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Since the Japanese takeover of Manchuria there had been a variety of border incidents with the Soviets, escalating to multiple armed clashes from 1935 to 1939.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet–Japanese_border_conflicts#Small_battles

The two largest and most significant battles came toward the end of the period, at Lake Khasan in 1938 and Khalkin-Gol in 1939. The Soviets are considered to have gotten the better of the Japanese in both of these.

However, it was only in the aftermath of the Khalkin-Gol/Nomonhan battle of 1939 that Tokyo took notice, put the officers of the Kwangtung Army on a leash and compelled much more cautious and correct behavior on the Soviet and Mongolian borders. Presumably, this restraint by high commands in Tokyo and Manchuria was brought on by the particularly severe demonstration of Soviet superiority in equipment and maneuver during the summer 1939 clash.

The "lesson" of the 1939 clash, "don't mess with the Soviets" stuck & caused behavior modification that earlier clashes did not.

Is it plausible for an earlier clash to have taught the Japanese this lesson definitively? Could it have been as simple as Japanese forces probing in the same portion of the Manchukuo-Mongolian border in an earlier year (1932, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37 or 38)? Would the Soviet command have been capable of giving the offending Japanese a beating in any of those years?

In turn, might an earlier definitive "lesson" for Japan have accelerated the conclusion of a Japanese-Soviet neutrality pact? Or, if such a clash occurred before the Marco Polo bridge incident of July 1937, might it have made Japan more resistant to getting pulled into an escalated war with China, for fear of a Soviet intervention?
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