Foreword

The study of Soviet-Chinese relations by O. B. Borisov and B. T. Koloskov which constitutes the bulk of this volume is a unique document. To all intents and purposes, it is the official Soviet record of conflict with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as seen from the perspective of Moscow in 1971, the year in which it was published. There is no “Borisov” or “Koloskov” in real life: these are pseudonyms of two high-ranking specialists in Chinese affairs. Neither one is an academic scholar; both have been intimately acquainted with the convolutions of Soviet-Chinese relations over a long period of time, and both had unlimited access to secret party and government archives as they were writing their book. Who they actually are is irrelevant. Their desire to remain anonymous is valid, for a disclosure of their identities would preclude their participation in negotiations with the PRC or service at the Soviet Embassy in Peking. They wrote their study on instructions from the people directly concerned with Soviet policies toward China, who then carefully reviewed it: it took an unusually long time—almost nine months—for the book to be approved for publication after the completion of the manuscript.

Somewhat puzzling is the period which Borisov and Koloskov chose to cover in their work: from 1945 to 1970. If their purpose was to analyze Soviet relations with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), they should have started with an earlier date, say with the late 1930s, when the CCP, on Moscow’s bidding, formed a united front with the Kuomintang (KMT) to fight the Japanese, who were then threatening the Soviet Union as well as conquering China. If their purpose was to study state relations with the PRC, they should have started with 1949, when it was formed: during the years 1945–1949 “Soviet-Chinese relations” were relations between the Soviet Union and the government of the Republic of China headed by Chiang Kai-shek.

We can surmise that the year 1945 was selected as a starting point because it was then that the Soviet Union, having taken part in defeating Japan, occupied Manchuria and emerged as a powerful factor in the affairs of China, maintaining relations with its legitimate government while enabling the CCP to use Manchuria as a staging area for its future offensive against KMT forces. Since Borisov and Koloskov do not explore the background of Stalin’s attitudes and policies toward the Chinese Communists, crucial for the understanding of subsequent developments, I have preceded their book by an introductory essay, “The Soviets and World Communism: Sources of the Sino-Soviet Dispute.”

Borisov and Koloskov’s reluctance to go into the background of Moscow’s relations with the CCP is understandable. With the partial rehabilitation of Stalin in recent Soviet historiography, his statemanship is acknowledged only in the general area of Soviet relations with “imperialist” countries. His internal policies receive scant attention, while his attitudes toward foreign Communist parties, from the 1930s to his death, are given a uniformly silent treatment: Stalin’s name has become anathema to all ruling and many nonruling Communist parties, to all, that is, except the Chinese. For reasons of their own—quite obnoxious to the present Soviet leadership—they have allocated to Stalin a place of honor in the Communist Pantheon. The introductory essay seeks, in part, to explain this phenomenon.

Apart from this gap, Soviet-Chinese Relations, 1945—1970 represents the most detailed and informative account of the Sino-Soviet conflict ever published anywhere and, as of 1971, also the most definitive Soviet statement on the subject. It is by no means an objective study in the Western sense. Surveys of this kind always have one paramount purpose in the Soviet Union: to serve the current needs of Soviet foreign policy, to provide those interested in the subject, whether professionally or academically, with guidance as well as with information. Unlike “bourgeois objectivist” studies in the West, Soviet studies leave no doubt as to where The Truth lies and who is to blame for an unfortunate turn of events in Soviet relations with other countries. No book or article has ever appeared in a Communist country which directly or indirectly criticized one or another aspect of its foreign policy.

Yet it would be erroneous to assume, in spite of its consistently annoying self-righteous tone, that Soviet-Chinese Relations is merely an indictment of the Maoist heresy. Since the book is by necessity polemical, the authors not only heap charges against the adversary but also answer, even if by implication, Chinese accusations of Soviet leadership. A Western scholar familiar with the Sino-Soviet dispute would have no difficulty in establishing the adequacy of these rebuttals by reviewing the record of CCP attacks against the Soviets.

Borisov and Koloskov concentrate on broader aspects of the history of Chinese Communism and CCP-CPSU (and PRC-USSR) relations rather than on machinations of “Mao Tse-tung’s clique,” and generally avoid overstating their case. For instance, they make a major point, that without victory over Japan and Soviet occupation of Manchuria, the CCP would never have succeeded in defeating the KMT. Yet they are careful not to say that the objective of Soviet occupation was to assist the CCP in seizure of power in China. And although they recite at length all forms of aid given the CCP in Manchuria which helped to convert it into a Communist stronghold by the end of 1947, they make no claim whatsoever that the Soviet Union continued to assist the CCP with operations against the KMT after the Communist offensive got under way.

Soviet-Chinese Relations is a study of both party-to-party and state-to-state relations, although the former are assumed to have been terminated by the end of 1963. However, ideological CCP-CPSU debates which surfaced after 1960 are treated primarily as affecting adversely USSR-PRC state relations. The authors do not bother to answer CCP doctrinal charges, nor do they attempt to view them as “legitimate” even within the specific context of CCP politics. They constantly stress that the attacks were always initiated by the Maoists, reflecting the increasingly anti-Soviet orientation of the CCP leadership, but they do not adequately explain the causes of this orientation.

Needless to say, the authors consistently present Soviet policies toward the PRC as uniformly benign and Soviet intentions as impeccable. The deterioration of Soviet-Chinese relations, the undermining of the basic foundations of socialist unity, are presented exclusively as a responsibility of the chauvinist elements in the CCP led by Mao, who, in the end, triumphed over the internationalist (i.e. pro-Soviet) wing of the party.

The principal roots of the conflict, as they are described in the Borisov/Koloskov study, appear as follows:

1. Mao’s “cult of personality,” which allowed him to distort the fundamentally healthy CCP and push China toward an ultra-nationalist course, inevitably leading to its anti-Soviet stance.

2. Maoist opposition to the Soviet “peaceful coexistence” policy toward the imperialist world, first and foremost toward the United States; Mao’s attempts, beginning with 1957, to press for a more militant Soviet international posture, which could have provoked a Soviet-American nuclear confrontation—e.g., over the Taiwan Straits crisis or the Sino-Indian border dispute—seem to have been at the very foundation of Soviet hostility to the PRC.

3. Maoist ingratitude for Soviet aid and Soviet efforts to advance PRC interests internationally, eventually leading to CCP determination to develop China independently from the Soviet Union and other socialist states.

4. Violations by the Peking leadership of the most basic rules of behavior, mandatory in relations with other socialist states, such as refusal to coordinate its foreign policy with Moscow in the name of socialist unity, or insistence on continuing open polemics in which the most sensitive party and state secrets were aired to the delight of imperialist enemies.

5. The growth of anti-Soviet sentiments in China, fomented and cultivated by the Maoists, culminating in the anti-Soviet orgy of the “cultural revolution” and armed clashes along the Sino-Soviet frontier. Externally, the CCP anti-Soviet line manifested itself in efforts to split the international Communist movement by casting the Soviet Union in the role of a reactionary revisionist state, colluding with the imperialist United States against revolutionary national liberation forces.

Borisov and Koloskov end their story with the events of 1970, before rapprochement between the PRC and the United States took place and before President Nixon’s spectacular trip to Peking. This development, of great political and strategic importance for the Soviet Union, has since been dealt with in numerous Soviet articles and official statements. But if Soviet-Chinese Relations were to be updated to include the later period, changes in the study, if any, would probably be minimal: there has always been an implicit assumption in Moscow that enemies of the Soviet Union tend to gravitate toward each other. Once China had cut itself loose from the rest of the socialist commonwealth (save for Albania) and actively embarked on an anti-Soviet course internationally, there was no natural limit to how far it might go.

Yet there remains a strange ambivalence in the Soviet view of the PRC because in doctrinal terms China remains a socialist country. As one recent Soviet theoretical study states,

No country should be “excommunicated” from socialism just on the basis of certain ideological or political differences. Disagreements on separate questions of a political and ideological nature, if they do not lead to attempts to restore bourgeois social relations or to an actual alliance of a particular country with the imperialist powers against the other socialist countries, do not put any socialist state outside the world socialist system. . . . If a country remains socialist from the point of view of the dominant system of social relations, objectively it belongs to the system of world socialism. No one can decree its “exclusion” or “withdrawal” from this system.^*

Thus the People’s Republic of China, whether anyone likes it or not, is bound to remain part of the “socialist system” unless it restores capitalism or enters a formal alliance with, say, the United States (or Japan) against the Soviet Union. Until either or both of these conditions are met, other socialist states would continue to regard the PRC as a fraternal nation. This postulate, of course, does not preclude certain pragmatic precautions on the part of the Soviet government, such as stationing impressive military forces along the border with China or intensive diplomatic maneuvers aimed at preventing it from getting too close to the principal enemy, “imperialism.”

The text of the Borisov-Koloskov book for the present publication (translated by machine and verified by David Chavchavadze) was rather heavily edited in order to (a) reduce its size and (b) make the translation no less readable than the original. Both tasks were approached with the utmost care. Nothing of substance was eliminated. Cuts were made mainly at the expense of excessively numerous “episodes” used by the authors to illustrate causes and consequences of changing policies; detailed recitations of scientific-cultural USSR-PRC exchanges; lengthy quotations from minor Chinese publications and from speeches in various Communist conclaves, supporting and reiterating Soviet positions; developments in obscure plants and factories bearing upon more significant events; and not inconsiderable redundancies, common in Soviet political writings.

Daggers (†) in the text indicate information which has not been published before in the Soviet Union. In many instances, especially where the authors rely on documents deposited in secret party and government archives or on debriefings of Soviet officials who had served in China, this information appears for the first time in any language. The length of such new material is usually one or two sentences.

In trying to assure readability, no attempt was made to alter the original text. Not a sentence was added, even if it could have provided a smoother transition between paragraphs. The style, the language, were preserved faithfully. Editing affected exclusively sentence structure and choice of words, to correspond to modern American usage, and on occasion saying in five sentences what the authors tried to say in ten. As a result of the total editorial effort, the length of the original translation was reduced by about fifteen percent.

In cutting the text, I relied on my own judgment based on the general knowledge of the subject. I also heeded the advice of Dr. Boris Zanegin, a Soviet Sinologist, currently with the Institute USA of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, whose familiarity with Soviet studies of the People’s Republic of China was far superior to my own and who pointed out to me the passages in the Borisov-Koloskov book containing original and theretofore unpublished information. The main burden of improving the readability of the text and tracking down redundancies was borne by Sally G. Bunting. To her, as well as to Dr. Zanegin, I express my heartfelt gratitude.

VLADIMIR PETROV

INSTITUTE FOR SINO-SOVIET STUDIES

GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY

OCTOBER 1974

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* A. Butenko, ed., The World Socialist System and Anti-Communism (Moscow, 1972), pp. 136–137.