As is well known, mass emigration began following the collapse of the Russian Empire and the Bolsheviks’ rise to power. The overwhelming majority of those who left were military personnel, nobles, entrepreneurs, the intelligentsia, Cossacks, the clergy, civil servants, as well as those who did not wish to live under the new workers’ and peasants’ government.
Between 1917 and 1939, former citizens of the empire traveled mainly to Western Europe, but countries in Central and Southern Europe (Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Serbia, and Turkey) and the countries of Southeast Asia were also popular destinations. According to statistics, by the end of the 1920s, approximately 25,000 emigrants were living in the Chinese city of Shanghai. In Harbin, however, there were four times as many—about 100,000. And in the so-called exclusion zone of the Chinese Eastern Railway (CER), there were another 100,000.
It goes without saying that during the Soviet era, most of those who left were erased from history and forgotten. Only in the last few decades have researchers begun to take an interest in the fates of the millions of people who left their homeland against their will. The topics of research devoted to emigrants are quite diverse. There are large-scale works, such as the multi-volume series *Unforgotten Graves* (edited by Vadim Nikitich Chuvakov), which compiles information on more than 65,000 people who ended up in exile in various countries. And there are local studies as well, such as those dedicated to those buried in the Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois Cemetery, located on the outskirts of Paris. Of course, such “emigrant compilations” include quite a few natives of our beautiful city and region.
The fates of tens of thousands of Sloboda Ukraine emigrants, scattered across the globe, unfolded in completely different ways. Some of them died in poverty or took their own lives. Others found the strength to carry on, achieving fame and success. Today’s article will focus on those whose lives became intertwined with China.
On July 3, 1877, a daughter named Olga was born to the family of A. A. Kolesov, the director of the Kharkiv Agricultural School, a scholar, and a writer. Upon graduating from the Kharkiv Institute for Young Ladies in 1895, she received an award—a “large gold medal”—for her outstanding academic performance. Using her own funds, she opened an elementary school near Kharkiv for peasant children and married the livestock breeder Ivan Morozov. However, the wonderful journalist and writer Olga Alexandrovna is known to the world not by her husband’s surname at all. In her memoirs, she recalls:
She made her literary debut 20 years ago by publishing her Easter satirical piece “The Birch Grove” in the Kharkiv newspaper *Yuzhny Krai* under the pseudonym “M. Aleksandrov,” since the newspaper’s publisher and editor at the time, Yuzefovich, was more than skeptical about having young women contribute to his publication. And so that pen name has stuck with me for the rest of my life…
In 1911, she left our city with her family and settled in Semipalatinsk, where, during World War I, she worked as a Red Cross nurse and also used her own money to open a 50-bed hospital. During the Civil War, she organized a field hospital for Kolchak’s army. While traveling with her family from Omsk by train, a Red commissar killed her husband and one of her daughters. Fleeing the Bolsheviks, Olga Alexandrovna crossed the Gobi Desert with her son and reached Chinese Turkestan. There, after learning the basics of the language, she opened her own notary office. Then, in 1927, she moved to Tianjin to be with her daughter Vera. While living in China, she wrote articles on various topics for émigré newspapers and magazines (*Slovo*, *Shanghai Zarya*, *Parus*), as well as novels and comedies.
In 1949, after World War II, due to the advance of the “Red” Chinese, she moved to Tubabao Island (Philippines), and from there, in 1951, to San Francisco (U.S.).
She died on January 1, 1968, in Los Angeles.
However, the name of another native of our city has now been forgotten in his homeland. In his works on emigrants from China and the United States, researcher Amir Aleksandrovich Khisamutdinov provides a brief biography of a well-known artist.
Sergei Ivanovich Shcherbakov (July 7, 1894, Kharkiv — January 24, 1967, San Francisco). He graduated from the Stroganov School in Moscow. During the Civil War, he left for Harbin with his father, then lived in Japan for five years. He emigrated to the United States in 1931 and lived in San Francisco. In 1942, he released a series of charity postcards that were sold in public places throughout California, with the proceeds sent as humanitarian aid to the USSR. He built a summer house called “Shcherbakovka.” He participated in exhibitions throughout the United States. The artist’s last solo exhibition took place in November 1966. After Shcherbakov’s death, his widow donated his collection of paintings to the USSR.
To this day, little is known about another artist whose name is also associated with Kharkiv and Shanghai.
Researchers have not yet been able to determine even the years of Adam Henrichovich Novitsky’s birth and death. All that is known is that he graduated from the Kharkiv Art School in 1913 and subsequently worked in our city as a set designer for the new opera house. From 1932 onward, he lived in Shanghai, where he headed the art and printing department of the firm “Sight Shadow” and later became its manager. He designed the cover for K. A. Chkheidze’s book *The Land of Prometheus*.
When discussing Slobozhans who emigrated to China, it is worth mentioning the famous singer and conductor Pyotr Nikolaevich Mashin, who was born in our beloved city on February 1, 1877. He received his education at the Kharkiv Music School and, from 1907 to 1924, taught singing at the Harbin Commercial School. There, Mashin also opened his own music school. In 1925, he moved to Shanghai and organized a Ukrainian choir there. In 1928, he was honored for his masterful conducting of a mixed choir that performed in honor of the centennial of Schubert’s death. Pyotr Nikolaevich died in Shanghai on March 7, 1944.
And, of course, it would be unthinkable not to mention Ivan Vasilyevich Svit. He was born on June 27, 1897, in the Starobils’k District to a priest’s family. He spent his childhood in the Kup’yans’k District; there, in Kup’yans’k, he graduated from school in 1913 and from the Kharkiv Theological Seminary in 1915. He then studied at the Faculty of Mathematics at Kharkiv University. After the “Red” troops entered our city, Svita left Kharkiv and lived in Vladivostok from 1918 to 1922, where, after holding various jobs, he was able to secure a position as a journalist for the Siberian Telegraph Agency. He also contributed to the English-language magazine *Echo*, published in Vladivostok. In 1920, Svit became a correspondent for the newspaper *Dalekaya Okraina* (1920), and from 1921 to 1922, for *Vechernyaya Gazeta*. He served as editor and publisher of the newspaper *Rassvet* and as editor of the magazine *Voskhod*. In 1922, Ivan Vasilyevich published the weekly magazine *Poleznye Izvestiya* (*Useful News*), in which he often wrote about Ukraine and Ukrainians. In addition, he took an active part in the work of the “Ukrainian Revolutionary Headquarters.”
In October 1922, Svit moved to Harbin, where he began working at the economic bureau of the South Manchurian Railway (SMR). During this period, he wrote a number of works on economic topics. From 1926 to 1927, he served as editor of the magazine *Commercial Telegraph*. While in Harbin, Ivan Vasilyevich also took an active part in the public life of the Ukrainian community. He was a member of various national organizations (the “Union of Ukrainian Students,” “Prosvita,” and the “Ukrainian Political Center”), as well as the editor of several Ukrainian newspapers. It was Svit who organized the Ukrainian Publishers’ Union in Harbin.
Through his personal connections between representatives of the Japanese military mission and the Manchukuo authorities, he sought to promote the ideas of the Ukrainian liberation movement and strengthen the Ukrainian position in Manchuria. Here are just a few examples of Svit’s vigorous pro-Ukrainian activities in Harbin: on July 22, 1941, Ivan Vasilyevich moved to Shanghai, where he opened a stamp shop; in 1942, he was elected chairman of the Ukrainian National Committee in East Asia; at the same time, he worked as the editor of the Ukrainian nationalist newspaper *The Call of the Ukraine* (*Zov Ukrainy*). While living in Shanghai, Ivan Vasilyevich played an active role in the publication of the first-ever “Ukrainian-Japanese Dictionary” in Harbin in 1944.
Before the Chinese Communist forces captured Shanghai in 1949, he organized the evacuation of local Ukrainians to the Philippines, from where he eventually moved to the United States and lived in New York and Seattle. He died on March 8, 1989, at the age of 91.
To reiterate, this is merely a brief biography of one of the most prominent members of the Ukrainian diaspora—a journalist, historian, philatelist, and author of more than 2,000 articles, books, and brochures in Ukrainian, Russian, English, and Japanese. It is unfortunate that this distinguished figure is not commemorated in any way on the streets of Kharkiv, Ukraine.
We still don’t know how many such names of Slobozhans, scattered across the globe, there are. I would like to believe, however, that sooner or later the memory of these people will surely return to their homeland.
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