Mikhail D. Bukharin

Some new earlier unpublished documents concerning the history of exploration of Eastern Turkestan are published. They are fragments of the correspondence between W.W. Radloff and R. Pischel, protocols of the sessions of the Russian Committee for the Exploration of Central and Eastern Asia in Historical, Archaeological and Linguistic Relations, a previously unknown note of W.W. Bartold “Some Thoughts concerning the Expedition to Eastern Turkestan”, which deals with the organization of the expedition of the Russian Committee to this region. The letters of Radloff show the status of the Russian Committee as a part of the Foreign Ministry and precise the date of the creation of the Berlin Turfan Committee. These letters and Bartold’s note show the organizational difficulties in the work of the Russian Committee. The hopes of Russian archaeologists about common work with the German colleagues turned out to be vain; the help offered to the Germans was not paid back: instead of cooperation a conflict between the two expeditions broke out.