Koreans Becoming a Soviet People 103mental in beginning the pro cess towards the “total deportation” of Koreans
and Chinese by linking them with Japa nese expansion on racial/scientific
grounds. Unfortunately, there are no known sources, archival or academic,
that indicate why, in 1928, the white paper report was generated and its
purpose.^97 We only know that the white paper was circulated to all Dalbu-
reau members and candidate members in 1928 and again in 1934 (around
forty or so copies in each year).^98 Several original copies of the Arsenev
“Doklad” still exist. One is held in Rus sian state archives in Khabarovsk
(GAKhK), and in 1996 the entire Arsenev report was republished as part of a
document collection named Zhyoltaia opasnost by the editor Boris Diachenko
and published in Vladivostok.^99
The letter begins: “Proletariat of all nations, unite! By order of Com-
rade Bergavinov, [to whom] V. K. Arsenev sends a copy for your familiariza-
tion. To the Bolsheviks of the Far Eastern Regional Committee and the All
Soviet Communist Party.”^100 In the introduction, Arsenev recounts the ex-
ploits of Vasilii Poiarkov and Semyon Dezhnyov, who explored Yakutia/the
Amur and the Bering Strait in the seventeenth century. Arsenev mentioned
Japan as a military rival for the RFE and Siberia early in the paper. He re-
counted a very testy exchange that took place between P. F. Unterberger and
an officer of the Japa nese General Staff, Oiama, in 1881. Unterberger asked
Oiama why Japan was militarizing itself. Oiama replied, “As you know of
course, because of you.”^101
After the introduction, there was an unrelenting focus on race and the
racialization of the Soviet Union as a representative of Eu ro pean values
versus East Asians under the aegis of the Japa nese or as a yellow bloc. For
example, “Japan tries to Japanicize Korea and to Koreanize the Southern
Ussuri and the adjacent part of Eastern Manchuria.”^102 Arsenev also re-
jected Soviet internationalism when he opined, “It is erroneous to think that
we can create an international colony on the shores of the Japa nese Sea [Pa-
cific] as advantageous as it would be to our use.” Next, Arsenev excoriated
the Koreans for not boycotting Japa nese products and enterprises in Korea
and doubted that they would give up their lives to defend the RFE, which
ignores the historical rec ord of Koreans in the RFE. In a manner similar to
his earlier work, Chinese in the Ussuri Region (1914), V. K. Arsenev stated (in
the 1928 white paper):
The Korean people absolutely are distinct from us by character, by their way
of life and world view.... If it were just one single person, but rather the
entire mass of Koreans treat the period’s po liti cal events as if they are all equal.
Within our borders, Koreans are not attracted to [our] po liti cal convictions
but rather exclusively to material advantages. They are anthropologically,