Sino-Soviet split

The Sino-Soviet split (1956–1966) was the breaking of political

Sino-Soviet Split
relations between the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the Union
of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), caused by doctrinal divergences Part of Cold War and Sino-Soviet relations
arising from each of the two powers' different interpretation of
Marxism–Leninism as influenced by the national interests of each
country during the Cold War.[2] In the late 1950s and early 1960s,
debates of ideological orthodoxy between the communist parties of the
USSR and of the PRC became disputes about Soviet policies of de-
Stalinization and peaceful coexistence with the capitalist West. Despite
such background politics, to the Chinese public Mao Zedong proposed
a belligerent attitude towards capitalist countries, an initial rejection of
the Soviets' peaceful-coexistence policy, which he perceived as
Marxist revisionism by the Russians.[2]
Chairman Mao Zedong and Premier Nikita
Since 1956—after Nikita Khrushchev denounced Joseph Stalin and
Khrushchev (China, 1958)
Stalinism—China and Russia had progressively disagreed and
Date 1956–1966[1]
diverged about orthodox interpretation of Marxist ideology. By 1961,
intractable differences of philosophy provoked the Communist Party of Caused De-Stalinization, revisionism,
China to formally denounce Soviet communism as the product of by Maoism
"Revisionist Traitors".[2] The Sino-Soviet split was about who would Methods Proxy war, propaganda, border
lead the revolution of world communism—to whom, China or Russia, clashes
would the vanguard parties of the world turn for aid and assistance?[3]
Resulted Competition for Communist allies, tri-
In that vein, the USSR and the PRC competed for ideological
in polar Cold War
leadership through their respective networks of communist parties in
the countries of their spheres of influence.[4]
Sino-Soviet split
Geopolitically, the Sino-Soviet split was a pivotal event of the bi-polar Cold War Chinese name
(1945–1991) as important as theBerlin Wall (1961), the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962) Traditional Chinese 中蘇交惡
and the Vietnam War (1965–1975) because it facilitated the Sino-American
Simplified Chinese 中苏交恶
rapprochement of the 1972 Nixon visit to China. Internationally, the geopolitical
rivalry between communists—Chinese Stalinism and Russian peaceful coexistence
Transcriptions
—eliminated the myth that monolithic Communism was an actor in the 1947–1950 Standard Mandarin
period of the Vietnam War and in world politics—such Realpolitik established the Hanyu Pinyin Zhōngsū jiāowù
tri-polar geopolitics of the latter part of the Cold ar.[5][6]
W Russian name
Russian Советско–
китайский
Contents раскол

History Romanization Sovetsko–

Origins kitayskiy raskol
After Stalin
Onset
Formal ideological statements
Conflict
Cultural Revolution
National interests conflict
 Border war
Geopolitical pragmatism
Competing front groups
Equilibrium
The transition
Transcending Mao
Competing hegemonies
Reform
See also
References
Further reading
Primary sources
External links

History

Origins
In taking Communism to China, the leader of the
Communist Party of China (CPC), Mao Zedong,
fought against Imperial Japan, and especially the
Chinese Civil War (1927–1949), against the
Nationalist Kuomintang, led by Generalissimo
Chiang Kai-shek. Stalin played both sides and
Mao ignored most of his advice. During the
Second World War (1939–1945), Stalin advised
Mao to enter an anti-Japanese-coalition with
Chiang Kai-shek. After the war, Stalin advised
Mao against seizing power and to collaborate with
the Nationalists, because of Stalin's Treaty of
Chinese stamp commemorating theSino-Soviet Treaty of
Friendship and Alliance (1945) with the
Friendship, Alliance and Mutual Assistance(1950)
Kuomintang; in communist solidarity, Mao
abided Stalin. In the event, Gen. Chiang Kai-shek
opposed the USSR's annexation of Tannu
Uriankhai; three months after the Japanese
surrender, Stalin broke the treaty requiring Soviet
withdrawal from Manchuria, gave Mao control of
the region, and ordered Gen. Rodion Malinovsky
to give the Japanese army's spoils of war to the
Chinese Communists.[7]

In the 1945–1949 period, Chiang Kai-shek

received large amounts of financial and military
assistance from the United States, which tried to
broker peace between him and Mao. In 1948–
1949, the Nationalist armies collapsed and the
leaders fled to Formosa (Taiwan).[8]
Communist states in 1980: pro-Soviet (red), pro–Chinese (yellow),
the non-aligned North Korea and Yugoslavia (black). Somalia was
pro-Soviet until 1977, and Democratic Kampuchea (Cambodia) was
pro–Chinese until 1979.
As head-of-state of the People's Republic of China, Mao visited Moscow (December 1949–February 1950) and returned to China
with the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship (1950), which included a $300 million loan, the transfer of former Russian colonial
properties, and a 30-year military alliance. Under Soviet guidance, the PRC applied the soviet model of
centralised planned economy;
the planning and development made heavy industry the priority and consumer-goods production the second priority. Despite Soviet
guidance, Mao developed the basic ideas of China's Great Leap Forward (1958–1961), from an agrarian society to an industrial
society.

Ideologically, to justify realising the modernisation of China, Mao argued that orthodox Marxism, rooted in industrialized Europe,
could not readily be adapted and applied to the agricultural societies of eastern Asia, and adapted Marxism to Chinese socio-
economic conditions. In 1947, Mao sent the journalist Anna Louise Strong with documents to the West, and to "show them to Party
leaders in the United States and Europe", but that it was not "necessary to take them to Moscow". Mao's trust in Strong derived from
her article "The Thought of Mao Tse-Tung" and the book Dawn Comes Up Like Thunder Out of China: An Intimate Account of the
Liberated Areas in China (1948), reporting that Mao's intellectual feat was "to change Marxism from a European [form] to an Asiatic
form ... in ways of which neither Marx nor Lenin could dream"; the book was banned in the USSR, as anti-soviet literature.

After Stalin
In 1954, new Soviet leaderNikita Khrushchev sought to improve the USSR's relations with China by reaching new trade agreements.
He acknowledged Stalin's economic unfairness to China, arranged for the USSR to fund fifteen industrial projects in China, and also
arranged mutual exchanges of technicians.[9] Under the trade agreements, the two countries exchanged economic specialists (ca.
10,000 by 1960) and political advisors (ca. 1,500), and China sent laborers to fill the shortage of workers in Siberia. Despite this
economic cooperation, Mao and Khrushchev disliked each other.[9] In the field of international relations, the PRC and the USSR
strengthened their relationship through diplomacy, by encouraging Vietnamese rapprochement, by way of a peace treaty between
Communist North Vietnam and non-Communist South Vietnam, in 1954. In the event, by 1955, 60 per cent of China's exports went
to Russia, and Mao had begun implementation of aChinese version of the Soviet "Five Year Plan".[10]

In 1956, Sino-Soviet relations began to deteriorate when Khrushchev initiated the de–Stalinization of the USSR. In a secret speech to
the 20th Congress of the CPSU, On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences, Khrushchev criticized Stalin the man and Stalin's
policies — especially the "Great Purge" of the Communist Party, in which Stalin killed hundreds of thousands of people.

Khrushchev's de–Stalinization of the Soviet Union caused a serious domestic problem for Mao, who had emulated Stalin and
Stalinism in the development ofChinese Communism.[11]

For Mao, the Hungarian Revolution of 1956was a serious political concern, because such a revolt questioned the political legitimacy
of Communist Party government. In response, the Chinese Communist Party formally denounced Khrushchev's de–Stalinization
policies as ideological revisionism of Marx, and reaffirmed the ideological orthodoxy of Mao's Stalinist government — while
.[12]
preserving diplomatic and economic relations with the USSR; the abstractions of ideology had cracked socialist unity

Mao perceived that the Soviet Union's foreign policy of peaceful coexistence with the West would isolate the PRC in every sense of
geopolitics.[13] The Hungarian revolution made Mao aware that such revolts might occur in the PRC. He sought to counter possible
political discontent with the Hundred Flowers Campaign (1956) of political liberalization, which proved too successful when it
featured criticism of Mao as Party Chairman and head of state.[14] Hence, Khrushchev's political liberalization of the USSR
compelled Mao to retain the Stalinist model of government for the PRC. The ideological break was assured when Khrushchev's
Stalinist enemies failed to depose him, which left China and the USSR practicing different forms of Marxism, leading to ideological
quarrels and enmity.[15]

Despite Khrushchev's efforts to maintain positive Sino-Soviet relations (especially with technical assistance to China's nuclear
weapons program), political tensions remained strong, because the USSR's policy of peaceful coexistence threatened the PRC's
geopolitical credibility, especially after failed rapprochement with the U.S. That diplomatic failure and the presence of U.S. nuclear
[16]
weapons in the Republic of China (Taiwan) led Mao to a policy of confrontation with the U.S.
In 1958, the ideological differences, especially the Soviet policy of peaceful coexistence with the West, worsened Sino-Soviet
relations. Notably, Mao's Great Leap Forward, a Stalinist program of instant industrialization, led to a cult of personality around Mao
as the true leader of the socialist world.[17] Mao widened the ideological divergence between the PRC and the USSR with criticism of
Khrushchev's economic policies, which included foreign aid for China. To the USSR, the ideological radicalism of the PRC
est, in response, the USSR reduced aid to China.[18]
destabilized peaceful coexistence with the W

In July 1958, Khrushchev went to Beijing to negotiate for bases in China for Soviet submarines. Instead, Mao accused Khrushchev of
trying to control the PRC's coast, and there was no deal.[19] At the end of August, Mao tried to force the issue of PRC control of
Taiwan, held by the remnant of the Republic of China (RoC). China attacked RoC-held Kinmen and the Matsu islands, beginning the
Second Taiwan Strait Crisis (23 August–22 September 1958). Mao had not warned Khrushchev of the attack, which forced the USSR
to re-think peaceful coexistence with the W
est, especially after the U.S. publicly committed to the military defense of the RoC.

The PRC's failure to warn the USSR of the attack worsened Khrushchev's relations with Mao, especially because the U.S. threatened
nuclear war if the PRC invaded Taiwan. Such Chinese actions then compelled the USSR's involvement in Sino-American quarrels
over a lost civil war.[18] In that geopolitical context, Khrushchev became skeptical of Mao's mental health, fearing that his
.[20] Khrushchev cancelled aid agreements, including delivery of Soviet nuclear
confrontational behavior might provoke a nuclear war
weapons to the PRC. That lack of clear and candid communications from the Chinese and ideological disagreement about the Great
Leap Forward had seriously damaged Sino-Soviet relations.

Onset
.[21] In 1959, Premier Khrushchev met with U.S.
The events of the 1958–59 period convinced Mao that the USSR was not trustworthy
President Dwight Eisenhower (1953–1961) to decrease tensions with the West. To that end, the USSR had reneged an agreement to
provide technical aid for the development of a Chicom nuclear weapon; the USSR sided with India in the Sino-Indian War (1962), by
way of moderate diplomatic relations with India; each collaboration of the USSR with the West offended Mao. Thereafter, he
perceived Khrushchev as too-tolerant of the West, despite the USSR sometimes confronting the Western powers. The Chinese
Communist Party believed that the Communist Party of the Soviet Union concentrated too much on "Soviet–U.S. cooperation for the
domination of the world", with actions that contradicted the ideology ofMarxism–Leninism.[22]

Mao had expected an aggressive response from Khrushchev about the U-2 spy plane incident (1960) over Russia. At the 1960 Paris
Summit meeting, Khrushchev demanded an official apology from U.S. President Eisenhower, who refused. Mao and the CCP took
Eisenhower's response as a political affront to socialist countries, and the PRC responded with political rallies demanding that
Khrushchev act against the American aggressors. To the Chinese Communists, Khrushchev not responding to the U.S. with military
force tarnished his image as a Communist leader. At the 1960 International Meeting of Communist and Workers Parties, in
Bucharest, Mao and Khrushchev argued and each socialist attacked the other's interpretation of Marxist doctrine as the incorrect road
to world socialism. Mao argued that Khrushchev's greater emphasis upon material easiness would make the people ideologically soft
and un-revolutionary; Khrushchev replied, "If we could promise the people nothing, except revolution, they would scratch their heads
and say 'Isn't it better to have good goulash?' [23]
"

In the 1950s, the Sino-Soviet split manifested itself indirectly through actions related to other Communist states. China denounced
the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (1945–1992) and Tito, who had pursued a non aligned foreign policy; neither pro–
Russian nor pro–Chinese. The USSR criticizedPeople's Socialist Republic of Albaniaand Enver Hoxha, who had refused to abandon
Stalinism and had aligned with the PRC, starting the Soviet–Albanian split. Moreover, in accordance with geopolitical circumstance,
the USSR provided moral support to the Tibetan rebels of the 1959 Tibetan uprising against the PRC.

By 1960, the Sino-Soviet split was manifested as open criticism, when Khrushchev and Peng Zhen openly argued at the congress of
the Romanian Communist Party. Khrushchev insulted Chairman Mao as "a nationalist, an adventurist, and a deviationist"; Peng Zhen
called Khrushchev a Marxist revisionist whose régime of the USSR showed him to be a "patriarchal, arbitrary and tyrannical"
ruler.[24] In the end, Premier Khrushchev denounced the People's Republic of China in an eighty-page letter to the Romanian
Communist Party congress.
In June 1960, the USSR openly denounced PR Albania at the height
of the de-Stalinization of the USSR. In China, Bao Sansan described
the Party's message to the cadres in China, "When Khrushchev
stopped Russian aid to Albania, Hoxha said to his people: 'Even if we
have to eat the roots of grass to live, we won't take anything from
Russia.' China is not guilty of chauvinism and immediately sent food
to our brother country."[25]

Khrushchev further responded to Mao's criticism by withdrawing

some 1,400 technicians from the PRC, which led to cancellation of
some 200 scientific joint projects intended to foster cooperation
between Russia and China. To Mao, the withdrawal of Soviet
technicians from China justified his accusation that Khrushchev had
caused not only the PRC's great economic failures, but also had
Chinese Stalinism: Mao Zedong andEnver Hoxha,
caused the famines occurred during theGreat Leap Forward. leader of Albania

As socialist countries, the PRC and the USSR still had reason to
prefer political unity. In the PRC, Chairman Mao needed to continue economic relations, to alleviate famine in China, and resolve
border disputes with India. In the USSR, Premier Khrushchev had lost political ground, because of his policy of détente with the U.S.
His accusations of U.S. espionage against the Eisenhower government had generated political tensions that broke USSR–US
diplomacy at the Paris Summit meeting, which worsened relations between the American and Russian superpowers; and yet, the PRC
remained allied to the USSR.[26]

In November 1960, at the Congress of 81 Communist parties in Moscow, the Chinese argued about the interpretation of Marxist
doctrine with the Soviets, and with most of the other socialist delegations, yet compromised in effort to avoid an ideological split
among socialist nations. In October 1961, at the 22nd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union the USSR and the PRC
renewed their conflicting ideological disputes.[27] In December 1961, the USSR broke diplomatic relations with People's Socialist
Republic of Albania, which had been aligned with the PRC, escalating the ideological dispute from political-party level to the
national level.

When India annexed Goa, following demand by the Goan people, who were flabbergasted by Portugal's resistance to leaving its
occupied territory in 1961, Moscow lauded the action while an unimpressed Beijing declared that "India's apparent contribution to
anti-imperialist struggle consists of taking on the world's smallest imperialist power
."

In 1962, the PRC and the USSR broke diplomatic relations. Chairman Mao criticized Premier Khrushchev for withdrawing from the
Cuban missile crisis (1962), that "Khrushchev has moved from adventurism to capitulationism". Khrushchev replied that Mao's
confrontational policies would lead to a nuclear war. At the same time, the USSR supported India against the Chinese invasion of the
Indian north east in theSino-Indian War (1962).[28]

The aftermath of the Cuban missile crisis placed nuclear disarmament at foremost in 20th-century geopolitics. To limit production of
nuclear weapons by other nations, the USSR, the UK, and the US signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty (5 August 1963). In that time,
the PRC were developing their own nuclear weapons, and Mao saw the Limited Test Ban Treaty as an attempt to slow China's
becoming a nuclear superpower. He was angered by Khrushchev's failure to aggressively deal with the U.S. Premier Khrushchev's
failure to confront the West led Chairman Mao to publish nine (September 1963–July 1964) letters in which he openly and
specifically criticized the leadership of Nikita Khrushchev as Premier of the USSR. After the occurrence of the Sino-Soviet split,
Chairman Mao turned to the countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America to develop new and strong alliances to further the
[29]
economic and ideological redevelopment of the People's Republic of China.

Formal ideological statements

The governments of the PRC and the USSR supported their actions with formal ideological statements. In June 1963, the PRC
published The Chinese Communist Party's Proposal Concerning the General Line of the International Communist Movement,[30] and
the USSR replied with an Open Letter of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union; such were the last communications to each other,
as socialists.[31] By 1964, Chairman Mao said that a counter-revolution in the USSR had re-established capitalism; consequently, the
USSR broke relations with the PRC, and theWarsaw Pact soon followed the Soviets.

After Leonid Brezhnev deposed Premier Khrushchev in October 1964, Chinese Prime Minister Zhou Enlai went to Moscow and met
with Brezhnev and Alexei Kosygin, who were the new leaders of the USSR. The meeting with the Soviet leaders went poorly
, and the
disappointed Zhou returned to China and reported to Chairman Mao that the Soviets remained firm in their stance, for which Mao
denounced "Khrushchevism without Khrushchev"; Mao's dismissal continued the Sino-Soviet split.

China accused the Soviet Union of colluding with the U.S., for instance during the Glassboro Summit Conference (June 1967)
between Kosygin and U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson. Radio Peking said that they discussed "a great conspiracy on a worldwide
basis . . . criminally selling the rights of the revolution of [the] Vietnam people, Arabs, as well as Asian, African, and Latin-American
peoples to U.S. imperialists."[32]

Conflict

Cultural Revolution
Meanwhile, in China, Mao Zedong launched the Cultural
Revolution (1966–1976) to prevent the development of the
Russian-style bureaucratic communism of the USSR. The
schools and universities were closed as students, following
Mao's proclamations, organized themselves into Red
Guard, grassroots-led units of radicals. However, this
process was chaotic and violent and had no real leadership,
and so over time the Red Guard divided into factions, and
their subsequent violence provoked civil war in some parts
of China; Mao had the Army suppress the Red Guard
factions; and when factionalism occurred in the Army, Mao
dispersed the Red Guard, and then began to rebuild the
Chinese Communist Party.[33]

The vast grassroots experiment that was the Cultural

Revolution stressed, strained, and broke China's political
relations with the USSR, and relations with the West.
Nevertheless, despite the "Maoism vs. Marxism–Leninism"
differences interpreting Marxism, Russia and China aided
North Vietnam, headed by Ho Chi Minh, in fighting the
Vietnam War (1945–1975), which Maoism defined as a
peasant revolution against foreign imperialism. The
The Sino–Soviet split allowed minor problems to become
Chinese allowed Soviet materiel across China for the
violent at the disputed areas of the Argun and Amur rivers;
North, to prosecute the war against the Republic of the Damansky–Zhenbao is southeast, north of the lake. (2
Vietnam, a U.S. ally. In that time, besides the Socialist March – 11 September 1969).
People's Republic of Albania, only the Communist Party of
Indonesia advocated the Maoist policy of peasant
revolution.[34]
National interests conflict
Since 1956, the Sino-Soviet ideological split, between Communist political parties, had escalated to small-scale warfare between
Russia and China; thereby, in January 1967, Red Guards attacked the Soviet embassy in Beijing. Earlier, in 1966, the Chinese had
revived the matter of the Russo-Chinese border that was demarcated in the 19th-century, and imposed upon the Qing Dynasty (1644–
1912) monarchy by means of unequal treaties that virtually annexed Chinese territory to the
Russian Empire.

Despite not asking the return of territory, the Chinese did ask the USSR to formally (publicly) acknowledge that said border,
established with the Treaty of Aigun (1858) and the Convention of Peking (1860), was a historic Russian injustice against China; the
Soviet government ignored the matter. Then, in 1968, the Red Guard purges meant to restore doctrinal orthodoxy to China had
provoked civil war in parts of the country, which Mao resolved with the People's Liberation Army suppressing the pertinent cohorts
of the Red Guard; the excesses of the Red Guard and of the Cultural Revolution declined. Mao required internal political equilibrium
in order to protect China from the strategic and military vulnerabilities that resulted from its political isolation from the community of
nations.

Border war
Meanwhile, during 1968, the Soviet Army had massed along the 4,380 km
(2,738 mi.) border with China—especially at the Xinjiang frontier, in north-
west China, where the Soviets might readily induce Turkic separatists to
insurrection. Militarily, in 1961, the USSR had 12 divisions and 200 airplanes
at that border; in 1968, there were 25 divisions, 1,200 airplanes, and 120
medium-range missiles. Although China had detonated its first nuclear
weapon, the 596 Test, in October 1964, the People's Liberation Army was
militarily inferior to the Red Army.

By March 1969, the Sino-Soviet border confrontation had become the Sino-
Soviet border conflict, with fighting at the Ussuri River and on Damansky– The door to the nuclear war shelter
complex in the tunnels ofUnderground
Zhenbao Island; more small-scale warfare occurred at Tielieketi in August. US
Project 131, in Hubei, China.
journalist Harrison Salisbury reported that Soviet sources hinted at a possible
first strike against China's nuclear weapons testing site in the Lop Nur
basin.[35]

US Presidents Kennedy and Johnson had considered attempting to destroy the Chinese program before it succeeded, but the USSR
had refused to cooperate.[36] Now the U.S. warned the USSR that a nuclear attack against China would precipitate a world-wide war,
and the USSR backed off.[37] Aware of the Soviet threat, China built large-scale underground shelters, such as Beijing's Underground
City, and military shelters such as the Underground Project 131 command center in Hubei, and the 816 Nuclear Military Plant in
Fuling, Chongqing.

Geopolitical pragmatism
After the Sino-Soviet border conflict (2 Mar. – 11 Sept., 1969), Soviet Prime minister Alexei Kosygin secretly went to Beijing to
confer with Premier Zhou Enlai, and by October, the PRC and the USSR began determining the demarcation of their national
borders. Despite not resolving the border demarcation, the meetings restored Sino-Soviet diplomatic communications, and, by 1970,
Mao understood that the People's Republic of China could not simultaneously fight the USSR and the USA, whilst suppressing
internal disorder. In July 1971, Nixon's National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger, went to Beijing to arrange the Nixon visit to
China (February 1972). Kissinger's actions offended the USSR, who then convoked a summit meeting with President Nixon; that
action re-cast the Cold War as tri-polar relation among Moscow and W
ashington and Beijing.
Concerning the 4,380 km (2,738 mi.) Sino-Soviet border, Soviet
propaganda agitated against the PRC's complaint about the unequal
Treaty of Aigun (1858) and the Convention of Peking (1860), which
cheated China of territory and natural resources. To that effect, in the
1972–73 period, the USSR deleted the Chinese and Manchu place-
names—Iman ( 伊 曼 , Yiman), Tetyukhe ( 野 猪 河 , yĕzhūhé), and
Suchan—from the map of the Soviet Far East, and replaced them
with the Russian place-names Dalnerechensk, Dalnegorsk, and
Partizansk, respectively.[38][39] To facilitate social acceptance of
such cultural revision, the Soviet press misrepresented the historical
presence of Chinese people—in lands gained by Tsarist Russia— To counter the USSR, Chairman Mao met U.S
which provoked Russian violence against the local Chinese President Richard Nixon in order to establish a
populaces; moreover, politically inconvenient exhibits were removed Sino-American rapprochement. (China, 1972)
from museums,[38] and vandals covered with cement the Jurchen-
script stele, about the Jin Dynasty, in the Khabarovsk Museum.[40]

Competing front groups

After Mao Zedong broke bitterly with the Soviet Union in the late 1950s, he launched a world-wide rivalry.[41] Mao set up a network
of pro-Chinese, anti-Soviet parties and Communist fronts that directly challenged the pro-Soviet organizations in many
countries.[42][43]

By 1970, Sino-Soviet ideological rivalry extended to Africa and the Middle East, where the Soviet Union and China funded and
supported opposed political parties, militias, and states, notably the Ogaden War (1977–1978) between Ethiopia and Somalia, the
Rhodesian Bush War (1964–1979), the Zimbabwean Gukurahundi (1980–1987), the Angolan Civil War (1975–2002), the
Mozambican Civil War (1977–1992), and factions of the Palestinian people. In Thailand, the pro-Chinese Communist fronts were
organized with a violent revolutionary goal in mind, but they were based in local Chinese enclaves and failed to connect with the
larger population.[44]

Equilibrium

The transition
In 1971, the failure of Project 571, an attempted coup d'état against Chairman Mao, and the death of Marshal Lin Biao, Mao's
executive officer, concluded the politically radical phase of the Cultural Revolution (1966–76). Afterwards, China resumed political
normality, until Mao's death (9 September 1976), and the emer
gence of the politically radicalGang of Four.

The re-establishment of Chinese domestic tranquility ended armed confrontation with the USSR, but it did not improve Sino-Soviet
diplomatic relations because in 1973 the Soviet Army garrisons at the Russo-Chinese border were twice as large as the 1969
garrisons. That continued military threat prompted the Chinese to denounce "Soviet social-imperialism", by accusing the USSR of
being an enemy of world revolution.

Transcending Mao
After thwarting the 1976 coup d'état by the radical Gang of Four, who argued for ideologic purity at the expense of internal
development, the Chinese Communist Party politically rehabilitated Deng Xiaoping and appointed him head of the internal
modernization programs in 1977. While reversing Mao's policies (without attacking him), the politically moderate Deng's political
and economic reforms began China's transition from aplanned economy to a semi-capitalist mixed economy, which he furthered with
est.[45][46]
strengthened commercial and diplomatic relations with the W
In 1979, on the 30th anniversary of the foundation of the PRC, the
government of Deng Xiaoping denounced the Great Proletarian Cultural
Revolution as a national failure; and, in the 1980s, pursued pragmatic
policies such as "seeking truth from facts" and the "Chinese road to
socialism", which withdrew the PRC from the high-level abstractions of
ideology, polemic, and Russian Marxist revisionism; the Sino-Soviet split
had lost some political importance.[45][46]

Competing hegemonies
After the government of Mao Zedong, the Sino-Soviet split about
ideology became useless domestic politics, but was useful geopolitics,
wherein conflicted the Russian and Chinese hegemonies in the pursuit of
their national interests. The initial Soviet–Chinese proxy war occurred in
Indochina, in 1975, where the Communist victory of the National
Liberation Front (Viet Cong) and of North Vietnam in the thirty-year
Vietnam War had produced a post–colonial Indochina that featured pro-
Soviet governments in Vietnam (Socialist Republic of Vietnam) and Laos
The elimination of MarshalLin Biao in 1971
(Lao People's Democratic Republic), and a pro–Chinese government in
ameliorated the Cultural Revolution (1966–
Cambodia (Democratic Kampuchea). 1976).

At first, Vietnam ignored the Khmer Rouge domestic re-organisation of

Cambodia, by the Pol Pot government (1975–1979), as an internal matter,
until the Khmer Rouge attacked the ethnic Vietnamese populace of
Cambodia, and the border with Vietnam; the counter-attack precipitated
the Cambodian–Vietnamese War (1975–1979) that deposed Pol Pot in
1978. In response, the PRC denounced the Vietnamese, and retaliated by
invading northern Vietnam, in the Sino-Vietnamese War (1979); in turn,
the USSR denounced the PRC's invasion of V
ietnam.

In December 1979, the USSR invaded the Democratic Republic of

Afghanistan to maintain the Afghan Communist government in power.
Paramount Leader of China, Deng Xiaoping
The PRC viewed the Soviet invasion as a local feint, within Soviet's (center), with U.S. PresidentGerald Ford (left);
greater, geopolitical encirclement of China. In response, the PRC entered peaceful coexistence redux. (China, 1975).
a tri-partite alliance with the U.S. and Pakistan to sponsorIslamist Afghan
armed resistance to the Soviet Occupation (cf. Operation Storm-333).
Meanwhile, the Sino-Soviet split became manifest when Deng Xiaoping, the paramount leader of China, required the removal of
"three obstacles" so that Sino-Soviet relations might improve:

1. The massed Soviet Army at the Sino-Soviet border and in Mongolia.

2. Soviet support of the Vietnamese occupation of Kampuchea (Cambodia).
3. The Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
In 1981–82 period, Sino-American relations were strained by geopolitical disagreements about wars, such as the Israeli–Palestinian
conflict and the Falklands War. At the CCP's 12th Congress in September 1982, Deng Xiaoping revived the revisionist "Three
Worlds" idea that characterized China as a neutral player in a world divided by conflict between the superpowers. Meanwhile, in
March 1982 in Tashkent, USSR Secretary Leonid Brezhnev gave a speech conciliatory towards the PRC, and Deng took advantage of
Brezhnev's proffered conciliation; in autumn of 1982, Sino-Soviet relations resumed (semi-annually) at the vice-ministerial level.

When Brezhnev died in November 1982, a Chinese delegation, headed by Foreign Minister Huang Hua, attended the funeral, where
Huang praised the late Soviet leader Brezhnev as "an outstanding champion of world peace" and expressed hope for normal relations
with Moscow. However, Huang's actions at Brezhnev's funeral led to his dismissal from of
fice after he returned to the PRC.
Three years later, in 1985, when Mikhail Gorbachev became President of the USSR,
he worked to restore political relations with the PRC; he reduced the Soviet Army
garrisons at the Sino-Soviet border and in Mongolia, resumed trade, and dropped the
matter of the 1969 border-demarcation dispute. Nonetheless, the Soviet withdrawal
from Afghanistan remained unresolved, and Sino-Soviet diplomacy remained cool,
which circumstance allowed the Reagan government to sell American weapons to
China and so counter the geopolitics of the USSR in the Russo-American aspect of
the tri-polar Cold War.

Diplomatic relations between China and Afghanistan were neutral during the reign
of the Afghan king; yet, when pro-Soviet Afghan communists seized power in 1978,
relations between China and the Afghan communists quickly worsened and then
became hostile. Although the Afghan communists supported China's enemies in
Vietnam, and blamed China for supporting militant Afghan anti–Communists, China
responded to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan by supporting the Afghan
Mujahidin with aid, small arms, andmatériel, delivered by the Pakistani military and In 1979, the Chinese-supported
intelligence and the CIA, and likewise increased their military presence in Xinjiang, government of Pol Pot in Cambodia
near Afghanistan. China acquired American military equipment to defend from (Kampuchea) was overthrown by the
Soviet attack.[47] Soviet-backed Vietnamese in the
Cambodian–Vietnamese War (1975–
The Chinese People's Liberation Army trained and supported the Afghan Mujahidin 1979).
during the Soviet–Afghan War. China moved training camps for the Mujahideen
from Pakistan into China proper, which were supported with military advisors and
[48]
soldiers; afterwards, the Mujahidin were provided anti-aircraft missiles, rocket launchers, and machine guns.

Throughout the 1980s, Sino-Soviet political relations improved, by trade agreements and cultural exchanges, however ideological
relations between the Communist parties of Russia and China remained unchanged, because the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)
refused to accept the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) as their Marxist equals.

Reform
In May 1989, Soviet President Gorbachev visited the People's Republic of China, where the government doubted the practical
efficacy of perestroika and glasnost. Since the PRC did not officially recognize the USSR as a socialist state, there was no official
opinion about Gorbachev's reformation of Soviet socialism. Privately, the Chinese Communists thought that the USSR was
unprepared for such political and social reforms without first reforming the economy of the USSR.

The Chinese perspective derived from how the paramount leader, Deng Xiaoping, effected economic reform with a semi-capitalist
mixed economy, while the political power remained with the Chinese Communist Party. Ultimately, Gorbachev's reformation of
Russian society ended Soviet-Communist government and provoked thedissolution of the Soviet Unionin 1991.

See also
History of the Soviet Union (1953–64)
History of the Soviet Union (1964–82)
History of the People's Republic of China
Sino-Albanian split
Sino-American relations
Sino-Soviet relations
Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship
Soviet imperialism
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Further reading
Chang, Jung, and Jon Halliday. Mao: The Unknown Story. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005.
Ellison, Herbert J., ed.The Sino-Soviet Conflict: A Global Perspective(1982) online
Ford, Harold P., "Calling the Sino-Soviet Split", Studies in Intelligence, Winter 1998-99.
Friedman, Jeremy. "Soviet policy in the developing world and the Chinese challenge in the 1960s."Cold War History
(2010) 10#2 pp: 247-272.
Friedman, Jeremy. Shadow Cold War: The Sino-Soviet Competition for the Third World(UNC Press Books, 2015).
Goh, Evelyn. Constructing the US Rapprochement with China, 1961-1974: From "Red Menace" to acit "T Ally"
(Cambridge University Press, 2005)
Jian, Chen. Mao's China & the Cold War. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2001.
Kochavi, Noam. "The Sino-Soviet Split." inA Companion to John F. Kennedy (2014) pp: 366-383.
Li, Hua-Yu et al., eds China Learns from the Soviet Union, 1949-Present(The Harvard Cold War Studies Book
Series) (2011) excerpt and text search
Lüthi, Lorenz M. (2010).The Sino-Soviet Split: Cold War in the Communist World. Princeton UP. ISBN 978-
1400837625.
Mark, Chi-Kwan. China and the world since 1945: an international history(Routledge, 2011)
Olsen, Mari. Soviet-Vietnam Relations and the Role of China 1949-64: Changing Alliances(Routledge, 2007)
Ross, Robert S., ed. China, the United States, and the Soviet Union: rTipolarity and Policy Making in the Cold War
(1993) online
Scalapino, Robert A (1964). "Sino-Soviet Competition in Africa".Foreign Affairs. 42 (4): 640–654.
doi:10.2307/20029719. JSTOR 20029719.
Westad, Odd Arne, ed. Brothers in arms: the rise and fall of the Sino-Soviet alliance, 1945-1963(Stanford University
Press, 1998)

Primary sources
Luthi, Lorenz M. (2008). "Twenty-Four Soviet-Bloc Documents on Vietnam and the Sino-Soviet Split, 1964–1966".
Cold War International History Project Bulletin. 16: 367–398.
[Bao] Sansan and Bette Bao Lord (1964/1966), Eighth Moon: The True Story of a Young Girl's Life in Communist
China, reprint, New York: Scholastic, Ch. 9, pp. 120–124 [summary of lectures to cadres on Sino-Soviet split].
Prozumenshchikov, Mikhail Yu. "The Sino-Indian Conflict, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and th
e Sino-Soviet Split,
October 1962: New Evidence from the Russian Archives."Cold War International History Project Bulletin (1996) 8#9
pp: 1996-7. online

External links
The CWIHP Document Collection on the Sino-Soviet Split
The Great Debate: Documents of the Sino-Soviet Splitat Marxists Internet Archive

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