Sino-Soviet split

"Sino-Soviet conflict" redirects here. For the 1929 event, see Sino-Soviet conflict (1929).

Sino-Soviet split
Part of the Cold War
Mao Zedong (left) and Nikita Khrushchev (right) in Beijing, 1958
Date1961 – 1989
Location
Caused byDe-Stalinization of the Soviet Union, Anti-revisionism and Maoism–Third Worldism
MethodsProxy war, propaganda and border skirmishes
Resulted inCompetition between PRC and USSR for Eastern Bloc allies
Parties
Lead figures
  China
  Soviet Union
  Countries that shared borders with both: Mongolia was Soviet-aligned while Afghanistan and North Korea remained neutral, with the former eventually becoming Soviet-aligned in the late 1970s.
Sino-Soviet split
Chinese name
Traditional Chinese中蘇交惡
Simplified Chinese中苏交恶
Transcriptions
Standard Mandarin
Hanyu PinyinZhōngsū jiāowù
Russian name
RussianСоветско–китайский раскол
RomanizationSovetsko–kitayskiy raskol

The Sino-Soviet split was the gradual worsening of relations between the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) during the Cold War. This was primarily caused by doctrinal divergences that arose from their different interpretations and practical applications of Marxism–Leninism, as influenced by their respective geopolitics during the Cold War of 1947–1991.[1] In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Sino-Soviet debates about the interpretation of orthodox Marxism became specific disputes about the Soviet Union's policies of national de-Stalinization and international peaceful coexistence with the Western Bloc, which Chinese leader Mao Zedong decried as revisionism. Against that ideological background, China took a belligerent stance towards the Western world, and publicly rejected the Soviet Union's policy of peaceful coexistence between the Western Bloc and Eastern Bloc.[1] In addition, Beijing resented the Soviet Union's growing ties with India due to factors such as the Sino-Indian border dispute, and Moscow feared that Mao was too nonchalant about the horrors of nuclear warfare.[2]

In 1956, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev denounced Joseph Stalin and Stalinism in the speech "On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences" and began the de-Stalinization of the USSR. Mao and the Chinese leadership were appalled as the PRC and the USSR progressively diverged in their interpretations and applications of Leninist theory. By 1961, their intractable ideological differences provoked the PRC's formal denunciation of Soviet communism as the work of "revisionist traitors" in the USSR.[1] The PRC also declared the Soviet Union social imperialist.[3] For Eastern Bloc countries, the Sino-Soviet split was a question of who would lead the revolution for world communism, and to whom (China or the USSR) the vanguard parties of the world would turn for political advice, financial aid, and military assistance.[4] In that vein, both countries competed for the leadership of world communism through the vanguard parties native to the countries in their spheres of influence.[5]

In the Western world, the Sino-Soviet split transformed the bi-polar cold war into a tri-polar one. The rivalry facilitated Mao's realization of Sino-American rapprochement with the US President Richard Nixon's visit to China in 1972. In the West, the policies of triangular diplomacy and linkage emerged.[6] Like the Tito–Stalin split, the occurrence of the Sino-Soviet split also weakened the concept of monolithic communism, the Western perception that the communist nations were collectively united and would not have significant ideological clashes.[7][8] However, the USSR and China both continued to cooperate with North Vietnam during the Vietnam War into the 1970s, despite rivalry elsewhere.[9] Historically, the Sino-Soviet split facilitated the Marxist–Leninist Realpolitik with which Mao established the tri-polar geopolitics (PRC–USA–USSR) of the late-period Cold War (1956–1991) to create an anti-Soviet front, which Maoists connected to Three Worlds Theory.[3] According to Lüthi, there is "no documentary evidence that the Chinese or the Soviets thought about their relationship within a triangular framework during the period."[10]

  1. ^ a b c Lenman, Bruce; Anderson, Trevor; Marsden, Hilary, eds. (2000). Chambers Dictionary of World History. Edinburgh: Chambers. p. 769. ISBN 9780550100948.
  2. ^ John W. Garver, China's Quest: The History of the Foreign Relations of the People's Republic (2016) pp 113–45.
  3. ^ a b "Less Revolution, More Realpolitik: China's Foreign Policy in the Early and Middle 1970s | Wilson Center". www.wilsoncenter.org. Archived from the original on 27 August 2021. Retrieved 27 August 2021.
  4. ^ Robert A. Scalapino, "Sino-Soviet Competition in Africa", Foreign Affairs (1964) 42#4, pp. 640–654. JSTOR 20029719; Scalapino, Robert A. (1964). "Sino-Soviet Competition in Africa". Foreign Affairs. 42 (4): 640–654. doi:10.2307/20029719. JSTOR 20029719. Archived from the original on 9 October 2018. Retrieved 29 January 2018.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link).
  5. ^ Scalapino, Robert A. (1964). "Sino-Soviet Competition in Africa". Foreign Affairs. 42 (4): 640–654. doi:10.2307/20029719. JSTOR 20029719.
  6. ^ "Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969-1976". 2001-2009.state.gov. Archived from the original on 9 July 2021. Retrieved 27 August 2021.
  7. ^ Rothbard, Murray N. "The Myth of Monolithic Communism", Libertarian Review, Vol. 8., No. 1 (February 1979), p. 32.
  8. ^ Lawrance, Alan (11 September 2002). China Under Communism. Routledge. p. 53. ISBN 978-1-134-74792-4.
  9. ^ Cite error: The named reference :1 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  10. ^ Lüthi, Lorenz M. (2010). The Sino-Soviet Split: Cold War in the Communist World. Princeton University Press. p. 6. ISBN 9781400837625. Archived from the original on 9 June 2019. Retrieved 6 July 2017.