DANYLIW RESEARCH SEMINAR ON CONTEMPORARY UKRAINE

This paper focuses on the Japanese consulate in Odesa from the late 1920s to the mid-1930s. Particular attention is paid to how Japanese diplomats communicated the deepening grain crisis and identified the structural origins of the catastrophe well before the peak of the famine. The language of official diplomatic reporting remained cautious. Japanese diplomats operated under constant surveillance, while Japanese foreign policy aimed to avoid direct confrontation with the Soviet Union, especially after the intervention in Manchuria in 1931.

 

Svitlana Pavlenko, from Dnipro, is a Visiting Fellow at the Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki, Finland.