Pacific Russia after Empire: The Far Eastern Republic and Transnational Governance

The Far Eastern Republic (FER) was formed in 1920 in what today is known as the Russian Far East and Eastern Siberia. This polity may be interpreted as a Bolshevik instrument against the Japanese in the region; as a case of so-called New Imperialism, that is a formally independent state controlled from abroad; as a manifestation of early Bolshevik transnational policies aiming at creating a system of global governance based on the Communist Party of the World (the Communist International); or as a realization of Siberian Regionalist and agrarian socialist projects which were developed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Although the FER was under indirect control of the Bolsheviks, Soviet government and socialism were never introduced there. Besides, many FER citizens claimed a distinct Siberian identity. The largest minorities included the Chinese, Koreans, Buryats and other indigenous Siberian groups. After the Japanese withdrew, the FER was annexed to the USSR, but the Far East retained special status of a territory proving the far-reaching effects of its brief independent existence. Scrutinizing the four interpretations, the paper explores intellectual developments behind the emergence of the republic, reconstructs the political context of North and East Asia in the early twentieth century, and analyzes the history of political and economic structures in the dynamic borderland from the Civil War Governments to the Far Eastern Territory within the Soviet State. The Russian Far East is understood as a zone of transcultural interactions and its governance structures had to adapt to the trans-boundary dynamics. Although the Far Eastern Republic attracted much attention of the contemporaries, its history is largely missing from the recent narratives of Soviet and East Asian history and post-imperial analyses.