Soviets in Manchuria

     When the Soviet Red Army rolled into Manchuria in the closing days of World War Two, it was quite a shock to most residents in Harbin.  It wasn't all that long ago that the Japanese army had marched into Harbin to install the puppet Manchukuo regime, just 14 years earlier.  Japanese were far from being popular with the general population in Harbin, whether Russian or Chinese.  But, they were orderly, clean, and did not loot and otherwise misbehave.  They may have been intensely disliked by the residents of Harbin, and their rule was harsh and cruel.  They conducted some horrible experiments with chemical/biological weapons and forced women into sexual slavery as "comfort women," and generally treated everyone as second class citizens, if they were not Japanese.  But the residents of Harbin had to admit that the Japanese established order.  They managed to somewhat control the "hoonhoozy" problem and crime in general was low.  The Japanese army may have conducted itself like horrific criminals in Nanking, but in Harbin, they behaved.
     It was a completely different story with the Soviets.  The reputation of their behavior in Berlin and other places had preceded their arrival in Harbin, and they did not disappoint!  The Soviet troops looted, robbed, raped, and generally behaved as well armed street gangs!  It was a very common practice for a Soviet soldier to stand on a street corner, waving his "burp gun" and saying "davai, davai!" ("give, give!") to passersby, stripping the victims of all money and valuables.  It seemed that the officers were unable or unwilling to control the troops.  Fortunately, this type of behavior died down after a time.
     One of the first things that the Russian speaking population of Harbin noticed was the language spoken by the Soviet troops.  It was a very low form of Russian, a sort of a "hillbilly Russian!"  It was amazing how much the Russian language changed in the short period after the Bolsheviks took over the country.  In a little over a generation, the language had become coarse, and in some cases downright vulgar.  The usage of "ti" (same as Spanish tu) was common place, the polite form of "vy" (same as Spanish usted) seemed to have disappeared.  There were officers who spoke correct Russian, but vast majority soldiers spoke a form that was grammatically incorrect, and full of words formally considered vulgar.
     It made sense.  When the Bolsheviks took over Russia, they either imprisoned or killed off, or chased off all of the intelligentsia and others who they considered to be bourgeois!  The peasantry and the uneducated masses remained, and they made up most of the population of the new Soviet Union!  There was a time, in the 1920s in the Soviet Union, when there was such a shortage of teachers that to teach at a high school, you only had to be a high school graduate!  Of course in time the situation was corrected, but the language changed very rapidly.  Most Russians in Harbin used to laugh at the Soviets and their improper use of language, behind their backs, of course!  The Soviets, in turn, seemed to be somewhat intimidated by the more educated Harbin residents who obviously spoke a different level of Russian and lived in surroundings that were luxurious by Soviet standards.   The Soviets and the Russians in Harbin were separated for a quarter of a century, yet it seemed that they were from two completely different worlds.