RELEVANCE OF STUDYING THE WARS OF THE SECOND QUARTER OF THE 20TH CENTURY IN ASIA

Abstract

The Second World War in Asia is traditionally presented in Russian historiography in a much more modest way than the European theater of military operations. This approach is due to the involvement of the Soviet Union in the struggle for survival with Germany, in comparison with which the confrontation with Japan takes less relevance. However, the modern conditions of the so-called new wars put on the agenda the study of armed conflicts of the 1920s and 1930s (battles on the CER, the era of militarists in China, conflicts on Hasan Island and the Khalkhin Gol River, the Red Army campaigns in Xinjiang). They occurred in conditions of unclear borders between territories that de facto appeared after the collapse of the Qing Empire. As in modern military operations outside the country, the participating contingents were often disguised. For example, the Red Army soldiers in Xinjiang and the Soviet pilots in Central China were officially positioned as White Guard formations and could receive payment from Moscowallied centers of power in the Tianxia (which partly makes them similar to modern PMCs around the world). Wars in China in the second quarter of the 20th century were often waged directly by private armies, and even the troops of fairly centralized Japan often acted on the orders of Kwantung generals without coordinating with the government in Tokyo. As in modern military conflicts in the Middle East, the same high-ranking figures could change their position several times in the course of situationally formed alliances