Hello comrades Elizarovs
Young Jiang Ching-kuo, the future head of the Kuomintang party and the President of the Republic of China in Taiwan, was sent to study and work in the USSR by his own father in the late 1920s. And the father of the Chinese comrade was none other than Chiang Kai-shek, whose name we should sound like Jiang Jieshi. He himself preferred to call himself Zhongzheng, which means a fair person who managed to choose the middle ground.
Chiang Kai-shek, who in the future became the generalissimo and almost sovereign master of China, did not hesitate to call the members of the “big three”: Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill “a comrade-in-arms”. But in the 1920s, 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 growing relationship between the two revolutionary powers.
After completing an accelerated course of study at the Communist University of the Peoples of the East. Stalin in Moscow Jiang Ching-kuo in 1931, at the height of collectivization, became the chairman of a collective farm in the Lukhovitsky district of the Moscow region. In the villages of Bolshoye Zhokovo and Korovino, they knew him under the pseudonym Nikolai Vladimirovich Elizarov.
He borrowed the Russian name and surname from Anna Ilyinichna Ulyanova-Elizarova, Lenin's older sister, with whom he lived for some time after arriving in the USSR. Already in 1933, Nikolai Elizarov became a Komsomol organizer of the Uralmashzavod. Stalin in Sverdlovsk, where he met 17-year-old Faina Vakhreva.
They got married in 1935, but almost all of their life together, truly unique, more like a novel or a television series, was spent not in the USSR, but in “other” China - on the island of Taiwan. There, on a distant island, as well as in the foreign Chinese diaspora, Faina was called "Madame Jiang Fanliang": the hieroglyph "fan" means "honest", and "liang" means "virtuous". This name was given to her by her father-in-law, the legendary Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, back in 1938.
Few know why and why the Soviet Union "classified" the biography of Faina Ipatievna Vakhreva and her husband, President of the Republic of China in Taiwan from 1978 to 1988, Jiang Ching-kuo. At the same time with them all information about their friends, relatives and acquaintances was sent under the stamp "top secret".
Faina, the future Jiang Fanliang, was born in 1916 in Yekaterinburg into a Belarusian family that was evacuated from Minsk to the Urals during the First World War. Faina lost her parents very early, back in the mid-1920s. Her father once worked at the Yekaterinburg machine-building plant - the future 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 the factory newspaper there. He was fluent in Russian. In the mid-1930s, the Comintern and the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) planned to remove Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, my husband's father, from power in China, and Jiang Ching-kuo was 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 who remained in Belarus and Sverdlovsk, the acquaintances of my parents, about the people dear to my husband and me …
After Japan's repeated attack on China in 1937, the Kremlin changed its plan to remove Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. Jiang Ching-kuo 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 outbreak of World War II, which in fact was already unfolding on Chinese soil. And in 1937, the USSR signed a treaty of friendship and non-aggression with China, providing it with all kinds of assistance even during the Great Patriotic War. Chiang Kai-shek and the leader of the Chinese communists, Mao Zedong, were repeatedly thanked for such a policy of the USSR.
We just have common enemies …
China did not remain in debt: in July 1943, by decision of the Chinese leadership, three consignments of electric power equipment from the United States, intended for the country under Lend-Lease, were redirected to the USSR. As Chiang Kai-shek said, "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 Committee on Lend-Lease, and later 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 regions devastated by the Germans, which have now been conquered by the Red Army. This program began with three powerful generators that we made for China, but the Chinese allowed them to be handed over to Russia in 1943.
Then, in his diary, Jiang Ching-kuo noted:
Faina sometimes talks about Belarus and Russia. I have the impression that both the Chinese and the Eastern Slavs want to preserve their own traditions and foundations, but ideological blinkering and political barriers hinder this.
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 and in the Taiwan Strait until June 1950 inclusive. Moscow even objected to Beijing's seizure 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 retaliatory step of the Taiwanese authorities was the refusal to Washington of the participation of Taiwanese troops in the war in Korea and in the delivery of strikes by the US Navy and Air Force against Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia from Taiwanese bases. Although Taipei has always provided military and technical assistance to the pro-American South Vietnam. At the same time, Taipei supported and supports Beijing in matters of Chinese sovereignty in most of the islands of the South China Sea, speaking, however, for their "distribution" between Taiwan and the PRC.
But Washington did not trust Nikolai Elizarov, reasonably believing that its politically “pro-Soviet roots” and adherence - like Mao Zedong and Chiang Kai-shek - to the concept 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 Ching-kuo to San Francisco in 1983, an attempt was made on the life of the distinguished Taiwanese guests. A fragmentation grenade was thrown into the motorcade, but the explosion was delayed due to the fast speed of the vehicles. No one was hurt, and the terrorists seem to have been helped to escape.
The latter is not surprising, since the terrorist League for the Liberation of Formosa, which exists to this day, claimed responsibility for the attack. Recall that Formosa is the Portuguese name for Taiwan during the period of its possession by Portugal in the 17th-18th centuries.
The league settled in the United States in the early 1960s and advocates the complete separation of Taiwan from China. The repeated protests of Chiang Kai-shek and Jiang Ching-kuo about the presence of this group in the United States were left unanswered by Washington. This is how Americans react to modern Taipei protests on the same issue.
Special relationship
Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, in whose jurisdiction since November 1949 Taiwan remained with a number of adjoining miniature islands, including off the coast of the PRC, was a co-organizer (together with South Korea and South Vietnam) in 1966 of the World Anti-Communist League, in 1954 (together with South Korea) - "Anti-Communist League of the Peoples of Asia."
However, he still retained a special relationship with the Russians. Remembering, of course, Soviet aid to China during the many years of the 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-USSR who lived in Japan, Korea, Indochina and mainland China to live and work in Taiwan.
Until now, about 25 thousand Russian-speaking citizens of Taiwan live on the island - descendants of the Russian diaspora of Harbin, Shanghai and Saigon. Since the early 1950s, Russian language and literature have been studied at four Taiwanese universities. For three decades, the Far Eastern Russian-language editorial office of Radio Liberty worked in Taiwan, and from 1968 to the present, the semi-official Radio 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 of two southern Kuril islands to Japan: Shikotana and Habomai. He stated at the end of October 1956:
No one expected Soviet support for Japan's plans to revise its postwar borders. That declaration will encourage Japan in its territorial claims against 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, first of all, the Chinese and Korean islands, respectively, Diaoyu Dao (Japanese Senkaku) and Dokdo (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 make such claims with enviable regularity to this day. But a characteristic detail: despite the most difficult relations between Beijing and Taipei and Pyongyang with Seoul, we emphasize that they are united in opposing Japanese claims. And we are ready to jointly defend the territorial integrity of China and Korea, as Japan is regularly convinced of.
But Moscow planned to overthrow Mao and his entourage even with the help of Taiwan. PRC Premier Zhou Enlai, in talks with Romanian leader N. Ceausescu in Beijing in July 1971, said that “the USSR wants to align itself even with Taiwan in order to try together with him and, therefore, with the United States, to overthrow the Leninist-Stalinist leadership of our party and country., take revenge on us for our obstinacy."
Such a statement was not at all unfounded: as the prime minister explained, “on the initiative of Moscow, the longtime KGB emissary on special assignments Vitaly Levin (pseudonym - Victor Louis) in October 1968 met with the leadership of the Kuomintang defense and intelligence ministries on these issues, 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 about a change of leadership in Beijing, which will accelerate, as suggested by Victor Louis, with the simultaneous escalation of military clashes by Taiwan in the Taiwan Strait or on the coast of the PRC close to Taiwan. Moreover, almost all the islands off this part of the coast of the PRC belonged and still belong to Taiwan.
And the head of the Taiwanese delegation at these meetings was Nikolai Elizarov, the head of Taiwanese intelligence at that time: it was he who gave V. Louis the codename Wang Ping. From the Soviet side, these contacts were supervised personally by Andropov, from the Taipei side - by the then head of the state news agency, Wei Jingmen. In 1995, his memoirs 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 - Chiang Ching-kuo on October 25, 1968:
We first talked to him about the shame of Mao's gang. Speaking about the PRC, Louis noted: "The era of dictatorships is over, Stalin is dead, Mao Zedong is also not long left, besides, he has already gone crazy."When asked, "What do you think of Taiwan?" Louis said that “Although Taiwan is still developing, it has surpassed Japan in many ways. You Taiwanese Chinese are very smart and polite. " And he hinted that "you know how to look ahead."
Do I need to explain what was meant by Chiang Kai-shek's consent to contacts with Andropov's emissary? Further meetings were already more substantive. That is, the essence of Levin's statements was that Mao went too far, so let's forget the strife and find a way to overthrow him and his entourage. It will also be in the interests of the United States. So if you decide to "return to the mainland," we will not interfere with you. And we will probably help.
Victor Louis went so far as to offer cooperation with the USSR and India in helping Tibetan separatists to put pressure on Beijing: to this day, in India, since the mid-1950s, there is a "government of Tibet in exile." But the representatives of Taiwan, while condemning the "Maoization" of Tibet, have consistently declared their commitment to the unity of China.
The Taiwanese interlocutors understood that even a successful joint operation of Taipei and Moscow in the PRC would surely lead soon to the removal of the Kuomintang from power in the new China. For the Kuomintang a priori will not be a puppet of Moscow. The United States will also be interested in removing the Kuomintang, for the Kuomintang and especially Chiang Kai-shek himself were not trivial US puppets. And even less so in the new China.
Confirmation of such forecasts of the Taiwanese comrades was, first of all, that Nikolai Elizarov, as a sign of proof of Moscow's "sincere" intentions, proposed, and clearly at the suggestion of Chiang Kai-shek, to denounce the agreement on mutual assistance between the USSR and the PRC (1950).
But Levin dodged an answer, appealing to the unnecessary nature of such a step, but begging his interlocutors for information about Taipei's military or intelligence plans with regard to Beijing. At the same time, there was, of course, no question of disclosing similar Soviet plans, which convinced the representatives of Taiwan that the opportunism of the Soviet proposals was dangerous for the whole of China.
At the same time, the latter harshly rejected all requests by V. Louis regarding a meeting with the Generalissimo himself, reasonably suspecting Moscow of a 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, to gradually normalize 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 the removal of Khrushchev, 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 assignments abroad. Many sources mention Andropov's long-standing contacts with V. Louis, including 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 relationship between the KGB and Victor Louis and even to issue secret documents about this cooperation."
Since 1969, the Taiwanese intelligence began to inform Beijing about the meetings with W. Louis, but the Beijing "colleagues" of Taipei respected the request of the Taiwanese partners about the confidentiality of the information they transmitted. In addition, according to a number of data, there were also Peking-Taiwan meetings on the same issues in 1970 and 1971, held in the Portuguese Aomen (since 2001 - an autonomous region of the PRC). And through Aomin at the turn of the 60s and 70s, "unofficial" trade between the PRC and Taiwan was established.
For some reason, Moscow 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 Taipei's intransigence with 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 over 500 Taiwanese ex-agents from prison. The same was done in Taiwan in 1973 with two hundred arrested PRC agents.
On April 5, 1975, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek passed away. And in the USSR, they did not refute the project of overthrowing, together with Taiwan, the Mao Tse Tung leadership. Although a number of Soviet media gloated over the amnesty of the Taiwanese intelligence agency in the PRC, the real reasons for this step by Beijing, of course, were not mentioned …
