Sino-Soviet split

Sino-Soviet split
Sino-Soviet split
Chinese name
Traditional Chinese	中蘇交惡
Simplified Chinese	中苏交恶
Hanyu Pinyin
Transcriptions
Standard Mandarin
Hanyu Pinyin	Zhōngsū jiāowù
Russian name
Russian	Советско–китайский раскол
Romanization	Sovetsko–kitayskiy raskol

Sino-Soviet split
Sino-Soviet split
Part of the Cold War
	Mao Zedong (left) and Nikita Khrushchev (right) in Beijing, 1958
Date	Late 1950s/early 1960s – 1989
Location	China; Soviet Union; Mongolia; Indochina; Afghanistan;
Caused by	De-Stalinization of the Soviet Union, Anti-revisionism and Maoism–Third Worldism
Methods	Proxy war, propaganda and border skirmishes
Resulted in	Competition between PRC and USSR for Eastern Bloc allies
Parties
China; Albania (until 1978); Democratic Kampuchea (1975–1982); Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea (from 1982) Romania (part-time ally);	Soviet Union; COMECON; Warsaw Pact; Mongolia (from 1962); Cuba (from 1972); Vietnam (from 1978); Laos (from 1978); People's Republic of Kampuchea (1979–1989); Afghanistan (1979–1989) North Korea (part-time ally);
Lead figures
	Mao Zedong (until 1976); Hua Guofeng (1976–1978); Deng Xiaoping (1978–1989); Nikita Khrushchev (until 1964); Leonid Brezhnev (1964–1982); Yuri Andropov (1982–1984); Konstantin Chernenko (1984–1985); Mikhail Gorbachev (1985–1989);

The Sino-Soviet split was the gradual deterioration 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 founding father 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 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]

^ ^a ^b ^c Lenman, Bruce; Anderson, Trevor; Marsden, Hilary, eds. (2000). Chambers Dictionary of World History. Edinburgh: Chambers. p. 769. ISBN 9780550100948.
^ John W. Garver, China's Quest: The History of the Foreign Relations of the People's Republic (2016) pp 113–45.
^ ^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.
^ Robert A. Scalapino, "Sino-Soviet Competition in Africa", Foreign Affairs (1964) 42#4, pp. 640–654. in JSTOR Archived 9 October 2018 at the Wayback Machine
^ Scalapino, Robert A. (1964). "Sino-Soviet Competition in Africa". Foreign Affairs. 42 (4): 640–654. doi:10.2307/20029719. JSTOR 20029719.
^ "Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969-1976, Volume I: Foundations of Foreign Policy, 1969-1972". 2001-2009.state.gov. Archived from the original on 9 July 2021. Retrieved 27 August 2021.
^ Rothbard, Murray N. "The Myth of Monolithic Communism", Libertarian Review, Vol. 8., No. 1 (February 1979), p. 32.
^ Lawrance, Alan (11 September 2002). China Under Communism. Routledge. p. 53. ISBN 978-1-134-74792-4.
^ Cite error: The named reference :1 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^ 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.

[World_History_2000._p._769-1] 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.

[:2-3] "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. in JSTOR Archived 9 October 2018 at the Wayback Machine

[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, Volume I: Foundations of Foreign Policy, 1969-1972". 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.

[:1-9] 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.

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