100 Chapter 5
and others in the RFE, korenizatsiia and its programs faced a strong coun-
terattack from Comrades Geitsman and Arsenev, who were well respected
by Dalkraikom, the Comintern, and its leaders.
COMRADES GEITSMAN AND ARSENEV:
COUNTERING KORENIZATSIIA FROM WITHIN
From March to April 1928 there were missives from a regional representa-
tive of the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs, Geitsman, who stated
that the Korean Question was still to be deci ded, but that the Koreans were
“completely alien” and that the eight thousand Korean applications for So-
viet citizenship (received by 1928) were to be rejected due to a secret NKVD
order. However, the second point of the Geitsman letters was that the Chi-
nese, although not linked with Japa nese expansion (like the Koreans), were
also a po l itic al issue (question) simply because of the importance of wresting
from them their economic prowess in the RFE. Yet, the Chinese worked under
Soviet market forces that were determined by the state. The labeling of Chinese
economic power as a “po liti cal issue” borrowed from V. V. Grave’s view that
their economic might undermined Rus sian po liti cal authority and from
Stolypin’s belief that, “if we sleep our lethargic dreams... , when we awake
they [the RFE] will be Rus sian in name only.”^86 The NKID (Narkomindel,
the Soviet “Commissariat of Foreign Affairs”) report rehabilitated tsarist- era
attitudes towards the Chinese in their entirety. Third, Geitsman believed
that for every Chinese worker/NEPman who was deported, a Korean would
simply take his/her place. This is where the NKID and its cadres missed
the point about East Asians. They conflated the identities of the Chinese
and the Koreans, when in fact the two groups occupied very distinct op-
posing niches within the category of worker/peasants and that of citizen-
ship. The letter(s) read as follows:
In real ity, if we seriously consider the fact that about 200,000 Koreans are
living in the Vladivostok district,... that the overwhelming majority of
Koreans are engaged in agriculture and therefore, become completely
attached to the soil; when you learn that five- sixths of the rice produced is
cultivated by Koreans; and, fi nally, that the Korean population is completely
alien to us [italics mine], even in the sense of citizenship [presumably
Koreans who were Soviet citizens], then the question arises of who will be
the a ctual owner of our [Far Eastern] outskirts in the near future....
Koreans without citizenship are living here. Only 7,000 of the 200,000 possess
Soviet passports [italics mine]. A further 8,000 have at some time submitted
requests to be admitted as Soviet citizens, but following a confidential