Security Concerns Trumping Korenizatsiia 135Manchuria. Given these facts and beliefs, the greatest factor in the report’s
revival was to allow the Far Eastern Regional Committee (Dalkraikom) to
take a vote regarding an immediate full deportation of the Korean and the
Chinese populations. The aforementioned are the three most likely factors
that influenced the reissuing of Arsenev’s “white paper.”
The primary beneficiaries of a full deportation of the entire Korean
community in the RFE in my estimation would have been Stalin and
Ezhov, the Commissar for Internal Affairs (NKVD). Stalin and Ezhov
had begun the expansion of the powers of the OGPU (pre de ces sor to the
NKVD) in 1934. The murder of Sergei Kirov in December 1934 set off sev-
eral waves of repression within the CP (many victims of which were Stalin’s
opponents). Stalin began to warn that oppositionists among the Far Eastern
leadership could turn the RFE into a separate state linked to Manchukuo.
Some of the first conspiracies of this nature were unmasked in the RFE by
the OGPU in 1933. One such plot involved the creation of an autonomous
Kamchatka.^107 A vote to deport the Koreans allowed Stalin and Ezhov to
replace local RFE leaders and NKVD with their handpicked successors.
Therefore, it is quite pos si ble that the recirculation of the Arsenev report in
1934 was initiated by Stalin or Ezhov.
On a populist and local level, the secondary beneficiaries of the Ko-
rean deportation would have been the local Soviet leaders, farmers, and the
OKDVA kolkhozes (of demobilized Red Army soldiers and their families).
From 1928 to 1932, there had been anti- Korean and anti- Chinese vio lence
and disputes with Rus sian and Slavic farmers over land and resources.^108
With the Koreans deported, the Dalkraikom could increase their recruit-
ment of demobilized OKDVA soldier- farmers to the RFE. The new re-
cruits and local Rus sian farmers would also take over the former plots of the
Koreans, and local leaders would no longer have to deal with the disputes.
A. Khisamutdinov seemed to link the “white paper” to the deporta-
tions of the Chinese and Koreans because of the sequence in which the in-
formation was written. He wrote, “On 8 January 1934, that secret report
was given to all members of Dal’biuro. The Communist Party prepared for
purges against the Koreans and Chinese people. This was forgotten by the
Communist Internationalists who had as their platform the education and
recruitment of all peoples.”^109 Khisamutdinov also stated that the par tic u lar
archive is currently unavailable to any researchers.^110
However, it was also forgotten that, in the 1930s, the Soviet Koreans
constituted a significant part of the Red Army units and the nonmilitary
“assistance brigades” (filled by farmers/peasants) to guard Soviet borders.
First, I shall examine Koreans who served in the Red Army border units
that carried the regional name of OKDVA (the Special Red Banner Far