Later in World War II, at the Yalta Conference held in February 1945 between Soviet, American and British heads of state Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill, an important topic was the Soviet Union’s troop contribution to northeast China. The three parties held tentative talks on the political conditions for the Soviet Union to send troops to the northeast and eventually signed the Yalta Agreement.
According to the agreement, within two or three months after the surrender of Germany and the end of the war in Europe, the Soviet Union would participate in the war against Japan on the Allied side. The conditions were: i. The status quo in Mongolia (Mongolian People’s Republic) was to be maintained. (2) Russia’s former rights and interests destroyed by Japan’s treacherous attack in 1904 shall be restored, namely: a) the southern part of Sakhalin Island and all adjacent islands shall be returned to the Soviet Union; b) the commercial port of Dalian shall be internationalized and the superior rights and interests of the Soviet Union in the port shall be guaranteed, and the Soviet Union’s lease of the port of Lushun as a naval base shall be restored; c) a Sino-Soviet joint company shall be established to jointly operate the Middle East Railway and the South Manchurian Railway, which connect Dalian with the outside world. 3. The Thousand Islands were to be handed over to the Soviet Union.
By the agreement, the Soviet Union acquired the Thousand Islands and the Kuril Islands, as well as the Chinese ports of Dalian and Lushun and two railroads in the northeast. The U.S. and Britain sold out China’s sovereignty and interests without consulting the government of the Republic of China.
Soviet troop shipments to northeast China
The Soviet Union began to gradually ship troops to northeast China after the Yalta agreement was signed. According to an article about the Soviet troop movement to the Northeast in the second issue of the mainland magazine Breitbart in 2005, the Trans-Siberian Railway became the main artery for the Soviet Union to transport troops to Northeast China.
From May to August 1945, the Soviet Union shipped 136,000 wagons of troops and combat supplies to the Far East and Zabaikalye from the European theater, which was between 9,000 and 12,000 kilometers away. Eleven composite armies, two battle clusters, one tank group, three air force groups and three air defense groups, and four independent air armies were assembled in the Far East, with a total strength of L,577,700,000 men, 26,137 guns, 5,556 tanks, and 3,446 aircraft. It also had the Pacific Fleet and the Amur Regional Fleet.
Since The Japanese Kwantung Army was a powerful brigade of the Japanese army, its equipment and combat power were second to none, so Marshals Wasilevsky, Maretskov and Malinovsky, whom Stalin sent to northeast China, fought against the Germans several times. Wasilevsky was the Commander-in-Chief of the Soviet Army in the Far East.
Soviet troops to Northeast China
From July 17 to August 2, 1945, Stalin, Truman and Churchill held a secret meeting in Potsdam, located 30 km southwest of the German capital Berlin. The meeting discussed the Potsdam Proclamation for the Surrender of Japan, which was signed by the United States, China and Britain, while the Soviet Union participated in the Potsdam Proclamation only on August 8, when it declared a state of war with Japan.
On July 27, the Japanese side listened to the full text of the Potsdam Proclamation, but rejected it. This led to the United States dropping the atomic bomb on Japan and to an early Soviet troop deployment to northeast China.
In the afternoon of August 8, the Soviet Union read the Soviet declaration of war against Japan to the Japanese ambassador to the Soviet Union, Sato, and because the embassy’s telephone lines were intentionally sabotaged, no news was received in Japan when the Soviets launched their attack on the Japanese Kwantung Army.
At 00:10 on August 9, the Soviet Red Army launched a surprise attack on the Japanese Kwantung Army from the east, west and north, across the Sino-Soviet and Sino-Mongolian borders on a front of more than 4,000 kilometers. At that Time, the Japanese commander Yamada Ezo was still enjoying a Japanese song and dance performance. Only in the early morning did he give the order for full-scale combat.
After nearly a week of fierce fighting, on August 14, Soviet army groups rapidly advanced into the northeastern hinterland. On that very day, the Japanese government sent notes to the American, British, Soviet, and Chinese governments indicating surrender. at noon on the 15th, the Japanese emperor issued an edict of surrender, but the resistance of the Kwantung Army did not cease. However, on the 16th, after the Japanese main camp issued an order to the Kwantung Army to stop fighting and to negotiate with the Soviet troops, the Japanese surrendered. on the afternoon of the 19th, the Soviet troops entered Shenyang, where they captured the last emperor Puyi, who was later brought back to the Soviet Union for internment. on the 22nd, the Japanese army in Harbin surrendered to the Soviet troops. On the same day, Soviet troops entered Dalian.
Soviet atrocities
After entering the Northeast, the Soviet troops took brutal revenge on Japanese soldiers and civilians, such as raping women and plundering the residents’ property, but also robbed Chinese people of their property and raped Chinese women. To this day, the memory of the atrocities committed by the “Old Maoists” (note: a term of contempt for the Soviets in the Northeast) is still fresh in the minds of the elderly in the Northeast.
Some Northeasterners recall that in the major cities of the Northeast, at night, scattered Soviet soldiers would stop pedestrians and chase women, and sometimes break into homes at gunpoint. Some netizens have heard old people tell that Soviet soldiers once took the opportunity to touch women’s breasts and even drag them inside the house to rape them during ticket checking at Dehui railway station. As a result, Chinese women were afraid to go out at night, and men were afraid to wear watches and leather coats on the street. Many drunken Soviet soldiers and officers were lying on the roadside, which made people look at them.
In the 2010 book “Japan, China, More”, it was revealed that a Soviet soldier raped a local woman, and the people were so outraged that they killed him. As a result, the Soviet army was angered, and they brought in artillery to shell Guojiatun, and the people ran away in fear.
The article “The first person in the Party to resist Soviet chauvinism” in Breitbart, No. 9, 1999, also recounts that Liu Shunyuan, who was assigned to the local committee in Luta as deputy secretary, second secretary, and vice chairman of the Kwantung administrative office, saw, while riding on the train, that in addition to the trains full of rails, machines, and other materials, whistling northward, the Soviet soldiers in the carriages, seeing the younger Chinese women, whistled and shouted playfully. playfully shouted, “Haloshao!” Sometimes they even ran over and took the Chinese women in their arms, pinching and groping them. Liu Shunyuan couldn’t help but curse out, “What kind of Red Army is this? They are bastards!”
Liu Shunyuan soon learned that on August 22, 1945, when the Soviet Red Army entered northeast China and parachuted into Brigada, there was a warm welcome for the Soviet troops, but the attitude of the masses soon changed. For some Soviet soldiers, seeing young Chinese women, made their hands and feet, and even engaged in obscene activities in public places. The rape of Chinese women and the robbery of Chinese residents’ belongings by Soviet soldiers kept happening, so that the common people of Brigada gradually looked the other way …… Liu Shunyuan had reflected to the Soviet command about the discipline of the Soviet troops, but everything did not change.
Taiwanese Writer Lung Ying-tai, in his book “The Great River Sea 1949”, also recorded some details of the rape of Chinese women by Soviet troops provided by those in the know: “That winter, Hsu Chang-qing, a 21-year-old Taipei native, went to the Shenyang railway station to see off his friend, and as soon as he turned around, he saw this scene: a very large square in front of the Shenyang station, similar to the square in front of our present (Taipei) Presidential Palace About the same. When I was going back, I saw a woman in the square, holding two children and carrying another one on her back, and a bigger one with a straw mat, five people in total. Seven or eight Soviet soldiers surrounded them and raped the mother first and then the children, in full view of everyone. The child on the woman’s back had been untied and was bawling. After the Soviet soldiers finished bullying them, they told them to lie down neatly and machine-gunned them to death …… What Xu Changqing stumbled upon may well have been what happened to the Japanese women and children in the Northeast at that time, but the Chinese themselves, lived in equal fear. In the winter of 1945, Yu Heng was also in Changchun, and what he saw was that ‘Wherever the Soviet troops went, women were raped, things were removed, houses were set on fire’, and women, both Chinese and Japanese, cut off their hair and wore men’s clothes, otherwise they dared not go out into the streets. The so-called ‘liberators’ were in fact a horrible rabble, but the people did not dare say that the people had to go to his monument in the square, line up, take off their hats and pay tribute ……”
Also according to Zhou Shuling, who participated in the Northeast resistance, in Baoqing County, Heilongjiang Province, she sternly stopped the Soviet troops who were about to rape women: “What are you doing? You are here to liberate, not to harm the Chinese people! I’ll call you Stalin!”
The first reports of bad military discipline in the Soviet army were found in telegrams sent to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China by the first units of the Eighth Route Army to enter the Northeast. The troops of the Eighth Route Army in Shenyang called the Central Committee to report that the Soviet troops were “in rags and their discipline is very bad” and to make representations to the Soviets, but the Soviets argued that they were motivated by their hatred of fascism. The question is, were the Chinese people they robbed and raped fascists? And even if they hated Japanese fascists, would their bestiality be permitted?
In contrast to the bestiality of the Soviet army, some old people in the Northeast said that the Japanese army rarely raped women in the Northeast. When I was on a train in the northeast more than 30 years ago, I also heard an old man say something similar.
In addition, due to the lack of discipline of the Soviet army, Lu Dongsheng, deputy commander of the Songjiang Military Region of the Chinese Communist Party, was also killed by Soviet soldiers during a robbery in Harbin in December 1945. However, in the biographies of Chinese communist generals published later on the mainland, the introduction of Lu Dongsheng is: “He returned to China in September 1945 and became the deputy commander of Songjiang Military Region. He died in Harbin on December 14 of the same year.” The light “died in the line of duty” makes the truth of Lu Dongsheng’s death just obliterated.
What is even more outrageous is that the Chinese Communist Party, which claims to represent the people, ignored the atrocities committed by the Soviets in the Northeast, neither publicly condemning them nor organizing any protest marches, for reasons that are, of course, self-explanatory. For without the help of the Soviets, the CCP could not have quickly occupied the material-rich Northeast and used it as a base to win the civil war. It is true, as Mao said at the Seventh Congress of the CCP, that with the Northeast, “our victory in the whole country will have a solid foundation.” “That is to say, our victory was determined.”
History reveals that the greatest gifts the Soviets gave to the CCP were: 100,000 guns, thousands of cannons and countless ammunition, cloth and grain from the Japanese army; and 200,000 Manchukuo troops. There is no doubt that the Chinese Communist Party received such a gift, so how could it care about the grief of a mere ten thousand Chinese people?
Conclusion
In 1946, after the “American rape case” orchestrated by the Chinese Communist Party, Wu Guozhen, then mayor of Shanghai, admonished the students of Shanghai Jiaotong University who participated in the march: “How many Chinese women were raped when the Russians occupied the Northeast? If you must demonstrate, then you should do so against the criminal who has done more harm. Or, if you must demonstrate against the United States, then you should also demonstrate against the Soviet Union.” But did we see the Chinese Communist Party launch such a demonstration? What the Chinese Communist Party chose to do was to remain silent about Soviet atrocities.
The reason for the CCP’s silence, in addition to the enormous benefits granted to the CCP by the Soviet Union, was also the main reason for its shared belief in the violent Marxist-Leninist ideology with the Soviet Union, because the CCP’s brutality towards the common people was more than comparable to that of the Soviet army.
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