Burnt by the Sun. The Koreans of the Russian Far East - Jon K. Chang
Notes to Pages 171–174 239
- Statiev stated: “The government’s claim that these ethnic groups were less
loyal than others fluctuated on a case- by- case basis from valid to groundless, which sug-
gests that the actual motives for the deportations were not those that were officially pro-
claimed.” Alexander Statiev, “The Nature of Anti- Soviet Armed Re sis tance, 1942–44: The
North Caucasus, the Kalmyk Autonomous Republic, and Crimea,” Kritika 6, no. 2 (Spring
2005): 288.
- In 1941, Khai Ir Ti was transferred to Chita to work for the Rus sian General
Staff (Red Army leadership). The vari ous Soviet defense, military, and po liti cal police suf-
fered from a lack of Chinese and Korean translators. The Vladivostok archives gave an excel-
lent account of how the Intelligence Division of the Red Army recruited Chinese translators.
Van Ven Fa (also known by his Rus sian name, Aleksandr Pavlovich Kalashnikov) was born in
the USSR to a Chinese father and Rus sian mother. At fifteen he went to Manchuria to live
with an uncle. It is assumed that he learned Chinese during this time. Sometime around 1940
(at the age of twenty- four) he returned to the USSR. Red Army intelligence interviewed him,
found him to be “without a doubt honest,” and could not find “any compromisable material”
in his background check. The key factor was possibly his involvement since 1935 with the 7th
NRA, an anti- Japanese partisan group possibly linked to the Red Army and Soviet funding
(fond 163 contains files from the “Administration of the NKVD”). Mr. Van also showed
Captain Kovalev, who interviewed him, the wounds he suffered as proof of his military ser-
vice. Van/Kalashnikov was hired; see RGIA- DV f. 163, op. 2, d. 5, ll. 2–3. Were there other
partisans who had also proven their loyalty through battle for the Bolsheviks?
- See Anna Vasilevna Ti, Interview by Jon Chang, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, August 20,
- Kuromiya, Voices of the Dead, 128–14 0.
- Martin, “Origins of Soviet Ethnic Cleansing,” 852.
- Martin’s “Soviet xenophobia” is one of the most dominant theories, whether
accepted in part or in whole, among Western historians used to explain the Stalinist
regime, korenizatsiia, the Great Terror, and the nationalities deportations. Martin’s theory
was explained in his monograph The Affirmative Action Empire and in Sheila Fitzpatrick’s
(as editor) Stalinism: New Directions. For the latter, see Terry Martin, “Modernism or Neo-
traditionalism? Ascribed Nationality and Soviet Primordialism,” in Sheila Fitzpatrick, ed.,
Stalinism: New Directions (London: Routledge, 2000), 348–367.
- Martin, “Origins,” 861 states, “This seems convincing evidence that it was So-
viet, not Rus sian, xenophobia that drove the practice of Soviet ethnic cleansing.”
- Martin, “Modernization or Neo- traditionalism,” 358. Page 358 states, “Given
the new primordialism [referring to its genesis in the 1930s]... .”
- Martin, “Origins of Soviet Ethnic Cleansing,” 837, 852. Regarding Koreans as
an “ enemy nation,” see David R. Shearer and Vladimir Khaustov, Stalin and the Lubienka: A
Po l iti cal History of the Po liti cal Police and Security Organs in the Soviet Union, 1922–1954
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015), 215–216.
- According to Martin, Soviet xenophobia expressed through state programs and
policies created the primordialist identities and nationalisms that sprang up in the second
half of the 1930s. See ibid., 860, which states: “In the late 1930s, alongside ethnic cleansing
and ethnic primordialism, there was also a revival of a rather virulent state- sponsored Rus-
sian nationalist rhe toric.... this Rus sian nationalism is best understood as an effect rather
than a cause of Soviet xenophobia.”
- Martin, ibid., 829, affirms: “In neither case did the Soviet state itself conceive of
these deportations as ethnic.”
