Soviet-Chinese Conflict of 1929 and The Communist Movement in Manchuria

The 1929 Soviet-Chinese conflict over China-Eastern Railway was one of the most dramatic pages in the complicated history of Russian-Chinese relations in the 20th century. Contradictory justifications of the actions of both parties involved, formulated by the respective governments on the eve and during the conflict, produced strong influences upon modern Russian, Chinese and Taiwanese historiography. Russian scholars, as did their predecessors in1920s argued, that initiation of the conflict by the Chinese side was the probable prologue to international military intervention, inspired by ＂imperialists＂ and aimed at the partition of the Soviet Far Eastern region. Some of modern Taiwanese and Western historians echoed the Nanjing Government's position. They drew attention to the attempts of the Soviet administration of the China-Eastern Railway to spread the communist movement in Manzhuria and insisted that the ultimate goal of Russian communists was to establish their control over this part of China. This paper is based on the documentation from the Russian archives and shows that some of the accusations made by the Chinese Government and modern scholars, were quite far from the actual situation. In fact, on the eve of the conflict the Chinese communist movement in the China-Eastern Railway region and Manchuria, was almost inexistent, while the leadership of Soviet Russia started to pay closer attention to it only after the conflict had moved to its military phase.