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Japan
Organized Panel Session
After the failed Siberian Intervention, the Japanese government had to negotiate with the actual authority in Russia, the Bolshevik government, rather than with the impotent anti-communist forces, in order to protect Japan’s interests in the Russian Far East, north Manchuria and Inner Mongolia. The period between 1922 and 1925 was characterized by a gradual shift of attitude on the part of Japanese decision-makers to accept recognition of the revolutionary regime and its radical ideology. The change was completed in January 1925 with the conclusion of the Soviet-Japanese treaty, which, in effect, divided East Asia into Soviet and Japanese sphere of influence. In this paper I demonstrate how Japanese decision makers’ foreign policies corresponded to the pan-Asianist outlook, which considered the Bolshevik Revolution as the first successful anti-Western anti-imperialist revolt. Pro-Russian influential groups, both inside and outside the government,agitated for a Soviet-Japanese cooperation, and even for the creation of an Eurasian bloc, to resist the Anglo-American world order that was undermining, it was perceived, Japan’s and by extension Asia’s well-being.
Tatiana Linkhoeva
New York University