When this book on the Sino-Soviet split during the Cold War was published in 2014, it joined two other prominent works that were also based on extensive international archival research. In The Sino-Soviet Split: Cold War in the Communist World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008), Lorenz Lüthi argues that the main cause of the Sino-Soviet split lay in ideological differences. A contrasting view was expressed in Sergey Radchenko, Two Suns in the Heavens: The Sino-Soviet Struggle for Supremacy, 1962–1967 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009), which depicts the Sino-Soviet relationship as a more traditional competition for power and influence, determined by historical animosities, and with cultural and racial connotations. From the time the Sino-Soviet split flared into the open in the early 1960s, generations of scholars have explored the causes, nature, and consequences of the split. The lion's share of attention has been given to high-level diplomacy within the Communist world, different interpretations of ideology, conflicting national interests, and the role of top leaders such as Mao Zedong and Nikita Khrushchev. Blame has often been assigned, but the debate continues.Austin Jersild examines a new dimension of this well-studied topic. His story is not primarily about high politics and top leaders, such as Joseph Stalin, Mao, Zhou Enlai, and Khrushchev. Rather, he focuses on the experience of Soviet-bloc advisers and diplomats in China. In addition to drawing on familiar and well-used archival sources from Russia and China, he was able to delve into the archives of former Soviet and East European Communist parties and the archives of large industrial and cultural ministries in Prague, Berlin, and Moscow. Thus, Jersild's social and cultural history approach to the study of the Sino-Soviet alliance during the Cold War adds much to what we have previously known about this important historical period.The book consists of seven chapters, divided into two parts. Part one starts from Mao's first trip to the Soviet Union, from December 1949 to February 1950, and covers the Soviet bloc's advisory relationship with China, the important role of the Central Europeans in the bloc, and China's effort to limit its own exposure to the consequences of Soviet-bloc interaction. Part two begins with Mao's second trip to Moscow, in November 1957, and takes the story to 1964, when the Sino-Soviet alliance was on the verge of total disarray. These latter chapters are characterized by a more assertive China determined to redefine the Sino-Soviet alliance. The open “self-criticism” of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and the unveiling of Stalin's mistakes lowered the CPSU's prestige and shook its leadership role in the Communist world. The Chinese felt the first flush of self-importance when CPSU leaders consulted with them during the Hungarian revolution in the fall of 1956. As the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and Mao gained influence and new pride, Mao became more assertive, and the Chinese became more critical of the Soviet model.Less than two years later, however, the Chinese squandered their hard-earned capital within the Communist bloc. Soviet and East European advisers and diplomats assigned to China viewed the Great Leap Forward and the People's Communes, which began in the fall of 1958, as radical and disturbing developments. China was also parting company in this period with Soviet leaders, who were pursuing “peaceful competition” with the United States. The Central Europeans were pragmatic and more interested in Western-style consumerism and felt closer to the USSR than to China. Jersild identifies three main factors contributing to the fall of the Sino-Soviet alliance: the enduring problem of Russian/Soviet imperialism, Chinese ambition (Mao's aspiration to compete for leadership of the international Communist movement with the USSR), and Central European pragmatism (the role played in China by East German, Polish, Czechoslovak, and Hungarian personnel).Although a great deal has long been known about how Russian chauvinism and Chinese ambition affected Sino-Soviet relations during the Cold War, much less has been known about the East-Central European dimension of the Sino-Soviet split. According to Jersild, the East-Central Europeans possessed far more advanced technological expertise and industrial efficiency than the USSR did, even though Soviet leaders had taken on the mantle of the “leader” of the Eastern bloc. Moscow's shift to a policy of “peaceful competition” with the West enhanced the importance of the East-Central European economies for the USSR. In the spirit of détente, the East-Central Europeans were the pathway to the West and played the leading role in economic exchanges with the more advanced West. East-Central European leaders were fearful of the more radical Chinese model, which began to emerge after 1958. Hence, they were determined to side with Moscow in the Sino-Soviet split (pp. 220–223). In Jersild's view, “Poles, Hungarians, Czechoslovaks, and East Germans were central to the evolution of the Sino-Soviet relationship” (p. 220). By the early 1960s, the East-Central Europeans were apparently more comfortable remaining in a Communist bloc shorn of China, its ambition, its radical ideology, and its divisive influence.Jersild's ability to use English, Russian, German, and Chinese sources is admirable. I was particularly impressed with his effectiveness and accuracy in reading and interpreting Chinese documents. His book is almost free of typographical and factual errors, a fortunate contrast to several other recent works on China-related topics I have reviewed. This is an extraordinary accomplishment.I wish, however, that Jersild had shed better light on the role of competing Chinese and Soviet “friendship” newspapers and magazines, which were aimed at each other, first in a friendly way and later in an unfriendly way. He should have mentioned that the Chinese began to publish the Youhao bao (Friendship) newspaper in Russian in 1955 and later as a weekly in July 1957. Youhao bao, reporting on the situation and developments in China and the Soviet Union, was edited in Beijing and published and distributed mainly in the Soviet Union for the Soviet audience. It was the official organ of the (Beijing-based) Chinese-Soviet Friendship Society. In 1957, the Soviet authorities decided to publish a Chinese-language weekly about the Soviet Union, titled Suzhong youhao (Soviet-Chinese Friendship), for the Chinese audience as a response to “the accelerating cultural misunderstandings of the late 1950s” (p. 184). Jersild does cover Suzhong youhao (pp. 184–196), which was edited in Moscow in Chinese and then published in Beijing and distributed in China as the official organ of the (Moscow-based) Soviet-Chinese Friendship Society. The first issue came out on 1 January 1958. According to Chinese sources, Suzhong youhao was not published in Russian and then translated into Chinese, as Jersild assumes (p. 184). With the deterioration of Sino-Soviet relations in the early 1960s, the two magazines were transformed from “the window of friendship” to “the forefront of polemics,” publicizing the political viewpoints and opinions of each government. Consequently, Youhao bao and Suzhong youhao were both forced to shut down in September 1960, as discussed in Pan Peng, “Youhao and Suzhong youhao in the Whirlpool of Sino-Soviet Relations,” in Li Danhui ed., Lengzhan guojishi yanjiu No. 7 (Winter 2008), pp. 183–205.Despite this minor lapse, Jersild adds new perspectives on the cause of the Sino-Soviet split. He gives attention to “the significance of profound dilemmas at the lower levels of exchange, exacerbated by the very nature of the socialist bloc system, which made sustained collaboration unlikely over the longer term” (p. 225). Jersild does not hold Mao personally responsible for the deterioration and collapse of the alliance, noting, “Mao cannot be ignored, of course, but the impediments to a productive alliance were vast and cannot be reduced to the role of a single character” (p. 225). In general, I do not disagree with Jersild's observation, but I attribute the cause of the Sino-Soviet split to the inherent structural shortcomings of Communist state-to-state relations. The contradictions in Communist alliance relations were manifested in two aspects: contradictions and conflicts centered on ideology and national interests; and the contradiction between interparty relations and state-to-state relations. In Communist countries, state-to-state relations were an extension and variant of party-to-party relations. Certainly, the status and the authority of the Soviet-dominated Communist Information Bureau cannot compare with that of the prewar Communist International, and Soviet leaders after Stalin were relatively considerate of other bloc countries’ attitudes and opinions. However, to pursue victory in the Cold War struggle, the international Communist movement had to have a center; that is, one country and one ruling party as the leader of the bloc. This was a criterion that all Communist parties were expected to fulfill. Because the relationship among ruling parties in the Communist bloc was mixed up with state-to-state relations, the leader-subordinate relationship could also be applied. Thus, by 1958, a left-turning China under Mao and a right-leaning Soviet Union under Khrushchev could not see eye to eye and stay on good terms. It was impossible for them to compromise over issues of principle—the correctness of their respective programs and the safeguarding of legitimacy and Marxist orthodoxy in the international Communist movement. But without leaders with strong personalities such as Mao and Khrushchev, China and the Soviet Union might have been able to avoid a rupture in the early 1960s and border clashes in 1969.Jersild has produced an excellent, lucid, and original contribution to the literature on Sino-Soviet relations during the Cold War. His “bottom-up approach” is a reminder that much can still be learned about this convoluted but important relationship. The book should be read by all students of Sino-Soviet relations and Cold War history. In the 21st century, students of the latter are fortunate to have the fruits of three major works on the Sino-Soviet split by European and American scholars (Lüthi, Radchenko, and Jersild). Working with Chinese historians, I myself have produced a 2-volume history of the Sino-Soviet alliance drawing on international documentation, especially Chinese sources, to focus on the Chinese dimension of the story. Those two volumes, published in the Harvard Cold War Studies Book Series in 2015 and 2018, add to the rich literature on Sino-Soviet relations during the era of Mao Zedong.