WHERE RUSSIA AND CHINA COLLIDE

ALONG the 4,500-mile border shared by Russia and China, there is no clearer natural dividing line than the purple-hued Tien Shan mountain range. Rising majestically to heights of almost 25,000 feet, the permanently snowcapped peaks separate Soviet Kazakhstan from the Chinese region of Sinkiang. One main pass through the Tien Shan range is called the Dzungarian Gates, named after the Dsongars who formed the left flank of the Mongolian army of old. Historically the Gates have been the passageway for Mid-Asian traffic between Russia and China. Last week the two Communist giants reported that their troops had engaged in an armed clash at the Dzungarian Gates--the latest, and potentially most dangerous, of a series of border battles between Soviet and Chinese soldiers this year.

According to China, which first reported the skirmish, Soviet troops intruded into Sinkiang for no ostensible reason. They killed one shepherd, kidnaped another, and brought large numbers of tanks and armored cars onto Chinese soil in an effort to "provoke still larger armed conflicts," said Peking. After the Russians refused to "talk reason," Chinese troops fought back in self-defense, but the situation was still "developing," the Chinese protest to Moscow added ominously.

The Russian Foreign Ministry immediately issued a countercharge, claiming that a Chinese shepherd had sauntered 400 yards into Soviet territory in order to distract border guards while Chinese troops slipped into Russia. When ordered to leave, said the Russians, the Chinese replied with a burst of submachine-gun fire. Moscow mentioned no casualties on either side.

Propaganda Beamed. Both Russia and China could have figured to gain something from staging the clash. The Russians were quick to accuse the Chinese of "trying to poison the good atmosphere" of the Communist summit in Moscow. Peking might hope to show up Moscow as the aggressor before the world's other Communists. Clearly disturbed by the incident, Russia hastily summoned several of its ambassadors to Asian countries back to Moscow for consultations.

The most ominous aspect of the event was the implication from both sides that such clashes had occurred before in this sensitive area. The Sinkiang border region is probably a more volatile confrontation point than even the far-eastern Ussuri River area, where Chinese and Soviet troops engaged in a series of bloody border fights last March. The Dzungarian Gates lie just 250 miles from China's nuclear-testing and research sites on the Taklamakan Desert. Moreover, the Sinkiang Uighur Autonomous Region, as it is officially called, is two-thirds populated by Kazakh peoples, many of whom resent Chinese rule Russian radio propaganda beamed there frequently urges Chinese Kazakhs to rise up in arms against the Peking authorities.

The flare-up will doubtless give a new sense of urgency to Russia's campaign of military preparedness along the Sino-Soviet border. The campaign began some time ago, but has become much more evident since the Ussuri fighting,

Trip by Intourist. Much of the frontier area is remote and desolate territory, seldom seen by outsiders except the most hardy tourists. There may be fewer of those in the future; last week Russia acknowledged that most of the Trans-Siberian Railway had been off limits to foreigners since June 1. The ban was presumably imposed to prevent non-Russians from viewing Soviet troop movements and military hardware along the border. On the following pages are rare, recent color photographs taken in the troubled border areas. They are the work of an enterprising Italian freelance photographer who, just prior to the ban, completed a trip through Siberia arranged by Intourist, the official Soviet tourist agency,

Soviet military officials make no secret of the readiness campaign. 'First Deputy Defense Minister Sergei L. Sokolov recently wrote that "a straining of the U.S.S.R.'s entire military preparedness" was necessary to deal with recent Maoist provocations.

The Russians have generally kept some 20 army divisions stationed in the Trans-Baikal and Far Eastern military regions. These have recently been beefed up to full strength, and some reports suggest that new divisions have been added--bringing total estimated armed strength up to as many as 1,500,000 men. Most of these are concentrated along the Trans-Siberian Railway east of Irkutsk. In Mongolia, theoretically an independent republic, Soviet authorities have stationed up to 200,000 new troops under a defense treaty signed in 1966. Fighter planes, which can land almost anywhere on the flat Mongolian plateau, are scattered about the vast grasslands, housed in earthen shelters. Russia's main listening post on China is also in Mongolia, and Peking has begun to speak derisively of Mongolia as a Russian "colony." The Soviet Union enjoys military superiority everywhere along the border. The Chinese airfields nearest to the Ussuri fighting point, for example, are at least 250 miles away; within that radius, Russia has 50 airfields. Russian pilots on reconnaissance missions constantly overfly the outward few miles of Chinese territory. Some of the Soviet units stationed along the border are equipped with rockets, and nearly all have the latest and best Russian guns and military vehicles. Even in the contest to populate border areas Russia is far ahead of China, with up to 100 persons per square mile in places, compared to China's average of 2.6 persons. Despite all those advantages, Moscow is obviously taking no chances.

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