Intervention 49to prefer White leaders (belogvardeetsy) or atamans who emphasized mili-
tary prowess far above other attributes. Japa nese support for the three ata-
mans fighting on the side of the Whites— Kalmykov, Semyonov, and von
Ungern- Sternberg— literally drove thousands of peasants and potential
military recruits to the SRs and Bolsheviks by the end of their short rule.^71
On June 24, 1922, Japan announced that she would withdraw all troops
by the end of October 1922. One of the conditions of Japan’s withdrawal
from the FER was that anti- Japanese Korean partisan ele ments be dis-
armed. Four hours after the Japa nese pullout, partisans and the NRA en-
tered Vladivostok. On November 15, 1922, the FER was officially reab-
sorbed into the RSFSR (Rus sia). The Soviet Union was established one
month later.^72
For Russian- Koreans, however, the worst part of the Intervention lay
in the postwar image of Koreans having aided and abetted the Japa nese oc-
cupation of the RFE. The FER’s Japa nese Intervention in the Rus sian Far
East gave an example: “the Japa nese soldiers and their Korean drivers beat
up the inhabitants of the village, men and women as well as children, fre-
quently, using their weapons for the purpose.... Signed, October 7, 1919
by the true signatures of 29 citizens of the village of Ivanovka.”^73 The
number of Koreans in their employ could possibly have numbered in the
hundreds. Yet, these “Koreans” were overwhelmingly from Japa nese do-
minions. Very few people noticed this, because Soviet citizens as well as
Entente soldiers had a difficult time distinguishing between the vari ous
Asian nationalities (let alone inter- Korean identities). Bisher, citing AEF
briefs, states, “However, most Allied officers could not tell the difference
between Chinese, Buryats or other indigenous Siberian peoples, and
tended to classify anyone with Asian features as ‘Chinese’ unless they hap-
pened to be distinguishable by costume or language.”^74 Most RFE resi-
dents only understood that there were Koreans working for the Japa nese
Army. The great majority of these “Koreans” were from occupied Korea,
Japan, or Manchuria. This highlights a weakness of Soviet nationality, in
that this term unfairly classified all Koreans as being equally Korean re-
gardless of the language they spoke and their place of origin (Japan, China,
the RFE, or Korea). This was not the employment of a “contingent nation-
ality” based on cultural- historical factors, but rather an already essential-
ized definition of Koreanness that excluded sociocultural categories such as
place of birth.^75 Next, we will examine Lenin’s pronouncements against
Pan- I slam, Pan- Turk, and Pan- Asian movements at the Second Congress
of the Communist International (hereafter, SCCI) which were the first
expressions of xenophobia towards Pan- nationality and Pan- Islamic move-
ments within the USSR.