1. Anton Chekhov's Life and Thought, Selected Letters and Commentary, trans. Heim, Michael Henry, ed. Karlinsky, Simon (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 1973), 167 Google Scholar.

2. A detailed account of Russian railroad construction in Manchuria during the 1890s and of the foundation of Harbin is contained in E.Kh. (for Evgcnii Khrisanfovich) Nilus, Istoricheskii obzor kitaiskoi vostochnoi zheleznoi doragi. 1896–1923 g.g. (Harbin, 1923) vol. I. Nilus was married to the poet Aleksandra Parkau.

3. The economic prosperity of Russian Harbin in the second, third, and fourth decades of this century was interconnected with the economic boom in the rest of Manchuria, occasioned by the mass influx of Chinese farmers, fur trappers, and tradesmen. This led lo a great demand for American-made agricultural machines anil implements, which were distributed by several firms based in Harbin. Manchurian soybean products, animal skins, lumber, and other commodities were also exported to Germany and other European countries. See Simpich, Frederick, “Manchuria, Promised Land of Asia. Invaded by Millions of Settlers, This Vast Region Now Recalls Early Boom Days of the American West,” National Geographic Magazine (October 1929), 379–428 Google Scholar; and Owen Lattimore, “Byroads and Backwoods of Manchuria. Where Violent Contrasts of Modernism and Unaltered Ancient Tradition Clash,” ibid. (January 1932) 101–130. There were, as other commentators have pointed out. Russian beggars, prostitutes, and drug addicts in Harbin, but these were very small minorities.

Transient foreign visitors, who often assumed that the entire Russian-speaking population of Harbin had recently escaped from the Soviet Union, were hard put to explain the prosperous appearance of the street crowds. Jan Paul Hinrichs cites a long excerpt from Harry A. Franck's book Wandering in Northern China (New York, 1923). Franck wrote that the “ladies as well gowned as at the Paris races [who] strolled with men faultlessly garbed by European standards” all had “not a crust left at home” and sold their “necessary things” to achieve this deceptive appearance.

Lilian Grosvenor Coville (“Here in Manchuria. Many Thousand Lives Were Lost and More Than Half the Crops Destroyed by the Floods of 1932,” National Geographic Magazine [February 1933], 379–428) visited Harbin in the fateful year that brought a major flood, the Japanese invasion and an epidemic of cholera. She, too, was puzzled by the well-dressed look of Harbin Russians. She accepted the explanation that Harbin women were divided into two classes: the attractive ones, who were all cabaret hostesses, and the unattractive ones, who were all dentists. As to the men. they were either supported by their dentist wives or somehow managed to “exist and enjoy themselves on nothing at all.” Coville also believed that Harbin's “excellent ballet dancers” and other performers were “trained in Moscow and smuggled out of Russia to Harbin” (all quotes from 235).

4. The exact proportion of Harbin's Russian-speaking population in comparison with the Chinese is hard to pinpoint. The section called Fudicdzian. inhabited only by the Chinese, where street names and shop signs were in their language, occupied approximately one-sixth of the city's area. But it was far more densely populated lhan any of the Russian sections.

For description and analysis of “Moia-tvoia,” see the two articles by Nichols, Johanna: “Pidgination and Foreign Talk: Chinese Pidgin Russian” in Papers From the Fourth International Conference on Historical Linguistics, ed. Traugott, E. C. (Amsterdam, 1980), 397–407 Google Scholar; and “The Bottom Line: Chinese Pidgin Russian” in W. L. Chafe and Johanna Nichols, eds., Evidentially: The Linguistic Coding ofEpistemology (Norwood, N.J., 1987), 239–257.

5. See Woodward, James B., Leonid Andreyev, A Study (Oxford, 1969), 135 Google Scholar.

6. An enormous amount of information about economic, cultural, medical, culinary, and numerous other aspects of life in Russian Harbin is found in Polilekhnik, no. 10, a special tenth anniversary issue, 1969- 1979, Sydney, Australia. (I would like to thank my Berkeley colleagues and former lellow-Harbiners, Boris Bressler and Gregory Grossman, for bringing this fascinating publication to my attention.) Ordinarily published as a newsletter by the graduates of the Harbin Polytechnic Institute who live in Australia, the anniversary issue of 1979 is a volume of 300 pages with some sixty articles and essays.

Among the highlights is an illustrated account of Harbin churches and temples. Besides the numerous Orthodox churches there were two large Jewish synagogues, a handsome mosque on the Artillereiskaia ulitsa, and Catholic, Protestant, and Old Believer churches. This article is followed by an eyewitness account of the demolition and burning during China's Cultural Revolution of the most beautiful and famous of Harbin churches, the St. Nicholas Cathedral, built in 1899 in the traditional Vologda style of wooden architecture. On 23 August 1966, Red Guards, for the most part hysterical teenagers, destroyed the cathedral and burned its priceless icons while beating drums and shouting Maoist slogans (Politekhnik, no. 10, 134–144).

Hinrichs cites in his annotations (n. 14, 132) two minor newsletters published in the west by former Harbin residents. He apparently did not have access to the two most substantial of such publications, Politekhnik in Sydney and the magazine-format Biulleten’ of the “Igud lotsci Sin.” printed in Russian (with a brief supplement in English) in Tel Aviv. Biulleten’ is now in its thirty-fifth year of publication. The latest edition available at this writing (no. 298, June 1988) commemorates the fortieth anniversary of the arrival of some 6,000 Jewish residents of Manchuria and the rest of China in Israel. The issue features several memoirs about that event, including one by the magazine's editor Boris Mirkin. There is also an installment of the posthumously published chronicle of the earliest period of Jewish presence in Harbin by A. I. Kaufman (see note 11 below).

7. On the beginnings of Harbin's literary life, see Iu. (for lustina) Kruzenshtern-Petercts, “Churaevskii pitomnik. O dal'nevostochnykh poetakh,” Vozroihdenie, no. 204 (Paris, 1968), 45–70. This article provides information on the period 1917–1930, which antedates the time described in Percleshin's memoirs. See also Mikhail Volin, “Russkie poety v Kitae,” Konlinenl, no. 34 (Paris, 1982), 337–357.

8. For a biographical sketch of Baikov see the issue of Polilekhnik cited above (n. 6, 181). It was depressing to learn from Pereleshin's memoirs that the talented lul'skii was a cocaine addict and a regular contributor to the fascist newspaper Nash put'. Founded by the fiihrer of the Russian fascist movement Konstantin Rodzaevskii in 1932 and financed by the Japanese, this newspaper was the lowest example of gutter journalism that Harbin had ever seen. On Nash put’ and the Russian fascist movement in the Far East, see Stephan, John J., The Russian Fascists. Tragedy and Fane in Exile, 1925–1945 (New York, 1978)Google Scholar.

9. See Europese Nachl. Vladislav Chodasevitsj, GeorgijIvanov, Boris Poplavskij, Gedkhten, ed. and trans. Hinrichs, Jan Paul (Maastricht, 1984)Google Scholar; and Valerij Perelešin, Gedichten, ed. and trans. Jan Paul Hinrichs (Leiden, 1983). The latter has appeared in two more printings since its first publication, 1984 and 1985. Hinrichs is responsible for Dutch editions of, among others, Anna Akhmatova, Nikolai Gumilev, and Vasilii Rozanov.

10. For a good thematic and technical analysis of Pereleshin's early collections of poetry, see Aleksis Rannit, “O poezii i poetikc Valeriia Pereleshina: Shest’ pervykh sbornikov poeta (1937–1971),” Russian Language Journal [East Lansing] 30 (Spring 1976): 79–104.

11. On the fate of Achair (the name has three syllables) and other poets after the Soviet invasion of Manchuria, see Valerii Pereleshin, “Konets Alekseia Achaira,” Novoe russkoe slow [New York], 10 December 1972, 5. A shattering account of how various prominent members of the Harbin community, who had welcomed the Red Army as liberators from the Japanese, were invited by the Soviet command to receptions at which they were arrested and then deported can be found in A. I. [Abram Iosifovich] Kaufman, Lagernyi vrach (Tel Aviv, 1973). Kaufman (1885–1971), a well-known Harbin physician, scholar, and Jewish civic leader, spent sixteen years in Soviet camps before he was allowed to join his family in Israel in 1961.

12. Pereleshin, Valerii. luzhnyi dom (Munich, 1968)Google Scholar; Kachel’ (Frankfurt a. Main, 1971); Ariel', with an introductory essay by Iurii Ivask (Frankfurt a. Main, 1976). On the metaphysical dimension in Kachel’ and other poetry by Pereleshin, see Valentin Evdokimov (Moscow), “ ‘Chertovy kacheli1 i sed'moe nebo” (the (irst half of the title refers to a well-known poem by Fedor Sologub), Vestnik russkogo khristianskogo dvizheniia (Paris) no. 139 (1983). 173–191. On Ariel', see Karlinsky, Simon, “A Hidden Masterpiece: Valery Pereleshin's Ariel .” Christopher Street 2, no. 6 (1977): 37–42 Google Scholar.

13. Ch'u Yuan, Li Sao. Poèma, trans. Valerii Pereleshin (from the Chinese original) (Frankfurt a. Main, 1975); Stikhi na were. Antologiia kitaiskoi klassicheskoi poezii (Frankfurt a. Main. 1970); luzhnyi kresl. Antologiia brazil'skoi poezii (Frankfurt a. Main. 1978); M. Kuzmin, co-trans., Canticos de Alexandria (Rio de Janeiro, 1986).

14. The first six cantos of Pereleshin's “Poèma bez predmeta” were serialized in the following issues of Sovremennik (Toronto): no. 35–36 (1977): 127–153; no. 37–38 (1978): 70–95; no. 39–40 (1978): 132–159; no. 41 (1979): 29–58; no. 42(1979): 52–80; no. 45–46(1980): 35–64.

15. Kino-kont.sertv were afternoon performances, usually on Saturdays, where before seeing the latest Marlene Dietrich or Shirley Temple (ilm (a Shirley Temple fan club existed in Harbin in the 1930s) or one of the Ginger Rogers-F'red Astaire musical comedies, one could watch a live variety show. The latter could include performances by singers (Soliia Redzhi, a Harbin precursor of Edith Piaf, with her pesni ulitsy or the more sedate Mariia Sadovskaia); the beloved comedian F:edor Khmarin; one of the popular dance duos, such as the ballerina Ol'ga Manzhelei and her husband Serov; modest corps-de-ballet numbers; and, especially, exotic dancers, such as Larisa Andersen, Nina Antares, or Mara Vasilevskaia (one of whose dances, “Satanella,” depicted a she-devil and was performed in a black satin evening gown of extremely complex cut with a pair of silver horns on her head).

16. Compare Nataliia Il'ina, Dorogi i sud'by (Moscow, 1985); and the section “Larisa” in her “Vstrechi,” Okluibr', no. 5 (1987): 83–92.

17. Arsenii Nesmelov, Izbrannaia proza, Emmanuil Shtein, ed., (Orange, Conn., 1987).