World of the Continued United Front
* Second Sino-Japanese War
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Chinese Leaders, 20s and 30s
* Asia after the Second Sino-Japanese War, around 1940
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Sino-Soviet Relations, 1930s to 1950s
* United States Politics, to 1960
* Indochina and the Second Indochina War
* Indonesia, 1965 to 1989
* Russia, 1990s and 2000s
Sino-Soviet Relations - 1930s to 1950s
Initially, after Lenin's strokes left him unable to govern, the Soviet Union was led by a triumvirate consisting of Lev Kamanev, Grigory Zinoviev, and Joseph Stalin. In the mid 20s, however, the triumvirate broke up due to Zinoviev and Kamanev's opposition to Stalin's policy of "Socialism in One Country", and Stalin began to consolidate power. Stalin's rise was not without opposition, but as he rose and consolidated power, the Left Opposition, Right Opposition, and United Opposition factions found themselves suppressed and purged, often with large public show trials, with torture and forced confessions common and under the broader environment of growing repression and censorship in the Soviet Union
Leon Trotsky was a Soviet revolutionary and Marxist theorist and politician. whose particular strain of Marxist thought is known as Trotskyism. He joined he Bolshevik Party shortly before the October revolution, and rapidly became a major figure within the party, being involved in the negotiations for the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and later becoming a prominent military leader of the Reds in the Russian Civil War
After the rise of Joseph Stalin, Trotsky was removed from his positions in the Soviet Government, and eventually expelled. He spent the rest of his life in exile, first in Turkey, and then eventually making his way to China. There, he became involved with the Communist Party of China. The Communist leader, Chen Duxiu, was quite sympathetic to Trotsky and his criticisms of Stalin, though Chen never openly endorsed Trotskyism and publicly downplayed Trotsky's role in the party, out of concerns for Chinese-Soviet relations, being critical of the course the Soviet leadership was taking but nonetheless desiring to put up a united front against fascism and imperialism, and wanting to maintain Sino-Soviet economic ties. Trotsky's continued existence nonetheless put strain on Sino-Soviet relations - foreign developments in the 30s and early 40s temporarily pushed the two countries to cooperate, but after the Allied victory in the Second World War, the matter of Trotsky as well as other disputes led to the First Sino-Soviet Split, with Stalin breaking off relations with China and Korea
Trotsky was by far the most prominent of Soviet exiles in China, but he was far from the only one. In the 30s, as the purges stepped up in intensity in the USSR and old Bolsheviks increasingly came under attack by Stalin, Trotsky and some of his sympathizers in China covertly aided the flight of several Opposition figures to China, where the Chinese communist leadership stringently denied any harboring of such later fugitives but did quietly allow them to live fully out of the public's eye
Trotsky's ideas developed the basis of Trotskyism, a prime school of Marxist thought that opposes the theories of Stalinism. He was written out of the history books under Stalin and was one of the few Soviet personalities who was not rehabilitated by the Soviet administration under Nikita Khrushchev in the 1950s. In the Chinese sphere, however, he would be seen in a more positive light during and after the First Cold War, with Trotskyism having an influence on the development of Chinese Marxism, though never explicitly being endorsed in whole
With the death of Stalin in 1953, the Soviet leadership underwent significant change. Nikita Khrushchev, the new leader of the USSR, engaged in various reforms to the economy and society, among other things relaxing state repression and censorship. In terms of foreign policy, he pursued a policy of "Peaceful Coexistence", a softening of Soviet stance towards non-Warsaw Pact states. As part of this policy, he pursued an improvement of relations with fellow Communist-led China, moving away from the antagonism Stalin pursued after WWII. The First Sino-Soviet Split was ended with the Treaty of Ulaanbaatar in 1957
After the victory in the Second Sino-Japanese War and establishment of the Socialist Republic of China, the Chinese Communists gradually expanded control of the central government, using pressure and persuasion to bring the warlord governments to heel, as well as to bring Tibet officially into the Chinese state as a special autonomous territory. Certain regions, however, remained out of even indirect Chinese influence. Xinjiang, Tuva, and Mongolia were officially part of the Republic of China, and the Socialist Republic inherited claims on those territories, but the warlords in those areas had come under the influence of the Soviet Union, and Stalin retained domination of those regions, at times hinting at an eventual return of those regions to China, potentially in return for the Chinese leadership taking a path more obedient to Moscow's orthodoxy, though any discussion of such ideas came to an end with the post-war Sino-Soviet Split, with the local warlords remaining in control long after the rest of China was united
With the restoration of relations after the death of Stalin, however, Soviet leadership shifted on that matter, and one of the major effects of the Treaty of Ulaanbaatar was Soviet recognition of Chinese sovereignty over the disputed Central Asian territories of Mongolia, Tuva, and Xinjiang. Khrushchev figured that bringing China and Korea into the Soviet Sphere would be well-worth the loss of control over the smaller Central Asian territories. The Chinese would thereafter integrate the former warlord states as autonomous territories. In addition to these territorial changes, the treaty saw a resumption of major economic ties and economic assistance to China, as well as significant diplomatic and military cooperation between the Chinese and Soviets