ABSTRACT
In the 1940s, the northwestern part of Xinjiang experienced a brief period of
independence and this has had a profound impact on the culture and psyche of
the Uyghurs and the other non-Han Chinese people of the region. This
independent government, the Eastern Turkestan Republic (ETR), which lasted
from 1944 to 1949 is known in the official Chinese histories as the ‘Three
Districts Revolution’ sanqu geming and is regarded by the Chinese Communist
Party and by historians sympathetic to the party as having been a necessary
precursor of the ‘peaceful liberation of Xinjiang’ during which the CCP took
control of the region. A simplified definition of the rising is given in a historical
dictionary of Xinjiang published: ‘The Three Districts Revolution was an armed
uprising against the reactionary rule of the Nationalist Guomindang by mainly
Uyghurs and Kazakhs in the districts of Yili, Tacheng and Ashan (now known as
Altai) in northwestern Xinjiang and was a constituent part of the Chinese
People’s democratic revolution’.1
