Abstract
This article explores lives of smugglers in the Sino-Soviet borderlands during the late 1920s and early 1930s. While studying phenomena of smuggling, historians can—besides its economic dimension—also learn about identities of smugglers, which go beyond the notions of “nation” or homogenous concepts of “culture.” How was the transfer of commodities connected with smugglers’ identities, which, in turn, shaped their strategies and networks? To answer this key question, the text focuses on smugglers’ transcultural identities in the Sino-Soviet borderlands. The studied cases show how Sino-Soviet contraband networks were established through long-term social and economic contacts. Traffickers had often spent years in contact zones meeting Russians and Chinese before they came to be involved in complex activities of illicit trade. The studied cases suggest that smugglers as a social group working in a complex context can be defined as people who need to have special skills that develop from transcultural biographies.
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Notes
- 1.
Various concepts, such as “transnationality,” “hybridity,” “third space,” “cultures in between” and “entangled histories”—to mention just a few—advocate a shift from nation-state approaches to the study of people’s agency, mentality or cultural creation and could certainly also be adapted to enable smugglers’ personalities to be examined.
- 2.
Since the 1990s, anthropologists, historians and scholars of several other disciplines have used the concept “transculturality” in varying ways. As early as the 1940s, the Cuban sociologist Fernando Ortiz coined the term “transculturation” in a pioneering description of Afro-Cuban Culture. Among present scholars, the German philosopher Wolfgang Welsch is widely quoted but remains too normative for the case of smugglers’ identities. Wolfgang Welsch, “Transkulturalität. Zwischen Globalisierung und Partikularisierung,” in Jahrbuch Deutsch als Fremdsprache. Intercultural German Studies, ed. A. Wierlacher et al., vol. 26 (Munich: Iudicum 2006), 327–51. Dirk Hoerder’s approach seems more appropriate for the analysis of smugglers’ identities. Most important: Dirk Hoerder, “Transculturalism(s): From Nation-State to Human Agency in Social Spaces and Cultural Regions,” Zeitschrift für Kanada-Studien 45 (2005): 7–20.
- 3.
Although quite similar to a sentence in Hoerder’s 2005 article, this passage was quoted in Dirk Hoerder, “Historians and Their Data: The Complex Shift from Nation-State Approaches to the Study of People’s Transcultural Lives,” Journal of American Ethnic History 25,4 (Summer 2006): 85–96, quotation on 91.
- 4.
Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes. Travel Writing and Transculturation (London: Routledge, 1992), quotation on 6.
- 5.
See: Hoerder, “Transculturalism(s),” 8.
- 6.
See the introduction of this volume. For further reading see Olga Bakich, “Charbin, ‘Rußland jenseits der Grenzen’ in Fernost,” in Der große Exodus: Die russische Emigration und ihre Zentren 1917 bis 1941, ed. Karl Schlögel (Munich: Beck, 1994), 304–28, in particular 327. For a brief history of the CER: Sören Urbansky, Kolonialer Wettstreit. Rußland, China, Japan und die Ostchinesische Eisenbahn (Frankfurt/Main: Campus, 2008).
- 7.
For the specifics of each of the different East Asian communities in Russia’s Far East, see John Stephan, The Russian Far East: A History (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994), 71–9.
- 8.
David Wolff, “Russia Finds Its Limits. Crossing Borders into Manchuria,” in Rediscovering Russia in Asia. Siberia and the Russian Far East, ed. Stephen Kotkin and David Wolff (Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, 1995), 40–54, 42.
- 9.
On the issue of interracial marriages see Mark Gamsa, “Mixed Marriages in Russian-Chinese Manchuria” in this volume.
- 10.
The migrant’s share was unstable from the beginning, but declined significantly after the region came under full control of the Soviet authorities. V. Larin, “‘Yellow Peril’ Again? The Chinese and the Russian Far East,” in Rediscovering Russia, ed. Kotkin, 290–301, 297. See also: Stephan, Far East, 212–13.
- 11.
A polemic series of articles entitled “Regarding the question of yellow labor in Transbaikalia” (K voprosu o zheltom trude v Zabaikal’e) estimated the number of Chinese as of 1915 as high as 19,800 in Transbaikalia. The majority was employed in the gold mines. Chinese made up between 75 and 90 % of all miners in the goldfields. Zabaikal’skoe Obozrenie, 25 January 1916 and 8 February 1916.
- 12.
With the construction of the railway, Chita’s population multiplied within a decade from 11,522 in 1897 to 74,325 in 1910. Aziatskaia Rossiia. Izdanie Pereselencheskago Upravleniia Glavnago Upravleniia Zemleustroistva i Zemledeliia, vol. 1 (St. Petersburg, 1914), 293.
- 13.
The United Association of Chinese (huaqiao lianhe zonghui) complained as early as 1922 to the municipal authorities, who tried to impede their manufacturing business by forcing them to move. Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Chitinskoi Oblasti (GAChO), f. R-15, op. 1, d. 50, ll. 13–14.
- 14.
Other segments of the Sino-Russian border section had been demarcated in the mid nineteenth century. S.C.M. Paine, Imperial rivals. China, Russia, and Their Disputed Frontier (Armonk, NY: Sharpe, 1996), chapter 1.
- 15.
For a comprehensive overview from the porto franco to the establishment of Russian customs in the Far Eastern provinces: N. Beliaeva, Ot porto-franko k tamozhne. Ocherk regional’noi istorii Rossiiskogo protektsionizma (Vladivostok: Dal’nauka, 2003).
- 16.
From 1922 to 1923 called GPU (Gosudarstvennoe politicheskoe upravlenie). It was absorbed into the NKVD in 1934.
- 17.
For the state policy against contraband trade in the Soviet Far East during the 1920s, see A. Popenko, Opyt bor’by s kontrabandoi na Dal’nem Vostoke Rossii (1884 – konets 20-kh gg. XX v.) (Khabarovsk: Khabarovskii pogranichnyi institut FSB Rossii, 2009), 72–118.
- 18.
See, for instance, Urbansky, Kolonialer Wettstreit, 136–43.
- 19.
Stephan, Far East, 233–5.
- 20.
For the illegal production of alcohol and its contraband networks in the Sino-Russian borderlands, as well as its impact on morals, health, and security, see Sören Urbansky, “Der betrunkene Kosake: Schmuggel im sino-russischen Grenzland (circa 1860–1930)” in Globalisierung imperial und sozialistisch. Russland und die Sowjetunion in der Gobalgeschichte 1851–1991, ed. Martin Aust (Frankurt/Main: Campus 2013), 301–329.
- 21.
For the history of Zheltuga Republic and its mythological afterlife, see Mark Gamsa, “California on the Amur, or the Zheltuga Republic in Manchuria (1883–86),” The Slavonic and East European Review 81,2 (April 2003): 236–66.
- 22.
Concerning gold mining in Manchuria, see, for example, B. Torgashev, “Zoloto v Man’chzhurii,” Vestnik Man’chzhurii 8 (1928): 47–52; V. Kormazov, “Zolotopromyshlennost’ v Kheiluntszianskoi provintsii,” Vestnik Man’chzhurii 3 (1927): 41–4.
- 23.
Obzor Zabaikal’skoi oblasti za 1910 god, [Chita, 1911], 63–9; Kormazov, “Zolotopromyshlennost’,” 41.
- 24.
Compared to 4,686 workers in 1897 and 7,710 in 1901. Obzor, 69–70. A similar number worked in the mines and goldfields on the Chinese side. Ibid., 41.
- 25.
Stephan, Far East, 73.
- 26.
Kormazov, “Zolotopromyshlennost’,” 46. In 1923, one third of the excavated gold in the Soviet East disappeared into the Chinese market. According to official data in 1925, 250 pud (4.1 t) of Soviet gold, or five million roubles, were smuggled to China. See Popenko, Opyt, 114.
- 27.
The illegal export of gold declined significantly in the late 1920s. Ibid., 114.
- 28.
The wage difference was not significant. In low-paid employment—the only sector in which people of both nations competed—the wages for Russian workers in Transbaikalia in 1916 were 10–20 % higher than those of their Chinese colleagues. Zabaikal’skoe Obozrenie, February 8, 1916.
- 29.
GAChO f. 107, op. 1, d. 125, l. 365.
- 30.
Old Russian units of measurement. One funt equals 409.5 g and one zolotnik is 4.26 g.
- 31.
GAChO f. 13, op. 2, d. 55, l. 2–2 obl. For further examples, see ll. 31–7 of the same file. Reports written by Russian customs officers at Manzhouli station reveal that almost every day in the winter of 1916 train passengers were caught with contraband gold. See: GAChO f. 78, op. 3, d. 77, ll. 2, 12–3, 15.
- 32.
GAChO f. 13, op. 2, d. 56, ll. 142, 144.
- 33.
The regional archives in Chita (GAChO) alone have several thousand protocols of arrested smugglers on file. The earliest files date back to the years shortly after the Russo-Japanese War. Most of the cases were filed in the late 1920s and early 1930s. The first opis’ of fond R-1243 “Zabaikal’skaia tamozhnia” alone has 1,703 files with “information on confiscated goods [svedeniia o tovarakh zaderzhanykh],” i.e. smuggling cases from 1930–37 (but mainly 1930–32). Soviet and Chinese subjects accounted for approximately the same numbers. Most of the questionnaires contain a list of confiscated items, the circumstances of the arrest (how far away from the state border the smuggler was when caught, whether the detained person offered resistance, etc.), interrogation protocols (including the smuggler’s full name, age, place of birth, nationality, religion, education, legal and financial status, number of children, military service, party membership, political past), testimonies of eyewitnesses and family members, and, sometimes, the sentence. From the early 1930s on, questionnaires become unusable sources, because the authorities creating them were driven by political incentives.
- 34.
The two examined examples are not one-off cases. Both reflect a typical pattern of smuggling at a time when border controls were becoming increasingly tight. See, for instance, the interrogations of the Chinese gold seeker Chu Jian, arrested in December 1930, as one among hundreds of filed cases with similar smuggling patterns. GAChO f. R-1243, op. 1, d. 980, ll. 1–11 obl.
- 35.
GAChO f. R-1243, op. 1, d. 1360, l. 4.
- 36.
GAChO f. R-1243, op. 1, d. 1360, ll. 6–7.
- 37.
GAChO f. R-1243, op. 1, d. 1360, ll. 20–1.
- 38.
GAChO f. R-1243, op. 1, d. 1360, l. 18.
- 39.
We only know the Cyrillic transcriptions of their names: “Li Chzhao-chzhi” and “Kyn Syn-tian.”
- 40.
GAChO f. R-1243, op. 1, d. 1360, l. 20.
- 41.
GAChO f. R-1243, op. 1, d. 1360, l. 18–18 obl.
- 42.
There is surprisingly little research on confidence as an analytical category in history. Ute Frevert compiled a comprehensive overview on confidence in different contexts from medieval times to the present, ranging from politics over economy, civil society, military, family and friendship: Ute Frevert ed., Vertrauen. Historische Annäherungen (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2003).
- 43.
GAChO f. R-1243, op. 1, d. 1360, l. 6.
- 44.
There are no explicit remarks about confidence as a precondition for smuggler networks in Frevert’s book. Nevertheless, several factors that might influence degrees of reliance are mentioned in Frevert’s valuable introduction to that volume: friendship, social confidence building, face-to-face relations, and renunciation of force. Ute Frevert, “Vertrauen. Eine historische Spurensuche,” in Vertrauen, 7–66. Stefan Gorißen has analysed pre-industrial long-distance trade and identifies three dimensions that are crucial for confidence building among economic agents: first systematic confidence (Systemvertrauen), i.e. all agents involved agree on generally accepted norms, values and rules; second the social reputation of the economic agents, i.e. trustworthiness (Vertrauenswürdigkeit), and third personal confidence in the commercial partner. At least the latter two are applicable to Vasily’s “Russian connection.” See Stefan Gorißen, “Der Preis des Vertrauens. Unsicherheit, Institutionen und Rationalität im vorindustriellen Fernhandel,” in Vertrauen, 90–118, particularly 112–5.
- 45.
GAChO f. R-1243, op. 1, d. 1360, ll. 7, 21.
- 46.
GAChO f. R-1243, op. 1, d. 1360, l. 4–4 obl., quotation on l. 4 obl.
- 47.
GAChO f. R-1243, op. 2, d. 8, ll. 7, 30–31, quotation on l. 30.
- 48.
For the investigation results, see ibid., ll. 51–53.
- 49.
Ibid., l. 31–31 obl.
- 50.
Ibid., l. 52.
- 51.
Ibid., l. 6.
- 52.
Ibid., l. 5.
- 53.
Ibid., ll. 7, 21.
- 54.
Xin Fanbin is transliterated as “Shin-Fon-Bin” in the file. Ibid., l. 7.
- 55.
Ibid., l. 21.
- 56.
Ibid., l. 7.
- 57.
Ibid., l. 21.
Acknowledgement
I would like to thank Frank Grüner, Madeleine Herren, Karl Schlögel and Mariko Tamanoi for comments and criticism on various aspects of this article.
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Urbansky, S. (2014). “Vasily” of China and his Russian Friends: Smugglers and their Transcultural Identities. In: Ben-Canaan, D., Grüner, F., Prodöhl, I. (eds) Entangled Histories. Transcultural Research – Heidelberg Studies on Asia and Europe in a Global Context. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02048-8_2
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