Background From 1934 to 1941
Xinjiang, a province of the
Republic of China, was under the influence of the
Soviet Union. The local warlord
Sheng Shicai was dependent on the Soviet Union for military support and trade. Soviet troops entered Xinjiang twice, in 1934 and 1937, for limited periods of time to give direct military support to Sheng Shicai's regime. Following
Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, and the entry of the
United States into
World War II in December 1941, the Soviet Union became a less attractive patron for Sheng than the
Kuomintang. By 1943 Sheng Shicai switched his allegiance to the Kuomintang after major Soviet defeats at the hands of the Germans in World War II, all Soviet Red Army military forces and technicians residing in the province were expelled, and the ROC
National Revolutionary Army units and soldiers moved into Xinjiang to take control of the province. In the summer of 1944, following the German defeat on the
Eastern Front, Sheng attempted to reassert control over Xinjiang and turned to the Soviet Union for support again. Stalin refused to deal with Sheng and forwarded a confidential letter from Sheng to
Chiang Kai-shek. As a result, the Kuomintang removed him from the province in August 1944 and appointed him to a low-level post in the Ministry of Forestry in
Chongqing.
Rebellion Many of the Turkic peoples of the
Ili region of Xinjiang had close cultural, political, and economic ties with Russia and then 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
Kuomintang rule during the
Ili Rebellion. The pro-Soviet Uyghur who later became leader of the revolt and the Second East Turkestan Republic,
Ehmetjan Qasimi, was Soviet-educated and described as "Stalin's man" and as a "communist-minded progressive". Qasimi Russified his surname to "Kasimov" and became a member of the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In 1944, the Soviets took advantage of discontent among the Turkic peoples of the Ili region to support a rebellion against Kuomintang rule in the province in order to reassert Soviet influence in the region. Liu Bin-Di was a
Kuomintang (KMT) officer and was sent by officials in Dihua to subdue the Hi area (Ili region) and crush the Turkic Muslims, who were prepared to overthrow Chinese rule. His mission failed because his troops arrived too late. Several Turkic cavalry units armed by the Soviets crossed into China in the direction of Kuldja. In November 1944 Liu was killed by Uyghur and Kazakh rebels backed by the Soviet Union. This started the Ili Rebellion, with the Uyghur Ili rebel army fighting against Republic of China forces. Following Sheng Shicai's departure from Xinjiang, the new Kuomintang administration had increasing trouble maintaining law and order. On 16 September 1944, troops that had been sent to Gongha county, a majority Kazakh region, were unable to contain a group of rioters. By 3 October, the rioters had captured
Nilka, the county seat. On 4 October 1944, Chief of
Ghulja (Yining) Police Department Liu Bin-Di sent telegram to Dihua asking for immediate help: "Situation around Nilka 尼勒克镇 is catastrophic, on the battle of October 03 we suffered heavy losses, rebels captured many weapons and spread their actions south of Kash River 喀什河, our troops in Karasu 喀拉苏乡 and other adjacent villages are under siege, local population is joining bandits and increasing their strength, trucks with troops sent from Yining to Nilka delivered many wounded soldiers on return trip. On the head of bandits are
Ghani, Fatikh, Akbar, Kurban, Baichurin and others, number of rebels is over 1,500. They are all mounted on horses. City of Yining is in danger, we arrested 200 suspects in the city as a precaution. Additional troops from Urumchi are in immediate necessity." During October, the
Three Districts Rebellion broke out south of
Ghulja in the
Ili, also in
Altay and
Tarbagatay districts of northern Xinjiang. Aided by the Soviet Union, and supported by several Xinjiang exiles trained in the Soviet Union, the rebels quickly established control over the three districts, capturing Ghulja in November. The ethnic Chinese population of the region was reduced by massacre and expulsion. According to United States consular officials, the Islamic scholar
Elihan Töre declared a "Turkestan Islamic Government": The rebels assaulted
Ghulja on 7 November 1944 and rapidly took over parts of the city, massacring KMT troops, however, the rebels encountered fierce resistance from KMT forces holed up in the power and central police stations and did not take them until 13 November. The creation of the "East Turkestan Republic" (ETR) was declared on 15 November. The Soviet Army assisted the Ili Uyghur army in capturing several towns and airbases. Non-communist Russians like 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. They 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 to help mortar the Airambek and reduce the Chinese stronghold. The rebels engaged in massacres of Han Chinese civilians, especially targeting people affiliated with the KMT and Sheng Shicai. In the "Ghulja Declaration" issued on 5 January 1945, the East Turkestan Republic proclaimed that it would "sweep away the Han Chinese", threatening to extract a "blood debt" from the Han. The declaration also declared that the Republic would seek to especially establish cordial ties with the Soviets. The ETR later de-emphasized the anti-Han tone in their official proclamations after they were done massacring most of the Han civilians in their area. The massacres against the Han occurred mostly during 1944–45, with the KMT responding in kind by torturing, killing, and mutilating ETR prisoners. In territory controlled by the ETR like Ghulja, various repressive measures were carried out, like barring Han from owning weapons, operating a Soviet-style secret police, and only making Russian and Turkic languages official and not Chinese. 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 either an insignificant and negligible contribution to the rebels or did not assist them at all. The demands of the rebels included termination of Chinese rule, equality for all
nationalities, recognised use of native languages, friendly relations with the Soviet Union, and opposition to Chinese immigration into Xinjiang. The military forces available to the rebellion were the newly formed
East Turkestan National Army, which included mostly Uyghur, Kazakh and White Russian soldiers (around 60,000 troops, armed and trained by the Soviet Union, strengthened with regular Red Army units, that included up to 500 officers and 2,000 soldiers), and a group of
Kazakh Karai tribesmen under the command of
Osman Batur (around 20,000 horsemen). The Kazakhs expanded to the north, while the INA expanded to the south. By September 1945, the Kuomintang Army and the INA occupied positions on either side of the
Manasi River near Dihua. By this time the ETR held
Zungaria and
Kashgaria, while the Kuomintang held the Dihua area. The East Turkestan National Army, which was established on 8 April 1945 as the military arm of the ETR, was led by the Kyrgyz Ishaq Beg and the White Russians Polinov and Leskin, and all three were pro-Soviet and had a history of military service with Soviet-associated forces. The Soviets supplied the INA with ammunition and Russian-style uniforms, and Soviet troops directly helped the INA troops fight against the Chinese forces. The INA uniforms and flags all had insignia with the Russian acronym for "East Turkestan Republic", VTR in Cyrillic (Vostochnaya Turkestanskaya Respublika). 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 Uyghur Ili Army advanced with Soviet air support against poorly prepared Chinese forces, they almost reached Dihua; however, the Chinese military created rings of defences around the area, sending 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 rebel army pushed the 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 was able to expel them. The Ili rebels then butchered livestock belonging to
Kyrgyz and
Tajiks of Xinjiang. The Soviet-backed insurgents destroyed Tajik and Kyrgyz crops and moved aggressively against the Tajiks and Kyrgyz of China. The Chinese beat back the Soviet-supported rebellion in Sarikol from August 1945 – 1946, defeating the siege of the "tribesman" around Yarkand when they had rebelled in Nanchiang around Sarikol, and killing Red Army officers. The
Ma Clique warlord of
Qinghai,
Ma Bufang, was sent with his Muslim cavalry to Dihua by the Kuomintang in 1945 to protect it from the Uyghur rebels from Ili. In 1945, the Tungan (Hui) 5th and 42nd Cavalry were sent from Qinghai to Xinjiang where they reinforced the KMT Second Army, composed of four divisions. Their combined forces made for 100,000 Hui and Han troops serving under KMT command in 1945. It was reported the Soviets were eager to "liquidate" Ma Bufang. General
Ma Chengxiang, another Hui Ma Clique officer and nephew of Ma Bufang, commanded the First Cavalry Division in Xinjiang under the KMT, which was formerly the Gansu Fifth Cavalry Army.
Formation of the Coalition Government of Xinjiang Province and dissolution of the ETR In August 1945, China signed a
Treaty of Friendship and Alliance granting the Soviet Union a range of concessions that the United States promised at the
Yalta Conference. This ended overt Soviet support for the East Turkestan Republic. The Kuomintang's central government of China reached a negotiated settlement with the leaders of the ETR in June 1946. On 27 June 1946, the Interim Government of the ETR passed Resolution 324 to transform the Interim Government of the ETR into the Ili District Council of Xinjiang Province and dissolve the ETR (the resolution used 'East Turkestan' to denote Xinjiang Province). The new council was not a government, and the Three Districts were respectively and directly led by the newly founded
Coalition Government of Xinjiang Province along with the other seven districts in Xinjiang. On 1 July 1946, the Coalition Government of Xinjiang Province was established in Dihua. This government was constituted by three sides: the central government of China, the Three Districts, and the Uyghur-inhabited, anti-revolutionary Seven Districts (at the time, Xinjiang Province was divided into ten districts, and the Seven Districts were treated as a unit in the Coalition Government). In the 25 members of the Committee of the Coalition Government, there were seven from the central government, eight from the Three Districts, and ten from the Seven Districts. The communist
Ehmetjan Qasimi, the leader of the Three Districts, became the Provincial Vice Chairman. == Local opposition ==