In mid July 1900, while the Boxers in Peking laid siege to the foreign embassies, Chinese troops from the small settlement of Sakhalien (Chinese Heihe 黑河) shelled the city of Blagoveshchensk located across the Amur River. Although subsequent reports confirmed that there were no casualties on the Russian side, in the panic following the incident the inhabitants of Blagoveshchensk turned against the Chinese population of the city, who at the time numbered 5-6,000 people. On July 16, Chinese residents were rounded up and taken down to the river in order to be transported across to the other side. When no boats were found, they were driven at bayonet point into the river and told to swim to the other side. Nearly all of these people drowned and only less than a hundred of them were able to reach the other bank.

The number of those drowned in the Amur was never conclusively established — estimates ranged between 3-5,000. Although news of the tragic events did not appear in the Russian press at the time, later on they were extensively discussed both in Russia and abroad. While opinions differed as to who was responsible for this incident and to what degree, most sources agreed that the tragedy was triggered by the panic that followed the Chinese attack.¹ Because of the disturbances in China, most of the local troops had been mobilized and sent to the region of Harbin, leaving Blagoveshchensk practically unprotected. When the Chinese opened fire on Russian steamers on the Amur and forbade any further navigation on the river, the level of tension in the city reached its peak. By this time, of course everyone in town had heard of the atrocities committed against foreigners in China but for the first time such reports gained relevance at this distant frontier. Thus when on July 14 Chinese troops began shelling the city, a panic ensued as inhabitants expected a full-fledged assault and massacre. Suddenly, the thousands of Chinese residents who had been working on the Russian side as tailors, laundrymen, cooks or servants were considered a threat.

What follows below is a translation of a first-hand account from the weeks immediately following the massacre, written by Aleksandr Vasilievich Vereshchagin (1850-1909), a Colonel of the Russian General Staff.² With the outbreak of the Boxer Rebellion and the military tension that followed, he received orders to travel to Manchuria. Following his return home, in 1902 he published in instalments an account of his travels through the troubled regions of the Amur and Manchuria under the title “Through Manchuria, 1900-1902.”³

Vereshchagin left Moscow on July 30, 1900, first heading for Khabarovsk.⁴ By the time of his departure, the Boxer rebellion was already in full swing and foreign embassies in Peking were under siege. Yet at this time there had been no disturbances along the Manchurian border.  The news of the Chinese shelling Blagoveshchensk reached him and his fellow passengers on the train, shortly before arriving in Irkutsk. There were also rumors of the sacking of the city, although later it was confirmed that the Chinese only shelled the Russian bank from the other side of the Amur. By the time he arrived in Blagoveshchensk, the panic was mostly over and the troops of General Rennenkampf were effectively clearing the southern bank of the river. By interviewing local residents he gathered bits and pieces of information about the whole-sale drowning of the Chinese population of the city, which he was also able to substantiate when he continued his journey down the Amur and their steamer overtook hundreds of corpses floating downstream. Surprisingly, for weeks the incident remained relatively unknown even within the Russian army, and when on August 2, almost a month later Vereshchagin dined with a group of officers in Nikolsk-Ussuriisk, of the twenty or so people present nobody had heard of the tragedy prior to that moment.

Vereshchagin’s account is one of the very few recorded during or immediately after the events that transpired in Blagoveshchensk in July 1900. It is valuable not only as a report of what happened but also of how the inhabitants of the city felt about the death of the thousands of innocent Chinese civilians, many of whom they knew personally. Although the author himself assumes the role of an outsider who merely passes through the city, he is clearly shocked by both the gruesome nature of the incident and the dispassionate attitude of some locals regarding it.

 

Translation⁵

 

From Pokrovka to Blagoveshchensk

In some places the Amur branches out to the extent that it is hard to know where the real banks are.

“Over there, is that the Amur or a side branch?” I asked the old pilot. He sat calmly on the bench by the wheel and only from time to time waved with his arm to show the helmsman which way to steer.

“Branch!” he muttered and then went back to doing his job. There was an infinite number of these branches. The Amur is filled with islets of most diverse appearance, and some of them can be very peculiar. But what is especially interesting about the Amur is the difference between the two banks. Our bank, which was on the left side, is, with rare exceptions, uninhabited and inaccessible. There are very few Cossack villages or settlements of any kind, surrounded by poor hayfields and meadows.

The Chinese bank on the right side of the river is just the opposite, even if in places it is also wild and rocky. The hayfields here were abundant and it seemed that nobody harvested the grass. There were no stacks or haycocks anywhere. Suppose this had been a troubled summer, we were at war with the Chinese. But if these hayfields had been harvested in previous years, we would have been able to see some old fences or racks for the hay. However, nothing like that could be seen. Everything was desolate, with no sign of humans. Only once we noticed from the steamer a Chinaman. He walked hurriedly along the shore, now disappearing in the tall grass, now resurfacing again. This sight was so unexpected and rare that all passengers watched him at length, until he disappeared completely.

I don’t remember at which place on the river we began overtaking steamers with troops on them. These were double-deck steamers of the American type, so-called sternwheelers, i.e. they had only a single paddle wheel at the rear.

Where were these steamers from? Where were they heading? Who was their chief officer in charge? These were the questions we kept asking each other. Finally, at one of the stops to wood up we learnt that this was the detachment of General Rennenkampf. He had been ordered to clear the right bank of the enemy and then catch up with the detachment of Gribskii. Then they were to jointly take Aigun, still occupied by Chinese troops who were not letting our steamers through.

We rode out from behind a sandbank onto a wide stretch on the river, and a spectacular sight opened before my eyes. The Amur is extremely wide. We could see its blue far in the distance. And on this blue surface the steamers followed each other in a long succession; each of them was painted white, leaving behind a black trail of smoke against the sky. Even without binoculars we could see that all these steamers were carrying troops. The soldiers wore white dress caps and shirts. I began counting the vessels. There were twelve of them. With four hundred soldiers per steamer, they were carrying about five thousand troops in total.

At this point one of the steamers issued a signal. Suddenly the entire fleet turned sharply against the flow and we stopped at the Chinese bank. I use the word “we” because for safety reasons our steamer was obliged to follow the military vessels. We stopped right underneath a high cliff, on the top of which our Cossacks already managed to erect a cross. By the time we landed, Rennenkampf and his detachment were already gone in search of the enemy.  I stepped onto the bank. My God, what grass! It felt like I was sinking in it. So fragrant, simply amazing!

We did not wait for the return of Rennenkampf’s detachment but boarded our steamer and moved on. Still quite a distance before Blagoveshchensk, we noticed the flames of a massive conflagration. It was the small Chinese settlement of Sakhalien, located directly across from Blagoveshchensk. Following the Chinese bombardment of our side, our troops completely destroyed this place, burning it to the ground.

It is awkward to arrive at night into an unfamiliar city. Where to go? Which inn to choose? All of us were asking ourselves the same questions. But we worried in vain, as we were not to go ashore at this point.

 

Blagoveshchensk

As soon as our steamer reached the pier, a whole battalion of soldiers began making their way to us along the gang plank. We transported them to the small settlement of Sakhalien, already enforced by the detachment of General Rennenkampf. In the semi-darkness illuminated by the bright reflection of the conflagration, we could see groups of soldiers and officers. They were standing in anxiety, not knowing where they were being led and what would come of this expedition. Rumors about Chinese troops were most contradictory. Some said that they were complete cowards and could not withstand the slightest pressure of our soldiers. Others were of just the opposite opinion, claiming that the Chinese were very resistant and when a Cossack tried to cut down a mounted Chinese, the latter avoided the sword by falling to the ground, and from there he shot the Cossack, etc.

Morning. We all headed to look for vacant inn rooms. I was lucky to find a great room very close to the pier, and I moved in without delay. The room cost me five rubles per day. Currently, the entire city talked about the drowning of the Chinese residents of Blagoveshchensk. Even though it had been about three weeks since then, people discussed the incident as agitatedly as if it happened only yesterday.

As I sat in the common cafeteria having breakfast, I noticed a two-horse droshky driving up to our staircase. An officer in police uniform stepped out.

“Here is a person I could have an interesting conversation with about the disaster,” I thought to myself. “It would be nice to get acquainted with him!”

I walked up to him and introduced myself. We exchanged greetings. I led him back to my room and we began to talk.

“Could you please tell me who ordered them to be drowned?” I inquired.

“Nobody actually ordered to drown them,” calmly answered my discussant, downing a glass of lemonade. “The representative of the military command center issued an order to gather all Chinese residents and escort them along the river to Upper Blagoveshchensk, where the Amur is narrower, and from there send them in boats to the other bank. I ordered my police chief to fulfill this command. He took with him sixty Cossacks. They managed to gather the Chinese but they found no boats on the bank at all. So they started driving them right into the water, since everyone was completely panic-ridden.”

“So how many of them do you think drowned?”

“Quite a lot because they were driven into the water in rows of three,” replied my new acquaintance. And this was all I could find out from him. The same night went to the pier to enquire about the departure time of the next steamer for Khabarovsk. Here, sitting on a bench, I struck up a conversation with the ticket vendor, a very sweet and respectable old man.

“You see that large stone building across our pier?” he pointed forward with his hand. “The whole first floor was occupied by a Chinese store. The owner, a fat old Chinaman, had been trading there for about thirty years. He was very rich, but at the same time exceedingly kind, writing off lots of debts for us Russians every year. We were on very good terms with him as neighbors. So when they were being driven out of their homes, he was driven out, too. Well, he was such a prominent figure; he was not used to being pushed by force. Everyone respected him in this city, since he moved quite a lot of money around. In addition, it was a very hot day. Our Chinaman could not move fast enough, he was out of breath. As soon as he saw me, he began hugging me, and threw himself in front of me. ‘Ivan! Ivan!’ he cried, ‘Save me!’ He took out his wallet. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘this is forty thousand; take all, just save me.’ In reply, I said, ‘I am just an ordinary man, what can I do?’ At this moment a Cossack laid a whip across the back and drove him on. I never saw him again.”

The ticket vendor told this story so sincerely and poignantly that I did not doubt his words for a second. I instantly imagined this fat Chinaman, with a red sweaty face in the summer heat, in a blue silk khalat, driven by Cossack whips in the crowd.

Of course, it is an outrage that thousands of peaceful residents had been murdered. The claims that there were three thousand of them are certainly only a modest estimate. Some people assured me that the number of dead was nearly ten thousand. Will we ever know the truth? God knows. Then again, we also need to understand the Russian side. Half of the city’s population was Chinese. And then, all of a sudden, the city was being bombarded from the other side. And who was firing? Their own compatriots, people of the same faith. Not surprisingly, the residents of the city began to feel animosity against them. The whole city believed that there was a conspiracy between these and those Chinese, with the common aim to exterminate Russians. At the same time, there were no troops in the city, save for a reserve battalion. No weapons either. So when the gun fight began, all Russians ran to the command center requesting weapons and pleaded to have the local Chinese moved to the other side. And when those were driven down to the river but no means of transport were available, it was almost inevitable that such a tragedy would occur.

With its embankment, the main boulevard and its straight wide streets Blagoveshchensk makes a beautiful impression. Some of the buildings could be just as well standing on the Nevsky prospekt in St. Petersburg.

On July 22⁶, around noon, as I stood on the embankment I noticed that people from the entire city poured down to the pier. “What’s the matter?” I asked one of the inhabitants. “Aigun is taken!” he replied cheerfully. “A steamer is coming from Aigun!” Indeed, a steamer’s smoke rose against the bluish strip of the Amur. The deck was decorated with colorful Chinese flags. The crowd pushed flat against the pier, and the police could only hold them back with great difficulty. Finally, the steamer reached the dock and I could see several old and heavy Chinese canons on the deck, just seized by our troops, as well as dozens of various old rifles. In addition, a great number of flags, insignia and banners were flapping in the wind. In the bright sunshine, from the top of the steep riverbank, all this made a magnificent sight. The people of the city were greatly overjoyed.

 

From Blagoveshchensk to Khabarovsk

On July 24⁷ our entire party once again boarded the steamer and moved on. As before, our bank remained poor and inhospitable, whereas the Chinese side was covered in green vegetation. It seemed that there was an unlimited amount of hay there. The only problem was that there were not enough working hands. We did not see a single Chinese fangzi, only burnt down pickets here and there. In the distance we could make out lush oak trees with cooling shade against the summer heat, black birches, cork trees, luxurious walnut and ash-trees, maples, tall pointed cedars, either one by one or in groves. All of them were supplementing the magnificent scenery...

It has been almost a month since I left Petersburg but I still have not seen any Chinese, apart from the workers encountered along the way.

Early in the morning, I went out on the deck. The sun was just starting to spread its dazzling rays over the horizon. Everyone on the steamer was asleep. Only the captain, a tall, lean man with a red moustache and black navy jacket walked up and down the deck house, with hands behind his back. I greeted him. The steamer glided rapidly on the smooth surface, leaving behind it a trail of waves. We passed a rich Chinese village situated directly on the river. From the top of the deck we could clearly see the gray wealthy fangzi, the beautiful temples and storehouses. A multitude of wheat stacks, hay, stocks of firewood, logs and all kinds of other things. It appeared that the inhabitants had just abandoned the village, and there was a lot of livestock, horses, cows and calves, sheep, swine grazing around the village and its surroundings. On the riverside two dozens of insignia and banners, with some writings on them, were attached to high poles. Who knows what they meant. Most likely the inhabitants were trying to persuade the Russians to spare their village and not to pillage it. Indeed, what good can come out of such cruelty? The people ran away, leaving behind their homes and all possessions to the mercy of the Russians. It was as if they were saying, if you really have to, take what you need for provisioning the troops, but spare the walls and the rest of our things within.

“Captain! How about picking up a few banners? Those red ones with white in them are quite beautiful!” I yelled towards him. The captain consented, stopped the steamer and lowered a boat. Four of the crew quickly rowed to the shore and in about ten minutes they were back with the trophies. To be honest, I was quite fearful that a volley would be fired from the village while the crew were removing the banners. But everything worked out fine. And after not more than an hour we stopped on our side at a Cossack village to wood up. A tall, handsome man with a thick light-brown beard came up to me. He was the local ataman and was wearing a sword and uniform with yellow collar.

“Your High Nobleness! Would you permit our Cossack women to pay a visit to Nikanka⁸, to utilize some of those things,” he pleaded. “Why burn everything -- it would benefit no one. But we could really use some of the stocks. This has been a hard year indeed, everyone was taken off to the war and there was nobody to harvest the wheat. Only the women and children were left behind.”

“I am not in command here!” I told him. “You’d better go see General Rennenkampf who is coming after us with his detachment, and ask him. He can do here whatever he pleases.”

In retrospect, the words of the ataman were proven to be prophetic. As soon as the detachment landed, flames enveloped Nikanka from all sides, and with the village all stocks also went up in flames. What was the point of all this! Just like the ataman said -- it benefitted no one...

We proceeded quickly onward. Our steamer was moving downstream at the speed of twenty-twenty five versts an hour. I forgot to say that on both the Shilka and the Amur signal lights are placed along the river on known places; these pilot lights are used to navigate the steamers.

The Amur is beautiful and majestic. The stretch of the river we were passing probably extended to about ten versts. The sun sprayed golden colors over the calm blue of the water, and the light playfully reflected from the surface. An American lady in a white dress and straw hat wound in a white veil cheerfully walked around the deck, followed by a crowd of officers. They were joking, laughing and talking among themselves. I sat on a bench near the pilot’s deck house and admired the view. But what is that in front of us? Some dark objects were scattered in the water. As we were drawing up closer and closer, the objects grew in number and were becoming more and more noticeable.

“A Chinaman!” told me the old pilot in a low voice, in such an unruffled tone as if we were talking about a snag or an undercurrent. Despite his advanced age, the pilot had remarkable eyesight. On dark nights he would always be the first to notice the signal lights. No matter how much I strained my eyes, I was never able to discern them first. A scornful smirk appeared on the old man’s wrinkled face covered in thin brownish beard. As if he was saying, “what’s the use of paying attention to such trivialities!” The pilot was right. Our steamer was fast overtaking a drowned man. He was naked, of reddish-bronze color, with spread legs and arms hanging down on his sides. He floated face down, almost as if immersed in deep thought. The corpse was awfully bloated; the extremities were white and appeared to be made of lime. Then the waves created by the steamer reached the body and it adopted their rhythm, now rising, now sinking.

After this Chinaman we came across another one, then another one, and finally the whole width of the Amur was covered with floating bodies, as if chasing us. All passengers came out of their cabins to take a look at this extraordinary sight. I shall never forget it until my dying day. Clearly, these were those unfortunate ones who had been drowned in Blagoveshchensk. Having stayed a given amount of time on the bottom, they bloated and rose to the surface.

“Gentlemen! Gentlemen! Look how many of them are on the shore! Those are all Chinamen, too!” excitedly cried out a red-haired lieutenant in a tussore tunic, shading his eyes with his hand. At this section, the left bank of the Amur protruded into the middle of the river, forming a wide and flat sandbar. And this is where the drowned corpses accumulated.

“Feodor Vasilievich, could you please pass me the binoculars!” I turned to my friend lieutenant-colonel R., to whom a bit earlier I had lent the general’s binoculars. These were great binoculars. But my friend did not even hear me, he just stood there motionless, with his eyes fixed on the sight.

“Please, give them to me, I would like to take a look myself,” I repeated.

“I can’t! I am counting how many of them are here” he replied jerkily, apparently dissatisfied that I interrupted him.

“A hundred and thirty! A hundred and thirty one, a hundred and thirty two!” he counted in a low voice. As we moved farther down the river, we could still see the white strip of the sandbar in the distance for a long time, with a dark, reddish belt of corpses covering it along the edge of the water. There was a heavy stench in the air all around, and we all unwittingly kept our noses covered with handkerchiefs.

“Breakfast is served!” announced the cafeteria servant as he surfaced on the deck, wearing a soiled tail-coat and holding a napkin under his armpit as a symbol of his authority. The public descended below the deck. As for myself, I was in no mood for a breakfast. Because of the awful sight, and the stench around me, I completely lost my appetite. I stayed on the deck and continued to observe the surroundings. Now the front of the steamer hit a corpse and pushed it far away into the waves. Some kind of linen, perhaps an apron, was pulled over its head. “Could this have been a gardener?” I thought to myself. “After all, all gardeners in Blagoveshchensk were Chinese.” The long black queue floated out from underneath the linen and stuck onto the wet shoulders. Part of the belly had been eaten by fish and presented a gaping wound. It is hard to say even approximately how many floating bodies we passed that day. But based on the fact that on that single sandbar we counted a hundred fifty of them, it is reasonable to suppose that their number was quite large. Then we stopped to wood up. A body of a Chinaman was washed ashore. I grabbed my photo camera, in an attempt to make a quick picture. But as soon as I set the focus, a wave picked up the body and carried it away...

 

The author is the Research and Overseas Project Manager of International Dunhuang Project at The British Library.

 

Review of China Studies, 2009/1.

 

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