«Тарихтан тағылым – өткенге тағзым»
21
preserved sedentary agricultural communities during the migration process from Korean peninsula
to Russian far eastern regions in the middle of 19
th
century. But in the cases of 1937 they faced new
civilizational challenges after their deportation to the central asian regions, which was divided as
nomadic and sedentary zones by local traditional civilizations.
In the migration process from northern korean peninsula to imperial russian far eastern regions at
the middle of 19
th
century, imperial russians required for the korean migrants to adapt themselves in
the russian territories by the legal process, but cultural base and connection with historical homeland
was preserved by allowances of using mother tongue and connecting with historical homeland until the
beginning of soviet period(lenin’s reigning period).
III. Period 2: Changes of Ethnic Korean communities in the period of Stalinism
With the beginning of Stalin’s ruling, central planning system, Collectivization and Social
Restructuring of communities demarcated traditional indigenous communities in Central Asia. In this
period great purge on ethnic elites and leaders caused much sacrifices and compulsory settling of
nomadic communities’ lead demographic decreasing Kazakh communities in the 1930s.
In 1937, facing reports from the NKVD that the Japanese had infiltrated the Russian Far East by
means of ethnic Korean spies, Joseph Stalin and Vyacheslav Molotov signed Resolution 1428-326 ss,
“On the Exile of the Korean Population from border Regions of the Far East Kray”, on 21 August.
The deported Koreans faced difficult conditions in Central Asia: monetary assistance promised by the
government never materialised, and furthermore, most of the deported were rice farmers and fishers,
who had difficulty adapting to the arid climate of their new home. Estimates based on population
statistics suggest that 40,000 deported Koreans died in 1937 and 1938 for these reasons. With the
background of ethnic koreans’ deportation in the middle of 1920s already some of ethnic Koreans in
Russian far eastern region migrated into Kyzylorday region for experimenting rice cultivation in the
central asian nomadic regions and they established community “KAZRIS.”
However, the deportees cooperated to build irrigation works and start rice farms; within three
years, they had recovered their original standard of living, and the events of this period led to the
formation of a cohesive identity among the Korean deportees. However, in schools for Soviet Korean
children, the government switched Korean language from being the medium of instruction to being
taught merely as a second language in 1939, and from 1945 stopped it from being taught entirely;
furthermore, the only publication in the Korean language was the Lenin Kichi. As a result, subsequent
generations lost the use of the Korean language up until the era of glasnost, it was not permitted to
speak openly of the deportations.
In this period central asian agricultural communities diverged by the using patterns of indigenous
ethnic groups. First mass migration groups into central asian regions was Russian peasants in the
19
th
century, which established ethnic russian Communities in present kazakhstani area, because in
the sedentary area it had less possibility to create new agricultural land for new comers. Considering
different land-using patterns between temporarily land-usage of traditional kazakh community and
occupational land-usage of traditional uzbek community, nomadic community has more spaces for
accepting new comers from sedentary communities, which would be conceptualized as ‘nomadic (or
Kazakh ) tolerance.’
In the russian imperial period nomadic communities experienced the process for creating new spaces
for new comers by sacrificing or converting nomadic zones regardless of voluntarily or involuntarily
decisions. After establishing of russian administrative system in central asian nomadic zones annual
territories or distances for nomadic life pattern of breeding livestock decreased. Because imperial colonial
authorities categorized the land of nomadic life as un-used(or cultivated) land by misunderstanding
of land-using pattern of nomadic communities, the administrative controlled for decreasing boundary
of annual nomadic moving and these un-cultivated(?) lands assigned to new comers(most of them
were Russian peasants). With these territorial conditions new communities of russian peasants did not
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