Chinese in Russian Revolution

Participation of Chinese in Russian Revolution was observed since the very first days. They served as bodyguards of Bolshevik functionaries, served in Cheka, and even formed complete regiments of the Red Army .

This fact was well known

and even exploited by anti-Bolshevik propaganda. Chinese regiments took part in the dispersal of the Russian Constituent Assembly.
Iona Yakir headed a Chinese detachment bodyguarding Lenin and Trotsky. Later he headed a regiment made of Chinese workers, which was distinguished when the Red Army heavily defeated (temporarily) the Romanian troops in February 1918 during the Romanian occupation of Bessarabia.

Large numbers of Chinese lived and worked in Siberia in late Russian Empire. Large numbers of migrant workers were transferred to the European part of Russia during the World War I because of the acute shortage of the workforce. For example, by 1916 there were about 2,000 Chinese workers in Novgorod Guberniya. In 1916-1917 about 3,000 Chinese workers were employed in the construction of Russian fortifications around the Gulf of Finland. A significant part of them were convicted robbers (honghuzi, "Red Beards", transliterated in Russian as "khunkhuzy", Ñ…ÑƒÐ½Ñ…ÑƒÐ·Ñ‹) transferred from katorga labor camps in Kharbin and other Far Eastern places. After the Russian Revolution, Some of them stayed in Finland and took part as mercenaries in the Finnish Civil War on both sides.
After 1917 many of these Chinese workers joined the Red Army.
*Ren Fuchen from Tieling was the first Bolshevik in North Liaoning and a commander of the Chinese regiment of Soviet Red Army. He is commemorated as a revolutionary martyr in People's Republic of China.

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