The Eurasian Triangle. Russia, the Caucasus and Japan, 1904-1945

Japan and Caucasian Émigré Forces Ë 135

operations set up large and extensive networks using ethnic Chinese, Koreans, and

other minorities (including some émigré White Russians) against Japan.³²Indeed, the

situation was almost the reverse of that of the Russo-Japanese War thirty years ear-

lier. In the summer of 1937, the Japanese government estimated there were approxi-

mately two thousand Soviet “spies” in Japan and Manchukuo and fty thousand “So-

viet agents.”³³

Moscow’s condence was apparent in the statement made by Mikhail Kalinin (the

nominal “Soviet president”) in 1934. After speaking with Stalin, he noted that it was

very dicult to understand Japan’s policy (which he characterized as “endless adven-

turism”) and that every year things were becoming easier for the Soviet Union. He went

so far as to state:

It’s necessary for it to be widely believed that Japan is strong.... It’d be very good for us to have

a ght with Japan and beat it soundly. If we beat Japan, no scoundrel in the West would poke his

nose into our aairs. A war with Japan would not carry a direct danger.³⁴

Clearly, Kalinin’s statement reected Stalin’s judgment. How well Tokyo was informed

of Moscow’s condence at the time is not known.

6.2 Japan and Caucasian Émigré Forces

Japan’s aggression in China heightened the war scare in the Far East. At the time the

world press “was lled with reports of the possibility of war between the Soviet Union

and Japan. In 1932–33, the mood in the Soviet Far East escalated to one of panic over

expectations of war with Japan, as Soviet defectors to Manchukuo at the time testi-

ed.”³⁵In 1934 and 1935 the tense situation eased somewhat, as noted earlier, owing

in part to the rapid Soviet buildup of military forces. Nevertheless, Moscow suspected

that certain radical circles within the Japanese forces might stage war against the So-

viet Union despite the prevailing wishes of the Japanese government against it. The

threat of war in turn heightened Japan’s prestige among the émigré population from

the Soviet Union the world over.

32 See, for example, “Zenm ̄o ni haru rokoku supaimo.” ̄ Toky ̄ ̄o nichinichi shinbun(evening edition) 4
October 1933, 1.
33 GGSK, S.9.4.5.
34 “Nam bylo by ochen’ vygodno podrat’sia s Iaponiei i osnovatel’no pobit’ ee.”Istoricheskii arkhiv
2008, no. 6, 15–17.
35 See Hiroaki Kuromiya, “Stalin’s Great Terror and the Asian Nexus.”Europe-Asia Studies, 66, no.
5 (July 2014), 777. Japan shared the information it obtained from the defectors with Poland. Both
Japanese and Polish archives contain the records of their interrogations. On the Polish records, see,
for example, Centralne Archiwum Wojskowe (hereafter CAW), Warsaw, Poland, I.303.4.2015.