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A belated remark on a 1994 article

Among the new entries displayed in August, 1977 in the library of the Institute of Oriental Studies (St. Petersburg, Russia), rather occasionally (the subject of the article discussed below lies far beyond the field of my own studies) I came across Bruce A. Elleman's (henceforth - B.E.) article "Soviet Territorial Concessions in China and the May 30th. Movement: 1917-1927" (Journal of Oriental Studies, Dongfang wenhua, Centre of Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong, vol. XXXII, 1944, number 2, pp. 162-81). In this article B.E. claims that in the 1920's the Soviet government regained control over most of the Russian property in China. He believes that there were four categories of Russian property in China - legations (in plural ?), consulates, real estate and churches (p. 166), all of which through secret diplomacy with the Peking government (p. 162) were handed over to the USSR. I know nothing about the first three "categories of Russian property". As to the Russian Orthodox churches, B.E claims seem to me rather doubtful...

I was born in China and my family belonged to, as Elleman puts it, "the White Russians". I had as a close relative a high Orthodox priest, who stayed in China from the beginning of the 1020s up to 1956. Hence I am "from within" and know for certain (the documentary evidences are given below) that the opposite was the case. It appears indeed like a miracle (if we bear in mind only the situation in China - civil wars, Japanese occupation, etc., not taking into account the general negative attitude of the Soviet government towards the Church). The Russian Orthodox Church together with its large amount of real estate survived in China not only through the 1920s, but through the 1930s and 1940s up to the middle of the 1950s...

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