The Korean Deportation and Life in Central Asia 165tation.”^80 For instance, Egor Iakovlevich Tskai had been the chairman of
the Blagoslovennoe collective from the early 1920s until the Korean depor-
tation. He was also a “Soviet agent” who reported on the po liti cal mood and
currents within the Korean community (near Birobidzhan).^81 Berta Bach-
mann, a Soviet German who was deported to Central Asia in 1941, pro-
vided an example of how the in for mant network was entrenched in Soviet
life: “Meanwhile the arrests continued. There was in every village one (or
more) secret agent, who in league with the NKVD (the security police) des-
ignated who was to be arrested today, who tomorrow. In our German vil-
lage, which we had left, rumor had it that this agent was the teacher, who
himself eventually, after all the men had dis appeared, also had to take the
road to oblivion.”^82
The first wave of repressions struck the Soviet Korean elites, cadres,
and institutional leaders (prior to deportation). The proportion of those who
were falsely convicted in this cohort was extremely high. This is because the
2,500 Korean elites were selected based on their large influence in the com-
munity and not on their potential for committing subversion. Given the
aforementioned facts, during the Terror, the Soviet Union demonstrated an
uncanny verisimilitude to the “counterintelligence model.”
In answering the “why” of the Korean deportation, another question
has surfaced. Given that they did not pres ent a valid threat, why did the
Stalinist regime maintain such a “suspicious” view towards Soviet Kore-
ans?^83 This extreme paranoia about the Koreans becomes more explicable
when one considers that the NKVD had uncovered anti- Soviet ele ments
among the diaspora populations of several Soviet nationalities, including
Rus sians and Ukrainians. Yet, the Koreans were the first nationality to
suffer a total deportation.^84 One explanation is that Stalin used the Great
Terror as a testing period to prepare and mold the USSR for war. Thus, he
harnessed ethnic prejudices in order to galvanize the people to stand behind
the regime and against more foreign threats. Stalin fostered sentiments
against Germans, Poles, Koreans, and other Soviet diaspora nationalities as
pos s ib le fifth columnists to gain support and carry out his preparations.^85
But the prob lem was that the Poles, Koreans, Germans, Greeks, and other
diaspora peoples were not foreign invaders. In most cases, by 1937–1938
they were Soviet citizens and Russian- speakers of varying degrees, from
basic “kitchen Rus sian” to native speaker. This was not an attack from out-
side the Soviet Union and thus a legitimate expulsion and repression of es-
pionage and anti- Soviet ele ments.
Stalin and his regime considered Soviet Poles, Koreans, Germans, and
other diaspora nationalities to be equally as Polish, Korean, and German as
their co- e thnics from the titular homeland. These sentiments were patently