Formation of the Yenisei Cossack emigration in China

The article is devoted to the history of formation of the Yenisei Cossack emigration in China. The authors consider the main reasons, stages and sources of its formation. The considerable Russian diaspora was created in the beginning of the 1920s in China. The population of the eastern regions of Russia, including the Yenisei province, became the source of its formation. A considerable part of emigrants from the Yenisei province was made up by the Yenisei Cossacks. The main reason is that the Yenisei Cossacks in the years of the Civil War in Siberia and in the Far East proved to be selfless and resolute opponents of the Soviet power and conducted active anti- Soviet fight, both on the fronts of the Civil War and against its supporters in the back, practically in full strength. The existence of the Yenisei Cossacks diaspora in China is traced from 1920 to 1949. Its formation is connected with the events of the last years of the Civil War in the east of Russia. Formation of the Yenisei Cossack emigration took place in China step by step. A serious anti-Soviet spirit served as an additional condition of their mass leaving abroad, to China, after the end of the Civil War. Total evacuation with the Reds approaching occurred in the fall of 1919, not only serving Cossacks, but also members of their families and the wounded were involved in it, which allows to state that most part of the Cossack population of the Yenisei province left the place of their traditional residence and went to the east, and then to China. Receded from Transbaikalia in November 1920 military formations of the Whites were partially interned in China. Obviously, a considerable part of the Yenisei Cossacks and, especially, members of their families could settle in China during this period. In July 1921 a part of the Yenisei Cossacks got through Mongolia to China, particularly, to the zone of alienation of the Chinese Eastern Railway. The conditions of it could be the impossibility to go to the Soviet Russia, because of a strong anti-Cossack spirit of the Tuvinians, and the Red guerrillas coming from the poorest peasantry, who were traditionally at enmity with the Cossacks, as well as a rather close location of northern regions of the Chinese Eastern Railway alienation zone. The Yenisei Cossacks who receded from the territory of Primorye to China at the end of 1922 were the most numerous group of the Yenisei Cossacks who created the Yenisei Cossack diaspora in China. The Yenisei Cossack community existed in China till the summer of 1949. Information about the Yenisei Cossacks in the territory of China after 1949 has not been discovered until present.

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