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〖纽时中文〗在中俄边境,对一场反华大屠杀的选择性记忆
On Russia-China Border, Selective Memory of Massacre Works for Both Sides

俄罗斯布拉戈维申斯克当地一家博物馆的策展人安吉莉卡·兹维列娃承认在1900年发生了“不好的事情”,但她说她不知道细节。 DAVIDE MONTELEONE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
俄罗斯上布拉戈维申斯克——罪行发生在一条河边,120年前,俄罗斯哥萨克人在这里把成千上万的中国人淹死在阿穆尔河中。附近的山上矗立着一座青铜纪念雕像和一个混凝土的东正教十字架。
VERKHNE-BLAGOVESHCHENSK, Russia — The crime scene is a riverbank from which Russian Cossacks drove thousands of Chinese to their death by drowning in the Amur River 120 years ago. On a nearby hill stand a bronze memorial statue and a concrete Orthodox cross.
这些纪念碑不是用来悼念遇难者的。相反,它们是在颂扬哥萨克人保卫土地的功绩,这些土地曾经是中国的,但自19世纪中叶以来就一直属于俄罗斯远东地区。
These memorials are not there to mourn the victims. Instead, they celebrate the Cossacks for their role in securing lands that were once Chinese but, since the middle of the 19th century, have been firmly part of the Russian Far East.
两国都沉浸在受外国入侵者支配的痛苦记忆之中,然而对它们来说,1900年阿穆尔河上的可怕事件是一个棘手的问题。如今,俄罗斯和中国有着密切的经济和政治联系,由于对西方的共同警惕,以及对两国困扰丛生的过去的高度选择性记忆,两国紧密联系在了一起。
For two countries that revel in bitter memories of suffering at the hands of foreign intruders, the gruesome events on the Amur in 1900 present a ticklish problem. Russia and China now have close economic and political ties, and are bound together by shared wariness of the West and by highly selective memories of their own often fraught pasts.
“我们需要他们,他们也需要我们,”中国问题专家、在布拉戈维申斯克国立师范大学(Blagoveshchensk State Pedagogical University)任院长的奥尔加·扎勒斯卡亚(Olga Zalesskaia)说。“现在我们正在合作,挑起过去那些痛苦的篇章是没有意义的。”
“We need them and they need us,” said Olga Zalesskaia, a China expert and a dean at the Blagoveshchensk State Pedagogical University. “Now we are cooperating, and it makes no sense to stir up all the painful pages of the past.”
近来,两国一直试图回避这段历史。
Lately, both countries have been trying to sidestep this past.

一座横跨冰冻的阿穆尔河的临时桥梁将布拉戈维申斯克与中国黑河连接起来。 DAVIDE MONTELEONE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Also being sidestepped are more current quarrels stirred by the coronavirus pandemic, which began in Wuhan, China.
Russian officials, unlike President Trump, have studiously avoided calling it the “Chinese virus” while China, which responded with fury to a travel ban imposed by the American president, had no complaints about sweeping restrictions on travel from China imposed by Russia at the same time.
然而,透过棱镜看去,历史却显得 更加模糊。
But the past is viewed through a prism even more misted.
位于俄罗斯阿穆尔区首府布拉戈维申斯克的一家当地历史文化博物馆没有提及河中丧生的成千上万中国人,只是小心翼翼地提到了“1900年6月至7月在阿穆尔河上发生的军事事件”。
A museum of local history and culture in Blagoveshchensk, the capital of Russia’s Amur Region, makes no mention of the thousands of Chinese killed on the river, referring only gingerly to the “military events on the Amur, June-July 1900.”
博物馆的很大一部分展览空间被用来展示俄罗斯人在卫国战争,也就是第二次世界大战中遭受的苦难。这是5月9日全国庆祝活动的一部分,当天是苏联1945年战胜法西斯的75周年纪念日。
A big part of the museum’s display space is instead being turned over to exhibits recalling the suffering of Russians in the Great Patriotic War, otherwise known as World War II. It is part of a nationwide preparation for celebrations on May 9, marking the 75th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s victory over fascism in 1945.
河对岸的一家中国博物馆展示了一幅巨大的油画,画面上俄罗斯人把中国人赶下河去。但与此同时,中国煞费苦心地不去惹恼俄罗斯人:该博物馆不对外国人开放。
A Chinese museum on the other side of the river displays a huge painting that shows Russians driving Chinese into the river. But China takes pains not to rub Russians’ face in the episode: The museum is closed to foreigners.
康涅狄格大学(University of Connecticut)研究中国现代史的历史学家维克托·扎采平(Victor Zatsepine)研究过这起事件,他说,“肯定发生过大屠杀。”
Victor Zatsepine, a historian of modern Chinese history at the University of Connecticut who has studied the incident, said “the massacre definitely happened.”
但是,他说,“中国国内看到的样子和外国人看到的样子有很大的不同。”他指出,中国共产党有着根据当前政治、外交和经济需要操纵记忆的悠久传统。
But, he said, “there is a big difference in how things appear inside China and how they are presented to foreigners.” He noted the Chinese Communist Party has a long record of massaging memories to suit current political, diplomatic and economic imperatives.

在布拉戈维申斯克国立师范大学的俄罗斯和中国学生。“我们需要他们,他们也需要我们,”该大学的一位中国专家表示。 DAVIDE MONTELEONE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
扎采平在一份大屠杀研究报告中写道,这一事件不是意外,也不是战时混乱的结果——后者是俄罗斯对这场悲剧倾向采取的看法——而是“精心策划的帝国力量展示”,由俄罗斯人在“文化和种族优势”时期的态度所塑造。
In a study of the massacre, Mr. Zatsepine wrote that the episode was not an accident or the result of wartime confusion — Russia’s preferred view of the tragedy — but “a calculated display of imperial power” shaped by Russian attitudes at the time of “cultural and racial superiority.”
如今,拥有明显的优势的是中国,至少在经济上是如此,在黑龙江的中国一侧,灯火通明的高楼鳞次栉比,仿佛在嘲笑俄罗斯一侧破旧的河畔,那里许多建筑都可以追溯到19世纪。
Today China has clear superiority, at least in economics, with brightly lit high-rise towers strung along the Chinese side of the Amur as if to taunt Russia’s dowdy riverside, where many buildings date to the 19th century.
但北京不再像1960年代两国关系恶化、引发边境武装冲突时那样,把历史当作对付莫斯科的武器。
But Beijing no longer uses the past as a weapon against Moscow, as it did when relations between the countries deteriorated in the 1960s, triggering armed clashes along the border.
当人们将俄罗斯与过去的不良行为联系起来时,通常会称之为沙俄,与弗拉基米尔·V·普京(Vladimir V. Putin)统治的国家保持安全距离。
When Russia is mentioned in connection with past bad behavior it is usually referred to as Tsarist Russia, which keeps the country ruled by Vladimir V. Putin at a safe distance.
中国共产党把注意力集中在与美国及其盟友的竞争上,仍然时不时谴责日本和西方国家过去的殖民侵略行为。 例如,英国因曾经占据香港而不断受到攻击,如今香港已经回到中国手中。
The Chinese Communist Party, focused on its rivalry with the United States and its allies, still regularly bludgeons Japan and Western nations over their past colonial aggression. Britain, for example, is constantly assailed for seizing Hong Kong, now back in Chinese hands.
但与俄罗斯夺取并依然持有的大片领土相比,香港岛不足挂齿。2015年,中国国家民族事务委员会发布了一份关于俄罗斯在黑龙江沿岸扩张的报告,指责俄罗斯侵占了超过38.6万平方英里的“我国领土”。
But Hong Kong island is a speck of territory compared with the vast tracts of its land taken — and still held — by Russia. A 2015 report on Russia’s expansion along the Amur River by China’s Ethnic Affairs Commission accused Russia of seizing more than 386,000 square miles of “our country’s territory.”

代表阿穆尔地区哥萨克人组织的负责人亚历山大·尤里科。 DAVIDE MONTELEONE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
俄罗斯近年修改宪法,禁止对关于“为捍卫祖国”而采取行动的“历史真相”进行任何歪曲。为了迎接第二次世界大战纪念日,全国各地都挂起了“我们都记得”的宣传条幅。
In Russia, the country recently amended the Constitution to forbid any distortion of “historical truth” about actions taken “in defense of the Fatherland.” And in anticipation of the anniversary of World War II’s end, “We all remember” banners are now being strung up across the country.
然而1900年的事件属于莫斯科宁愿忘记的那一类历史,就像俄罗斯与阿道夫·希特勒(Adolf Hitler)于1939年签署的秘密协议那样。该协议使得波兰和波罗的海三国被莫斯科和柏林瓜分。
But the events of 1900 fall into the category of historical episodes that Moscow would rather forget, like the secret protocol of Russia’s 1939 pact with Adolf Hitler, which carved up Poland and the Baltic between Moscow and Berlin.
在阿穆尔河的两岸,记忆大都被失忆所取代。
And on the banks of the Amur River, memory has mostly given way to amnesia.
布拉戈维申斯克国立师范大学历史助理教授安德烈·德鲁扎卡(Andrey V. Druzyaka)说:“这里没有人记得1900年发生了什么。”
“Nobody here remembers what happened in 1900,” said Andrey V. Druzyaka, an associate professor in history at Blagoveshchensk State Pedagogical University.