“Pure Nonsense!” War Minister A. N. Kuropatkin about the Proceedings of Japanese Nationalists

Abstract

This article based on a large body of unpublished documents from the Russian State Military Historical Archive (RSMHA). The author analyzes the history of the acquaintance Russian Minister of War A. N. Kuropatkin with publications by the Japanese ultra-nationalist society Kokuryūkai in 1901. Despite weaknesses of Russian intelligence in the Far East before the Russo-Japanese War, the service was been able to obtain a highly valued materials, such as the second volume of Bulletin of Amur River Society. An analysis of this publication reveals that the authors and the journals founder, Uchida Ryōhei, had a high level of knowledge about Russian society. The Japanese discovered all the weak spots of Imperial governance, finance, economy, educational system, and domestic and foreign policies of the Russian Empire. The article shows how the Minister of War read a translation of Japanese edition and noted the authors’ conclusions. We conclude that the Japanese state was able to organize these investigations of Russia using materials from nationalist organizations that sometimes took different positions from those of the Russian government, in Russian. In contrast, Russian officials were not able to do a normal analysis of observations from official channels, And Kuropatkin often did not understand the value of such materials that were passed on to him.