Japan Border Review, No.1（2010）
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The Memory of the National Border in Modern andContemporary China: China’s Imagined Original Territory
KAWASHIMA ShinThis article explores the memory of China’s national border and the revision ofnational history. The main discourse on the national border in China maintains
that the modern border was determined under pressure from foreign powers, andthat the border had shrunk from its original size. Such discourses were createdin the process of nation-building, thus connecting Chinese nationalism to empireness.
The juxtaposition of the real national border and the imagined original borderindicate the border’s fragileness; while foreign powers are to blame for theshrinking of China’s national border, the imagined original border remains
along with the movement to recover it. China has now become a strong powerthat poses as threats toward the surrounding countries partly because of thefluctuating borders, though China peacefully negotiates with these countries forthe resolution of territorial disputes.
Chronologically, the virtue of the Chinese emperor has been imagined as
unlimited and borderless, with people being separated into two categories: theHua ( 華 Chinese) and the Yi （夷 barbarians). The barbarians were further
divided into two groups: those (Hua 華 or 化 ) who received the emperor’s virtue
and Chinese culture, and those who did not receive them ( 化外 ). The Chinese
dynasties had their own territories and borders, which often covered all the
Middle Kingdom (the region of the Hua people 華 ), including some barbarian
regions. The border was sometimes smaller than the Middle Kingdom, andwas usually decided by the dynasties together with the surrounding kingdoms.
However, the borders were established out of necessity due to reasons such as,
for example, the collection of taxes or the management of roads. The borders
would never have been defined unless otherwise.

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After China reset its national borders under the pressure from Western powers,
the Qing Dynasty and Min-kuo were eager to modernize China as a sovereignstate and to eliminate the vagueness of the border. China intentionally createda new national history highlighting the loss of national rights and of territory,
including the loss of suzerain countries. This narrative cultivated the imaginationof the original border of the Qing Dynasty, though they were sometimes decided
indefinitely.
After the 1930s, partly because of Japanese aggression and rising Asianism,
Chinese scholars carried out historical studies on the formation of its territories
in support of national rights, and Chinese intellectuals sometimes imagined wider
borders and vast territories. The official discourse denied the revival of Chinese
traditional empire which borders were imagined to be more vast by modern
Chinese intellectuals, though they had not been decided so clearly.
Where was China? The modern Chinese intellectuals and officials did not havea clear and unified definition. The Constitutionals in the Min-kuo era offered
two interpretations; one was real territories, and the other was imagined originalterritories. After the 1930s, China started to edit official historical maps, followedby scholars arguing about these interpretations. In the 1960s, scholars in the
PRC argued that the original Chinese territory was set during the most glorious
period of the Qing Dynasty, though the territory and border were not so clear in
the eighteenth century.
In the 1990s, the PRC successfully negotiated with neighboring countries
and resolved most territorial disputes. Though the political context largely
determined China’s new border, it was far from a repudiation of the imagined
original border. If so, China’s border remains fragile.

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China’s “Frontiers”:
Issues Concerning Territorial Claims at Sea
SATO Koichi

The South China Sea Islands are composed of four groups, namely, the Paracel
Islands, the Pratas Islands, the Macclesfield Bank, and the Spratly Islands. The
Paracel Islands are occupied by China (the People’s Republic of China: PRC),
and the Pratas islands are occupied by Taiwan (Republic of China: ROC), though
the reefs of Macclesfield Bank are all sunken reefs with the exception of the tworocks of Scarborough Shoal being occupied by the Philippines armed forces.
Therefore the focal point is the territorial dispute over the Spratly Islands.
According to Chinese sources, the sea area of the Spratly Islands is around
800,000 square km, or 38% of the total sea areas of the South China Sea; thearea includes 230 islands, reefs and cays.
All the islands, reefs, and cays are claimed by China, Taiwan, and Vietnam,
and some part of the islands and reefs are claimed by the Philippines, Malaysia,
and Brunei. The sea area of the Spratly Islands is believed to be rich in oil andfishery resources. The four claimants, namely Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines,
and Vietnam are members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations(ASEAN). China occupies 7, Taiwan occupies 1, Vietnam occupies 21, Malaysia
occupies 5, and the Philippines occupies 8, though most of them are rocks
and sunken reefs. Almost all of the claimants except Brunei have built artificial
islands and emplacements to station troops. Some have even built airstrips onthem.
China is the biggest claimant of the Spratly Islands. People’s Liberation Army
(PLA) naval ships attacked Vietnamese troopships around Johnson Reef of theSpratly Islands in March 1988, sinking two Vietnamese ships and wrecking one.
Further, Chinese relations with Vietnam and with the Philippines have been
aggravated for some time, because the PLA navy built a territorial marker at the111

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Gaven Reefs in July 1992, and built some military posts for stationing troops on the
Mischief Reef, which was also claimed by Vietnam and the Philippines, in February
1995, expanding them in October 1998. The ASEAN foreign ministers expressed
several times their serious concern over Chinese military actions which have affected
the peace and stability in the South China Sea at the ASEAN Ministerial Meetings.
The Chinese broken U-shaped line on the map of the South China Sea is also the
focal point of ASEAN countries. The broken U-shaped line was officially drawn inthe map of the ROC in 1947, and on the map of the PRC in 1953. It includes all fourgroups of the South China Sea islands, and the broken line appearing in a Chinese
map also seemed to indicate that a part of the Natuna Islands of Indonesia belonged
to China. A Taiwanese researcher pointed out that it is unclear as to whether the
cartographer had full knowledge of international maritime law. If so, the legality ofthe broken line may be in doubt, though China claims that the broken line is the
Chinese boundary of the historical waters.
The Indonesian government had requested the Chinese government to explain theimplication of the broken line in 1994 and again in 1995. The Chinese government
denied having territorial claims on the Natuna Islands, though they refused to
explain the details of the meaning of the broken line. ASEAN leader tried to settle
the South China Sea conflict peacefully at the ASEAN-China Summit Meeting which
they had begun in 1997. Further, the ASEAN leaders agreed on the treaty on theSoutheast Asia Nuclear Weapon-Free Zone (SEANWFZ) in 1995, and they planned
the Regional Code of Conduct for the South China Sea to check the Chinese claim in
the South China Sea.
This article follows the process of the South China Sea dispute between China and
ASEAN countries in the post Cold War era, and analyzes the security implications of
the broken U-shaped line on the Chinese map.

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The Frontier Issue between China andits Neighboring Countries
LI Guoqiang

China is vast both in land and maritime territories. China has more than 18,000
kilometers of coastline, more than 6,500 islands bigger than 500 square meters;
it has jurisdiction over three million square kilometers of sea area and has eightmarine neighbors. Compared with other countries, China has more marine
neighbors and more complicated marine surroundings. The disputes in the Yellow
Sea, the East China Sea and the South China Sea still remain unsettled. The dispute
between China and South Korea over the border demarcation of the Yellow Sea
is not only over the boundary of an exclusive economic zone but also over thecontinental shelf. The main dispute over this issue is that China advocates applying
both the natural extension principle and the “equity” principle. South Korea,
however, advocates applying the "intermediate line" principle. Since the late 1960s,
huge amounts of undersea oil reserves have been discovered in the East China
Sea, highlighting the issue in this region. In the east continental shelf of the East
China Sea, there are considerable overlaps among China, South Korea and Japan.
Among the 560,000 square kilometers of marine jurisdiction China claims on the
East China Sea, there are about 210,000 square kilometers overlapped between
China and Japan, and 120,000 square kilometers between China and South Korea.
Because of disagreements among China, South Korea and Japan over principles
and standpoints on the boundary issues of the East China Sea and relevant islands
including the Diaoyu Islands and Suyan Island, it is hard to achieve substantial
progress in the border demarcation of the East China Sea. In the South China Sea,
there remain many challenging issues among China, Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia
and Brunei relating to the border demarcation of the exclusive economic zone andthe continental shelf. The issue of the South China Sea borderlines has yet to be
put on the agenda of the relevant countries because of unresolved issues. Maritime
boundaries not only relate to vital political benefits but also to economic benefits.

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There is a long way to go until these disagreements among relevant countries canbe radically resolved. Territorial disputes may be settled through the observation ofinternational practices and through bilateral diplomatic negotiation. In recent years,
concerning sea boundary issues, China and its neighboring countries put in a great
deal of effort to achieve some success through diplomatic negotiations. Relevant
countries can resolve these problems through consultation and peace negotiations.
Moreover, relevant countries have discussed temporary agreements which can lay
the foundation for a final settlement of the boundary question. It is possible for thesecountries to either cooperate or collide on the issue of the sea frontier and otherunresolved difficulties. The methods, ways and measurements to settle the issue stillneed improvement, and it is hard to predict the time when it can be totally resolved.
If the concerned countries follow the basic principles of the boundary issue, they
can promote mutual trust to properly settle maritime boundary problems.

India’s China Relations and Border Disputes
YOSHIDA Osamu
India’s relations with China had long been dominated by border disputes. India’s
position that its border was clearly demarcated had not been the official view ofthe government until Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru issued his directives on theborder for his government following India’s signing of the Agreement of Panchsheelor the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence with China in 1954. Nehru told his
Secretary General to withdraw old maps and print new ones “showing our northernand north eastern frontier without any reference to any ‘line’” or any statement that“there is undemarcated territory.”
The 1954 Agreement has been understood to be instrumental for India tobarter India’s recognition of China’s claim to Tibet for the declaration of peacefulcoexistence with China, thus illuminating the superiority of peaceful Asia over theCold War-torn West. Contrary to this conventional view, Nehru saw the objective of
the agreement as finalizing the frontier between the two countries. However, while
the agreement specifies six passes and the Indus Valley as points of transaction in the111Summary

middle sector, there was no mention of the eastern and western sectors. Moreover,
China didn’t share Nehru’s view and claimed in 1960 that the understanding at thetime was that “no boundary question would be addressed during negotiations.”
Nehru’s attitude may be understood from other parts of his directives. The
directives include those to extend India’s control to the territories up to theboundary by setting up checkpoints along the border, by maintaining local bordermilitias with their principle duties being construction or supporting cottage
industries, or by encouraging border trade between India and Tibet. In other words,
he attempted to demarcate the boundaries through the unilateral but manifested
actions of effective control, as the frontier between the two was now opened totraffic. China, too, extended its tangible control over the frontier region, but they
believed the border had to be decided eventually through bilateral agreements.
Differences in style of diplomacy between the two emerging Asian powers may
have complicated the problem. Because India followed the British way of diplomacy,
those unilateral but clearly manifested actions were to be understood as the
beginning of the diplomatic process. And if China failed to respond in due course,
India would claim that China acquiesced in India’s unilateral demarcation. On
the other hand, China ignored diplomatic issues for which they were ill-prepared
and assigned priority to the effective control over territorial claims. Thus the twocountries squandered the chance for defining their common border before the breakout of military clashes.
Another factor behind Nehru’s unilateral actions was how India and China
defined the border. For China, it was the act to transform itself from a pre-modern
East Asian empire to a sovereign territorial state, which was indispensable forbeing a modern state. China therefore assigned priority to the effective exercise ofsovereignty, and holding discussions with its neighbours including India about theborder was left for the future. For India, and for Nehru in particular, its territory
and frontier were inherited from the British, and he might have been deeply
influenced by the notion that even borders left ‘undefined’ by the British had to betreated as defined or demarcated.
From the end of the border war in 1962 to 1976 when they exchanged
ambassadors once again, relations between India and China were antagonized. It
was not until Rajiv Gandhi’s visit to China, the first for an Indian prime ministerin 34 years, in 1988 that talks on the border started to produce results. A series of111

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confidence-building measures have since been implemented, including the reductionof border forces and the shelving of border issues. China came one step closer to
India in 2003 by allowing trade through Sikkim, whose merger with India in 1975
had been opposed by China.
China’s concession to India on Sikkim should be understood in terms of its wish
to complete the delineation and demarcation process of its land border. China’s
eagerness seems to reflect its desire to expand bilateral trade across land routes.
However, India has reasons to be not as eager as China, such as the characteristics
of its export items and its trade deficit with China, besides the domestic political costpossibly involved in the quick settlement of border disputes. Moreover, India’seffective control over the people in the eastern sector or Arunachal Pradesh isrecognized by the international community, while Chinese control over the western
sector is just the military occupation of no man’s land and thus lacks internationalrecognition. This difference in position on the respective occupying territories in thedisputed areas creates current political tension, and the reference to the imperial‘line’ may spur domestic agitation. However, these two Asian regional powers have
implemented measures for confidence-building over the past years and should
achieve success in managing the relationship between competition and cooperation.

To Which Country Does the Ryukyu Islands Belong?
An Analysis of Chinese Views
ISHII Akira
The Ryukyu Kingdom was traditionally a tribute state of the Ming Dynasty andlater the Qing Dynasty; at the same time, it was a tribute state of Japan. However,by taking advantage of a weakened Qing Dynasty, Japan encouraged the Ryukyu
Kingdom to break diplomatic ties with the Qing Dynasty and became Okinawa
Prefecture in 1879. Thus, the Ryukyu Kingdom was absorbed into Japan; however,
it is not to say that the Qing Dynasty accepted this matter.
During the Sino-Japanese War, the history in which the Ryukyu Islands was once111

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part of China had not been forgotten in the Republic of China (ROC). In addition,
they became more assertive over the Ryukyu Islands, or “the lost territory,” insistingthat the ROC should reclaim it from Japan.
This paper mainly discusses the ROC government’s attempts to reclaim the Ryukyu
Islands and explores the ROC government’s position on the Ryukyu Islands dispute.
In Chinese mainland the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was founded in 1949.
PRC’s policy towards the Ryukyu Islands will also be discussed.
Moreover, the name Ryukyu indicates island isthmuses roughly between
Kagoshima Prefecture in Japan and Taiwan. In contrast Okinawa is the name usedby the Japanese side and indicates the area Okinawa Prefecture governs. The ROC
has used the name Ryukyu. But the PRC first used the name Ryukyu but changed thename to Okinawa in mid-1950’s.
Regarding the ROC’s Ryukyu policy, during the Sino-Japanese War, a disagreement
within the government broke out between the group accepting Japan’s possessionof the Ryukyu Islands and the other group insisting the Ryukyu Islands should notbelong to Japan because it was forced to be a Japanese colony.
The Discussion Group on International Affairs, which was established under
the Supreme Council for National Defense, led by Jiang Kai-shek completed the
document on November 10, 1943, stating the conditions of Japan’s unconditionalsurrender. It is written as follows: “the Ryukyu Islands belonged to the ROC. If andwhen the U.S. and Britain firmly maintain objection, it will be under international
control and be a demilitarized zone.” This document, which was prepared for the
U.S., Britain, and ROC summit in Cairo, indicates giving the maximum demandon its territory. Whether bringing forward this claim or not at the U.S. and Britain
summit depended on Jiang Kai-shek’s judgment. In the end, he did not bring up theterritory of the Ryukyu Islands at this summit with the U.S. President Franklin D.
Roosevelt.
The reclamation of the Ryukyu Islands became intense in the ROC after winning
the war against Japan. The National Consultative Council submitted a proposal for apeace treaty with Japan to the government, and it specified that the Ryukyu Islands
be placed under the ROC’s trust territory. At that time, the U.S. made clear its
intentions to put the Ryukyu Islands under sole trust territory.
The media in the ROC created a clamor for reclaiming the Ryukyu Islands
however, the government had not officially demanded the Ryukyu Islands, and it111Summary

remained at the level of domestic discussion.
Then the ROC lost the Chinese civil war to the Chinese Communist Party, and thecapital was moved to Taipei in December 1949. Taiwan did not raise the Ryukyu
Islands dispute in the Japan-China Peace Treaty which had begun in February 1952
in Taipei. It held the opinion that the dispute over the Ryukyu Islands was between
the U.S. and Japan.
Taiwan changed its position that the dispute over the Ryukyu Islands was between
the U.S. and Japan when Amami Oshima was returned to Japan. Taiwan had nochoice but to clarify its position because Taiwan had protested that Amami Oshima
was a part of the Ryukyu Islands.
After that, the Chinese Nationalist Party (Guomindang) strengthened its supportof the Ryukyu Revolutionary Party (Ryukyu Geming Tongzhihui) which aimed at
the Ryukyu Islands being independent. The leader was Tsugumasa Kiyuna (Chinese
name, Cai Zhang). The Ryukyu Nationalisit Party (Ryukyu Guomindang) formed on
November 30, 1958, with Kiyuna as its vice president.
However, the movement toward the independence of Ryukyu Islands was
unsuccessful and lacked broad support. Jiang Kai-shek, too, had taken measures tostrengthen economic and trade relationships and cross-cultural relations.
Meanwhile, the PRC had concluded the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Allianceand Mutual Assistance with the Soviet Union, and this treaty stipulated that a peace
treaty with Japan be concluded under both parties’ agreement. The Soviet Union
envisioned the Ryukyu Islands becoming a military base. The Soviet Union and the
PRC strongly opposed U. S. control of the Ryukyu Islands. But the PRC never statedthat the Ryukyu Islands should be restored to the PRC.
The PRC formulated its policy toward Japan freely after the Soviet Union resumed
diplomatic relations with Japan. The PRC’s media released a comment on Japanby using the name Okinawa, taking the position that Okinawa clearly should berestored to Japan. Since the end of the 1950s, it had supported the Okinawan
people’s struggle for the return of Okinawa to Japan in relation to the Japan - U. S.
Security Treaty.
In the 1970s, the PRC formally announced to a delegation from Okinawa its
support of Japan’s reclaiming of the Northern Territories. Back then, the PRC
considered the Soviet Union as a major enemy.
Meanwhile, another territorial issue appeared in Taiwan at the end of the 1960s:

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the territorial dispute over the Senkaku Islands (Chinese name, Diaoyudao). The
PRC sees Diaoyudao as a “China’s sanctuary” and is taking the same position with
Taiwan in principle on this dispute.

Is Sino-Japanese Reconciliation Possible?
A Case Study of Forced Chinese Laborers in the 1940s
LI EnminSerious war history issues have marred Sino-Japanese relations and public
opinions since the 1980s. The Chinese grievances about wartime suffering and thelack of Japanese contrition became major sources of Chinese popular animosity
toward Japan. Is Sino-Japanese reconciliation possible in the future? Based on
findings of a case study on the Hanaoka Incident, this paper suggests that it ispossible. It uses a wide selection of primary sources in Japanese and Chinese
languages, including documents of NGO or NPO organizations, diplomatic archives
and interviews with attorneys representing both the victims and the perpetrators of
the incident.
During World War II, Japan forced a large number of Chinese commoners andwar prisoners into slave labor in Japan. There were 986 forced Chinese laborers
in Hanaoka in northeastern Japan, working on a river project run by Kajima-gumi,
the wartime predecessor of Kajima Construction Corporation, the largest generalcontractor in Japan now. The forced laborers rioted in June 1945, protesting against
their ruthless Japanese overseers, the cruel working conditions and the inadequacyof food. But the Japanese military police suppressed the rebellion and 113 laborers
were killed. By the end of World War II, a total of 418 Chinese laborers in Hanaoka
had allegedly died. This is known as the Hanaoka Incident.
In November 2000, Kajima and the Committee of the Sodality of Hanaoka Victims,
which represents all survivors and the families of the perished laborers, succeeded inreaching a conciliation agreement at the Tokyo High Court, ending a five-year court
battle over a lawsuit filed by 11 Chinese plaintiffs. According to the conciliation

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documents, Kajima agreed to establish a fund with 500 million yen, or $4.6 million,
for compensation payment or postmortem consolation payment to all 986 Chinese
victims of the Hanaoka Incident. The International Committee of the Red Crossin China and the newly established Hanaoka Peace and Friendship Foundation in
Beijing have been administering the fund for the past ten years. They have been
making efforts to reach conciliation through offering compensations and providing
memorial services as well as scholarships. In April 2010, many NGOs and NPOs
jointly founded the Hanaoka Peace Memorial Museum at the site of the Hanaoka
Incident. The money for this museum came from civic movement organizations andtheir campaigns. This is the first war memorial museum constructed by perpetrators
rather than victims in Japan. This paper argues that the core context of the Hanaoka
conciliation consists of three elements: the compensation payment, the constructionof a memorial museum and making public apologies to victims by a corporation.
These are different from what Germany did in the 1990s (both the German
government and corporations accepted joint responsibilities for the lawless acts of
the Nazis conducted on forced foreign laborers).
The Hanaoka conciliation was the first time that a major Japanese corporation hascompensated foreign wartime victims through a fund. Looking through the lens ofresolving war history issues, it can be seen as providing a new framework or model
for reaching conciliation. It is really a bold effort to develop a universal approach toreaching conciliation in Asia.
The central point of this paper is that a court-connected reconciliation must
be understood fundamentally as a process, not as an end result because apurely judicial approach to reconciliation is limited. The central aspects of real
reconciliation, which should be understood as heart-to-heart reconciliation, arerecognition of truth, which serves to redress the past, giving voices to victims in thepresent, and creating a communal memory for the future. Establishing truth is thecornerstone of reconciliation. As the case study indicates, there is still a long way togo for China and Japan before real reconciliation could be reached.

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Image and Reality of the Penal Colony in Sakhalin:
Prejudice and Adaptation
AMANO Naoki
Sakhalin in the czarist era was the island of exiles. They laid the foundations of
Sakhalin as a colony. In those days many Russians viewed Sakhalin Island as a
non-Russian territory, because of their low regard of the exiles. In this paper I willaddress the following four questions. First, how was such a negative image createdand stereotyped? Second, how did the exiles live in the penal colony, and how
different were the realities of their life from the image? Third, how did the image
operate on the realities in Sakhalin? Fourth, why could the reality not change theimage? From these points of views I will analyze Sakhalin’s history from the 1850s
to the eve of the Russo-Japanese war.
In 1871, Vasilii Vlasov, the head of a branch of the Department of Executive
Police, visited Sakhalin to investigate hard-labor institutions. After returning to
St. Petersburg, he submitted a report to the Ministry of Interior. His report was
extremely influential in creating the negative image of the penal colony in Sakhalin.
He described the corrupt life of the exiles and of the officials living on the island.
According to him, the island’s chaos was caused by a lack of policy.
In the 1870s, various newspapers and journals reported on the situation in
Sakhalin. Many of them negatively depicted life in the penal colony, expressing
prejudice toward the exiles. The discourses of government officials projected anegative image of the exiles. Russian citizens imagined the exiles as vicious, and theisland akin to hell. This was the common stereotype of the island at the end of the1870s when the Russian government began to accelerate the settlement of Sakhalin.
One of the major goals in the penal colony was to develop agriculture. However,
the officials abandoned this dream as early as the 1880s. An authority on geography
argued against the possibility of developing agriculture because of the severe
climate. The inspectors of agriculture on the island repeated the same opinion.
Moreover, the officials regarded the exiles as corrupt and incompetent.
It was Anton Chekhov’s Sakhalin Island (1895) that popularized this negative111Summary

image among Russian citizens. Before and after visiting Sakhalin in 1890, Chekhov
exhaustively read materials on the island, and was influenced by the stereotype. He
did not change the image. Indeed, his description of miserable scenes made it more
influential.
However, Chekhov also illustrated the positive side of life on the island. He
described the germ of agricultural development, though not much. From the middleof the 1890s, the realities of the penal colony began to change. That is, Sakhalin was
becoming an agricultural colony.
There were three categories of exiles in the Russian system. The convicts-inexile were put in prison and forced into servitude. The settled-exiles were released
from prison, lived in designated settlements, and worked on the land unguarded.
The peasants-in-exile were treated as free populations, although with some
restrictions. They were free to select their settlements, and had the right to returnto the continent. The last two categories were de facto free peasants. The numberof peasants-in-exiles exceeded convicts in the 1890s. In 1900 the number of defacto peasants was three times as large as the convicts. When the Russo-Japanese
war broke out, the majority of them stood on their own feet without aid from the
Sakhalin administration.
The Sakhalin administration neither controlled nor supported them. This meansthat they adapted to the land on their own. However, the officials did not see reality
on the ground. Their prejudice blinded them. They did not view the settled-exiles
and the peasants-in-exile as able peasants, but as corrupt exiles. They lived in adifferent world from the de facto peasants. They were indifferent to the exiles’ land.
The realities did not change the image.
Before the Russo-Japanese war reached as far as the island, Sakhalin alreadyhad been abandoned. The Russian government discussed the abolition of the penal
system and even the sale of the hopeless colony to the U. S. The outcome of the war
had been decided before the fight.

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On Gleb Struve: Historian of
Russian Emigrant Literature
NAKANO Yukio
This paper deals with the problems of “Russian literature in exile” from thecontemporary perspective of literary studies, focusing on the life and works of
Russian literary historian Gleb Petrovich Struve (1898-1985). Despite his important
contributions to the study of the history of Russian literature, we know little about
his life and his close relationships with contemporary writers such as Marina
Tsvetaeva (1892-1941), Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977), George Orwell (1903-1950)
and Paul Celan (1920-1970).
The first part of this paper covers the period from his birth in 1898 to his
employment at the University of London’s School of Slavonic and East European
Studies in 1932. In this period his relationships with other contemporary writers
deserve attention. His correspondence with Nabokov in his Russian-writing period
tells us the role Struve played in the life of Nabokov as an adviser not only in hislife in emigration, but also in his literary debut in emigrant journals and books intranslation. After graduating from Oxford, Struve was engaged in journalism. He
found jobs mainly at the publishing houses owned by his father. In 1922 he met
Marina Tsvetaeva in Berlin and in 1923 Struve named his daughter Marina after
Tsvetaeva. Tsvetaeva gave a copy of her new collection of poems, Remeslo , toStruve’s daughter with her dedication. Using his excellent knowledge of foreign
languages, he worked as a translator in commercial companies and translated theworks of economist John Maynard Keynes, politician Thomas Woodrow Wilson into
Russian and Ivan Bunin, winner of the 1933 Nobel Prize for literature, into English.
The second part covers the period from his employment in 1932 to his move to theUnited States in 1947, focusing on his life during World War II and his publicationsof Soviet Russian literary history. Since his employment as lecturer at the School of
Slavonic and East European Studies, like his predecessor, Prince Dmitry Petrovich
Svyatopolk-Mirsky (1890-1939), he taught Russian language and literature until his
retirement and his eventual employment at the University of California, Berkeley

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Summaryin 1947. Also, Struve was known for his works on Russian literary history written
in English (History of Soviet Russian Literature (1935), 25 years of Soviet Russian

Literature: 1918-1943 (1944) and Russian Literature under Lenin and Stalin, 19171953 (1971)). Following his predecessor at King’s College, Prince Dmitry SvyatopolkMirsky, a well-known literary critic and historian, the influence of Struve’s English
works went beyond Russian emigrant readers. George Orwell, one of Struve’s nonRussian readers, found Zamyatin’s anti-utopian novel We in the History of Soviet

Russian Literature and got the idea for his anti-utopian novel 1984.
The third part covers the period from 1947 to 1985, focusing on his emigrant
publishing including the Chekhov Publishing House. During World War II Struve
lost his parents: his father died in 1944 in Paris, following the death of his motherin 1943. In 1946, Struve accepted an offer from the University of California at
Berkeley as a visiting professor. In 1947 he accepted the position of professor at
the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of California
at Berkeley, and spent almost the rest of his life in the United States. In this period
Struve’s main contribution in the study of Russian literary history could be definedin his publications of the works of the depressed poets in the Soviet period and his
studies and writings on “Russian literature in exile.” In collaboration with publisher
and literary critic, Boris Filippov (1905-1991), Struve published the works of writers
banned in the USSR: Nikolai Gumilyov, Osip Mandelshtam, Marina Tsvetaeva,
Boris Pasternak, Anna Akhmatova, Nikolai Zabolotsky and Iosif Brodsky. In 1959,
German poet, Paul Celan found Mandelshtam in the first collection of Mandelshtam
published by Struve and Filippov and began to translate his poems into German andintroduced him into German literature.
His Russian literature in Exile (1956) still remains one of the most comprehensive
works on Russian emigrant literature. He considered this book to be an “inventory”
of the knowledge on Russian emigrant literature. This book was connected withthe end of the Chekhov Publishing House subsidized by the Ford Foundation, anddespite its short-lived existence of only four years, it published many legendary
books banned in the USSR: the first collections of Nikolai Gumilyov (1952), Osip
Mandelshtam (1955), and the original Russian version of Zamyatin’s novel We
in 1952. Behind the publication of these works, we can detect Struve’s effort todisseminate the legacy of twentieth century Russian literature to the world.
On the basis of these observations, Struve’s effort to disseminate Russian literature222

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to non-Russian readers materialized in the works of Orwell and Celan. His life
was seemingly divided into two phases: before and after the American period,
reminding us of Nabokov, one of Struve’s most eminent contemporary writers. But
his continuous interest in recording his contemporaries could be a unifying thread
between these two phases. His writings on Russian literary history covering emigrant
literature remain unfinished and should be rewritten and renewed by the generations
that follow, positioning Struve himself in the context of the history of contemporary
Russian literature.

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