Attack on Soviet Geological Expedition in Xinjiang

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Stephen_Rynerson
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Posts: 266
Joined: 07 Jul 2013, 06:08

Attack on Soviet Geological Expedition in Xinjiang

#1

Post by Stephen_Rynerson » 11 Jun 2014, 03:54

I posted about this in the USSR forum about six weeks ago thinking that it would be a more productive place to inquire, but having gotten no response there, I thought I'd check here just in case anyone is exclusively surfing the China forum.

According to David Wang's Under the Soviet Shadow: The Yining Incident, in February 1940, Ashan Kazakhs in Fuyun County (also called Koktogai), Xinjiang attacked a Soviet geological expedition in the area and killed "the head of a team, Banenko . . . ." The only source listed by Wang is a single page in a Chinese source -- Xinjiang Shi-nan (新疆 市南, if GoogleTranslate is working right) by Zhou Dongjiao (周 东郊). This attack is not mentioned in writings by Andrew D.W. Forbes or Linda Benson, who are the two principal modern English-language writers on the subject of Stalinist-era Soviet activity in Xinjiang.

Searching on-line, I've been able to turn up references in a geology publication to a "V.G. Banenko" having described the geology of the Koktogai area in 1940, so that is roughly consistent with Wang's account.

Can anyone confirm that such an attack took place and, if so, please provide as much in the way of detail about the attack as feasible, particularly as exact a date as possible and the composition of the forces involved (assuming the geological expedition was armed to some degree or accompanied by Soviet troops). Thank you in advance for any assistance with this.

GregSingh
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Re: Attack on Soviet Geological Expedition in Xinjiang

#2

Post by GregSingh » 12 Jun 2014, 06:52

Are you sure spelling "Banenko" is correct? Perhaps that geology publication has his name is Cyrillic?


Stephen_Rynerson
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Joined: 07 Jul 2013, 06:08

Re: Attack on Soviet Geological Expedition in Xinjiang

#3

Post by Stephen_Rynerson » 13 Jun 2014, 05:30

GregSingh wrote:Are you sure spelling "Banenko" is correct? Perhaps that geology publication has his name is Cyrillic?
Well, I'm open to the possibility that "Banenko" is not the correct spelling/transliteration. Since Wang is writing in English from a Chinese source that itself presumably references either another Chinese source or a Cyrillic source, there's plenty of opportunity for error to creep in there. The geology publication that also refers to "Banenko" is Granite-Related Ore Deposits of Central Kazakhstan and Adjacent Areas, which is only available in "snippet" view from GoogleBooks (see here http://books.google.com/books?ei=c2KaU6 ... &q=banenko ). The geology publication, despite being in English, is listed in WorldCat as being edited by Vitalii Vitalevich Shatov and was published by a St. Petersburg, Russia-based publisher, so it is presumably transliterated from Cyrillic.

As noted in my original post though, I'm sure that Wang and the geology publication are referring to the same individual -- Koktogai is a location in Xinjiang (http://books.google.com/books?id=7Xe8CU ... ai&f=false ) and the date (1940) is consistent with both sources. The likelihood of two different publications managing to misspell/mistransliterate an individual's name to produce the same result in that specific context seems vanishingly small.

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