Was the Sino-Soviet split inevitable?

The People's Republic of China and the Soviet Union were allies in the 50s, with the Soviets giving technological formation to Chinese engineers. But around 1960 Mao Tse-Tung strongly denounced Khrushchev as a "revisionist" due to his reforms. Khrushchev in response talked bad about the Great Leap Forward. The two former allies became enemies.

The question (also for a TL I'm working on) is: was the Sino-Soviet split inevitable? Mao's opinion about Khrushchev's reforms and the controversial nature of the Great Leap Forward were inevitable and were theh inevitably going to destroy the Sino-Soviet alliance?

I'm looking for a scenario that still sees Khrushchev and Mao taking and maintaining power and where Soviet reformism and the Great Leap Forward are still there (despite some change to the Leap it's ok).

Any ideas?
 
I've long taken an interest in the SSS, but I'm not clear on the exact reasons. Was it REALLY just about destalinization, and the Great Leap Forward? I realize that both parties would have reason to take respective issue with those policies, but when you consider that they both must have regarded the USA as a mortal enemy, it seems a rather extreme reaction to give up an alliance like that just because of disagreements over internal policies.

I know that there were also territorial disputes involved, but it's not clear to me if those caused the split, or were aggravated by it. If China, for example, thought that Russia(which unlike the US shared a border with China) was encroaching on her territory, that could provide a plausible incentive to split up.

So, going by my limited knowledge, I'd say that if border disputes were a major cause, yes, a split was probably inevitable. If it was just "You insulted Stalin and that hurt our feelings". I'd find it surprising if that were enough to engender the breakup.
 
In the middle and long term? Absolutely, the chinese don't want to play second fiddle to the Russian forever and Moscow will have never accepted the PRC even as an equal patner...so sooner or later they will have departed way
 
In the middle and long term? Absolutely, the chinese don't want to play second fiddle to the Russian forever and Moscow will have never accepted the PRC even as an equal patner...so sooner or later they will have departed way

Agreed, the real issue was there can be only one #1 in the Communist World and both the USSR and China wanted to be that. So sooner or later they were going to break apart.
 

Anchises

Banned
In the middle and long term? Absolutely, the chinese don't want to play second fiddle to the Russian forever and Moscow will have never accepted the PRC even as an equal patner...so sooner or later they will have departed way

Agreed, the real issue was there can be only one #1 in the Communist World and both the USSR and China wanted to be that. So sooner or later they were going to break apart.

And lets not forget the geostrategical interests of China and Russia. Both countries have conflicting interests in Central Asia that precede Communism.

I don't think that a unified China would play the second fiddle for long. The ideological differences are just the cherry on top.
 

Lusitania

Donor
The split had its orrigins in the Soviet attitude towards the Chinese and its treatment of them.

after Mao and Chinese communists had defeated the nationalist forces he visited Moscow expecting to be welcomed as an equal and compatriot instead he was welcomed with disdain by Soviets. A slight he never forgave and repaid when Stalin’s successor visited Beijing

Secondly during the Korean War the Soviets supplied the Chinese with modern Soviet weapons but forced the Chinese to pay for them.

These two examples provide examples of how the Chinese who saw themselves as equals and the Soviets who saw the Chinese as peasants and secound class.

While the Soviets provided technicAl and military support to the Chinese in the 50s this all ended by the 1960 as the Chinese refused to be secound class communists and demanded to be treated as equals.
 
Rivalry was inevitable. At the end of the day the Soviets were both a physical threat and an ideological one, there were plenty of Chinese communists who liked the Soviet model more than Mao’s version.

So without Mao and with a China that followed the Soviet model more closely, the split would have taken place later, and might have been more amicable.
 
If that were the case they wouldn't be basically allies today. But they are.
Allies is kind of an exaggeration. Friendly is a better term. They did solve the border dispute (which, much to the disdain of ordinary Russians, were more in China's favour with Russia giving up occupied lands), and they're not exactly trying to force each other into regime change as America has. But take away America, and issues like the Sinification of the Russian Far East becomes far more obvious.
 
Well for Mao, a triumphant revolutionary in a major socialist republic, with new theoretical advancements to Marxism, he is unlikely to stick around long with a USSR that reintroduces capitalist relations (as Khrushchev did). So while it's not inevitable, it's true that an anti-revisionist stance would be taken. So the easiest way to stop it is to have rightists take power in China far earlier (say the rightist coup post-Great Leap is never challenged by the Cultural Revolution), or stop revisionism in the USSR.
 
So get Molotov or Kaganovich to succeed Stalin?

More or less (really Molotov as Kaganovich was never really in contention to become the top guy). In her memoirs Stalin's daughter talked about how she visited Molotov and his wife Polina in the 60s after Molotov was forcibly retired, and they would talk to her about how China was the only place where revolutionary spirit survived. In the foreword to Molotov Remembers, Albert Resis also says that Khrushchev transferred Molotov away from the Mongolian ambassadorship (his initial post of exile after the defeat of 1957) because he feared how close he was to China.
 

Anchises

Banned
If that were the case they wouldn't be basically allies today. But they are.

I think Putin would disagree with you if you call China his ally. Sure they both veto western proposals but China is in the process of degrading Russia to a junior partnership and that bites with Russia's ambition to stay a Great Power.
 
So get Molotov or Kaganovich to succeed Stalin?

Or have a mini-Cultural Revolution in the USSR. It's arguable Stalin wanted to shift focus from economics to politics and saw a new bourgeoisie forming in the party. But his power within the Party wasn't enough to deal with it, unless he stages a coup (which would not be viewed very well) he still has to pass directives and laws through the Party. Maybe had he done a Mao-esque "encourage the masses to revolt to destroy the bourgeoisie in the Party" this could be avoided.
 
Or have a mini-Cultural Revolution in the USSR. It's arguable Stalin wanted to shift focus from economics to politics and saw a new bourgeoisie forming in the party. But his power within the Party wasn't enough to deal with it, unless he stages a coup (which would not be viewed very well) he still has to pass directives and laws through the Party. Maybe had he done a Mao-esque "encourage the masses to revolt to destroy the bourgeoisie in the Party" this could be avoided.

That made me think of this quote from J. Arch Getty about the purges that gives them (at least in one aspect as the 37-38 purges were caused by a number of factors) a Cultural Revolution-like character:

The center was trying to unleash criticism of the mid-level apparat by the rank and file activists. Without official sanction and pressure from above, it would have been impossible for the rank and file, on their own, to organize and sustain such a movement against their immediate superiors. The evidence suggests that the 'Great Purge' should be redefined. It was not the result of a petrified bureacracy's stamping out dissent and annihilating old radical revolutionaries. In fact, it may have been just the opposite, a radical, even hysterical reaction to bureaucracy. The entrenched officeholders were destroyed from above and below in a chaotic wave of voluntarism and revolutionary puritanism.
 
That made me think of this quote from J. Arch Getty about the purges that gives them (at least in one aspect as the 37-38 purges were caused by a number of factors) a Cultural Revolution-like character:

When you look at the trials and such it does seem to take on that character. Especially with the writings of Stalin during that time. Of course not to the extent of the GPCR (which was effectively encouraging hundreds of millions of people to revolt), though.
 
The easiest way to prevent the Sino-soviet split would be for Lin Biao to succeed in the plot to overthrow Mao

He saw the Americans as the bigger threat to China. As long as that thinking prevails, the Chinese will want friendly relations with the Soviets

China having it's own bomb would give it some deterence against overt Soviet aggression
 
Rivalry was inevitable. At the end of the day the Soviets were both a physical threat and an ideological one, there were plenty of Chinese communists who liked the Soviet model more than Mao’s version.

So without Mao and with a China that followed the Soviet model more closely, the split would have taken place later, and might have been more amicable.

Maybe a little later, but not much. The problem was there can be only one #1 and both Russia and China wanted it.
 

Lusitania

Donor
The split was always inevitable due to fact that Chinese expected to be treated as equals and brothers in arms while Soviets saw them as they saw their Asian people within the Soviet Union who were not equal to the Slavics.
 
And that's not considering how the Soviets actually backed the KMT over the CCP most of the time until basically after WWII...

Also, as for today, remember the whole SCO kerfluffle between China and Russia over those breakaway republics, and that China didn't recognize the Russian annexation of Crimea...
 
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