CHAPTER 7: WHOSE IDENTITY, WHOSE CONSTRUCTS AND WHOSE INTEREST? THE SYNTHESIS OF PRIMARY AND SECONDARY DATA IN
4.6 The Sino-Soviet Conflict
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unique revolutionary struggle. He was essentially saying the method that guaranteed socialists success in the Soviet Union cannot be applied in China with expectations of similar results.
Secondly, playing a subservient role to the Soviet Union was predictably a humiliation to communist China, led by a party that was virulently against subordinating China to any form of foreign control, physical or ideological. Thus, Mao’s adulation towards the Soviet Union masked a covert discomfort. Just as the intermittent and expedient comity that had characterized CCP- GMD relations, Sino-Soviet relations were equally based on expediency and convenience.
Indeed, concealed suspicions between the two powers that eventually escalated into open conflict and ideological attrition were testament to the weak foundations on which Sino-Soviet relations were built.
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ground to the other. China had done so, at least on face value, during the Stalinist era in the Soviet Union.37 It grew more emboldened for a role as a leader of international socialism after the death of Stalin and the accession of Khrushchev to power in the Soviet Union.
The differences in perceiving the Sino-Soviet conflict could be bridged by a balanced assessment of what led to the split. Those who argued that the Sino-Soviet split was a charade were probably unaware of how the two powers were really at variance with each other on political and territorial issues. Those who pointed out that Russia was more interested in pragmatic policies and was hence poised to recoil from conducting a campaign of international communism were also unaware of the fact that Russia was indeed still yearning for a communist world. The two powers were thus all interested in the ultimate victory of communism over other ideologies.
What seemed to be the point of separation was the method that each power was advocating.
The death of Stalin in 1953 and the subsequent ascent of Khrushchev to power represented a shift in the Soviet formula for communist domination in the world. Though it was in 1956 that Sino-Soviet relations became visibly strained, their genesis could be traced to 1954 when Khrushchev visited China. According to Taurer (1977) one of the objectives of the new Khrushchev’s visit to China was to try and craft a new working relationship between the two communist powers after the death of Stalin. In general terms, the era of Stalin was characterized by an accumulation of power in one individual. Furthermore, the Stalinist purges were also a regrettable legacy of Stalin that his successors sought to move away from. Mao, as stated above, enjoyed almost unrestrained influence in China and hence his style of leadership was akin to the style that Khrushchev was condemning. The rifts between the two sides were so deep that Khrushchev thought that “conflict with China was inevitable” (Khrushchev 1974:252).
The general analysis of Sino-Soviet conflicts usually cites 1956 as the watershed moment (see Zagoria 1961). In that year the Communist Party of the Soviet Union held its 20th Party Congress. During the Congress, Khrushchev gave what has come to be known as the Secret Speech. It denounced the cult of personality that had been built around Stalin and the abuse with
37 For an evenhanded assessment of Sino-Soviet amity and the later animosity, it is politic to state that suspicions between China and the Soviet Union predated the accession of a more forward looking Khrushchev era. Singh (1968) talks of the Soviet Union’s disappointment and a probable feeling of betrayal when Mao promoted the notion of passive waiting after the Soviet Union entered WWII which ineffectively staved off China’s stepping up of the struggle against Japan in 1941 to prevent it from attacking the rear of Soviet territory.
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which he had wielded his power. Such denunciation of a leader was uncustomary in the communist camp. The Secret Speech was a shock to those who heard it and it had a telling impact on Sino-Soviet relations. It was after the 20th Congress that China started to openly disentangle itself from Soviet leadership and chart a separate path, one that it thought led to a more credible brand of socialism. The word “revisionism” gained currency during this epoch and was used to describe the Soviet Union and any other power or organization that supported its stance.
Apart from disagreements on collective leadership and the cult of individuals, China and the USSR differed on the methods they thought could bring a socialist victory. The Soviet Union during Khrushchev was slowly warming up to the idea that revolutionary violence was not the only means to defeat non-communist ideologies. Parliamentary methods were also thought to be possibly effective. Furthermore, post-Stalin USSR entertained the possibility of peaceful coexistence with the capitalist West. China disagreed on both these scores. First of all, as Lynch (2004) argues, twentieth century politics in China were characterized by violence and the CCP, mainly influenced by Mao, was the main champion of revolutionary violence (see also Kleinman and Kleinman 1994 on political violence in China).
Other Marxist theorists would argue that on the march towards socialist victories violence was one of the processes. To Mao, violence was presented as the process of bringing about political rectitude and ideological purity (Lynch 2004). Thus, what the new Soviet Union was now promoting was antithetical to genuine socialism. Similarly, the CCP insisted that peaceful coexistence was not a possibility between communist powers and capitalist powers because their differences were too diametrical. Mao insisted on the inevitability of the Third World War which would bring about a communist victory. To the Soviet Union, and other movements and powers, the CCP’s dogged insistence on revolutionary violence was redolent of Marxist zealotry, an attitude that was at variance with civilized politics of the twentieth century in an evolving world system. Africa was the arena on which the big part of Sino-Soviet dissonance was fought.
China lost some political ground in Africa because of its conflict with the USSR (Singh 1968). It is noteworthy that at the onset of the Sino-Soviet strife much of Africa was under colonial rule and the communist camp was involved, politically, economically, and ideologically to end colonialism. The edge that the communist camp had in Africa was that colonial powers came
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from the West and hence were capitalist. China was not big on material sponsorship against colonialism, but it was in terms of propaganda or rhetoric. However, the Sino-Soviet rift caused problems for China in Africa. There was a gulf in how China presented itself and how certain African political movements perceived it. By insisting on revolutionary violence, China was trying to assume the identity of a true communist country. However, certain African movements like the African National Congress (ANC) and the South African Communist Party (SACP) were primarily non-violent organizations and hence were opposed to the notion of violence as the inevitable process of political change. The same could be said about the UNIP government of Kaunda that had taken power from Britain through what were mainly non-violent means.
In sum, the Sino-Soviet split indicates an evolution of Chinese identities and interests, whether contrived or substantially assumed. Before the communist takeover, Mao had harboured some skepticism about the role that the Soviet example can play in the CCP’s quest for power.
However, the official line had changed after the takeover and China was ready, facetiously at least, to be second position to the USSR in the communist camp. Its identity was that of a socialist power striving to revive a weak economy and determined to ruin the nationalists who had fled to Taiwan. However, the death of Stalin and the change in Soviet leadership had an impact on how China perceived itself. No longer considering itself a lowly member of the communist camp, China started seeing itself as a more credible face of world socialism, describing the Soviet Union and those that supported its new line as revisionists.
China’s interests had also shifted. It no longer sought only the elimination of capitalism and imperialism but the weakening of the Soviet Union as a counterfeit of socialism. China was beginning to posture itself as the most principal promoter of and “as the centre of the world revolutionary process” (Singh 1968:331). Even China’s policy towards Africa became more tailored towards limiting or discrediting Soviet influence. The insistence on violence on the part of China was seen by the Chinese as a true identity and formula of a socialist organization seeking a socialist world, but its opponents saw China’s identity as fanatical and hence had to be rebuffed. The brief invasion of India in 1962 added another dimension to those who saw in the PRC a perfidious power that had reneged on the five principles of coexistence that China and India had signed. The CCP wanted ideological purity by arguing along the lines discussed here
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but other players and powers interpreted this interest in opposite ways.38 Another episode during which China sought to rid itself of malcontents and preserve a pure identity was referred to as the Cultural Revolution – another controversial period that tainted China’s identity and antagonized many politicians, some within China itself.