The “Yellow” and “Jewish” Question in the Russian Far East: Managing Foreignness, Productivity, and Colonization, 1858-1914

Abstract

This article compares the Russian empire’s “Yellow” and “Jewish” question in the Far East, contrasting imperial officials’ attitudes toward Chinese, Korean, and Jewish settlement and economic activities in the Priamurskii Krai. Considering these groups side by side reveals how the empire treated Jews as its own internal other, and how discourse about Jews in the Western borderlands could be broadened to include other groups the Russian empire viewed as a threat: in this case, Chinese and Korean migrants and settlers. The article details the legal limbo these three groups existed in between 1858–1884, and the development of anti-Asian and anti-Jewish attitudes after administrative boundaries were redrawn in 1884. Despite the small number of Jews in the region, local officials and the Ministries of Justice and Interior debated the “Jewish Question” in the Priamur, and Jews were considered the archetypical economic exploiter for those Russian officials and Russian settlers who wanted to underscore the perceived economic threat of Chinese and Korean settlers. While the empire formerly considered Jews as a potentially productive colonizing element, this article uses the regional example of the Far East to consider how imperial attitudes toward non-Russian elements of the population weighed the economic usefulness of undesirable groups against their perceived cultural threat.