Karakhan Manifesto

▪ China-Union of Soviet Socialist Republics [1919]

      manifesto issued on July 25, 1919, by Lev Karakhan, a member of the foreign ministry of the newly formed Soviet republic, in which he offered to relinquish all Soviet claims to the special rights and privileges won by the Russian tsarist government in China. The proposal, even after it was later somewhat modified, created a favourable impression in China; it was the first unilateral expression of friendship and offer of equality from a European country.

      The climate created by this manifesto encouraged an interest in Marxism among Chinese intellectuals, who two years later formed the first Chinese Communist Party. Because of the precarious position of both the Soviet and Chinese governments in 1919, the proposal was not immediately taken up, and it did not become generally known in China until March 1920.

      Meanwhile, in September 1920, Karakhan repeated his proposal to the Chinese, this time offering it as a basis for negotiations between the two nations. After extended negotiations, a treaty was finally signed on May 31, 1924, and it actually reaffirmed much of the former tsarist position in North China. Under the treaty the Russians surrendered their rights of extraterritoriality—that is, the right of foreigners to be tried by their own consuls and to govern themselves in China. The Russians insisted, however, on the joint Chinese-Soviet administration of the Chinese Eastern Railway, the railroad line running through the northeastern Chinese provinces of Manchuria from Siberia to the Russian warm-water port of Vladivostok on the Sea of Japan. The railway had been built originally by the Russians about the turn of the century. During the Russian Civil War the line had been placed under the control of a commission of the Western powers. Now the Russians reclaimed it, agreeing in principle, however, to the eventual purchase of the railway by China.

      The treaty also provided for the preservation of Soviet influence in the crucial border country of Outer Mongolia. Karakhan was allowed to become a full ambassador, which made him the highest-ranking foreign minister in China.

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