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The Shanghai Russians, a sizable part of the Russian diaspora, flourished in Shanghai, China between the World Wars. By 1937 an estimated up to 25,000 Russians lived in the city; they formed the largest European group there by far. [1] Most of them had come from the Russian Far East, where, with the support of the Japanese, the Whites had maintained a presence as late as the autumn of 1922.
In the late 19th century, the Russian imperial government was shifting the focus of its investment to northeast China. It developed the Chinese Eastern Railway first in Heilongjiang linking Harbin to Vladivostok, and later to Port Arthur on the Liaodong Peninsula. As a consequence, China's trade with its northern neighbour soared. As soon as there was a regular ferry service between Vladivostok and Shanghai, the Russian tea merchants started to settle in the commercial capital of China. About 350 Russian citizens resided within the Shanghai International Settlement in 1905. In order to protect their interests, the Russian consulate was opened in 1896. The old building of the consulate, still occupied by the Russian diplomats, ranks among the Bund's minor landmarks.
The bulk of the Russian exile community relocated to Shanghai from Vladivostok following the fall of the Provisional Priamurye Government at the close of the Russian Civil War. Admiral Oskar Victorovich Stark's squadron alone brought several thousand White Russians from Vladivostok in 1922. Many Harbin Russians, attracted by the booming economy of Shanghai, moved to the Shanghai International Settlement over the following years. Barred by both distance and money from joining established communities in Paris and Berlin, a large number gravitated towards Shanghai, a freeport at the time, requiring no visa or work-permit for entry. For this same reason it was later to become a refuge for Jews fleeing the Nazis.
Although free, and relatively secure, conditions for the émigrés were far from ideal. For one thing they were all stateless, as the Soviet government had revoked the citizenship of all political exiles in 1921. The only travel document most of them had was the Nansen passport, issued by the League of Nations. Unlike other foreigners in China they did not have the benefits conferred by extraterritoriality, which granted immunity from local laws. If arrested, they would be tried under Chinese law. [2]
This was made worse by the barriers to employment opportunities, which in this international city required a good command of English or French as a minimum requirement. There were whole families that depended on wives or daughters who made a living as taxi dancers (hired dancing partners). A survey by the League of Nations in 1935 reportedly found that some 22% of Shanghai Russian women between 16 and 45 years of age were engaging in prostitution to some extent. [3]
Some did find professional work, teaching music or French. Other women took work as dressmakers, shop assistants and hairdressers. Many men became career soldiers of the Shanghai Russian Regiment, the only professional/standing unit within the Shanghai Volunteer Corps. [4] By slow degrees, and despite the many difficulties, the community not only retained a good deal of cohesion but did begin to flourish, both economically and culturally. By the mid-1930s there were two Russian schools, as well as a variety of cultural and sporting clubs. There were Russian-language newspapers and a radio station. An important part was also played by the local Russian Orthodox Church under the guidance of St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco.
![The cover of Vladimir Zhiganov [ru]'s album The Russians in Shanghai (1936) Russiansinshanghai01.jpg](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a9/Russiansinshanghai01.jpg/220px-Russiansinshanghai01.jpg)
Many exiles set up restaurants in the district known as Little Russia (around the Avenue Joffre, now Middle Huaihai Road, in the French Concession), contributing to the development of the local Western-style Haipai cuisine. Russian musicians (such as Oleg Lundstrem) achieved a dominance over the city's foreign-run orchestra. The most famous Russian singer, Alexander Vertinsky, relocated from Paris to Shanghai; and Fyodor Chaliapin was seen on tour. Vladimir Tretchikoff, the "King of Kitsch", spent his youth in the city. Russian teachers offered lessons in theatre and dancing. Margot Fonteyn, the English ballerina, studied dance in Shanghai as a child with Russian masters, one of whom, George Gontcharov, had formerly danced with the Bolshoi in Moscow. [2]
But it was the contribution that Russian women made to the entertainment industry, dancing and otherwise, that gave the city its exotic reputation, noted in the guidebooks of the day.[ citation needed ] A fictionalized portrayal of their predicament is presented in the James Ivory film The White Countess (2005).
The Japanese formed a bureau for the Russian emigrees; it provided identification papers necessary to live, work and travel. The Shanghai Russians were left to choose between a Soviet citizenship or to remain stateless by support of the bureau. The stateless Russians were officially favoured by the regime, but in reality, they were not trusted and were exposed to a great risk of being arrested as spies for the Soviet Union. They were also often enlisted in the army for work along the border with the Soviet Union. After 1941, when Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union, they were in an even more sensitive situation. To separate the anti-Soviet Russians from the Soviet Russians, the former were ordered to wear a badge with the colours of the Czar — later a white numbered disk of aluminium.
The Shanghai Russians survived through the difficult days of the Japanese occupation, [2] but left in the end with the advance of the Communists. They were forced to flee, first to a refugee camp on the island of Tubabao in the Philippines and then mainly to the United States and Australia; however, many settled in Hong Kong. The Russian monuments of Shanghai did not escape the ravages of the Cultural Revolution. The Pushkin statue, funded by public subscription and unveiled on the centenary of the poet's death, was smashed by the Red Guards in 1966. It was subsequently restored in 1987. The Orthodox Cathedral of St. Nicholas, consecrated and elaborately frescoed in 1933, was converted into a washing machine factory, and subsequently a restaurant. The municipal government terminated the lease of the cathedral to the restaurant in 2004. The building became a bookshop in 2019. [5]
In the 1967 British film A Countess from Hong Kong , written and directed by Charlie Chaplin, Sophia Loren plays the only child of Russian aristocrats who escaped, during the Russian Revolution, to Shanghai, where she subsequently was born. Her parents died there when she was thirteen; she was the mistress of a gangster at fourteen. Asked how she has come to live in Hong Kong, she replies, "Well, there was another war, another revolution — so here we are."
Harbin is a sub-provincial city and the provincial capital and the largest city of Heilongjiang province, People's Republic of China, as well as the second largest city by urban population after Shenyang and largest city by metropolitan population in Northeast China. Harbin has direct jurisdiction over nine metropolitan districts, two county-level cities and seven counties, and is the eighth most populous Chinese city according to the 2020 census. The built-up area of Harbin had 5,841,929 inhabitants, while the total metropolitan population was up to 10,009,854, making it one of the 50 largest urban areas in the world.
Jews and Judaism in China are predominantly composed of Sephardi Jews and their descendants. Other Jewish ethnic divisions are also represented, including Ashkenazi Jews, Mizrahi Jews and a number of converts.
The term Harbin Russians or Russian Harbinites refers to several generations of Russians who lived in the city of Harbin, Heilongjiang, China. Russians and other Europeans settlers were responsible for turning Harbin into a European city with the majority of the population being ethnic European. From approximately 1898 to the mid-1960s. Harbin, a major junction city on the Chinese Eastern Railway (CER), came successively under the control of the Qing dynasty, under Russia's Sphere of influence, the Republic of China, Japanese puppet state Manchukuo and the People's Republic of China in this period.
Amleto Vespa was an Italian mercenary and secret agent of Italian origin, who worked in Manchuria from 1922 to 1940, first for a local warlord, and then for the Empire of Japan. A self-proclaimed fascist and an admirer of Benito Mussolini, Vespa had no admiration for the Japanese administration of Manchukuo, which he described with considerable venom in a book published in 1938.
The Shanghai International Settlement originated from the merger in the year 1863 of the British and American enclaves in Shanghai, in which British subjects and American citizens would enjoy extraterritoriality and consular jurisdiction under the terms of treaties agreed by both parties. These treaties were abrogated in 1943.
The Shanghai Ghetto, formally known as the Restricted Sector for Stateless Refugees, was an area of approximately one square mile in the Hongkew district of Japanese-occupied Shanghai. The area included the community around the Ohel Moshe Synagogue. Shanghai was notable for a long period as the only place in the world that unconditionally offered refuge for Jews escaping from the Nazis. After the Japanese occupied all of Shanghai in 1941, the Japanese army forced about 23,000 of the city's Jewish refugees to be restricted or relocated to the Shanghai Ghetto from 1941 to 1945 by the Proclamation Concerning Restriction of Residence and Business of Stateless Refugees. It was one of the poorest and most crowded areas of the city. Local Jewish families and American Jewish charities aided them with shelter, food, and clothing. The Japanese authorities increasingly stepped up restrictions, surrounded the ghetto with barbed wire, and the local Chinese residents, whose living conditions were often as bad, did not leave. By 21 August 1941, the Japanese government closed Shanghai to Jewish immigration.
Ethnic Russians or Russian Chinese, are one of the 56 ethnic groups officially recognized in China. Enhe Russian Ethnic Township is the only ethnic township in China designated for China's Russian minority. Russians have been living in China for centuries and are typically the descendants of the Russians who settled in China since the 17th century. Ethnic Russians in China are Chinese citizens. Many of them are descendants of Cossacks. There are currently over 15,000 ethnic Russians in China who have lived their entire life as Chinese citizens. In the census of 1957 there were 9,000 ethnic Russians. The 1978 census counted just 600 Russians, but the figure rose to 2,935 in the 1982 census and 13,504 in the 1990 census.
A white Russian émigré was a Russian subject who emigrated from the territory of the former Russian Empire in the wake of the Russian Revolution (1917) and Russian Civil War (1917–1923), and who was in opposition to the revolutionary Russian political climate. Many white Russian émigrés participated in the White movement or supported it, although the term is often broadly applied to anyone who may have left the country due to the change in regimes.
The Beijing Legation Quarter was the area in Beijing, China where a number of foreign legations were located between 1861 and 1959. In the Chinese language, the area is known as Dong Jiaomin Xiang, which is the name of the hutong through the area. It is located in the Dongcheng District, immediately to the east of Tiananmen Square.
There are roughly 1,000 Armenians currently living in Mainland China and Hong Kong.
Simon Kaspé was a Jewish resident of Harbin, Manchuria, who was kidnapped, ransomed, tortured and murdered by a gang of fascist Russian criminals under the influence of Konstantin Rodzaevsky. The half-hearted investigation into his death by the Japanese authorities, who were attempting to court the White Russian community as local enforcers and for their Anti-Communist sentiments, sparked anti-Japanese sentiment among the Jewish community of Manchukuo, and the flight of nearly 70% of the Jews of Harbin.
Dr. Abraham Josevich Kaufman was a Russian-born medical doctor, community organizer and Zionist who helped protect some tens of thousands of Jews seeking safe-haven in East Asia from Nazi atrocities during World War II.
The Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum is a museum commemorating the Jewish refugees who lived in Shanghai during World War II after fleeing Europe to escape the Holocaust. It is located at the former Ohel Moshe or Moishe Synagogue, in the Tilanqiao Historic Area of Hongkou district, Shanghai, China. The museum features documents, photographs, films, and personal items documenting the lives of some of the more than 20,000 Jewish residents of the Restricted Sector for Stateless Refugees, better known as the Shanghai Ghetto, during the Japanese occupation of Shanghai.
The Ohel Rachel Synagogue is a Sephardi synagogue in Shanghai, China. Built by Sir Jacob Elias Sassoon in memory of his wife Rachel, it was completed in 1920 and consecrated in 1921. Ohel Rachel is the largest synagogue in the Far East, and one of the only two still standing in Shanghai. Repurposed first under the Japanese occupation during World War II and again following the Communist conquest of Shanghai in 1949, the synagogue has been a protected architectural landmark of the city since 1994. It was reopened for some Jewish holidays from 1999 and briefly held more regular Shabbat services as part of the 2010 Shanghai Expo.
The Beth Aharon Synagogue was a Sephardi synagogue in Shanghai, China, built in 1927 by the prominent businessman Silas Aaron Hardoon in memory of his father Aaron. During World War II, the synagogue provided refuge for the Mirrer yeshiva of Poland, the only Eastern European yeshiva to survive the Holocaust intact. After the establishment of the People's Republic of China, it was used by the Wenhui Bao newspaper and as a factory during the Cultural Revolution. It was demolished in 1985.
Israel's Messenger, also known in Chinese as Youtai Yuebao, was an English-language newspaper published in Shanghai from 1904 to 1941. It was established by N.E.B. Ezra, who served as the paper's Editor-in-Chief for more than 30 years until his death in 1936, as the official newspaper of the Shanghai Zionist Association. It was one of China's oldest and most sophisticated Jewish periodicals, which also influenced the Jewish press in India.
Nissim Elias Benjamin Ezra (1883–1936), commonly known as N.E.B. Ezra, was a Baghdadi Jewish publisher and Zionist based in Shanghai. He founded the Shanghai Zionist Association in 1903 and its official newspaper, Israel's Messenger, one of China's oldest and most sophisticated Jewish periodicals. He served as editor-in-chief of the newspaper for more than 30 years until his death in 1936. Influenced by Ezra, his nephews started the newspaper Jewish Tribune in Bombay, India.
The New Synagogue was an Ashkenazi synagogue in Shanghai, China, opened in 1941 to serve the city's then growing Russian Jewish community. It was located on rue Tenant de la Tour in the Shanghai French Concession. The synagogue was closed in 1965 after the departure of most Jews from Shanghai following the Communist victory in China, and was repurposed as the auditorium of the Shanghai Institute of Education. It was demolished in the 1990s.
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, during the 1920s and 1930s by the Soviet government. Most of the deportees were relocated to the Chinese province of Xinjiang and Soviet-controlled Central Asia. Although there were more than 70,000 Chinese living in the Russian Far East in 1926, the Chinese had become almost extinct in the region by the 1940s. To date, the detailed history of the removal of Chinese diasporas in the region remains to be uncovered and deciphered from the Soviet records.
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