861.00/7122: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Ambassador in Great Britain (Davis)
758. You may make the following the basis for informal discussion with the Foreign Office:
The Department of State is in receipt of advices from which it would appear probable that Ataman Semenov, the leader of an anti-Bolshevist Russian faction, basing itself on Chita, in the Trans-Baikal region of Eastern Siberia, may withdraw from Russian territory to the concession zone of the Chinese Eastern Railway. It is desired to present this possibility to the earnest attention of the Foreign Office and to suggest that it be considered in the light of the following:
The group headed by Ataman Semenov is a Russian faction pretending to international status and exercising certain attributes of de facto sovereignty such as the maintenance and control of troops, the exercise of police powers and the regulation of commerce. As such it can have no possible place on territory over which the Chinese Government exercises sovereignty.
With respect to any claim that Semenov’s presence with his troops is required to maintain order on the Russian railroad concession across Manchuria, it is to be remembered that there already exist several agencies charged with this task. Under an agreement as to [Page 540] the distribution of troops on the railways, reached on April 22, 1919, pursuant to article 2 of the plan for the supervision of the Chinese Eastern and Trans-Siberian Railways, dated January 15, 1919, the protection of the entire Chinese Eastern Railway was entrusted by the Inter-Allied Committee to China and Chinese troops. There have always been, moreover, certain Russian instrumentalities existing to safeguard the railroad line. It furthermore appears that there are considerable bodies of Japanese troops present in the railway concession zone. In view of the presence of these three bodies of guards there would not seem to be any necessity now for the presence in the zone of additional Russian troops.
It will be remembered that in undertaking to guard a portion of the railroad, Japan, China and the United States desired to ensure its satisfactory operation. In the course of the functioning of the agreement this Government found it necessary in the summer of 1919 to call upon the Japanese Government to protect the members of the Railway Service Corps against danger to their lives and property, resulting from arbitrary and lawless acts committed in the territory controlled by Ataman Semenov, by forces owing allegiance to him and in distinct contravention of the commands issued by the Russian authorities whom the Powers were then supporting and to whom Semenov was subordinate. There is, therefore, nothing in the past activities of the more or less irregular and undisciplined force directed by Ataman Semenov which would lend color to any claims advanced by him as to his purpose or desire to protect or represent the interests of Russia, now unhappily left without a spokesman in the Far East. It is consequently a matter for grave apprehension lest the presence of his forces in the railway concession zone should lead to serious complications and disorders, which might result in the complete paralysis of traffic on the railroad and an undesirable intensification of its present financial difficulties.
The Department desires to learn whether the British Government would be inclined to join in common representations to China and Japan in the sense of the foregoing.