5.01 Authoritarian States todo
USSR and China’s relationship
- Maoism derived heavily from Stalinism
- socialist realism, New Socialist Man, and Five-Year Plan drew directly from 1921-1991 🇷🇺 Communist Russia
- some form of competition between China and the Soviet Union – a superior-subordinate, original-fake relationship
- Mao wouldn’t have that
- Mao’s participation in the Korean War further strained the fraught relationship
- Timeline
- 1950: Sino-Soviet Treaty
- Korean War
- 1953 and 1954 Sino-Soviet Treaty
- USSR agreed to significant aid package for China’s first FYP, incl. a bigger
- … etc check slides
- Taiwan Crisis – USSR didn’t agree with shelling
- Stalin, the de-facto leader of the Communist movement, dies
- Mao wrote a telegram mourning his death (probably not fully sincere)
- Mao thought himself Stalin’s successor as the communist leader → increasingly resented Khrushchev as he didn’t accord Mao this status
- Khrushchev denounces Stalin and the USA; Mao doesn’t openly dissent, but he ideologically and politically supported Putin
1950: Sino-Soviet Treaty of Alliance
- a formal alliance between the USSR and China, signed on 14 February 1950
- mutual military assistance vis-a-vis aggression by J and any potential collaborating states
- military aid provided to help China develop its air force
- no joint revolutionary strategy devised for East Asia – Stalin forced Mao to drop plans supporting Vietminh in their struggle against the French in Indochina
- Soviet promise to restore Chinese sovereignty over the province of Manchuria
- USSR promised to transfer control over the South Manchurian Railway (controlled by Japan, then Soviet Union)
- China failed to secure Soviet agreement on Mongolia; it remained in Soviet hands
- USSR to provide credit worth 300 million GBP at 1% interest, to be repaid over 10 years from 1954
- a sticking point for Mao later – it didn't come free, and also forced Mao to admit China’s financial weakness → further strained Sino-Soviet relations
- much of it was spent on machinery and equipment needed for defense industries
- technical assistance provided at Henan aluminium plant, Jiantan cable factory, Hunan rare metals plant
- Soviets refused to provide aid to conquer Taiwan, which remained in KMT hands
- Stalin eared provoking the USA into action amidst the 1941-1991 The Cold War
Treaty’s impact
- 2 communist giants had formed a military alliance and established a new economic relationship
- Communist Bloc now stretched in a single mass, from Eastern Europe