[Pictured: Mao and Khrushchev meet in Beijing in 1957 prior to the Sino-Soviet split]
By Nolan Long
In a widely circulated quotation, Chinese President Xi Jinping is supposed to have said that the collapse of the Soviet Union is a “tragedy too painful to look back upon.” While this is most likely an apocryphal quote that began being circulated by Western media in recent years, it is, in fact, consistent with Xi’s actual thinking on the Soviet collapse. Throughout the pages of the Governance of China, President Xi gives continued attention to the history of Sino-Soviet relations and his regret of the Soviet disintegration. In the memory of Xi Jinping and the Communist Party of China as a whole, it would seem that the period of division between the People’s Republic and the USSR is now seen as a mistake. While Xi has seemingly never spoken publicly about the Sino-Soviet Split, his regret for this era is evidenced by his mourning of the Soviet collapse, his rhetorical focus on periods of alliance between the two countries, and his diplomatic efforts to ensure strong China-Russia ties today. In China’s New Era, the Soviet Union is remembered as an ally, rather than an enemy.
The history of Chinese-Soviet relations is a long one. Ken Hammond’s recent book, China and the World, covers this topic extensively. After the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, the new socialist state developed close ties with the Soviet Union. To this point, Xi Jinping notes, “after the founding of the PRC in 1949, China explored the path of building socialism in sole alliance with the Soviet Union and in semi-seclusion from the rest of the world.”[1] He also noted the theoretical contributions that the Soviet Union made to China’s early experience with socialist governance: “we are always open to useful governance experience from other countries, digesting its essence and employing it for our own use on the basis of our own systems. For example, we learned a lot from the valuable experience of the Soviet Union during the initial period of the PRC in building socialism.”[2]
However, these mutually beneficial relations between the PRC and the USSR did not last long. As early as the late 1950s, cracks in the socialist alliance were forming, only to be exacerbated during the 60s, and sustained throughout the 70s. The origin of the dissolution of the alliance laid primarily in ideological disagreements. Whereas Mao Zedong and the CPC saw the Soviet Union as revisionist (under the leaderships of Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev) and later as social imperialist, the Soviets saw the People’s Republic as increasingly erratic, uncontrollable, and ‘adventurist.’ The Split was not purely theoretical, however. It resulted in the withdrawal of Soviet technical professionals in the 1960s and was a contributing factor to China’s war with Vietnam in 1979.
Though incredibly ironic from our modern point of view, the Communist Party of China, during the Sino-Soviet Split, saw the primary contradiction in world politics as Soviet social imperialism. Ken Hammond writes, “up to the end of the 1960s, China’s primary contradiction in the world was the clash between the socialist camp and the imperialists, led by the United States. But now Mao and others felt the Soviet Union was the greater threat to China.”[3] As a result, China undertook a strategic alliance with the United States against the Soviet Union. In retrospect, this alliance, and the Sino-Soviet Split as a whole, was a disaster for the global socialist movement. This is not to say the CPC’s criticism of the Soviet leadership was invalid; the CPSU had indeed become revisionist following the ascendency of Nikita Khrushchev. The Soviet leadership practically abandoned Marxism-Leninism through the denigration of Stalin and the veiled attack on Lenin. The criticism of the Communist Party of China was certainly necessary, but the diplomatic Split itself was at least regrettable, if not itself a mistake.
However, as is evidenced in the writings and speeches of General Secretary Xi Jinping, the memory of the Sino-Soviet Split has now soured in the Communist Party of China. Tensions between the two states began settling in the early 1980s, though the collapse of the USSR in 1991 made these efforts to resolve differences irrelevant. The question now at hand is one of historical memory. Do Xi Jinping and the CPC remember the Soviet Union as an ally or an enemy?
President Xi’s words and actions suggest that he regrets the Split between the PRC and the USSR. In 2015, on the 70th anniversary of the end of World War Two, Xi honoured the dead of WWII as well as the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression. He noted not only the great number of Chinese lives lost, but also the tremendous death toll of Soviet fighters, demonstrating his memory of the sacrifice of the Soviet people.[4] Similarly, in a 2013 speech given from Moscow, President Xi told a story of a Soviet air force captain, Gregory Kurishenko, who fought alongside the Chinese against the Japanese imperialists.[5] This story was told to emphasize the historically close ties between the Chinese and Russian people. Clearly, Xi Jinping’s memory of the Soviet people is one of allyship and not of enmity.
While the quotation at the beginning of this essay is likely apocryphal, President Xi Jinping has assuredly demonstrated remorse over the collapse of the Soviet Union. He notes that the disintegration of the world’s first socialist state marked a period of negative transformation in the socialist movement as a whole; “in the late 1980s and early 1990s, during a period of dramatic change in Eastern Europe, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union collapsed and the Soviet Union disintegrated, dealing a severe blow to world socialism.”[6] While noting the consequences the collapse had on the socialist world as a whole, President Xi still holds that the collapse was the result of ideological revisionism. “One main reason for its failure was that the Communist Party of the Soviet Union became detached from the people and turned into a group of privileged bureaucrats who only served their own interests.”[7] This quotation is not so much a dismissal of the importance of the Soviet Union as much as an apt historical assessment. While critiquing the late USSR’s ideological line, Xi Jinping still does not embody Split-era hostilities to the Soviet Union in his thought.
Lastly, Xi Jinping’s efforts to foster mutually beneficial relations with the Russian Federation demonstrate that historical hostilities do not bear on his thought or actions. Since his tenure as General Secretary of the Communist Party of China began in 2012, Xi has made continual and concerted efforts to establish strong diplomatic ties with Russia, the historical successor to the Soviet Union. While Xi clearly regrets the Soviet collapse, this does not stop him from working with the modern Russian Federation in order to re-establish cooperative ties between the Chinese and Russian peoples. In a 2013 speech given in Moscow, Xi stated, “at present, both China and Russia are at a crucial stage of national renewal, as their relations have entered a new period characterized by provision of vital mutual development opportunities and serving as primary mutual cooperation partners.”[8]
While President Xi Jinping has seemingly never explicitly spoken or written about the Sino-Soviet Split, his work implies a deep regret for this historical period and the blow it dealt to the global socialist movement. As such, Xi’s tenure can be seen as an effort to rectify the historical mistakes made by the Communist Party, while maintaining a firm stance against revisionism. In the memory of Xi Jinping and the CPC as a whole, the Soviet Union is now remembered as an ally and mentor, rather than an adversary.
Notes
[1] Xi Jinping, “A Deeper Understanding of the New Development Concepts,” in The Governance of China, Vol. II (Foreign Languages Press, 2017), 233.
[2] Xi Jinping, “Uphold and Improve the Chinese Socialist System and Modernize State Governance,” in The Governance of China, Vol. III (Foreign Languages Press, 2020), 148.
[3] Ken Hammond, China’s Revolution and the Quest for a Socialist Future (1804 Books, 2023), 56.
[4] Xi Jinping, “Remember the Past and Our Martyrs, Cherish Peace, and Build a New Future,” in The Governance of China, Vol. II (Foreign Languages Press, 2017), 485.
[5] Xi Jinping, “Follow the Trend of the Times and Promote Global Peace and Development,” in The Governance of China, Vol. I (Foreign Languages Press, 2014), 303.
[6] Xi Jinping, “Be Prepared for the Great Struggle,” in The Governance of China, Vol. IV (Foreign Languages Press, 2022), 93.
[7] Xi Jinping, “Apply the New Development Philosophy in Full,” in The Governance of China, Vol. IV (Foreign Languages Press, 2022), 197.
[8] Xi Jinping, “Follow the Trend of the Times and Promote Global Peace and Development,” 302.
References
Hammond, Ken. China’s Revolution and the Quest for a Socialist Future. 1804 Books, 2023.
Xi, Jinping. The Governance of China, Vol. I-IV. Foreign Languages Press, 2014-22.
This post has been syndicated from Read - Hampton Institute, where it was published under this address.