Railroad Technocracy, Extraterritoriality, and Imperial <i>Lieux de Mémoire</i> in Russian Émigrés’ Manchuria, 1920–1930s

The Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and the Russian Civil War that ensued generated two types of movements in Manchuria, in Northeast China. One was a demographic movement, the flight of Russian refugees into the region. The other was political and juridical, consisting of initiatives taken by the Chinese republican government to claim territorial sovereignty over Manchuria, and to overturn the unequal treaties signed with the now-defunct Russian imperial state. Both movements revolved around the Chinese Eastern Railroad (CER), the final stretch of Siberian railroad that was built by the Russian state two decades before the revolution. Arriving in Manchuria, a significant number of the refugees, in particular, railroad engineers and other technical professionals, helped retain Russian control in running the railroad. This control served to maintain the CER concession zone as a destination of emigration from Russia, just as the