Korean Korenizatsiia and Its Socialist Construction 55and 5–7 percent professionals employed as teachers and skilled professionals.
Among the rural workforce, this population was further divided into
5–6 p ercent rich farmers, 25–30 percent middle peasants, and 65–70 percent
landless sharecroppers or poor peasants (see Table 4).^13
The Commission on the Korean Question came about in order to
settle the issue of Korean incorporation as Soviet citizens and agricultural
workers. At the same time, around 20,000 new Korean mi grants were
reaching and settling in the RFE annually during 1923–1926.^14 This new
influx of Koreans unsettled the local RFE administration and their goals of
land reform and citizenship because of the changing demographics. At the
same time, some Koreans continued to be exploited as they were required to
pay rents as high as 70 percent of the harvest. The influx of Korean illegal
mi grants only perpetuated this phenomenon. In 1926, only 84,931 Koreans
(50 percent) of the total RFE Korean population of 168,009 were Soviet
citizens.^15 In this section and those to follow, we shall see a constant tension
between those who wished to grant Koreans land and citizenship (such as
Comrades Anosov and Mamaev) versus those, such as Arsenev, who believed
that the Koreans were and would remain “aliens” to Soviet socialism. Despite
the unequivocial promises of Lenin regarding socialism, Soviet nationalities
policies typically vacillated between the views of Arsenev and Anosov, de-
pending on the cadre in charge, the resource in question, and the po liti cal
mood at that moment.
Generally speaking, there were four main rural industries that Koreans
participated in during korenizatsiia: rice farming, silkworm breeding, fish-
ing, and, unofficially, opium cultivation. After the October Revolution, the
Bolsheviks nationalized many foreign businesses and cancelled their pre-
1917 national debt. After the First World War, “war communism” was an
economic strategy based on state planning, requisitioning, and distribution
that did very little to feed the masses and fomented anti- Soviet sentiments.Table 4. 923 “Commission on the Korean Question”: Findings 1
Total Population =Percentage Rural + Percentage Urban
120,980 (100%) 103,482 (85.5%) 17,498 (14.5%)
Breakdown by Occupation Breakdown by Class: Farmers
a. Farmer/agricultural worker 80% a. Kulak/rich farmer 5–6%
b. Laborer (urban) 5–6%
c. Urban petit bourgeois 10% b. Middle peasant 25–30%
d. Academic/professional 5–7% c. Landless/poor peasant 65–70%
Source: B. D. Pak, Koreitsy v rossiiskoi imperi, 115.