The Soviet Offer to China of 1919

Abstract

T HE FIRST major effort of Soviet Russia win sympathies of and establish direct contact with its government was a manifesto of July 25, 1919. Previously Bolsheviks had directed their propaganda and diplomatic efforts at Entente Powers, with only occasional words for the oppressed peoples of East. As Siberia was being rewon and its armies were approaching long Sino-Soviet frontier, Kremlin now focused greater attention on Far East with its vast potential of revolutionary resources and its reservoir of anti-imperialist, anti-Western sentiments. This first manifesto to Chinese nation and Governments of Southern and Northern China was issued by Sovnarkom and signed by Leo Karakhan, Deputy People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs. No official text of original declaration has been discovered, but a version, presumably authorized, appeared in Izvestiia just one month after document's date.' It hailed coming liberation foreign gold which is strangling enslaved peoples of East, and first among them Chinese nation. The declaration repeated previous Soviet pledges annul all Tsarist treaties and in a general way restated anti-imperialist policy of nonannexation and self-determination of people. Specificially, it referred a previous offer to start negotiations for annulment of Treaty of 1896, Peking protocol of 1901, and all agreements with Japan from 1907 1916.2 According this manifesto, negotiations with concerning these treaty renunciations had broken down in March 1918, when the Allies seized Peking government by throat and forced suspension of negotiations. No other material on these early contacts has been found, except for Chicherin's statement in mid-1918: We notified that we renounce conquests of Tsarist government in Manchuria and we restore sovereign rights of in this territory, in which lies principal trade-artery Chinese Eastern railway, property of Chinese and Russian people.4