How the last ruler of the Qing dynasty lived in Soviet captivity and tried to become a communist
In August 1945, Pu Yi, the last emperor of the Qing dynasty that ruled China for three centuries, was captured by the Soviet army. Later, he will become one of the main witnesses at the Tokyo trial against Japanese criminals, ask Stalin to become a communist and will in every possible way demonstrate loyalty to the Soviet regime, realizing that his life depends on it. As he did constantly: the three times retired emperor became famous not for his fortitude, but for his ability to quickly adapt. As a sign of loyalty and "friendship", he even offered the USSR his treasures, which already in the 2000s. surfaced at a private exhibition in Kiev. Vladimir Sverzhin talks about how the retired emperor got into the Soviet camps, tried to become a communist and how his Soviet years passed.
Two year old emperor
In ancient times, the courtesan and dancer Theodora lived in the capital city of Constantinople. She charmed the local sovereign so much that he made her an empress. During the next, often in those parts of the uprising, when her husband urged her to run and be saved, Theodora contemptuously answered the monarch: "Porfira is the best shroud!" and, energetically getting down to business, suppressed the rebellion. The phrase became winged. But few of the hereditary crowned heads at a critical moment could repeat it with the same pride.
Among those who preferred not to stand up to the end, but humbly surrender, was the thrice emperor, Generalissimo Pu I. If you look at his portrait in a ceremonial uniform, you can assume that he spent his life in battles and campaigns. But the reality was much more modest.
Emperor Pu Yi Aixinjuelo (in Manchu Aisin Giro - "golden family") came from the Qing dynasty, which ruled in China since 1644. His family came from Manchuria, and his representatives continued to use the more ancient Mongol khan along with the imperial title. But it was largely thanks to the activities of the monarchs of this dynasty that what we call today's China was formed.
Pu And with his wife.
Promotional video:
Pu Yi was born on February 7, 1906, and already in 1908 he was enthroned. Empress Qi Xi, who ruled before him, deserves a separate story. She is a cruel and unprincipled intriguer, who actually usurped power, and a wise ruler who literally pulled the country out of the centuries-old Middle Ages. In the second half of the 19th century, she took over a country with bows and spears, and left - with railways and armored trains, electricity, telegraph, modern navy, and even a number of civil liberties. If her heir had grown up and successfully ruled China, she would undoubtedly be considered a great sovereign. But everything turned out differently.
Pu Yi's imperial work did not work out. At first, he simply did not grow up to her. It's hard to rule over a country with hundreds of millions of people when you're only two years old. The country was ruled by his father, Prince Chun. Inexperienced in managing a huge turbulent power, he tried to actively carry out reforms, but only achieved that all the bureaucracy in the provinces got out of the control of the center and the power of the monarch was under threat.
At the end of 1911, a revolution took place in China. Of course, the young sovereign could not cope with it, and the regent turned out to be too weak for decisive action. After leaving power, he declared:
The concern showed itself quickly - on February 12, 1912, the 6-year-old emperor abdicated the throne for the first time. But he remained to live in the palace complex "Forbidden City" in Beijing as a foreign monarch. However, in 1917, a new coup took place in the capital, and General Zhong Xun again brought young Pu Yi to power. But after a couple of weeks, the uprising was suppressed. Not having time to really figure out what it was, the emperor was again deprived of the throne.
Over the next years, he, as before, lived in quite comfortable conditions in his own palace, getting used to smiling day after day at the Republicans who had seized power. However, in 1924, the Chinese who returned from Soviet military service decided that the revolution was not quite real, and threw Pu Yi out of the country. Since 1925, the former emperor himself and his "court in exile" settled in the Japanese concession in Tianjin, where the second deposed monarch learned to sincerely smile at the eternal enemies of China and demonstrate deep loyalty to the power that sheltered him.
Pu Yi with members of the Manchurian government.
The art of adjusting
In 1932, with the active help of the Japanese from the territory of China, a puppet state was carved out, proudly called the Great Manchurian Empire (Manchukuo). To make the newly appeared "great empire" convincing, the owners elevated the hapless emperor Pu Yi to the throne there. Of course, now he has grown up and could well rule, but he was not put on the throne so that he would interfere in state affairs. Yes, now he was surrounded by honor, the "friendly" emperor of Japan bestowed orders on him and gave him valuable gifts. He even had his own ministers and army, but there was no more real in this reign than a fire in a fireplace on a canvas in Pope Carlo's closet. Each minister had Japanese deputies who actually dealt with affairs, and the entire command of the Manchu army bore suspiciously Japanese names. And in Japan, Pu Yi himself was originally listed only as the supreme ruler of Manchuria - in fact, the Japanese governor.
Of course, this was another blow to the pride of the heir to the dragon throne, a descendant of the founder of Manchuria, but he was no stranger to it. If he himself wished to deal with state affairs, to conclude alliances with other powers, the Japanese would immediately give him a hand. Years of ordeal for the young monarch made him secretive, withdrawn and overly cautious, not to say fearful. He did not believe in his own strength, but he learned to deftly adapt to the rapidly changing conditions and requirements of the owners. Needless to say, later it was very useful to him.
New Soviet life in the zone
Pu Yi's reign of the Great Manchurian Empire ended in August 1945, when Soviet troops entered the war with Japan. The authors of books in the military adventure genre could certainly write fascinating novels about a secret special operation to capture the emperor and his retinue. However, even here Pu Yi was not lucky - in reality everything was much more prosaic. Driven by their own calculations, and maybe by ordinary compassion, the Japanese intended to take Pu Yi and his closest circle out of the country, but did not have time. The airfield at which the sovereign was waiting to be sent to the islands was captured by a landing force of the advancing Soviet army. Subsequently, the emperor himself recalled it this way:
From that moment on, the emperor began a new life. I must say that the Soviet leadership was somewhat confused, having captured such a "trophy". On the one hand, albeit formally, Pu Yi was the head of a belligerent state. On the other hand, this "unbeaten aristocrat" was so inactive that, apart from his origin, there was absolutely nothing to blame him. He himself stated:
After some deliberation, the Soviet command decided that this generalissimo, even though he had never been on the battlefield, was still a high-ranking prisoner of war, and ordered to send the newly renounced Pu Yi from Chita, where he was originally located, to Khabarovsk, to "Spetsobject-45" …
It was a kind of comfort zone reserved for senior command personnel. In addition to the former emperor, 142 enemy generals and two admirals were kept here. At the same time, Pu Yi and his closest retinue - eight people - were housed on the second floor of the guarded building, and Japanese prisoners of war - on the first. Therefore, the emperor, who decided to testify against the Japanese authorities, always felt: if the guards gape, and the neighbors could simply finish him off.
Arrested Pu Yi, among the Soviet officers and soldiers, is transported to Chita.
This understanding, of course, prompted the emperor to actively cooperate with representatives of the Soviet government, including the Soviet special services. According to the modern Kazakh press, the emperor was even recruited by the Soviet intelligence officer Amir Sultanov. He knew Chinese well and was himself like a Chinese, so the emperor at first took him for a fellow countryman. But even after learning that Sultanov was Kazakh, he remained very disposed towards him. It is doubtful that such a recruitment really took place: as an agent, the former generalissimo had very little applied value, but Pu Yi was prompted by his entire life experience to seek close cooperation with the new government.
The failed communist and his treasures
If Pu Yi's recruitment can be a military legend, then the emperor's attempt to join the Communist Party is a fact. In Moscow, where his application was sent, they must have reacted to him with nervous laughter; a telegram came to Khabarovsk with a refusal. Frustrated, Pu Yi asked if there had ever been an emperor in the Communist Party, when he received the answer no, he sighed heavily: "I could be the first."
On August 20, 1946, Pu Yi arrived in Tokyo to participate in the Tokyo Process. There, according to the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper:
In fact, on this, the real significance of Pu Yi as a valuable witness was exhausted, he himself perfectly understood this. Trying to raise his values for the Soviet power, the former emperor decided, according to the old Eastern custom, to present her with a valuable gift and donated the treasures he had with him for the restoration of the Soviet economy destroyed by the war.
It should be noted that the "cannibalistic" Stalinist regime had never even tried to impose its "clawed paw" on them. According to clearly underestimated and conservative estimates, the transferred gold and jewelry were estimated at more than 900 thousand rubles. In a letter to Stalin personally, Pu Yi wrote:
True, this was far from all that the three times retired emperor had with him at that time. Something was deposited in a local Buddhist temple. His brother Pu Te and other members of his retinue hid the most valuable things in a suitcase with a double bottom. Those were ordered to hide the treasures wherever possible, so that one day there was an embarrassment: the head of the guard gathered the Chinese prisoners and began to demand explanations about who and why hid the precious jewelry in the engine of the faulty car in the yard.
Soviet soldiers pose in the throne room of the Emperor of Manchukuo.
Among the "donated" treasures, according to some researchers, were the sacred sword and mirror of the goddess Amaterasu, the patroness of the Japanese imperial family, presented by Emperor Hirohito. The fact of contemplation of Pu Yi of these national treasures of Japan did indeed take place, but Emperor Hirohito would rather make himself hara-kiri than pass these treasures to anyone. Moreover, to his puppet Pu I. So we can assume that we can only talk about a copy of real relics (those who disagree with this can imagine how Nicholas II, from his generosity, donates the Monomakh hat to the descendant of the last king of the Commonwealth).
Until 1950, Pu Yi and his entourage lived in relative comfort at the Krasnaya Gorka special dacha near Khabarovsk. However, Stalin found friendship with Mao Zedong much more important than keeping the former, now useless, emperor in captivity. It was decided to extradite Pu Yi to China. According to Colonel Klykov, who carried out the transfer of high-ranking prisoners:
Today it is no longer possible to say which “personal values” were transferred along with them. The Soviet Union claimed that these were the very jewels that Pu Yi donated to restore the post-war economy. However, it is known that in 2003 a private exhibition was held in Kiev, in which about 400 items from the treasury of Emperor Pu I. were presented. How they got to the current owner and what happened to them remains a mystery. There is a version that this is some part of the jewels that were hidden in a Buddhist temple, but this is only a version.
Pu Yi and Mao Zedong.
The former emperor himself was held in the Fushun War Criminals Prison for the next nine years. But in 1959, Mao Zedong liberated Pu Yi as a re-educated person with a sweeping gesture. And two years later he even met with him and had a long conversation. After his release, Pu Yi settled in Beijing. He worked in a local botanical garden, then as an archivist at the National Library, and since 1964 became a member of the PRC's political advisory council. With Mao's blessing, he wrote his memoir, The First Half of Life. The Great Helmsman must have liked this work, because in 1966, during the Cultural Revolution, for which Pu Yi was almost the first target, he received special state protection.
However, he did not need this protection for a long time. In 1967, the former thrice emperor, former generalissimo, former prisoner of war and political prisoner, failed communist Pu Yi, died of liver cancer, leaving no offspring behind.
Vladimir Sverzhin