To the Harbin Station: The Liberal Alternative in Russian Manchuria, 1898-1914 (review)

To the Harbin Station: The Liberal Alternative in Russian Manchuria, 1898-1914. By David Wolff. (Stanford, Stanford University Press. 1999) 255 pp. $49.00

Harbin, Russia's only colonial city (1898-1917) and one with a distinctive history as "the freest city in the Russian Empire" (10), provides an exceptional Russian urban model of tolerance and liberalism. Built by Russian engineers on the ruins of an old distillery in Northern Manchuria, this railroad stop on the Chinese Eastern Railway grew into a city of 110,000 people by 1913. The population, attracted by economic opportunity and loose civilian governance, comprised virtually every Russian stratum of society, as well as such sizable minorities from the Russian empire as Jews, Poles, and Baltic peoples. A large number of Chinese (one-third of the population by 1913) and a smaller group of Japanese were also drawn to this boomtown.

To explain Harbin's remarkable liberal spirit, Wolff proposes that most of the Russian subjects there had deliberately sought out its guaranteed freedom from oppression. Geography also placed Harbiners far from the Russian capital and its controlling surveillance. Russian administrative and legal institutions were difficult to apply to the motley population and, in any case, Russian imperial laws were selectively enforced. A spirit of ethnic and cultural toleration and cooperation was fostered by Russian graduates of the Vladivostok Eastern Institute who migrated to Harbin and knew and appreciated Chinese language and culture. Wolff argues convincingly that the liberal Harbin pilot pro-ject influenced Russia's 1907 Siberian colonization policy and important agricultural reforms in European Russia.

Harbin, like most imperial Russian cities, was radicalized by the 1905 revolution. The employees of the Chinese Eastern Railroad joined the general strike of 1905, but significantly, unlike Russia proper, the city instituted no pogroms against Jews. Punished briefly with military rule, Harbin soon reverted to its freer governance and took full advantage of the civil rights extended by the 1905 October Manifesto.

This study is not limited to urban history. The author cites interministerial debates about the building, purpose, and management of the city to show how a confused Russian domestic policy misled Japan concerning Russia's intentions in Northern Manchuria. Had Russia spoken with one voice to articulate Minister of Finance Sergei Witte's policy of peaceful penetration and not annexation, perhaps Japan might not have attacked Port Arthur in early 1904.

Liberal and multi-ethnic Harbin was not to last more than two decades. China reclaimed the territory in 1920, only to lose it in 1931 to the Japanese, who, in turn, had to cede the area to China after World War II. In 1949 it became part of Communist China. At present no Russians are left among the population.

The author is admirably suited for this project. Obtaining material from archives and libraries in seven countries, he applied his knowledge of Russian, Japanese, Chinese, and European languages to utilize a wealth of primary material. It is also evident from the text that he writes gracefully in English. This historical study should appeal to a broad audience: to urban, diplomatic, military, regional, and railroad historians; to the growing number of those who study Siberia; to demographers and social scientists interested in ethnic and minority interaction; and to humanists and linguists involved in Russian oriental studies (see the Appendix: "Some Notes on Russian Sinology in Beijing, Kazan, St. Petersburg, and Vladivostok, 1715-1899"). Former Russian Harbiners, such as Nicholas V. Riasanovsky, whose incisive introduction betrays nostalgia for his native city, should also discover in this excellent study a meaningful history of their past.

Patricia Herlihy
Brown University

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