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Participation of Chinese in Russian Revolution was observed since the very first days. They served as bodyguards of Bolshevik functionaries, served in Cheka, and even formed complete regiments of the Red Army .

This fact was well known and even exploited by anti-Bolshevik propaganda. Chinese regiments took part in the dispersal of the Russian Constituent Assembly. Iona Yakir headed a Chinese detachment bodyguarding Lenin and Trotsky. Later he headed a regiment made of Chinese workers, which was distinguished when the Red Army heavily defeated (temporarily) the Romanian troops in February 1918 during the Romanian occupation of Bessarabia.

Large numbers of Chinese lived and worked in Siberia in late Russian Empire. Large numbers of migrant workers were transferred to the European part of Russia during the World War I because of the acute shortage of the workforce. For example, by 1916 there were about 2,000 Chinese workers in Novgorod Guberniya. In 1916-1917 about 3,000 Chinese workers were employed in the construction of Russian fortifications around the Gulf of Finland. A significant part of them were convicted robbers (honghuzi, "Red Beards", transliterated in Russian as "khunkhuzy", хунхузы) transferred from katorga labor camps in Kharbin and other Far Eastern places. After the Russian Revolution, Some of them stayed in Finland and took part as mercenaries in the Finnish Civil War on both sides. After 1917 many of these Chinese workers joined the Red Army.

Miscellanea

• There is a 1923 short story Chinese Story by Mikhail Bulgakov about a Chinese mercenary in Red Army.
• Ren Fuchen from Tieling was the first Bolshevik in North Liaoning and a commander of the Chinese regiment of Soviet Red Army. He is commemorated as a revolutionary martyr in People's Republic of China.

References

1. Donald Rayfield, Stalin and His Hangmen: The Tyrant and Those Who Killed for Him, Viking Press 2004: ISBN 0670910880 (hardcover)
   • "In 1919, 75 percent of the Cheka's central management was Latvian. When Russian soldiers refused to carry out executions, Latvian (and Chinese force of some 500 men) were brought in.
2. ^ Arthur Ransome (1919) "Russia in 1919", New York, B.W.Huebsch. Chapter "Kamenev And The Moscow Soviet":
   • I talked to the Chinaman afterwards. He is president of the Chinese Soviet. He told me they had just about a thousand Chinese workmen in Moscow, and therefore had a right to representation in the government of the town. I asked about the Chinese in the Red Army, and he said there were two or three thousand, not more.
3. The British Library, Slavonic and East European Collections, Russian and Soviet Posters, 1914-1921, "Anti-Bolshevik posters issued by the Counter-Revolutionary Forces during the Civil War":
   • Poster "Petr and Vasilii, or the Village in "Sovdepiya": The text reads: "Thus the punitive Bolshevik detachments of Latvians and Chinese take bread by force, destroy villages and shoot peasants."
   • Poster "Even the Sailors...": The text reads, in part, "...then the comissars called in the Chinese, and they, calmly, without trembling, shot priests."
4. Leon Trotsky, Between Red and White (1922) Introduction
5. Harry Halén, "Kiinalaiset linnoitustyöläiset vuosina 1916-1917". In: Lars Westerlund (ed.), Venäläissurmat Suomessa 1914–22: osa 2.1 (Russian War Victims in Finland, 1914 - 1922. Part 2.1) Helsinki : Valtioneuvoston kanslia (2004) ISBN 952-5354-43-1 Template:Fi icon
6. "Chinese Story", in "Bulgakov's Encyclopedia" Template:Ru icon
7. Tieling

• Russian Revolution
• Chinese people