User:HNlander/Deportation of Chinese in the Soviet Union
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The Deportation of Chinese in the Soviet Union was the forced transfer of Chinese nationals and ethnic Chinese Soviet citizens from the Russian Far East to China and Soviet-controlled Central Asia and during the 1920s and 1930s by the Soviet government.[1]: 561 Although there were more than 70,000 Chinese living in the Russian Far East in 1926,[2] by the 1940s, Chinese had become almost extinct in the Russian Far East,[2][3]: 73 [4]: 61 with the detailed history of how the Chinese became extinct still yet to be uncovered and deciphered from the Soviet records.[4]: 61
From 1926 to 1937, at least 12,000 Chinese were deported from the Russian Far East to the Chinese province of Xinjiang,[5]: 53 around 5,500 Chinese settled down in Soviet-controlled Central Asia,[5]: 53 and 3,932 were killed.[5]: 54 In the meantime, at least 1,000 Chinese were jailed in forced penal labour camps in Komi and Arkhangelsk;[5]: 55 Even today, some of the villages in Komi are called "Chinatown" because of the Chinese prisoners held in the place during the deportation.[1]: 191 Unlike other deported peoples, the deportation of Chinese and Koreans were carried out by NKVD members of their own nationalities.[6]: 5 While the Koreans, Chinese and Japanese were forced to leave the Russian Far East, the Soviet government launched the Khetagurovite Campaign to encourage single female settlers in the Far East, which unwittingly replaced the deported Asian populations.[7]
On 30 October 2012, Russian human rights group Memorial set up a monument in Blagoveshchensk in memory of the victims of the ethnic cleansing in the Russian Far East.[8] On 30 April 2017, the Last address set up an inscribed board in memorial of Wang Xi Xiang, a Chinese victim of the Great Purge in the Moscow Office of the International Committee of the Red Cross.[9]