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Authors: Odd Arne Westad

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etminh against the French in Vietnam. Korea, Mao's second priority in terms of foreign relations, was not on the agenda in any of the official talks in Moscow. On relations with the United States, Stalin recommended a moderate policy, even on the issue of Taiwan. "What is most important here is not to give the Americans a pretext to intervene," Stalin told Mao. He rejected Mao's request for Soviet "volunteer pilots or secret military detachments to speed up the conquest of Formosa" and suggested that an internal uprising would be the best way to liberate the island.

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The summit ended in a mixed result for the Chinese visitors. They did get aid and security guarantees. They did get Soviet promises to restore formal Chinese sovereignty in Manchuria. They did not get Mongolia, aid to conquer Taiwan, or a joint revolutionary strategy for East Asia. Worse, the Soviet side consistently forced the Chinese into the role of supplicants, and Stalin, especially, missed no opportunity to lord over his visitors. For those in the Chinese delegation who had not experienced Stalin's Russia firsthand, it was a rude reminder of the inequalities of Soviet socialism. For all the CCP leaders, embarked on a mission of national resurrection through socialist transformation, there were only two ways out of the dilemmas the Soviet slights posed: to prove one's worth as a loyal junior ally, or to stand up for recognition as an equal. The next two stages of Sino-Soviet relations were shaped by these mind-sets.
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War, 1950-1953
The Korean War provided the content for the Sino-Soviet relationship that the Moscow summit had failed to produce. Fighting the war gave the new Chinese regime a chance to stand up against imperialism and fitted Mao's sense of purpose as a regional liberator. The war linked the military establishments of the countries in a common task, in spite of frequent disagreements on how to conduct the campaigns. Through their efforts in Korea, the CCP leaders could prove themselves worthy of a prominent role in the world Communist movement. For Stalin the war became a surrogate for the all-out war with the West that he neither wanted nor was prepared for, a containable war in which he, through the Chinese war effort, could hit back at the United States for past setbacks in Europe, Japan, and the Middle East.
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It is unlikely, however, that this was a war which Mao or Stalin really wanted in the first place. Mao was ready to confront imperialism outside China's borders, but Korea was not his arena of choice. As he explained to his colleagues during the long and tortuous debate in Beijing in the fall of 1950 on whether China should intervene, Korea was right next to China's most important industrial areas and close to the center of the PRC government.
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North Korean leader Kim Il Sung pushed for an attack on the South throughout 1949, and Stalin promised to "assist" him in the matter of reunifying Korea by military means already on January 30, 1950. Stalin and Kim discussed the strategic plans for the offensive at meetings in Moscow in April. But the Soviet leader may well have hoped that Mao whose agreement he instructed Kim to obtain before proceeding with the plans would turn the Korean leader down. A Chinese refusal to play along would have given Stalin a chance to back out of the Korean challenge with his revolutionary credentials intact, while chastening Mao's bothersome vigor on regional issues. But Mao could not turn down Kim's request. His personality as well as his ideology blocked such an option: Kim came to him to seek the liberation of his country one of China's traditional clients; he had Stalin's OK; and he had reasonable chances of success. Mao believed that "solely military means are required to unify Korea" and activated Chinese support for the war effort as soon as the North Koreans attacked on June 25.

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As war broke out, the Chinese had not decided how far they were willing to go to support Kim's crusade for reunification. Mao sent Chinese military and intelligence advisers to accompany the North Korean forces during their advance and helped Kim's troops to cross over to South Korea from ports on the Shandong peninsula, thereby attacking Seoul's forces in the rear. But after the massive American counterattack in mid-September, Mao hesitated. He told Stalin on October 2 that China would not send its army to fight in Korea, since such a giant intervention meant that "our entire plan for peaceful reconstruction will be completely ruined, and many people in the country will be dissatisfied."
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It took a direct request from Stalin to Mao, as well as a series of meetings between the Soviet leader and a Chinese delegation headed by Zhou Enlai and Lin Biao in the Crimea on October 9-10, to get the Chinese to change their minds. On October 13 Mao told Ambassador Roshchin that China would send troops to Korea.
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After the Chinese intervention began on October 19, the Soviet Union did provide substantial support for the Chinese and North Korean operations. Soviet air force units supplied air cover for the Chinese troops as they crossed the Yalu River, destroying twenty-three American planes in twelve days. Over the next two years of war, Moscow continued to provide military supplies and advisors for the Chinese war effort, enabling the PLA first to roll back and then to contain the better-equipped United Nations forces. There are still no firm figures as to the extent to which military aid to China reduced Soviet output in other areas, but judging from Soviet documents, the expenditure must have made a considerable dent in overall production. Stalin promised Mao to arm and equip ten

 

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Chinese divisions in 1951 and an average of twenty divisions per year in the years to come. Still, the Chinese rightly felt that they were bearing the brunt of the effort, with 900,000 dead or wounded by the end of the war, and Stalin's demand that China acquire the supplies on credit did not go over well in Beijing (chapter 4).
In terms of military strategy in Korea, Stalin agreed to let Mao lead the way but reserved the right to intervene as the ultimate arbiter of strategic sagacity. Except in two cases (both in 1951), Beijing followed Stalin's advice on overall strategy. On the battlefield the situation was very similar. When Soviet and Chinese military advisers disagreed as they did frequently, particularly at the start of the war the Red Army officers usually prevailed, even though it sometimes took Beijing's direct intervention to secure its envoys' agreement. Still, it is remarkable how fast the Chinese conformed to Soviet methods of fighting, even though those methods were very different from their own experience. By 1953 the cooperation between Soviet and Chinese military advisers seemed rather harmonious, with the two groups often jointly imposing their decisions on grudging Korean officers.

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As could be expected from the way the war started, Stalin and Mao quickly turned the issue of peace negotiations into a game of political posturing. Stalin seems to have wanted a cease-fire already in the summer of 1951 to him, what counted was that the military situation had stabilized; an attempt to reunify Korea had been made, but the game was up and there were much more important matters going on in Europe. To Mao, who had invested so much of his domestic prestige in standing up to the Americans in Korea, the issue was not that simple. On one hand, he had to avoid defeat. On the other hand, he did not want to give Stalin, or his own Political Bureau, the impression that he was willing to call it quits. In the summer of 1951, Mao therefore followed a tough line in his contacts with the Americans while remaining on the lookout for ways to get out of the conflict.
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After months of inconclusive battles and stalled negotiations, Stalin' s attitude hardened. With the front stabilized, the stakes in Korea were much reduced, and the Soviets could use peace in East Asia as leverage to get American concessions in other areas. Consequently, Stalin became increasingly unwilling to consider any real peace initiatives, even as the Chinese during 1952 started to make clear to him their desire for a settlement. Peace became possible only with Stalin's death in March 1953.
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The Korean War influenced the Sino-Soviet relationship by creating a sense of accomplishment on the Chinese side and a sense of fraternity with the Soviet Union that had stood by them. Mao felt very strongly that the Chinese Communists had proved their worth to Stalin and their Soviet comrades and such a

 

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feeling was not uncommon even in Moscow. Yet Stalin's policy of keeping the war simmering could have created havoc in the alliance, as the terrible cost for China kept growing. Stalin, whose constant maneuvering had led to the Korean War, ended his reign with a fatigued policy of incessant low-grade war at China's expense (chapter 2).
Ascent, 1953-1957
Stalin's death altered the relationship between the Soviet Union and China in fundamental ways. The Kremlin successors Nikita Khrushchev and Anastas Mikoyan more than anyone realized that China was an extraordinary strategic asset in the Soviet confrontation with the West, an asset that Stalin had come close to gambling away through his reckless political games. But Khrushchev also was impressed with China in political and ideological terms the Chinese party had, against all odds, won military victories against powerful enemies and established a People's Democracy, intent on learning from the Soviet Union. Moscow had to assist China and to prove to Chinese leaders that the Soviet Union was capable of offering assistance beyond Stalin's habitual stinginess (chapters 7 and 8).
The reaction to the news of Stalin's death in Zhongnanhai the Beijing Kremlin, which the Chinese had set up within the old Imperial City was disbelief and sorrow. For the CCP elite, Stalin was the leader of world communism who had guided the movement since the Chinese party started its climb to power. They respected and honored him, and it would take years before criticism of Stalin could be voiced openly within the party, even if the party leaders well knew, as Mao put it in 1956, that "if I had always followed Stalin's advice, I would have been dead."

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As the struggle for power in the Soviet Politburo was decided with the arrest and execution of Deputy Premier Lavrenti Beriia in the summer of 1953 and Khrushchev's gradual replacement of Premier Georgi Malenkov that fall and winter, Mao was careful to stand on the sidelines. He seems to have hailed Khrushchev's ascendancy, possibly because Khrushchev was not personally associated with any of Mao's past humiliations at the hands of the Soviets. But the' Chinese leader also strongly believed that after Stalin's death he himself had advanced to a position of prominence in the world Communist movement Khrushchev could not match Mao as a theoretician nor in his experience as a political leader.
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To the Chinese, Khrushchev's visit to Beijing in September-October 1954 signified a transformation of the relationship with the Soviet Union. Not only had the new Soviet leader chosen China for his first major foreign trip, but the very fact that the head of the Soviet party came to see Mao and not the other

 

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way around carried tremendous symbolic significance to most Chinese. It bolstered the image of the international position of the CCP leader, especially among those who had been puzzled by Mao's hurried departure for Moscow after the proclamation of the People's Republic in 1949.

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Khrushchev's readiness to agree to Chinese proposals for the handing over of the Lüshun naval base and of Soviet shares in the joint companies in Manchuria and Xinjiang added to the Chinese satisfaction, as did the Soviet leader's granting further loans and technical assistance (chapter 8).
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Economic cooperation between the Soviet Union and China reached a new level after Khrushchev's 1954 visit. The 520-million-ruble long-term credit granted by the Moscow leaders enabled the Chinese to acquire new Soviet technology for their factories and plants, equipment for their mines, ships, and locomotives for transport. Unlike under Stalin, the Kremlin ordered its ministries to provide the Chinese with what they wanted, even state-of-the-art technology that had not yet been implemented in the Soviet Union. The aid to China had ''highest priority," the Foreign Ministry reported to the party secretariat (chapter 7).
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The number of Soviet experts and advisors going to China and the number of Chinese students going to the Soviet Union increased dramatically during 1954. The Soviet experts mostly engineers, technical instructors, or teachers were spread all over China and in most cases received an enthusiastic welcome from the people. Although many had had no choice when ordered abroad, as a rule they were able to live a more privileged life than they ever would in the Soviet Union.
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For the Chinese students who were sent to the Soviet Union, life was considerably harder. Problems with language, food, and climate were common, and some of the students were sent to study at provincial colleges that had few facilities for receiving them and in which the level of training was low. Still, most of the Chinese excelled at their studies and returned home with necessary skills and with administrative and organizational ideas that would stay with them beyond their Soviet experience.
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The military cooperation between the two sides also flourished from 1954 on. Before Khrushchev's visit, Moscow and Beijing had agreed on a new comprehensive program of supplying China with new Soviet defense technology, including the MiG-17 jet fighter and short-range missiles. The Soviet leaders seem to have been somewhat more hesitant in supplying the Chinese with nuclear technology, but during his visit to Beijing Khrushchev did agree to help China with materials and technical support and to train Chinese scientists, so that China would be able to start its own nuclear research programs. Parts of this agreement were implemented immediately after Khrushchev's return to Moscow, well before it was officially announced on May 1, 1955.
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