198 Ë Conclusion
the autonomous province [of Xing’an or Hsingan or Barga] itself has a greater degree of freedom
in its internal aairs than any other part of Manchukuo. The Mongols are ruled partly by their
hereditary princes and partly by elective and appointed o cials. They are even allowed to main-
tain their own troops.³In 1936, Japan allowed the Inner Mongolians to have their own government, the Mon-
golian Military Government in Chahar with Prince De Wang (Demchugdongrub) as its
head.⁴This was why Bammat and others continued to entertain illusions about Japan,
and why Moscow regarded Japan as a mortal enemy whose in uence it feared might
spread into Outer Mongolia (under Moscow’s control) and the Soviet Union (including
Buryatia).
For this reason Stalin was much more obsessed, at least initially, with Japan’s
threat than with Nazi Germany’s. Stalin suspected he could deal with the Nazi dictator.
Indeed, he concluded the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and destroyed Poland with Hitler,
erroneously believing he was outmaneuvering the latter. By comparison, Stalin could
not nd any leader in Japan with whom he could bargain, because there was no dicta-
tor in Japan. Moreover, unlike Germany, Japan had been working with Poland, the Cau-
casus, the Baltics, and others, encircling the Soviet Union on the Eurasian continent.
This is why Moscow caught far more “Japanese spies” than “German spies” in 1937–- Stalin thus resorted to numerous political and military provocations to weaken
Japan. The Battle of Khalkhin Gol in 1939, in which Japan was routed, for example,
was provoked by Moscow for this purpose because it had a superb secret weapon: the
commander of the main Japanese ghting forces was a Soviet agent!⁵
In the end, Moscow was saved by Japan’s increasingly self-destructive imperial-
ist war against the Chinese. The United States played a critical role in this. Washing-
ton saw Japan as a usurper of its own colonial interests in China and Asia in general.
Japan’s adventure in China led to what might be called an informal and virtual united
front against Japan between the United States and the Soviet Union in the resump-
tion of American-Soviet diplomatic relations in 1933. President Franklin D. Roosevelt
used theNew York Timescorrespondent in Moscow, Walter Duranty to present the So-
viet Union in the best possible light to the American public in order to facilitate US
recognition of the Soviet Union.⁶Duranty was an apologist for Stalin. When millions
of people were dying from hunger in the Soviet Union in 1932, Duranty repeatedly de-3 Owen Lattimore,The Mongols of Manchuria(New York: H. Fertig, 1934), 21.
4 The government was Japan’s puppet government, however, and did not signify the independence
of Inner Mongolians in Barga.
5 See Hiroaki Kuromiya, “The Mystery of Nomonhan, 1939.”The Journal of Slavic Military Studies24,
no. 4 (December 2011), 659–77. There is little doubt that the 1938 battle of Lake Khasan was also pro-
voked by Moscow against Japan. See Hiroaki Kuromiya, “The Battle of Lake Khasan Reconsidered.”
The Journal of Slavic Military Studies29, no. 1 (2016), 99–109.
6 Tim Tzouliadis,The Forsaken: An American Tragedy in Stalin’s Russia(New York: Penguin, 2008),
55–59.