46 Chapter 3the short biography of a Korean woman who inspired many others to become
Bolsheviks.
Aleksandra P. Kim was born in the Ussuri village of Sinelnikov on
February 22, 1885. Her mother died when she was very young. Her father
raised her, and when she was ten, they went to Manchuria because her father
worked as a translator for the Chinese Eastern Railway and Trans- Siberian
Railway. Her father passed away in 1902, and Kim soon married Mark I.
Stankevich. After finishing her education, she began work as a teacher.
Later, in 1914, she left her husband and went to the Urals to help recruit
Rus sian, Chinese, and Korean laborers into the Social Demo cratic Party
(RSDRP). In 1917, this po liti cal group became one branch of the Bolshevik
Pa r t y.^60 After the October Revolution, Aleksandra wrote Bolshevik tracts
encouraging prisoners of war (hereafter denoted as POWs) to surrender
their weapons and join the Bolsheviks. She successfully recruited twenty-
five Japa nese POWs, a rare feat.^61 From the Urals, she was sent to Khabarovsk
to become the Party’s commissar of foreign affairs.
In August– September 1918, the Bolsheviks lost control of Khabarovsk
to the Whites. A. P. Kim and seventeen other Party leaders tried to escape
on the steamship Baron Korf. They were caught by Kalmykov (a White leader
in Siberia) and tried. Kalmykov’s ensign, who was handling the trials, was
surprised to find that they had caught a young Korean woman among the
Reds. The prosecutor informed her that she would be released if she renounced
the Bolsheviks. Instead A. P. Kim stated: “I above all am a Bolshevik. I fought
and fight for Soviet authorities. Soviet rule is the rule of the proletariat and
oppressed peoples. I am deeply convinced that the Korean people can be
freed, regardless of their country, only if they achieve socialist victory with
the Rus sian people.”^62
Khan Chan Gol (née Grigorii Eliseevich Khan) was born in Rus sia in
the Ussuri region in 1892.^63 He served in the Rus sian Army on the Western
Front from 1915 to 1916. Apparently, he showed leadership qualities during
battle. In November 1916, he was sent from the front to the Kiev Military
Acad emy and in May 1917 graduated as a commissioned officer. After Brest-
Litovsk, Khan (surname) served briefly in the Siberian Rifle Supply Regi-
ment in Turkestan. In April 1918, he or ga nized the first Korean village
soviet at Nikolaevsk and was elected its chairman. Khan and N. K. Ilukhov
were elected to the Partisan Administration of the Olginsk region, officially
called the “Temporary Military- Revolutionary Staff of the Partisan Regi-
ments.” On March 10, 1919, this administration issued a resolution banning
the practice of land rental in the Olginsk region. Also, the resolution states
that Chinese and Koreans in the district would obtain land free of charge.^64
In 1919, Khan led his first group of Korean partisans fighting Japa nese and