wolff interkit

DAVID WOLFF (Washington, DC, USA)

INTERKIT: SOVIET SINOLOGY

AND THE SINO-SOVIET RIFT

Brezhnev: "We did not discuss the Chinese issue with the US. We didn't ask a single question regarding Beijing's policy and he didn't ask us. We didn't want to give him a reason to think we were concerned that they went to China. We have our principled course and there's nothing for us to learn from Nixon about what goes on in China. We in any case know better than Nixon the situation in the PRC and the policy of the Chinese leadership."

Stenogram of a friendly meeting with the leaders of the workers' parties of the socialist countries (July 31, 1972, Crimea)' '

In the final days of January 1969, high-ranking members of seven ruling Communist parties gathered in East Berlin to discuss "The Situation in the People's Republic of China and the Mao Zedong group's present stage." The head of the East German International Department (ID) within the Central Committee, Paul I\1arkovski, welcomed the heads of the guest delegations punctually at 10 AM on January 28. Three of them held the same title as Markovski.2 The remaining delegations contained Deputy Directors of the re- spective International Departments.3 Speaking in his native German, Mark- ovski began with Bulgaria, continued with Mongolia, before moving on to the lower rungs of the alphabet, where "Ungarn" came last. - t i .

I. Stiftung Arkhiv der Parteien- und Massenorganisationen (Hereafter, SAPMO) DY 30 J IV 2/201 (Abtei lung Intemationaler Verbindungen). File 924

2. Paul Markovski (1929- )entered the Section in 1956 and became Director of the Section starting in 1966. From 1964 to 1966, on his way up, he served as Deputy Director. Other Direc- tors at the Berlin meeting included: Konstantin Tellalow (1925- ), who had served on and off in the Bulgarian International Department from 1951, becoming Director in January 1967; Pun- zagin Schagdarsuren; and Andras Gyenes from Budapest (1927- ), who had served as Deputy

Director until 1968, when he was promoted to Director. , _ . 3. Deputy Directors included O. B. Rakhmanin, (1924- ), who had become First Deputy Di- rector of the USSR International Department in 1968; Bohdan Lewandowski (1926- ), who served in the International Department from 1967 until 1971, before and after service at the UN; and Josef Sedivy from Czechoslovakia. Biographic data from Who's IYho in the Socialist Coun- tries (New York: K. G. Saur, 1978). These men are strikingly of a cohort.

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Three days later, a protocol was adopted unanimously by all present. In- terestingly, the list of signers, while still beginning with Bulgaria, continued with Hungary and Germany, for in Russian "Vengerskaia narodnaia respublika" and "Germanskaia demokraticheskaia respublika" come before Mongo- lira. Clearly a translation from the Russian, the meeting's conclusions had been drafted by the Russians for approval by their Warsaw pact allies. The verbatim discussions, however, show considerably more give and take, for in the face of an ever-broadening Sino-Soviet split, the Russians needed to mol- lify as well as pressure in order to prevent further rifts.4 The instructions to the Soviet delegation, approved in Moscow on January 21, also make clear the importance attached to the search for a common front against a Maoist menace whose contours were still not interpreted as uniformly as the Rus- sians might wish.5

In fact, I will argue that the shadowy organization that evolved out of the meetings of ID leaders and China specialists would play a lead role in open- ing and developing a whole "second front" inside the Cold War.6 Of course, Moscow set the general course, while allowing room for well-rewarded con- tributions from other' participants. In parallel, the Soviet Union single hand- edly undertook a massive military build-up in the Far East. In 1965, the Sino- Soviet border areas, including the Mongolian People's Republic, hosted 20

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combat divisions. This number grew to 45 by 1979. The number of fighter aircraft increased six-fold to 1,200 in the Russian Far East, with smaller, though dramatic improvements, in artillery, tank, missile, and nuclear forces.?

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"Interkit" is but one element in the overall Sino-Soviet relationship, but probably among the least studied.

After a retelling of the Sino-Soviet split making use of recently declassified documentary evidence, this article presents short introductions to the work of the ID and Soviet sinology at the time. Faced with a steady deteriora- tion in Sino-Soviet ties, a series of annual international conferences that came to be known as "Interkit" occurred at the intersection between these two communities. An outline of the new organization's functions and history will lead to a more detailed examination of several aspects of the 1969 meeting,

4. The author would like to thank the Parallel History Project and James G. Hershberg for making the transcript of the 1969 meeting available as found in SAPMO at J IV 2/201/800. Henceforth, this stenogram will be referred to as "SAPMO" alone, with other materials from the same archive followed by additional description of archival location.

5. Rossisskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv noveishei istorii (Hereafter, RGANI), f. 4, op. 19, d. 525, l. 29.

6. Although never cited as such in documentation, oral informants universally refer to this organization as "Interkit," the (Anti-)China International.

7. For military build-up, see Paul Langer's "Soviet Military Power in Asia," in Donald Zago- ria, ed., Soviet Policy in East Asia (New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press 1982), 267-70.

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occurring just a few weeks before Sino-Soviet tension erupted into open warfare on the Ussuri River border. Finally, implications for the Sino-Soviet split, competition in the Third World, and our general periodization of the Cold War will be considered. If, as the epigraph suggests, Brezhnev and other top leaders felt that the analyses they were receiving from the Interkit collec- tive gave them best knowledge of China, then that goes far towards explain- ing the Warsaw Pact's inability to move Sino-Soviet relations in a more con- structive direction throughout the 1970s.

As the directives to the Soviet delegation to Interkit in 1971 stated: "... joint analysis of the various sides of the Chinese problem is very useful for the ideological and propagandistic activity of our parties as well as the development of a concrete political line towards the PRC. It plays an important role in the deepening of the scientific research work" g Analysis by coordinated party specialists that then defmed policy possibilities and future research could eventually become a closed circle, offering the Politburo only one logical choice and the people of the Warsaw Pact only one unified, self- fulfilling negative image of China.

Sino-Soviet relations: 1959, 1969 The choice of 1959 is somewhat arbitrary as a turning point in relations

between Russia and China for significant communal memories remind the Chinese, even today, of the wide lands taken from them by the tsar's minions in 1860, as Beijing lay prostrate after the Second Opium War. The Russians, in turn, responded with attacks on the "unequal treaty" of Nerchinsk (1689). Negotiated "under duress" by superior Qing dynasty forces, the Russians had signed away their patrimony in the Eastern reaches of the Amur. Even between the Communist hierarchies, there was already bad blood. For example, Mao and all his surviving comrades from the Long March of 1934-35 remembered well the year 1927, when Stalin had counseled moderation and the rising tide of Chinese revolution had been smashed by Guomindang (GMD) leader Chiang Kai-shek's armored fist in a terrible bloodletting. The survivors had then wandered from mountain fastness to hidden valley, first west- ward and then northward, always only a few steps ahead of superior GMD military forces intent on exterminating the last remnants of Communism in China. Only 10-20 percent completed the Long March. From this dire sce- nario Mao had emerged as preeminent CCP leader, the Chairman (zhuxi).

Even a celebratory event such as a visit to Stalin's 70 birthday in De- cember 1949 had a gray lining. Mao felt ignored and feigned illness. A friendship treaty eventually eventuated, but by then chances for real friendship were already remote. With such an inauspicious beginning, it is no sur-

8. RGANI, f. 4, op. 19, d. 605,1. 40.

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prise that the "ten thousand-year" alliance was essentially over in under a decade. 9

The crucial period was between July 1958 and October 1959, the months of N. S. Khrushchev's two visits to Beijing. Although the first was occa- sioned by deep disagreements over a Soviet proposal for a "joint fleet" and shared radar installation, by the end of four Mao-Khrushchev conversations, the relationship was, to all appearances, back on track. The first aid adminis- tered to the alliance by a well behaved, even apologetic, Khrushchev during his 1958 visit to Beijing would no longer be effective a year later. During the 14-month interim, the Soviet leadership would become convinced that Mao's recklessness could wreck Khrushchev's push. for peaceful coexistence, his updating of Marxism-Leninism for a nuclear age. Border skirmishes in the Himalayas were a reminder that China could easily manufacture quandaries and embarrassments for USSR foreign policy. And the standoff in the Taiwan straits suggested that an even higher price might have to be paid for insuffi- cient coordination between Beijing and Moscow. 10

In October 1959, Khrushchev returned to Beijing for the tenth anniversary celebration of the PRC's establishment. He arrived in the Chinese capital just days after sharing the "spirit of Camp David" with Eisenhower, and the Oc- tober 2, 1959 summit transcript shows how far Sino-Soviet relations had de-

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teriorated since the 1958 visit. The collapse of the Great Leap and Mao's other domestic challenges had left the Chinese tyrant more prickly and paranoid than ever. Despite Mao's later accusation that Khrushchev "doesn't research [China] and believes a whole bunch of incorrect information," the So- viets fully grasped the PRC's dire straits." Meanwhile, Khrushchev's big head over Camp David and his fear that Chinese aggression, east and west, could embroil the USSR in unnecessary conflict, further contributed to the

9. For a more detailed treatment of the period 1948-1959 with translated documents, see David Wolff, "'One Finger's Worth of Historical Events': New Russian and Chinese Evidence on the Sino-Soviet Alliance and Split, 1948-1959," Cold War International History Project Working Paper, no. 30 (2000).

10. It is important to keep in mind that Khrushchev only extended his nuclear guarantee to China after Zhou Enlai called for renewed talks with the Americans. As Suslov's first draft, but not his second, would state a year later in affirming support for the Chinese position: "But we are unable to agree that a world war [should be] ignited because of Taiwan." So far, no documentation is available on Gromyko's visit to Beijing on September 5, 1958, but if his memoirs are any guide, transcripts will be very revealing both regarding PRC views on Taiwan and on nuclear warfare. Andrei Gromyko, Memoirs (New York: Doubleday 1989), 251-52.

11. On July 2, 1959, the State Committee on Economic Cooperation with Socialist Countries reported to the USSR Council of Ministers regarding rationing in China. RGANI, f. 5, op. 49, d. 243,11.1-8. -

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mutual intransigence. i2 Discussions of Taiwan, American' prisoners, and Ti- bet only reinforced disagreement. 13

For example, Khrushchev blamed the PRC for the Tibetan imbroglio, wishing that the Dalai Lama were "in the grave" [v grobu]. Unimpressed by their explanation of events, Khrushchev prodded the Chinese to shoulder re- sponsibility for the border war with India, contrary to Beijing's official pro- nouncements. Angrily rejecting Khrushchev's charges, Mao and his foreign minister, Chen Yi, in turn, accused Khrushchev. of "time-serving" [prispo- soblenchestvoj, a charge he vehemently rejected. Chen Yi, the Soviet leader retorted, was himself guilty of such extreme leftism that "if you go left [from here], you may come out on the right. The oak is strong, but it too can break." Khrushchev was reaching the limits of his tolerance.

Marshal Lin Biao then offered an analogy with the Soviet destruction of the German army and Suslov rejected the suggestion that a "trivial incident [pustiakovyi intsident]" could be compared with the "killings of tens of millions." Nor was Khrushchev ready to accept Mao's parallel between the es- cape of the Dalai Lama and the much earlier departures of Aleksandr Keren- skii and Leon Trotskii from the USSR.14 Although by the end of the meeting a civil tone had been re-established, it was clear that neither common language nor common cause could be maintained much longer. This would be the last meeting ever between the now firmly estranged Communist leaders. Only in 1989, as the Cold War and the USSR drew to an end, would Mikhail Gorbachev arrive in Beijing to renew the party-to-party dialogue.

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12. Eisenhower's strategy had specifically aimed at massaging Khrushchev's ego in order to get a favorable outcome on the Berlin ultimatum. This inflated state of mind may have made compromise in Beijing difficult. For example, on September 15, 1959 in their first one-on-one, Eisenhower "said he believed that Mr. Khrushchev had an opportunity to become the greatest political figure in history because he has tremendous power in a complex of states with great might.... For this reason, the President said, he believed that Mr. Khrushchev could be the man to do a great deal to secure peace in the world." U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United Statf!.s (hereafter FR US), 1958-1960, vol. 10, pt. 1, p. 409.

13. Sergei Khrushchev, Nikita's son, was 24 in 1959 and accompanied his father to the US. He has recently written: "I allow myself to express the supposition - based on my personal im- pressions - that the warm reception given Father in the United States, his great success there, and the prospect for improved world relations had inclined Father toward euphoria. It seemed to Fa- ther that talks with Mao Zedong in Beijing would enable him to resolve any disagreements. He was bitterly disappointed." (Sergei Khrushchev, Nikita A7:rM?c/!ey and the Creation of a Su- perpower [University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State Univ. Press, 2000], 346.

, 14. Less than a week earlier, it was Khrushchev who had suggested to Eisenhower that US

support of Chiang Kai-shek was comparable to supporting a come-back by the aging Kerenskii. FRUS, 1958-1960, vol. 10, pt. 1, p. 480.

15. The October 2 conversation was considered so damaging to Sino-Soviet relations that it has been rumored that both sides agreed to destroy their copies of the transcript. Now, thanks to the late General Volkogonov's belief in the principles ofglasnost', the Soviet copy has appeared.

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A week after returning to Moscow, ideologist-in-chief, M. A. Suslov, who along with foreign minister, A. A. Gromyko, had accompanied Khrushchev to Beijing, began to compile a report on the trip to be presented at the De- cember 22-26, 1959 CC CPSU Plenum.'6 After circulation to and minor edit- ing by Presidium (Politburo before 1952 and after 1964) members and candi- dates, this analysis would become the most explicit statement yet to the top managers of Soviet government and society that all was not well in Sino- Soviet relations. It described the October 2 talks as "not completely pleasant at times" and criticized Chinese policies along a broad spectrum, both ideological and geo-political. Although Suslov invoked Mao's "one finger" analogy from the 1958 summit to claim that the relationship could and would be salvaged, despite "serious disagreements," his references to Mao's neo- Stalinist cult of personality must have left the audience wondering if repairs were really possible under the PRC's current leadership. Certainly, this pow- erful personal critique of Mao could not have been distributed without Khru- shchev's concurrence. 17 Whatever doubts the Soviet kingpin had previously entertained regarding his Chinese counterpart, they now were fast hardening into conviction. 18 '

Possibly, both Khrushchev's and Gromyko's memoirs are so thin, even misleading, on the 1959 meeting, because they wished to maintain the spirit of the agreement with the Chinese by not revealing too much. We can only hope that Beijing also violated its alleged commitment to shred the memcon and that the Chinese version will be available soon. Meanwhile, the Russian version can be consulted in the Volkogonov Collection, Library of Congress Manuscript Division, Reel 17 or in translation by Vladislav Zubok in Cold War International History Project Bulletin (hereafter CWIHP), nous.12-13.

16. For a discussion of the role of plenum materials in Soviet and Cold War history as well as a sampling of transcripts in translation, see CWIHP Bulletin, no. 10 (March 1998), 5-60. For an insightful analysis of Suslov's speech, see Mark Kramer, "Declassified Materials from CPSU Central Committee Plenums: Sources, Context, Highlights," ibid., 13-16. For additional quota- tions from the report, see ibid., nos. 8-9 (Winter 1996/1997), 244, 248, 259-62.

17. On December 10, 1959, the new Soviet ambassador to the PRC, Stepan Chervonenko, in- formed Liu Shaoqi that "attempts to sabotage Soviet foreign policy would affect all sides of the bilateral relationship." (Odd Arne Westad, Brothers in Arms [Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ Press, 1998], 177-78). Suslov also had unfailing guidance, although in more cryptic language, from Khrushchev's speeches on October 31 and December 1, published in Pravda on November I and December 2, respectively. The fact that Suslov delivered the plenum report, together with his arrival in Beijing in advance of Khrushchev, may have been calculated to disabuse speculation that Suslov headed a "China lobby" in the Kremlin. See Donald Zagoria, The Sino-Soviet Con- flict, 1956-61 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1962), 278.

18. For a perceptive discussion of the Mao-Khrushchev dynamic, see William '1'aubman, "Khrushchev vs. Mao: A Preliminary Sketch of the Role of Personality in the Sine-Soviet Split," CWIHP Bulletin, nos. 8-9 (Winter 1996/1997), 243-48.

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Also in December 1959, Mao disseminated his conclusions from the Oc- tober meeting in an internal CCP speech.19 The talk outline reveals that Mao had now made up his mind about Khrushchev and was ready to spread the word among his cadres. Something is "not good about the style of the [So- viet] party and people.... Lenin died early and didn't have time to reform it." Sino-Soviet relations since 1945 are viewed as a prologue to the split. Almost every year contributes a landmark grudge against Stalin, Khrushchev and the Soviet leadership. Mao repeats the finger analogy, claiming that sources of disunity are but one in ten, just "one finger's worth of historical events."

But similarly to Suslov's report, the prospects appear grim. "Khhruushchev and his group are very naive. He does not understand Marxism-Leninism and is easily fooled by imperialism.... If he doesn't correct [his mistakes], in a few years he'll be completely bankrupt (after 8 years). He panics over China. The panic has reached its extreme."

The early sixties have been viewed variously, with some emphasizing the unwillingness of the Chinese to formalize the split for in the face of famine, who besides the Soviets could provide aid? Others have focused on discrete acts of Soviet enmity to pick turning points. The sudden withdrawal in 1960 of the Soviet advisors from hundreds of ongoing projects is often discussed. Disagreements over Soviet handling of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis also come to the fore. Recently released documents suggest that Khrushchev's anti-Mao policies came to a head in 1963, when a high-level party delegation headed by Deng Xiaoping was invited from China for long, pointless discussions. Simultaneously, an American delegation, headed by veteran Soviet specialist and wartime ambassador Averell Harriman, was in town to negoti- ate the Limited Test-Ban Treaty, a first step, in Chinese eyes, toward Soviet- American monopolization of atomic power and weapons.

It can hardly be coincidental that on July 10, Mao met with visitors from the Japanese Socialist Party and announced: "About a hundred years ago, the area to the east of Baikal became Russian territory, and since then Vladi- vostok, Khabarovsk, Kamchatka, and other areas have been Soviet territory. We have not yet presented our account for this list." On July 19, Zhou Enlai confirmed the accuracy of this statement in an interview with the Japanese daily, Asahi Shimbun .20 Deng's violent polemics, clearly in parallel with Mao

19. Mao speech notes in Jianguo yilai Mao Zedong wengao [Mao's Manuscripts since the es- _ tablishment of the PRC] (Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe, 1987), 8: 599-602. Excerpts translated in Wolff, "'One Finger's Worth'," 72-74.

20. Mao and Zhou cited from Thomas Robinson, "The Sino-Soviet Border Dispute," Ameri- can Political Science Review, 66 (1972), 1178. Even wider claims including Mongolia and Xin- jiang were made in 1964. For these, see Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, The Northern Territories Dispute and Russo-Japanese Relations (Berkeley: University of California Press, 199$), 1: 212. The fact

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and Zhou's irredentist threats, could only be exacerbated by the knowledge that US-USSR collusion was proceeding simultaneously.21 The Chinese delegation in Moscow may also have added urgency to the US task of cultivating detente with the USSR, but probably reminded Khrushchev as well of necessary limits on cooperation with capitalists and imperialists. When Harriman, as instructed by JFK, floated the idea of joint preemptive action against the PRC nuclear potential, Khrushchev refused even to discuss the idea.22 On the other side of town, the Chinese were accusing him of entertaining sinister intentions of just this kind.

Mao, who, like DeGaulle, denounced the Treaty, would soon regale the French press with forceful language.23 .

Mao then got back to the subject of the atom bomb: "I know that you are ahead of us in that respect. But we too shall have our own bomb. It is a means of power. That doesn't mean we're going to use it But there are two large countries that intend to lead the world without consulting anyone else. Have they consulted General de Gaulle? The Moscow [Test Ban] Treaty is a fraud. Those two countries must not come and sh_ on our heads." The interpreter was dumbfounded at this [use of slang], wondering at first if he indeed had to translate literally, but Mao told him to go ahead, and added: "That may shock you, but it's the truth."

In 1963, Khrushchev undertook another initiative that could only be seen as inimical to China - he proposed the inclusion of Mongolia in the Warsaw Pact. After all, against whom could Mongolia possibly invoke mutual de- fense, if not China? Poland's leader, Gomulka, led opposition to Mongolian membership by labeling it "dubious and risky." Such a move would anger China leading to counterproductive pressure on Mongolia. It would also di- lute the Warsaw Pact's value as a counter to NATO and West Germany. Khrushchev backed down, but reconfirmed his enmity towards China by tell-

that these statements were made to the Japanese who had (and have) their own territorial disagreements with the Soviets/Russians may also have been intended as the suggestion of possible irredentist cooperation against the USSR.

21. Highlights of the Deng-Suslov debates can be found in CWIHP Bulletin, no. 10 (March 1998), 175-82.

22. "Khrushchev does not seem to be receptive to US probing in this sensitive area, particu- larly on the question of a Chinese threat to the USSR, or joint US-Soviet action against China," reported Harriman. See Harriman telegram to JFK, July 15, 1963, FRUS, 1961-1963, vol. 7, p. 801; August 1, 1963 memo for Harriman, box FCL 18, folder "USSR General 1963," Harriman Papers, Library of Congress.

23. Mao Zedong to French delegation on January 30, 1964 as printed in Paris-Presse- Intransigeant on February 21, 1964 and reprinted in attachment to July 2, 1964 State Department memo by Secretary Dean Rusk to various embassies as "Status of Program to Influence World Opinion with Respect to a Chinese Communist Nuclear Detonation" (Central Foreign Policy Files, DoS Files, 1964-66, Record Group 59, US National Archives) .

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ing Gomulka in January 1964 that nuclear weapons were ready, should the Chinese cross the border. The issue of Mongolian coordination in anti- Chinese campaigns would soon be re-addressed in the context of Interkit.

Other East European leaders also worked towards-Sino-Soviet detente after Khrushchev's forced retirement in October 1964, but a meeting between the GDR's Walter Ulbricht and Zhou Enlai in the wings of the 47'h anniversary of the October Revolution failed to make progress. Zhou remained convinced that Rodion Malinovskii's drunken suggestion, "We got rid of Khru- shchev and you should get rid of Mao, too!" reflected unchangingly hostile attitudes at the USSR highest levels. He then analyzed inebriation under the lens of dialectical materialism: '

ZHOU: Brezhnev, Kosygin and Mikoian responded as follows: "they said they didn't know anything about this until now, that they were furi- ous about it. They do not agree at all with Malinovskii's words. Sec- ondly, they said that they spoke to Malinovskii on the telephone. They said Malinovskii responded that he had not made himself clear. He said he'd had too much to drink and apologized. He, Malinovskii. We [the Chinese] responded that we had noted their response and that we will ex- amine their response and we reserve our right to give serious consideration to this issue. Because even then we had our doubts that this event was merely coincidental. We indicated that a segment of the Soviet leadership wanted to continue Khrushchev's policies and they wanted to continue to develop Khrushchev's ideas. If we believe in dialectical materialism, that is, if we believe that ideology is determined by existence, then it is immediately obvious that especially words spoken in drunkenness reveal one's innermost thoughts. He cannot drink much because he is not very healthy. That was not just one word or just one sentence from him, it was criticism.

ULBRICHT: We are in a better position. We are always sober .... 24

And thus, we approach the Chinese Cultural Revolution not only with a heritage of tension between the USSR and the PRC, but also with potential friction between the USSR and its East European allies over the correct policy towards Beijing. Moscow's shock at the extremes of 1965-66, as Red Guards deified Mao and harassed the Soviet embassy, would galvanize it to coordinate its allies, both east and west.

. ant a Soviet-bloc summit held in Moscow on October 21, .1966, all the General-Secretaries described the widening threat from Beijing and.the need for a unified response. Ulbricht spoke of the Chinese "trying to transfer their

24. SAPMO, J IV 2/201/712 2

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own quarrelsome politics" to Asia and Africa, concluding that "the time has come that the communist and workers' parties meet both at the multilateral and bilateral levels to come to an agreement on how to conduct the fight against anti-communism." Mongolia's Tsedenbal told about Cultural Revolu- tion propaganda and military espionage being conducted along his borders "on a daily basis." He also called for "uniform opinion" leading to "uniform and concrete steps toward strengthening the international communist movement." Brezhnev, representing the Eurasian link between clients East and West, followed up on both lines of argument, confirming Ulbricht's concerns about the breadth of Chinese aspirations by mentioning the newly formed Red Guard "world headquarters" and Mao's claim to be "leader of the world revolution." He also echoed Tsedenbal by describing border incidents involv- ing Soviet fishermen being trapped in Chinese nets. He affirmed his solidar- ity with the Mongolian position by wondering rhetorically "how other parties would react if they were treated in this way?" He concluded that "unity is dear to communist parties."

Indignation went hand-ili-hand with fear for Brezhnev continued, still in a rhetorical vein, that "given all this, I ask the comrades: does the danger of war exist? Given the uncertain politics of China, nobody can give any guarantee." The 1966 establishment of the Institute of the Far East already represented a Soviet best effort to answer Brezhnev's question through expert analysis of Chinese-generated inscrutabilities and uncertainties. A year later, the founding of Interkit would be an answer to the call for the coordinated international containment of China. Mao could not mistake these intentions, nor does it seem that any attempt was made to mask the new undertaking. Then, the Chinese Chairman would also engage in all-fronts confrontation with the USSR, a cold war within the Cold War, that would culminate in the strategic turn towards the Americans and the bloody March 1969 clashes on the Ussuri border.25 For the second half of the Cold War, Sino-Soviet enmity would be an over-arching force field, snaring and distorting all relations within the socialist camp.

25. The Robinson article cited above provides an analysis privileging the Russian version of events. The counterpart is Neville Maxwell, "The Chinese Account of the 1969 Fighting at Chenpao," China Quarterly, 56 (1973), 730-39. For new evidence on the events of 1968'?69, see CWIHP Bulletin, nos. 6-7 (Winter 1995/1996), 186-93, 194-201, and 11 (Winter 1998), 155-75.

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The International Department26 .

Although among several descendants of the Comintem dissolved in 1943, the International Department, came into its own after Khrushchev began to search for alternative foreign policy organs. Molotov's dominance in the For- eign Ministry had taught him a lesson. The "draft structure" and "plan" for the ID went to Khrushchev for approval on March 26, 1953. It called for 95 employees, a third of whom would be translators. Almost half would attend to European affairs, while the remainder divided, up the world. Six were as- signed to cover China, Korea and Mongolia .27 Mikhail Suslov and Boris Po- nomarev, party apparatchiki par excellence, supported the idea of a party foreign policy organ and the latter became the director of the International De- partment four, almost thirty years. The idea of the "fraternal department" reso- nated well with the romantic ideas about the socialist movement entertained by Khrushchev in such questionable enterprises as shipping nuclear weapons to Cuba.

The thorny relationship between Suslov and Ponomarev guaranteed the In- ternational Department long life in the strange system of checks and balance's that led to comfortable stagnation. 28 On the other hand, it also produced stalemates that often allowed Andrei Gromyko's Foreign Ministry the fore- most role in foreign policy making.29 Mark Kramer has argued that the Inter- national Department "had some wider foreign policy responsibilities as well, [but] its jurisdiction was confined primarily to the key tasks of administering front organizations and maintaining liaisons with non-ruling Communists and other revolutionary groups. ,30 This is a minimalist definition, probably true for some periods, but Sergei Grigoriev, himself a former International De- partment affiliate, argues a broader interpretation:

After the expansion of the ID at the end of the 1950s, its key functions were viewed in the party apparatus as: coordinating all Soviet foreign

26. The ID's full name was the "Department for Contacts with Socialist Fraternal Parties." By the 1980s,'it had grown to 347 people listed in its 1985 internal phonebook. Much of what follows comes either from RGANI, f. 5, op. 28, containing International Department materials for the 1950s or from Sergei Grigoriev, The International Department of the CPSU Central Committee (Cambridge, MA: Kennedy School Occasional Papers, 1995). Grigoriev worked in the American section of the ID from 1984 until 1990.

27. RGANI f. 5, op. 28, d. 1,11. 1,9. 28. According to Grigoriev, the hatred between Suslov and Ponomarev had two poles: Stalin-

ism and anti-Semitism. , 29. In addition to the Foreign Ministry and ID, the KGB and personal aides to top figures, e.g., Aleksandr-Agentov for Brezhnev, played varying roles in foreign policy making.

30. Mark Kramer, "The CPSU International Department," E. P. Hoffmann and F. J. Fleron, eds., Soviet Foreign'Policy: Classic and Contemporary Issues (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1991 ).

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policy-making; controlling decision-making and the implementation of decisions in foreign policy both in general and with regard to various re- gions, groups of countries, and individual countries, elaborating new policies and foreign policy initiatives in the international arena; organizing the regular flow of different kinds of foreign policy information to most of the Politburo members; and actively participating in personnel policy related to all the institutions that dealt with foreign policy and foreign economic relations.31

The analysis presented below of the International Department's coordination of Warsaw bloc policy and propaganda towards China seems to be closer to the latter definition of International Department functions, although in many ways it goes beyond Grigoriev's widest view. The International De- partment's central role in organizing Interkit goes beyond the circulation of information to the actual promotion (and limitation) of knowledge creation for policy elites and masses alike. Although the 1969 meeting speaks only of propaganda and research tasks, later instructions to Interkit specifically speak of its foreign policy tasks.

Even more important, the immense amount of energy expended by the In- ternational Department in its battle against Chinese influence both in the Warsaw Pact and in the Third World, greatly influenced Ponomarev's approach to the socialist world. Once one accepts the fact that a country recog- nized as socialist could become the Soviet Union's worst enemy, caution towards the headlong support of so-called socialist causes followed. Grigoriev reports an incident "at the end of the 1960s or at the beginning of the 1970s," when Ponomarev, summoned to the office during a late-night coup in the Su- dan, remembered: "I was sitting in my office and thinking fearfully: what if they really won? They have millions of people there, and we would have to feed them all.... This was a real nightmare. Luckily for us, they lost." Simi- larly, Ponomarev and Suslov came to loggerheads over the 1980 election in France, the latter supporting the Socialist candidate (and eventual winner) Francois Mitterand. Ponomarev had seen socialist successes abroad turn into Soviet liabilities and had learned his lessons.32

Soviet sinology Soviet China-watching has followed a troubled course with apparent

trumps often reduced to deuces by the Chinese themselves. For example, in 1956, Beijing resisted Soviet efforts to establish a research institute dedicated to the study of China alone, insisting that studies continue within units with

31. Grigoriev, The International Department of the CPSU Central Committee, 24. , 32. Ibid., 26, probably July 1971.

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broader Asian competence. After Khrushchev's fierce polemics with Mao during a visit to Beijing in October 1959, studies of China fell silent. After all, attacks could only endanger the fleeting and wishful opportunities for in1- proved ties, while sympathetic treatment would expose sinologists to accusa- tions of sinophilia with potential dire consequences. , .

Gilbert Rozman, the closest student of Soviet sinology in the 1960s-1980s has observed that: "Only after 1967 was a concerted effort made to explain what had happened and was happening in the PRC.... At the end of the 1960s Soviet Chinese studies reached their maturity. From this time to 1982 they would be marked by voluminous output, stable organization, and a con- sistent prevailing outlook on Chinese society. This outlook was an amplifica- tion of emerging views from the mid 1960s; so there was no fundamental change in thinking for about two decades under Brezhnev's and Suslov's leadership...."33 An analysis by Seweryn Bialer found only slightly more variation and concluded that "Soviet China experts in their writings and personal contacts with Western colleagues reflect the official position and, at the same time, could serve as a guide to discern nuances and differences that may exist in particular aspects of China policy among the political elite... These differences are primarily differences of stress, not of substance. ,,34

'

In fact, it was the stunned apprehension of the Cultural Revolution, seen in the USSR as primarily directed against Moscow, that had galvanized and concentrated sinological energies. In 1966, a committee co-opting officials from both the International Department and the Foreign Ministry mandated the establishment of the Institute of the Far East (Institut Dal 'nego Vostoka) to engage in studies of contemporary China for direct consumption by the policy-making community. Nomenklatura-style perquisites and liberal resources drew the best and the brightest sinologists to the endeavor. The Chi- nese themselves contributed to the development of a secretive and authoritative Zhongnanhai-ology by discontinuing the publication of official statistics in 1959.35 At the Berlin meeting, when the Director of the Institute of the Far East wanted to present his numbers, he felt obliged to caution "that we are

; .

33. Gilbert Rozman, A Mirror for Socialism: Soviet Criticisms of China (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1985), 42-43. Rozman's analysis tracks Soviet views of various Chinese classes/groups to document Aesopian commentary regarding the possibility of reform within socialist systems. His introduction contains the best overview of the Soviet China-watchers in the 1960s-1980s. This group has been surprisingly long-lived, perpetuating the views to be presented below. , 34. Seweryn Bialer, "The Sino-Soviet Conflict: The Soviet Dimension," in Zagoria, ed., The Sino-Soviet Conft'ict, 109.

35. Zhongnanhai is the party leadership compound adjacent to the former Imperial palace at the heart of Beijing. For a map of the Chinese "Kremlin," seeAndrew Nathan and Perry Link, eds., The Tiananmen Papers (New York: Public Affairs, 2001), xxx.

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forced to conduct studies, researches and various calculations. All these numbers come out of this [process]. I would like you to keep this in mind. ,36 Clearly, highly-trained, specialist cadres would be required to ferret out and interpret the data no longer supplied by a paranoid China.

At the same time, new educational opportunities multiplied the sinological cohort to over a thousand by the end of the 1970s. In a sense, this was the heyday of Soviet sinology as 1966-68 saw a greatly expanded output of China-related print materials. With hard currency resources, the Institute of the Far East could purchase materials worldwide for inclusion in its 'closed' library. It also monopolized sinological contact with other countries, maintaining, for example, a group membership in the European Association of Si- nology until 1978, when individuals were nominated in order to place them into the governing organs of that body

On the other hand, the enthronement of a budding orthodoxy regarding China meant diminished opportunities for reform-minded scholars, who had been closely associated with Khrushchev-era reforms. Nonetheless, Rozman concludes that: "Indirectly and intermittently, the proponents of this view- point kept the de-Stalinization perspective alive until they could articulate it more fully, if only in a Chinese context, in the post-Mao era. The field of Chinese studies harbored reform forces, who, while on the defensive through

> the 1970s, preserved a forum fQr reflection and continued analysis of the problems of socialism."38 Burlatskii's biography of Mao, for example, while ostensibly uncovering the unhealthy tendencies to which the 1969 Berlin meeting was devoted, could also be read as an indictment of Stalin or any other Soviet leader aspiring to "Mao-like" pre-eminence.39

The consolidation of the 1970s left four influential individuals in charge of the China field. M. S. Kapitsa,4 O. B. Rakhmanin, M. I. Sladkovskii' and S. L. Tikhvinskii maintained a firm hold on all studies of China, from the com- manding heights of four interlocking institutions. By the early 1980s, Kapitsa had become director of the Foreign Ministry's Far Eastern Department, Rakhmanin worked as first deputy director of the International Department, Sladkovskii oversaw several hundred specialists as director of the Institute of the Far East, while Tikhvinskii trained diplomats as the president of the So-

36. SAPMO, 356-57. 37. RGANI, f. 4, op. 24, d. 622. 38. Rozman, A Mirror for Socialism, 45. 39. Fedor Burlatsky, The True Face of Maoism (Moscow: Novosti, 1968). 40. M. S. Kapitsa ( 1921- ) From 1970, head of the First Far Eastern Department (Socialist

countries) of the Soviet Foreign Ministry. 41. M. I. Sladkovskii (1906- ). After graduation from Far Eastern State University in Vladi-

vostok, he worked in the Ministry of Foreign Trade from 1930 until 1965. Director of the Insti- tute of the Far East from 1966.

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viet Union's Diplomatic Academy. During the final six years of the Brezhnev era, this quartet produced over 200 articles and books, providing unerring semi-official guidance to Soviet sinologists regarding the party line.42 Two of the sinological "gang of four," Rakhmanin and Sladkovskii, were present in Berlin for the second meeting of Interkit. As the directors of. China-policy in the International Department and of the Institute of the Far East, these two individuals represented the two streams of policy-oriented China-watching that would be merged into Interkit, shaping elite.and popular perceptions of the Middle Kingdom throughout the Warsaw pact.43

Interkit : Early days , The first meeting of Interkit took place in December 1967 in Moscow. Al-

though I have no material directly from this meeting, the head of the Soviet delegation at the 1969 Berlin gathering, A. M. Rumiantsev, the Vice- President of the USSR Academy of Sciences, reported on the distance cov- ered since the previous meeting. First of all, the CC CPSU approved the documents generated by the Moscow meeting for "practical work." The documents were then circulated to the Central Committee, the members of the Central Control Committee, Soviet diplomats, and the First Secretaries of the union republics, regional and local party committees. A concrete propaganda plan was drawn up resulting in a series of articles in Kommunist, printed in 200,000 copies. These, in turn, were consolidated into a brochure and republished in English, French, German and Spanish by "Novosti" press. Ten articles were also published in Pravda and Izvestiia.

Rumiantsev then lists the suggestions of various parties to the Moscow meeting, later implemented by the Russians. The value of non-Russian input suggests both the Russian delegation's desire to please, and possibly an un- derstanding that Sinology in the Warsaw pact was often strongest beyond the borders of the USSR. "We are of the opinion," stated Rumiantsev, "that the publication of documents and articles provided by the fraternal parties about the Chinese question was and is extremely significant. We consider this form of coordination and mutual aid in our shared affairs to be most important and promising." The Germans had suggested the creation of a special center for the study of China, the Hungarians were credited with emphasis on propaganda radio broadcasts, the Czechs, it seems, had called for a conference of press and radio representatives, the Bulgarians had called for more scientific cooperation, the Poles wanted more publication coordination, and the Mon-

golians argued for more joint propaganda. ,

42. Rozman, A Mirror for Socialism, 44, 50-51.

43. Actually, the Warsaw Pact plus Mongolia, Cuba and Vietnam, but minus Romania.

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Rumiantsev then went on to describe the special cooperative relationship between the Mongolian comrades and the USSR "in somewhat greater detail, since that country is a direct neighbor of China and is therefore under extremely strong propagandistic pressure from the Mao Zedong group." It turned out that every month, the Soviets were providing the Mongolians with approximately 400 press items for radio broadcasts in Chinese, Mongolian and Kazakh to influence Chinese citizens and in English for broadcasts to "Southeast Asia and the Far East." Rumiantsev invoked the special ties with the Mongolians, since they were the only countries broadcasting propaganda directly to China. The Soviets themselves were broadcasting 32 hours a day (total) in a mixture of Mandarin, Cantonese, and Shanghai dialects as well as Kazakh and Uigur. "We can say with certainty," concluded Rumiantsev, "that we are driving the truth about Mao Zedong and his policies right through the [Great] Wall of China. ,44

Rumiantsev then called on the participants to go beyond print and radio to produce TV movies about China as well. As the Vice President of the Acad- emy of Sciences, Rumiantsev also presented a list of further possibilities for future shared research and training:

1) A symposium on the key social problems in contemporary China to be held in the end of 1969, leading to the publication of an article collection;

2) Short-term exchanges of scholars to present papers about contemporary China;

3) Exchange of young scholars within the socialist sinological community; 4) Provision of information on library collections regarding China and pe-

riodic exchange of materials; 5) Acceptance of students from the fraternal countries into sinological lan-

guage, literature and history programs at Soviet universities. He then called for a meeting of leaders from sinological institutes in the

summer of 1969 to look at these proposals and exchange information on such questions as:

1) the possibility of organizing a meeting of Foreign Ministry representatives in 1969; 2) the efforts of the Mao group to promote splits in the Communist movement; 3) study of the Mao group's efforts in Asia, Africa and Latin America; 4) Organization of a conference on non-capitalist development. 45 These suggestions match closely the "List (Perechen ') of Measures re-

garding the Coordination of Propaganda and Research on the Chinese Ques- tion," that was attached to the CPSU Central Committee's January 21, 1969

44. SAPMO, 296-304.. 45. Ibid., 3 10-11.

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approval of the delegation's trip to Berlin. In fact, the Perechen would be re- produced in a verbatim German translation as part of the final Protocol.46 On January 31, Lev Deliusin who had served as the chairman of the editorial committee for the joint statement announced that the whole text had been approved unanimously by the committee which then presented the document to the full session. Markowski and Rumiantsev quickly stated their full agreement with the text and it was adopted in a burst of applause. Interestingly, the only change that Rumiantsev suggested (and got) was the removal of the word "Secret" (Vertraulich) from the first page. In a show of trust, he insisted that each party should make its own decisions on the document's use, not limited by the strict rules on the circulation of classified documents. 41

The Soviet document also had the delegation's "Instructions" (Ukazaniia) attached. General guidance would be provided by the evaluation of the Chi- nese issue at the April and July 1968 plenums as well as a November 22 Pol- itburo decision. Point Three ordered the Soviet delegation "if possible, to ob- tain agreement on a set a theses as at Moscow in December 1967, based on the project worked out by the International Departments of the CC CPSU. if the delegations from fraternal parties do not consider it possible to work out joint materials, [the delegation should] not insist, but instead limit 'itself to agreement on general ideas and evaluations on the key questions of the given topic.""

Eager to avoid the tensions regarding the appropriate approach to China that we have seen in discussions among the Warsaw Pact allies throughout the early 1960s, the Russians listened attentively to reports from the other countries' delegates, tolerating minor deviance.49 In fact, it was Rumiantsev who introduced one important novelty by referring to China as "a third force," admittedly in quotation marks. The call for the study of "non- capitalist development" also implies the existence of "a third way." He would soon find himself contradicted by the Bulgarian representative, Tellalow, who denied that China could be anything but an objective aid to imperialism when it opposed the Soviet Union. Nonetheless, this is the shadow of the nas- cent Strategic Triangle appearing on the horizon.50

Among the most divergent (and interesting) presentations were those made by the Polish delegates, Lewandowski and Rowinski. This was the

46. Ibid., 515-17. 47. Ibid., 323-26. Rumiantsev may also have assumed that Beijing would get the document

, anyway, so why not leak it directly? If indeed, Beijing was aware of the criticisms and coordina- . tions aimed at it during the Berlin meeting, then this conference may also have made its' small

contribution to the atmosphere in which the decision to fight on the Ussuri was made. 48. RGANI, f. 4, op. 19, d. 525,11. 29, 107-10. 49. This would be less necessary after the March 1969 border conflict. 50. SAPMO, 283, 340.

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smallest delegation, but clearly commanded great respect. Lewandowski spoke of the vicious cycle (Teufelkreis) between nationalism and crises, as the PRC used the latter to provoke the former, which in turn led to more crises. He also compared China to the US in its use of psychological warfare. Finally, he warned, citing US State Department sources, that US-China relations were really improving, although still at the preparatory stage, and pre- dicted that the Warsaw negotiations would soon be moved elsewhere to avoid unnecessary visibility."

His colleague Jan Rowinski presented a detailed analysis of the Chinese press, with emphasis on the internal journal cankao xiaoxi (Reference News), which in its heyday would become the world's largest circulating daily. In 1969, two and a half million copies were printed every day, mainly for party members. Rowinski also noted the "differentiated, nuanced" handling of problems specific to individual socialist countries. Romania, West Germany, and "the events in Czechoslovakia" are listed among the key objective differences in the socialist camp on which the Chinese try to play. Rumiantsev was so interested in this report that he asked Rowinski to provide him with the data on which it was based. 52

Appendices to the 1969 stenogram include lists of the delegates and their institutional affiliations as well as a twenty-page report "On several matters pertaining to the international activities of the Mao Zedong group," which turns out to be a country-by-country analysis of Chinese positions and actions in the countries of Asia and Africa. Zhou Enlai is cited as calling for a "worldwide" battle with "modem revisionism," the Chinese ideological long- hand for the Soviet bloc. Then, the author runs through a list of cases in Af- rica and Asia, exposing the dangerous influence of Chinese tactics, such as forming Maoist grouplets within existing parties leading to schisms, e.g., In- dia, or declaring People's War without consideration for the chances of vic- tory. Indonesia is presented as an example of the latter.

The tragic events of 1965 in Indonesia are still fresh in the memories of all Communists. The bloody destruction of the Indonesian Communist Party and the death of hundreds of thousands of Communists are on the conscience of the Mao Group. And nonetheless Mao and his accomplices keep pushing the Indonesian communists to actions that not only prevent their recovery, but instead [will] lead to the final elimination of the Party.

51. Ibid., 288, 292, 303. 52. Ibid., 386-89. Lewandowski in the chair at the time of Rowinski's report spoke of his

pleasure at Rumiantsev's indirect recognition of the strength of Polish sinology. Rowinski's was the only mention of the Warsaw Pact's recent invasion of Czechoslovakia, attesting further to the independence and stature of the Poles. -

451

... Under pressure from Beijing, the survivors of the CC CP Indonesia gathered several armed units and leading cadres in summer 1968 in eastern Java.... As a result, the military operations carried out by the Indo- nesian military authorities from June to August. resulted in 1500 Com- munists being arrested or murdered, including all members of the Polit- buro ... still at liberty.53 .. _

Particular concerns are voiced regarding the susceptibility of intellectuals and students to the Maoist appeal, but these are domestic groups that the KGB had already accumulated substantial experience in handling, as the most likely domestic holders of anti-Soviet attitudes.54 The "comprehensive work" (umfassende Arbeit) undertaken by the Communist parties "in recent years" is regarded optimistically as "isolating the Maoists and uncovering their pseudo-revolutionary demagoguery." Dwelling on the international preten- sions of the Maoists, points the way to an all-out, many-faceted global conflict. This would become increasingly important in the 1970s as triangular Cold War spread virulently throughout the Third World.55

Leonid Brezhnev almost certainly read the results of the 1969 Berlin meeting for his speech to the assembled General Secretaries of the Warsaw Pact in 1972 follows the line traced by Interkit. He condemned the Chinese urge to split the socialist camp, while designating cooperative science as the appropriate countermeasure.

Now, a bit about Chinese tactics. They are sending telegrams in every direction. They wish to visit and also receive visits from all over. We shouldn't be so polite with the Chinese. We are polite and they answer us with a dirt-throwing campaign. (eine Schmutzkampagne) Certainly, we should not be silent any longer. Besides, the Chinese have real fear of science. (grosse Angst vor der wissenschlafticher Arbeit) Every country can make use of specific groups of ours who know how to make compo- sitions on these issues in which there are no curses, rather the principled illumination of the Chinese position. 56

.

53. Ibid., 524 54. This analysis also distances the USSR from the worldwide demonstrations and protests of

summer/fall 1968, events that appear to be considered as victories for the Maoists, rather than Moscow. , . 55. Ibid., 539. For more on Cold War in the Third World and its reflection in Soviet scholar- ship, see CWIHP Bulletin, nos. 8/9 and Jerry Hough, The Struggle for the Third World (Wash- ington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1986).

56. SAPMO, DY 30 J IV 2/201. File 1570 August 2, 1971 Crimea meeting of the General Secretaries.

452

Interkit: Continuities and changes My data on the annual meetings of Interkit are fragmentary, but the ar-

chives of Eastern Europe could certainly supplement it. Together with the comments on China made at the annual Crimea meetings of the General Sec- retaries, we begin to see the ties between the makers of China's Soviet image and the formulators of Soviet China policy. In 1970, the meeting moved to Warsaw and in 1971, the Bulgarians hosted. The 1971 Soviet directives continued to emphasize the risk of the Chinese splitting the socialist camp, by "giving itself a calm, attractive character ... using the desire of the fraternal countries to normalize relations with the PRC to worsen relations among the fraternal parties." At the same time, the Soviet delegates were instructed to report to their Interkit comrades that "the Chinese leaders are visibly alarmed by the effectiveness of the political, economic and other cooperation of the socialist countries."" In 1971, unlike 1969, foreign policy activities are specifically listed as part of Interkit's role.58

Since Rumiantsev did not attend any of the Interkit meetings in the 1970s, Rakhmanin assumed leadership of the delegations. He also met with his counterparts one-on-one during numerous intra-bloc visits. For example, on February 28, 1973, he met with Hermann Axen in Moscow to discuss Asia policy. After an interesting overview of Soviet-bloc affairs in Korea, Vietnam and China, Rakhmanin thanked the Germans for their China research, noting that the US was preparing hundreds of China specialists a year in over 50 institutions, while the USSR had an output of only fifty scholars annually from its sole policy-oriented institute, the Institute of the Far East. The implication is that the USSR would only be able to fight the sinological Cold War with the aid of its allies.

By 1975, as preparations were being made for the next meeting in Ulaan- baatar, the Soviet position declared that "the battle with Maoism is tightly tied to the battle against imperialism, since the Maoist leadership of China has openly taken the position supporting the most reactionary imperialist powers....This is the watershed between Marxist-Leninists and revision- ists/renegades." Nonetheless, despite claims that socialism was being ever more deeply undermined in China, the USSR never stated that the PRC was not socialist. There has been much speculation about why this was so, but since the International Department was mainly responsible for such key ideological formulations, it had no interest in defining the PRC as being outside the Department's own coverage of socialist countries.

Shortly after the appearance of Interkit, the Soviets founded an organization to make bloc-wide policy on trade to China. A 1973 meeting in Moscow

57. RGANI, f. 4, op. 19, d. 605, I. 41. 58. Ibid., f. 4, op. 19, d. 605,1. 1. 40.

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was followed by annual gatherings in Budapest and Berlin. Soviet instructions to the delegation heading to Berlin called both for limitations on military and dual-use technologies as well as for "additional measures to guarantee secrecy."'9 " ,

For the 1980 Interkit meeting, held in Warsaw, Soviet officials were dis- patched in advance in order to prepare the conference materials. This suggests the immobility of the institution, still headed by O. B. Rakhmanin, mandated to coordinate "foreign policy, trade/economic relations, and propaganda." The writing of a final joint report is already described as a "tradition." The only major change in the final years was the inclusion of Cuba and Vietnam in the group and the clear sense that the Chinese had divided the 'socialist camp' into three sections: North Korea, Romania, and Yugoslavia in which China tried to develop "nationalistic" efforts; Afghanistan, Cuba, Kampuchea, Laos, Mongolia and Vietnam under direct propaganda attack by Beijing; others subject to a combination of Chinese carrots and sticks de- signed to eventually wean them from the Soviet bottle.6 As the Soviet ID noted in a 1979 Instruction sent directly to Soviet ambassadors in Berlin, Warsaw, Budapest, Prague, Sofia, Ulaanbaatar, Havana, Hanoi and Vienti- ane : "There are cases in which the responsible representatives of fraternal countries, despite the official position of their parties, try to exclude some important areas of contact with China from multi-faceted coordination." The dispatch concluded that "Work on these matters should not be considered as episodic in nature. ,61

As late as 1982, even Foreign Ministry suggestions that an improvement in Sino-Soviet relations might be in Moscow's interest were sidelined as "crazy," with Rakhmanin's grip tightening further in 1984 during the brief Chemenko interlude. Gorbachev's 1985 appointment of Vadim Medvedev to head the ID was a turning point, producing tension in the China branch. Competing visions began to trickle up to the Politburo and Rakhmanin was finally retired in 1986. Thereafter, perestroika policy shifts towards Afghani- stan, Mongolia and Vietnam opened Gorbachev's road to Tiananmen.62 i,

59. Ibid., f. 4, op. 22, d. 1601,1. 4. '

.

60. Ibid., f. 4, op. 24, d. 1268,1. 1. 61. Ibid., f. 4, op. 24, d. 1200, l. 4. Copies were sent to the Soviet embassies in Beijing, Py-

ongyang, Phnom Penh, Bucharest, and Belgrade. , , 62. An insider's view of perestroika China policy can be found in Alexander Lukin, The

Bear Watches the Dragon (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2003), 149-52. He notes that: "In the first half of the 1980s, strong independent views and often personal courage ... were required to voice a positive assessment of the reforms in China, for this clashed with the interests of the dominant anti-China lobby." These interests are identified as ties to the "military-industrial complex." (144) :.. :

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Conclusion The long tenure of Interkit and the relative stability of its organization re-

sulted in a new orthodoxy of anti-Chinese policy that through "multi-faceted coordination" reversed the era of Sino-Soviet friendship in all fields.63 It is hard to judge which effects were more deleterious - the limiting of foreign policy options for leaders by presenting a monolithic image of China or the poisoning of public opinion by radio, print and television propaganda aimed at hundreds of millions throughout Eurasia. At the same time, the concentra- tion of Interkit research in the Institute of the Far East took resources away from interdisciplinary studies of China to focus energies on political and ideological tasks. The breadth of the Russian sinological tradition lost much at the hands of Interkit.

'

As long as Rakhmanin, the sinological "Big Four" and parallel cohorts in the other Soviet-bloc countries continued to run Interkit, history would re- main a special and especially disputed category. Already in 1972, Rakhmanin and his International Department sidekick B. T. Kulik published their ortho- dox take on the post-war era Soviet-Chinese Relations, 1945-70 under thinly- disguised pseudonyms.64 Not surprisingly, Interkit tasks often included the reduction of Chinese history to politically useful results. When the Chinese imitated the Interkit/Institute of the Far East model by making use of its

< Academy of Science institutes to advance historical claims to territories lo- cated inside the Soviet Union, all objectivity was lost. The Soviet scholars considered the Chinese move natural, although they were disturbed in 1978, when more qualified Chinese scholars, purged during the Cultural Revolu- tion, returned to work. Rakhmanin's consternation in the face of the Chinese versions can be sensed in the statement that "At the core, contemporary Chi- nese historiography ... by educating the people in the spirit of great power racism and chauvinism undertakes the psychological preparation of the Chi- nese population for military adventures .,,65 The appropriate countermeasures took the form of joint historical research with the Mongolian Academy of

63. The stability of the Soviet foreign policy world has been widely remarked upon. Not only did Ponomarev run the International Department from the 1950s until 1980s, after working in the Comintern since 1935, but Gromyko headed the Foreign Ministry from 1957 until 1985, while Ustinov stayed in top military posts from 1941 until his death in 1984. Nikolai Patolichev, minister of foreign trade, held that post from 1958 until 1985, while Aleksandrov-Agentov advised Brezhnev, Chernenko and Andropov.In comparison to these, the tenure of Rakhmanin and his cohort does not seem unusual.

64. O. B. Borisov and B. T. Koloskov, Sovetsko-kitaiskie otnosheniia, 1945-1970 (Moscow: Mysl', 1971 ). Note that the authors' pseudonymic initials match those of O. B. Rakhmanin and B. T. Kulik.

65. On this, see "0 merakh po razoblacheniiu kitaiskikh fal'sifikatsii istorii i otporu territorial'nym pritiazaniiam Pekina k SSSR," in RGANI, f. 4, op. 24, d. 694, Il. 2-3.

455

Sciences, reiterating the special role of Mongolia in the Soviet approach to hostile China.

'

The periodization of the Sino-Soviet split, especially its final stages in the 1960s, also encourages us to rethink the general periodization of the Cold War. Numerous authors have spoken of a great divide in the.Cold War. John Lewis Gaddis, for example, treats 1962 as a turning point, for after that "its outcome was largely determined." Vladislav Zubok and Constantine Plesha- kov also focus on 1962 for resolving the Cuban missile crisis (Karibskii krizis) ended "the most terrifying period in the Cold War," but continue their analysis until Khrushchev's 1964 ouster to emphasize the importance of gen- erational change implicit in their choice of leadership biographies as narrative device. Marc Trachtenberg chose 1963 for the signing of the Limited Test- Ban Treaty in Moscow, not for its role as an arms control treaty, but as "a whole web of understandings that lay just below the surface .,,66 Similar claims have been made for the 1960s as a whole as turning point on account of social turmoil, east and west, let loose by superpower detente.

But although the German issue is the object of Trachtenberg's special interest, he names both Germany and China as the countries to be dealt with by the seminal treaty. 67 Clearly, a period that is largely described in terms of "resolution" and "d6tente," when viewed from the US and its archives, is less so once we factor in the Sino-Soviet rift. Precisely in the period when the Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon administrations were signing the central documents for cooperation with the Soviets, a new Cold War between Moscow and Beijing was taking shape. Those who conclude that the US had already "won" might wish instead to celebrate the respite accorded the US as the USSR turned its attention to the Eastern front. Just as the Western front in World War II is considerably better studied than the Eastern one, the same might be said for the Cold War.

Finally, the extensive appendix on Chinese policy in the Third World attached to the 1969 meeting prefigures the way in which two considerations prepared the USSR to enter a new, multi-polar phase of the Cold War. First of all, the idea that a socialist country was not necessarily an ally of the USSR led to more cautious analyses of all lefhving forces in the Third World. Secondly, China's increasingly global competition for influence suggested the possibility of a "third force" in world politics. Jerry Hough has traced the way in which discussion of the Third World fell silent in 1960-63, as Soviet officials and academia began to digest the broader implications of "losing

66. John Lewis Gaddis, We Now Know (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1997), 279-80; Zubok and Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin's Cold War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1995), 274; Marc Trachtenberg, A Constructed Peace (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1999), 390.

67. Trachtenberg, A Constructed Peace, 384.

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China." This was followed by authoritative publications suggesting the "presence of an uncontrolled element - the independent actions of medium and small powers.... At the present time international political crises quickly (almost instantly) acquire a universal character and directly or indirectly drag in all the most important states and military coalitions...." This statement came from a volume co-edited by Evgenii Primakov in 1972.68 From this point of view, his vision of geopolitics evolved towards the multi- polarity he practiced as Russia's Foreign Minister and that is still preached by his proteges on Smolensk square. Although Interkit was terminated in 1989, close ties between official academics and scholarly officials continue to influence Russian policy in the post-Soviet period. But that is a topic that goes beyond the scope of this article.

Woodrow Wilson Center

68. Cited in Hough, The Struggle for the Third World, 235. ,

wolff interkit

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