Jockeying for Leadership: Mao and the Sino-Soviet Split, October 1961 – July 1964.” [27 October 2015]

H-Diplo H-Diplo Article Review 562 on “Jockeying for Leadership: Mao and the Sino-Soviet Split, October 1961 – July 1964.” [27 October 2015]

Discussion published by George Fujii on Tuesday, October 27, 2015

H-Diplo Article Reviews No. 562 Published on 27 October 2015

H-Diplo Article Review Editors: Thomas Maddux and Diane Labrosse Web and Production Editor: George Fujii Commissioned for H-Diplo by Thomas Maddux

Danhui Li and Yafeng Xia.“Jockeying for Leadership: Mao and the Sino-Soviet Split, October 1961 – July 1964.” Journal of Cold War Studies, 16:1 (Winter 2014): 24-60. DOI: 10.1162/JCWS_a_00430. http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/JCWS_a_00430

URL: http://tiny.cc/AR562

Review by Avram Agov, Langara College, Vancouver

Danhui Li and Yafeng Xia do an outstanding job of examining the origins of the Sino-Soviet split. Their article offers one of the most comprehensive analyses of the critical crossroad of international communist movement in the early 1960s. The two authors start with a review of the main scholarly interpretations of the reasons for the Sino-Soviet conflict, ranging from ideological divergence to differing national interests and personal tensions. Li and Xia argue that the clash of national interests was the result, rather than the cause, of the conflict between the two socialist neighbors, and that their ideological dispute was for “appearance’s sake;” instead, the root cause of the split was the competition between the Soviet Union and China for leadership of the international communist movement. (26) A major contribution of the article is the use of a collection of documents from the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs as well as documents from internal party meetings and local archives, which illuminate the Chinese side of the dispute. Nevertheless, the two authors incorporate Russian and other primary and secondary sources, which provide a more nuanced picture of the complex Sino-Soviet relations. The narrative links important events which affected relations between the two socialist giants. Another major advantage of the analysis is the connection between domestic politics and inter-party and inter-state relations, particularly on the Chinese side.

The authors date the genealogy of the Sino-Soviet split from October 1961 and the 22nd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) to July 1964, when the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) published an article, condemning Khrushchev’s revisionism. The narrative includes key events and developments which precipitated the rift between the socialist allies. The authors mention the Sino-Soviet quarrel in October 1959 and the powers’ “fragile détente” until mid-1961. The narrative

Citation: George Fujii. H-Diplo Article Review 562 on “Jockeying for Leadership: Mao and the Sino-Soviet Split, October 1961 – July 1964.” [27 October 2015]. H-Diplo. 10-27-2015. https://networks.h-net.org/node/28443/discussions/91649/h-diplo-article-review-562-%E2%80%9Cjockeying-leadership-mao-and-sino Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 1 H-Diplo could have included more details about the nature of the disagreement in 1959. The CCP defended the Albanian Labor Party which was ostracized by the Soviet bloc, but refrained from open criticism of the revisionist program of the CPSU. At their 22nd Congress, the Soviet communists reaffirmed the political course of 20th Congress – peaceful coexistence, peaceful transition and peaceful competition. The new program of the CPSU articulated also the principles of “people’s state” and “people’s party,” which, to Mao Zedong and his colleagues, represented a retreat from proletarian dictatorship. (29) The question is how far the Chinese communists were ready to go in criticizing the CPSU. Even though the CCP launched a propaganda campaign against the decisions of the 22nd Congress, it was careful not to break with the Soviet Union and issued more cautious internal party directives and circulars. (33)

The next major event which further pushed the Soviet Union and China apart was in the realm of inter-state relations, namely the Ita incident in China’s Ili Kazak Autonomous Prefecture of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) in May 1962. Li and Xia explain the history of the exodus of thousands of Soviet citizens from the region to the former Soviet Union. One issue that can be explored further is whether there was something in the Chinese policy which triggered the incident in addition to the provocative Soviet behavior. The USSR and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) engaged in diplomatic battle that led to China’s annulment of the bilateral consular agreement, leaving only the Soviet embassy in Beijing open by the end of 1962. (36) The Ita incident is an example of how disagreements in the ideological sphere can transfer to institutional disputes, which damage bilateral relations. The atmosphere of amity enforces the will on various levels of party-state hierarchies to look for a mutual solution when problems occur between the two states. Once the alliance cracks in one place, discord can spread to other spheres and unravel the relations.

One section of the article is devoted to Chinese internal politics, revealing how Mao used the battle against revisionism as a tool in a party power struggle. It is quite indicative that the Great Leap Forward (1958-1960) and the People’s Commune Movement (from 1958) were attempts to catch up with the Soviet Union. These experiments were the “price” the Chinese had to pay to find a more efficient path to socialism and to prove that Mao was “wiser than Khrushchev and better qualified to be the leader of the socialist bloc” (43). The disastrous results of the Great Leap Forward forced Mao to soften his stance on Sino-Soviet ideological disagreements, but this retreat was temporary, as he criticized the likes of Wang Jiaxiang, director of the CCP’s International Liaison Office, who was looking to reach accommodation with the Soviet Union. Mao also employed the Soviet connection in his attack on Peng Dehuai, former Defense Minister and critic of Mao’s adventurous economic policies. These developments show that the rift with Moscow had deeper roots in the 1950s.

The narrative turns again to the diplomatic arena, where three events deepened the Sino-Soviet mistrust and conflict: the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962, the nuclear test ban and nonproliferation, and the Sino-Indian conflict in 1963. The Chinese branded CPSU Chairman Nikita Khrushchev’s compromise with President John Kennedy as a “humiliation” to the socialist countries, being unaware of the secret deal, including the withdrawal of American missiles from Turkey in exchange for the withdrawal of Soviet missiles from Cuba. Further, the Chinese leadership sharply criticized the Soviet-American push for nuclear nonproliferation as “collusion” between the two superpowers to prevent China from “doing atomic research,” i.e. obtaining atomic bomb. (46) As for the Sino-Indian border dispute, the Chinese expected Soviet support, but instead Moscow, to Chinese chagrin, supplied India with weapons. These disputes underscore the close connection between inter-

In the final section of their article, Li and Xia focus their analysis on the international communist movement as the arena of the crucial contest between the CCP and CPSU for a leadership role. The Chinese communists believed that they represented a growing leftist contingent in the communist movement. Even though the number of communist parties sympathetic to the CCP’s stance was increasing, it remained a minority in the movement and the even tinier group among the socialist countries. After its Eight Congress in September 1962, the CCP’s determination to lead the world revolution strengthened. At their Congress, the Chinese communists asserted that Khrushchev “discarded” Marxism-Leninism after the 20th Party Congress of the CPSU, and at the National Foreign Affairs Conference in November openly declared that they were “jockeying for leadership positions with the revisionists in the international struggles.” (52) The CCP’s platform against the Soviet Union was to divide the world into three parts among imperialism, revisionism, and Marxism-Leninism. Hence, the new Chinese strategy was fighting both imperialism and revisionism. At the same time, the Chinese emphasized the thinking of Mao Zedong and argued that only Mao was in a position to develop Marxism-Leninism. (52) This appears to have been the Rubicon in the Sino-Soviet dispute, turning it into open competition and conflict over the leadership role of world communism. According to the authors, Sino-Soviet party-to-party relations collapsed when the Chinese propaganda attacked Khrushchev by name calling him a “phony communist” in mid-1964. (56) Li and Xia argue that both China and the Soviet Union, and especially China, were “unable” to seek common ground in 1964. (56-57)

The two authors rightly trace the origin of Mao’s ambition to challenge Khrushchev’s leadership to 1956, although the article focuses on developments in the early 1960s. Perhaps, a monograph could extend the examination of the roots of the Sino-Soviet tensions to 1950s. An important question in the historiography on the Sino-Soviet split is whether it was inevitable. It seems that the power of the two giants was too big for them to manage their alliance within the hierarchical system of international socialism and communism. Li and Xia convincingly outline the steps toward rupture in the relations between the two former allies, implying that it was bound to happen. Indeed, the competition for leadership in the international communist movement was pivotal in the Sino-Soviet rift. At the same time, their ideological dispute was a significant factor for the split as well. Ideological divergence affected different institutions and pathways toward socialism, which in turn made it increasingly difficult to resolve differences and conflicts in diplomacy and inter-state relations. One of the premises of integration in the specialist world is common ideology and institutions. When differences appear in these fields, integration is replaced by divergence, leading to a vicious cycle of mutually reinforcing disagreements and confrontations at various levels of bilateral relations. The insightful and informative analysis of Li and Xia is a substantial contribution to the scholarship of t Sino-Soviet relations, elucidating a critical period in the evolution of the epoch-making split.

Avram Agov is an instructor in East Asian history at Langara College, Vancouver. He received BA in philosophy and history at Sofia University in 1988 and was a visiting scholar at Columbia University on a Fulbright Fellowship. He received MA in Regional Studies-East Asia at Harvard University. He studied at the Korean Language Institute of Yonsei University and worked in Samsung Electronics (visual media business) in Korea for six years. He was also postdoctoral fellow at the Korea Institute

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