Paper abstract:

The paper will discuss one of the important stages in the process of migration of local population of Xinjiang to Soviet Kazakhstan in the 1950-1960s. The migration which was initiated based on the Agreement between the Soviet and Chinese governments of 1950s and was envisioned as a repatriation of Soviet citizens residing in the province had several stages. One of them was an exodus of the 1962 which became known as “events of May 29”. Unlike other stages of the migration it was a result of deterioration of the Sino-Soviet relations and implied illegal crossing of the state border. It resulted in the migration of more than 70 thousand of people who fled to the Soviet Union without legal documents. The paper will examine the causes and consequences of the exodus putting it into the context of the “great game” that is a struggle between great powers for domination in Central Asia. The exodus will be characterized as a last stage of the “great game” between the Soviet Union and China, as result of deterioration of Soviet-Chinese relations. Application of the “great game” paradigm to discussion of this stage in the migration in question will be based on analysis of both archival materials and oral histories collected in the course of implementation of the project held in 2020-2022.