Capture of the Tuapse

On 18 June 1949 during the Chinese Civil War, the Government of the Republic of China (ROC) declared the Closed Port Policy to establish an actual aerial and naval blockade of trade with the People's Republic of China (PRC) along the Chinese coast from Liao River to Min River area, which was extended to include Guangdong on 12 February 1950. The Executive Yuan issued an emergency measure applying to domestic vessels, crews and companies to strengthen the trade ban on China on 16 August 1950, however the Kuomintang government extended the practice to foreign vessels and even in the international waters against the international law of the sea and the admiralty laws. The New York Times reported that 67 foreign civilian ships were attacked by local pirates between September 1949 and October 1954, as half of them were British vessels, whereas actually 141 interference incidents were reported by the Royal Navy in the routine "Formosa Strait Patrol" operations since October 31, 1949, showing the anti-British atmosphere within the ROC and the KMT high-rank circle, even on the armed intervention of the Royal Navy escorting the British vessels from ROCN warships. On 13 February 1951, a fleet of 3 ROCS destroyers under the direct orders of ROC President Chiang Kai-shek captured the Norwegian civilian cargo ship Hoi Houw at 24°13'N 123°18'E within Japanese waters among the Yaeyama Islands. On 15 April 1951, the Panamanian civilian cargo ship Perico was captured by the ROC Navy at 25°31'N 123°48'E, north of Taketomi Island. Nevertheless, the piracy activities of attack, killing and confiscation known to the Parliament of the United Kingdom, British Hong Kong and Australian media coverages intensified in the summer of 1953 after Joseph Stalin's death and the Korean Armistice Agreement. then Inchkilda was seized by the ROC Navy again on 24 October 1954, but received British and American diplomatic support to be released. On 16 August 1953, Nigelock was captured by the ROC Navy toward the Magong military port in Penghu, but was rescued by HMS St Brides Bay (K600, Bay-class frigate); it was intercepted again by ROCS Huangpu PC-105 (PC-461-class submarine chaser) and was rescued by the destroyer HMS Cockade (R34) on 24 August. The Italian civilian freighter Maribu was also attacked by gunboats on 31 July 1953, and the Danish civilian freighter Heinrich Jessen on 9 August - both were hijacked first to the Kinmen sea area to shift members, then formally confiscated in Keelung. 61 out of 62 Polish sailors were released through Polish and United States diplomatic intervention, while one was found dead in a park with signs of torture, while the 29 Chinese sailors were imprisoned in the Green Island Prison. 11 were rescued by the International Committee of the Red Cross in 1956, 3 staff leaders were executed, 1 died in prison, and 5 died due to sickness or accidents. Eventually 5 survivors were released and returned to the PRC after martial law was lifted in 1987, and 4 chose to stay in Taiwan. ==Capture==

On 21 June 1954, the civilian tanker Tuapse with 49 crew members, which sailed from Odessa and was loaded with 11,702 tons of Romanian kerosene from Constanța in the Black Sea with the scheduled delivery to Shanghai and Vladivostok, arrived in Victoria Harbour in British Hong Kong to resupply. On 23 June it passed through the international seaway of Balintang Channel in Bashi Straits, eastbound toward the west Pacific Ocean. in charge on board the flagship Tan Yang DD-12 (former Japanese Imperial Navy Yukikaze, transferred to ROCS after WWII), with the permission of President Chiang Kai-shek to sink the target if encountering resistance. Three rounds of 127 mm naval DP gun shots were fired near the bow to force the oil tanker in full stop, then an assault team led by Captain Chiu Zhong-ming (邱仲明上校, who had also led the assault on the Prezydent Gottwald two months earlier) with over 100 seamen and marines boarded to seize the ship, then Admiral Ma himself moved to Tuapse in command. Three sailors trying to save the Soviet flag ripped off by soldiers were struck down by rifle butts, and two engineers proceeding the mechanical self-destruction sequence were beat up hard by seamen breaking into the engineering room. The ship with its oil content was towed to the Port of Kaohsiung for intelligence examination with samples collected for chemical analysis in Okinawa, and the oil was immediately pumped out to the military storage. The crew, including the only female crew, bartender Olga Popov, were divided in 3 groups roughly by age to be transported to different locations for interrogation with no cross contact to each other allowed, and Captain Vitaly A. Kalinin was denied permission to visit the other groups. The Black Sea Shipping Company continued to distribute the victims' wages to their families throughout the following years. U.S. Ambassador Karl L. Rankin in Taipei officially urged the release of ship and crew on 9 July, and visited the ROC Minister of Foreign Affairs, George Yeh, in sick leave at home over night; The First Lady, Soong Mei-ling led the representatives of Chinese Women's Anti-Communist and Anti-Russian League () to the persuasion visit. They were invited to a party in the Seven Seas Residence, rowing boats in the Bitan Lake, A declassified CIA briefing to the White House and United States National Security Council revealed that the shipping insurance premium crossing the South China Sea had increased from 1% to 5% since 24 June after the Tuapse Incident, and certain international liners had been deterred midway at the Singapore Port unable to continue or had to change plans. The PLA Air Force moved in the Hainan Island for the first time in history to secure another transport route through Yulin and Huangpu ports, Two U.S. aircraft carriers, USS Hornet and USS Philippine Sea (CV-47) arrived for a rescue mission on 26 July and shot down 2 PLAAF Lavochkin La-11 fighters east of Dazhou Island. On 2 August, Commander of PLA in CMC, Peng Dehuai convened an executive meeting to establish the tactical command for the East China Military Region as per Mao Zedong's directive to open another front. The First Taiwan Strait Crisis started on 3 September 1954. On 8 September, A colonel arrived to announce the order of ROC Chief of the General Staff, General Peng Meng-chi (, aka. "Kaohsiung Butcher" due to his brutality against civilians during the Feb. 28 Massacre and the White Terror era) to the crew, declaring that "The Third World War has begun - the tanker and cargo have been confiscated, and the crew are officially treated as prisoners of war", On 8 September 1954, eight nations including the United Kingdom, United States, France, Australia, New Zealand, and the Philippines,... signed the Manila Pact to form the collective defense alliance Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), but ROC was subsequently opposed and excluded, then was never able to join another regional security organization in the twentieth century. The adversities of crisis management argued the rational integrity within the policy making structure and processing among the government branches as various factors such as public opinions, moral principles, international laws, allies' positions, and policy announcements had little effects in consideration to avoid the contradiction accumulating until the outbreak of conflicts forcing in response and losing control on initiatives. ==Development==

The Battle of Yijiangshan Islands began on 18 January 1955 with Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15s and Ilyushin Il-10s scrambling for the aerial domination, followed by the decisive retreat in the Battle of Dachen Archipelago till 26 February. The Kuomintang had lost the strategic control on the East China Sea, and the WEI was dissolved with the remaining intelligence operations transferred to the Naval Auxiliary Coordinations Center, (NACC) under the direct supervision of United States Navy. Secretary of State John F. Dulles arrived in Taiwan to meet President Chiang Kai-shek on 3 March as the Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty came into force to secure the Taiwan Strait, The Soviet Government demanded the French Government mediate. Another request was also made through the Swedish Red Cross. As a result of international joint efforts and pressure in 9 months (October 1 - July 26), Chiang eventually agreed to release 29 crew members who did not sign the asylum application, including Captain Kalinin. They were transferred through Taipei, Hong Kong, then arrived in Moscow by plane on 30 July. One week later on 8 August, the United States Embassy to Japan began to investigate the piracy attack with casualties on the Ryukyuan fishery boat Daisan Seitoku Maru () by two gunboats of about 40 soldiers wearing the ROC flags and uniforms on the disputed territorial water 25°44'N, 123°28'E of Senkaku Islands on 2 March, but the ROC Ministry of National Defense (MND) denied all the over fifty presented evidence, and claimed that they were framed by a PRC spy operation. The Japanese ship owner also arrived in Taipei to appeal a civil lawsuit, but was denied of compensation later. Since 25 May 1955, the secret police of Bureau of Investigation and Statistics (BIS) under the command of Mao Renfeng had started to arrest the subordinates of General Sun Li-jen to interrogate with torture for being pro-American in an allegedly coup d'état to collaborate with the CIA to take control of Taiwan to declare the independence; Chiang was upset that the British merchandise liners still passing through the "Bandit Area" () daily in October 1955, after the ROC Air Force bombing had sunk the British civilian ship Edendale in the Shantou Port on 19 January, so he ordered that the ROC Armed Forces can "sink one vessel to show that we are serious." (''). which led to the 1959 Conlon Report'' by Robert A. Scalapino of the Harvard University recommending the independent Republic of Taiwan as a resolution, and elected the President of the Republic of Taiwan Provisional Government in Tokyo on 28 February 1956. Tanker Tuapse was renamed ROCS Kuaiji (AOG-306, ), commissioned in the ROC Navy with 22 commissioned officers and 88 enlisted rank seamen on 20 October 1955, to deliver aviation fuel for ROCAF monthly alongshore before the transit pipeline across the island was constructed. Taiwan Navigation Co., Ltd. tried to acquire the ship in 1960, but was turned down because the ship was registered as stolen vessel with the IMO/IMB, so it could not enter the territorial waters of UN countries; the ship was often idle in port. She was retired on 1 October 1965, and laid down permanently in Kaohsiung Harbor. ==Aftermath==

Chief telegraphist Michael Ivankov-Nikolov, accountant Nikolay I. Vaganov, Valentin A. Lukashkov, Viktor M. Ryabenko, Alexander P. Shirin, Mikhail I. Shishin, Viktor S. Tatarnikov, Venedikt P. Eremenko and Viktor Solovyov left with the assistance of the Church World Service to the United States in October 1955. Vaganov was arrested in 1963 for the Anti-Soviet agitation on the VOA broadcast, In 1959, the Odessa Regional Court sentenced in absentia the sailors who never returned to the USSR - Tatarnikov, Ivankov-Nikolov, Eremenko and Solovyov - to death for treason. After appearing in anti-Soviet speeches in Washington, D.C., Ivankov-Nikolov lost his mind and was handed over to the Soviet Embassy, returning to the USSR in 1959; Sailors L. F. Anfilov, Vladimir I. Benkovich, Pavel V. Gvozdik and N. V. Zibrov accepted an intelligence assignment to leave for Brazil with Polish passports by the end of 1957, then appeared at the Soviet Consulate in Uruguay and returned to the USSR next year. However they were arrested after a press conference and sentenced to 15 years in prison for treason. which mandated all the civilian cases tried by the military courts. They spent seven years in prison before being placed under the guarded house arrest in various military quarters in Hsinchu and Tainan mountain areas till lastly to the Yilan suburb under the custody of Taiwan Garrison Command, Following the Sino-Soviet split, Soviet journalist Victor Louis visited the Minister of National Defense, Chiang Ching-kuo in Taipei in October 1968, and was allowed to bring the sailors some family letters which they had not received for thirteen years; then held several meetings with the Minister of ROC Government Information Office, James Wei in Vienna after the Conflict of Zhenbao Island in March 1969 to achieve a mutual agreement on releasing all the remaining crew in ROC military custody in 1970; but this agreement was not honoured or realized, until after martial law was lifted, as the reporting of the Independence Evening Post and the advocacy of Amis legislator Tsai Chung-han for the detainees' human rights drawing public attention to the situation. but returned to Ukraine in 1993 after three years of bedridden sickness and a stroke. Sailor Zhorka M. Dimov suffered from the continual beating and bleeding without medical care and committed suicide in 1975; Mikhail M. Kalmazan died of sickness afterwards; Anatoly V. Kovalev died in a psychiatric facility. Their corpses were not returned-family members were later shocked upon receiving postal-mailed ashes. and the government has never apologized or compensated the families or the states of the victims as per the international law. ==Legacy==

The communication barriers with the Tuapse crew exposed the issue of lacking interpreters and translators in need, so Major-general Pu Dao-ming (), who was processing the case, gave the detainees a radio to listen to the news, and received special permission to found the first Russian language course in Taiwanese history at the Foreign Language School of MND in 1957. The exceptional permission was extended later to the public institutes with scholarships offered for specified services, till the taboo finally disappeared with decades of accumulated outstanding practice merits, and the East European cultural and linguistic education are open to the civilian society and academies such as the academies of NCCU, CCU, TKU and FHK today. The ROC naval traffic blockade status ended on 12 September 1979; The Central Naval Museum in Saint Petersburg preserves a model of the tanker Tuapse. ==See also==