The Chinese in the Southern Urals in the 1920s

Abstract

The article explores Chinese migrants in the Southern Urals in the 1920s. At this historical stage, Chinese migration to the USSR was not regulated by requests of factories and coal mines for cheap labor, as was the case in tsarist Russia. Chinese migrants came to the Soviet Union to earn money, engage in trade in part in the social and cooperative movement, and study at Soviet universities. Prerequisites for the emergence of a stable Chinese community, including in southern regions of the Urals, were born. However, the complication of relations between the USSR and China and conflict over the CER in 1929 worsened the situation of the Soviet Chinese and led to a reduction of further migration. For several decades, the formation and development of the Chinese diaspora was stopped. Based on archival documents first identified and put into circulation, the approximate sociocultural appearance of the Chinese in the South Urals is reconstructed. These materials make it possible to get an idea of such important characteristics as: total number, distribution in urban and rural areas, gender, age, place of birth, migration, marital status, occupation, change of residence and work, military service, level of education, and participation in public life. The article describes a number of details in the biography of the Chinese in the Southern Urals and shows features of migration waves of the late imperial and early Soviet periods of Russian history.