Commentary | Tatiana Linkhoeva, Russia’s War in Ukraine and the Russo-Japanese War
On April 14th, 2022, news outlets and social media around the world reported live the sinking of the warship Moskva, the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, hit by the Ukrainian forces. Japanese media were quick to note that the warship Moskva was the first Russian battleship hit and sunk since the 1905 Battle of Tsushima, recalling the most spectacular and most remembered battle of the Russo-Japanese War (1904–05) when almost all of the Russian Baltic Fleet was destroyed, leading to Russia’s eventual surrender to Japan. Comparisons between the Russo-Japanese War and Russia’s War in Ukraine soon followed in news and social media outlets, further amplified by the 117th anniversary of the Battle of Tsushima the next month (May 25–28th). Critics of Russia’s invasion have drawn attention to this anniversary and expressed hope for Russia’s imminent defeat, reminiscent of the defeat from the Japanese navy in 1905.
Yet, for those seeking to draw parallels between Vladimir Putin’s plans for Ukraine and the Russo-Japanese War, a more suggestive comparison might be Imperial Japan’s annexation of Korea in 1910, which was the main outcome of the Russo-Japanese War. For the Japanese media, however, the annexation is hardly an event to celebrate, unlike the victory over imperial Russia. Mentioned in passing in history books on the twentieth century, the Russo-Japanese War, nevertheless, occupies a crucial place in national histories of both Russia and Japan, for obviously different reasons. In Russian history, Japan’s victory is remembered for exposing the weakness of the autocracy, causing such unrest in the Russian empire that the Tsar had to limit (in reality, only slightly if at all) his autocratic powers to establish representative institutions and promulgate the first ever Constitution in imperial Russia. In histories of Imperial Japan, the Russo-Japanese War has been nearly universally viewed as a war between progress and backwardness, as a war in which modern and civilized Japan defeated autocratic, backward, corrupt, and imperialist Russia. By drawing parallels between the war in Ukraine and the Russo-Japanese War that assign to Japan a positive role, we revive, in fact, the old imperial discourse. This imperial discourse was promoted by the Japanese imperial government, the military, and the educated elites, and legitimized the war as a just war against an evil autocracy.
“By drawing parallels between the war in Ukraine and the Russo-Japanese War that assign to Japan a positive role, we revive, in fact, the old imperial discourse.”
Needless to say, considering the Russo-Japanese War in binary terms of good versus evil is problematic. Only one part of this equation is true: imperial Russia was indeed autocratic and corrupt. It does not mean, however, that imperial Japan was the epitome of modern progress. And yet, in popular media and in museum exhibitions, the Russo-Japanese War has been often celebrated for its modern achievements. Those in Japanese and foreign popular media who presently admire imperial Japan’s victory ought to remember that both Meiji Japan and Romanov’s Russia went to war out of imperialist interests. The war was fought, after all, over who would control the Korean Peninsula – its people, territory, politics, and economy. Imperial Russia had a strong war party and a racist autocrat, while imperial Japan was paranoid about its security, defense, and economic advantages. As an imperialist war between two imperial powers, fought on the territory of uninvolved third parties (the Korean peninsula and Manchuria), the Russo-Japanese War and the Battle of Tsushima have little in common with the Russia’s aggression in Ukraine. In fact, trendy comparisons sparked by the sinking of the warship Moskva lead to bigger and more important questions of how war memory is instrumentalized.
On the other hand, there are many Japanese commentators who find an eerie resemblance between international affairs in East Asia in the early twentieth century and in Eastern Europe now, and between Putin’s aggression and imperial Japan’s expansionism. But as a citizen of Russia and as a historian of modern Japan, I see more alarming similarities in the way the state and society in Putin’s Russia and Imperial Japan slid into nationalist-militarist fever. Both wartime societies set off processes that, even if predictable, were/are not controllable. In imperial Japan, in anticipation of war, the state initiated for the first time mass mobilization, taking away rural youth and breadwinners; state propaganda went into overdrive, promoting ethnocentric nationalism and emperor worship; right-wing ultranationalist “adventurers” activated on the Asian continent, at times taking initiative on their own, at times led by the military.[1] The cult of the military, in effect, started the process of the gradual militarization of Japanese society, which provided a rationale for the public to accept human sacrifice and economic hardships. Similarly, nationalism, militarization, a great power complex, siege mentality, etc. are features of the post-Soviet Russian state and society.
But the Russo-Japanese War also produced the first anti-war movement in East Asia, led by the leftist Heiminsha (the Commoners) group. Appalled by the scale of the human loss, economic hardships, social disintegration, state propaganda, and the glorification of war, the men and women of the Heiminsha created one of the most powerful anti-war and anti-imperialist writings in East Asia, inspiring generations to come. Anti-imperialism and critiques of Japan’s imperial and colonial capitalism were at the core of the anti-war movement. Remarkably, they went after the emperor himself, challenging the emperor-centric cult ideology that the emperor and the state were one in the same. But what I think was a more important development was how the Heiminsha group and others extended their network to the outcasts (burakumin), Koreans, Chinese, European, and North American socialists to develop ideas and strategies of how to confront not only the imperial state but also to eradicate nationalist/expansionist/racist ideas from the social fabric. They showed for the first time in Japan that any resistance cannot be done alone.
After its victory in the Russo-Japanese War, the Japanese state moved swiftly to annex Korea and to crush opposition at home. In 1911, twelve leading Japanese socialists were hanged, forcing the others to go underground, into exile, or to leave the movement all together. Like in imperial Japan, in the last twenty years Russian opposition has been systematically destroyed; its main activists are currently in prison or exile. Authoritarian states do not tolerate critique of their actions, not in imperial Japan nor in Putin’s Russia. Importantly, however, Japan’s anti-imperialist movement eventually self-organized in the 1920s and became intellectually very vibrant. That will be, hopefully, the next step for the Russian opposition.
History can teach many things: for one, not to fall for a simple binary of good-versus-evil and apply it retrospectively onto past events. As I tell my students: ask yourself who wins from this narrative? Instead, we should shift everyone’s attention to how similar are stories of wartime societies: death, loss, confusion, and anger; but also a chance to reckon with why war was allowed to happen in the first place, what mistakes have been made, and how to avoid them next time. Imperial Japan won the Russo-Japanese War and the victory enabled the regime to carry further for another forty years, bringing an immense suffering to people inside and outside of the growing empire. Let us hope that will not be the case for Russia.
Notes
[1] One can recall that the war in Donbas in 2014 was spearheaded by Russian monarchists/nationalists, acting on their own and often insubordinate to the main military command. One of the most famous being Igor Strelkov. Like Japanese prewar “continental adventurers,” they loathe Russian capitalist oligarchy and dream of Russia’s great power status.
Dr. Tatiana Linkhoeva is Assistant Professor of Modern Japanese History at New York University. She is author of Revolution Goes East: Imperial Japan and Soviet Communism (Cornell University Press, 2020). Her current research is a comparative study of the Soviet and Imperial Japanese regimes in the Mongolian territories.
To cite this essay, please use the entry suggested below:
Tatiana Linkhoeva, “Russia’s War in Ukraine and the Russo-Japanese War,” criticalasianstudies.org Commentary Board, June 6, 2022; https://doi.org/10.52698/SWCM6957.