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

20 Ë The Russo-Japanese War

Assisted by Japanese diplomats and ocers stationed in Europe as well as English

socialists and Swedish ocers and businessmen,²²Akashi now cultivated extensive

contacts with subversive elements. In his postwar report to the General Sta, Akashi

discussed fteen anti-Tsarist political parties and some forty important persons of

these parties. The Russian Socialist Revolutionary Party, the Russian Social Demo-

cratic Party, the Liberal Party (the Union of Liberation), the Jewish Bund Party, the

Armenian (“Droshak” or Dashnaktsutyun) Party, the Georgian (Sakartvelo) party,²³

the Lettish (Latvian) Social Democratic Party, the Finnish Constitutional Party, the

Finnish Active Resistance Party, the Polish Nationalist Party (National League), the

Polish Socialist Party, the Polish Progressive Party, the Ukrainian Socialist Revolution-

ary Party, the Belarusian (or Belorussian) Party (Hramada), and the “Gapon Party”

• all came under Akashi’s attention. The overall prejudices at the time in Europe, as

well as Japan’s peculiar ignorance and arrogance, were reected in Akashi’s own prej-

udices. Regarding the Georgian Sakartvelo Party, for instance, Akashi wrote: “Georgia

is generally a backward civilization, and the Georgians are ferocious and brave. Con-

sequently this party is not as moderate as other socialist groups, and frequently uses

explosives.”²⁴Akashi, however, almost certainly would have agreed with H.C. Arm-

strong, who said regarding the Georgians of the time and their struggle for indepen-

dence:

Though only a people of three million souls in all, they revolted against the might and massed

strength of Russia; and the Russians trod them down with erce reprisals, sending thousands to

the gallows and tens of thousands to exile in Siberia. But it was in vain, for though sometimes

for a while crushed, their spirit remained unbroken and again, untamed and untamable, they

revolted; and they carried on their “Unending Battle” for Freedom.²⁵

Akashi’s listing of the opposition leaders is almost a “Who’s Who” in the Russian op-

position movements, starting with N.V. Chaikovskii, Prince Kropotkin, G.V. Plekhanov ,

and V.I. Lenin, and ending with P.N. Miliukov, P.B. Struve, Maksim Gor’kii, and Roman

Dmowski. Akashi also lists Prince Loris-Melikov (Hovhannes Loris-Meliov/Melikian)

and Mikayel Varandian (Hovhannisian), both of the Droshak Party, and Varlam

Cherkezishvili (Varlaam Cherkezov, a Georgian prince and anarchist). Akashi per-

sonally met many of the people he listed (although no one knows for sure whether he

actually met Lenin.). Akashi maintained particularly intimate ties with Konrad Viktor

(Konni) Zillicaus (1855–1924), head of the Finnish Active Resistance Party who had

lived in Japan for two years; Witold Jodko-Narkiewicz (1864–1924), leader of the Polish

22 Michael Futrell, “Colonel Akashi and Japanese Contacts with Russian Revolutionaries in 1904–5.”
St. Antony’s Papers 2: Far Eastern Aairs4 (1967), 12.
23 The “Sakartvelo Party” used repeatedly by Akashi in fact signied the Georgian Party of Socialist
Federalists. See footnote 26 of this chapter (page 21).
24 Akashi,Rakka ry ̄usui, 26.
25 H.C. Armstrong,Unending Battle(New York-London: Harper & Brothers, 1934), xii.