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Please, help me to identify the small territory to the northwest of Mongolia that you can see in this map:

Flags of the world, 1935 map from Wikipedia. The country has a light red flag and a blue emblem in the middle. It is bordering the northwest corner of Mongolia.

I've searched on Google and Wikipedia with no results.

(I know it's not so small a territory. It looks about the size of Austria)

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2 Answers 2

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It is Tannu Tuva. When Mongolia broke out from China in 1911, this little territory was separated from China (which was in a state of internal turmoil during the first years of the Republic of China) but was not claimed by Mongolia.

In practice, Tannu Tuva was a Soviet satellite country, only the Soviet Union and Mongolia recognized it.

Stalin annexed it to the SU in 1944.

As a side note, the protests by Chinese Nationalist Government (the Kuomintang) about Soviet encroachment in it are credited as the reason for Stalin switching his support to the Communist Party of China.

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    Well, it's larger than Austria and Ireland together. Asia is too laaarge.
    – Ginasius
    Commented Oct 26, 2016 at 20:22
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    Just as a note, according to A history of the Peoples of Siberia by James Forsyth (page 356), the Tuvan People's Republic voted in their Khural to join the SU willingly. Stalin accepted and made the official announcement in 1948.
    – Qiangong2
    Commented Mar 4, 2018 at 23:37
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The answer to your question is the Tuvan People's Republic, or Tannu Tuva for short. It was a puppet state of the Soviet Union from 1922 to 1944, when it was then absorbed into the Soviet Union. Today, the closest remnants of Tannu Tuva is the Tuva Republic, a subdivision of Russia.

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