19 0 Chapter 9the White and Allied forces (consisting of British, American, and French
troops) on August 2, 1918, many of the local Red Army soldiers simply dis-
carded their Red Army uniforms and renamed themselves as local zemstvo
militias working under the authority of the Whites. This Supreme Admin-
istration (the Whites) worked directly with the Allied military command
until the latter’s withdrawal from Arkhangelsk province in October 1919.^20
If one were to count every person who switched allegiances and par-
ticipated in some manner, whether direct or indirect, provided aid, food,
provisions, voluntarily and involuntarily, in support of the Whites and other
anti- Bolshevik groups during the Intervention, this number would possibly
be in excess of ten million!^21 A substantial proportion of the cities, towns,
and villages along the vari ous fronts of the civil war and the Trans- Siberian
railway were populated by a majority population of Rus sians and Ukraini-
ans. Soviet citizens who had supported anti- Soviet groups could also have
been stigmatized with the label of fifth columnists and wreckers, saboteurs
and diversionists, for the cap i tal ist- imperialist nations during the Great Ter-
ror. Yet, during the Terror only the Rus sians categorized as Kharbintsy were
actually repressed as part of the nationalities deportations.^22 My argument is
simply that the most fully developed “reverse piedmonts” ever established
on Soviet soil were those established by the Whites (with support from the
Entente forces) among primarily Rus sians and Eastern Slavs in urban and
rural areas across the Trans- Siberian and the vari ous fronts of the Rus sian
Civil War. Yet Stalin and the NKVD did not see fit to target all former
White Guardists and their collaborators or to conduct national operations
targeting Rus sians and Ukrainians.^23 This is due in part to the Soviet belief,
policy, and treatment of “Rus sians” as the bedrock of the Soviet peoples, the
eldest brother and “first among equals” (see Figure 16).^24
On the other hand, the trope of the Koreans as a “vanguard for Japa nese
expansion” began immediately after the Intervention. The Dalbureau resolu-
tion of December 1922 proposed to deport all Koreans from the Primore. So-
viet Koreans proved their character and confirmed their socialist “remaking”
as Red Partisans during the siege of Nikolaevsk, the 1929 war, as members of
border and self- defense assistance brigades, and as Korean NKVD who helped
carry out the total deportation of 1937. Those who saw Koreans in primordial-
ist terms such as “aliens” or a “yellow peril” applied the same logic to their po-
liti cal identities. This was the primary reason for their deportation in 1937.^25
An auxiliary effect of the deportation was the purge of the Korean
intelligent sia, which eviscerated the voice and the internationalist spirit of
the community. The Korean intelligent sia that had developed during koreni-
zatsiia demonstrated their willingness to speak out against unfair policies,
defend their rights as Soviet citizens, and to extend socialism throughout