Suchergebnisse

In this forum, three leading experts on Sino-Soviet relations and Mao Zedong's policy toward the Soviet Union offer their appraisals of Sergey Radchenko's Two Suns in the Heavens, The Sino-Soviet Struggle for Supremacy, 1962–1967, published by the Woodrow Wilson Center Press. The commentators praise many aspects of Radchenko's book, but Michael Sheng and to a lesser extent Qiang Zhai and Deborah Kaple wonder whether Radchenko has gone too far in downplaying the role of ideology in Mao's foreign policy. Unlike Lorenz Lüthi, who gives decisive weight to ideology in his own book about the Sino-Soviet split, Radchenko argues that a classical realist approach is the best framework for understanding Chinese foreign policy and the rift between China and the Soviet Union. Sheng and Zhai also raise questions about some of the sources used by Radchenko. Replying to the commentaries, Radchenko defends his conception of Mao's foreign policy, arguing that it is a more nuanced view than Sheng and Zhai imply. Radchenko also stresses the inherent shortcomings of the source base scholars are forced to use when analyzing Chinese foreign policy.

This article reviews major issues in the historiography of the Russian/Soviet side of the Cuban missile crisis, as it has developed since the early 1990s. Focusing on key works, including Fursenko and Naftali's One Hell of a Gamble and Mikoyan's Anatomi'ia Karibskogo Krizisa, the article explores three issues: why Nikita Khrushchev decided to send missiles to Cuba, why he resolved to withdraw them, and how close the world came to 'the brink'. The author contends that in our understanding of the Kremlin's motivations in the Cuban missile crisis, we have come to over-rely on disparate pieces of 'evidence', which, at closer investigation, turn out to be one-sided, undocumented, or demonstrably false. The author therefore urges caution in drawing far-reaching conclusions from the crisis, especially in projecting its uncertain lessons onto the broader scholarship on the Soviet decision making during the Cold War.

In this forum, three leading experts on Sino-Soviet relations and Mao Zedong's policy toward the Soviet Union offer their appraisals of Sergey Radchenko's Two Suns in the Heavens, The Sino-Soviet Struggle for Supremacy, 1962-1967, published by the Woodrow Wilson Center Press. The commentators praise many aspects of Radchenko's book, but Michael Sheng and to a lesser extent Qiang Zhai and Deborah Kaple wonder whether Radchenko has gone too far in downplaying the role of ideology in Mao's foreign policy. Unlike Lorenz Luthi, who gives decisive weight to ideology in his own book about the Sino-Soviet split, Radchenko argues that a classical realist approach is the best framework for understanding Chinese foreign policy and the rift between China and the Soviet Union. Sheng and Zhai also raise questions about some of the sources used by Radchenko. Replying to the commentaries, Radchenko defends his conception of Mao's foreign policy, arguing that it is a more nuanced view than Sheng and Zhai imply. Radchenko also stresses the inherent shortcomings of the source base scholars are forced to use when analyzing Chinese foreign policy. Adapted from the source document.

AbstractThis article is an account of Soviet and Mongolian efforts to manipulate a nationalist insurrection in Chinese Altai in 1944–45. For the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin this insurrection, led by a Kazakh nationalist, Osman Batyr, offered an excellent opportunity to attend to Soviet security interests in Xinjiang. For the Prime Minister of the Mongolian People's Republic (MPR), Khorloogiin Choibalsan, Osman represented an important investment in the process of expanding the MPR's regional influence and prestige. Choibalsan intended to co-opt Osman in an expanded Great Mongolia, which he hoped to build up at China's expense by winning the loyalty of the Kazakhs in Xinjiang and the Mongol banners of what is now Inner Mongolia. Stalin supported Choibalsan's vision for a time, until he reached a broader accommodation with China, ending Soviet support for anti-Chinese nationalist movements and putting an end to Choibalsan's Great Mongolia Dream.

Andrei Ledovskii, a long-time Soviet diplomat with a particular expertise on East Asian affairs, and several other Russian specialists on Soviet policy in the Far East have published a massive collection of declassified documents about Soviet policy vis-à-vis China in the first five years after World War II. The authors seek to show that the Communist victory in the Chinese civil war was attributable to Soviet fraternal help, that Josif Stalin wholeheartedly embraced the Chinese Communists' struggle for power, and that the Sino-Soviet alliance from beginning to end enjoyed unstinting Soviet support. But in fact the documents reveal that Stalin's policy toward the Chinese Communists was opportunistic and utilitarian, that he refrained from decisively supporting the Communists in the Civil War until almost the end, and that all the talk of proletarian internationalism in the Sino-Soviet alliance was but a cloak for Soviet expansionist ambitions in East Asia.

A review essay on a book by Andrei Ledovskii, Raisa Mirovitskaya, & Vladimir Myasnikov [Eds], Russko-kitaiskie otnosheniya v XX veke, Vol. 5, pt. l: 1946-1948, & pt. 2: 1948-fevral 1950 ([Russian-Chinese Relations in the 20th Century] Moscow: Pamyatniki Istoricheskoi Mysli, 2005).