There is no doubt that when the required amount of time passes, the statute of limitations expires, and documents on the events of the border conflict near Lake Zhalanashkol in 1969 will be declassified. between the USSR and the People's Republic of China, the public on seemingly long-known facts await new discoveries. We'll have to rewrite the section on Wikipedia and more. There are reasons for this. In the fall of 1998, at one of the civil defense events held in the technical Lyceum No. 7 in Pavlodar, the Republic of Kazakhstan, I was lucky to meet representatives of various organizations with Nikolai Alexandrovich Ebel, then the deputy head of the repair service of the Heat Networks enterprise. There was a lot of time, he turned out to be an interesting interlocutor, and among other things, he said that he directly took part in hostilities on the border of the PRC and the Kazakh SSR, when he served in the army.
The first material dedicated to these events in the media I was able to see only in 2004, in "Arguments and Facts" No. 42 of October 20, entitled "One step away from World War" and I was quite surprised at the discrepancies in the description of the events presented by Ebel ON. and the author of the newspaper material Oleg Gerchikov. I offer you their comparative analysis.
Backstory first, taken from Wikipedia:
After the events of spring 1969 on Damansky Island, provocations from the PRC did not stop. In May-June of the same year, the situation on the Dzungar ledge of the Kazakh section of the border worsened. On August 12, on the territory of the PRC, in the immediate vicinity of the Soviet border outposts "Rodnikovaya" and "Zhalanashkol", a movement of reinforced groups of Chinese military personnel was noticed. The head of the border troops of the Eastern District offered the Chinese side to negotiate, but received no response. Both outposts were put on high alert, trenches were dug along the border, a system of trenches and communication trenches was created in the most threatened areas, and two armored personnel carriers of a maneuvering group were deployed on the flanks.
The materials of Wikipedia and "AiF" rather complement each other and slightly differ, telling about the heroism of Soviet border guards who are able to solve complex problems on their own, only "AiF", even if in passing, exploits the rather hackneyed theme of "Moscow's silence".
"AiF" - At night in Moscow, in the Main Directorate of the Border Troops, the head of the political department of the Eastern Border District, Colonel (now General) Igor Petrov, phoned. They listened to him, thanked him politely for the message and hung up. The same story repeated itself with the KGB officer on duty. Moscow's behavior alerted the colonel, and he tried to "ring" the situation through personal connections. An acquaintance from the headquarters of the border troops said in confidence that the leadership was "in the know," but kept silent.
And at this time … according to N. A. Ebel. serving as a private in the special forces, something happened that was never written about in the "AIF" and Wikipedia.
- August 12, 1969 our unit received an order to load into An 12 transport aircraft and already in flight we changed the insignia on our uniforms for buttonholes and shoulder straps of border troops. They gave out caps.
- Why?
- Order. The conflict is borderline, which means it cannot go beyond the scope of the border troops, otherwise it is a war.
- Strange, to me personally incomprehensible explanation. What happened next?
- We landed at night, guided by the light signal of hand lamps. There was a wind, there was a greater spread during the landing, by the morning only 25-30 people left the company from the company in the morning. We moved to the line, to the height, dug in.
- But so someone could get to the Chinese, because the landing was carried out in the immediate vicinity of the state border?
“I don’t know what the landing pattern was. Perhaps it was the board with our group that passed in close proximity to the border. We were given a task, we completed it. In addition, the section of the state border that should have been closed was quite long, the entire brigade was parachuted. It was possible to expect provocations in several places, but we were lucky, so to speak.
- Do not remember the names of georeferencing? Lakes? Hill?
- No. But you never know what lakes and mounds there. All we knew was that we were on the border with China in the Ucharalsky region of the Kazakh SSR.
With the mention of the Ucharal region of the Kazakh SSR, the presentation of events by the parties begins to overlap. Why partially? In Wikipedia and "AIF" it is said that the Chinese soldiers on August 13, 1969. penetrated deep into the territory of the USSR up to 400 meters, but for what purpose it is not indicated. Nevertheless, they had a goal, Nikolai Alexandrovich says about this:
- The Chinese moved the border pillars to our territory, the old pits from which they pulled them out, buried and masked with turf. If you want it, you won't find it.
But it turned out later. Of course, Ebel N. A. could not know how the events had developed before, what kind of provocations had, the time of their beginning, he told what he knew. When the Chinese soldiers reached the line of their trenches, butting and pushing each other on the parapets began, which grew into a hand-to-hand dump. Was there an order to "squeeze out" the violators, as "AiF" and Vicki wrote? Perhaps it was, but at that moment the guys were left on their own, 30 of our soldiers against more than 70 from their side, here the information of the parties converges. Company against platoon. Nikolai Aleksandrovich claims that there was a strict order - not to open fire and not to let the Chinese go any further, adding with sincere bewilderment:
- It was hard. All completely two-meter fellows. Where did they get the two-meter Chinese?
A very interesting slip of the tongue for a thin man 1 meter 85 cm tall. There is no doubt that the PRC had the same "career border guards" as our hero. In any case, provocation differs from misunderstanding in that it is carefully prepared and requires special skills. Nevertheless, our special forces turned out to be stronger.
The first shot was fired by the Chinese servicemen, Nikolai Aleksandrovich claims (AiF and Wikipedia suggest this).
- My friend Vitaly Ryazanov was killed next to me. After that, I was the first to open fire from our side. Then there were three more days of fighting with a blow deep into the territory of the PRC, there were many victims and blood.
To the last words of Ebel N. A. should be treated with caution, as a significant personal factor intervenes. According to the participant himself, after these events, he was under investigation, sat in the guardhouse for about a month, upon the fact that the first opened fire without an order. They wanted to refer his case to a military tribunal. Fortunately, nothing happened.
I imagine myself in the place of an officer of a special department, but what else could a soldier have done in those conditions? Do what you must and be what will be, let the diplomats deal with the subtleties.
- Nikolay, from the side of the violators, single shots were heard. How many times have you fired back?
- And also two … three … automatic horns.
In any case, no matter how different the testimonies of the participants in those events were, it seems quite obvious that the events near Lake Zhalanashkol are an example of the brilliant actions of both Soviet intelligence and the special forces of that time, who turned out to be head and shoulders above their Chinese comrades, which something else remains to be seen. Separately, a big thank you must be said to the soldiers who fulfilled their duty.
Attached to the text is a scanned photograph from the AiF taken from the archives of the FSB border troops, alas, for some reason it was not available in the newspaper's online archive, so I apologize for its poor quality. It supposedly depicts the participants in the conflict, the person circled with a marker is surprisingly similar to Ebel N. A., but this may also be a coincidence.
