26 Chapter 2Amur Railroad line is one example. After the Russo- Japanese War, A. N.
Kuropatkin, the leader of Rus sia’s armed forces, issued a statement about the
pol iti cal reliability of Baltic Germans/non- Russians in the Rus sian Army
that unintentionally portended ominous repercussions for Rus sian minori-
ties. He stated the following:
In the Rus sian Army, in 1907, in the composition of the officer corp was
found:
A. Not of the Orthodox faith: Generals (full)—22%, Lieutenant
Generals—15%, Major Generals—14.5%, Captains—15%.
B. Not having a Rus sian surname: Generals—41%, Lieutenant
Generals—36%, Major Generals—37%, Captains—31%. A significant
number of t hose carry ing non- Russian surnames in the General Staff are
of German origin.Kuropatkin went on to say that this composition (the percentage of
Germans and non- Russians) of the officer corps was neither good nor
healthy for the formation of a war college, nor did it aid an army’s com-
manding officer’s staff in making wise and in de pen dent decisions.^84 This use
of surnames to mark ethnicity was employed again during the First World
War. In 1905, Japan made Korea a protectorate of her empire. As a result,
Japan controlled Korea’s diplomatic relations and appointed a Japa nese
resident- g eneral for Korea (as a Japa nese head of state).
In the late nineteenth century until even the early Soviet period, Rus-
sian peasant/Cossack relations with East Asians were sometimes violent
and demeaning.^85 Some of the peasants, hunters, and farmers of the RFE
hunted and killed Chinese and Korean workers in order to rob them. How-
ever, first, they dehumanized them, employing zoological tropes by referring
to the Chinese as merely “grouses” and to the Koreans as “white swans.” This
denigration allowed the hunters to rationalize their murderous acts as sym-
bolic animal hunts to put food on the table. These hunts could also have
been partly linked to the relations between Rus sia and “backwards Asia” at
that time, for Korea and China had not modernized, and most Asian nations
were not able to compete militarily or eco nom ically with the West. China
ceded territory after territory to the foreign powers (Rus sia included). De-
spite this, many Chinese and Koreans came to the RFE and were able to
become reasonably successful as farmers and merchants. Some Asians even
became very wealthy. There was some ele ment of jealousy, hatred, incredu-
lity, and the zero- sum paradigm of “Rus sian resources for Rus sians” in the
phenomenon of the “hunts” and the meta phors “grouse” and “white swan.”