The 1929 Conflict on the China-Eastern Railway in the Coverage of the Foreign Press (based on the materials of the Archive of Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation)

Abstract

The article analyzes the materials of the foreign press (European countries, USA) deposited in the Archive of the Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation concerning the Soviet-Chinese conflict of 1929 on the Chinese Eastern Railway. The documents are abstracts of articles from periodicals (newspapers "Kölnische Zeitung", "Berliner Tageblatt", "Manchester Guardian", "Chicago Daily News", "New York Times"), news agencies ("United Press", "Internews"). These materials cover the events on the Soviet-Chinese border from July to September 1929: armed provocations by China, the participation of Russian emigrants in them, the USSR’s response actions – the formation of a Special Far Eastern Army, the appointment of V.K. Blyukher as its commander, the operations of individual units of the USSR border troops. Considerable attention in the presented foreign telegrams is paid to the characteristics of the foreign policy of the Soviet Union during the period under review, the analysis of the position of the Chinese leadership, as well as the role of Japan in the settlement of the conflict and the attitude of the USSR, China and Japan to the intervention in the situation in the Far East of the states of Europe and the USA. Their analysis makes it possible to identify the peculiarities of the views of foreign political circles on the conflict and its participants – the USSR and the Republic of China, to characterize the opinion of the leading world powers regarding the international significance of the conflict.