Violence, Flight, and Hunger

Abstract

This chapter reveals Moscow’s struggle to control the Sino-Kazakh border during the period 1931-33, as hundreds of thousands of starving Kazakh refugees sought to flee across the border to Xinjiang. In stark contrast to method of border control in the Soviet Union’s west, where Moscow would adopt a less coercive approach, Soviet border guards began to shoot those who fled, a choice that escalated tensions with Republican China.