Permalink : http://hdl.handle.net/2115/83536

JaLCDOI : 10.14943/ebr.9.1.45

This study focuses on the Chinese-Lenin School (also the acronym CLS) and how the Soviet state used the CLS and other tertiary institutions in the Russian Far East to recruit East Asians into Soviet intelligence during the 1920s to the end of 1945. Typically, the Chinese and Korean intelligence agents of the USSR are presented with very few details with very little information on their lives, motivations and beliefs. This article will attempt to bridge some of this “blank spot” and will cover the biographies of several East Asians in the Soviet intelligence services, their raison d’etre, their world view(s) and motivations. The basis for this new study is fieldwork, interviews and photographs collected and conducted in Central Asia with the surviving relatives of six East Asian former Soviet intelligence officers. The book, Chinese Diaspora in Vladivostok, Second Edition [Kitaiskaia diaspora vo Vladivostoke, 2-е izdanie] which was written in Russian by two local historians from the Russian Far East also plays a major role in this study’s depth, revelations and conclusions.