The author focuses on the application by the Soviet leadership of new forms and methods to normalize trade, economic and political relations with the Chinese province of Xinjiang in 1921–1923.

On September 5, 1921, the Soviet leadership sent to Urumqi, the provincial capital, a delegation led by Kazansky, an employee of the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs, to negotiate the restoration of trade and economic relations between the parties. However, it was not possible to achieve any significant results during the negotiations. The new Soviet representatives, now headed by the Commissioner of the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs in Western China, Esper Konstantinovich Ozornin-Kister, arrived in Urumqi on August 25, 1923, and the negotiation process was resumed on August 31, 1923. To support them, the Russian side voiced events that should have been of interest to Xinjiang’s trading circles. They proposed to establish an unlicensed regime along the borders of the USSR with the Eastern countries. The Russian-Eastern Chamber of Commerce compiled lists of goods that would be advisable to allow unlicensed import and export in trade with Western China, Afghanistan and several other countries of the East. In addition, her representatives drafted a plan to change customs rates on the border with the province. Also, the USSR government proposed that the provincial dujun conclude a concession agreement for the development of deposits. However, despite the clear prospects of the proposed cooperation and the obvious mutual benefit, the Soviet state failed to obtain the right to concession in 1923.

In search of establishing systematic trade relations between the USSR and Western China in 1923, the Soviet side also proposed other forms of cooperation, for example, the creation of a “Russian-Chinese Joint-Stock Company” with the seat of his board in Moscow.

However, despite concessions and a change in approaches to building relationships, it was not possible to formalize and reverse the negative aspects in trade, economic and political relations with the province during the period under review. Too great was the distrust on the part of the administration of neighboring Chinese territory towards the new Russian government, its ideology and practical actions.