Security Concerns Trumping Korenizatsiia 117latinizing Korean. When Pak was asked if the latinization of Korean would
cut off Soviet Koreans from those in Korea, he responded that latinization
created no barriers between the vari ous Koreans and that it “ will become
a revolutionary weapon which we [Soviet Koreans] have taken up first.”^23
Kvar Li and Nikolai Pak were Soviet cadres first, and as such, they pre-
sented latinization as a program that came to life from within the Korean
community. Both men understood that, whether intentional or not, latini-
zation would isolate (thus Sovietizing) Koreans from the lit er a ture, media,
and politics of their ethnic homeland. It is also reflective of the 1930s that
both Li and Pak proposed punishments for those who opposed Korean lati-
nization. Sonbong (Avangard) on January 4, 1932, rebutted Nakson Kim’s
anti- latinization proposal to be anti-Party and antirevolutionary. The Mari-
time Latinization Committee (Nikolai Pak belonged to this committee for
the latinization of Korean) suggested that Kim’s transgressions could not be
excused by self- criticism.^24 This seemed to be a call for repression. Sonbong
Issue 670, “A Korean Language Teacher Opposes Latinization,” called Kim
Sijong, who opposed latinization, a petit bourgeois and stated that he would
be dealt with accordingly. Kim Sijong was a Korean- language instructor at
the Nikolsk- Ussuriisk Pedagogical Institute and refused to be named to a
research committee on latinization.^25 In sum, many of the Soviet Korean
cadres pledged and demonstrated their loyalty to the Party and were quite
willing to repress other RFE Koreans in order to prove it.
In the end, the latinization program for Korean was over before it
began. Only two documents w ere ever published in latinized Korean.^26
Funding for latinization ran into serious prob lems early on. In April 1932,
Resolution no. 282 from the Presidium of the Vladivostok City Soviet
(committee) declared that there was a “complete absence of funds” to pay
(bud geted 64,500 rubles) for Chinese latinization in its administrative
area.^27 It was likely that funds for Korean latinization were also non ex is tent in
- Fi nally, latinization was rendered moot with the return to the Cyrillic
script for all Soviet languages beginning around 1934.^28 At approximately
the same period, N. Ia. Marr rose to become the most prominent Soviet
linguistic expert and a member of the Alphabet Committee. His “Stadial
Theory” proposed that the Rus sian language and script represented the
highest form of socialist development and were to be the means to lead the
other nationalities and languages to the same level. Rus sian, as the most
highly developed language, stopped latinization dead in its tracks. By the
late 1930s, most of the latinized languages returned to the Cyrillic script, as
Rus sian became a mandatory subject in all Soviet schools, even those teach-
ing in the native language.^29 Martin states: “By 1934, however, Stalin had
declared the ‘greatest danger princi ple’ an irrelevancy and the rehabilitation