Security Concerns Trumping Korenizatsiia 125lective farm or commune also included alcohol such as vodka, suli, and han-
shin as part of the social atmosphere. The Soviet archives note that Koreans
had opened many small cafés that served their own home- brewed (samogon)
vodka, suli, and hanshin near the train stations in the Primore by the 1920s.^50
But the principal use of alcohol was as a social lubricant to facilitate social-
izing, gossiping, and camaraderie. After all, there was still work to be done
in the morning seven days a week on the farm or the fishing artel. It is in ter-
est ing to find that on most of the Korean kolkhozes, even in the RFE, they
did not play the traditional Korean games (wrestling, board jumping, the
Korean swing) except on Korean holidays. This was an example of Russifi-
cation and Sovietization. Yet, Koreans continued and preferred to speak
Korean when among Koreans. Language was considered the most salient
sign of culture during korenizatsiia and among Soviet ethnographers. Most
Koreans seemed to employ an instrumentalist approach to assimilation and
the maintenance of “native culture.”
Soviet Koreans played Rus sian games and sports, as these were the
games and leisure activities that most people were acquainted with. They
often sang Rus sian songs and took many well- known Rus sian songs and
translated them into Korean with the same bars and notes.^51 This was
because these were the most popu lar songs and the songs that most people
knew and liked. But one of the weaknesses of Soviet “cultural autonomy”
was that it lacked cultural “authenticity.” Korenizatsiia and Soviet ethnography
believed that language was one of the key components of national culture.
Therefore, Koreans in the RFE were speaking Korean in school from age
seven (first class) to the end of their higher education (about twenty years
of age for those who finished the Pedtechnicum of Nikolsk- Ussuriisk).
However, the subject material they evaluated and the medium in which
these themes were discussed (radio, school, books, newspapers, journals)
were strictly within a Rus sian/Soviet framework. For example, the social
sciences in Soviet education continually discussed the idea of perpetual
class conflict between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat/peasantry. They
also employed a very specific Soviet terminology, such as the proletariat,
class- consciousness, cap i tal ist- imperialist nations, and bourgeois enemies.
Thus, true Korean cultural autonomy was, at times, difficult to find in
Soviet korenizatsiia.
Maia Kim, of Kolkhoz Politotdel, was born on March 22, 1937, in the
Korean village of Gai Da Mak in the Primore. She told the story of how her
parents had met and their age difference without any embarrassment. This
story transgresses many of today’s legal and cultural norms. However, it is
part of the allure and, perhaps, the bounty of oral history that it can reveal
culture and norms that are now forbidden, hidden, or denied.