Burnt by the Sun. The Koreans of the Russian Far East - Jon K. Chang
244 Notes to Pages 190–194
- Understandably, due to the large numbers of Rus sians and Ukrainians national
operations against these groups during the Terror would not have been logistically feasible.
But given the large number of collaborators during the civil war, why were the Rus sians so
easily named the “core people” whose loyalty was never collectively questioned during the
Second World War?
- Incredibly, this continues today in Rus sia where Rus sian nationalist parties are
numerous and indeed are the backbone of the dominant po liti cal parties of twenty- first-
century Rus sia. The Soviet Union is reconstituting itself in Rus sia due to the migration of
millions of Central Asians and Caucasian peoples, although many of these peoples are not
yet citizens. The birthrate of these peoples is substantially higher than that of the Eastern
Slavs. Rus s ia is increasingly becoming both Muslim and Asian. Yet, the dominant po liti cal
parties in Rus sia are still promoting the idea that po liti cal loyalty is best mea sured by race and
nationality. These po liti cal and nationalist sentiments will only divide and weaken Rus sia.
- The profile of “diaspora nationality” was that its possessors were border- residing,
migratory, maintained cross- border contacts, and had loyalties to ethnic homelands or
simply to lands that contained their ethnonym.
- I refer to the period of 1985–1991. Leon Aron spoke of this period in this man-
ner: “Rarely, if ever in its 1,000- year history was Rus sia as honest with herself as in the
years between 1987 and 1991. The national scrutiny was intellectually dazzling and almost
incredibly bold.” See Aron, Roads to the Temple, 2.
- Vasilii Mitrokhin and Sergei Tretiakov are examples of ex- KGB members who
defected in the 1990s and then published memoirs and or monographs based on the archives
they smuggled out of the former USSR. Regarding Tretiakov, see Peter Earley, Comrade J:
The Untold Secrets of Rus sia’s Master Spy in Amer i ca after the Cold War (New York: G. P. Put-
nam’s Sons, 2007), and Christopher Andrew and Vasilii Mitrokhin, The Sword and the
Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB (New York: Basic Books,
1999). Regarding the sale of Soviet factories and their equipment in the 1990s, see Chrystia
Freeland, Sale of the Century: The Inside Story of the Second Rus sian Revolution (London:
Little, Brown, 2000). Some of the Soviet factory equipment was then resold at wholesale
prices to Chinese factories.
- Sikorskii, Full Circle, 214.
- Soviet identity usually contained some ele ments of nationality, for example, the
nationality of the speaker when proclaiming his loyalty to the Soviet Union or as a Soviet
person. This person typically included his national community as part of his statement, and
then there would be a switch to “we, the [nationality].”
- Afanasii A. Kim was arrested on these very charges; see Chapter 6.
- Chong Sik Lee and Ki Wan Oh, “The Rus sian Faction in North Korea,” Asian
Survey 8, no. 4 (April 1968): 275–279.
- Gum Nam Kim, Interview by Jon Chang, Severnyi Maiak Kolkhoz, Uzbekistan,
May 28, 2009.
- As an example, Iliaron Em, who was interviewed for this study, was sent to Ja-
lalabad, Af g han i stan, as a lead engineer to work on Soviet- Afghan irrigation and other civil
engineering proj ects from 1967 to 1970.
- “Marked operatives” would be defectors, émigrés, or POWs.
- There is, however, one significant event in U.S.– Soviet relations that supports
this viewpoint. In 1957, the Soviet espionage ring of Col o nel Rudolf Abel was broken by
the FBI in New York City. Abel’s real name was Viliam Genrikhovich Fisher, a Soviet
OGPU/KGB officer descended from Baltic Germans. His assistant in running this opera-
