Personalities at War: The Sino Soviet Split 1956 -1964
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On March 2nd 1969, The Sino-Soviet border erupted in bloodshed. A Chinese ambush a Soviet patrol on Zhenbao Island killing over thirty soldiers and bringing the two countries to the brink of a full fledged war. What happened to the alliance that had begun a mere two decades earlier? It was demolished not only by events that occurred between these two nations, but by the way that these events were handled. More importantly, this alliance broke down due to conflict between the personalities of the leaders of these two countries, because of the effect that had on how tenuous situations were handled. The major conflicts between the Soviet Union and the Peoples Republic of China arose from the personalities of their two leaders, Nikita Khrushchev and Mao Zedong. It is important, if one is to understand the conflict as a whole, to understand the men separately before delving deeper into the problems that their personalities generated when they are forced to deal with one another. Their relationship began fairly amicably before Khrushchev took power. As soon as Khrushchev gave his famous "secret speech" defaming Stalin and his cult of personality however, Mao immediately branded Khrushchev as unreliable and began changing his policies and speeches to vilify Khrushchev and the Soviet Government. This denouncement was caused simply because Khrushchev's speech inadvertently. defamed not just Stalin's policies but Mao's policies as well. The secret speech was immediately followed by rebellions in Poland and Hungary. The nature of these conflicts and the methods that Mao suggested using on each of the revolts shows how early after the speeches he was dissatisfied with Soviet leadership of the socialist sphere of influence even though he never dared say it. Possibly as an attempt to deal with the problems that Khrushchev unintentionally expressed about his rule, Mao instituted the "let a hundred flowers bloom" campaign. This campaign allowed intellectuals to voice constructive criticism of the government. This plan to create a more liberal political landscape backfired when people began criticizing both the Party in general and Mao personally. Mao completely reversed the party's stance and began crushing the careers of the dissenters, finally opting to ignore Khrushchev's call for de-Stalinization. When Mao visited the Soviet Union for the fiftieth anniversary of the October Revolution, Khrushchev offered Mao every courtesy and honor. Mao however refused to show even the slightest interest in Russian culture or anything that Khrushchev offered him. Mao then began the largest mistake of his political career, The Great Leap Forward, which promised to hurl China into a state of full-blown communism well ahead of the Soviets. Instead of propelling China's socio-economic status forward, the Great Leap Forward instead devastated the Chinese population. This also destroyed Mao's political standing and the Chinese people's beliefs in the Soviet government its advisors. Mao's background as a historian probably had a great deal of influence over his policies including the Great Leap Forward and the way that Mao dealt with Khrushchev during his visit to Beijing to discuss a joint submarine fleet.