The Caucasus Group and Japan Ë 145
Khabarovsk, the Maritime Province, and Sakhalin. (The Zelenyi Klin, populated by
up to half a million to one million ethnic Ukrainians who had emigrated or been
deported there, was three times the size of Soviet Ukraine.) Also, in November 1934
those Ukrainians in Turkey (supporters of the Ukrainian National Republic) were
disappointed by the Polish-Soviet nonaggression pact and so turned to Japan for sup-
port. They submitted to the Japanese military attaché in Istanbul an action plan in the
event of war between Japan and the Soviet Union. The plan included creating special
Ukrainian military units in the Far East as well as assassinating prominent Commu-
nists in Soviet Ukraine. Even if war did not break out, they hoped that Japan would
support their independence movement as well as those by Caucasians and Central
Asians.⁶⁸In 1934 the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists proposed a similar plan
to Japanese diplomats in Paris.⁶⁹What actually resulted from these proposals is not
known.
Concerning the Caucasus, Japan ultimately chose the rightist groups. It never
trusted those social-democratically minded elements in the Promethean movement.
After Warsaw and Paris signed non-aggression pacts with Moscow in 1932, Japan
saw a golden opportunity and sought to convert disillusioned activists from the
Promethean movement. The foundation of Manchukuo, as discussed earlier, only
enhanced Japan’s prestige among them. When the Social Democratic Georgian gov-
ernment in Paris requested that Japan allow their representative to be charged with
defending the interests of Georgian refugees stationed in Manchukuo, Japan seems
not to have accepted the appeal. (In January 1933, Japan asked Paris whether the Geor-
gian government was legitimate. Paris responded that after the French-Soviet pact,
it no longer enjoyed the o cial status of diplomatic legation in France.)⁷⁰In general,
however, while avoiding the Georgian Social Democrats working for the Promethean
movement (in other words, those oriented towards France, Britain and Poland), Japan
courted the Georgian rightists, ideological adversaries of the Georgian socialists, and
similarly minded Northern Caucasians, rst in Istanbul, then in Berlin.
In the autumn of 1933, Kanda, Japan’s military attaché in Turkey, asked the prior of
the local Georgian Catholic Church, Father Shalva Vardidze, for contact with Georgian
émigrés of rightist persuasion. Vardidze recommended to Kanda Spiridon Kedia, the
leader of the Georgian National Democratic Party; General Giorgi Kvinitadze, a veteran
of the Russo-Japanese War and World War I and former chief of the Georgian Army
68 Reproduced inTrudy Obshchestva izucheniia istorii otechestvennykh spetssluzb, v. 2 (Moscow:
Kuchkovo pole, 2006), 122-126.
69 See Archives du ministère des Aaires étrangères (AMAE). Correspondance politique et commer-
ciale 1914–1940. Z (Europe). Dossier Japon 1930-1940, no. 140, fol. 105-106.
70 See “Visite de Monsieur Matsoudaïra, attaché à l’ambassade du Japon,” 12 January 1933. AMAE.
Correspondance politique et commerciale 1914–1940. Z (Europe). Dossier Russie (Géorgie) 1919-1939,
no. 653, fol. 312. In fact, Paris renounced its recognition of the Georgian government-in-exile and
closed its legation in Paris.