The first Karakhan Manifesto was a statement of Soviet policy toward China dated 25 July 1919. It was issued by Lev Karakhan, the deputy for the Commissariat for Foreign Affairs for Soviet Russia. Commissariat in Russian refers to a ministry. The manifesto offered to relinquish various rights and territories that Russia had seized from China (by force by Nikolai Muravev, the Russian Gov-General of Eastern Siberia). The Karakhan Manifesto offered to relinquish and return to China territories seized during the Tsarist Amur Annexation, extraterritoriality, economic concessions, and Russia's share of the Boxer indemnity. These and similar treaties had been denounced by Chinese historians, diplomats and those without state ties from the 20th century to the present (21st century) as part of the West's (including Russia) "unequal treaties" and as part of China's century of humiliation (approximately 1839-1949). The original first Karakhan Manifesto created a favorable impression of Soviet socialism (communism) among Chinese intellectuals and socialists. However, within one month (technically one month and one day) of the issuance of the first Karakhan Manifesto, Izvestiia (a Soviet state run newspaper) issued a revised Karakhan Manifesto which did not promise to return territories nor the Chinese Eastern Railway (C.E.R.) to China. Many Chinese saw this as a betrayal and that the USSR and the Bolsheviks were no different than the other imperialists who had carved up China through the Treaty Port system (over 100 Chinese cities were used as treaty ports) and the unequal treaties with foreign powers such as Germany, the United States, Great Britain and France.
Background: The "Why" Behind the Issuing of the First Karakhan Manifesto
The Russian Civil War began as soon as the October Revolution (November 1917) had finished. At the beginning of the civil war, the anti-Bolshevik battles were sporadic and localized. The Russ. Civil War began because the Bolsheviks wanted to destroy the Constituent Assembly which was a form of multi-party rule that they had with other political parties and because Bolshevism (national communism) nationalized and confiscated all private property especially those belonging to foreigners and foreign entities (whether the properties were owned in full by foreign entities or were held as joint-holdings). The Bolsheviks quickly dissolved the Constituent Assembly and annulled the political rights of Russian Mensheviks, Kadets, anarchists, Left SRs, Right SRs and others on January 19, 1918. This is because the Constituent Assembly represented a "power-sharing" government whose majority were SRs (the Socialist Revolutionary Party) and not Bolsheviks. At that time, this was an exceptionally radical, authoritarian and oppressive move by Lenin. This was to be followed by more actions and policies which were equally oppressive and authoritarian. On Feb. 21, 1918, Lenin reinstated the death penalty for crimes of counter-revolution and defection to other non-Bolshevik parties. He believed that the Bolsheviks could not remake Russian society without terror and the use of terror by the Cheka. June 1918 began the policies of "War Communism," and unofficially, the "Red Terror." War Communism consisted of the nationalization of all Russian industry (plants, small factories, mines, foreign owned docks and port-facilities, foreign owned ships, trains/train wagons, etc.) using the Cheka and Red Guards and food requisitioning which was coerced from the peasants to feed the factory workers (the proletariat) and the urban support base of the Bolsheviks. Note that the Red Terror began in June 1918, but was not formally announced until September 1, 1918. The Red Terror was formally announced after Aug. 30, 1918 when two assassination attempts against Bolshevik leaders took place. The first failed against Lenin, but he was shot twice. The second assassination attempt killed the Petrograd Chekist, Uritsky. The Red Terror enacted by the Bolsheviks targeted all counter-revolutionaries who opposed their rule such as the leaders of the Kronstadt rebellion (defection to the SR's)Getzler, Israel, Kronstadt, 1917-1921: The Fate of a Soviet Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 199 and various peasant rebellions from Moscow to the Urals in the summer of 1918.McCauley, Martin, The Soviet Union, 1917-1991, 2nd ed.(London: Longman Publishing, 1993), 24-25, 31-34 By September 1, 1918, this campaign produced widespread violence, arbitrary arrests, torture and in general, punitive repressions against innocent citizens, striking workers and anti-Bolshevik elements, parties and social groups. Ironically, the Bolsheviks used Latvian, Hungarian and Chinese Cheka (secret or political police) units to carry out some of the most brutal purges. These units were employed when Russians or Ukrainians found the work to be distasteful or had loyalties to those who were being repressed. Here are several histories of the Chinese Cheka units. The caption in the photo labelled "Chinese Cheka" in Russian reads, "Even the sailors, these desperate hooligans and robbers were scared by the honest and life-giving cross of our Lord [held by the Orthodox priest]. Then the commissars called out the Chinese [CHON units of the Cheka] and they calmly without quivering shot the priest. This occurred in Moscow."Felshtinsky, Yuri, Krasnyi terror v gody grazhdanskoi voiny [The Red Terror during the civil war] (London: J.W. Arrowsmith, Ltd., 1992), p. 229
Thus, due to the Bolshevik's economic policies of state control over all property and land, many Western and Central European, North American, and Asian governments sent troops to fight against the Bolshevik's Red Army during the Russian Civil War. These troops were called the Interventionist or Entente forces. The United States and the Wilson regime saw the Bolsheviks as bringing a form of tyranny and oppression to Russia far worse than rule under the Tsar. The U.S. felt guided by a moral obligation and economic self-interest in deciding to send an American force of approximately 14,000 soldiers to Russia to help overthrow the Bolsheviks. Thus, the Russian Civil War began with the Right SR's (Socialist Revolutionaries) and Mensheviks (along with regional and municipal governments- the latter called zemstvos) supporting the White Army which fought against the Reds (the Bolsheviks). The White Army and White Movement were supported by eleven separate Interventionalist military forces from the United States, Japan, Canada, Italy, the Great Britain, France, Poland, Czechoslovakia (not yet established until October 1918), China and others. Japan sent as many as 70,000 soldiers to help overthrow the Bolsheviks. As one can see, the Bolsheviks were besieged on many fronts throughout the entire former Russian empire. Thus, they sought allies and in order to gain Chinese allies, the Bolsheviks under Chicherin and Karakhan made promises to return Chinese lands taken by the Tsars in the 19th century (best exemplified by the Treaties of Aigun in 1858 and the Treaty of Beijing in 1860). In both cases, Tsarist Russia sent small forces of armed vessels (with cannons) down China's Amur River and forcibly acquired the land beginning on the left bank (1858) and later the right bank (1860) of the Amur River.
The Karakhan Manifesto was issued in order to win the support of communists and socialists throughout Asia and especially in China in the event that the Civil War turned against the Bolsheviks/Soviets. The Bolsheviks also hoped to count on the support of socialists and communists in Korea, Vietnam, India and other areas in Asia. The Bolsheviks believed that, if they began to lose the Civil War, they could garner the support of thousands (and possibly a hundred thousand or more) Chinese and other Asian socialists and communists to fight for the Bolsheviks. However, this proved unnecessary because by October 1919, the Red Army (of the Bolsheviks) began to defeat White Movement (whom the Intervention forces support) throughout all of Russia whether it be European Russia, the Urals, western Siberia and the Zabaikal region and the Russian Far East. The Red Army drove out the last Intervention force, the Japanese in October 1922 from Russia and the Bolsheviks declared the "new" Soviet Union on Dec. 30, 1922.
From Besieged to Betrayal: The Treachery of the Soviet State towards China
First, let us provide the historical background behind Lev Karakhan and his original manifesto of 1919 (which is not the "revised" Aug. 26, 1919 manifesto by the Soviets). On July 5, 1918, Georgii Chicherin, the head of the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs (and Karakhan's superior) made a speech to the Fifth Congress of the Soviets stating "We notified China that we renounce the conquests of the Tsarist government in Manchuria and we restore the sovereign rights of China in this territory, in which lies the principal trade-artery--the Chinese Eastern Railay, property of the Chinese and Russian people." This statement was made one year prior to the Karakhan Manifesto and states a return of the territories taken during Tsarism while declaring the CER to belong to both nations.Whiting, Allen S., "The Soviet Offer to China of 1919," The Far Eastern Quarterly, August 1951, pp. 355 and 355-356fn6
Lev Karakhan was the Deputy of the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs from March 1918 to May 1921. He was a close ally to Chicherin and served as his deputy. The original Karakhan Manifesto was written on July 25, 1919. This manifesto promised to return to the Chinese Eastern Railway and any lands taken by the Tsarist government to China. There are only two surviving copies of the original Karakhan Manifesto. The first was published by Vladimir Vilenskii, a commissar (official) with Sovnarkom in the Far East in 1919.Whiting, Allen S., "The Soviet Offer to China of 1919," The Far Eastern Quarterly, August 1951, pp. 363-364 and a second version in French sent by Monsieur Y.D. Yanson to the Bejing government on March 26, 1920. The Vilenskii reprint is featured above as the "Karakhan Manifesto" published by Whiting in his monograph, Soviet Policies in China, 1917-1924. Both copies of the original (Vilenskii's and Yanson's) republished the original Karakhan manifesto in its entirety. M. Yanson, was a Soviet representative of the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs for Eastern Siberia. Yanson was a regional commissar.Whiting, Allen S., Soviet Policies in China, 1917-1924 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1953),33, 217, 289fn12 However, on Aug. 26, 1919, the Soviet newspaper Izvestiia published a revised version of the Karakhan Manifesto without the promises to restore the Tsarist era territorial acquisitions nor the C.E.R. to China. The Bolsheviks then claimed that this was the original version of the manifesto and not a revised one. Millard's Review, a weekly journal published an English language translation of the Yanson "original" manifesto on June 5, 1920. Millard's Review specialized in news and reporting on Sino-Soviet diplomatic and political relations.Whiting, Allen S., "The Soviet Offer to China of 1919," The Far Eastern Quarterly, August 1951, p. 356