Competing for Leadership: Split or Détente in the Sino-Soviet Bloc, 1959–1961

Abstract

Disagreements between the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the Soviet Union in the late 1950s over both foreign policy — China's bombardment of Jinmen in August 1958 and border clashes with India in 1959 — and domestic policy — the Great Leap Forward in 1958–60 and the People's Communes Movement in 1958 — provoked a more contentious ideological dispute: which party, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) or the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), more accurately represented orthodox Marxism? which party pointed the international Communist movement in the right direction? and which party should lead the movement? After the Moscow Declaration of November 1957, by which the twelve parties in power in socialist countries endorsed the decisions of the twentieth congress of the CPSU, to demonstrate the unity of the socialist bloc, the CCP moved to the left while the CPSU moved to the right.