The Cold War History of Sino-Soviet Relations
Introduction by Shen Zhihua
Since the last decade of the last century, research in the history of the Cold War has entered a new stage thanks to the declassification of relevant documents in Russia and eastern European countries as well as a succession of publications of material from Chinese historical archives. In this research, investigation of Sino-Soviet relations is one of the most striking subjects.
The change in Sino-Soviet relations to a considerable extent decided the fate of the socialist camp, and directly influenced and changed the political setup of the world in the Cold War era: the signing of the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Alliance in the early 1950s ultimately shaped the direction of the US Far East strategy, leading the Cold War spreading from Europe to Asia; the split between China and the Soviet Union eventually led to the easing and normalization of Sino-US relations, with the consequence of China withdrawing from the Cold War marked by Soviet-US confrontation. In this sense, discussions on Sino-Soviet relations are one of the most interesting subjects for research in Cold War history, and such research has been very fruitful in recent years. Here we published only seven articles by authors from China, Taiwan, and Japan.
All these articles have made use of historical archives and documents, concentrating on one particular issue or event. To a considerable extent they reflect the level of research on the history of Sino-Soviet relations in eastern Asia.
One of the structural weaknesses in the state relations of socialist countries is the tendency to cover or replace different national interests with a unified ideology. Before they took power, Communist parties in each country followed internationalism and obeyed the interest of the revolutionary center – Moscow. When they became parties in power, they found that they also shouldered national responsibilities, and conflicts occurred quite often between national interests and internationalism. Yang Kuisong's article displays the situation in the early period of the establishment of the People's Republic of China in which Chinese national interests clashed with those of the Soviet Union.
While following the policy of siding with the Soviet Union without reservation, one of the most difficult tasks facing the CCP was the Chinese people's repugnance to and ignorance of the Soviet Union. So the “Sino-Soviet Friendship Association” was set up to reverse this situation. The mission of the association was to issue propaganda about the Soviet Union and to organize people to learn from the Soviet Union. In relating the circumstances of this task, Yu Minling has produced a thought-provoking article pointing out the dislocation between the CCP propaganda and the responses of the people.
The convening of the 20 th national congress of the Soviet Communist Party was a shock to the socialist bloc. Thereafter, Mao began to consider the possibility of China following its own way. Lin Yunhui's article reminds the reader of the significance of this event, claiming that the CCP's move from condoning the 20 th congress as an act of intellectual liberation to attacking Khrushchev's revisionism and “total denial of Stalin” was a turning point in Cold War history.
Professor Kazuko Mori concentrates on the nature of the system of Sino-Soviet alliance. Her analysis focuses on Soviet nuclear aid to China and Sino-Soviet military cooperation. Her article points out the fact that the Soviet Union, from a strategic viewpoint, attempted to maintain the status quo while China strongly desired a change in the status quo. By the nature of the alliance, the Soviet Union's emphasis was on a military “commonwealth” while what China really wanted was a guarantee of security and material aid. The pursuit of extra independence on the part of China would inevitably result in the failure of military cooperation and a split in the alliance.
The bombing of the Jinmen Islands indicated serious divergences between the foreign policies of China and the Soviet Union, and Mao Zedong's high-handed action was more than Khrushchev could put up with. Dai Chaowu's article posits this event was one main reason Soviet Union stopped supplying atomic bomb samples and relevant technical material to China. It was also one of the important causes for the split in the Sino-Soviet alliance.
Shen Zhihua's article analyses the divergences in domestic policies between the two countries concerning the “Great Leap Forward” and the People's Commune Movement in China and the response of Soviet Union to these events. He concludes that another fuse for the split was Mao Zedong's “declaration of war” on the Soviet Union after he received the draft of Khrushchev's speech criticizing the people's communes while he himself was sponsoring criticism of Peng Dehuai at the Lushan meeting.
Another structural weakness in the state relations of socialist countries is the practice of equating inter-party relations with state relations. Li Huidan's article centers on the border issues between China and the Soviet Union in the 1950s. Drawing on rich archives and investigations, the article indicates it was due to the neglect of sovereignty and state consciousness that a strange “borderless” situation appeared in China's Xinjiang province. This situation contained the seeds of border conflict following the rupture of Sino-Soviet relations.
*SHEN ZHIHUA is Professor of the Department of History, East China Normal University. His research interests are history of the Soviet Union, history of the Cold War. His representative works include New Economic Policy and the Road to Socialization of Soviet Agriculture (Beijing: China Social Sciences Press, 1994); Soviet Experts in China (1948-1960) (Beijing: Chinese International Radio Press, 2003); Mao Zedong, Stalin and the Korean War (Guangzhou: Guangdong People's Press, 2003).
[Translated by Xiang Long, revised by Sally Borthwick]
[First published in Social Sciences in China (English Edition), Spring 2005. By courtesy of Prof. Shen Zhihua
