Koreans Becoming a Soviet People 83Primore (see Map 2).^14 The Koreans were actually a significant proportion of
the population of seven contiguous raions. These territories ( whether four or
seven raions) were sufficient to have formed a Korean national autonomous
oblast. Soviet Koreans began lobbying for such an administrative area be-
ginning in 1920.^15 In the mid- to- late 1920s, many nationalities received
SSRs and ASSRs (SSR for union republics and ASSR for autonomous re-
gions, a lower form of nation and autonomy). In 1924, the Turkestan ASSR
was converted into the Uzbek and the Turkmen SSRs. In 1929, the Tajik
SSR was created from Uzbekistan.^16 Some form of territorial autonomy was
granted to most of the vari ous Soviet nationalities during the mid-1920s to
m id-193 0 s.
In regard to the Koreans, they requested a Korean autonomous oblast
many times and had hoped to use an autonomous oblast as a piedmont for
anti- Japanese expansion.^17 A region such as an oblast was needed in order to
show widespread Sovietization of Koreans and the successful implementation
of korenizatsiia programs. Khan Myon She’s (Andrei) “Short Report: Notes
on the Situation of the Korean population in the Primore” (December 26,
1922) proposed that Koreans receive an autonomous oblast that would serve
as an anti- J apanese bulwark and a base for Korean in de pen dence on the
Russia- Korea border.^18 In Kim, a Soviet Korean delegate at the Fifth Con-
gress of the Comintern, also spoke of the RFE as a socialist piedmont for
occupied Korea. He noted that the newspaper Sonbong (Avangard) was the
only Korean socialist workers’ newspaper printed in Korean and serving the
interests of Korean workers in Korea and the RFE.^19 The Comintern’s Far
Eastern (Dalkrai) Bureau indicated that they supported Khan’s proposal
and sent the proposal to the Central Committee. Moscow deferred a deci-
sion in de fi nitely.^20 Dalkrai Bureau, in December 1922, stated: “All Koreans
from the Primore should be settled outside of the border region to either the
Amur or Zabaikal oblasts. Motives of the Dalbureau: [to prevent] the spread
of Japa nese influence by Koreans. To talk about any such autonomy [of
Korean territory] over that of the latter [the expansion of Japa nese influ-
ence] will never happen.”^21 In January 1923, the local Dalbureau pushed
through a resolution to deport all Koreans from the Primore due to “dis-
semination in the region of Japa nese influence through Koreans.” This
view was later reendorsed by Geitsman’s NKID (Narkomindel) reports in
March– April 1928.^22
The rumor of Koreans as a vanguard for Japa nese expansion would
prove to be untrue, because in 1923 the Red Army itself had forcibly dis-
armed and deported anti- Japanese Korean partisans. Six to seven hundred
Korean illegal residents, kulaks, and partisans were forcibly deported to Ka-
mchatka, Okhotsk, and Aian, Japan, based on charges of swindling, fraud,