The Soviet Union and Communist China, 1945-1950: The Arduous Road to the Alliance by Dieter s> Heinzig (review)

Abstract

566 SEER, 84, 3, JULY 2006 Frolov has, nevertheless,unearthed importantnew informationconcerning the wartime actions of Soviet partisansin Finnish territory.To this day, the wanton cruelties of the partisans against the civilian population, including the destruction of whole villages and their inhabitants, remain a source of bitterness. The Soviet Union never admitted any wrongdoing, and presentday Russia has adopted the same unflinching line. Occasional demands for clarificationor war crimes charges against the survivingmembers of partisan groups known to have taken part in atrocitieshave met with official silence. Frolov convincingly documents some of the atrocities,but evidentlyfeels that he has to balance this disclosure by appealing to Soviet reports of cruelties committed by the Finns against Soviet prisonersof war (p. 132). This is beside the point. While there is no arguing againstthe fact that Finnishtroops were also guiltyof cruel, unjustand calloustreatmentof theircaptives,the methodical depravities of the partisans against civilians make this kind of tu quoquecomparison superfluous.Thus, Frolov's ultimate conclusion that both 'sides did not always follow [the principles ofl the Geneva agreement, but instead occasionally treated captives cruelly and even killed them' (p. I38), seems carefulto the point of timidity. Frolov'stext is translatedfrom a Russian original,and footnotes to Russian sourcesand literatureare given, as a rule, in Cyrillic.However, the translation often betrayslinguisticusagesalien to Finnish.It is the dutyof the translatorto check the terminologyand, if necessary,suggestalternativesmore in line with the targetlanguage. Perhapsthe most unhappy choice of termsin this sense is the use of the Soviet 'Great PatrioticWar' throughoutthe text. Frolov can be partly excused by the palpable difficultiesthe consistent naming of the wars fought between Finland and the Soviet Union poses. However, particularly in a work intended for foreign readership,this kind of lip-serviceto Stalinist linguisticsis irritating.Professionalhistorianswould do well in trying to find less politicallyladen terminologyto tell their stories. These criticismsaside, Frolov's work makes an important and interesting introductionto a topic thought by many to be too difficultand unapproachable . Here Frolov has shown that the material does indeed exist and that many questions can be answeredby diligent archivalwork. National Archives ofFinland OULASILVENNOINEN Helsinki Heinzig,Dieter. TheSovietUnionand Communist China,I945-I950: 7he Arduous RoadtotheAlliance. An East Gate Book. M. E. Sharpe, Armonk, NY and London,2004. xix + 53ipp. Appendices.Notes. Bibliography. Index. ?70?50? IN the wake of the Sino-Soviet dispute of I960, it became commonplace in Westernscholarshipto assumethat relationsbetween the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Soviet Union had always been fraught, as the Chinese struggled to achieve independence from Moscow. Since the repudiation of Maoism in the People's Republic of China and the fall of the Soviet Union, REVIEWS 567 crucialsource-materialon relationsbetween the two partieshas become available , the effect of which has generally been to demonstrate that the Soviet contributionto the Chinese revolutionwas much greaterthan Maoist mythology maintained.The proliferationof new material,however, has not produced much consensus as to the general characterof relationsbetween Moscow and Yenan. Some continue to insist that their leitmotif was the determinationof the CCP to define its own political line, whereas others, notably Michael Sheng, BattlingWestern Imperialism: Mao, StalinandtheUnitedStates(Princeton, NJ, I998), argue that policies were largely in accord with those laid down by Moscow. In this impressive study of the forging of the Sino-Soviet alliance between 1945 and I949, Dieter Heinzig steersa middle course,arguing that after I938 the CCP listened to Moscow attentively but not necessarily completely; yet he insists that the road to the friendshiptreaty of February I950 was 'arduous',beset with tensions rooted in fundamental differencesof strategicand political interest.His massivelyresearchedstudy draws on Russian materialsfrom the PresidentialArchive, the ForeignMinistryarchiveand the archiveof the formerCPSU, as well as on new workby PRC scholarswho have had access to archives.The studybegins with the makingof the treatyof August I945 between the Soviet Union and the Kuomintang (KMT) government , which led to the involvement of the Soviet Union in the war against Japan, and ends with the friendshiptreatyof I950. In between, Heinzig examines in detail Stalin's'duplicitousdiplomacy'with the KMT, on the one hand, and the CCP, on the other, between I945 and I948; Stalin's reluctance to recognize Mao as more than a 'partisanleader';his effortsto achieve a more equal relationshipwith the...