Comrade | Guevara
Tsarist Russia is the most aggressive and insatiable country on the planet, and it is always full of possessiveness over the territories of its neighbors. As a neighbor of Tsarist Russia, China was known for its vast land and large population, and naturally became the coveted object of successive tsars. In order to annex China's territory, Tsarist Russia has formulated a series of plans, the most crazy of which is the "Yellow Russia Plan", which attempts to annex 1/3 of China's territory and use the Great Wall as a border. So, how is this plan proposed? Why did it ultimately fail to achieve its overall goal?
01 Yellow Russia Plan
Among the Western powers, the largest amount of Chinese territory was undoubtedly occupied by Tsarist Russia
。 In fact, as early as the 1630s, Tsarist Russia had invaded northeast China and burned and plundered in the Heilongjiang River Basin. However, Tsarist Russia, which had not yet completely escaped its barbarism, encountered the Qing Dynasty, which was in the ascendant period, and a major war broke out around the city of Yaksa. Eventually, the heavily damaged Tsarist Russia was forced to withdraw from northeastern China, and in 1689 signed the Treaty of Nebuchu on an equal footing with the Qing Dynasty, legally establishing the Heilongjiang and Ussuri River basins, and a vast area including Sakhalin Island to belong to China.
Schematic map of Tsarist Russia's occupation of Chinese territory
In the nearly 200 years since the signing of the Treaty of Nebuchadnezzar, Tsarist Russia once abandoned its illusions of aggression against China and instead pointed the spearhead of aggression at Eastern Europe and West Asia. It was not until after the Crimean War that Tsarist Russia, which suffered a crushing defeat in the western battlefield, once again turned its attention to the east, taking advantage of the dilemma faced by the Qing Dynasty after the Opium War to wantonly encroach on China's territory.
During the reign of Alexander II (1855-1881), Russia forcibly occupied 1.5 million square kilometers of China's outer northeast and outer northwest through a series of unequal treaties
, it's really appalling.
When Alexander II's grandson Nicholas II (reigned 1894-1917) ascended the throne, he formulated a larger and more frantic strategy for invading China, the "Yellow Russia Plan", which was never satisfied with seizing the territory of its neighbors. The main point of this plan is to start from the Chogory Peak on the Sino-Russian border in Xinjiang to the Far East seaport of Vladivostok, connecting the middle into a straight line, encroaching on Outer Mongolia, the three northeastern provinces, most of Xinjiang and most of Inner Mongolia in the north of the line, and turning it into the territory of Tsarist Russia like Little Russia (Ukraine) and Belarus.
Schematic diagram of the "Yellow Russia Project"
If the "Yellow Russia Plan" is finally realized, then China will lose a large area of land in the northwest and northeast, covering an area of more than 4 million square kilometers, accounting for about 1/3 of the total land area at that time. At that time, China will retreat to the so-called "18 provinces of the headquarters" and use the Great Wall as the national border to the Tsarist Russia
。 However, given russia's insatiable nature, it is likely that it will continue to invade the south across the Great Wall and include the whole of North China. The thought of this makes people shudder.
02 Occupation of Northeast China
If we want to achieve the overall goal of the "Yellow Russia Plan", the first thing that needs to be done is undoubtedly to encroach on the three northeastern provinces of China
。 The three northeastern provinces are rich in resources, large populations, and fertile soils, which are far more "charming" than the desolate and barren Xinjiang, Inner and Outer Mongolia, and other places. Moreover, once the three northeastern provinces were occupied, Tsarist Russia could also pose a direct threat to Beijing, forcing the Qing Dynasty to adopt a weaker posture towards it. In this way, Xinjiang, Inner and Outer Mongolia and other places can be snatched up in the form of treaties without the need for force.
Nicholas II
For these reasons, Nicholas II, from the very beginning of his rise to power, forced Li Hongzhang, the plenipotentiary of the Qing Dynasty, to sign the Treaty of Mutual Assistance against Enemies (also known as " )
Sino-Russian Secret Treaty
", 1896). Under the pretext of helping China resist Japan, Russia not only gained the right for warships to freely enter any Chinese port, but also the right to build railways (Middle Eastern railways) and garrison troops in Heilongjiang and Jilin. Two years later, Tsarist Russia forcibly leased Lushun and Dalian, turning the three northeastern provinces into its sphere of influence.
Nicholas II knew that if he wanted to turn the three northeastern provinces into the real territory of Tsarist Russia,
Immigration and cultural aggression
essential. To this end, Nicholas II encouraged the Russians to emigrate in large numbers to northeast China, both as an "internal response" to the war of aggression against China and as a role in developing the local area. At the same time, Tsarist Russia also set up Orthodox churches, Russian language schools and other institutions in the northeast, and distributed a variety of Russian-language newspapers and magazines, with the intention of carrying out cultural "brainwashing" in the northeast and weakening the anti-Russian sentiment of the local people.
The Russian army invading northeast China
Because the overall objectives of the Yellow Russia Plan are too large and the areas involved are complex, it is common sense that it will take at least 20-30 years to complete. However, Nicholas II was impatient and hoped that his general goal would be achieved during his reign. To this end,
Taking advantage of the eight-power alliance to invade China, Nicholas II brazenly sent more than 100,000 troops in July 1900 to invade the northeast in five ways, occupying the whole territory in a very short period of time
。 During this period, the Russian army wantonly slaughtered the Chinese people and created the appalling "Jiangdong Sixty-Four Tun Massacre", which was heinous.
03 Planned bankruptcy
In order to legitimize and prolong the occupation and eventually achieve the goal of incorporating the entire northeast into the territory of Tsarist Russia, in July 1900, Tsarist Russia forced the Shengjing general Zengqi to sign the "
Fengtian handed over the land for the time being
turned the entire northeast into a de facto colony of Tsarist Russia. However, the Qing court, led by Empress Dowager Cixi, refused to sign this unequal treaty, and the people of the northeast also launched a large-scale anti-Russian movement. Under these circumstances, Tsarist Russia had no choice but to sign a "War" with the Qing Dynasty.
Settlement of the Treaty of the Three Eastern Provinces
(1902), promising to withdraw from the three northeastern provinces in stages.
Empress Dowager Cixi
However, in the usual style of Tsarist Russia, it did not want to abide by the treaty at all, and from the moment of signing, it sought various reasons to delay the withdrawal plan. By April 1903, Tsarist Russia had "changed its face" even more, and instead of withdrawing its troops in accordance with the treaty, it proposed to the Qing court the so-called "seven new conditions for withdrawal" and reoccupied Fengtian. At the same time, Nicholas II appointed Alexeyev, the head of the Invading Russian Army, as the Governor of the Far East in a vain attempt to directly rule the three northeastern provinces.
Tsarist Russia's rebellion not only aroused strong protests from the Qing court, but also made other powers deeply disgusted and even hated, especially Japan
。 The reason why Japan hates Tsarist Russia, in addition to the same coveting of the three northeastern provinces, also has a lot to do with the "three-state intervention and Liaoning" incident in that year (Note: After the Sino-Japanese War, Tsarist Russia united Germany and France to force Japan to return the Liaodong Peninsula ceded to it by China). With the increasing sharpening of the contradictions between the two sides,
In 1904, during the struggle for control of northeast China and the Korean Peninsula, Japan and Russia eventually went to war
。
Map of the russo-Japanese War situation
The Russo-Japanese War lasted more than a year and ended in a crushing defeat for Tsarist Russia and a crushing victory for Japan. In 1905, under the mediation of U.S. President Roosevelt Sr., representatives of Japan and Russia signed the "Portsmouth"
Treaty of Portsmouth
, officially declaring an end to the war. According to the treaty, Tsarist Russia transferred all rights and interests in northeast China and the Korean Peninsula to Japan and ceded South Sakhalin Island.
With the withdrawal of Tsarist forces from the northeast, Nicholas II's ambitious "Yellow Russia Plan" collapsed
bibliography
Ding Mingnan and Yu Shengwu: History of Imperialist Aggression against China, People's Publishing House, 1973.
Institute of Modern History, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences: History of Tsarist Russia's Invasion of China, People's Publishing House, 1976.
[United States] Fairbank and Liu Guangjing: The Cambridge History of China's Late Qing Dynasty, China Social Sciences Press, 2007.