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The Siberian Frontier and the Russo- Japanese Rivalry, 1890S–1920S

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The Siberian Frontier and the Russo- Japanese Rivalry, 1890S–1920S 4 “The Unknown Enemy:” The Siberian Frontier and the Russo- Japanese Rivalry, 1890s–1920s EVA-MARIA STOLBERG n the late nineteenth century the Siberian and Manchurian frontiers Iwith their rich natural resources and potential for agricultural and industrial development became an arena of competition and conflict between Russia and Japan. Imperialist ideologies, economic, ethnic and geopolitical tensions, i.e. the Russo-Japanese struggle for supremacy in Northeast Asia culminated dramatically in the Russo-Japanese War that produced political and economic disturbances in the Siberian hinter- land. The Russo-Japanese War cannot be understood without the Siberian background. This military conflict was the first significant out- burst in Russo-Japanese rivalry that started during the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway and Chinese Eastern Railway and continued during the Japanese intervention into the Siberian Civil War (1918–22). Finally, the Japanese occupation of Manchuria in 1931 represented again a threat to Siberia that only vanished with the Soviet intervention into Manchuria in August 1945.1 Although the era of Russian and Japanese expansion in Asia, includ- ing the Russo-Japanese War, created much interest among international scholarship, it is striking that the complex relationship between the Siberian and Manchurian frontier in the Russo-Japanese War and other conflicts between Russia and Japan still demands a thorough evalua- tion. Due to the fact that Siberian archives were closed to Western scholars until 1991, there is still much to learn about the role of Siberia in Northeast Asia. For tsarist and Soviet Russia alike, Siberia was a springboard for expansion in Northeast Asia, and the Japanese also had an image of Siberia that shaped, as had Manchuria and Mongolia, Japanese national identity during the era of imperialism.2 This chapter “The Unknown Enemy” 47 puts Siberia’s place in the Russo-Japanese War into the broader frame- work of Russo-Japanese geopolitics in Northeast Asia between the 1890s and 1920s. OVERLAPPING FRONTIERS: SIBERIAN AND MANCHURIAN COLONIZATION IN THE FRAMEWORK OF RUSSO-JAPANESE GEOPOLITICAL COMPETITION The rise of the Russian and Japanese empires in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was combined with technological and indus- trial progress. The construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway and Chinese Eastern Railway set the framework for the exploitation of natural resources of the Siberian and Manchurian frontiers.3 The imper- ial governments in St. Petersburg and Tokyo recognized that railways were not only vehicles for military and economic control over periph- eries, but also a symbol for imperial greatness. It was a symbolic act when Nicholas, successor to the Russian throne, laid the foundation stone of the Trans-Siberian Railway near Vladivostok in May 1891. This was a clear manifestation that tsarist Russia participated in “railroad imperial- ism.” The construction of the Chinese Eastern Railway would safeguard Russia’s political and economic interests in Manchuria against the increasing influence of Japan. Therefore, Russia’s Manchurian policy was connected with the Siberian development. But just a decade before the Russo-Japanese War, the Trans-Siberian Railway could not meet its goal, i.e. to transfer sufficient logistics to the eastern front. When the Russo- Japanese War broke out in 1904, the Circumbaikal line was not yet built, military transport to Manchuria had to be organized on icebreakers. There was no double track between the Urals (Cheliabinsk) and Lake Baikal (Irkutsk) to help facilitate the transfer of soldiers and war material to the Manchurian front. After Russia’s disastrous debacle, Russian war minister Aleksei Kuropatkin recognized that the technological condition of the Trans-Siberian Railway contributed to Russia’s weak defense in Northeast Asia.4 In contrast, in World War II, the transcontinental rail- road was used more effectively by the Soviet military.5 The construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway in the 1890s had a geopolitical (strategic and economic factors), but also a psychological impact. In 1899, Russian Minister of Transport, K.N. Pos’iet, declared that China and Japan with their extreme population density would present a dangerous threat to deserted Siberia.6 Moreover, in tsarist plans the Trans-Siberian Railway should not only strengthen Siberia’s defense capability, but should also provide a springboard for a strategic and eco- nomic infiltration of northern Mongolia and especially of Manchuria. Regional Siberian authorities considered these borderlands belonging to China as a kind of cordon sanitaire against Japanese expansion on the Asiatic continent.7 A report by military engineer A.K. Sidenser reveals the intentions of the Russian army to build a transcontinental railroad through Siberia: 1) as infrastructure in order to exploit Siberia’s.
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