Karta Kitaia, Iaponii i prilegaiushchikh oblastei SSSR [i.e. Map of China, Japan and Adjoining Regions of the USSR]. 1:10,000,000. Moscow: Kartograficheskii otdel Upravleniia Voennykh Topografov RKKA, 1932. by Karta Kitaia, Iaponii i prilegaiushchikh oblastei SSSR [i.e. Map of China, Japan and Adjoining Regions of the USSR]

54,5х71 см. Soiling, some foxing, tears of edges and along some creases, tiny hole in left lower corner, few small fragments of blank margins lost, otherwise good.

This map was composed in February 1932, shortly before Japan founded a puppet state Manchukuo. By this time, Japan had already invaded China in September 1931. Moving along the southern branch of the CER, the Japanese military forces reached Harbin on February 5 and spread along the western and eastern lines of the CER. Subsequently, Harbin turned into one of the main bases of the Japanese occupying forces.

The map displays China, Japan, Mongolia, Korea, Southeastern part of Siberia and the Far East, Nepal, Bhutan, Northern lands of India, Tajik and Uzbek Republics. Railways are indicated, both completed and under construction. Meanwhile, the Chinese Civil War was another crucial subject of this map. Soviets of Chinese Communists existed in conditions of continuous armed struggle against the Kuomintang reaction. In 1931, there were about 10 Communist areas with a population of several million. The map highlights “stabilized Soviet areas in China”, including parts of provinces Jiangxi, Henan, Fujian, Hubei and Anhui.

Another interesting piece of this map is a former Chinese land, Tannu-Tuva [the Tuvan People’s Republic] neighboring Mongolia. In 1914, Tuva became a protectorate of Russia as the Uryankhai region. The state was recognized by the USSR in 1924 and the Mongolian People’s Republic in 1926, but most countries of the world considered Tuva to be part of China. By 1932, it was a de jure sovereign state controlled by Bolsheviks. In the pre-revolutionary period, its capital was named Belotsarsk [Town of the White Tsar], but Tuvan names were used after the Revolution: Khem-Beldyr in 1918 and Kyzyl [“Red” in Tuvan] in 1926. However, in this map Soviet cartographers marked the settlement as Krasnyi [“Red” in Russian].