ABSTRACT
In 1933 the independent republic of East Turkestan was proclaimed in what is now better known as the Xinjiang region in the People's Republic of China (PRC). That event at the time was a spillover from the civil war in Russia and the expansion of Soviet power thereafter. Not a few divisions belonging to the white side after the 1917 revolution took refuge to Chinese Turkestan, another name for Xinjiang, with all the chances of political destabilization in the region as a consequence. Their promises, agitation and ideological fervor enabled the Soviets to undermine the position of China's central government. Murder plots and armed local rivalries did the rest to make the region an inhospitable place for the rest of the thirties. The News from Tartary collected in 1935 by the brother of James Bond's spiritual father and special Times correspondent, Peter Fleming, is testimony to that. The unruly surroundings brought expeditions like Sven Hedin's to explore the feasibility of a highway from Peking to the region's capital, Urumqi, to a premature standstill. The Berlin-Peking line via Urumqi by the German aerospace company with its geopolitical correct name “Eurasia” had to suspend activities. It was still very much in the tradition of the “Great Game” played between Russians and Britons from the latter part of the 19th century onward. (1)
