Andrey Lankov. Koreans of the CIS, or the Extraordinary Adventures of Confucians in Russia

Koreans of the CIS, or the Extraordinary Adventures of Confucians in Russia
Andrey Lankov

Publication date: January 9, 2002

The Koreans of Russia-USSR-CIS have always been perhaps the most invisible among all national minorities of this size - after all, by the time of the collapse of the USSR, their number reached 450 thousand people. Meanwhile, Koreans are the only East Asian minority that has lived in our country for a long time. Over the course of a century and a half of its history, this one-of-a-kind ethnic group has deeply rooted itself in the soil of its new homeland - and still has not completely become its own.

Korean emigration to Russia began back in the 1860s and was caused by the same thing as most emigrations - need. The bulk of the settlers were peasants who were fleeing land shortages and bureaucratic exactions, although from the end of the 19th century among the settlers there were also political refugees fleeing the Japanese. In Russia, the attitude towards Korean immigrants was ambivalent from the very beginning. On the one hand, the administration of Primorye welcomed immigration - after all, the Koreans raised virgin soil and reaped considerable harvests, thus helping to solve the food problem and develop the vast deserted region. On the other hand, the authorities were afraid that the settlement of the newly acquired lands by “Asians” would eventually become the basis for territorial claims against Russia on the part of its Asian neighbors. In short, Korean immigrants were treated much the same as Chinese immigrants are treated now. That is why I could not help but smile when, not so long ago, in a newspaper published by Koreans in the CIS, I read a report from Sakhalin, full of complaints about the “dominance of the Chinese,” who “flooded the Far East” and “intended to settle there.” A century ago, in exactly the same tone (and almost in the same expressions!) the newspapers wrote about the ancestors of the authors of this article.

The settlers spoke mainly an archaic northeastern (Hamgyeong) dialect, which is very different from the literary Seoul language - in much the same way as Russian is from Ukrainian. Therefore, the widespread belief among CIS Koreans that their language was “spoiled” from long life in Russia is incorrect. The CIS Koreans did not “ruin” the language, but, on the contrary, preserved the dialect of their ancestors, who never spoke Seoul. The exception is the Koreans of Sakhalin, but they ended up on the territory of the USSR much later - only in 1945. At the beginning of the 20th century, the self-name of Russian Koreans arose - “koryo saram” (obviously under the influence of the Russian name of Korea, which has not been used in Korea itself for several centuries ).

By 1917, about 100 thousand Koreans already lived in Russia, and in the Primorsky Territory they made up almost a third of the total population (in some areas - up to 90%). Most Koreans moved to Russia with their families, seriously and for a long time. The settlers sought to obtain Russian citizenship and willingly were baptized, accepting Orthodoxy. The richer Koreans tried to learn Russian, and, if possible, send their children to a Russian gymnasium. By 1917, among the settlers there were already graduates of Russian universities. However, these Russian-educated Koreans constituted a very small part of the Korean community, which on the whole continued to live in isolation.

During the Civil War, the overwhelming majority of Koreans actively supported the Bolsheviks, which was quite understandable. The Bolsheviks promised to put an end to any discrimination against national minorities - the Koreans were a national minority, which the authorities were quite wary of. The Bolsheviks wanted to divide the land equally - land-poor peasants predominated among the Koreans. The Bolsheviks promised to start a world fire and end imperialism - Korea was a Japanese colony. Finally, in the Far East, the main allies and sponsors of the whites were the hated Japanese, which made the reds “the enemy of the enemy,” and therefore a friend.

At first, the new government tried to keep its promises. Korean peasants received land, new Korean schools began to open in the region (by the early 1930s there were more than 250 of them), a Korean pedagogical college began operating in Ussuriysk, a Korean theater and a Korean newspaper "Sonbong" ("Vanguard") were founded, which and now continues to be published in Almaty under the name “Kore Ilbo”. In the mid-thirties, the Korean Pedagogical Institute was created in Vladivostok, which was then the only Korean higher education institution in the world (in Korea itself, teaching at universities was conducted only in Japanese). Party bodies, following the official line of supporting “national minorities,” actively promoted “national cadres” from among Soviet Koreans.

However, despite all the internationalist rhetoric, the central authorities continued to treat the Koreans with suspicion. In those years, Korea was a Japanese colony; Koreans were perceived as “almost Japanese” and, therefore, as potential agents of the main enemy of Soviet Russia in the Far East. The Koreans living closely in the border areas caused nervousness among the authorities, which grew as relations with Japan deteriorated. It was under these conditions that the disaster of 1937 occurred - the forced resettlement of Koreans, of whom by that time there were already about 180 thousand in Russia. The decision to evict all Koreans from the border areas and send them to Central Asia was made by the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the Council of People's Commissars on August 21, 1937 (directive # 1428-326bss). For the first time in Soviet history, belonging to a particular ethnic group in itself became sufficient grounds for punishment. In addition, the eviction was preceded by terror, ferocious even by the standards of 1937. During the repressions, the party leaders who emerged in the post-revolutionary years were almost completely destroyed, almost all Korean officers and the majority of Koreans who had a higher education died in prison. The resettlement itself took place in the fall of 1937 and was accompanied by considerable casualties - especially among children, many of whom died on the trains.

Until Stalin's death in 1953, Koreans were subject to official discrimination, although their situation was better than that of other “repressed peoples” (Germans, Kalmyks, Crimean Tatars). In contrast, Koreans did not have to appear in person at the “special commandant’s office” every week for registration; they could move throughout the territory of Central Asia, and, upon receiving special permission, beyond its borders. Finally, Koreans, unlike Germans or Tatars, even in Stalin’s times could study in higher educational institutions and occupy responsible positions. Kalmyk or German in 1941-1953. could not become either the secretary of the district committee, or the director of the plant, or the operative officer of the NKVD, but Koreans came across these positions from time to time. However, the discrimination was palpable. Koreans were not taken into the army (instead they were sent to forced labor); they could not travel outside Central Asia without special permission. These restrictions did not apply to those Koreans who lived outside the Far East in 1937 and were not subject to eviction, but there were few of them, approximately 10-15 thousand.

After the resettlement, the bulk of Koreans ended up in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. According to the 1959 census, 44.1% of all Soviet Koreans lived in Uzbekistan, and 23.6% in Kazakhstan. Koreans were settled in villages, so that Korean collective farms were formed in Central Asia, which mainly specialized in growing rice. However, resettlement was carried out in such a way that large “purely Korean” areas did not arise; Korean villages were scattered over a vast territory, quite far from each other, among Uzbek, Kazakh, and Russian villages. In addition, in 1937-1938. Many Korean cultural institutions were liquidated, including the Korean Pedagogical Institute.

In 1945, the number of Soviet Koreans increased sharply due to the annexation of Southern Sakhalin to the USSR. On its territory there were numerous mines where Koreans worked, sent there as part of the mobilization by the Japanese authorities. By 1945 their number reached 40 thousand. They formed a very unique group among Soviet Koreans. The majority of Sakhalin Koreans came from the southern provinces of the country and, unlike the Koreans of Central Asia, spoke the Seoul dialect. After the annexation of the island, they found themselves in a strange position: having automatically lost Japanese citizenship, they did not acquire Soviet citizenship, which they were simply not given - despite persistent petitions. Some of them became citizens of the DPRK (which, by the way, they had never been to), and the majority for a long time remained “stateless persons” who required special permission to leave the island. The Koreans of Sakhalin began to accept Soviet citizenship only after 1970.

The rehabilitation of Central Asian Koreans took place in several stages in 1953-1957. It was then that restrictions on movement and military service were officially lifted, and settlement outside Central Asia was allowed. However, some unspoken prohibitions continued to exist until the collapse of the USSR. For example, a Korean who went to serve in the army sooner or later discovered that he could not advance beyond lieutenant colonel, while some of his Russian, Tatar or Ossetian friends from school were already drilling holes for general's stars. A Korean’s party career also usually stopped at the level of district committee secretary. However, discrimination was not too strong, and in many areas (science, education, medicine) it was completely absent.

The distrust was caused by the fact that the Koreans, along with the Germans, Jews, and Poles, belonged to those “national minorities” that had their own states outside the USSR. Specialists feared that such minorities, under certain circumstances, would act for the benefit of their “historical homeland,” but against the interests of the Soviet Union. We will not say how justified these fears were in the case of Jews or Germans, but the Korean paradox was that until the end of the eighties, the overwhelming majority of Soviet Koreans did not associate themselves with any of the Korean states and did not experience any patriotic feelings in any way. in relation to Seoul, nor in relation to Pyongyang. All they knew about South Korea was that it was a “bloody dictatorship,” and rumors coming from the DPRK about a cult of personality, terror and general poverty also did not evoke a desire to be proud of historical ties with such a country.

In 1959, 313 thousand Koreans lived in the USSR, and by 1989 - 439 thousand. However, by the end of the Soviet period, the growth rate slowed down - partly due to the transition to small children, and partly due to the spread of mixed marriages, the share of which reached 40% by the end of the Soviet period. In the peculiar system of national division that developed in Central Asia in late Soviet times, the Koreans, of course, belonged to the “Russians” or “Europeans” - like all Westernized non-Muslim ethnic groups (and also, by the way, the completely Muslim Tatars). From the point of view of an ordinary Uzbek, there was no fundamental difference between a Russian, a Korean, a Jew (an alien, not a Bukharian) and a German, and these groups themselves quite clearly felt their own “civilizational unity.”

The linguistic assimilation of Koreans really began precisely after the resettlement and was the result not so much of the conscious policy of the authorities as of the new conditions of their life. By the end of the 1950s, Russian became the native language of all Korean youth in Central Asia (schools teaching in Korean were closed in the early 1940s). The Korean language was taught in many schools in Korean villages as a foreign language, but in small quantities and without much effect - schoolchildren considered this subject unnecessary, studied under pressure and, as a result, did not master the language. Parents treated this position with understanding, and often raised the question of completely eliminating the teaching of the Korean language as unnecessary. Koreans were increasingly involved in the “big life,” the success of which directly depended on the quality of education, which should have been received in Russian. However, the parents' wishes were not supported. The ideologemes of official internationalism (very close, by the way, to the ideologemes of political correctness) demanded that official measures to preserve the Korean language continue. The Korean newspaper continued to be published, which in 1938-1989. was called "Lenin Kichkhi" ("Lenin's Banner") - very boring in content, but generously subsidized and distributed by district committees without fail. The Korean theater operated and actively toured Central Asia, which in Khrushchev and Brezhnev times was, perhaps, the main center of Korean culture. At the same time, both in the theater and in the newspaper the Korean literary language in its Pyongyang-Seoul version was taken as a basis, although in practice the Hamgyong dialect had a considerable influence on the “Soviet-Korean” language. However, by the 1980s, the loss of the language had gone so far that even Korean theater actors often automatically memorized lines whose meaning they only partially understood.

The consequence of rehabilitation was massive urbanization. Since the mid-fifties, Korean youth en masse went to study at universities, including universities in Moscow and Leningrad (which, by the way, became possible precisely as a result of the transition to the Russian language in schools), and by the end of the seventies, Koreans became one of the most educated peoples of the USSR. Here, of course, the cult of education and books, traditional for the peoples of the Far East, played a role. As a result, by 1989, the proportion of people with higher education among Koreans was twice (!) higher than the average for the Union - although, of course, an allowance must be made for the fact that most of them received higher education at universities in Central Asia with their, let's say, specific conditions.

Koreans began to settle throughout the territory of the USSR. It was then that “Korean carrots” and other “Russian-Korean salads” appeared in the bazaars, which were destined to make a victorious march through Moscow and St. Petersburg grocery stores in perestroika times. Russia, by the way, is perhaps the only country in the world where Korean cuisine has become popular. In most other countries, Korean cuisine does not enter the mass market - it is too specific. However, the secret of the success of Korean cooking in the former USSR is simple: what is sold here under the guise of “Korean cuisine” has nothing to do with the cuisine of the Korean Peninsula. This is a product of the culinary creativity of Russian Koreans, very far from the cuisine of the “Peninsular” Koreans. Neither Seoul nor Pyongyang have “Korean carrots” and never have (as, indeed, other “Korean salads” from Moscow counters)...

By 1989, about 70% of Koreans in the USSR were city dwellers, but the departure from agriculture was not complete. Korean rice-growing collective farms continued to flourish, and new Korean villages appeared outside Central Asia (in the North Caucasus, Kalmykia, and Ukraine). In addition, since the fifties, the contracting system (kobongji) began to spread, according to which Korean brigades began to enter into short-term rental agreements with collective farms in Central Asia, southern Russia and Ukraine. Tenants grew vegetables or melons, with onions being especially popular. In the fall, the tenants had to hand over a pre-agreed volume of production to the collective or state farm, and everything else was at their complete disposal and could be sold on the market. The Koreans were excellent gardeners, so the yield on the fields they leased shocked even seasoned chairmen and directors. Tenants were often deceived, but in most cases they returned home with huge profits for those times. The “kobongji” system reached its peak in the late 1970s, when even Koreans burdened with academic degrees (there were already many of them) did not hesitate to go to such earnings. Koreans also actively participated in the development of shadow business, which began in Central Asia earlier than in Russia.

The ending follows...