Japanese prisoners of war in the Soviet Union Keywords:, Kazakhstan, Karaganda

The issue of Japanese prisoners of war staying on the territory of the former USSR after the end of World War II is one of the most painful in Soviet-Japanese and Russian-Japanese relations. For many years, it has had a negative impact on the social and political climate in our countries.

Rather, in the Soviet Union, this problem was subject to a strict default - a kind of ideological "taboo", as, indeed, everything that, in one way or another, concerned military captivity. Moreover, in this case we were talking about more than 600 thousand citizens of a foreign state, with whom a peace treaty has not yet been signed and in respect of whom, according to Japanese and a number of Russian researchers, an illegal act was committed* sending from Manchuria to the territory of the former USSR for labor use at national economy facilities. countries.

The Japanese made a great contribution to the restoration and development of the post-war economy of the Soviet Union: they worked in mines and mines, felled timber and built houses, participated in the construction of the BAM and the construction of the largest industrial complexes and residential buildings, etc. Moreover, about half of them ended up at the most difficult labor facilities in the regions of Siberia and the Far East, while the rest were distributed to different cities and republics of the USSR. More than 60 thousand of them died due to unusual harsh climatic conditions, hard work, malnutrition, physical exhaustion, diseases, etc.and found their last refuge on Soviet soil. Others, as often happened in those years, were convicted by "troikas" under the infamous Article 58. Those who were lucky enough to survive had to overcome the difficult path of returning to their homeland, which lasted for more than 10 years.

The Japanese became the last prisoners of World War II: the final batch of Japanese citizens convicted in captivity in the amount of a little more than 1 thousand people left our country only on December 23, 1956, as a result of the signing of the Soviet-Japanese Declaration on the end of the state of war between the USSR and Japan and the restoration of diplomatic relations.

However, the remaining issues of military captivity were outside the framework of bilateral agreements. Nevertheless, for the Soviet leadership, the issue of Japanese prisoners of war was removed from the agenda for many years, and all available documentary materials about their stay in Soviet camps were hidden in archives, access to which was practically closed.

For Japan, on the other hand, the problem of military captivity and stay in Soviet camps was becoming increasingly social and political acute, and exclusively in public circles. It was about the payment of allowances and compensations by the Japanese authorities both to former prisoners of war themselves, and to the families of the deceased, etc.

Government agencies showed little interest in solving this problem and often played their own political game, redirecting all these demands to the USSR. And this is understandable: the top leaders did not like to recall the military past: after all, Japan's aggression was condemned by the world community, and the war ended in a crushing defeat and unconditional surrender. Social spending on payments would be an additional burden on the country's budget.

But, perhaps, the main argument that determined the negative position of official Tokyo in relation to the" prisoners of Siberian captivity " (as it is customary in Japan to call these people) is very tense relations with the USSR, the development of which was practically blocked by the realities of the Cold War, including the so - called territorial problem. And the tragedy of military captivity, which carries a rather strong emotional charge, was skillfully used by Japanese politicians in order to incite anti-Soviet sentiment in the country.

* It seems that the thesis about the "illegality" of sending Japanese prisoners of war to the USSR is based on a one-sided interpretation of paragraph 9 of the Potsdam Declaration, taken out of the historical context, which states:: "The Japanese armed Forces, after they are disarmed, will be allowed to return to their homes with the opportunity to lead a peaceful and working life." This interpretation implies the automatic entry into force of clause 9, but does not take into account the factors that prevent the application of this clause, in particular, the absence of an end to the state of war between the USSR and Japan, not to mention the fact that the Cold War began, and Japan turned into an American springboard of confrontation between the United States By the way, at the conclusion of the San Francisco Peace Treaty of 1951, the Americans deprived the conference participants of the opportunity to even discuss the Anglo-American draft treaty, not to mention making amendments, leaving only the right to sign it. The USSR did not use this "right". This is a question about international law, legal subtleties, etc.

It is characteristic that the decision to repatriate German prisoners of war until December 31, 1948 was made only in April 1947 in Moscow at a conference of the foreign Ministers of the USSR, the United States and Great Britain. But in practice, repatriation was delayed until 1950. In addition, prisoners of war convicted of war crimes were not subject to repatriation. Only after intense negotiations of the German Chancellor K. In September 1955, a decree "On the early release and repatriation of German prisoners of war convicted of war crimes" was issued in Moscow, and more than 14 thousand German prisoners of war convicted of war crimes were repatriated from the USSR. Convicted of war crimes, Japanese prisoners of war in the USSR were also the last to be sent home. Some of them "re-educated" and with unfurled red banners came to the headquarters of the Communist Party of Japan in Tokyo, but there they were given a turn away from the gate (ed. by E. M. Rusakov).

In this difficult political situation, former prisoners of war launched a broad public movement for their rights throughout Japan. In numerous actions and appeals to the Japanese government, Parliament, and the judiciary, they demanded compensation from the Japanese authorities for their work in captivity. It should be clarified that similar payments under the Geneva Convention of 1949 had already been made to their compatriots who had returned from captivity from the United States, Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand, etc.and this situation, in fact, put prisoners of Soviet camps in a discriminatory position. Along with compensation, the issue of providing the Soviet side with lists of dead and missing persons, places of burial in the USSR, rehabilitation of illegally convicted persons, etc. was raised.

All these issues have been resolved only in recent decades with the direct participation of our country. In 1991, during the visit of the first President of the USSR Mikhail Gorbachev to Japan, the Japanese side was first given a part of the death lists in the amount of 28,700 people, and their relatives were given the opportunity to visit these graves for the first time. In addition, the Governments of the two countries signed a bilateral agreement on persons held in prisoner-of-war camps, which became the official basis for the beginning of the activities of Japanese and Soviet public and state structures to implement it. At the initiative of the Soviet side in the USSR, in the general process of rehabilitation of victims of political repression, due attention was paid to the consideration of cases of Japanese illegally convicted in captivity, Japanese graves were put in order in the regions, memorial obelisks were erected on them together with Japanese organizations, etc.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in new Russia, as well as in other republics of the former Soviet Union, these humanitarian steps are taking further development: the process of identifying the names of the dead and searching for their graves continued, the process of rehabilitation of wrongly convicted people intensified, more than 40 thousand Japanese received official certificates of their presence and work in captivity, etc. But these important humanitarian actions, unfortunately, did not receive proper understanding and support from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party of Japan in those years.

And only the change of political power in Japan and its transfer to the hands of representatives of the Democratic Party of Japan in 2009 led to significant progress in this issue: the Democrats fulfilled their election promises by passing a corresponding law in parliament, which allowed them to start paying long-awaited compensation to former prisoners of Soviet camps. In material terms, this action is quite symbolic: it is calculated in small amounts, and also does not apply yet to the families of the deceased and citizens of other states - Korea, China, etc., who were once called up to the ranks of the Kwantung Army. Nevertheless, it has essentially restored historical and legal justice to this category of Japanese citizens, and most importantly, it has removed this painful issue in relations between our two countries.

But the theme of Soviet captivity still remains relevant in Japan. However, now it has acquired a purely historical, educational and memorial character. At the initiative of the Japanese Parliament, a special center for providing assistance to former "Siberian prisoners of war" and collecting documentary materials was recently established. We are talking about continuing to identify the names of those who died in Soviet camps and also their burial sites, because the fate of almost half of the missing people is still unknown to their relatives. Another area of work of this center is the collection and publication of documentary materials about the conditions of the Japanese in Soviet captivity, memoirs of eyewitnesses of these events - in a word, the compilation of a historical chronicle of those events. And in this matter, of course, scientists-historians of Russia, Kazakhstan and other former Soviet republics, where Japanese citizens served their captivity, can and should provide significant assistance.

The history of prisoners of war in the former USSR has become one of the most actively developed topics in modern Russian historiography. This is primarily due to the declassification of archival collections, including those concerning foreign prisoners of war, that began at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s. It was then that this question first appeared on the pages of newspapers and magazines. This important humanitarian topic was addressed by leading Soviet journalists: V. Tsvetov, Y. Tavrovsky, V. Dunaev and others. This was followed by the first scientific publications of V. Galitsky, S. Kuznetsov, Yu. Bondarenko and others.

And then came the time for serious analytical and research work, which resulted in a significant number of articles, dissertations, scientific monographs, etc. These include the books of Doctor of Historical Sciences S. Kuznetsov " Japanese prisoners of war in the USSR after World War II "(Irkutsk, 1994), Doctor of Historical Sciences E. Katasonova " Japanese prisoners of war in the USSR: the Big game of great Powers (Moscow, 2003), "The Last prisoners of World War II: little-known pages of Soviet-Japanese relations". relations" (Moscow, 2005), V. Karpov's "Prisoners of Stalin" , etc.

At the same time, the range of aspects considered in these publications,

The issues that make up the essence of the problem range from legal, political and diplomatic to the number, conditions of detention, nature and orientation of labor use, medical and food security, mortality, and repatriation. Research and publications also differ conceptually. Some of them consider the problems in the context of totalitarianism and the repressive policy of the USSR. Others have a more balanced and constructive approach. They take into account that this aspect of the Second World War, as well as the impact of the Cold War on it, has not yet been sufficiently studied, is extremely controversial and is very significant in its long-term consequences.

An important contribution to the scientific coverage of the problem of military captivity was the publication of documentary collections: "Russian Archive: The Great Patriotic War. Foreign prisoners of war of the Second World War in the USSR "(1996) 1, "Prisoners of war in the USSR. 1939-1956 Documents and materials" (2000) ², etc. Almost all of these studies are based on the use of archival materials from leading Russian archives: the Russian State Military Archive, the State Archive of the Russian Federation, the Foreign Policy Archive of the Russian Foreign Ministry, and local archives.

Summing up the interim results of the research work carried out by Russian scientists on the problem of military captivity, it should be noted that this problem, according to Professor M. M. Zagorulko, "is only just entering the band of active study by professional historians. Many issues remain debatable and require additional research supported by authentic documents. " ³

In this context, the scientific monograph published by Karaganda Bolashak University in Kazakh, Russian and English "Karaganda oblysyndagy Zhapon eskeri tutkyndar. Japanese prisoners of war in the Karaganda region.

Japanese prisoners of war in Karaganda region "( under total. edited by N. O. Dulatbekov) (Astana, Regis ST-Polygraph, 2011, 1240 p.). This is essentially the first major research paper on Japanese prisoners of war published outside of modern Russia.

The development of this issue in Kazakhstan began after the decree of the Cabinet of Ministers of the Republic of Kazakhstan dated August 17, 1992 No. 689 "On the formation of the Republican Commission on Foreign Prisoners of War and Internees of the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945"was issued. The first research resulted in materials about the fate of Japanese prisoners of war in Kazakhstan. These materials were summarized in the Book of Memory handed over by the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan N. A. Nazarbayev to the Government of Japan in April 1994.

Kazakh historians first turned to the topic of prisoners of war of the Second World War in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In the course of research on a number of topical issues of the political history of Kazakhstan in the first half of the XX century, in particular, the history of political repression, the history of the Karaganda camp (Karlag), etc. republican and regional periodicals published a number of articles dealing with various issues of the history of prisoners of war in Kazakhstan, including in the Karaganda region. Among the most famous researchers of this problem are the historians L. Mikheeva, V. Nikolaev and others.

The initiator of writing and publishing a new large-scale scientific multi-faceted study of this problem was the rector of Karaganda University "Bolashak", Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor Nurlan Dulatbekov Orynbasaruly. The university operates the Central Kazakh Research Institute of Actual Problems, which develops a number of large research projects. Among the real achievements of the scientific research and historical-educational center for the study of mass political repressions of the XX century, we should mention the publication of the "History of Karlag" in 4 volumes, which collected the works of prisoners of this camp.

Another project of the historical research and historical education center is "History of prisoners of War in Central Kazakhstan". And the beginning of this project was the publication of a scientific monograph devoted to a comprehensive review of the complex of issues related to the stay of Japanese prisoners of war in the Karaganda region after the end of World War II.

After the defeat of the Kwantung Army in Manchuria, 19 army camps were set up for the temporary detention of captured Japanese soldiers. On August 23, 1945, the State Defense Committee headed by Stalin adopted Resolution No. 9898 "On the admission, placement and labor use of prisoners of war of the Japanese Army", which described in detail the sending of 500 thousand Japanese prisoners of war to forced labor in the Soviet Union, clearly defined their distribution among the country's economic facilities and established measures for organizing their work and activity ⁴. The decree provided for the export of Japanese from Manchuria to the Far East, Eastern Siberia, Krasnoyarsk Krai, Altai Krai, as well as to a number of republics of the USSR.⁵

Having thus arrived on the territory of Kazakhstan and joined the contingent of camps for foreign prisoners of war, both existing (camp N 99) and newly created (camps N 37 and N 39), former soldiers of the Kwantung Army were involved in the unfolding industrial and civil construction and involved in the extraction of coal, copper ore, and copper smelting. production, etc.

This was the time when the Karaganda region was covered by a network of correctional labor camps (Karlag), which were held as citizens of the USSR,

so are foreign prisoners of war from the German and Japanese armies. All of them were concentrated in POW camps that were structurally subordinate to the Main Directorate for Prisoners of War and Internees of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs.

Of the 15 POW camps stationed in Kazakhstan, 4 were located in the Karaganda region. The total number of all prisoners of war in the Karaganda region was 31074 people. Of these, 15,735 people, or 50.6%, were Japanese. Accordingly, their contribution to the construction and operation of the regional economy facilities was also significant. This shows the role that Japanese prisoners of war played in the development of the Karaganda region's economy in the first post-war years.

In total, Japanese prisoners of war were involved in work at enterprises of eight ministries. Most of them (4,721 people) worked at the facilities of the Karaganda Coal Plant of the Ministry of Coal Industry, which in those years was one of the most important strategic production facilities not only in Kazakhstan, but also in the entire Soviet Union. More than a third of all prisoners held in the Kazakhstan Economic Region were concentrated in Spassky camp No. 99, and worked mainly at the facilities of the Karaganda Coal Plant and Glavkaragandashakhstroy.

It was a time when Karaganda residents, like all Kazakhstanis, took an active part in the economic, social and cultural development of the republic, which was accompanied by post-war hardships and difficulties.

The history of the stay of Japanese prisoners of war on the territory of the Karaganda region has so far been one of the least studied topics in historical science. And the authors of the book considered it their duty to fill in the existing gap. First of all, the research and publications of Kazakh and Russian historians available on the topic were examined. Scrupulous work was carried out to search, identify and study a huge array of relevant documents and materials in the funds of the State Archive of the Russian Federation, the Russian State Military Archive, the State Archive of the Karaganda region, and the State Archive of the city of Zhezkazgan. As a result, together with the use of previously published documents in the work, an array of new documentary materials is introduced into scientific circulation.

The analysis of literature and archival sources allowed the authors to formulate research tasks that were determined by the complexity and complexity of the problem, its weak development. The authors of the study focused on such key aspects as the nature and conditions of detention of Japanese prisoners of war, providing them with food and clothing, organizing medical care, labor use, etc. They document that the conditions of detention of Japanese prisoners of war, like all others, were harsh, but quite consistent with the standards of the regime in the society in which they found themselves.

It is noteworthy that the problem is considered against the background of a broad historical retrospective, which allows us to see the key aspects of the political, economic, social and cultural development of the Karaganda region, as well as in close connection with the history of the creation of a camp system for foreign prisoners of war in the USSR, starting in 1939. The book analyzes in detail all the fundamental government and party normative documents of those years related to the organization of labor and everyday life of foreign prisoners of war, their medical care, ideological and cultural work in their ranks, issues of repatriation, etc.

The published book is characterized not only by a high scientific level, thoroughness and responsible approach to presenting a huge number of facts and statistics, but also by the rare printing quality of the publication today, as well as its scale - 1232 pages.

It includes a historical essay in Kazakh, Russian and English, lists of names of repatriated persons, photographs of prisoners of war, construction sites erected by them in the region, color reproductions of paintings painted by the Japanese, etc. In general, this is a real chronicle of the stay of Japanese prisoners of war in the Karaganda region, which is designed to significantly deepen and expand scientific ideas about the post-war period of the history of Kazakhstan and the USSR as a whole, on the one hand, and on the other, to help restore the historical truth about Japanese citizens who found themselves in camps in Kazakhstan. In Japan, the book "Japanese prisoners of war in the Karaganda region" has already received the highest rating and positive reviews from historians.

* * *

Now Karaganda researchers have a new fundamental project on their agenda-publishing the memoirs of former Japanese prisoners of war who worked in the Karaganda region. And this is a very real and very interesting idea to show that difficult situation through the eyes of direct participants in those events. Moreover, an 8-volume edition has already been published in Japan, based on documentary evidence of prisoners of war themselves about their time in captivity in the USSR, and one of the volumes is devoted to their life and work in Kazakhstan.

E. L. KATASONOVA, Doctor of Historical Sciences

Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences

¹ Russian Archive: The Great Patriotic War. Foreign prisoners of war of the Second World War in the USSR, Moscow, Terra, 1996, vol. 24 (13).

² Prisoners of war in the USSR, 1939-1956 Documents and materials (edited by M. M. Zagorulko). Moscow, Logos Publ., 2000.

³ Ibid., p. 9.

⁴ Ibid., pp. 283-287.

⁵ Ibid., pp. 286-287.

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