With the historical hindsight we have today, its clear to us what the consequences of Khrushchev’s policies have led to. Had the CPC maintained its position with the Soviets, especially at a time when China was far weaker than it is today, who’s to say that it wouldn’t have gone down the same road as the soviet union?
We can’t outright say that the split was objectively wrong or objectively right, because we don’t know what would have happened were history different.
I believe that Mao was perhaps a bit too idealistic and the level of hostility was too much, but between co-operating with a revisionist state and cutting ties, I think his decision was closer to what was necessary at the time.
Tell me if I’m missing something, but it comes across as totally bizarre when people will praise Mao for cutting off “the revisionist SU” but then ignore that the alternative is literally the USA. So we can’t work with revisionist socialists but we can work with racist genociders? Or China today being allied with capitalist Russia. If there was no sino Soviet split China very well could have avoided the liberal economic reforms imo. I think we can pretty easily say the split was not a good thing. Of course we can argue whether this thing or that would happen but let’s not ignore splitting up China and Russia is exactly what US goal was and even now with Russia being capitalist the US would love to break their alliance. The two together make the collective west uneasy for a reason.
You also have to consider that the USSR and China being linked heavily could have driven China down with the Soviet Union, because of the split, China was able to withstand the collapse, come out stronger on the other side and move into a position much greater than that of the Soviets. Without knowing exactly the internal thoughts of the leadership of the CPC it is difficult to know what they were thinking, but perhaps they saw the the dramatic shifts coming from the govt after Stalin’s death, and they were not feeling confident that the Soviet Union was indeed a reliable ally. If they were willing to turn on Stalin shortly after ww2 and his death, who was to say they wouldn’t do the same of Mao. Fickle allies are bad news, especially fresh after a Civil War and in the throws of cultural revolution. I think both sides took the split a bit too far though,they could have kept temps low and gone their own ways, but they got very aggressive with each other which sucked a lot.
With the historical hindsight we have today, its clear to us what the consequences of Khrushchev’s policies have led to. Had the CPC maintained its position with the Soviets, especially at a time when China was far weaker than it is today, who’s to say that it wouldn’t have gone down the same road as the soviet union? We can’t outright say that the split was objectively wrong or objectively right, because we don’t know what would have happened were history different. I believe that Mao was perhaps a bit too idealistic and the level of hostility was too much, but between co-operating with a revisionist state and cutting ties, I think his decision was closer to what was necessary at the time.
Tell me if I’m missing something, but it comes across as totally bizarre when people will praise Mao for cutting off “the revisionist SU” but then ignore that the alternative is literally the USA. So we can’t work with revisionist socialists but we can work with racist genociders? Or China today being allied with capitalist Russia. If there was no sino Soviet split China very well could have avoided the liberal economic reforms imo. I think we can pretty easily say the split was not a good thing. Of course we can argue whether this thing or that would happen but let’s not ignore splitting up China and Russia is exactly what US goal was and even now with Russia being capitalist the US would love to break their alliance. The two together make the collective west uneasy for a reason.
You also have to consider that the USSR and China being linked heavily could have driven China down with the Soviet Union, because of the split, China was able to withstand the collapse, come out stronger on the other side and move into a position much greater than that of the Soviets. Without knowing exactly the internal thoughts of the leadership of the CPC it is difficult to know what they were thinking, but perhaps they saw the the dramatic shifts coming from the govt after Stalin’s death, and they were not feeling confident that the Soviet Union was indeed a reliable ally. If they were willing to turn on Stalin shortly after ww2 and his death, who was to say they wouldn’t do the same of Mao. Fickle allies are bad news, especially fresh after a Civil War and in the throws of cultural revolution. I think both sides took the split a bit too far though,they could have kept temps low and gone their own ways, but they got very aggressive with each other which sucked a lot.