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[THE HEAVILY CENSORED FIRST RUSSIAN EDITION OF SKRINE’S CHINESE CENTRAL ASIA] Kitayskaya tsentral’naya aziya: Syn’Tszyan’ [i.e. Chinese Central Asia (Xinjiang)]

Skrine, C.

Item #2763

Moscow: Molodaya Gvardiya, 1935. 144 pp: 2 maps, 26 black and white ill. 19,5x13,7 cm. In original publisher’s illustrated cardboards by Alexander Radishchev. Binding worn, loss of the pieces of the spine, but otherwise in a very good condition.

Scarce. First Russian edition. English original published in 1926. Translated from English and edited by the Soviet orientalist and historian Andrei Stanishevsky (1904-1993). Front cover by the Soviet graphic artist Alexander Radishchev (1898-1978) shows a mountain pass with a caravan of travelers and pack animals silhouetted on the foreground.
A standout example of Soviet strategic intelligence in print and the first Russian translation of Sir Clarmont Skrine’s bestseller travelogue “Chinese Central Asia (Xinjiang).”
The book was published by the state-run Molodaya Gvardiya in Moscow in 1935. During the previous decade, fears of Bolshevik contagion had barred the Soviet Union from Xinjiang, creating a major strategic blind spot. While British diplomats like Skrine mapped the “forbidden” Pamirs, the Red Army was occupied with Basmachi insurgencies. By 1935, as the USSR established a “shadow protectorate” in Xinjiang, Skrine’s book became a vital intelligence trophy. It allowed the Soviets to inherit British geographic secrets, gaining high-resolution data on trade routes, ethnic loyalties, and crucial “visual reconnaissance” photographs, without deploying a single agent.
The author, Sir Clarmont Skrine (1888–1974), was a career diplomat who served as the British Consul-General in Kashgar from 1922 to 1924. An avid mountaineer and pioneer of high-altitude photography, he and his wife undertook six major expeditions through the Kashgar mountains. Skrine’s most significant geographic contribution was the exploration of the previously unmapped Agalistan region and the precise identification of the Kongur (7719m) and Kongur-Tiube (7595m) peaks, which had been frequently misidentified by earlier explorers. His field observations and panoramic photography provided the first accurate maps of these alpine districts, securing his reputation as a premier explorer of the “Heart of Asia”.
The Russian translation of Skrine’s book opens with a sharply polemical foreword by Andrei Stanishevsky aka Aziz Niallo. Stanishvesky was a prominent Soviet intelligence officer and ethnographer who effectively operated as the unofficial ruler of the Pamirs during the early 1930s. After remarkably surviving the 1937 Stalinist purges by hiding in a psychiatric hospital, Stanishevsky served in WWII military intelligence and ultimately retired as a lieutenant colonel. In the text, the editor explicitly mocks Skrine’s romanticized vision of Xinjiang, asserting that his perception of a “Happy Arcadia” blinded him to the “hungry poverty” of the local population. Stanishevsky even compares the original British preface by Sir Francis Younghusband to the propaganda of Joseph Goebbels and accuses Skrine of frontier espionage for collaborating with the White Guard Pavel Nazarov. Yet, despite these ideological attacks, he admits the book’s immense strategic value, praising its vivid descriptions of mountain ranges not yet visited by Soviet researchers.
The main part of the book consists of seventeen chapters, providing a meticulous account of Skrine’s life and work at the British Consulate in Kashgar. In the text, the author details his arduous journey from Kashmir across the “roof of the world” and offers an extensive description of Xinjiang province, with a focus on the rugged landscapes of the Pamir and Kunlun Mountains. The narrative also chronicles his desert treks and visits to historic oasis towns like Yarkand, Khotan, Keriya, and Aksu, enriched by his personal observations of local customs. To align the text with Soviet interests, the Russian edition exhibits significant censorship, fully deleting passages regarding the lack of Soviet representation in Xinjiang and the closure of the Russo-Chinese frontier to the «new regime». Mentions of friendly European settlers and cross-cultural hospitality were similarly erased. Almost every chapter concludes with hostile editorial remarks accusing Skrine of either concealing local misery or secretly prospecting mineral resources for personal gain.
The book features 26 early black-and-white reproductions of photographs taken by the author during his travels. The images show now-destroyed wall of the old city in Kashgar and the city wall in Khotan, the castle of the rulers of Baltit, the British Consulate in Kashgar, a bazaar in Kashgar, portraits of a local beggar, a hunter, etc., and ethnographic views. The edition also includes two maps: “Chinese Turkestan and Adjacent Territories” and a “Schematic Map of China’s Provinces.” The latter is a vital editorial substitution that replaces the original 1926 English map (Pamirs Qungur Massif) to reflect the shifting borders of the 1930s. The Russian schematic deliberately highlights the newly established Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo, though it cartographically binds the territory within China to reflect the refusal to recognize its independence.
Our copy of the book likely belonged to a Red Army officer or a border guard assigned to the Tajikistan-Xinjiang frontier. Because maps in these geopolitical texts were frequently torn out for active field use by military personnel, finding a copy with its supplements entirely intact is exceptionally rare.
Overall, the earliest Russian translation of Sir Clarmont Skrine’s bestseller travelogue “Chinese Central Asia (Xinjiang).”

Worldcat shows copies of the edition at the National Diet Library in Tokyo, University of Michigan, and University of Hawaii.

Price: $350.00

Status: On Hold