On September 11, 1969, Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin and Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai held an urgent impromptu meeting at Beijing Airport to try and resolve the political and border crisis between their two countries. After 3½ hours, the two premiers reached a consensus: that their countries would resolve their differences through peaceful means, that border talks that were broken in 1964 would be restarted, that diplomatic ties between the two states would be restored, and that trade and transportation exchanges between their countries would be reopened.
The meeting was held to defuse tensions between the two countries. Chinese authorities were concerned about the growing threat of war with the Soviet Union. Despite appearing defiant, and warning Russia that it too had nuclear weapons, China was unprepared to go to war, and its military was far weaker than that of the Soviet Union. Exacerbating China’s position was its ongoing Cultural Revolution, which was causing serious internal unrest.
In August-September 1969, believing that a Soviet nuclear attack would target China’s major populated centers, the Chinese government prepared to empty the cities and relocate the population and vital industries to remote locations. Large-scale underground civilian and military shelters were built in Beijing and other areas of the country. At Mao’s urging, national and party leaders moved away from Beijing to different areas across China, to avoid the government being wiped out by a single Soviet nuclear attack on the capital. By this time, even the Western press believed that war was imminent between the two communist giants.
(Taken from Sino-Soviet Border Conflict – Wars of the 20th Century – Volume 5)
Background In November 1917, Russian communists seized power in Petrograd, and after emerging victorious in the Russian Civil War (October 1917-October 1922), they established the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (usually shortened to USSR or Soviet Union). Nearly 27 years later, in October 1949 in China, Mao Zedong founded the People’s Republic of China (PRC) when his Red Army all but defeated Chiang Kai-shek and the Chinese Nationalist (Kuomintang) forces in the Chinese Civil War. In December 1949, Chiang and the Kuomintang fled from the Chinese mainland and moved to Taiwan, where he established his new seat of government.
Thereafter, the Soviet Union and Red China established close fraternal ties. In February 1950, the two countries signed the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Alliance, and Mutual Assistance, a thirty-year military alliance which included a Soviet low-cost loan of $300 million to assist in the reconstruction of war-ravaged China. In December 1950, the Soviet government returned to China sovereignty of the region of Lushun, including Port Arthur, located in the Chinese northeast. And with China militarily intervening in the Korean War (previous article) in October 1950, the Soviet Union sent large amounts of weapons to China, and provided air cover during the Chinese counter-offensive starting in late 1950. The period 1950-1958 saw close political, diplomatic, and economic relations between the two communist powers, particularly in relation to their common ideological struggle against their Cold War enemies, the United States and capitalist West.
In March 1953, Joseph Stalin, who had ruled the Soviet Union for over three decades, died suddenly, and was succeeded by Nikita Khrushchev. Khrushchev brought about a radical shift in Russia’s domestic affairs, implementing a series of reforms collectively known as de-Stalinization. The most repressive aspects of Stalinist policies were reversed: suppression and censorship were reduced; some economic and social reforms were introduced; political prisoners were released; the Gulag camp conditions were improved; and Stalinist landmarks, places, and monuments were renamed to erase memories of the Stalin era.
In foreign affairs, Khrushchev implemented “peaceful coexistence” with the West, which was a dramatic reversal of Stalin’s policy of confrontation against capitalist/democratic countries. The Soviet Union increased trade with the West, participated in international sports events, and allowed greater cultural and educational exchanges, and Western cinema and arts to enter the Soviet Union.
However, in China, Mao was alarmed by these changes in the Soviet Union. He had drawn inspiration for China’s political and economic development on the Stalinist model, and perceived Khrushchev’s “peaceful coexistence” policies with the West as deviating from Marxism-Leninism. As a result, Chinese-Soviet relations became strained, leading to a decade-long period (late 1950s through the 1960s) of hostility known as the Sino-Soviet split. This split was aggravated by other regional and global events which occurred during this period.
In 1958, Mao launched the Great Leap Forward, a large-scale series of programs in agriculture and heavy industries aimed at accelerating China’s path to communism. Mao’s plan was to vault China into a global economic power that would surpass the Soviet Union and even the industrialized Western powers, including Britain and the United States. However, the program ended in utter failure. Together with a massive drought, the policies of the Great Leap Forward caused widespread famine that led to mass starvation. Some 36 million people died from hunger, and another 40 million babies failed to be form, or a total of 76 million deaths due to the “Great Chinese Famine”.
The Great Leap Forward also further strained Sino-Soviet relations, as Khrushchev perceived Mao’s ambitious programs as a direct challenge to the Soviet Union’s leadership in the socialist world. The Soviet government then pulled out its military, technical and economic advisers from China. Then when Khrushchev visited the United States in September 1959, China saw this as further evidence that the Soviet Union had strayed from Marxism-Leninism, and had become “soft” in its relations with the West.
In March 1959, when the Dalai Lama (Tibet’s spiritual leader) fled from Tibet into India following a failed Tibetan revolt against Chinese rule, the Soviet government gave moral support to Tibet, angering Mao. India itself also had a long-standing border dispute with China. When border clashes between India and China broke out in 1959 which ultimately led to a limited war in 1962 (Sino-Indian War, separate article), the Soviet Union remained neutral in the conflict and even tacitly sided with India, which again provoked Mao.
China also wanted to invade Taiwan to fulfill its long-sought goal of reunifying China. However, China’s invasion plan received only tepid support from the Soviet Union. In 1958, after China provoked the Second Taiwan Strait Crisis by shelling Quemoy and Matsu islands, the Soviet Foreign Ministry cautioned China against escalating the conflict, because the United States had sent a naval force to defend Taiwan.