Kulja revolt Many of the Turkic peoples of the
Ili region of Xinjiang had close cultural, political and economic ties with Russia and later the Soviet Union. Many of them were educated in the Soviet Union, and a community of Russian settlers lived in the region. As a result, many of the Turkic rebels fled to the Soviet Union and obtained Soviet assistance in creating the Sinkiang Turkic People's Liberation Committee (STPNLC) in 1943 to revolt against the Kuomintang rule in Ili. The pro-Soviet Uyghur who later became leader of the revolt,
Ehmetjan Qasimi, was Soviet-educated and described as "Stalin's man" and as a "Communist-minded progressive". The rebels assaulted
Kulja on 7 November 1944, rapidly took over parts of the city, and massacred Kuomintang troops. However, the rebels encountered fierce resistance from Kuomintang forces holed up in the power and central police stations and did not take them until the 13th. The creation of the "East Turkestan Republic" (ETR) was declared on the 15th. The Soviet Army assisted the Ili Uyghur army in capturing several towns and airbases. Non-communist Russians like the White Russians and Russian settlers who had lived in Xinjiang since the 19th century also helped the Soviet Red Army and the Ili Army rebels and suffered heavy losses. Many leaders of the East Turkestan Republic were Soviet agents or affiliated with the Soviet Union, like Abdukerim Abbasov, Ishaq Beg, Seypidin Azizi and the White Russians
Fotiy Leskin,
Ivan Polinov and Glimkin. When the rebels ran into trouble taking the vital Airambek airfield from the Chinese, Soviet military forces directly intervened and helped to mortar Airambek and to reduce the Chinese stronghold.
Massacres The rebels engaged in massacres of Han Chinese civilians, especially targeting people affiliated with the Kuomintang and Sheng Shicai. In the "Kulja Declaration" issued on 5 January 1945, the East Turkestan Republic proclaimed that it would "sweep away the Han Chinese" and threatened to extract a "blood debt" from the Han. The ETR also declared that it would seek to establish especially-cordial ties with the Soviets. The ETR later de-emphasized the anti-Han tone in its official proclamations after it had finished massacring most of the Han civilians in its area. The massacres against the Han occurred mostly in 1944–1945, with the KMT responding in kind by torturing, killing, and mutilating ETR prisoners. While the non-Muslim Tungusic peoples like the Xibe played a large role in helping the rebels by supplying them with crops, the local Muslim Tungan (Hui) in Ili gave an insignificant and negligible contribution to the rebels or did not assist them at all. The Soviets supplied the INA with ammunition and Russian-style uniforms, and Soviet troops directly helped INA troops fight against the Chinese forces. The INA uniforms and flags all had insignia with the Russian acronym for "East Turkestan Republic", ВТР in Cyrillic (Восточная Туркестанская Республика). The Soviets admitted their support of the rebels decades later by transmitting a radio broadcast in Uyghur from Radio Tashkent into Xinjiang on 14 May 1967 that boasted that the Soviets had trained and armed the ETR forces against China. Thousands of Soviet troops assisted Turkic rebels in fighting the Chinese army. In October 1945, suspected Soviet planes attacked Chinese positions. As the Soviet Red Army and Turkic Uyghur Ili Army advanced with Soviet air support against poorly-prepared Chinese forces, they almost succeeded in reaching Ürümqi, but the Chinese military threw up rings of defences around the area and sent Chinese Muslim cavalry to halt the advance of the Turkic Muslim rebels. Thousands of Chinese Muslim troops under General
Ma Bufang and his nephew General
Ma Chengxiang poured into Xinjiang from Qinghai to combat the Soviet and Turkic Uyghur forces. Much of the Ili army and equipment originated from the Soviet Union. The Ili army pushed Chinese forces across the plains and reached Kashgar, Kaghlik and Yarkand. However, the Uyghurs in the oases gave no support to the Soviet-backed rebels and, as a result, the Chinese Army expelled them. The Ili rebels then butchered livestock belonging to
Kyrgyz and
Tajiks of Xinjiang. The Soviet-backed insurgents moved aggressively against the Kyrgyz and Tajiks and destroyed their crops. The Chinese beat back the Soviet-supported rebellion in Sarikol from August 1945 to 46 by defeating the siege of the "tribesman" around Yarkand when they had risen up in rebellion in Nanchiang around Sarikol and by killing Red Army officers. The Chinese Muslim
Ma Clique warlord of
Qinghai,
Ma Bufang, was sent with his cavalry to
Ürümqi by the Kuomintang in 1945 to protect it from the Uyghur rebels of Ili. In 1945, the Tungan (Hui) 5th and 42nd Cavalry were sent from Qinghai to Xinjiang, where they reinforced the KMT 2nd Army, made up of four divisions. Their combined forces totalled 100,000 Hui and Han troops, who served under KMT command in 1945. It was reported the Soviets was eager to "liquidate" Ma Bufang. General
Ma Chengxiang, another Hui Ma Clique officer and nephew of Ma Bufang, commanded the 1st Cavalry Division in Xinjiang under the KMT, which was formerly the Gansu 5th Cavalry Army. A ceasefire was declared in early June 1946, with the Second East Turkestan Republic in control of Ili and the Chinese in control of the rest of Xinjiang, including Ürümqi. On 27 June 1946, the Interim Government of the East Turkestan Republic passed Resolution 324 to transform the Interim Government of the East Turkestan Republic into the Ili District Council of Xinjiang Province and dissolve the ETR (the resolution used 'East Turkestan' to denote Xinjiang Province). == 1947 unrest ==