Disputes over de-Stalinisation, coexistence with the West, Taiwan and Soviet aid turned allies into open rivals.
In 1956 Khrushchev denounced Stalin in a secret speech and called for peaceful coexistence with the West. Mao disagreed. He thought the attack on Stalin weakened communist authority, and he saw coexistence as abandoning revolution.
Security disputes followed. During the 1958 Taiwan Strait crisis, the USSR gave only cautious support. In 1959 Moscow cancelled its promise to help China build an atomic bomb, and stayed neutral in China's border dispute with India.
Mao's Great Leap Forward, launched in 1958, rejected the Soviet model. Khrushchev mocked it. At the Romanian Workers' Party Congress in Bucharest in June 1960, Khrushchev attacked the Chinese delegation openly. The next month, the USSR withdrew all its experts from China.
The quarrel became public. China criticised Soviet "adventurism" and "capitulation" in Cuba in 1962 and attacked the 1963 test ban treaty. Each side competed to lead world communism. Ideology, security and national pride were tangled together.
- Secret speech
- February 1956: Khrushchev denounces Stalin.
- Bucharest congress
- June 1960: Khrushchev attacks China.
- Experts withdrawn
- July 1960.
- Nuclear help cancelled
- 1959.
Worked example: Weighing causes of the split
An essay asks whether ideology was the main cause of the Sino-Soviet split.
- Ideology: disputes over Stalin, coexistence and the path to communism.
- Security: Taiwan, the nuclear question and India showed different national interests.
- Leadership: Mao and Khrushchev each claimed authority over world communism.
- Judgement: ideology was the language of the dispute; national interests and status drove it.
Watch out for this
The split happened suddenly over a single event in 1969.
The split developed from 1956. The 1969 border clash was a later climax of a long rivalry.
Check your understanding
Why did the USSR withdraw its experts from China in 1960?
- Relations had collapsed after open disputes, such as at the Bucharest congress.
- China had asked for them to stay longer.
- Their projects had all been completed.