Notes to Pages 68–71 215
irreducibility of po liti cal identities ascribed to ethnic or class criteria is reflected in the in-
creasing use of the term ‘ele ment’ to describe organically distinct collectivities comprising
the general population.”
- Abramsky, “The Birobidzhan Proj ect, 1927–1959,” 67.
- Evgenia Tskhai Interview 2.
- Viktor Li Interview 2.
- Grossman, Forever Flowing, 141, 143.
- Ten “Special Red Army Collectives” were established in 1929. Most were deacti-
vated Red Army soldiers who served in the RFE and were willing to try their hand at farm-
ing; see Bone, “Socialism in a Far Country,” 46.
- Ibid., 61, 63, 72–73.
- Regarding land, a Soviet land distribution report in February 1926 stated that a
par t ic ul ar parcel of land could be distributed to 1,300 Rus sian families or 3,050 Koreans;
see Bugai and Pak, 14 0 let, 209. Regarding exemptions and other benefits, Rus sian and
Ukrainian “resettlers (from the western borderlands to the RFE)” who were demobilized,
ex- Red Army received relocations costs, start-up farm credits, and bread rations equal to
that of urban proletariat. See Bone, “Socialism in a Far Country,” 37, 45, 48, 50, 87.
- In 1923, 77 demobilized Korean settlers who were former Red Army or Red par-
tisans were told to clear the taiga in order to obtain land parcels for the artel the Red Star.
Twenty- nine of the 77 Koreans had served in the Red Army. See Bugai and Pak, 14 0 let, 217.
- “Thus national equality in all forms (language, schools, etc.) is an essential ele-
ment in the solution of the national prob lem.” See Stalin, Marxism, 58.
- Martin, Affirmative Action Empire, 16.
- One of the best examples of the centralized control of “regional autonomy” was
the local Dalkrai Comintern’s approval for a Korean Autonomous Region. But Moscow
had the final say, and once the paperwork arrived there, the issue remained and died there
(see Chapter 5). For more on center- periphery relations and Stalin’s control over decision
making, see J. J. Stephan, Rus sian Far East, 203–224; John Keep and Alter Litvin, Stalinism:
Rus sian and Western Views at the Turn of the Millennium (New York: Routledge, 2005), 51,
59; and O. V. Khlevnuk, Politburo: Mekhanizmy politicheskoi vlasti v 1930- e gg. (Moscow:
Rosspen, 1996), 8, 260–261.
- Kate Brown’s A Biography of No Place supported this idea. It stated: “The trope of
peasant backwardness... increasingly backwardness in national form— came to be seen as
a major cause of po liti cal sedition.” See Brown, A Biography of No Place, 86.
- E nemy nationality has strong parallels to “ enemy combatants” because of the
state’s willingness to use repression, labor camps, and deportation/exile against them.
- Simon, Nationalism and Policy, xv, and Brudny, Reinventing Rus sia, 7.
- Serafima Pavelovna Kim, Interview by Jon Chang, Kolkhoz Politotdel, Tash-
kent, Uzbekistan, June 1, 2009. Soon Ok Lee also gave a similar answer regarding Soviet
persons and Korean identities and the “best nationality is my nationality.” See Lee Soon Ok
Inter v iew.
- Syn Hva Kim, Ocherki, 211. Serafima Kim indicated that the PDI (Teachers In-
stitute) was in Nikolsk- Ussuriisk, not Vladivostok as the author in Ocherki had written.
- Bugai and Pak, 14 0 let, 19 7.
- Serafima Kim, Interview 1 by author, Kolkhoz Politotdel, Tashkent, Uzbekistan,
May 25, 2009.
- Simon, Nationalism and Policy, 54. Koreans had approximately 160–171 village
soviets.
