Burnt by the Sun. The Koreans of the Russian Far East - Jon K. Chang

Security Concerns Trumping Korenizatsiia 141

Division in Eastern Siberia. Allison’s report stated: “Mr. Powell estimates

that at least ten percent of the Rus sian Far Eastern Army is made up of

Orientals; Chinese, Koreans, and Mongols. The head of the G.P.U. [OGPU]

in Eastern Siberia is a Chinese and one of the chief officers of the Rus sian

aviation force in Siberia is also a Chinese.”^125 The Koreans and the Chinese

of the USSR had a long rec ord of ser vice in the OGPU/NKVD dating back to

the when it was still called the Cheka (December 1917 to February 1922).^126

In direct antithesis to the Arsenev’s “white paper” (his report,

“Doklad”) was a speech by Afanasii Kim at the 17th All- Union CP Con-

gress in 1934. Koreans knew after 1928 that their fate in the RFE was in

the balance. The fact that they still had not received an autonomous region

(either an ASSR or AO) reinforced their fears.  A. Kim followed Stalin’s

example regarding blood as a metonym for loyalty while speaking for the

community as a whole. Basically, he pledged the absolute loyalties of the

Korean community to defend Soviet borders by affirming:

We are now living in a tense situation of complicated po liti cal relations....

in one of the kolkhozes of the Poset region near the border, we heard the

whir of a Japa nese airplane, which flew above the kolkhoz. Korean kolkhoz

peasants know that Soviet power is their own power, and that the Commu-

nist Party is their own party.... We know that the task of Korean kolkhoz

peasants and Korean workers is to defend our Red borders of the Soviet Far

East until the last drop of blood.^127

During the second half of korenizatsiia (1931–1937) in the RFE, there

was a much greater internalization of Soviet identity and values, because

after the establishment of Manchukuo (1932) and Hitler’s rise to power

(1933), the so- called cap i tal ist- imperialist enemy was actually at both the

Table 6. (continued )

Post/Division/Regiment Rank Name

36. 12th Tank Battalion Executive
    Secretary
    Party Bureau

Khan, Nikolai

Ivanovich

3 7. Po liti cal Instructor, 185th Mechanized
Construction Battalion

Po liti cal

Instructor

Kim, Vasilii

Petrovich

[Signed Vasilii Konstantinovich Blukher, OKDVA Commander]

Blukher, 37 persons in total

Source: RGVA f. 33879, o. 1, d.115, ll. 22–24, as cited in Son, Rossiiskie koreitsy, 379–381.