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The Soviet Offer to China of 1919
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 March 2011
Extract
The first major effort of Soviet Russia to win the sympathies of China and to establish direct contact with its government was a manifesto of July 25, 1919. Previously the Bolsheviks had directed their propaganda and diplomatic efforts at the Entente Powers, with only occasional words for “the oppressed peoples of the East.” As Siberia was being rewon and its armies were approaching the long Sino-Soviet frontier, the Kremlin now focused greater attention on the Far East with its vast potential of revolutionary resources and its reservoir of anti-imperialist, anti-Western sentiments.
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- Copyright © Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1951
References
1 Izvestiia, August 26, 1919, 1.
2 The 1896 treaty of alliance between China and Russia was accompanied by a protocol which provided for construction and exploitation of the Chinese Eastern Railway by the Russo-Chinese Bank, later merged with the Banque du Nord to become the Russo-Asiatic Bank. See Treaties and Agreements with and Concerning China, 1919–1929 (ed., MacMurray), 1: 84. Subsequent agreements allowed the Tsarist government, through this bank, to exercise full control in the C.E.R. zone. The Peking protocol of 1901 concerned the Boxer Indemnity (ibid., 310). The agreements with Japan established spheres of influence in North China (ibid., 643, 803, 899; 2: 1327).
3 Izvestiia, August 26, 1919, 1.
4 Chicherin to the Fifth Congress of Soviets in July 1918 (ibid., July 5, 1918, 7). He continued: “More than this, we consider that if part of the money invested in the construction of this railway by the Russian people were repaid by China, China might buy it back without waiting for the term [thirty-six years — Editor] in the agreement violently imposed on her.…We agree to renounce all landrights of our citizens in China. We are ready to renounce all indemnities.” This speech is of particularly interest in light of its striking similarity with the 1919 manifesto. The only major difference was the absence of any statement on the Chinese Eastern Railway in the Izvestiia publication of the 1919 declaration.
5 Izvestiia, August 26, 1919, 1.
6 China Year Book, 1924, 870, “signed by Karakhan as a true copy certified.”
7 Millard's Review, a well-informed weekly, reported Soviet notes to China received March 21, 1920, and April 1, 1920; see MR, March 27 and April 10, 1920, referring both times to an offer to return the Chinese Eastern Railway. It published the “first” full translation of the Yanson wire of March 26, 1920, on June 5, 1920, 13: 24–26, in an article by H. T. Kong, “Russian Soviet Would Befriend China.” This included an entire paragraph concerning the Chinese Eastern Railway offer. The text also appeared in the same version in the North China Herald, December 1, 1923, 590Google Scholar.
8 Millard's Review 13 (June 5, 1920), 26Google Scholar.
9 Although the text of the 1920 declaration did not appear in the Russian press, it was included in an appendix to B. Savvin's, P.Vzaimootnosheniia tsarshoi Rossii i SSSR s Kitaem (Moscow, 1930), 128Google Scholar. A translation in Yakhontoff's, VictorRussia and the Soviet Union in the Far East (New York, 1931), 381Google Scholar, was allegedly made from the official Narkomindel text. However, both Savvin and Yakhontoff incorrectly date the manifesto October 27, 1920. Since all references to the second declaration made by Joffe, Karakhan, and other negotiators in China, as well as by all Narkomindel writers, correctly date it September 27, 1920, it is probable that Yakhontoff used the Savvin booklet as the basis of his translation. China Year Book, 1924, 872, contains an official English translation, “as published by the Soviet Mission.”
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27 Deiateli, 816–17.
28 Vilenskii, 15.