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forces in Manchuria from seeking to give Mao’s people a head start in the civil war that was now imminent. “I shall never forget my first sight of the People’s Army,” said Russian gunner Georgy Sergeev. “I saw some men coming down954 from the mountains. They were in rags, many barefoot. They had no weapons, but each carried a stick with a bundle on its end. So this was the heroic 8th Route Army.” Crowds of vengeful Chinese gathered around headquarters and POW cages, shouting at the Russians to surrender the prisoners to them. On 23 August, Soviet front HQ ordered the handover of captured Japanese weapons to nearby Chinese Communist units. To satisfy the letter of Stalin’s agreement with the Nationalists, Soviet officers were to have no personal dealings with Mao’s people, instead merely to withdraw guards from arms dumps. The first Communist unit arrived in darkness, and laboured by torchlight in complete silence, manhandling crates of weapons and ammunition with furious energy. “When I came back to the depots955 with my men,” said a Soviet officer, Major Belyaev, “they were completely empty, literally cleaned out. The Chinese had even swept the floor and taken away the shelving.”

THE EMPEROR PU YI heard news of the Japanese surrender at Dalizikou, where the final drama of his pitiful reign was acted out. For the third and final time in his life, on 15 August he signed an “Abdication Rescript,” surrounded by unhappy ministers and privy councillors. His Japanese custodian announced that he was to be evacuated to Japan. He should decide who should accompany him. The emperor chose his brother, two brothers-in-law, three nephews, his doctor and valet. His sole remaining concubine asked through sobs what she was supposed to do. The emperor blandly responded that she could not accompany him: “The plane is too small, so you will have to go by train.”

“Will the train get to Japan?”

“Of course it will. In three days at most you and the empress will see me again.”

“What will happen if the train doesn’t come for me? I haven’t got a single relation here.”

“You’ll be all right.”

The inglorious imperial plane landed at Shenyang to transfer its passengers to a larger aircraft for the flight to Japan. Yet even as they waited upon this, Soviet transport planes arrived, disgorging scores of Red soldiers brandishing tommy-guns. A few minutes later Pu Yi became a Russian captive. This was a relief, for more than anything he feared falling into the hands of Nationalist or Communist Chinese. The emperor’s Soviet guards were fascinated by their prize, and at first a little awed by the responsibility. Lt. Alexander Zhelvakov, a political officer with 6th Guards Tank Army, was warned by his commander that he would answer with his life for the emperor’s security, and believed it. The Soviets shared Pu Yi’s perception that if he fell into the hands of Chinese, they would tear him asunder.

“I didn’t get a wink of sleep956 during the night of 20 August,” Zhelvakov said later, “and the emperor didn’t sleep either—didn’t even take off his clothes. He was skinny, quite tall, wearing horn-rimmed spectacles, a dark suit and white shirt. He looked rather ordinary, a little pale, depressed, lost. One could see how nervous he was. His brother never left his side. The two of them looked, to be honest, pretty forlorn and unworthy of their rank. There was absolutely no royal grandeur. Pu Yi kept asking: ‘Am I going to be killed? Am I going to be shot?’ He seemed shy, indeed pretty scared. Once he understood that no one was going to kill him, he gradually calmed down, cheered up, even began to smile.”

Zhelvakov escorted the imperial party and their heaps of expensive luggage onto a transport plane to the Soviet city of Chita, where they were removed to incarceration in a procession of limousines. After Pu Yi departed, one of Zhelvakov’s soldiers, a doughty Communist, said sourly: “Comrade Lieutenant957, we should have put a bullet in him.” The emperor cherished brief hopes of being permitted to go into exile in Britain or the United States. Instead, he