136 Ë The Caucasus Group and Japan
In the Caucasus, the prospect of a Soviet war with Japan encouraged the rebels, or
at least so Moscow feared. In the spring of 1932, for example, there was yet another up-
rising organized by the “counter-revolutionary kulak-mullah underground” in Chech-
nia and Dagestan. The leaders allegedly went around the bazaars and mosques to ag-
itate for insurrection. They declared that the “Soviet Union is ghting against Japan.
Each nationality must establish its own government, and in Chechnia a government
of shariah and imam.”³⁶The uprising was subsequently crushed with the help of Red
Army soldiers. Rumors of war with Japan thus provided a powerful incentive for in-
surrection in the Caucasus in 1932.³⁷
Soon after the foundation of Manchukuo, Japan’s military, expecting con ict with
the Soviet Union and sensing opportunity, began expanding and strengthening anti-
Soviet intelligence.³⁸In October 1932, the General Sta in Tokyo and Japan’s military
attaché in Moscow issued a special instruction to the Japanese military attachés in
Paris and Warsaw on subversion against the Soviet Union. The attaché in Paris, put
in charge of Europe and Turkey, was to draw up detailed plans for Tokyo by April
- The instruction noted that the importance of Japan’s position against the ex-
port of Communism by the Soviet Union and the Third International (also known as
the Communist International or Comintern, an international organization promoting
world communism) and the justness of war against the Soviet Union should be under-
stood widely in the world. It further gave instructions on the following three points
“as preparations”: (1) to carry out measures that would destroy the ghting capac-
ity of the Soviet Union as soon as possible after the outbreak of war; (2) to assist the
independence movements of Ukraine, Georgia, and Azerbaijan and “disturb” (kaku-
ran) these areas; and (3) to link the anti-Soviet émigré Russian organizations to their
comrades within the Soviet Union, call up rebellions in the country, agitate for “paci-
sm [defeatism?]” (one word after was deliberately not spelled out in the instruction),
and scheme for the overthrow of the Soviet government. In addition, the instruction
urged that a friendly relationship be maintained with France, Poland, the Little En-
tente (that is, Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Yugoslavia), the Baltic states, and Turkey
(which would help carry out the diversionary plans already mentioned). And it further
dictated the expansion of diversionary and intelligence organs in Europe and Turkey
36 Quoted in “Vtoroe pokorenie Kavkaza: Bol’sheviki i chechenskie povstantsy.”Rodina1995, no. 6,
- The impact of the international situation on the uprisings, see also G.V. Marchenko, “Antisovetskoe
dvizhenie v Chechne v 1920–1930-e gody.”Voprosy istorii2003, no. 1, 136.
37 See N.E. Eliseeva, “Chechnia: vooruzhennaia bor’ba v 20-30-e gody.”Voenno-istoricheskii arkhiv
no. 2 (1997), 162.
38 Earlier, in February 1932, Jan Kowalewski, a Pole who had trained the Japanese in cryptography in
Tokyo and was now based in Moscow as Poland’s military attaché, was deeply disappointed by Japan’s
weak intelligence in the Soviet Union. Although military units were being sent to the Far East, Japan
had not even actively organized intelligence on the Trans-Siberian Railway. See RGVA, f. 308k, op. 12,
d. 120, ll. 8-8ob. Subsequently Japan addressed this problem with Poland’s support.