ENIGMA OF RUSSIA

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19453, 12 October 1937, Page 12

ENIGMA OF RUSSIA

FAR EAST CONFLICT MILITARY STRENGTH LARGE FORCE AVAILABLE Soviet Russia, which has just concluded a pact of non-aggression with China, is the great enigma of the present conflict in the Far East. Will she intervene, and, if so, to what extent and in what manner? asks a writer in the Sydney Morning Herald. Russia has shown a desire to avoid •war. Otherwise, it is considered by observers, she would never have taken without more active protest the loss of her Chinese Eastern Railway and of all that she has built up in Manchuria. But a time may come when she feels that she must make a stand against the further encroachment of Japan in North China. Japan, on her side, has greatly dreaded Russian expansion, and especially Communist propaganda. Thus, one of her aims has been to create a buffer State in North China against further penetration by Russia. No one can say with certanity what motives led Japan to her present adventure with China. One explanation .held by observers is that the

die-hard faction in the Japanese Army, resenting the new liberal tendencies in Tokyo, resolved to throw down a challenge to the Government and to prove th.it they are the masters in North China. They were, it is considered, encouraged to do so by their belief -that the Russian Army in the Far 7£ast is in a disaffected state, and by Japan’s apparently easy success in the recent quarrel with Russia on the Amur. One Weak Spot Geographically, Japan would appear to be in a very strong position against attacks by most of the other great Powers. There remains, however, one weak spot in her armour—the Maritime Province of Soviet Russia, on the mainland, just across the Sea of Japan. Only 400 or 500 miles by air from their great industrial cities, Vladivostok seems to the Japanese to be a pistol presented at them. Some recent writers, however, reject the popular belief in the ability of Russia's aeroplanes to score a quick victory by wiping out Japan’s cities. Japan, they claim, can only be crushed on the sea; Russia only in Europe. Either achievement is equally impossible between these two opponents. Japan has had to watcli Ru.'jsia develop a great military organisation in the Far East. When the Manchurian affair began in September, 1931, the Soviet Union had only four infantry divisions and two cavalry brigades, or a total of about 50,000 or 60,000 men, on the Soviet-Manchurian frontier. These forces have been increased to

: 15 infantry divisions and two or three ■ cavalry divisions, or a total of 250,000 r to 260,000 men. Soviet Russia also i maintains in the Far East about 800 > or 900 aeroplanes, several hundred ; tanks and armoured cars, a fleet of r river gunboats, and also, it is ber lieved, many submarines. I r These forces are stationed in three i different zones along the border: — (1) The Chita zone; (2) Blagoveshi censk-Khabarovsk; (3) VladivostokNikolsk. At Vladivostok, there are ’ said to be about 100 super-heavy t bombers which, in a few hours, could t attack the vital parts of Japan and re- , turn to their base of operations. t Line Of Defences t Since 1932, Russia has spent nearly r £100,000,000 sterling on the construc- ’ tion of defensive works at important c parts of the Soviet-Manchukuo borl der. These defensive works are comt posed of small but strong forts, 50 to r 100 yards apart, and arranged in * threefold or fourfold lines. ' Their number is said to be between 5000 and 6000. From the strategical ? point of view, these forts arc not only 1 important for defence, but also form f powerful bases for operations. Russia " has also been steadily fortifying Vladivostok, where, according to the - Japanese, 50 to 60 submarines are stai tioned. The great majority of the i Russian submarines are small vessels e of the coastal typg not desired for y ocean cruising. They would, howr ever, be formidable enough for operai, tions either in the Baltic or the Sea ■. of Japan. 3 On an average, a new boat has been

added to the Pacific flotilla every month. The presence of this powerful force so near to her coastline and its potential ability to harass her vital communications with Manchuria, has caused Japan uneasiness. It coincides with the establishment of large aerodromes for heavy bombers in the Vladivostok region. Two great Soviet railway construction schemes are also of great-import-ance to the situation in the Far East. They are the doubling of the transSiberian main lines as far eastward as Khabarovsk, the headquarters of the Far Eastern Army on the Amar River, which is regarded as Moscow’s substitute for the loss of the Chinese Eastern Railway, and a new line from the rich coalfields of Karaganda to the copper mines of Kanhard, near Lake Balkhash, eventually linking Western Siberia to the Russian territories bordering Chinese Turkestan, a zone of Russian infiltration and a hoi bed of international intrigue. When the doubling of the strategic key, Khabarovsk-Vladivostok line, about which the Russians are very reserved, is finished, the Soviet will have repaired the worst damage done to her military communications with the Far East by the loss of the Chinese Eastern Railway. Russia’s Withdrawal Russia, as long ago as the seventeenth century, concluded with China the Treaty of Nerchinsk, which roughly marked out the boundaries between Manchuria and Siberia, and recognised Russia’s ownership of Siberia. Nearly 200 years later, when China was having trouble with England and

France, Russia extracted further treaties from China, giving her all the land north of the Hmar (the scene of a recent incident with Japan), and eastwards between Manchuria and the sea, right down to Vladivostok.

Between 1096 and 1904, Russia gradually extended her power over all Manchuria. She obtained from China a perpetual lease of the Kwantung Peninsula in South Manchuria, where she built the harbour of Dairen and the fortress of Port Arthur. She also obtained a concession to build a railway known as the Chinese Eastern Railway, across Manchuria, to connect Vladivostok more quickly with Moscow, and with a branch line running down southward to Port Arthur and Dairen.

Russia’s expansion brought about the war with Japan in 1904-5. Russia, being defeated, was forced to give up her various concessions in South Manchuria, and to withdraw to Northern Manchuria.

For the next 26 years, Manchuria, nominally under Chinese rule, was virtually divided between Russia and Japan. Then in 1931, came the Japanese seizure of Manchuria. Russia was unable to resist, and four years later she sold the Chinese Eastern Railway to Japan. In the meantime, however, she had been strengthening her position in the territories of Outer Mongolia, immediately westward of Manchuria, and more recently in Sinkiang, the extreme north-western part of China. Marshal Bluecher, the commander of the Soviet Special Far Eastern Army, was reported last week to have gone to Outer Mongolia. In the Far East, he is better known as Gal-in, or Galcnti, a name that be assumed, for its authentic Chinese flavour, when he was military adviser to General Chiang Kai-shek. In 1921, he took an army from Siberia into Outer Mongolia, where he defeated Baron Ungem, and he was prominent in the Sino-Soviet conflict in 1927, which followed Borodin’s expulsion from China.