The historiography of the issue of foreign espionage in the Russian Far East is full of myths. With the light hand of contemporaries-V. V. Grave, D. M. Schrader, P. F. Unterberger [Grave, 1912; Schrader, 1897; Unterberger, 1900] - the opinion was established in Russian literature that Chinese and Japanese spies, along with tens and hundreds of thousands of seasonal workers, penetrated into the remote edge of the Russian Empire and created a system of total espionage and they played the role of a "fifth column" in the region, preparing its rejection in favor of Asian countries. However, when working with sources, it is necessary to take into account that many cases that are used as evidence of "Asian espionage" in Russia were generated by career considerations of officials of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. This is indirectly confirmed by the small number of cases that were brought to trial, and an even smaller number of convictions. Nevertheless, in some periods of time, immigrants from neighboring Eastern countries did create serious problems for the state interests of the Russian Empire in the region.

Chinese scouts began to visit the Amur region immediately after the division of the region between Russia and China in 1861. As sources of information, they used Chinese settlers who lived in the border area. Therefore, during the suppression of unrest by Russian troops among Chinese gold prospectors and fishermen in 1868, Beijing was better informed about the movements of Chinese detachments than the Russian authorities [GAIO, f. 24, op. 11/2, d.148, l. 178-181].

At the same time, in our opinion, Chinese actions on the territory of Russia in the 60 - 80s of the XIX century cannot be considered acts of real espionage. The ability of Chinese settlers to conduct intelligence activities outside the Chinese community (information gathering, recruitment, etc.) was limited. Chinese farmers lived in isolation from Russian settlers, had no contact with the Russian administration, and had no professional experience or training. The entire military and political value of the Chinese settlers of the Amur region for the Qing Empire consisted only in the possibility of using them for primitive sabotage activities. So, during the Russo-Chinese armed confrontation of 1879-1881. they cut the telegraph line in the Amur region, and during the Russo-Chinese War of 1900, they shelled the suburbs of Blagoveshchensk [GAIO, op. 11/1, d. 148, l. 109-112].

However, some historians have a different view of the political role of Asian subjects in the Russian Far East. Thus, N. V. Grekov, who made little use of archival data from the Far East and Eastern Siberia and relied mainly on published information, came to the conclusion that the Irkutsk District headquarters discovered the presence of Chinese intelligence agents very late and knew nothing about the work of Japanese intelligence centers [Grekov, 2000, p.150]. This is not entirely true.

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The Chinese government was not able to conduct large-scale operations on the territory of Russia at the turn of the XIX-XX centuries. This is not only due to the weak socio-economic and political potential of China at that time, but also to the attitude of Chinese immigrants to the Manchu Qing Dynasty, which held power in Beijing until 1912. Since ancient times, Chinese people abroad have formed unions based on professional and community characteristics. Such unions eventually turned into secret organizations of the mafia type. Members of secret societies had their own body language. Members of secret Chinese societies were considered criminals in the Qing Empire. Therefore, the Chinese, united in societies operating in the Amur region (legal or secret), did not cooperate with the Beijing administration and did not conduct intelligence on the Russian border. Moreover, they often killed Chinese officials, as well as people who collaborated with the authorities in general [GAIO, f. 24, op. 10, d. 247, k. 1666, l. 2].

The largest of the Chinese legal societies at the beginning of the XX century was the Main Vladivostok Chinese Trade Society ("Haishengwei hua Shangzong Hui"). Its board was elected at a general meeting, where everyone could express their opinion in written and oral form (the list of candidates was posted). The Board of directors of the company, consisting of 28 members, was elected by secret ballot. Nine Chinese merchants were honorary members of the society [GAIO, f. 24, op. 10, d. 247, k. 1666, l. 75]. The company's income consisted of membership fees, monetary fines, real estate sales, and voluntary donations. The amount of membership fees was determined depending on the wealth of the company's members: from 50 rubles. (1st category) up to 1 rub. (7th category) [GAIO, f. 24, op. 10, d. 247, k. 1666, l. 76].

Chinese societies had branches in all major settlements of the Amur region. The parent organization was the Vladivostok Commercial Society. It, like other societies, refused to comply with the orders of the Chinese consul. Moreover, Chinese business representatives, seeking to distance themselves from Beijing's official policy, did not allow the consul to attend their meetings. At the same time, it has drawn representatives of Russian officials into its ranks. Many of the Company's shares were owned by Russian citizens. Russian officials were necessary for the organization to seize the market and fight the Chinese bandits-hunghuz. The Chinese population was subject to levies, which included Russian detectives, commercial agents and translators [AVPRI, F. Pacific Table, op. 487 (1911), d.759, l. 10]. The contingent of Chinese translators was replenished at the expense of "strikers", i.e. domestic servants and office workers, who, having mastered the Russian language and established relations with their owners, began to act as patrons of their compatriots [AVPRI, f. Pacific Table, op. 487 (1911), 759, p. 47]. Russian officials not only did not interfere with the activities of this organization, but also sent requests to the company's management board for registration, passport control and personnel of Chinese firms. Together with the police, they compiled reviews of trade and made decisions about the fate of certain Chinese entrepreneurs [AVPRI, F. Pacific Table, op. 487 (1911), d. 759, l.44 vol.].

The following fact speaks volumes about the merger of the Chinese trade organization and local officials. Song Puqing served as a Chinese interpreter for the military governor of the Primorsky Region, General Manakin, for 10 years. He decided to improve his financial situation, undermined by playing cards. In coordination with local officials, a decree was issued that restricted the activities of Chinese porters. They were forbidden to do this work outside the artel. For joining the artel, the porter was required to pay 2 rubles and 1 rubles for the badge. In addition, the rules required the Chinese to live in the night shelter of the artel owner with a fee of 3 rubles per month. Owner of the artel by the decision of the Chinese Court

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The trade organization became Song Puqing. Taking into account that the number of Chinese porters in Vladivostok was 500-600 people, and their income - from 1.5 to 3 thousand rubles. per month, the owner of the artel could, receiving 10-20% of this amount, save 2-4 thousand rubles. per year [AVPRI, F. Pacific Table, op. 487 (1911), d. 759, l. 49, 49 vol.].

The merging of Chinese organizations, which sometimes did not disdain illegal operations, and regional law enforcement agencies was obvious to contemporaries. So, noting the fact that Chinese firms control the artesian wells of the city district and the actions of water carriers that divided Vladivostok into sections, a local public figure P. G. Matsokin asked: "... whose gray robe (the uniform of a Russian official. - Author) this vital trade is covered up! " [Matsokin, 1911, p. 6].

Chinese societies that cooperated with representatives of the Russian authorities were sometimes headed by people associated with crime. When in December 1914 a collection of money for the purchase of weapons was organized among the Chinese in Khabarovsk, Russian counterintelligence began to check the connections of the Chinese Mutual Aid Society, assuming that it was fulfilling orders from the German government. However, no evidence of this could be found. But it turned out that the leadership of the organization included the largest smugglers of the region. At the same time, it was established that the smugglers Lee Jung Ho and Hashimoto Toranosuke had common trade affairs (importing alcohol to Russia) with Lieutenant Colonel A. M. Bodisko, chief of staff of the 46th militia brigade [Ikonnikova, 1999, p. 48]. However, the smugglers were not actively fought, as they were sometimes a source of information about the espionage activities of the Chinese authorities. And often the espionage actions of the Chinese authorities ended in failure. So, on December 28, 1912, at the "tip - off" of a Chinese brothel keeper, the chief of staff of the Chinese Kuljin army, Hao Kojuan, was arrested, bringing home 14 topographic maps of Russia and records in Chinese [GAIO, f. 25, op. 11, d. 85. l. 1-3].

Chinese espionage did not play a significant role in the Amur region. But the Chinese were used by other powers to conduct intelligence work in the Far East.

On the eve and during the First World War, German intelligence here largely carried out its activities, relying on Chinese agents. For the first time, the Russian authorities paid attention to the Chinese as agents of Germany in the summer of 1914. On the eve of the war, several hundred subjects of the Republic of China were sent from Germany to the western regions of Russia. The Chinese immediately engaged in trade or were hired for the construction of some objects of the Kingdom of Poland [AWPRI, f. Pacific Table, op. 487, d. 1060, l. 442]. On July 28, 1914, the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia sent out a circular letter "On the attitude during the European War to China and the Chinese living in Russia." It said that several Chinese traders were detained within the Warsaw Military District, caught spying for Germany. "The observation of Chinese traders in St. Petersburg and Moscow,"the document emphasized," revealed that they form a correct, closely cohesive and well-functioning disciplined organization." The circular ordered "to establish everywhere in Russia, through the ranks of the gendarme and general police staff, careful monitoring of the Chinese in order to clarify their occupations and goals of staying in the Empire" [GAIO, f. 25, op. 11, d. 92, l. 2].

Responding to the circular, on November 18, 1914, the assistant chief of the Irkutsk Provincial Gendarme Department (GZHU) in the Chita region, Captain Bulakhov, in a letter to the director of the Police Department (DP), announced the existence of a grandiose spy organization in Siberia, operating from Omsk to Vladivostok. As noted by the gendarme, German firms had as their goal the organization of sabotage in the rear of Russia. According to him, the Germans had special methods of communication and ci groups-

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thai agents. An immediate review of this report showed its complete inconsistency and inconsistency with reality [Grekov, p. 245-252].

However, not everything was made up by Russian counterintelligence and police officers.

On December 9 and 11, 1914, the head of the Vladivostok Counterintelligence department, A. A. Nemysky, telegraphed that he had received confidential information about the formation of Hunkhuz gangs by order of the German government, aimed at freeing and arming prisoners of war, for which it was supposed to attack the villages of Nikolskoye, Spasskoye, Iman, Razdolnoye and Blagoveshchensk around December 18. On December 23, 1914, information was received that the leaders of these gangs were in contact with captured German officers and "at present they are concerned about forming and supplying the gang members with a large number of weapons." According to the same confidential information, the appearance of a German wearing a Chinese dress and leading anti-Russian agitation among the Chinese and Mongols was established [GAIO, f. 25, op. 11, d. 92, l. 6-7]. It was about the German agent Papenheim. According to Russian law enforcement agencies, on February 24, 1915, this German arrived at the headquarters of the Mongol Prince Babujab together with a caravan from Kalgan. He offered money for sabotage on Japanese and Russian railways in Manchuria and looting trains engaged in delivering guns, shells and ammunition to Russia. However, the Mongol prince chose not to contact the German intelligence officer. He allowed him to recruit volunteers, provided him with food, but the German did not reach the Khingan tunnel, which was the goal of the expedition. He was killed and robbed on the way by unknown people [GAIO, f. 25, op. 11, d. 220, l. 5]. Despite the failure to blow up the Khingan tunnel, Chinese - German agents were able to set fire to the railway bridge on the CER and carry out an attack on the steamer "Siberia" on the Sungari River.

In an effort to increase the effectiveness of sabotage operations, from the end of 1914 in one of the cities of the Jilin province of China, German officers created training courses in the methods of partisan struggle of Chinese and Koreans "in order to join the Hunghuz gangs operating against Russia and Japan" [Ikonnikova, 1999, p.46]. Students of these courses during the first half of 1915 assisted in the escape of seven German and three Austrian officers [GAIO, f. 25, op. 11, d. 112, l. 19]. Local authorities tried to fight the escapes of prisoners of war from camps located in eastern Russia. But, as it became clear from a letter dated February 25, 1915, from the envoy in China to the Russian Foreign Minister, Beijing refused to extradite prisoners of war, since according to international law, subjects of belligerent powers on the territory of a neutral country were to be interned until the end of the war [AVPRI, F. Chinese table, op. 491, d. 3341, l. 2].

Initially, the German consular service in Harbin and German businessmen in Manchuria used Russian citizens - Germans and Jews-to organize the escape of prisoners of war. So, in March 1915, Cossacks on the border detained two German soldiers who had fled from Minusinsk, having bribed a Russian coachman who took them to the border. Here they bought a horse and a revolver. While trying to cross the Mongolian-Chinese border, German soldiers were detained by a Russian patrol [AVPRI, F. Chinese table, op. 491, d. 3341, l. 7 vol., 8]. In August 1915, Lyubimov and Tagamalitsky were arrested for facilitating the escape of Austrian officers to China, providing them with forged passports and bribing border guard officials. For each officer who escaped from captivity, those arrested received 250 rubles. [AVPRI, F. Chinese table, op. 491, d. 3341, l. 59, 66].

Moser, the US Consul in Harbin, gave them the money to carry out their escapes through trusted representatives. The organization that helped ensure the escape of prisoners of war included Dr. Budberg, M. D., Rabbi Kiselev-Shames, an employee of the

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Harbin Post Gaslund and unemployed Karys Gusak. Thanks to the activities of this group, 12 German officers fled to Manchuria from the Amur region and Eastern Siberia [AVPRI, F. Chinese table, op. 491, d. 3341, l. 88-90]. After a judicial review of the case, Lyubimov and Tagamalitsky were sentenced to five years in prison [AVPRI, F. Chinese table, op. 491, d. 3341, l. 117].

After the" defeat " of this group, the Germans decided to create a new group of Chinese immigrants, believing that it would be more difficult for the Russian authorities to conduct search work in the large Chinese community of the Amur Region. The first results were impressive: only from October 11 to 19, 1915, 16 people escaped with the help of the Chinese [AVPRI, F. Chinese table, op. 491, d. 3341, l. 121].

This group was led by German Adolf Bronenger, who lived in the city of Changchun. He was not only engaged in espionage, but also engaged in drug trafficking, exporting opium poppies from Russia to China. Bronenger organized three routes along which the escapes of prisoners of war were carried out. The first one began in Blagoveshchensk, the second-north of Lake Khanka, the third passed from the Amur River to Sungari. The group included up to 40 Chinese and Japanese people. They organized caches of clothing and food and transported prisoners of war to Tianjin. Here they were received by a Chinese firm headed by Lutermann, a German sales agent in Jilin. In less than two months of 1915, five Austrian prisoners of war arrived in Tientsin in Chinese clothes and with Chinese escorts [RGVIA, f. 1573, op. 2, d. 796, l. 12b; 12b].

On March 2, 1916, an envoy in Beijing informed the Irkutsk Governor-General that the identity of the Chinese who had assisted in the escape of Austro-German prisoners of war in Eastern Siberia had been established. Military counterintelligence and ZHPU identified four people in Harbin, three in Manchuria station, five in Blagoveshchensk (Guan Shulin, Zhan Rongjiu, Ma Rentin, Chen Qitai, Zhao Ruochan), and five Chinese in Irkutsk (Xi Yuanqing, Liu Dongcheng, Tian Yushi, Wu Xun, and Wei Shaozhou). Of the five Chinese arrested in Irkutsk, three were Shandong residents who spoke fluent Russian, one was a native of Haicheng and one was a Shanxin. The Shandong army also operated in other Russian cities. The choice of Chinese from this province was explained by the fact that in Shandong there were offices that recruited workers to the mines of the Amur region. Chinese workers studied Russian during their stay in Russia. The Shandong people supplied prisoners of war with Norwegian and Swedish passports, and then accompanied them to the border [AVPRI, F. Chinese Table, op. 491, d. 3341, l. 217].

Not only the Chinese, but also Koreans participated in facilitating the escape of prisoners of war from the Amur region. According to the Russian consul in Tianjin, they received 1 thousand rubles for each released prisoner of war [AVPRI, F. Chinese table, op. 491, d. 3341, l. 199-201]. In 1915, in the Amur Region, the tasks of German intelligence were performed by young Koreans: Yun Hye, Jo Jang-won, Tem Eun-geum, Kim Lip. They were sent by the German consuls in China to organize the escape of German prisoners of war from Nikolsk-Ussuriysky and Nikolaevsk-on-Amur [AVPRI, F. Chinese table, op. 491, d. 3341, l. 216 vol.]. On May 13, 1916, Russian counterintelligence arrested one of the members of this group - Kim Lip. After that, other members of the Korean organization were also detained [Ikonnikova, 1999, p. 48].

From the beginning of the war to November 28, 1916, according to the Main Directorate of the General Staff, 145 German and Austrian officers and 717 soldiers fled to China, including 77 officers and 79 soldiers from the Amur and Irkutsk military districts. There were five points on the border through which the Chinese escorted prisoners of war. Chinese agents then handed the fugitives over to the Germans, who took them to the German consulate in Mukden. These operations were led in late 1916-early 1917 by the Chinese assistant to the German Consul Tan Zhuzhen [AVPRI, F. Chinese table, op. 491, d. 3341, l. 313, 319].

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On September 21, 1916, the consul in Mukden reported to the Russian Foreign Ministry that " the German consulate sent 20 Chinese people in separate groups of five people each to set up secret reception shelters for escaped German prisoners of war. Each group was headed by a Chinese interpreter who spoke German." The groups were to be hired to work in Russia. Upon arrival in the Empire-to leave the working artel and help prisoners of war escape from the camps. The consul also attached to his report a list of 20 Chinese [AVPRI, F. Chinese table, op. 491, d. 3341, l. 262].

In October 1916, counterintelligence reported to the district quartermaster General that "an unspoken investigation proved that German officers stationed in the village of Spassky were visiting the Linberg pharmacy under the pretext of various purchases", in the service of which was a Chinese citizen Liu Bozhang. Liu Bozhang often visited the POW camp. In addition, he opened a Chinese gambling den in the village with the money of the apothecary Linberg. The Chinese, who were drawn into the game by Liu Bozhan and failed to win back, were sent to the border of Russia and China, where they received newspapers and magazines for prisoners of war, as well as correspondence from other countries. In addition, it was noted that the owner of an electric workshop in the village of Spassky, German Meyer, was in close relations with the apothecary Linberg and twice put out the lights during the escape of prisoners of war. It seemed that there was a whole German-Chinese spy network in Spassky. But in reality, everything turned out to be much simpler. An investigation conducted by the Amur counterintelligence Department and the gendarme department found that Linberg only sold the captured German officers a map of the Primorsky Region and a compass, which could help the latter escape to China. No German correspondence or Chinese network existed. The frequent arrival of German officers to the pharmacy was explained by the fact that he had a 17-year-old girl Monankinova. Linberg himself lived in the region since 1905, and no anti-Russian actions were noticed behind him. As for Alfons Frantsevich Meyer, the investigation found that there were malfunctions at his power plant, but very rarely, and the lights were turned off for 2 to 3 minutes. He did not put the dynamo out of action, the shoots fell on days when the lights were on. In other words, Meyer and Linberg were victims of envy and slander [RGVIA, f. 1573, op. 2, d. 796, l. 216-221].

N. P. Popov, the head of the Irkutsk Counterintelligence Department (CRO), enlisted Lieutenant Horvat, an Austrian prisoner of war held in the Yeniseysk concentration camp, to identify those who contributed to the escapes of prisoners of war. He was promised Russian citizenship. He was secretly brought to Irkutsk and legalized as a Danish Frink. In Irkutsk, the Croat met an Austrian pastor named Drexel and a representative of the American Red Cross, Noran. The pastor named a group of people who could contribute to the escape of prisoners-hotel lackeys. Drexel also revealed to the false Frink that he was conducting encrypted correspondence with prisoners of war: Captain Etrahe and Lieutenant Ibrahim. Soon all those involved in providing assistance to prisoners of war were arrested [GAIO, f. 25, op. 11, d. 114, l. 5]. The Russian military authorities began to detain Austrian-German soldiers who had escaped from captivity with Norwegian and Spanish passports in their hands, as well as the Chinese accompanying them, and in August 1917, a Norwegian citizen, Hans Hansum, was arrested for espionage and organizing escapes [GAIO, f. 25, op. 11, d. 112, l. 96]. On October 21, 1917, the headquarters of the Irkutsk Military District informed the Irkutsk Regional Commissar that an Austrian prisoner of war, Baruch S. Gennar, had received an identity card from the Danish Embassy signed by Consul Scharf. The investigation revealed that the certificate was issued by Yaroslav Zavodnik , an Austrian citizen who works at the Danish consulate in Irkutsk. On December 2, 1917, he was placed under police supervision and exiled to Balagansk [GAIO, f. 25, op. 11, d. 112, l. 124, 137].

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Thus, the Chinese were more likely not spies of Beijing, but the environment from which Russia's opponents recruited spies. This explains the "elusiveness" of Chinese spies before the First World War. Since China did not see Russia as an enemy, collecting military and political information was always a side activity for the Chinese. Chinese migrants, supported by the border authorities, committed mainly economic crimes. With the outbreak of the war, espionage became a lucrative business: German intelligence spared no expense in organizing sabotage groups behind Russian lines to free German prisoners of war and destroy military equipment.

In total, during the First World War, the Irkutsk and Amur counterintelligence departments monitored 169 unreliable individuals. Mostly in the" development " were the Chinese. So, 80 people (41 of them Chinese) were suspected of spying for Germany, 20 (9) - Austria, 3 - Turkey, 2 - Japan. Of the suspects, eight people were temporarily arrested (a Chinese and seven Japanese). 22 Japanese and 8 Chinese were expelled from the country [GAIO, f. 25, op. 11, d. 112, l. 122].

Unlike the Chinese, the Japanese were engaged in espionage on the territory of the Russian Far East before the First World War. This was explained by the fact that the Japanese government from 1895 to 1904 and from 1905 to 1910. It considered Russia as the main enemy.

The first recorded penetration of Japanese intelligence into the Russian Far East dates back to 1878, when an officer, Enamoto Takeaki, traveled through Siberia to the European part of the country and made a description of this region. In 1893, Lieutenant Colonel Fukushima traveled to the region for "special" purposes, and in the same year the Japanese General Staff published the Topography of Siberia. Fukushima participated in the formation of the Japanese organization "Domeykai" - "Cooperative Society". In 1895, this professional association was transformed into "Dohokai" - "Zemlyachesky society" [Vaskevich, 1905, p. 18-24]. Members of this society collected various information about the socio-economic situation in the region [Grekov, 2000, p. 66, 68].

Japanese espionage in the region especially increased after the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-1905. From 1906 until the Russo-Japanese agreement on the division of spheres of influence in the Far East in 1910, Japan believed that Russia was inclined to take revenge and start a "war of retribution". Therefore, the Japanese paid special attention to conducting intelligence operations in Russia. From 1906 to 1910, 72 people were detained in the province on suspicion of spying for Japan and 8 were expelled from the country. For comparison, from 1854 to 1884, there were 31 people in the region on suspicion of espionage. Thus, at the beginning of the XX century, the intensity of political crime increased by almost 20 times compared to the middle of the XIX century [AVPRI, F. Pacific Table, op. 487, d. 999, l.13].

Tokyo protested against the expulsion of the Japanese. It was noted that searches of Japanese migrants were carried out on unverified denunciations, and the expulsion from the country took place without sufficient grounds. So, it was reported that when checking passports, the policeman blackmailed the carpenter Yokutsi and the laundress Sakata. Having found an expired passport, he demanded a bribe of 10 rubles. The refusal led to a search, the discovery of sketches of the bridge in the notebook, and the subsequent arrest of a Japanese family. Two other Japanese men, Utsida and Ohara, who kept a brothel in Vladivostok, were arrested and expelled from Russia without any charges of committing political crimes [AVPRI, F. Pacific Table, op. 487, d. 999, l. 20,21]. A thorough check carried out by the Amur Governor-General did not reveal any wrongdoing in their actions. no evidence of a crime. All the Japanese were detained on the basis of facts that exposed them in collecting information of a strategic nature, and were legally expelled.

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In a secret letter No. 10705 dated December 17, 1908, the Governor-General of the Amur Region, P. F. Unterberger, informed the Minister of War that the Japanese spies were members of the so-called mutual aid societies. However, St. Petersburg did not pay attention to this information [AVPRI, F. Pacific Table, op. 487, d. 759, l. 1-2]. Again, the issue of secret Japanese societies and their assistance to the Japanese authorities in collecting confidential information was raised at the government level only in 1911.

On December 24, 1910, at Razdolnoye station, Captain Korf, head of the Nikolsky department of the gendarme and Police Department of the Ussuri Railway, received information from Nam Tekgsam, a 33-year-old Korean. He testified that on November 2, 1910, the Japanese Ikuzo Nagano came to him and persuaded him to get in touch with the Japanese consul in Vladivostok.

Upon receiving this information, Korf ordered a search of Ikuzo Nagano's home. There was found a list of Koreans with an indication of their occupations, documents of the Japanese women's society at the Honkenshi Temple in Vladivostok, papers of Buddhist missionaries Kotsumi Keneshei and Oyata Kyakumin, cash receipts for the transfer of money by the Ministry of Finance of Japan to the consul and Nagano Ikuzo, a list of chairmen of secret Japanese mutual aid societies [AWPRI, F. Pacific Table, op. 487, d. 759, l. 18-21].

During the investigation, it was established that the chairman of the Chita Japanese Society was a Japanese Kokeza, and his assistant was Saito. The official purpose of the society was to help treat Japanese people and send them home, as well as to receive superiors and clergy. Membership fees were collected for the needs of the society: from a worker - 15 kopecks, from a merchant - 30 kopecks, from a woman-10 kopecks. per month. The head of the society in the village of Sretenskaya was a resident of the village photographer Daisaku Kishikawa. He was also treasurer and secretary. The members of the society contributed money to the company's cash register on a monthly basis. Men - 20 kopecks, and women-10 kopecks. In the cities of Nerchinsk and Verkhneudinsk, there was a "Chimso-Taiso" society. The Nerchinsk Society was headed by Dr. Yosaduro Ogawa. The Verkhneudinsk society was headed by Imai, a barber, and his deputy was Shirosaki Man, the owner of a brothel. The society existed on earnings in the sphere of prostitution [GAIO, f. 25, op. 11, d. 38, l. 9].

Having received information about Japanese organizations, the gendarmes arrested Ikuziro Nagano, the owner of a brothel, and Hirato Asaziro, the owner of a laundry, who lived in Razdolny village. They were charged with carrying out orders from the Japanese Consul General (according to Russian law, foreign public organizations operating in Russia were not allowed to be managed by representatives of a foreign administration). In addition, the Japanese were accused of maintaining relations with Japanese bankers and hiding from paying taxes [AVPRI, F. Pacific Table, op. 487, d. 758, l. 1-2.).

On April 20, 1911, the border commissar reported to the military governor of the Amur region that " Japanese subjects coming to our borders form special colonies of Japanese. They choose from their environment a foreman, an assistant, also known as a clerk, and as needed the necessary number of employees. All these persons form an "information desk". The positions of foreman and assistant are elective, while the rest are self - employed. Foremen and clerks of such reference bureaus mostly come from pupils of the foreign language school in Tokyo, who come as employees to large points on our territory " [AVPRI, F. Pacific Table, op. 487, d. 759, l. 7].

The connection of the Tokyo school, which produced consular officers, with Japanese societies in the Amur region, as well as the close ties of these societies with the Consul of Japan (for example, in 1911, the Japanese consul Haizi Nihai, accompanied by Secretary Hirato Minora on-

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setil Irkutsk, Chita, Nerchinsk, Sretensk and made changes in the leadership and personnel of Japanese societies) served as the basis for determining the espionage nature of these organizations. Having received such information, on July 9, 1911, a comrade of the Minister of Internal Affairs reported to the Foreign Ministry: "According to the information available in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, all Japanese people in Vladivostok are united in illegal conspiratorial societies that apparently receive material support from the Japanese treasury and are directly dependent on the local Japanese consul. Having general economic and cultural goals as their purpose under the charter, they also serve the Japanese government as a tool for collecting all the necessary information through the members of the society, which, due to their mass and in connection with the work of professional spies, give a very complete and correct picture of what is happening in Vladivostok " [AVPRI, F. Pacific table, op. 487, d. 759, l. 3].

The Ministry of Internal Affairs proposed to launch a "crusade" against Japanese espionage, but the Russian Foreign Ministry in its response to the Ministry of Internal Affairs believed that these societies could be legalized on the basis of the law on public organizations in the empire of March 4, 1906 and establish police supervision over them [AVPRI, F. Pacific Table, op. 487, d. 759, L. 10]. On August 1, 1911, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs notified the Chairman of the Council of Ministers, P. A. Stolypin, that although all these Japanese societies are subject to closure as illegal, it should still be taken into account that according to the laws of the Russian Empire, the creation of mutual aid societies has been allowed since 1906. The Foreign Ministry pointed out that the Russian law enforcement agencies do not have direct evidence regarding the conduct of espionage by representatives of these societies in Russia, and recommended that no measures be taken to eliminate them. It was proposed to enter into negotiations with the Japanese consul and register the societies, excluding possible "anti-state elements" from their charter [AVPRI, F. Pacific Table, op. 487, d. 759, l.9].

Nevertheless, the local authorities did not give up trying to get a sanction to fight Japanese organizations. So, on July 12, 1912, the Amur Governor-General N. L. Gondatti proposed to close Japanese societies in the region. The Japanese, the Governor-General noted, systematically collect information about the political and economic life of the region and provide it to the consul [AVPRI, F. Pacific Table, op. 487, d. 759, l. 27].

Local security services and authorities bombarded higher authorities with requests to increase the material base and legal powers. But they used only indirect facts as their argument. Thus, according to the opinion of the General Staff Headquarters, expressed in a report for 1911, only indirect signs indicated the activities of Japanese intelligence in the region: first, that all members of societies were required to obey strict discipline and put state interests above personal ones; secondly, meetings of societies were held with careful secrecy [GAIO, f. 25, op. 11, d. 38, l. 16]. According to the Military Ministry, communication between the societies was maintained by priests of the Buddhist sect "Nishi Honganji". This religious organization was headed by a former colonel of the Japanese General Staff, Hagino (Grekov, 2000, p. 27). In October 1910, Colonel N. Shcherbatov, head of the Gendarme and Police Department of the Ussuri Railway, convinced the Police Department that 80% of the Japanese of Primorye were former military personnel who were conducting reconnaissance of the area. According to the military authorities, Japan had its own intelligence center-a consul in Vladivostok. Dozens of letters flocked to him from Chita, Irkutsk, and Blagoveshchensk, i.e., cities where Japanese mutual aid societies existed [AVPRI, F. Pacific Table, op. 487, d. 766, l. 2-12].

However, Russian officials did not provide specific facts of Japanese espionage, which indicates that Japanese intelligence was limited to monitoring the movements of military contingents and recording the volume of construction in the region.

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The creation of an agent network by infiltrating Russian authorities and conducting operations to seize secret documents by Russian counterintelligence was not registered.

On the eve of the First World War, the number of suspects, according to the Irkutsk (Omsk and Irkutsk military districts) counterintelligence department, was 271 people. According to the Vladivostok KRO (Amur Military District), 229 people were under surveillance, 87% of those registered were Japanese. Operations were carried out on 104 Japanese people, in which both external (external, whose duty was surveillance) and internal (direct communication with suspects) agents were involved. At the same time, the number of people registered by the counterintelligence service was many times higher than the number of those arrested on charges of espionage. Irkutsk KRO took 14 people under arrest, Amur - 41. From this we can conclude that the CRO overestimated the number of suspects [Grekov, 2000, pp. 177-179].

As can be seen from the correspondence of the Russian Foreign Ministry and the Ministry of Internal Affairs for 1911, the Ministry was concerned about the lack of court cases on Japanese espionage. For example, the headquarters of the Irkutsk Military District registered 46 suspects of espionage from 1908 to 1911, but not a single case went to court [Grekov, 2000, p. 139]. In June 1910, a Korean named Ahn Hij-jun was arrested on suspicion of spying on the bridge plan. He was held in a Tomsk prison for four months before being deported to Japan. The regional authorities never managed to collect "sufficient data for a court conviction" in relation to the Korean and other persons [AVPRI, F. Pacific Table, op. 487, d. 999, l. 57-62]. In October 1910, the Ministry of Justice received the case of a Japanese citizen, Heitaro Kimuro. But after studying the case, the prosecutor's office decided not to bring the case to court and decided to send the Japanese out of the country [AVPRI, F. Pacific Table, op. 487, d. 1002, l. 2]. In total, from 1907 to 1910, seven Japanese citizens were expelled on suspicion of committing a crime, and 60 Japanese were briefly arrested and expelled for committing administrative offenses [AVPRI, F. Pacific Table, op. 487, d. 999, l. 40-51]. In the Irkutsk and Omsk provinces in 1911-1914 there was not a single trial of espionage, in the Amur Military District - two. At the same time, one person was administratively expelled from Irkutsk and Omsk, and 27 from the Amur Military District [Grekov, 2000, pp. 185-188, 199].

In the summer of 1913 The Irkutsk provincial Gendarme Department established surveillance of Major Sadao Araki, an assistant military agent (attache) at the Japanese Embassy, who arrived in Irkutsk on his way from St. Petersburg to Tokyo. Secret surveillance with the help of Korean agents revealed that he was collecting information about the city and the railroad. In Chita, Araki was detained, and materials incriminating him in espionage were seized from him: a diagram of railways and geographical maps with notes. The arrested Japanese man apologized in writing to the military authorities, and a criminal case was being prepared against him. But the military authorities "forgot" that Major Araki was a member of the diplomatic corps and that his luggage was subject to diplomatic immunity. Since the facts incriminating the Japanese diplomat were obtained illegally, the case had to be hushed up [Grekov, 2000, pp. 188-193]. In September of the same year, the Irkutsk counterintelligence service detained Miamura, a Japanese man who had arrived in Irkutsk using forged documents in the name of Yamashida Kata, and together with him, his Chinese assistant Song Lu, who had a passport in the name of merchant Zhang Fengxiang [Naumov, 1999, p. 19]. Since it was not possible to prove that the foreigners produced their own passports, they were expelled from Russia for using false documents.

Often, Japanese people who were seen collecting information about the economic state of the Russian border region did not find themselves in the dock. Economic espionage did not fall under anti-state activities at that time. So, according to an agent's message-

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A letter from Tokyo dated January 30, 1917, found that the Irkutsk philistine Donatello (Don Othello) passed commercial information to Japanese entrepreneurs. Donatello himself was the owner of cinemas in Irkutsk, Chita, Blagoveshchensk, Khabarovsk [GAIO, f. 25, op. 11, d. 133, l. 19-20]. (Interestingly, the Chronicle cinema in Irkutsk in the 90s of the XX century. after privatization, the new owners returned the name of the ownerOn August 2, 1917, counterintelligence established that the Japanese Consul General in Vladivostok, Giro Kikuchi, was in Irkutsk with his secretary, Tanaka Bunichiro. Giro made inquiries in the Department of the Mining District regarding the state of the mining industry and was particularly interested in the data of the Department of Resettlement and Land Management on the number of vacant plots in the border zone [GAIO, f. 25, op. 11, d.92, l. 60].

Despite the rare cases of arrest of professional Japanese spies and the lack of evidence of the participation of Japanese societies in espionage on the territory of Russia, the temporary manager of the Ministry of War, Engineer-General V. M. Vernander, on July 15, 1912, requested permission to liquidate Japanese societies on the basis of Article 124 of the Department. 10 "Laws on societies, unions and assemblies". However, Foreign Ministry officials looked at the case differently. In a letter dated July 21, 1912, the managing director of the Russian Foreign Ministry, A. A. Neratov, reported that the prohibition of Japanese public organizations was difficult to implement due to political considerations (Japan's rapprochement with the Entente). Therefore, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs recommended limiting itself to the exclusion from the charters of companies that may lead to a violation of Russian laws. If the Japanese commit an illegal act, then, in the opinion of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, they should be punished in the usual legal order [GAIO, f. 25, op. 11, d. 38, l. 17]. Based on the recommendations of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Minister of Internal Affairs in a letter dated September 5, 1912, proposed to the Governor-General of the Amur region N. L. Gondatti to negotiate with the Japanese consul in Vladivostok and register Japanese societies. The minister advised only to strengthen supervision over the activities of the Japanese, to force these societies to provide the authorities with a report on their activities, to establish control over their meetings, to exclude from their charter any mention of the intermediary and judicial role, to stop the practice of keeping Russian police officers by foreign organizations [AVPRI, F. Pacific Table, op. 487 (1911), D. 759, L. 35].

The chief of the gendarme and Police Department of the Trans-Baikal Railway reported to the Irkutsk Governor-General on October 8, 1912, that " Japanese and Chinese subjects who were in the service of the Siberian express trains of the International Sleeping Car Society were removed from service on the basis of circular order No. 356 of the headquarters of the Separate Gendarme Corps of July 6, 1910." In addition, the gendarme chief notified about the need to prohibit the recruitment of foreign servants for service in the station canteens [GAIO, f. 25, op. 11, d. 38, l. 4-6]. Based on these recommendations, on February 7, 1913, the Irkutsk Governor-General signed a decree on the registration of all Japanese and Chinese citizens who arrived in the region. Japanese societies were subject to registration. They were ordered to establish secret supervision. The Japanese, as well as the Chinese and Koreans, were forbidden to live at railway stations that were of strategic importance [GAIO, f. 25, op. 11, d. 38, l. 30-33].

The mention of Koreans was due to the fact that they often became agents of Japanese intelligence. Japanese intelligence, according to secret information from regional divisions of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, tried to get in touch with Korean foremen and collect economic and political information through them [RGVIA, f. 2000, op. 1, vol. 1, d. 1050, l. 192].

The problem of Koreans was discussed in the Main Directorate of the General Staff as early as March 8, 1908. It was noted that measures should be taken to prevent Japanese-Korean aggression.-

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Russian contacts, in particular in the coastal zone. In 1906-1908, Japanese schooners came here under the guise of fishing, communicated with Korean workers in order to collect information about the Russian Pacific coast [RGVIA, f. 2000, op. 1, vol. 1, d. 1050, l. 223; 226]. On September 17, 1908, it was decided to evict all Koreans from the border village of Grodekovo, as spies were found among them [RGVIA, f. 1573, op. 2, d. 644, l. 145].

On December 17, 1908, P. F. Unterberger submitted a note to P. A. Stolypin about Japanese intelligence in the region. According to P. F. Unterberger, the pernicious activities of the Japanese were aggravated by the fact that they involved Chinese and Koreans in espionage, who "taking part in all kinds of private and government work, have the opportunity to penetrate into many places closed to the Japanese" [AVPRI, F. Pacific Table, op. 487, d. 766, l. 20].

Contacts between Russian intelligence and Korean anti-Japanese organizations were much more significant.

With the help of the Russian special services, the "justice" detachments led by Lee Bomyun and P. Choi carried out a number of military operations on the territory of North Korea in 1908 [Pak, 1994, pp. 156-157].

In January 1909, the congress of the Kunminhwe Society was held in San Francisco. The society supported the idea of creating a unified Korean army on the territory of Primorye. In May 1909, authorized representatives of the society were sent to Siberia and Manchuria. Yang Chu Ryong was elected chairman of the Siberian branch, and Lee Gang became the head of the military committee. In total, the Siberian branch of the society consisted of 1,150 Koreans. By 1909, the society had opened branches in 12 Russian cities, including Vladivostok, Sretensk, Irkutsk, Krasnoyarsk, Verkhneudinsk, and Chita. In 1909, the Kunminhwe Society consisted of 6 territorial branches. In 1910, there were already 16 of them [AVPRI, F. Pacific Table, op. 487, d. 758, l. 4].

Gradually, however, the Russian authorities began to express dissatisfaction with the growth of Kung Minhwe branches. Contacts between the leaders of Kunminhwe and the Americans also caused distrust. There was concern that the United States might take advantage of this society to provoke a new military clash between Japan and Russia. The Russian Foreign Ministry, in a secret letter to the chairman of the Council of Ministers, recommended eliminating the " Kunminhwe "and creating a legal Korean society under Russian patronage "to counteract Japanese influence." The Russian Foreign Ministry also expressed serious concern that the leaders of Kunminhwe are being developed by Japanese intelligence, which has introduced its agents into the Korean organization [AVPRI, F. Pacific Table, op. 487, d. 758, l. 3]. According to counterintelligence, the Japanese have recruited some members of the Kunminhwe and are using them to promote " pan-Asianism and the expulsion of Europeans from Asia." For the" alienation of Koreans "from Russia, the Japanese authorities gave some members of the "Kunminhwe" 20 thousand yen [AWPRI, f. Pacific Table, op. 487, d. 758, l. 8]. After receiving this information, the Governor-General suggested closing the society and arresting its members. The more cautious Minister of Foreign Affairs thought to" direct "the activities of the Koreans against the Japanese: to close the "Kunminhwe" and create a pro-Russian society of Koreans [AVPRI, F. Pacific Table, op. 487, d. 758, l. 8].

Since the intelligence of the Military Ministry confirmed the data of counter-recruitment of Koreans by the Japanese and American authorities, the head of the Nikolsk-Ussuri district, where the units of the Korean rebel army were located, was ordered to begin disarming the Korean detachments. Customs authorities were ordered to confiscate weapons transported across the border. A Cossack team was placed on the Russian-Korean border to detain Koreans crossing the border [Pak, 1999, p. 153].

Taking advantage of the complaint of the rich meat merchant Moon Changba about the extortion levied by the guerrillas, and Lee Bomyun's "circular order" to collect money from the Koreas-

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On October 1, 1910, the Russian authorities initiated a lawsuit and sent Li Bomyun, Li Kyupun, Kim Huado, Ahn Handyu, Li Gi, Li Chinkong, Li Bomsek and other Koreans who were seen in contact with Japanese and especially American authorities and preachers from Primorye to Irkutsk Province [AWPRI, F. Pacific Table, op. 487, d. 999, l. 56].

On May 19, 1911, 57 Koreans petitioned for the creation of a pro-Russian society of Koreans [Yun Byung-seok, 1999, p. 10]. On October 20, 1911, a congress of Korean communities was held in Chita on Kuznechnaya Street, which announced the creation of the Kwon-choi ("Society for the Promotion of Business"). In addition to educational purposes, the society also had military goals. A secret officer school was created, and the Amur region was divided into three military districts [Yun Byung-seok, p. 17]. On March 28, 1914, a diplomatic official under the Amur Governor-General reported that border Commissar Yu. U. Kuzmin proposed to release Lee Bomyun, who was popular in the Korean environment, and return him to Primorye for use in anti-Japanese propaganda. Lee Bomyun was returned and appointed as the Vice-chairman of Kwon-choi [AWPRI, F. Pacific Desk, op. 487, d. 750, l. 149].

The situation with Korean political immigrants changed after the outbreak of the First World War. Under the influence of the international situation (Japan's entry into the war on the side of the Entente), on August 7, 1914, the military governor of the Primorsky Region issued an order to close Korean societies in Vladivostok and other areas of the region. In 1914, 15 Korean activists who continued to oppose Japan, led by Lee Gang and Jeong Jaegwan, were arrested. 25, op. 11, d. 121, l. 1]. Many Korean political figures emigrated to China. In 1915, the German-Korean political society "Strong Guard" was formed in Mukden, to which the German government offered to commit acts hostile to Russia and Japan in Manchuria and the Amur region with the assistance of local Chinese and Koreans: organizing sabotage, assassinating high-ranking officials, etc. CER, warehouses in Harbin and Vladivostok, and assistance in the release of prisoners of war in Nikolsk-Ussuriysky to restore Korean independence. The Koreans, through the mediation of the Germans, made contact with some Chinese revolutionaries and Hunghuzs to organize an attack on the CER within the Qiqihar province. It was also planned to cause unrest among Chinese migrants, directed against Russia and Japan [Kirmel, 1999, p.163-165]. Having received information about the alliance of Korean organizations with the Germans, the Russian authorities intensified the fight against "propaganda between Koreans" and liquidated all Korean organizations in 1915-1916 [GAIO, f. 25, op. 11, d. 183, l. 17-34].

Thus, before the First World War, the main form of political crimes committed in the Russian Far East was Japanese espionage. Japanese public organizations in the Russian Far East were mostly agents of Japanese intelligence. To a lesser extent, the Japanese used foreigners and Koreans. Koreans were active agents of Russian intelligence and counterintelligence, which used the fact of the occupation of Korea by Japan to incite anti-Japanese sentiment among Koreans living in Russia. The spread of German espionage in the region during the war and the alliance of Japan and Russia in this war led to the fact that the Koreans were used for their own purposes by the German intelligence services.

list of literature

Archive of Foreign Policy of the Russian Empire (AVPRI).

Vaskevich P. Essay on the life of the Japanese in the Amur region. Verkhneudinsk, 1905.

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State Archive of the Irkutsk Region (GAIO).

Grave V. V. Chinese, Koreans and Japanese in the Amur region. St. Petersburg, 1912.

Grekov N. V. Russkaya kontrrazvedka v 1905 - 1917 gg. Spionomaniya i real'nye problemy [Russian counterintelligence in 1905-1917]. Moscow, 2000.

Ikonnikova T. Ya. The Far Eastern Rear of Russia during the First World War. Khabarovsk, 1999.

Kirmel N. S. Struggle of counterintelligence agencies with German and other intelligence services in Siberia. 1914-1917 // Siberia: vekhi istorii. Irkutsk. ISU, 1999.

Matsokin P. G. Evaluation of production data in Japanese, Chinese and European craft and industrial establishments of Vladivostok for 1910-1911. 1911. N 10.

Naumov I. V. Neizvestnaya rukopisis F. A. Kudryavtsev [Unknown manuscript of F. A. Kudryavtsev]. Irkutsk, 1999.

Pak B. D. Koreans in the Russian Empire. Irkutsk, 1994.

Russian State Military Historical Archive (RGVIA).

Unterberger P. F. Primorsky region. 1856 - 1898. An essay. St. Petersburg, 1900.

Schreider D. I. Our Far East, St. Petersburg, 1897.
Yoon Byung Seok. Korean national movement for independence on the territory of Primorsky Krai / / Koreans in the Far East. Vladivostok: DSU Publ., 1999.

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