Co-Operation and Conflict in Sino-Soviet Relations

Abstract

ELATIONS between China and Russia have been frequently disturbed since the two countries first made contact on a state level during the 17th century. It was hardly to be expected that the accession of a Communist government in China would settle all outstanding differences. There was a previous history of Soviet or Comintern control and mismanagement of the Chinese Communist Party, particularly during its first United Front with the Kuomintang (1924-27) and the subsequent First Revolutionary War. Stalin's reluctance to assist the Chinese Communists after 1945 is well known, whether he genuinely underestimated their chance of success, or deliberately preferred to see China divided and weak. Soviet territorial interests along China's land frontiers, and Chinese resentment at those unequal treaties which were still in force, were additional factors making for discord. However, the formation of the Chinese People's Republic altered the entire perspective of Sino-Soviet relations. To the informal connection between two Communist parties was added a formal relationship between two sovereign states, as symbolised by the Alliance of 1950. This Alliance, which first linked the two nations in a dual state and ideological partnership, makes a convenient starting-point from which to consider the present Sino-Soviet dispute. And it is the presumed harmony of this Alliance in its early years, that both protagonists now refer to as the status ante quo, which they wish to restore. Whether the Alliance has ever in fact conformed to the ideal picture now painted of it is another matter.