Soviet Policy in Xinjiang: Stalin and the National Movement in Eastern Turkistan by Jamil Hasanli

IF 0.7 2区 历史学 Q1 HISTORY Journal of Cold War Studies Pub Date : 2023-01-01 DOI:10.1162/jcws_r_01166
Justin M. Jacobs
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Because the Soviet Union played a pivotal role in political developments within Xinjiang throughout the first half of the twentieth century, this is not a negligible lacuna.In part for this reason, Jamil Hasanli's new study of Soviet influence in Xinjiang has been met with great expectations in the field. Focusing on the period of preeminent Soviet involvement in the politics of Chinese-ruled Xinjiang (1930–1949), Hasanli's book is chock full of statistical data and previously classified top-level reports from the Russian archives. The majority of these highly sensitive archival sources have not yet been consulted by any other scholar. This fact alone is cause for celebration. All future scholarship on Xinjiang must consult this book. Hasanli has uncovered archival gems for nearly every major political development during the turbulent reigns of Chinese warlords Jin Shuren (1928–1933) and Sheng Shicai (1933–1944), along with the short but crucial administration of the Nationalist government (1944–1949). Readers will learn, for instance, new details about the fate of the Hui warlords Ma Zhongying and Ma Hushan, who opposed Sheng Shicai for many years in the 1930s, as well as prominent Uyghur politicians such as Khoja Niyaz Haji, who joined Sheng's government in 1934 and was later executed. Perhaps the most precious new insights relate to the visit of Sheng and his wife to Moscow in 1938 to meet with Joseph Stalin and other top Soviet leaders. Hasanli provides a detailed record of the various meetings in which Sheng took part, including his shocking, repeated requests to join the Communist Party, secede from the Republic of China, and overthrow the government of Chiang Kai-shek. After discussing how Sheng fell from political grace in 1944, Hasanli regales the reader with extraordinary detail on the Kazak rebel Osman Batur's meetings with Mongolian leader Khorloogiin Choibalsan, the political career of the Turkic leader Elihan Tore and Soviet battlefield maneuvers on behalf of the East Turkestan Republic.Despite this rich material, the book has several grave shortcomings. Fascinating as all the new political revelations and narrative details are, Hasanli rarely integrates them into an organized analysis of the bigger picture, nor does he engage seriously with the insights of scholars who have made use of Chinese archives over the past decade. (Most egregious in this regard, especially in light of Hasanli's extensive discussion of Soviet interest in mineral prospecting in Xinjiang, is the utter neglect of Judd Kinzley's Natural Resources and the New Frontier: Constructing Modern China's Borderlands.) Far more troubling, however, are the sloppy narrative voice and uncritical scholarly eye that mar considerable portions of this promising book. Hasanli has gained unprecedented access to Soviet archives, but the end result for the reader too often feels like an unfiltered data dump. Lengthy quotations, commentary, and statistics from document after document are translated in interminable detail, with little attempt to sift through the chaff and guide the reader to a critical conclusion. Worse yet, the subjective perspectives of various Soviet officials are all too often presented as historical fact, with little attempt to frame their perspectives as products of a particular political agenda, bias, or other contingent situation. Nor is it merely the Russian source base that is presented without a critical eye. Hasanli also occasionally integrates the discourse of Turkic refugees writing long after the events in question, as when he describes how Sheng Shicai once “invented 125 kinds of torture and 28 methods of killing” (p. 61) to keep the Muslim people of his province in check. A quick glance at the footnote for this strange and unchallenged assertion leads the reader to the polemical writings of Uyghur exile politician Isa Yusuf Alptekin, writing three decades after the events in question. But Hasanli presents his dubious statement as fact.Unfortunately, Hasanli's book is replete with endless examples of this sort of haphazard analysis. Extensively quoted Soviet archival documents contradict themselves from one page to the next, but Hasanli often fails to note the contradiction. Distracting typographical mistakes abound on nearly every page. Lengthy quotations by other scholars are often inserted without any narrative framing and sometimes even without attribution in the main text. Chinese names and places are inserted without any consistency: Kuomintang/Guomindang is spelled at least three different ways, and the names of most Chinese politicians have at least two variants. At times, even identifying who a particular Chinese figure is supposed to be can be difficult. In chapter four, an entire paragraph is set as a block quotation (p. 127), suggesting a lengthy translation from a primary source. But it turns out to be part of the author's main narrative, with a quotation from historian Jay Taylor, whose name is added to the list of hundreds of misspellings and typographical errors throughout the book.As for errors of fact, to take just one obvious example, in chapter one Khoja Niyaz Haji is confidently said to have been killed in a gas chamber in 1942 (p. 38), whereas in the next chapter he is said to have been executed in 1938 (p. 67). Hasanli does not take any notice of the discrepancy in his sources, allowing it to pass without comment. For all the additional detail and color introduced by the voluminous Soviet sources, surprisingly few novel revelations emerge. Hasanli twice promises to reveal the true fate of Ma Zhongying after his defection to the Soviet Union, but at the end of several scattered discussions of him the reader can still only conclude that he disappeared under mysterious circumstances in the late 1930s. (Although Hasanli does not say so himself, his revelations of Sheng's trip to Moscow in 1938 seem to make clear that this visit—and the vote of confidence from Stalin that it represented—was almost certainly the occasion for Ma's final disappearance.) The discussion of the mysterious murder of Sheng's brother Sheng Shiqi in 1942 includes intriguing new details on suspicions surrounding the motives and possible involvement of Sheng or his sister-in-law, Chen Xiuying. Yet, even though the new revelations are clearly inconclusive—the paper trail still ends in nothing more than rumors—Hasanli confidently asserts that Chen “was falsely charged with the murder.” Although we get considerably more detail on the interactions of Turkic separatist leaders such as Elihan Tore with Soviet officials in the 1940s, the basic narrative of decisive Soviet involvement in the East Turkestan rebellion remains unchanged.No serious scholar of Xinjiang can afford to ignore this book. On every page the reader will encounter fascinating new statistics and commentary drawn from the Soviet archives, some of which is truly jaw-dropping. 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Abstract

Over the past decade, scholarship on Xinjiang (or East Turkestan) has undergone remarkable changes. Whereas previous scholars were limited to a source base consisting chiefly of Anglo-American consular archives, published Chinese newspaper accounts, and the memoirs of exiled Turkic refugees, a new generation of historians has been able to make ample use of Chinese and Russian archives, along with rare collections of Uyghur documents preserved abroad. Of these three new source bases, however, the Russian archives clearly still offer the greatest untapped potential. Because the Soviet Union played a pivotal role in political developments within Xinjiang throughout the first half of the twentieth century, this is not a negligible lacuna.In part for this reason, Jamil Hasanli's new study of Soviet influence in Xinjiang has been met with great expectations in the field. Focusing on the period of preeminent Soviet involvement in the politics of Chinese-ruled Xinjiang (1930–1949), Hasanli's book is chock full of statistical data and previously classified top-level reports from the Russian archives. The majority of these highly sensitive archival sources have not yet been consulted by any other scholar. This fact alone is cause for celebration. All future scholarship on Xinjiang must consult this book. Hasanli has uncovered archival gems for nearly every major political development during the turbulent reigns of Chinese warlords Jin Shuren (1928–1933) and Sheng Shicai (1933–1944), along with the short but crucial administration of the Nationalist government (1944–1949). Readers will learn, for instance, new details about the fate of the Hui warlords Ma Zhongying and Ma Hushan, who opposed Sheng Shicai for many years in the 1930s, as well as prominent Uyghur politicians such as Khoja Niyaz Haji, who joined Sheng's government in 1934 and was later executed. Perhaps the most precious new insights relate to the visit of Sheng and his wife to Moscow in 1938 to meet with Joseph Stalin and other top Soviet leaders. Hasanli provides a detailed record of the various meetings in which Sheng took part, including his shocking, repeated requests to join the Communist Party, secede from the Republic of China, and overthrow the government of Chiang Kai-shek. After discussing how Sheng fell from political grace in 1944, Hasanli regales the reader with extraordinary detail on the Kazak rebel Osman Batur's meetings with Mongolian leader Khorloogiin Choibalsan, the political career of the Turkic leader Elihan Tore and Soviet battlefield maneuvers on behalf of the East Turkestan Republic.Despite this rich material, the book has several grave shortcomings. Fascinating as all the new political revelations and narrative details are, Hasanli rarely integrates them into an organized analysis of the bigger picture, nor does he engage seriously with the insights of scholars who have made use of Chinese archives over the past decade. (Most egregious in this regard, especially in light of Hasanli's extensive discussion of Soviet interest in mineral prospecting in Xinjiang, is the utter neglect of Judd Kinzley's Natural Resources and the New Frontier: Constructing Modern China's Borderlands.) Far more troubling, however, are the sloppy narrative voice and uncritical scholarly eye that mar considerable portions of this promising book. Hasanli has gained unprecedented access to Soviet archives, but the end result for the reader too often feels like an unfiltered data dump. Lengthy quotations, commentary, and statistics from document after document are translated in interminable detail, with little attempt to sift through the chaff and guide the reader to a critical conclusion. Worse yet, the subjective perspectives of various Soviet officials are all too often presented as historical fact, with little attempt to frame their perspectives as products of a particular political agenda, bias, or other contingent situation. Nor is it merely the Russian source base that is presented without a critical eye. Hasanli also occasionally integrates the discourse of Turkic refugees writing long after the events in question, as when he describes how Sheng Shicai once “invented 125 kinds of torture and 28 methods of killing” (p. 61) to keep the Muslim people of his province in check. A quick glance at the footnote for this strange and unchallenged assertion leads the reader to the polemical writings of Uyghur exile politician Isa Yusuf Alptekin, writing three decades after the events in question. But Hasanli presents his dubious statement as fact.Unfortunately, Hasanli's book is replete with endless examples of this sort of haphazard analysis. Extensively quoted Soviet archival documents contradict themselves from one page to the next, but Hasanli often fails to note the contradiction. Distracting typographical mistakes abound on nearly every page. Lengthy quotations by other scholars are often inserted without any narrative framing and sometimes even without attribution in the main text. Chinese names and places are inserted without any consistency: Kuomintang/Guomindang is spelled at least three different ways, and the names of most Chinese politicians have at least two variants. At times, even identifying who a particular Chinese figure is supposed to be can be difficult. In chapter four, an entire paragraph is set as a block quotation (p. 127), suggesting a lengthy translation from a primary source. But it turns out to be part of the author's main narrative, with a quotation from historian Jay Taylor, whose name is added to the list of hundreds of misspellings and typographical errors throughout the book.As for errors of fact, to take just one obvious example, in chapter one Khoja Niyaz Haji is confidently said to have been killed in a gas chamber in 1942 (p. 38), whereas in the next chapter he is said to have been executed in 1938 (p. 67). Hasanli does not take any notice of the discrepancy in his sources, allowing it to pass without comment. For all the additional detail and color introduced by the voluminous Soviet sources, surprisingly few novel revelations emerge. Hasanli twice promises to reveal the true fate of Ma Zhongying after his defection to the Soviet Union, but at the end of several scattered discussions of him the reader can still only conclude that he disappeared under mysterious circumstances in the late 1930s. (Although Hasanli does not say so himself, his revelations of Sheng's trip to Moscow in 1938 seem to make clear that this visit—and the vote of confidence from Stalin that it represented—was almost certainly the occasion for Ma's final disappearance.) The discussion of the mysterious murder of Sheng's brother Sheng Shiqi in 1942 includes intriguing new details on suspicions surrounding the motives and possible involvement of Sheng or his sister-in-law, Chen Xiuying. Yet, even though the new revelations are clearly inconclusive—the paper trail still ends in nothing more than rumors—Hasanli confidently asserts that Chen “was falsely charged with the murder.” Although we get considerably more detail on the interactions of Turkic separatist leaders such as Elihan Tore with Soviet officials in the 1940s, the basic narrative of decisive Soviet involvement in the East Turkestan rebellion remains unchanged.No serious scholar of Xinjiang can afford to ignore this book. On every page the reader will encounter fascinating new statistics and commentary drawn from the Soviet archives, some of which is truly jaw-dropping. But a distressingly large number of these new insights cannot be cited responsibly in future works of scholarship until they are double-checked against their footnotes, compared with previous scholarship, and reframed to reflect a critical understanding of the archival voice.
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苏联在新疆的政策:斯大林与东突厥斯坦的民族运动
近十年来,关于新疆(或东突厥斯坦)的学术研究发生了显著变化。以前的学者仅限于主要由英美领事档案、出版的中国报纸报道和流亡的突厥难民的回忆录组成的来源基础,而新一代的历史学家已经能够充分利用中国和俄罗斯的档案,以及保存在国外的维吾尔族文件的罕见收藏。然而,在这三个新的信息源中,俄罗斯的档案显然仍具有最大的未开发潜力。由于苏联在二十世纪上半叶新疆的政治发展中发挥了关键作用,这是一个不容忽视的空白。部分出于这个原因,Jamil Hasanli对苏联在新疆影响的新研究在该领域受到了很高的期望。哈桑里的书聚焦于苏联对中国统治下的新疆政治的显著介入时期(1930-1949),书中充斥着大量的统计数据和俄罗斯档案中此前被列为机密的顶级报告。这些高度敏感的档案资料中的大多数还没有被任何其他学者查阅过。仅这一事实就值得庆祝。今后所有关于新疆的学术研究都必须参考这本书。在中国军阀金树人(1928-1933)和盛世才(1933-1944)的动荡统治期间,以及短暂但至关重要的国民政府(1944-1949)的执政期间,Hasanli发现了几乎每一次重大政治发展的档案珍宝。例如,读者将了解到关于回族军阀马中英和马虎山命运的新细节,他们在20世纪30年代曾多年反对盛世才,以及著名的维吾尔政治家,如霍贾·尼雅兹·哈吉,他于1934年加入盛世才政府,后来被处决。也许最宝贵的新见解与1938年盛氏夫妇访问莫斯科会见约瑟夫·斯大林和其他苏联高层领导人有关。Hasanli提供了盛参加的各种会议的详细记录,包括他令人震惊的,反复要求加入共产党,脱离中华民国,推翻蒋介石政府。在讨论了盛是如何在1944年失势的之后,哈桑利用哈萨克叛军奥斯曼·巴图尔(Osman Batur)与蒙古领导人霍洛金·乔伊巴尔桑(Khorloogiin Choibalsan)的会面、突厥领导人伊莱汗·托雷(Elihan Tore)的政治生涯以及苏联代表东突厥斯坦共和国的战场行动等细节来款待读者。尽管内容丰富,这本书还是有几个严重的缺点。尽管所有新的政治揭露和叙事细节都很吸引人,但哈桑利很少将它们整合到对更大图景的有组织分析中,他也没有认真对待过去十年来利用中国档案的学者的见解。(在这方面最令人震惊的是,特别是考虑到哈桑利对苏联在新疆矿产勘探兴趣的广泛讨论,他完全忽视了贾德·金兹利的《自然资源与新边疆:构建现代中国的边疆》。)然而,更令人不安的是,草率的叙述和不加批判的学术眼光玷污了这本充满希望的书的相当一部分。Hasanli获得了前所未有的访问苏联档案的机会,但对读者来说,最终的结果往往感觉像是未经过滤的数据转储。冗长的引文、评论和统计数据从一份又一份的文件中被翻译成没完没了的细节,几乎没有试图筛选杂乱无章的内容,引导读者得出一个关键的结论。更糟糕的是,各种苏联官员的主观观点经常被当作历史事实来呈现,很少有人试图将他们的观点框定为特定政治议程、偏见或其他偶然情况的产物。不带批判眼光的不仅仅是俄罗斯的信息源。Hasanli偶尔也会把突厥难民的话语整合在一起,比如他描述盛世才曾经“发明了125种酷刑和28种杀戮方法”(第61页),以控制他省的穆斯林人民。快速浏览一下这个奇怪而无可争议的论断的脚注,读者就会看到维吾尔流亡政治家Isa Yusuf Alptekin在事件发生三十年后所写的论战性作品。但是Hasanli把他那可疑的陈述当成了事实。不幸的是,Hasanli的书中充满了这种随意分析的无数例子。大量引用的苏联档案文件每一页都自相矛盾,但Hasanli经常没有注意到这种矛盾。几乎每一页都有令人分心的印刷错误。 其他学者的长篇大论的引语往往没有任何叙事框架,有时甚至没有署名插入正文。中文名字和地名的插入没有任何一致性:国民党/国民党至少有三种不同的拼写方式,大多数中国政客的名字至少有两种变体。有时,甚至连确定一个特定的中国人物应该是谁都很困难。在第四章中,整个段落被设置为块引用(第127页),表明从主要来源的冗长翻译。但事实证明,这是作者主要叙述的一部分,引用了历史学家杰伊·泰勒(Jay Taylor)的话,他的名字被添加到全书数百个拼写错误和印刷错误的列表中。至于事实的错误,只举一个明显的例子,在第一章中,Khoja Niyaz Haji被自信地说于1942年在毒气室中被杀害(第38页),而在下一章中,他被说成于1938年被处决(第67页)。Hasanli没有注意到他的消息来源中的差异,允许它不加评论地通过。尽管大量的苏联消息来源提供了更多的细节和色彩,但令人惊讶的是,很少有新的发现出现。Hasanli两次承诺揭露马中英叛逃到苏联后的真实命运,但在几次零散的讨论结束时,读者仍然只能得出结论,他在20世纪30年代末神秘地消失了。(虽然Hasanli自己并没有这么说,但他对盛1938年莫斯科之行的披露似乎表明,这次访问——以及它所代表的斯大林的信任投票——几乎肯定是马最终失踪的原因。)关于1942年盛世奇的兄弟盛世奇被神秘谋杀的讨论包含了一些有趣的新细节,这些细节围绕着盛世奇或他的嫂子陈秀英的动机和可能参与其中。然而,尽管新的揭露显然是不确定的——书面记录仍然只是谣言——hasanli自信地断言陈“被错误地指控谋杀”。尽管我们对20世纪40年代伊莱汉·托雷等突厥分离主义领导人与苏联官员之间的互动有了更多的详细了解,但关于苏联决定性地参与东突厥斯坦叛乱的基本叙述仍未改变。任何一个认真的新疆学者都不能忽视这本书。读者在每一页都能看到从苏联档案中提取的引人入胜的新统计数据和评论,其中一些确实令人瞠目结舌。但令人痛心的是,这些新见解中有大量不能在未来的学术著作中被负责任地引用,除非它们与之前的学术相比,与脚注进行了仔细检查,并重新定义,以反映对档案声音的批判性理解。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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44
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