128 Chapter 6Soviet Poles and Germans were merely poor- to- middle peasants eking out
a living.
Germans and Poles portrayed as kulaks was a common trope believed
by many peasants because from the fourteenth century onward, Polish and
German nobles held huge tracts of lands in the Baltics, Ukraine, Belarus,
and Poland. Brown asserts: “at the onset of the Revolution, the Polish elite
[on the right bank of the Dniepr, Ukraine] owned or managed most of the
agricultural land and factories and controlled local courts and administration,
while Polish lawyers, entrepreneurs, and doctors ran regional institutions,
banks, schools, and hospitals.”^59 This was also true of Germans particularly
in the areas of the Baltics, Ukraine, and Rus sia.^60 Soviet officials also la-
beled the Koreans as aliens, a “yellow peril,” and traitorous threats during
several episodes of battles over land and resources with Rus sians and Red
Army (OKDVA) kolkhozes from 1928 to 1932.^61 During collectivization,
approximately six to seven hundred Koreans were also deported as kulaks
from the interior of the Primore to Oxotsk and Kamchatka as special set-
tlers.^62 A large number of Koreans also fled to Manchuria.^63 In the 1930s,
Koreans, Germans, and Poles in the Soviet Union were increasingly seen as
“potential fifth columnists” who could not extinguish their ascribed “loyal-
ties” to their ethnic homelands. The culmination of this view ( towards the
Koreans) appeared in three Pravda articles in 1937 and their deportation
later that year.
Despite the warnings over “local nationalism,” the issues of an autono-
mous oblast and Korean in de pen dence continued to be of great importance
to Soviet Koreans. In my interviews with Anatoli Kim and Serafima Kim,
both mentioned that Koreans should have received an autonomous region in
the RFE.^64 Ma Khak Bon stated that in 1937 NKVD agents induced Kore-
ans to board the trains to Central Asia by telling them, “You Koreans will
receive an autonomous oblast in Central Asia.” The possession of an autono-
mous region was central to the definition of a Soviet nationality.^65 NKVD
agents as “po liti cal police” were very aware of the sensitive issues within
each Soviet community.^66 orea’s inK d e pen dence (March first demonstrations)
from Japa nese rule also remained an impor tant issue for RFE Koreans in
the 1930s. Il Khe recounted that his fa ther went to a Korean in de pen dence
demonstration in 1934 or 1935 that took place in a theater in Vladivostok.^67
Unfortunately for the Koreans, they were entering a new period of Soviet
nationalities policies that would place a greater emphasis on the repression
of cultural practices and characteristics that connotated “foreign ties and
influence” beginning around 1931. The Koreans would need to master the
art of walking on eggshells à la Soviet.