Dear Marguerite,
Thank you for the maps, that confirmed my suspicions.
Reading the 1980 Soviet map. got me to laughing. Here is why:
In the R.E.H. storyline, that became part of the chronicler’s ongoing voice-over, of Conan the Barbarian, he was “sent to Khitai”, to learn culture, swordsmanship, and a few other things. In Russian, Red China is ‘kitai’! The R.E.H. stories were written in the ‘30’s. That is remarkable.
What is also funny is that the term Khitai, Cathay for China comes from a non-Chinese Khitai kingdom in what is now northern China/southern Siberia — they were Mongol-Turkic and had kingdoms and empires over centuries like the Kara-khitai etc.
“In Russian, Red China is ‘kitai’!”
Kitai is the Russian version of the English old name of China - Cathay. It comes from Khitan, a Chinese nomadic people who occupied Northen China in the 10th century.
The name Cathay was used by Marco Polo in his writings about China in the 16th century.