Korean Korenizatsiia and Its Socialist Construction 65creased by only 2,000 to 170,000 (the number of Soviet citizens was not
given).^59 The years 1928–1930 saw the revival of tsarist- like “correct coloni-
zation,” whereby Koreans were given land and moved out of the Ussuri
while demobilized Eastern Slav colonists were recruited and transferred
thousands of miles from the Ukraine and Western Rus sia to the RFE.^60
Many Soviet citizens continued to exploit cheap Korean labor and charge
exorbitant prices to rent land.
In 1925, Korean immigration from China and Korea to the USSR
continued, which exacerbated the prob lem of landless Koreans and their
exploitation by Rus sian landowners. Therefore, Soviet authorities gave land
grants to and settled 608 Korean families near Spassk, a northern, less set-
tled district of the Primore. Interestingly, the granting article stated: “In
conclusion, in the next few years, we need to close the border so that land
distribution can be done among the previous settlers and especially keep
money in the colonization fund for future Rus sian settlers.”^61 This statement
readily acknowledged the state’s preference for Rus sian settlers even in 1925.
Soviet land re distribution awarded unequal plots of land to Koreans
and Rus sians. Rus sians would typically receive larger land grants and better
land. This followed a tsarist pre ce dent.^62 For example, in the second half of
1925, the Primorskii guberniia established and made formal its land distri-
bution policy for its norms (the amount of each land parcel). Rus sians received
35 desiatinas per family, while Koreans got only fifteen. This difference was
perhaps an attempt to attract reluctant colonists, but the policy grated on
the local RFE population and certainly showed that Soviet socialism still
had chauvinist attitudes as well as policies that could not be explained away
because the “Rus sians” (and Ukrainians and others) had only recently arrived
in the RFE yet received the best and largest land parcels.^63 Furthermore,
the same Primorskii guberniia made available a report (February 1926) stat-
ing that the colonizing fund had “45,555 desiatinas that would be used to settle
either 1,300 Rus sian families or 3,050 Korean families [ita l ics m ine].”^64 Rus sians
were also “first among equals” in regard to white- collar jobs (kontornaia rab-
ota) and top positions in every union republic and national autonomous re-
gion in the USSR. Tatar, Bashkir, and Kazakh complained that Rus sians
and Eastern Slavs dominated administrative jobs and top positions in vari ous
Soviet institutions in Bashkiria, Kazakhstan, and Tatarstan in the 1920–
1930s.^65 Similar complaints were made in Turkmenistan.^66 During the tsar-
ist period, Koreans complained that the Rus sians and the Cossacks received
better land, more provisions, and more equipment than Koreans. This con-
tinued into the Soviet period, the demobilized OKDVA (Far- Eastern Red
Army) kolkhozes being the most prominent example. The unequal land grants
were chauvinistic, not socialist. This policy gave Rus sians and Eastern Slavs