External and internal factors of the Soviet migration policy formation in Kamchatka in the middle and late 1920s

The article describes the way the Soviet migration policy trends connected with Kamchatka were changing under external and internal factors influence. The research is based on the materials of Khabarovsk and Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky State Archives and scientific literature. Till 1927, the Soviet state did not suppose Kamchatka to be a prospective territory for transmigration. This territory was not included into the first Soviet Far East migration and colonization plans that appeared in 1925. But such plans for Kamchatka appeared in 1928-1929. The first planned settlers arrived here in 1930. Kamchatka became one of the strategic points and its forced resources development started. The identification of the most important events allowed making objective conclusions about the state migration policy goals and reasons of its forced implementation in Kamchatka in the late 1920s - early 1930s. The external factor was connected with the increase of political strain between the USSR, Japan and China, and a significant Japanese economic influence in Kamchatka. The situation required the strengthening of the state positions in the region. The internal factor was connected with the end of the new economic policy in the late 1920s, the beginning of industrialization, the implementation of the idea of socialism construction in a separate country. These trends of internal policy led to the necessity of the country's internal resources mobilization. That is why the Soviet state chose the reasonable line of a gradual reduction of Japanese economic influence in Kamchatka due to the reinforcement of the state sector in the region's economy and political integration of the peninsula by means of the migration policy. In 1927, a special state agency, the Kamchatka Joint-Stock Company (the Soviet abbreviation AKO), was established. It became the conductor of the state policy, including migration. In Kamchatka the forced development of fishing industry of export level started, and it demanded labor. In 1930, special AKO structures, responsible for the state migration policy implementation, were established. The first planned migrants in Kamchatka appeared in the spring of 1930. The author concluded that in the late 1920s the state's assessment of Kamchatka changed greatly. Under the influence of external and internal factors Kamchatka's geopolitical status increased, active development of its resources started, a large state economic enterprise was founded to represent Soviet interests in the region. Within a short period of time (1927-1930) the state migration policy started because without its implementation the economic and political integration of the territory into the USSR was impossible.

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