Harbin Russians
Encyclopedia : H : HA : HAR : Harbin Russians
The Harbin Russians or Russian Harbinites were three generations of Russians who lived in the city of Harbin, the junction city of the Chinese Eastern Railway (CER), from approximately 1898 to the mid-1960s. The first generation were originally the builders of the China Far East Railway along with employees, and private settlers. Harbin had a total of 68,549 subjects of either the Russian or Chinese Empires, and consisted of fifty-three different nationalities. Harbin also consisted of forty-five spoken languages with Russian and Chinese as the dominant tongues. Only 11.5 percent of all residents were actually born in Harbin, which were made up of local Chinese and Manchus. Countless Russians moved to Harbin in order to work on the railroad. Upon arriving to Harbin, the Russians had to establish it. Life was hard for the builders and early settlers. The railway and the city had to be built from scratch along with houses being constructed and settled. Furniture and personal items were brought in from Russia, and the people had to establish themselves and their facilities. This new place known as Manchuria seemed foreign and alien, while the homeland was so far away. After the Russo-Japanese War, while many Russians moved out, the long-time residents decided to stay. Eventually the roots of the people had taken hold and by 1913 Harbin had become an established Russian colony for the purpose of building and maintaining the China Far East Railway.
The decade from 1913 to 1923 saw Russia through World War I, the Russian Revolution, and the Russian Civil War. In the 1920s Harbin was flooded with about 100,000 to 200,000 Russian émigrés fleeing from Russia which included leaders, officers, soldiers of the White movement, members of White governments in Siberia and the Russian Far East, the intelligentsia, and ordinary people. On September 8, 1920, the Chinese Republic announced that it no longer recognized the Russian consulates in China. On September 23 China ceased relations with representatives of Imperial Russia and deprived Russians of extraterritorial rights. Overnight Russians in China found themselves stateless. Soon afterward, the Chinese took control of the institutions in Harbin such as the courts, police, prison, post office, and some research and educational institutions.
In 1924 in Beijing, a Sino-Soviet agreement was signed leading to a complete takeover of the China Far East Railway by Sino-Soviet management. This led to a strong Soviet Union presence in Harbin. The agreement stated that only Soviet and Chinese citizens could be employed by the CFER. This meant that now the citizens of Harbin had to decide not only on their nationality, but also their political identity. Many Harbins took Soviet citizenship for patriotic reasons. Sadly, there were some Harbin residents who remained stateless and eventually lost their jobs with the China Far East Railway. Gradually, the national and especially the political identity of the people of Harbin were splitting each other up into opposing sides.
In the mid 1930s, the Japanese occupied Manchuria, including Harbin, and turned it into the puppet state of Manchukuo. In 1935, the Soviet Union sold its share of the China Far East Railway to Manchukuo; that is, Japan. In the spring and into the summer of 1935, thousands of Harbin people loaded onto trains with their passports and belongings, and left for the Soviet Union.
People in the Soviet Union used the terms KVZhDist and Harbinets (Harbinite, "person from Harbin") for any person connected in one way or another to the KVZhD.
After 1935, many Harbinites returned to the Soviet Union. Nearly all of them came under arrest during the Great Purge (1936 - 1938), charged with espionage and counter-revolutionary activity according to the NKVD Order no. 00593 of September 20, 1937.
Some Harbin residents moved to Shanghai, Beijing, Tianjin, Qingdao, and other cities and eventually left China completely. The remaining Harbin Russians could not or would not leave even while they were faced with the increasing advancement of Japan in Manchukuo. Some Harbins even welcomed the occupation with hopes that the Japanese would help in their anti-Soviet struggles. They also looked to them for protection from the Chinese efforts to restore sovereignty in Harbin. These Russians also dreamed of liberating Russia, but remained blind to the lingering Chinese struggle for independence. Eventually, the last generation of Harbin Russians left Manchukuo for good, never to return again.
Russian Harbinites had an unpleasant time under the Manchukuo régime (1932 - ) and later under the Japanese occupation. In 1945, after the Soviet Army had occupied Harbin, the Soviets sent to labor camps all those Russian Harbinites whom they identified as White Guardists or who had collaborated with the Japanese authorities.
After 1952, the Soviet Union initiated a second wave of repatriation of Russian Harbinites, and by the mid-1960s virtually all of them had left Harbin; this time no repressions took place. There are several Russian connections in Australia resulting from refugees from Harbin finding sanctuary there. Igor Ivashkov (Gary Nash) escaped from Russia to China as a child and, escaping the rise of Chinese Communism, moved from there to Australia. He wrote a memoir 'The Tarasov Saga' about his experiences.
External Links
References
- Mara Moustafine. Secrets and Spies: The Harbin Files. A Vintage Book series, Random House, Australia Pty Ltd, 468 pp.
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.