In the Sumbei camp for Soviet citizens, created in the summer of 1929 by the Chinese authorities in Manchuria, police violence was practiced, there were isolated cases of beatings, reprisals against Soviet citizens and extortion of bribes from its wealthy inhabitants. Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor of the Ural Federal University Sergei Smirnov told about this in an interview with Lenta.ru.
At the same time, the historian emphasized that during the escalation of the conflict between the USSR and China for control over the Chinese Eastern Railway (CER) in the summer and fall of 1929, the Soviet side deliberately exaggerated the scale of the situation.
According to him, in reality there were less than 2,000 people in the camp, some of whom were later sent to the USSR, and some of whom were released. At the same time, Soviet citizens were kept in relatively humane conditions.
The Chinese also understood how all this could backfire
Smirnov added that the Soviet side immediately took reciprocal measures, beginning the persecution of thousands of Chinese citizens in the USSR who were arrested. He cited what he considered to be the best scientific work on the subject – article historian Maria Krotova, “From the history of the conflict on the CER: Chinese concentration camp for Soviet citizens,” published in 2013.
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Citing data from the Izvestia newspaper, she reports that by the beginning of December 1929, 1,683 people remained in custody in Harbin, 1,450 of whom were in the Sumbei camp, and the rest in city prisons.
Based on the study of various documentary sources, the researcher came to the conclusion that the Sumbei concentration camp and the conditions of detention of Soviet citizens in it became a bargaining chip for Soviet diplomacy and Soviet propaganda during the conflict, as well as a means of pressure on the central Nanjing and Mukden governments in the struggle to restore their share of sovereignty over the CER.
However, the real situation of the imprisoned Soviet citizens in this camp was not as difficult as the USSR authorities and Soviet propaganda presented it to be.
Krotova emphasizes in her article that Soviet citizens were released from the Sumbei concentration camp at the end of December 1929 on the basis of the Soviet-Chinese agreement Khabarovsk Protocol from December 22, 1929 on the settlement of the conflict on the CER. All of them were reinstated in service, they were paid their salaries in full for six months.
The Chinese Eastern Railway (CER) conflict was a Sino-Soviet military and political conflict over control of the Chinese Eastern Railway, a joint Soviet-Chinese enterprise. In response to the capture of General Zhang Xueliang by Kuomintang troops in the summer of 1929, the Red Army routed the enemy in the ensuing military actions. The Khabarovsk Protocol, signed on December 22, 1929, ended the conflict and restored the strategically important railway to its pre-conflict status.
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