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Authors: Odd Arne Westad

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and blind optimism or pessimism as a result of the increase or decrease of the Soviet aid.''

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The serious attempts at negotiations with the GMD that Mao and the Politburo engaged in during the first phase of the mission of U.S. mediator George C. Marshall came as a result of the waning of any prospect of Soviet aid. The Chinese Communist leaders recognized that their own limited resources did not allow them to prevent GMD forces from taking over large cities and key communication lines in the Northeast. In late December the CCP Politburo decided to refocus its work in the Northeast on rural areas far from large cities and major communication lines and to establish small but solid base areas there. It also harshly criticized those cadres in the Northeast who still clung to the hope that the Soviets would help the CCP seize the main cities. At the same time, the CCP leadership hoped that negotiations, endorsed by a U.S.-Soviet compromise on China, could prevent Jiang Jieshi from launching an all-out attack.
Mao had expected that the Soviet Union would play a direct role in the negotiations and was surprised and disappointed when Stalin failed to do so. Commenting on the situation, the CCP Politburo said unambiguously: "From the very beginning, China had depended on checks and balances between several states to maintain its independence, that is, using barbarians to deal with barbarians. If China were exclusively controlled by one state, then it would have disintegrated a long time ago."
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In mid-February 1946, after being mined down by Stalin, the CCP Politburo explained to the party that it was no longer necessary to seek Moscow's participation, because the Soviets "could ask us to make greater compromises" in order to demonstrate their "fairness."
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In early 1946, as the CCP-GMD talks made steady progress, Mao Zedong announced that "the stage of China's peaceful development will begin from here." In Mao's view, the main reason for the change in GMD behavior was the international trend of Soviet-U.S. compromise of which Stalin had advised him.
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The CCP leaders had learned to design their strategies with a view to adapting them to changing Soviet-U.S. relations. The CCP's continuous adaptation to Soviet policies resulted from this way of thinking, even when these policies restrained the scope of Chinese Communist actions.
The Chongqing negotiations stalled on the issue of Manchuria in late February. At the same time, the Soviet attitude toward the GMD hardened due to the failure of its economic talks with Jiang Jieshi. Seizing the opportunity, the CCP Politburo again strove to have the Red Army transfer some areas under its control to the Chinese Communists. In light of previous experience, the Politburo warned that the Northeast Bureau should obtain clear-cut agreements with the Soviet forces beforehand, because "the Soviet Union could change its attitude

 

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toward Jiang again when it resolves the problem of economic cooperation with the GMD government in the future."

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It is hue that even after altering its Northeast policy in mid-November 1945, the Soviet Union still maintained close relations with the CCP and provided it with secret assistance in the Northeast. However, the CCP leaders felt that the immediate objective of this cooperation was to prevent the United States from entering the area and the GMD government from exclusive domination there. In exchange for minimal Soviet assistance, the CCP cooperated fully with Moscow's China policy.
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In the spring of 1946, Soviet-U.S. relations deteriorated rapidly and the Cold War international system began to take shape. As Soviet-U.S. global confrontation intensified, and Stalin's attempts to work with Jiang failed, the Soviet Politburo decided to support the CCP's attempts to control the areas north of Changchun so as to exclude U.S. and GMD influence from the Soviet border zones. On the eve of the Soviet withdrawal, Moscow advised the CCP to "fight without restraint" and accepted the CCP plea for support to occupy Changchun, Harbin, and Qiqiha'er.
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Although the Soviet offer of support was exactly what the CCP had hoped for, Mao still warned that the party should consider the effects on the international situation of any offensive actions in the Northeast. In late April, however, as the talks were breaking down and CCP and GMD forces fought for control of Changchun, the chairman wrote top party leaders that he was changing some of his views on the international situation. Mao still saw the Soviet-U.S. compromise as a general trend in the foreseeable future. However, he believed that such a compromise did not mean that people in other countries would follow suit and make corresponding domestic political compromises. Moreover, he argued that a Soviet-U.S. concord could result only from the struggle of world democratic forces against the United States.
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According to Mao, under conditions of the current Soviet-U.S. confrontation, it was only logical for people of various countries to engage in struggle.
As a result of the GMD offensives and the CCP's new willingness to fight, a full-scale civil war erupted in late June 1946. During its first phase, Mao completed his theoretical adjustment to the new global and regional situation, saying that the center of international politics was not Soviet-U.S. rivalry but rather "the confrontation between American reactionaries and the peoples of the world." Washington's anti-Soviet propaganda, in Mao's view, merely constituted a smokescreen for its domestic problems and external expansion. Before the United States controlled the world's "intermediate zone" of semi-colonized and colonized countries, it could not attack the Soviet Union. Therefore, popular revolutions in that ''intermediate zone" played a decisive role in maintaining

 

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world peace and defending the Soviet Union. In those circumstances, the CCP's policy was "the policy of war": determined efforts to defeat the GMD offensive in order to carry the Chinese Revolution to victory.

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Mao's pronouncements on these issues in 1946-1947 were aimed against those within the party who advocated different interpretations and proposed alternative basic policies. The chairman also attempted to find common ground between his position and that of the Soviet Union, despite their different points of departure. In a theoretical sense, Mao' s feat lay in placing the military victory of the Chinese Revolution above the strategic role of the Soviet Union, while making his views closely fit Soviet positions on international affairs.
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During the civil war, the Soviet Union repeatedly sought to constrain the CCP out of fear that the Chinese Communists' political and military initiatives might provoke the United States to intervene and lead to Soviet-U.S. conflict. Mao, however, felt that the United States and the Soviet Union by themselves could no longer decisively affect the Chinese political situation and that the CCP therefore should be an ally of Moscow, but not an instrument of its diplomacy and strategy. This view influenced almost all major policy decisions of the CCP Politburo during this period.
Stalin, Mao, and the Civil War
Even though the relationship between the Soviet Union and the CCP had improved substantially by June 1946, no fundamental changes in Soviet East Asian policies ensued as a result. The Soviet leaders believed the CCP forces remained too weak to win the civil war and risked defeat, if not total elimination. The primary task of Soviet diplomacy was to prevent direct U.S. intervention in the Chinese civil war. Moscow therefore used all occasions to condemn U.S. military assistance to the GMD government as intervention in Chinese affairs, while Stalin continued to express his willingness in principle to coordinate policy toward China with the United States. In December 1946 Stalin told James Roosevelt (FDR's son) that the Soviet Union "would like to practice a common policy with the United States on the question of the Far East."
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In April 1947, in a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Marshall, Soviet foreign Minister V. M. Molotov wrote that by "a common policy" Stalin meant adherence to the agreement reached by the foreign ministers of the three Great Powers in December 1945.
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When the CCP leaders decided to use military means to fight the GMD, they also were trying to protect the Chinese Revolution and destroy the existing international system in East Asia centered around the Soviet Union and the United States. Between July and September 1947, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) changed its strategy from defense to offense. In October the CCP Politburo launched the slogan "Defeat Jiang Jieshi and liberate the whole country." In a

 

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CCP CC meeting in December, Mao Zedong repeated the views he had proposed in April 1946, that compromise between the Soviet Union and the United States did not necessarily mean that people in other countries also must follow suit and compromise at home. Mao also endorsed Stalin's criticism of the French and Italian Communist parties for "rightist deviations" and said that the fundamental reason for the defeat of the revolutionary forces in those countries was that the two parties had been too devoted to the parliamentary road. He also praised the policy of Yugoslav Communist Party, arguing that unlike some West European Communist parties, which had been deceived by the Potsdam and Yalta agreements, the Yugoslavs had adhered to armed struggle and won. Mao suggested that one should study the experience of the Yugoslav Communist Party in its practice of the united front.

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At the time Mao may not have known that the past policies of the French and Italian Communist parties had followed secret Soviet directives. There is, however, some evidence that he intended at least part of his criticism to warn against a too defensive and passive Soviet foreign policy. While echoing Stalin's new view of both the French and Italian Communist parties, Mao's comments struck other CCP leaders as encouraging a more militant attitude in Moscow.
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Although the CCP and the Soviet Union had established a solid basis of cooperation in the Northeast and shared interests in opposing U.S. intervention in the Chinese civil war, the ideological and practical bonds did not obliterate all differences between the two parties. Stalin is known to have belittled CCP strength and distrusted the party's leaders.
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His repeated requests to the CCP to compromise with the GMD in order to support Soviet diplomacy no doubt irritated Mao. The CCP chairman had many reasons continuously to caution the party that it should "rely on itself, not on foreign assistance."
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Chinese Communist military successes, however, caused Stalin to upgrade Soviet relations with the CCP. Meeting with Yugoslav leaders on February 10, 1948, Stalin admitted that he had erred in evaluating the Chinese situation. He said that while the CCP leaders had ostensibly accepted Soviet advice, they had in fact practiced a different policy and they had been right.
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In the spring of the same year, at the CCP's request, the Soviet Communist Party Central Committee (CPSU CC) decided to assist with repair of railroads in the Northeast. Unlike previous Soviet actions, the decision came not as a matter of convenience or a consideration exclusively for the Northeast area. In May Stalin told Ivan Kovalev the CPSU CC special representative to the CCP that the Soviet Union should exert itself to help the Chinese party. As long as "the two countries took the road of socialism, the victory of world revolution was assured."
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The CPSU CC decision and Stalin's new views signified an important expansion of Soviet relations with the CCP. If Soviet trade relations with the CCP-controlled areas in the Northeast had been regional and tactical measures, its assistance to the CCP from this time flowed from a strategic consideration. After Soviet experts arrived in the Northeast, they informed the CCP that the Soviet Union would continue to provide aid and would be willing to develop relations with a future CCP government.

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The Soviet experts assisted the CCP in repairing the railroads and in training personnel for the CCP military. The rapid restoration of the railways was extremely important; it enabled the CCP Northeast forces to fight and win the Liaoshen campaign. More broadly, the timely Soviet assistance signified an important opportunity for the two sides to develop relations.
Soon after the PLA launched its strategic counteroffensive in mid-1946, CCP leaders began to think about the need to reformulate the party's relations with the Soviet Union. In early 1947, Mao thus proposed to Stalin that he visit Moscow, but his initiative was not followed up during the civil war. Mao's proposal did, however, indicate the CCP's desire to consolidate ties with its Soviet counterpart.
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Meanwhile, the CCP Politburo used the Soviet-Yugoslav split as a way of displaying its closeness to Moscow. When the Communist Information Bureau (Cominform) expelled the Yugoslav Communist Party in the summer of 1948,
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the CCP Politburo quickly passed a resolution backing the Soviet position.
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The party leadership also launched an education campaign, especially within its Northeast Bureau, to oppose bourgeois nationalism and promote proletarian internationalism.
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On November 1 Liu Shaoqi published "On Internationalism and Nationalism," pointing out that in the period of fierce struggle between the imperialist and socialist camps, people either stood on one side or the other: Neutrality was not possible. Accordingly, Liu stated that whether or not to side with the Soviet Union was a question of revolution or reaction and of national progress or national degeneration.
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Through this article, Liu tried not only to unify the party's thinking but also to tell the Soviet Union that the CCP Politburo believed that working out a formal alliance with Moscow was a question of principle. The CCP also wanted to show in practice, through a close relationship with the Soviet military in the Northeast, that its leaders were doing their best to satisfy all Soviet requests. To a large degree, the Northeast Bureau's arrest of several U.S. consular officials in Shenyang reflected Soviet requests.
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After the fall of Shenyang on November 2, 1948, the PLA occupied all of the Northeast. Mao judged that "in about another year's time, it [will be] possible to

 

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