Civil War Migrants in Russia’s Far East

Abstract

This article examines migration by the intelligentsia during the Civil War to Russia’s Far East. It analyses how they quickly adjusted to the new surroundings. The intelligentsia worked diligently in science, education, and culture and made significant institutional and scientific advances in the Far East, despite harsh local conditions.

Notes

1 Hoerder, Cultures in Contact, 4.

2 The Far East is a general name given to states and territories in East Asia. The Russian Far East is a term that refers to the Russian part of the Far East, i.e. the extreme north-eastern areas of Russia, between Siberia and the Pacific Ocean. Both terms are used in the article, for the Russian migrants’ influence was also extended to the Chinese Eastern Railway area (Northern China) and Japan.

3 Siegelbaum and Moch, Broad is My Native Land, 14.

4 Gatrell, The Making of the Modern Refugee; A Whole Empire Walking; ‘Domestic and International Dimensions of Population Displacement in Russia’; ‘War, Population Displacement and State Formation in the Russian Borderlands, 1914–24’. Hoerder, Cultures in Contact. Another study of war-induced migration in 1914–18 is Lohr, Nationalizing the Russian Empire. Siegelbaum and Moch also focus on various forms of population displacement in the twentieth century such as seasonal and labour migration, resettlement and deportations, Broad is My Native Land.

5 The history of the Civil War in Russia has attracted hundreds of studies from historians from various countries. See the detailed and balanced assessment of the historiography in Vladislav Goldin, Rossia v grazhdanskoi voine. Goldin has highlighted major trends and issues in this research. His book is the most complete Russian survey of research on the Civil War. Several attempts have been made to compose a Western historiography of the Civil War. See the survey by U.S. historian Peter Kenez who analyzed the major studies of the Civil War published prior to 1990, Zapadnaia istoriografiia grazhdanskoi voiny v Rossii. The most valuable work for researchers is Jonathan D. Smele, The Russian Revolution and Civil War. 1917–1921.

6 The most complete and detailed regional description of the Civil War in the Russian Far East has been made by scholars from the Institute of History, Archaeology, and Ethnography of the Far East People (Vladivostok). Larin, Dal’nii Vostok Rossii v period revoliutsii 1917 i grazhdanskoi voiny. Among researchers from abroad who deal with revolutionary events in Siberia and the Far East, see Smith, Vladivostok under Red and White Rule and Paul Dotsenko, an eyewitness and active participant in the Civil War, with The Struggle for a Democracy in Siberia. 1917–1920, based on archival documents, Soviet and émigré publications, and his own reminiscences. Letters of another eyewitness, Eleanor Prey, who lived in Vladivostok in 1894–1930, gives us a vivid picture of the city during the Civil War, Prey, Pis’ma iz Vladivostoka. The political situation in Vladivostok in 1917–22, along with other issues, is described by the U.S. historian John Stephan, The Russian Far East. A History. Revolutionary Vladivostok and the international intervention in Siberia and the Russian Far East is covered in Benjamin Isitt’s From Victoria to Vladivostok.

7 Poliakov, Sovetskaia strana posle okonchaniia grazhdanskoi voiny; Komissarov, Khudozhestvennaia intelligentsia.

8 Eliutin, Vysshaia shkola SSSR za 50 let; Kim, Velikaia oktiabr'skaia sotsialisticheskaia revoliutsiia i stanovlenie sovetskoi kul’tury; Izdatel'skoe delo v pervye gody Sovetskoi vlasti.

9 Soskin, Sibir’, revoliutsiia, nauka;Revoliutsiia i kul’tura (1917–1920); Ermakova, Dal’nevostochnyi gosudarstvennyi universitet; Beloglazova, Kul’tura Dal’nego Vostoka v usloviiakh obshchestvennykh transformatsii 20–30-kh gg. XX v.; Koroleva, Khronika kul’turnoi zhizni Vladivostoka. 1917–1922; Khisamutdinova, Dal’nevostochnaia shkola inzhenerov.

10 Fedukin, ‘Intelligentsia i beloe dvizhenie’; Danilov and Mametov, Intelligentsiia provintsii v istorii i kul’ture Rossii; Zakharov, ‘Otnosheniia nauchno-tekhnicheskoi intelligentsii k sovetskoi vlasti v 1920–30-e gody’.

11 Fitzpatrick, Education and Social Mobility in the Soviet Union, 1921–1934; idem, ‘Klassy i problemy klassovoi prinadlezhnosti v sovetskoi Rossii 20-kh godov’.

12 Badcock, Politics and the people in Revolutionary Russia; idem, ‘Talking to the People and Shaping Revolution’.

13 For example, Eliashevich, Vozrast i kachestvo iuzhno-ussuriiskikh iskopaemikh uglei; Georgievskii, Primorskaia oblastnaia arkhivnaia komissiia; Pentegov, ‘Issledovatel'skaia rabota v oblasti khimii v DVK za desiat’ let (1922–1932)’.

14 Ivashkevich, Pisateli, uchenye i zhurnalisty na Dal’nem Vostoke v 1918–1922.

15 Veimarn, ‘Neskol’ko slov ob Ural’skom gornom institute’, 10.

16 Soskin, Sibir’, revoliutsiia, nauka, 31.

17 Veimarn, ‘Neskol’ko slov’, 10.

18 The Chinese Eastern Railway (CER) was a single-track line built by the Russian Empire on Chinese territory between 1897 and 1903 to shorten the route between Chita and Vladivostok.

19 Larin, Dal’nii Vostok Rossii v period revoliutsii 1917 i grazhdanskoi voiny, 70.

20 Galiamiva, Rabochie Dal’nego Vostoka vo vtoroi polovine XIX – nachale XX v., 30.

21 Stephan, The Russian Far East, 128.

22 Issit, From Victoria to Vladivostok, 53–107; 111–34.

23 Stephan, The Russian Far East, 132.

24 Prey, Pis’ma iz Vladivostoka, 351.

25 ‘News’, Dalekaia Okraina, 23 November 1918, 1.

26 Filatov, Byt’ po semu!, 94.

27 Georgievskii, ‘Dal’nevostochnyi gosudarstvennyi universitet v proshlom i nastoiashchem’, 350–1.

28 Academic Staff of Vladivostok Polytechnic Institute. Curricula Vitae. (1918). RGIA DV, f. P-117, op. 1, d. 6, ll. 29–33.

29 Malysheva, ‘Velikii iskhod kazanskikh universitariev v sentiabre 1918 g.’

30 Minutes of the Far Eastern Society for Higher Education Promotion Board Meeting. 21 July 1918. RGIA DV, f. P-117, op. 1, d. 14, ll. 63-5.

31 Fitzpatrick, Klassy i problemy, 22.

32 Ershov, ‘Zaprosy i nuzhdy vysshego obrazovania na Dal’nem Vostoke’.

33 Dmitrash, ‘Kraevoi gosudarstvennyi universitet vo Vladivostoke’, 6.

34 Academic Staff List of the Polytechnic Institute in Vladivostok. 1919. RGIA DV, f. P-117, op. 1, d. 6, ll. 35–7.

35 Ivashkevich, Pisateli.

36 Sonin, ‘Stanovlenie iuridicheskogo obrazovaniia na Dal’nem Vostoke’, 12–14.

37 Ivashkevich, Pisateli.

38 Ershov, ‘Zaprosy i nuzhdy’.

39 Veimarn, ‘Ocherki po energetike kul’tury’, 1–32.

40 Academic Staff List of the Polytechnic Institute in Vladivostok. April 1920. RGIA DV, f. P-117, op. 1, d. 57, ll. 1–3.

41 ‘Ustav Vladivostokskogo Politechnicheskogo Instituta’.

42 ‘Ustav Vladivostokskogo Politechnicheskogo Instituta’.

43 Ermakova, Dal’nevostochnyi gosudarstvennyi universitet, 64–5.

44 Founded in 1882 in St Petersburg, the Russian Geological Committee had been the initiator of all geological research in Russia. It had to terminate its activity during the Civil War.

45 Turmov, U istokov vysshei tekhnicheskoi shkoly na Dal’nem Vostoke Rossii (1918–1941), 59–60.

46 The Far Eastern Republic (FER) (April 1920–November 1922) was a sovereign democratic state established by Soviet Russia as a buffer state between Russia and Japan.

47 Beloglazova, Kul’tura Dal’nego Vostoka Rossii, 54.

48 Turmov, U istokov vysshei tekhnicheskoi shkoly, 36, 39, 79, 91.

49 Eliashevich, Vozrast i kachestvo iuzhno-ussuriiskikh iskopaemikh uglei, 6.

50 Otchet o sostoianii i rabote Geologicheskogo komiteta Dal’nego Vostoka, 25–28.

51 Riazantseva, Geologicheskaia sluzhba Primoriia.

52 Pentegov, ‘Issledovatel’skaia rabota v oblasti khimii v DVK za desiat’ let (1922–1932)’, 22–8.

53 Turmov, U istokov vysshei tekhnicheskoi shkoly, 20, 39, 42, 91, 121.

54 Minutes of the FER Ministry of the Public Education Academic Board Meeting. 21 September 1921.RGIA DV, f. P-730, op. 5, d. 11, l. 17.

55 Georgievskii, Primorskaia oblastnaia arkhivnaia komissiia, 2–4.

56 Ivashkevich, Pisateli, 42.

57 Koroleva, Khronika.

58 Matveev, Periodicheskaiia pechat’ na Dal’nem Vostoke, 37.

59 Khisamutdinov, Sleduiuschaia ostanovka – Kitai.

60 Eudin, The Life of a Chemist, 484.

61 Turmov, U istokov vysshei tekhnicheskoi shkoly, 36, 47.

62 Georgievskii, ‘Dal’nevostochnyi gosudarstvennyi universitet v proshlom i nastoiashchem’, 356.

63 Akoulin, ‘B. P. Pentegov i drugie osnovateli’; Shevchenko, Svarshchik Viktor Vologdin; Solov’eva, Nemnogo o radio i o nas s vami; Ermakova, ‘Georgievskii i arkhivnoe delo.’