Monday, 22 May

I received a telegram from Liquan, saying that the Cossack rebels have increased to over 4000. There were Soviet military officers and people who wore Soviet uniforms. His family members have already returned to Chongqing. The situation seems to be quite serious. This afternoon, Counsellor Liu met with Litvinov.  He said the Xinjiang authority is antagonistic towards the Soviet Union. His consul wanted to go on an official trip to Ili from his jurisdiction, but was obstructed on the way for three days and asked to return to Dihua. Also there were over twenty Soviet people wanting to return to the Soviet Union but the Xinjiang authority rejected permission. Ambassador Panyushkin’s health is better, and he left Chongqing on 16 May and stayed in Dihua for three days and has arrived at Alma-ata. He will arrive in Moscow during the daytime. He also said that our country has made things difficult for the Soviet Embassy in Chongqing, such as putting 5 or 6 people to live in one room. Also Soviet diplomats’ actions are restricted in China too. The Xinjiang authority treated the Soviet Union like this and he did not know its intention. People in the Foreign Ministry perhaps have scarce understanding towards the Soviet Union. This has put my work here in difficulty, and he cannot fully cooperate with me. For example this time they did not cable me the news of Ambassador Panyushkin’s departure from Chongqing. With regard to matters that happened in China and are related to Sino-Soviet relations they never cabled me. This made me extremely disheartened. But since I feel this is my duty towards the Party and my country, I cannot be perfunctory as it is against my wish. So I have to do my utmost to be tolerant and follow the instructions of Lin Sen and Dai Jitao, imitating what Zeng Jize has done in the past but I feel really bad about it.

In the morning, I studied Russian. The pattern of change of its numbers is the most complicated in the languages of the world. I had learnt French before, and I found its numbers were illogical. For example, in French we needed to use four 20 and one 15 to make it 95. But comparing French with Russian, every word has six different types of conjugations. For example, 3265 had six types of conjugations. For every change, the four numbers of 3265 had to change. Also there is gender in syntax as well. It is really unreasonable.