若手ロシア人研究者による1916年の日露協約の研究

―現代のための教訓―

抄録

This article examines three books by young Russian scholars on the topic of 1916 Russian-Japanese Alliance aiming to find out what implications their research may have for the present state of relations between Japan and Russia. The books under consideration are: E. Baryshev, The Period of Japanese-Russian Alliance of 1914–1917, The Truth about the ‘Extraordinary Friendship’ (2007); Yu. Pestushko, Japanese-Russian Relations during the First World War (2008) and D. Pavlov, The Forgotten Alliance, Japan and Russia in the Period of 1914–1918 (2014). One common feature of their research is the wide use of Russian and Japanese original sources, which sets their research apart from ideological inclinations usually characteristic to historical studies in the Soviet period.

Though the three authors concentrate on analysis of the same political process, they are different in accents the authors make and in what they add to the central topic of their books. For Baryshev, the rapprochement was supported by what he calls the “civilizational similarity” of the two countries, which were both latecomers in modernization and thus felt themselves antagonistic to the Anglo-Saxon world. His research may, indeed, be qualified not only as a history of diplomacy, but also of the social and political thought. Pestushko conducted a thorough study of political and economic processes emphasizing the difficulties of negotiations between Japan and Russia and highlighting the importance of the territorial issue, i.e. the transfer of the southern branch of the East Chinese Railway from Russia to Japan. Though the issue was not resolved to Japan’s entire satisfaction, this did not prevent the signing of the treaty because other considerations prevailed. Pavlov describes in details the process of weapons supply by Japan to Russia calling it the core of Russian-Japanese rapprochement. This article argues against such an assessment, because, though Russian money helped modernize the Japanese military industry, the establishing of zones of influence in Manchuria and Inner Mongolia was the priority for each negotiating party. Pestushko and Baryshev reject the previously dominant assessment of the 1916 Alliance as the anti-German one suggesting its anti-American nature. However, it may be more right to say that while for Russia it was anti-German, Japan saw the United States as the main threat to its interests in China.

The article also examines how the rapprochement influenced mutual Russian-Japanese images. It reviews the case of the writer Vas. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko who in 1916 had to make corrections to his book written in 1908 concerning the assessment of Russian-Japanese relations. The article brings to attention letters written by young Japanese to their Russian friends, which were published in Kokumin Shinbun in 1916.

On the whole, though the period of rapprochement was not long and ended with the 1917 revolution in Russia and Japanese intrusion into Siberia, the attention paid to it by Russian scholars is indicative of the trend towards seeing the relations between the two countries in a positive perspective. The three books demonstrate that in spite of many frictions and frequent differences in vision Japan and Russia are able to overcome them.