THE SINO-SOVIET SPLIT, 1959–1969 Term Paper

Mao Zedong’s Communist Party victory in the Chinese Civil War in 1949 seemingly affirmed the monolithic face of communism. Behind this monolithic face, however, the Sino-Soviet relationship was laced with tension. Soviet leaders V. I. Lenin and Josif Stalin had both considered Mao Zedong a thickheaded peasant, and neither had ever given him their full support. Mao Zedong knew this, and with good reason never fully trusted his Soviet allies.

In 1958 Mao had launched his “Great Leap Forward,” a boot-strap economic policy aimed at collectivizing agriculture and increasing iron and steel production. Initial indicators suggested that Mao’s policies were successful, but by 1959 it was clear that the Great Leap Forward was a disaster, and increased Russian technical assistance and economic aid were desperately needed to keep China’s economy moving forward.

In addition to economic assistance, Mao Zedong needed Soviet military technology, especially missiles and nuclear weapons. He was severely disappointed when Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev not only refused to give China atomic weapons but also announced he was committed to a policy of “peaceful coexistence” with the West. Increasingly it seemed that Khrushchev saw China as a liability; he frequently joked about Mao Zedong’s economic failures and repeatedly made fun of his peasant appearance. In 1960 Khrushchev recalled 12,000 Russian technicians working in China and summarily canceled hundreds of Sino-Soviet economic projects. Mao Zedong was furious. By 1964 the Sino-Soviet split was so deep that Mao declared that Russia, not the United States, was China’s worst enemy. This observation was verified in 1969 when Chinese and Soviet troops clashed along the Ussuri River in northern Manchuria.

The Sino-Soviet split weakened both leaders. Coming at the same time as the Cuban Missile Crisis, the split was used by Khrushchev’s critics within the Soviet Central Committee to oust him from power in 1964. The split also ensured that Mao Zedong could not hide the dismal failures of his economic policies and prompted him to launch the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. By illustrating that communism did not have a monolithic face and that Russian and Chinese national interests were more important than ideological unity, the Sino-Soviet split assisted in improving East-West relations and contributed to ending the Cold War. The United States took full advantage of the split. In 1972 President Richard Nixon and Mao Zedong signed a joint communiqué normalizing relations between China and the United States.
Suggestions for Term Papers
1. Investigate Mao’s “Great Leap Forward” and write a paper analyzing the economic, political, and demographic consequences of this venture.
2. Although publicly Mao expressed friendship for the Soviet Union, he never fully trusted his Russian allies. Write a paper explaining why Mao distrusted the Russians.
3. Between 1946 and 1960 the Soviet Union gave huge amounts of aid to China, but Premier Nikita Khrushchev abruptly halted this aid in the summer of 1960 and ordered the Russian advisors to leave China. Write a paper on Khrushchev’s reasons for doing this.
4. Examine the 1969 border clashes between Chinese and Russian troops and analyze their effects on Sino-Soviet relations.
5. In what ways did the Sino-Soviet split influence President Richard Nixon’s decision to recognize Mao as China’s legitimate leader?
6. Assess the effect of the dissolution of the Soviet Union on relations between China and the states that were once part of the Soviet Union.

Research Suggestions

In addition to the boldfaced items, look under the entries for “Mao Zedong and the Long March, 1934–1935” (#25), “The Victory of the Chinese Communist Party, 1949” (#46), “Khrushchev’s ‘Secret Speech’ at the Twentieth Party Congress, 1956” (#51), and “The Chinese Economy at the End of the Twentieth Century” (#100). Search under Zhou Enlai and Henry Kissinger.

SUGGESTED SOURCES

Primary Sources

Khrushchev, Nikita. Khrushchev Remembers. Translated and edited by Strobe Talbott. Boston: Little, Brown, 1970. A well-edited collection of Khrushchev’s memoirs and speeches that gives Khrushchev’s position on the split.

Kissinger, Henry. White House Years. Boston: Little, Brown, 1979. An insightful explanation of the American decision to recognize China. Mao Tse-tung. Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung. 5 vols. Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1965. The fifth volume of this series gives perspective on the split.

Nixon, Richard M. RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon. New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1978. President Nixon gives a candid appraisal of Mao and U.S. policy.

Selden, Mark. The People’s Republic of China: A Documentary History of Revolutionary Change. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1979. A most useful collection of documents providing a good perspective on the split.

Secondary Sources

Brzezinski, Zbigniew. The Grand Failure: The Birth and Death of Communism in the Twentieth Century. New York: Scribner, 1989. This former national security adviser’s analysis of the split shows its importance for the twentieth century.

Khrushchev, Sergei. Khrushchev on Khrushchev: An Inside Account of the Man and His Era. Edited and translated by William Taubman. Boston: Little, Brown, 1990. Written by his son, who became an American citizen, these are candid reflections on Khrushchev’s achievements.

Riasanovsky, Nicholas. A History of Russia. 6th ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. A solid treatment of the split with a good bibliography. This is a good starting point for the Russian perspective.

Spence, Jonathan. The Search for Modern China. New York: W. W. Norton, 1990. His explanation of the split, along with his critical bibliography, is an excellent starting point for the Chinese perspective.

Terrill, Ross. A Biography: Mao. New York: Harper and Row, 1980. A fast-paced, well written biography by a premier student of modern China.

Whiting, Allen. “The Sino-Soviet Split.” In Cambridge History of China, vol. 14, part 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. The most accessible short scholarly assessment of the split.

World Wide Web

“The National Security Archive.” http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv. Contains good documentary links on the split.