Why Did The Soviet Split Essay

Introduction In the 1950s and 60s, when the two largest Communist States in the world ended their alliance, the world was shocked. Not only did the split between the Soviet Union and China create a divide in worldwide Communist leadership but also marked a turning point in the Cold War era. In his book, The Sino-Soviet Split, historian Lorenz M. Lüthi describes the collapse of the Sino-Soviet alliance to have been as significant to the time period as “the construction of the Berlin Wall, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Second Vietnam War and the Sino-American rapprochement” (2010, 1). This essay seeks to explore the multiple causes of the split and weigh them against each other. In it I will argue that while several causes were at play in causing
Due to the lack of an urban working class in China, Mao had used a peasant base for the Chinese revolution in the 1930s and 40s. This was against the advice of the Soviets who advocated the use of the urban working class as had been made in the Russian Revolution of 1917. Moreover, during his leadership, Stalin had urged Mao to form a coalition against Japan with Chiang Kai-Shek, the leader of the Nationalist Party of China (or Kuomintang) and Mao’s rival in the Chinese civil war. Stalin had also told Mao not to cease power and to negotiate with Chiang as Stalin had signed a treaty of friendship with the Nationalists in 1945. However despite these differences, the two countries had more or less been benevolent to each other. Stalin had handed over Manchuria to Mao and had given Mao’s party a billion dollars in material aid to help expel the Nationalists from continental China and establish the People’s Republic of China. Mao had also secured huge low-interest loans and a long military alliance with the Soviet Union as part of the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Alliance signed in