The Soviet Great Purges and the ICP

From: Balazs Szalontai <aoverl@yahoo.co.uk>

Date: Apr 15, 2006 11:14 AM

Subject: [Vsg] the Soviet Great Purges and the ICP

Dear All,

may I have a new question? To your knowledge, was any Vietnamese Communist imprisoned or executed in the Soviet Union during the 1937-1939 purges? I did not find a reference to any such case in the books and articles I have hitherto read, but I may have overlooked some publication that covered this issue. It would be interesting to know whether ICP emigrants were in any way affected by the Great Purges, since this wave of Stalinist repression was extremely devastating for the Japanese and Korean Communists who lived in the USSR in these years. On the Japanese victims of the terror, you may find some interesting pieces of information here:

http://www.ff.iij4u.or.jp/~katote/SPurge.html

I also wonder how many ICP emigrants lived in the Soviet Union in 1937-39 and what happened to them in these years and afterwards.

Thanks in advance,

Balazs Szalontai

From: sophie qj <sophie_qj@yahoo.com>

Date: Apr 18, 2006 6:00 AM

Subject: Re: [Vsg] the Soviet Great Purges and the ICP

Hi Balazs,

You should consult the book by Anatoly Sokolov, Komintern i Vietnam, for the most comprehensive list of Vietnamese who studied in Moscow. He lists 54 people who studied at the University of the Toilers of the East (Stalin School) from 1927-38. Of these, one is known to have been sent to work in a factory in Samara in 1934, when he came under suspicion as a provocateur. I personally saw one letter in the Comintern files from this ex-student, in which he begged the Comintern leadership to allow him to return to Moscow. His pseudonym was Barsky; his real name is given as Bui Van Minh. Sokolov gives no information about his return to Moscow and eventual fate. Sokolov (p. 80) also says that five Vietnamese died in the defense of Moscow during the Second World War. He gives three of their names (based on research by Vietnamese scholars in 1956) as Ly Thuc Tat, Ly Nam Thanh, and Ly An Tao. These are probably pseudonyms.

The situation of the Koreans in the USSR was completely different. They composed a sizable emigre population in the Far East, where many of them were caught up in the purges.

Good luck,

Sophie