The first Korean communist, who gave her life bridging the Russian Revolution and Korean liberation
On September 16, 1918, dragged before Ataman Kalmykov's White Cossacks to be shot, her final cry: 'Freedom and independence for Korea!'
Born to Korean migrants in Siberia, she joined the Bolsheviks in 1916, becoming the first Korean communist. Dispatched to the Far East on Lenin's orders, she served as Commissar of Foreign Affairs for the Khabarovsk Soviet, co-founded the Korean Socialist Party with Yi Tong-hwi, and organized Korean Red Guard units against White and Japanese forces before her execution in 1918 at 33, a symbolic figure bridging the Russian Revolution and the Korean independence struggle.
Career Timeline
- 1916Joined the RSDLP(B)
- 1917Secretary, Khabarovsk Bolshevik branch & Commissar of Foreign Affairs, Far Eastern Council of People's Commissars
- 1918.4Co-founded the Korean Socialist Party in Khabarovsk
- 1918.6–8Organized Korean and international Red Guard units against White and Japanese forces
- 1918.9.4Captured by White and Japanese forces
- 1918.9.16Executed by White Cossacks in Khabarovsk
Related historical events
Early Life and Political Formation
Alexandra Kim was born Kim Aerim on February 22, 1885, in Sinelnikovo, a Korean village in the Amur (Maritime) region. Her father, Kim Du Suh, had fled famine in Korea's Hamgyong Province in 1869, settling in the Russian Far East, converting to Orthodoxy, and working as a translator under the Russian name Piotr Kim. He later worked on the Chinese Eastern Railway in Manchuria, where he befriended Jozef Stankevich, a Russian railway technician of Polish origin. In 1895, the young Alexandra joined her father in Manchuria, but Kim Du Suh died soon after. The Stankevich family adopted her, giving her the Russian name and patronymic, Alexandra Petrovna Stankevich, that she would carry through her revolutionary career.
After graduating from a girls' school in Vladivostok, she became a primary school teacher and married the son of her adoptive father, but the marriage ended in divorce around 1910. In Vladivostok she began participating in political activities within the Korean migrant community, then moved to the Urals, where she worked as a Chinese and Korean interpreter for timber industry laborers. It was there that she joined the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1916. Party organizers saw her as an ideal operative: young, educated, devout, fluent in Russian, Chinese, and Korean, and able to move between cultures. In 1917, Lenin personally ordered her dispatch to the Far East to establish Bolshevik cells among the Korean population of Siberia: the assignment that would propel her to the posts of Commissar of Foreign Affairs for the Khabarovsk Soviet, co-founder of the Korean Socialist Party, and organizer of Korean Red Guard units.