86 Chapter 5these ideas and a rebuke for the Comintern and CP leaders in reports to the
Comintern in 1923–1924 that accused the CP of treating the Koreans as if
they w ere still under the tsar. Second, Kalinin’s reference to yellow labor
strictly in terms of class is noteworthy. This is a good example of Soviet na-
tionality being defined by inherited features as well as sociohistorical mark-
ers and is in marked opposition to the tsarist- era ethnographers and
governor- generals (Chapter 2), the reports of Arsenev and Geitsman, and
the trope of “yellow peril” invoked by Pravda i n 1937.
Dalbureau explic itly identified Koreans as a vanguard of the Japa nese
Empire and influence in December 1922, two months after Japa nese troops
had departed from the RFE and just prior to indigenization. Yet on De-
cember 14, 1925, the Soviet Union and Japan signed a treaty, the Conven-
tion of 1925, that allowed Japa nese citizens access to timber, oil, gas, and
fisheries in the entire RFE (Japa nese interests were concentrated in north-
ern Sakhalin, Kamchatka, and the Primore). This treaty also allowed Japa nese
citizens to live and work in the RFE so long as they had a trade, occupation,
or business and paid their taxes and residence visas. In essence, the 1925
Convention revived Japan’s aspirations for holding the RFE and allowed
the Japa nese access to its environs under the guise of pursuing business
interests.^31
Japan prepared for this rapprochement in advance. In 1923, they uni-
laterally paid the Soviet Union 6,250,000 rubles in gold for fishing rights
that they had used during the Intervention! The Soviet Union had not re-
quested reparations from Japan for fishing rights. This payment was an act
of goodwill and enticement in anticipation of the 1925 Convention.^32 There-
after, the Japa nese paid over one million rubles per year for RFE fishing
rights alone. These monies were income that the Soviet Union sorely needed,
as their economy had not yet recovered to the level prior to the First World
War ( until approximately 1927).^33 The 1925 Convention allowed Japa nese
citizens the right to initiate enterprises, whether wholly private or joint ven-
tures, throughout the entire USSR. Japan and her citizens enjoyed the sta-
tus of a most favored nation in Rus sia.^34 Yet, at the same time, Lenin had
warned of “reverse piedmonts,” as the Second Congress of the Communist
International (SCCI) and the Dalkrai Soviet leadership had already begun
to promote the trope of Koreans as the vanguard of Japa nese expansion/
empire (December 1922 statement). The Soviet state had no right to accuse
Koreans of Japa nese loyalties or affiliations in light of the 1925 Convention
that it deemed to sign. This trope that portrayed RFE Koreans as a van-
guard for Japan seriously undermined the Korean’s efforts for territorial au-
tonomy and their construction as a Soviet people.