Hello, comrades Elizarovs
Young Jiang Jinggo, the future head of the Kuomintang party and the President of the Republic of China in Taiwan, was sent by his own father to study and work in the USSR in the late 1920s. And the father of the Chinese comrade was none other than Chiang Kai-shek, whose name should sound like Jiang Tsheshi. He himself preferred to call himself Zhongzheng, which means a just person who managed to choose a middle ground.
Chiang Kai-shek, who in the future became the generalissimo and almost sovereign master of China, did not hesitate to call the "big three" members: Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill. But in the 20s he was only the chief of staff of the main Chinese revolutionary Sun Yat-sen. Chan sent his son to the USSR in the wake of the strengthening relations between the two revolutionary powers.
At the end of an accelerated course of study at the Communist University of the East. Stalin in Moscow, Jiang Jingo in 1931, at the height of collectivization, became chairman of the collective farm in the Lukhovitsky district of the Moscow Region. In the villages of Big Zhokovo and Korovino, he was known under the pseudonym Nikolai Vladimirovich Elizarov.
He borrowed the Russian name and surname from Anna Ilyinichna Ulyanova-Elizarova, the elder sister of Lenin, whom he lived for some time after arriving in the USSR. Already in 1933, Nikolai Elizarov became the Komsomol of the Uralmashzavod them. Stalin in Sverdlovsk, where he met with 17-year-old Faina Vakhreva.
They were married in 1935, but almost all of their life together, truly unique, more like a novel or a television series, took place not in the USSR, but in "other" China - on the island of Taiwan. There, on a distant island, as in the foreign Chinese diaspora, Faina was called "Madame Jiang Fanlyan": the hieroglyph "fan" means "honest," and "liang" means "virtuous." This name was given to her by the father-in-law, the legendary Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, back in 1938.
Few people know why and why in the Soviet Union they “classified” the biography of Faina Ipatievna Vakhreva and her husband, President of the Republic of China in Taiwan from 1978 to 1988, Jiang Jinggo. At the same time, they sent all the information about their friends, relatives and acquaintances under the heading “Top Secret”.
Faina, the future Jiang Fanlyan, was born in 1916 in Yekaterinburg into a Belarusian family, who was evacuated from Minsk to the Urals during the First World War. Faina very early, in the mid-1920s, lost her parents. Her father at one time worked at the Yekaterinburg Machine-Building Plant - the future of Uralmash.
In 1991, Faina Vakhreva told Taiwanese and local Russian-speaking journalists:
I worked as a turner at Uralmashzavod in Sverdlovsk, and my future husband was a Komsomol organizer and editor of a factory newspaper there. He was fluent in Russian. In the mid-1930s, the Comintern and the Central Committee of the CPSU (B.) Planned the removal from power in China of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, the father of my husband, and Jiang Jingo was previously included in the new, communist leadership of China. Officially announced a break with his father.
All our contacts with the outside world were placed under the control of the NKVD. Since then, I do not know anything about the friends and acquaintances of my parents who remained in Belarus and Sverdlovsk, and about the people dear to me and my husband ...
All our contacts with the outside world were placed under the control of the NKVD. Since then, I do not know anything about the friends and acquaintances of my parents who remained in Belarus and Sverdlovsk, and about the people dear to me and my husband ...
After Japan’s repeated attack on China in 1937, the Kremlin changed its plan to remove Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. Jiang Jingo was advised to apologize to his father, return to China and help create a joint anti-Japanese front with the Chinese Communists.
This was done shortly before the start of World War II, which was actually unfolding on Chinese soil. And in 1937, the USSR signed a treaty of friendship and non-aggression with China, rendering him all kinds of assistance even during the years of World War II. For such a policy, the USSR was repeatedly thanked by Chiang Kai-shek and the leader of the Chinese Communists, Mao Zedong.
We just have common enemies ...
China did not remain in debt: in July 1943, by decision of the Chinese leadership, three batches of electric power equipment from the United States, destined for the country under Lend-Lease, were redirected to the USSR. As Chiang Kai-shek stated, "in connection with the enormous needs of the defense and rear of the USSR."
This is especially noted in the memoirs (1956) of the head of the American Lend-Lease Committee, and subsequently US Secretary of State Edward Stettinius:
The third Lend-Lease program is related to the generation of electricity for Soviet military factories in the Trans-Urals and in the areas devastated by the Germans that were conquered by the Red Army today. This program began with three powerful generators manufactured here for China, but the Chinese allowed in 1943 to transfer them to Russia.
Then, in his diary, Jiang Jinggo noted:
Faina sometimes talks about Belarus, Russia. I have the impression that both the Chinese and the Eastern Slavs want to preserve their own traditions and foundations, but this is hindered by ideological sluggishness and political barriers.
Nevertheless, my father understood that it was Stalin who did not allow Mao Zedong to seize Taiwan in 1949-50, although there were no US troops here in the Taiwan Strait until June 1950 inclusively. Moscow even objected to the capture by Beijing of small islands controlled by Taiwan near the PRC. These facts affected the attitude of the Generalissimo to Stalin and Russia.
Nevertheless, my father understood that it was Stalin who did not allow Mao Zedong to seize Taiwan in 1949-50, although there were no US troops here in the Taiwan Strait until June 1950 inclusively. Moscow even objected to the capture by Beijing of small islands controlled by Taiwan near the PRC. These facts affected the attitude of the Generalissimo to Stalin and Russia.
It seems that the Taiwan authorities' retaliation was Washington’s refusal to participate in the war in Korea by the Taiwanese forces and to strike from the Taiwanese bases with the US Navy and Air Force in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Although Taipei has always provided military-technical assistance to pro-American South Vietnam. And at the same time, Taipei supported and supports Beijing in matters of Chinese sovereignty on most of the islands of the South China Sea, however, speaking out for their “distribution” between Taiwan and China.
But Washington did not trust Nikolay Elizarov, reasonably believing that its politically “pro-Soviet roots” and commitment — like Mao Zedong and Chiang Kai-shek — the concepts of a united China would make it difficult for Taiwan to become an unsinkable US aircraft carrier.
During the visit of the "unofficial" Taiwanese delegation led by Jiang Jingguo to San Francisco in 1983, an attempt was made on high Taiwanese guests. A fragmentation grenade was thrown into the motorcade, but the explosion was late due to the fast speed of the vehicles. No one was hurt, and the terrorists seemed to have been helped to escape.
The latter is not surprising, since the terrorist “Formosa Liberation League”, which has existed to this day, has claimed responsibility for the attack. Recall Formosa - the Portuguese name of Taiwan during its tenure by Portugal in the XVII-XVIII centuries.
The league settled in the United States in the early 1960s and advocates the complete separation of Taiwan from China. Repeated protests by Chiang Kai-shek and Jiang Jingo about the presence of this group in the United States Washington left unanswered. Americans also react to modern protests in Taipei on the same issue.
Special Relationships
Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, who has been in charge of Taiwan since November 1949 with a number of adjoining miniature islands, including off the coast of China, was a co-organizer of the World Anti-Communist League in 1966, in 1954, in XNUMX g. (together with South Korea) - "Anti-Communist League of Asian Peoples."
However, he still retained a special attitude towards the Russians. Remembering, of course, Soviet aid to China during the long Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945) and Moscow’s containment of Beijing’s plans to seize Taiwan. In particular, Chiang Kai-shek in the same 1950 allowed emigrants from Russia-the USSR who lived in Japan, Korea, Indochina and mainland China to live and work in Taiwan.
About 25 thousand Russian-speaking citizens of Taiwan, the descendants of the Russian diaspora of Harbin, Shanghai and Saigon, still live on the island. And Russian language and literature has been studied at four Taiwanese universities since the early 1950s. For three decades, the Far Eastern Russian-language editorial office of Radio Liberty has been working in Taiwan, and since 1968 the still official radio station of the Republic of China in Taiwan has been broadcasting along with other languages in Russian.
In the context of current realities, it is characteristic that the generalissimo was simply shocked by the notorious Soviet-Japanese declaration of October 19, 1956 on the possible transfer to Japan of the two South Kuril islands: Shikotan and Habomai. He declared at the end of October 1956:
No one expected Soviet support for Japan’s plans to revise the post-war borders. That declaration will encourage Japan in its territorial claims to China and other countries. And if this is condoned in the Kremlin after Stalin, I have nothing more to say.
Chiang Kai-shek had in mind primarily the Chinese and Korean islands — respectively, Diaoyu-dao (Japanese Senkaku) and Tokto (Japanese Takeshima), located on strategic straits between the East Asian seas and the Pacific Ocean. These claims in Tokyo began to be put forward precisely after the Soviet-Japanese declaration, and more actively - from the mid-1960s.
As you know, Japanese politicians have made such claims with enviable regularity to this day. But a characteristic detail: despite the most complicated relations between Beijing and Taipei and Pyongyang with Seoul, they, we emphasize, are united in opposing Japanese claims. And they are ready to jointly defend the territorial integrity of China and Korea, which Japan is regularly convinced of.
But Moscow planned to overthrow Mao and his entourage even with the help of Taiwan. The Chinese Prime Minister Zhou Enlai at the talks with the Romanian leader N. Ceausescu in Beijing in July 1971 stated that “the USSR wants to get in touch even with Taiwan in order to try with it and, therefore, with the USA to overthrow the Leninist-Stalinist leadership of our party and country , avenge us for our obstinacy. "
Victor Louis is a journalist and special agent. In the photo - with the leader of the Chilean communists, Luis Corvalan
Such a statement was not at all unfounded: as the prime minister explained, “on the initiative of Moscow, the long-standing KGB emissary for special assignments Vitaly Levin (pseudonym Victor Louis) met in October 1968 with the leadership of the Kuomintang Defense and Intelligence Directorate, a new meeting was held in Taiwan in March 1969, then in Vienna in October 1970. Apparently, there were other meetings. He arrived in Taiwan via Tokyo or British Hong Kong.
Everything is calm in Beijing
It was a change of leadership in Beijing, which would accelerate, as suggested by Victor Louis, with the simultaneous escalation of military clashes by Taiwan in the Taiwan Strait or on the coast of China adjacent to Taiwan. Moreover, almost all the islands off this part of the coast of China belonged and still belong to Taiwan.
And the head of the Taiwanese delegation at these meetings was Nikolai Elizarov, head of Taiwanese intelligence at that time: it was he who appropriated W. Louis the code name Wang Ping. On the Soviet side, Andropov personally oversaw these contacts, while on the Taipei side, the then head of the state news agency, Wei Jingmen. In 1995, his recollections of these contacts were published in Taipei in Chinese and English ("Soviet Secret Agent in Taiwan").
Here is what it says about the first meeting, with the participation of Nikolai Elizarov - Jiang Jingo on October 25, 1968:
We first talked to him about being ashamed of Mao’s gang. Speaking about the PRC, Louis noted: "The era of dictatorships has passed, Stalin has died, Mao Zedong also does not have long, and besides, he has already lost his mind." To the question: “What do you think of Taiwan?” Louis said that “although Taiwan is only developing, it has far surpassed Japan. You Taiwanese Chinese are very smart, polite. ” And he hinted that "you know how to look forward."
Is it necessary to explain that Chiang Kai-shek’s consent to contacts with the emissary of Andropov was meant? Further meetings were already more substantive. That is, the essence of Levin’s remarks was that Mao had gone too far, so let's forget the feud and find a way to overthrow him and his entourage. It will be in the interests of the United States. So if you decide to "return to the mainland," we will not bother you. And, probably, we will help.
Victor Louis went so far as to offer cooperation with the USSR and India in helping the Tibetan separatists to pressure Beijing: today in India, since the mid-50s, there is a "Tibetan government in exile." But representatives of Taiwan, condemning the "Maoization" of Tibet, invariably declared their commitment to the unity of China.
The Taiwanese interlocutors understood that even the successful joint operation of Taipei and Moscow in the PRC would probably lead to the removal of the Kuomintang from power in new China. For the Kuomintang a priori will not be a puppet of Moscow. The United States will also be interested in the removal of the Kuomintang, because the Kuomintang and especially Chiang Kai-shek himself were not trivial puppets of the United States. Moreover, they will not be so in the new China.
Confirmation of such forecasts by the Taiwanese comrades was, first of all, that Nikolai Elizarov, as a sign of proof of Moscow’s “sincere” intentions, proposed, moreover, at the suggestion of Chiang Kai-shek, to denounce the mutual assistance agreement between the USSR and China (1950).
But Levin dodged the answer, appealing to the optionalness of such a step, but begging the interlocutors for information about Taipei's military or intelligence plans regarding Beijing. Moreover, the disclosure of similar Soviet plans was not, of course, out of the question, which convinced the representatives of Taiwan of the dangerous situation for the whole of China in the Soviet proposals.
At the same time, V. Louis strongly rejected all requests of V. Louis regarding a meeting with the Generalissimo himself, reasonably suspecting Moscow of the desire to politically discredit Chiang Kai-shek at the right time by the very fact of such a meeting. In a word, the parties failed to agree. This was most likely due to the policy of the United States, Taiwan’s main ally, towards the gradual normalization of relations with Beijing after the well-known conflict with the USSR on Damansky Island in March 1969.
As for his Kremlin counterpart, Victor Louis said that after Khrushchev’s removal, he often met with Yuri Andropov, who was appointed the new head of the KGB on May 17, 1967, and carried out a number of his instructions abroad. Many sources mention Andropov’s long-standing contacts with V. Louis, including the Major General of the former KGB, Vyacheslav Kevorkov. According to him, "the head of the KGB, Yu. V. Andropov, forbade in any way to formalize the relations of the KGB with Victor Louis and even to issue secret documents about this cooperation."
Since 1969, Taiwanese intelligence has been informing Beijing of meetings with W. Louis, but the Beijing "colleagues" of Taipei respected the request of the Taiwanese partners for the confidentiality of the information they transmit. In addition, according to a number of data, Beijing-Taiwan meetings were held on the same issues in 1970 and 1971, held in Portuguese Aomin (since 2001, the Autonomous Region of the PRC). And through Macau at the turn of the 60s and 70s, “unofficial” trade was established between China and Taiwan.
And in Moscow, for some reason, they ruled out the possibility of a regular leak of information from Taiwan about these contacts, naively believing that such an option is impossible due to the intransigence of Taipei and Beijing. As a result, relations between the USSR and the PRC deteriorated even more, and Mao, in gratitude to Chiang Kai-shek, ordered in 1972 to release more than 500 Taiwanese ex-agents from prison. The same thing was done in Taiwan in 1973 with two hundred arrested agents of the PRC.
On April 5, 1975, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek died. And in the USSR, they did not refute the project of the overthrow, together with Taiwan, of the Mao Zedun leadership. Although a number of Soviet media gloated over the amnesty of Taiwanese intelligence agents in the PRC, the real reasons for such a move by Beijing, of course, were not mentioned ...