SEER,Vol. 8i, No.2, April2003 California on the Amur, or the 'Zheltuga Republic' in Manchuria (i 883-86) MARK GAMSA INthe summer of I898 the writerNikolai Garin was sailing down the riverAmuron hiswayto an expeditionthroughKorea andManchuria. On the evening of io August, seventy verstybelow Pokrovskaia(thefirst Cossack station, where the Amur is formed at the confluence of the Shilka and the Argun rivers),the writer and a fellow passenger were enjoyingthe earlysunseton the deckof the steamship.Their reverie,as we go on to readin Garin'sdiaryentryfor that day, was interruptedby the captain who stepped out of his cabin and ('somewhat agitatedly') addressedthe two men: 'HaveyouheardofZheltuga?' 'Butofcourse.' 'Hereitis.' 'Where, where?' Weeagerlyrosefromourseats,fixingourgazeontheChinesebank.' In the followingpages, the readersof Garin'stravelogueare reminded of 'the famous Zheltugarepublic'.The republic'spopulation consisted of independent gold prospectors 'from all nations, but primarily Chinese and Russian', and reached 12,000 men. Its founder was 'an educated man from legal circles'.Orderwas maintained through strict enforcement of the law:murdercaseswere punishedby execution, and theftby floggingand banishmentfromthe gold camp. As the ship passed in full view of the rightbank of the Amur, Garin and his companion observed from close quartersthe Chinese village, builtafterthe annihilationof the mixed republic.The captainhad been a member of the republic himself. Zheltuga, so he says, was dispersed by a combined assaultof Russianand Chinese armies,and burntdown by the latter, who also beheaded up to 300 of their compatriots. It is Mark Gamsa is a doctoral student at Queen's College, Oxford. The author would like to thank Dr N. A. Samoylov of the Faculty of Oriental Studies, St Petersburg State University, for acting as host during a research trip in March 2001, as well as to acknowledge the generous support of The Queen's College. The late eminent historian of the Russian Far East, Dr Boris Petrovich Polevoi (I9I8-2002), and Mr and Mrs Emile and Stephanie Ninaud (Seattle) were kind enough to share parts of their family history. ' N. Garin, PoKoree, Mandzhuriii Liaodunskomu poluostrovu, in his Polnoesobranie sochinenii v8 tomakh,Petrograd, I9I6, 5, p. 42 (all dates from Russian pre-Revolutionary sources are given in the old style). These travel notes by Nikolai G. Garin-Mikhailovskii (I852-I906) were serialized in I899 and published in book form in I904. CALIFORNIA ON THE AMUR 237 worth recalling that Garin's expedition was taking place at a fateful moment for the historyof Russian involvement in Manchuria. Largely through the forceful diplomacy of Nikolai Murav'ev, then governorgeneral of Eastern Siberia, the treaty of Aigun (I858) and the subsequent treaty of Peking (i86o) drew the borderline between the two empiresalong the Amur and the Ussuririvers,landing Russiawith the territoriesknown as the Amur and Maritime Districts. In August I897 work officiallybegan on the constructionof the Chinese Eastern Railway (CER), the last leg of the Trans-Siberianrailwaythat by I903 would link Vladivostok to Chita. In early I898 Russia came into possessionof PortArthur,and the foundationsof Harbin, headquarters of the futureCER zone, were laid. Amid hopes for a prosperousfuture, which the promise of Manchuria aroused in the Far Eastern borderlands , it appears that Zheltuga was far from forgotten: in another exchange with the author, the captain expresseshis intention tojoin a 'new republic'beyond the border, 'once Manchuriais ours'.2 All the key elements of the story to be unravelled in this article are already present here: the strikingclaim concerning the existence of a 'republic'on the borderlinebetween two autocracies;the multinational origins of this republic's membership; the mystery surrounding the identity of its leaders;the destructionof Zheltuga and its replacement by a Chinese gold mining settlement (Mohe, the northernmosttip of China today);even the place of the episode in the collectivememory of the first Russian colonizers in Manchuria, and the potentiality of a 'Zheltuga' being transferred to a new geographical location. The adjective'famous',which Garin'sdescriptionshareswith almostall the referencesto Zheltuga in late nineteenth-centurysources, can be seen today as an invitationto reconstructa lostpiece of FarEasternlore that was very much alive in contemporaries'minds. We begin by piecing together a chronicle of the events. Indeed, it is not only Zheltuga that has been absent in historical research in any language since the closing years of the nineteenth...