The Danger of War in the East: The Soviet Policy toward the Uyghur Rebellions of the 1930s

This talk examines the Soviet policy towards the Xinjiang uprisings of the early 1930s. Their heterogeneous and fluid nature undermined Soviet ambitions in the region. The Soviet policies are deconstructed to show that several actors, in addition to the top leadership of the USSR, played a role in shaping the Soviet policy towards the struggles of non-Han peoples in China’s Central Asian areas for social and national emancipation: the Comintern, the Central Asian Bureau of the CPSU, Uyghur activists, and the military and intelligence services. They advocated supporting the rebels, but ultimately, the Kremlin only created a hybrid pro-Soviet regime in Xinjiang from a part of the rebels and a new Chinese warlord governor. The paper draws on archival records and Soviet Uyghur publications of the time. The research has been generously supported by the Gerda Henkel Foundation.

The speaker, Siarhei Bohdan, is a Research Associate at the University of…