ABSTRACT
Among the relationships that have shaped modern East Asia, the nexus between Japan and the Soviet Union has yet to receive the scholarly attention it deserves. One reason for this must surely lie with East Asian historiography as a discipline, described recently as “hopelessly U.S.-centric.” 1 Another is that Soviet archives remained off-limits to foreign researchers until the 1990s, posing an obstacle to investigating Moscow’s decisions and intentions. In the meantime, Soviet historians produced little more than apologetics for the Communist Party’s actions. 2 Even after the archives opened in the early 1990s the USSR’s role in defeating the Japanese empire, and in the construction of the postwar, post-imperial order in East Asia remained a marginal topic in English-language historiography.
