Russian Émigrés in Harbin’s Multinational Past: Censuses and Identity

Abstract

The paper examines censuses of Harbin population held in turn by Tsarist Russia, China, the Japanese rulers of Manchukuo, and the PRC in the first five decades of the twentieth century. These censuses reveal how Harbin émigrés from Russia were forced into mutually exclusive collective political identities and how this labelling served political ends of the ruling powers and controlled people’s lives.