[Enclosure—Translation]
The Soviet Acting Commissar for Foreign
Affairs (Karakhan) to the Chinese
Chargé in the Soviet Union (Hsia)71
Mr. Chargé d’Affaires: On May 27, at 2
o’clock p.m. the premises of the Consulate General of the Union of
Soviet Socialist Republics at Harbin were suddenly invaded by a
detail of police. A search was made which lasted about six hours.
During all this time the Consul General of the Union of Soviet
Socialist Republics, Mr. Melnikov, and his assistants were detained
and were deprived of the possibility of communicating with the
outside world. With respect of the Vice Consul Mr. Znamensky,
physical force was employed. Regardless of the decisive protest of
the Consul, the police took away a part of the Consular
correspondence, and arrested all the visitors, to the number of 39,
there were in the various rooms of the Consulate. All of those
arrested were Soviet citizens living in Manchuria. Among them were
many employees of Soviet state economic institutions and of the
administration at Harbin of the Chinese Eastern Railway, who had
come there on the affairs of their institutions or had called on
passport and visa business, and, lastly, three temporary extra
workers at the Consulate. Chinese policemen and Russian
white-guardsmen serving in the Chinese police openly carried off
money and things, belonging to the Consulate and its employees.
On the next day after the search the police for its part published a
statement, exceptional for shamelessness and stupidity, about a
“session of the III International”, alleged to have been going on in
the “basement[”] of the Consulate and to have been discovered by
them. At the same time, with the manifest inspiration of the
self-same police, the Chinese and white-guard press is printing
further provocative inventions, designed to justify the illegalities
of the police authorities.
The police raid and search in the premises of the Consulate General
of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, which is under the
protection of international law, was a flagrant violation of the
very bases of international law. The detention of the Consul and his
assistants for six hours; the arrest of visitors, including those
found in the office of the Consul General himself; the seizure of
Consular correspondence, inviolable under international law,
accentuate still more the violent and lawless character of all this
affair, emphasizing the complete contempt of the police authorities
for the elementary principles of international law and international
intercourse.
[Page 194]
The outright outrages on the part of the policemen which accompanied
the search—the pilferage of property and money, the physical
violence offered to Consular assistants, are the natural
concomitants of such arbitrary conduct, and fully correspond to the
character of the whole conduct of the police authorities toward a
Consulate General of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
The actions of the Harbin police authorities do not at all acquire
legality from the wholly unfounded and provocative explanations and
charges against the Consulate that these authorities are publishing
in the press. The statements about a “session of the III
International” going on in the Consulate is a manifest, stupid
invention, without rhyme or reason, moreover, as is plain to be
seen, and is merely an awkward attempt on the part of these same
local authorities to evade merited responsibility for their flagrant
actions, apt to create new complications in the mutual relationships
between the two neighboring countries.
The Union government is obliged to bring to the attention of the
Government of the Chinese Republic that the unlawful police raid on
the Consulate General of the U. S. S. R. at Harbin occurred after
prolonged preparation in the form of a provocative campaign begun
against the Soviet Union and against its Consular offices, which
found expression not only in irresponsible observations in the press
but also in slanderous utterances on the part of official and
unofficial persons and institutions of the National Government. The
Union government finds that a regular police raid on the premises of
the Consulate General of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics at
Harbin, together with the above mentioned campaign, creates a
situation in which the normal work of the Consular offices of the
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on Chinese territory becomes
exceedingly difficult, if not wholly impossible. The resulting
position is the more serious in that the recent events were preceded
by the raid on the Embassy of the Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics at Peking on August [April] 6,
1927, the white-guard raid on the Soviet Consulate at Shanghai on
October 25, 1927, the devastation of the Soviet Consulate at Canton
in December, 1927, accompanied by the killing of 5 of its employees,
and a number of violent actions inflicted by the Chinese side upon
the Chinese Eastern Railway. All these acts, responsibility for
which lies at the doors of various Chinese authorities, as is known,
still remain unatoned, and are hindering the reestablishment of
normal Chinese-Soviet relationships.
The Union government, for its part, in spite of a series of acts of
exceptionally provocative character on the part of Chinese
authorities [Page 195] with respect
of the Embassy and the Consulates of the Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics in China, has with inexhaustible patience refrained from
answering with any repressive measures, justified as they would be
by the circumstances. The Union government in particular has
continued to render to the Mission and Consulates of the Chinese
Republic on the territory of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
all the protection that is assured to them by international law and
that is essential to their normal functioning. The Union government
has been guided in this matter by the desire to assure to the
Chinese citizens, living on the territory of the Union of Soviet
Socialist Republics, the same degree of protection and care, on the
part of their Consular institutions, that are enjoyed by the foreign
citizens of other Powers, which maintain with the Soviet Union
diplomatic relations. The Union government is obliged, however, to
affirm that this calm and friendly position of its is, obviously,
being distorted by influences hostile to the Union of Soviet
Socialist Republics into proof of its readiness to leave unanswered
all future provocations of its Consular offices in China.
Confronted with a new provocative and violent act with respect of its
Consular service, the Union government is obliged to make the most
decided protest against said police outrages, and to demand an
immediate order for the liberation of the Soviet citizens arrested
in the premises of the Consulate, and the return of all the
correspondence that was carried off and all the things and money
that were stolen.
At the same time the Union government is obliged to declare that, as
the Chinese authorities with all their actions plainly show that
they neither can nor will give due weight to the universally
accepted norms of international law and usage, it for its part no
longer regards itself as bound by these norms with respect of the
Chinese Representation at Moscow and the Chinese Consulates on the
Soviet territory, and that in future this Representation and the
Consulates will not be conceded the right of extraterritoriality,
with which international law clothes them.
The Union government declares that the Soviet Union in all
circumstances inalterably strives to maintain and sustain friendly
relations with the Chinese people. The Union government is obliged,
however, most decisively to warn the Nanking Government and its
organs from further trying the longsuffering of the government of
the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics with provocative acts and
with the violation of treaties and agreements.
Accept [etc.]
