76 Chapter 4Informally, the pro cess of land reform (for Koreans) and distribution
was slowed by the fact that the Soviet land organs wanted to save the best
land parcels for incoming Rus sian settlers and demobilized OKDVA/Red
Army resettlers. In practice, some in the Soviet institutions were still fol-
lowing tsarist- era recommendations: “It was intended that the Chinese pre-
cede the Rus sians and clear out the forests to make the land arable. But the
Chinese don’t do this. They don’t go to the mountains. They stay in the
valleys on the good arable land with lots of water.”^117 Thus, a large number
of the Koreans who received land in the 1920s to 1930s were sent north (of
the Primore) to the Khabarovsk okrug. Alexandra Kim’s family was resettled
near Khabarovsk when she was twelve (in 1933). But the growing season
north of the Primore was short and there were large fluctuations in tem-
perature even during summer. The Khabarovsk okrug did not prove to be a
productive area for rice cultivation until the late twentieth century.
With the advent of korenizatsiia, many young educated Koreans
(t he vydvizhentsy) began to join the Soviet organ INKORPORE that rep-
resented Korean workers and peasants. These young educated Koreans
aggressively petitioned for more expedient land reform and defended Kore-
ans in court in Rus sian. INKORPORE representatives even went above the
local and regional structures and voiced their complaints directly to Mos-
cow.^118 The Korean activists formed a collective, representative voice for the
Korean community, some of whom were recent mi grants to the USSR who
did not speak Rus sian fluently. Unfortunately, the societal tensions these
activists produced were likely unwanted and alarming to the Stalinist re-
gime. Mamaev further explained this situation:
The equality of Koreans in po liti cal rights and rights to land under Soviet
law is viewed by Rus sian peasants as a violation of their interests, and
frequently one can hear the expression, especially when they are address-
ing agricultural workers about the practical implementation of agricultural
policies, regarding “the sale of Koreans.” In their turn, the Korean popula-
tion stand up for their rights in every way. They complain to all govern-
ment institutions about irregular agricultural practices. This is, in
par ticu l ar, clearly reflected in the Institute of Korean Representatives
[INKORPORE— Institut Kor- Upolnomochennikh], who have in fact
declared themselves representatives of the Korean population and their
strug gle for the rights to land, labor, and not only about the [rights] of the
peasants, but with the Soviet organs as well.^119One should note that, despite Soviet cultural autonomy, Rus sian was the lan-
guage of the courts, the Soviet institutions, the Politburo/Central Commit-