REVOLUTION GOES EAST Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University The Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute of Columbia University were inaugu rated in 1962 to bring to a wider public the results of significant new research on modern and contemporary East Asia. REVOLUTION GOES EAST Imperial Japan and Soviet Communism Tatiana Linkhoeva CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS ITHACA AND LONDON This book is freely available in an open access edition thanks to TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem)—a collaboration of the Association of American Universities, the Association of University Presses, and the Association of Research Libraries—and the generous support of New York University. Learn more at the TOME website, which can be found at the following web address: openmono graphs.org. The text of this book is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International: https://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0. To use this book, or parts of this book, in any way not covered by the license, please contact Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. Visit our website at cornellpress. cornell.edu. Copyright © 2020 by Cornell University First published 2020 by Cornell University Press Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Linkhoeva, Tatiana, 1979– author. Title: Revolution goes east : imperial Japan and Soviet communism / Tatiana Linkhoeva. Description: Ithaca [New York] : Cornell University Press, 2020. | Series: Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019020874 (print) | LCCN 2019980700 (ebook) | ISBN 9781501748080 (pbk) | ISBN 9781501748097 (epub) | ISBN 9781501748103 (pdf) Subjects: LCSH: Communism—Japan—History—20th century. | Japan—Politics and government—1912–1945. | Soviet Union—History—Revolution, 1917–1921—Influence. | Soviet Union—Foreign relations—Japan. | Japan—Foreign relations—Soviet Union. Classification: LCC HX413 .L44 2020 (print) | LCC HX413 (ebook) | DDC 320.53/22095209041—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019020874 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019980700 Cover images © Shutterstock: Map © Lukasz Szwaj; Red ink wash © Elina Li. For my late mother, Svetlana Linkhoeva, and for my father, Leonid Linkhoev Contents Acknowledgments and Note on Transliteration ix Introduction: Two Russias 1 Part I “OUR NORTHERN NEIGHBOR” 1. Before 1917 15 2. Revolution and Intervention 39 3. The Anti-Western Revolution 67 4. Anticommunism Within 100 Part II THE JAPANESE LEFT AND THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION 5. Anarchism against Bolshevism 127 6. The Japanese Communist Party and the Comintern 159 7. National Socialism and Soviet Communism 185 Conclusion: Imperial Japan and Soviet Communism in the 1930s 211 Notes 221 Bibliography 257 Index 271 Acknowledgments Many people and institutions assisted in writing this book. I had two intellectual godfathers at the University of California, Berkeley: Andrew Barshay, who inspired me to study the Japanese Left, and Yuri Slezkine, who made Russia and Russian history exciting again for me. My two intellectual godmothers were Mary Eliza- beth Berry and Victoria Frede-Montemayor, who helped me find my own voice in writing history and are simply everything that I aspire to be. My special thanks go first and foremost to them. John Connelly, Alan Tansman, and Wen-hsin Yeh in Berkeley encouraged this project from its inception. At Ludwig Maximillian University in Munich, Germany, Andreas Renner provided invaluable support to complete the book manuscript. My colleagues at New York University deserve my special gratitude for welcoming and supporting me: Ayse Baltaciuglu-Brammer, Zvi Ben-dor Benite, Jane Burbank, Frederick Cooper, Stephen Gross, Irvin Ibar- guen, Rebecca Karl, Monica Kim, Yanni Kotsonis, David Ludden, Andrew Need- ham, Anne O’Donnell, and Susanah Romney. Conversations and friendship with colleagues at other universities stimulated my thinking: Anna Belogurova, Sheldon Garon, Carol Gluck, Yumi Kim, Mary Knighton, Paul Kreitman, Yukiko Koshiro, George Lazopoulos, Janis Mimura, Jason Morton, Mariko Naito, Saito Shohei, Seiji Shirane, Sören Urbansky, Miriam Voerkelius, Louise Young, and Max Ward. I am fortunate to have Brandon Schechter as my dear friend and colleague. In Japan, I have benefited from the counsel of Arima Manabu, Ishikawa Yoshihiro, Nakami Tatsuo, Tomita Takeshi, Umemori Naoyuki, and David Wolff. I presented individual chapters at various meetings at UC Berkeley, Colum- bia, LMU in Munich, the University of Köln and Heidelberg, the University of Kyushu, and Waseda University. I am grateful for the opportunities to present my ideas and for the helpful questions I received. Two anonymous readers from Cornell University Press offered incisive comments for the improvement of the manuscript. I also wish to thank Kenneth Ross Yelsey from the Weatherhead East Asian Institute and Roger Haydon at Cornell University Press for their assistance in publishing this book. Over the course of research and writing, I have received support from UC Berkeley, LMU in Munich, and NYU. A one-year research fellowship from the Japan Foundation gave me the chance to undertake my research in Japan. I want to thank the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies for the offer of a visit- ing researcher position. A postdoctoral fellowship from the German Excellence ix x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Initiative at LMU provided two wonderful and productive years in Munich. I also express appreciation to the Schoff Fund at The University Seminars at Columbia University, and the Center for the Humanities at NYU for their help in the publi- cation of this book. Material in this work was presented at the History of Modern Japan seminar at Columbia University. I am indebted to my partner, Alvaro Bonfiglio, for his immense patience and kindness, and to my two children, Gabriel and Mika Francesca, who were born during my doctoral years. The book is dedicated to my late mother, Svetlana, and my father, Leonid, in my native Buriatia—without their unconditional love none of this would be possible. Note on Transliteration Japanese names follow the customary Japanese order, surname first, unless the person uses Western name order in Western-language publications. REVOLUTION GOES EAST INTRODUCTION Two Russias Proletarians and oppressed people of the world, unite! —First Congress of the Peoples of the East, Baku, September 1920 The Russian Revolution of 1917 raised a profound question: was socialism a means to promote national unity and wealth, or was its goal to achieve global human liberation from both capitalism and imperialism? In imperial Japan, as elsewhere in the non-Western world, the answer was neither obvious nor uni- form. This question, however, was even more complicated in Japan because the Russian Revolution happened at a time when Japan approached the fiftieth anni- versary of its own great revolution, the Meiji Revolution of 1868, and when the Japanese public began to contemplate the historical foundations and future of their own modernized imperial state. As such, the Russian Revolution provoked fierce debates among supporters and opponents alike about the relationships among the state, society, individuals, and the national community; and finally, the objectives of the Japanese imperial project. This book explores Japan’s dispa- rate responses to the Russian Revolution during the 1920s and demonstrates how the debate about Soviet Russia and its communist ideology became a debate over what constituted modern Japan. After their successful takeover of power in October 1917, Russian Bolsheviks declared a war not only on capitalism, but no less significantly a war on impe- rialism.1 Russian Bolsheviks, however, envisioned their revolution as the first in a series of world proletarian revolutions. The Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin specifically insisted that without the success of proletarian revolutions in Europe, the Russian Revolution and the Bolshevik regime would not be able to survive. However, by 1920, as communist revolutions failed to materialize in Europe, 1 2 INTRODUCTION and as the Red Army was gaining control over Eastern Siberia and the Russian Far East, the center of gravity of the Russian Revolution shifted to East Asia. It was in East Asia, as well as in the Middle East, where the Russian Revolution merged with and acquired the character of an anti-imperialist struggle. And it was the anti-imperialist message that Russian Bolsheviks skillfully employed in East Asia to win over Japanese, Korean, Chinese, and Mongol national liberation movements.2 Consequently, the anti-imperialist struggle became the cornerstone of the Japanese, Korean, Chinese, and Mongol communist parties, established between 1921 and 1922 with the help of Russian Bolsheviks.3 In 1917, imperial Japan was the only Asian empire, having already formally incorporated Taiwan and Korea and enforced aggressive policies in northeast- ern China and the Russian East. After the collapse of tsarist Russia, Japan took advantage of the power vacuum in East Asia. Between 1918 and 1925, as part of the Allied intervention to contain the Bolshevik Revolution, Japan deployed considerable armed forces to the Russian Far East, Eastern Siberia, and northern Manchuria. Unlike other foreign interventionist forces, however, Japan actively interfered in the Russian Civil War, which prompted Russian Bolsheviks to declare