The first clash between Beijing and Moscow is considered to be a discussion about the results of the XX Congress of the CPSU and Nikita Khrushchev's report on the cult of Stalin's personality. Despite the fact that the subsequent VIII Congress of the CPC, which raised the topic of China's industrialization, proclaimed reliance on the Soviet experience of socialist construction, these actions of the CPSU leadership became a reason for the CPC, but not a motive for further ideological and political demarcation.

The development of a new party line began in China after the VIII Congress, and the most important reason for it was the report of N.S. Khrushchev. The speech of the Soviet leader against Stalin and his nomination of a number of accusations of carrying out repressions and other acts incompatible with socialist legality were used by the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party to critically approach this experience of the Soviet Union.

In addition, to the indignation of the Chinese and other delegations was the fact that this report itself was read out without their presence behind closed doors, since they were simply not allowed into the meeting room. The text of the report itself was never transmitted to the Cpc Central Committee, which led to the fact that Beijing had to formulate its position based on those notes made by Chinese communists from a copy of the draft version of N.S. Khrushchev's speech, as well as from the translation of the publication of the American edition of the New York Times about the last XX Congress of the CPSU. [2]

In fact, using these events in Beijing, they began to form a new party course, since, according to Mao, criticism of the cult of personality shook the basic foundations of the theory of building socialism and they had to solve the theoretical and practical problems that arose independently.

At the same time, it should be noted that the differences expressed by the CPC were used as a pretext for the decisions of the XX Congress of the CPSU, but there were other issues behind this pretext. It is characteristic that for several years after the XX Congress (February 1956), its decisions were fully recognized publicly by the Communist Party of China. Thus, the CPC brochure for April 1956 says: "The XX-th Congress of the CPSU [...] made a number of important decisions. These decisions concern the consistent implementation of Lenin's course on the possibility of peaceful coexistence of countries with different social systems, the development of the Soviet democratic system, consistent observance of the principle of collegiality within the party, criticism of the shortcomings of the party [...] The Congress mercilessly exposed the cult of personality that has long spread in Soviet life, which entailed many mistakes in work and had unpleasant consequences."

In addition, the decisions of the XX Congress were adopted as a guideline for all socialist countries and at a meeting of 12 socialist countries in Moscow in November 1957, where the delegation of the Communist Party of China was headed by Mao himself. The Declaration emphasizes that "the historical significance of the XX Congress of the CPSU for the further development of the international communist movement on the basis of Marxism-Leninism". At the same time, the same Declaration notes that "The Communist and Workers' Parties participating in this Meeting declare that the Leninist principle of peaceful coexistence of the two systems, which has been further developed in modern conditions and decisions of the CPSU Congress, is the unshakable foundation of the foreign policy of socialist countries and a reliable foundation of peace and friendship between peoples." [3]

The same assessment was confirmed in the Declaration of the 81st Communist Party in Moscow in November 1960.

As we will see further, the main deterioration in relations between the two countries occurred after the XXII-th Congress of the CPSU in October 1961. Relations between the USSR and the PRC worsened when the Chinese leadership was not satisfied with the position of the USSR in 1962 on the border dispute with the PRC (October-November 1962), since the USSR considered the invasion of the PRC into India unfair, regarding it as a violation of the agreement between the PRC and India (1954) regulating border disputes between the two countries.

However, going back to the beginning of this process Mao Zedong gave his assessment of the new Soviet leadership at the plenum of the CPC Central Committee on October 9, 1957 as follows: "First of all, we have contradictions with Khrushchev on the issue of Stalin. We do not agree that he is trampling Stalin into the mud. After all, he blames Stalin to the point of outrage. And this already concerns not only one of their countries, but all countries. Our installation of a portrait of Stalin in Tiananmen Square meets the aspirations of the working people of the whole world and shows our main differences with Khrushchev."[4]

This position fully emphasized both the tribute to tradition and continuity in the communist movement, and also demonstrated the independence and independence of Chinese politics, and the fear that total criticism of Stalin's personality could spread to Mao Zedong himself. The fact is that by that time the cult of the personality of its chairman, as the helmsman of the Chinese people, began to develop in the PRC, and this turn of the leadership of the CPSU hit him personally.

Formally correctly criticizing the leaders of the CPSU for the "course of the XX Congress", which was indeed a turning point in the construction of socialism in the USSR, the Chinese leadership made completely incorrect political conclusions. Mao Zedong seriously argued that de-Stalinization was a form of rebirth of the Soviet Union and its rejection of the socialist path of development. Moreover, it was allegedly damage to the process of restoration of the capitalist system. Later, already in the 60s, this attitude would lead to the development by Mao Zedong of a special theory of "social imperialism" in relation to the USSR.

Therefore, these conclusions really became a turning point, as the leadership of the CPC comes to the conclusion that it is necessary to develop an independent line, which was later expressed in a fierce struggle for leadership in the world communist movement and the socialist camp. At the same time, such a position was justified by the need to fight Moscow's revisionism and preserve the principles of Marxism-Leninism, which were now defended exclusively by the Chinese Communist Party, as they themselves were claiming.

However, the defense of these principles was clearly using «ultra-left» radical slogans. In particular, the object of attack by the leadership of the CPC was the thesis of the Soviet Communist Party on the peaceful transition from capitalism to socialism, voiced by Nikita Khrushchev at the same XX Congress of the CPSU. Yes, indeed, this point clearly contradicted the Marxist-Leninist theory, but it can be interpreted as the desire of the leadership of the USSR at that time to avoid a third world war through the so-called peaceful coexistence of the two systems in order to ensure the possibility of calm economic development and socialist construction in those countries where the Communist parties were already in power.

This position was rejected by the leading figures of the Chinese Communist Party, who considered it unrealistic and impossible in principle. In the situation of attempts by imperialism to stop the collapse of the colonial system and unleashed wars and interventions in Indochina, such a view seemed to be a real irony. But if the criticism of such a position of the CPSU was largely justified and correct, then Beijing's attacks on Moscow's thesis about the necessity and possibility of preventing a global war led to the promotion of petty-bourgeois adventurist ideas and slogans that have nothing in common with the class approach and Marxist analysis.

We are talking about the idea of a nuclear world revolutionary war. Thus, at a joint meeting of communist and workers' parties in Moscow in November 1957, the chairman of the Chinese Communist Party announced the concept that even if half of humanity is destroyed in the event of a nuclear conflict, the second, represented by the victorious peoples, "will create a thousand times higher civilization on the ruins of imperialism than under the capitalist system, will build their truly wonderful future."

As we can see, this "revolutionary war" seemed to be a positive phenomenon, despite the death of most of the working class and working people, since in this way it would completely destroy the capitalist basis and this world system itself. At the same time, Mao Zedong and the majority of the CPC leadership were confident that in the end it would be the unconditional victory of the socialist system, despite the fact that the productive forces and large masses of the population in the core of the socialist camp, namely in the USSR, would be destroyed.

Mao even concretized his thoughts within the framework of his report, trying to justify his unsupported optimism about the possible number of dead: "Is it possible to assume how many human casualties a future war may cause? Perhaps it will be one third of the 2,700 million population of the whole world, i.e. only 900 million people. I think it's still not enough if atomic bombs are really dropped. Of course, it's very scary. But it wouldn't be half as bad... If half of humanity is destroyed, then there is still half, but imperialism will be completely destroyed and there will be only socialism in the whole world."[5]

Beijing also proceeded from the idea that large masses of the Chinese population provide undeniable advantages for the PRC, since in the event of a thermonuclear third World War, the losses for the people would not be so critical. Mao Zedong did not rule out the death of 300 million Chinese, but mathematically deduced that the remaining 300 would be able to fully master the deserted lands and establish a new world center of socialism. At the same time, the leadership of the CPC believed in the inevitability of such a global clash in the near future.

This attitude and Beijing's practical policy in the Asia-Pacific region was already clearly in conflict with the foreign policy of the USSR, which then sought to avoid being drawn into local regional conflicts in order to prevent open armed confrontation with the United States. The fact is that in addition to the world revolutionary nuclear war, in 1958-1959 the leadership of the CPC put forward a new line in its foreign policy activities, named in the national style as follows: "sit on a mountain and watch the struggle of two tigers." [6]

This concept was to provoke a conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States and thereby achieve the realization of their strategic interests in the region. In essence, this meant the desire of the Chinese Communist Party to force the Kremlin to follow the path of Mao's theoretical developments about the inevitability of the intensification of the armed struggle of the socialist camp with world imperialism.

It was during this period from 1957-58 that the situation in the waters around the island of Taiwan sharply worsened, where the last Kuomintang forces settled, which received direct military and political assistance from Washington. Then, as now, Beijing demanded the annexation of Taiwan to mainland China and assumed that the USSR would act as one of the participants in the clashes. In response to the shelling of the islands of Kinmen and Matsu in the Taiwan Strait by the People's Liberation Army of China (PLA), the US administration has advanced the forces of its Pacific fleet equipped with nuclear weapons.

At that moment, Moscow took a position of non-interference in the conflict, based on the fact that its escalation was not coordinated with it by the Chinese leadership, thereby actually distancing itself from Beijing's actions. It was only after the new Taiwan conflict began to subside in October 1958 that Nikita Khrushchev sent Eisenhower a formal letter of protest.

Such a denouement of the situation has become another and more serious factor of the separation between the CPSU and the CPC and a turning point in relations between the socialist countries. Beijing's response was the refusal in October of the same 1958 to Moscow's proposal to place a submarine base and a tracking radar station. That is, measures of real protection were rejected on the move in the event of a new aggression by the US Navy.

This fierce controversy between the USSR and the People's Republic of China was also heated up a lot by the domestic political course. The fact is that 1958 Mao Zedong proclaimed a "new general line" in building socialism. The experiment of the "three red banners" (the "general line", the "big race" in industry, as well as the creation of "people's communes" in villages), had terrifying socio-economic consequences. This «ultra-left» course had nothing to do with the Soviet experience and ignored the progressive development of industrialization and collectivization in the 30s, divided into several five-year plans.

As a result of the voluntarist policy, a number of regions of China were seized by famine, and entire sectors of the national economy were paralyzed. The Soviet leadership, not without reason, considered the Chinese attempts to build their own socialist society in three years, without regard to the real backward base and without Moscow's scientific and technical support, erroneous, adventurous and dangerous for the interests of the USSR.

At the same time, in China itself, in 1957, the first anti-Soviet campaign began for the first time. It was unleashed within the framework of the internal political course "let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools compete", when the CPC Central Committee allowed part of the intelligentsia and various near-party and non-party groups to discuss the further development of socialist construction in order to prevent dogmatism and excesses.

As a result, of course, this discussion at the top of Chinese society, which came out of the pre-revolutionary past, led to negative consequences and anti-communist statements. The desire of this creative "elite" to return the capitalist system became clear to everyone. But while the controversy was going on, anti-Soviet sentiments spread by right-wing elements, which were actively broadcast by the party press, sharply strengthened.

All this together created the basis and prerequisites for a sharp cooling of relations and the start of the process of rupture between the largest socialist countries of the world already in the second half of the 50s. Subsequently, the situation only worsened.

Rightly criticizing the opportunistic tendencies and theses of the leadership of the CPSU about the peaceful coexistence of socialism and capitalism and the possibility of the peaceful coming of communists to power, the leadership of the CPC actually went to the other extreme and justified its own course, expressed in the departure from the USSR, which by the end of the 60s led to a fierce conflict, as well as to the formation of the great Han chauvinism and nationalism.

After Beijing refused to host a base of military submarines, Moscow abandoned previous agreements in the field of nuclear energy in 1959, and then the following year withdrew its technical specialists from the construction sites of the Chinese national economy. In 1960, there were reductions in the supply of raw materials, equipment and spare parts. Subsequently, the Soviet government demanded the return of loans granted to China, earlier than planned, starting in 1950.

Naturally, this could not but increase Beijing's hostility, especially since it was painful in a situation when the policy of the "Big Leap" was frankly failing. Then, in 1960, the most serious crisis and famine occurred, which struck millions of residents of the People's Republic of China. In response, the CPC Central Committee began to openly act on the split of the international communist movement, and to consolidate around itself as an alternative center different countries of the socialist camps and communist parties that were somewhat at odds with Moscow.

Thus, in the conflict between the CPSU and the Albanian Party of Labor, the Chinese Communist Party eventually supported the latter, and after the complete rupture of Soviet-Albanian relations in 1962, Beijing signed an agreement with Tirana on the provision of economic assistance. As a result, in the early 60s, the PRC, in addition to Albania, was supported to varying degrees by Romania, the DPRK, and the "leftists" in the national liberation movement of Latin America, Asia and Africa, which created a basis for the formation of communist parties in the world, focused entirely on Beijing.

The Soviet and Chinese leadership did not agree with the assessments of the Caribbean crisis. For the first time openly in the press, Beijing criticized Moscow's foreign policy, calling the deployment of missiles in Cuba adventurism, and their withdrawal - capitulation. The leadership of the USSR, in turn, accused China of an "inflexible" behavior.

But Mao and his associates have already launched a special political offensive against the Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapons Tests in the Atmosphere, Outer Space and Under Water, which was signed by representatives of the USSR, the United States and Great Britain in Moscow on August 5, 1963. This document was of great importance and was supported by more than 90 countries by the end of the year. But China, which at that time was trying to acquire nuclear weapons, came to the conclusion that this treaty was directed against it as a result of a deal between "two superpowers".

Officially, Beijing in its statement pointed out that this treaty is "a "deception", a "betrayal" of the interests of socialist countries and peoples of the whole world," blunted their vigilance against the aggressive policy of imperialist states, leads "to a weakening of the defense capability of the socialist commonwealth" and, moreover, "consolidates the monopoly of the three powers on atomic and hydrogen weapons." [7]

Against the background of the above accusations, it is very interesting that on July 31, 1963, the Chinese Government itself solemnly proclaimed a worldwide program aimed at a complete ban and total elimination of nuclear weapons and existing means of their delivery. According to the Soviet side, the State Council of the People's Republic of China hoped to oppose its own program to the test ban treaty, negotiations on which were initiated by the USSR in early July 1963.

In the same period from 1960 to 1966, the ideological polemic between the CPC and the CPSU escalated, which became the real core of the beginning foreign policy struggle of the USSR and the PRC. An example is a series of articles in the party magazine “Hongqi” - "Red Banner" and “People's Daily Newspaper” - "ZHen'min' zhibao", as well as a report presented by the head of the propaganda department of the CPC Central Committee, Lu Dingyi, released on the eve of the solemn meeting dedicated to the 90th anniversary of Lenin. On the basis of these publications, a special collection "Long live Leninism!" was already released, which became the basis for the "exposure" of the "revisionist schismatic line" of the CPSU leadership.

Naturally, this tendentious pamphlet was issued with the aim of "defending Marxism-Leninism" and overcoming ideological differences within the world communist movement. At the same time, Beijing allegedly relied on the basis of the same Declaration of the 1957 Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties. [8]

In response, the Central Committee of the CPSU prepared and distributed a special letter dated July 14, 1963, which talked about something completely different, and in particular, about the incorrect interpretation of the theses of Lenin's most important works, which were included in the brochure in fragmentary form. In addition, it was pointed out that, on the contrary, the CPC Central Committee distorts the provisions of the Declaration of the Moscow Meeting of 1957.

However, this explanation did not stop the controversy at all. Moreover, since 1963, the CPC Central Committee has been launching a broad propaganda campaign and a number of actions designed already for citizens of the Soviet Union. In particular, by the decision of the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party, 11 thousand copies of pamphlets and books containing anti-Soviet propaganda were sent to various institutions and individuals, and two years later their number increased to 45 thousand copies. [9] From this moment, the international radio "Voice of Beijing" begins its work with anti-Soviet broadcasts broadcasting to the territory of the USSR.

With the beginning of this openly hostile propaganda campaign in 1963, Beijing sent an appeal from the Chinese leadership to Moscow through the diplomatic department, which spelled out 25 points on which the CPC Central Committee differed from the position of the Soviet leadership. In these paragraphs, the entire state and social system of the USSR was condemned, allegedly having already reached the bottom of rebirth. In addition, the Central Committee of the CPSU was accused of abandoning the principles of Marxism-Leninism and the world revolution as a whole.

In turn, these events prompted the Kremlin to organize countermeasures to neutralize Beijing's ideological offensive strategy, which could shake many Communist parties and socialist camp countries. As a result, at a special plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU in February 1964, Secretary for Ideology M.A. Suslov made a report in which he called the line of the Communist Party of China a "special course" imbued with "great-power chauvinism and petty-bourgeois adventurism." [10]

Such an assessment of the actions of the Communist Party of China led to even more fierce polemics and to even more serious retaliatory criticism of the CPSU and the USSR as a whole, which made relations between the two communist parties and their countries even more hostile. Beijing tried at this moment to hide behind a revolutionary phrase and ultra-left phraseology, but in assessing the balance of forces in the world and in real practice, it went to the right, which resulted in the development of new theories, which allegedly "enriched" Marxism-Leninism

So, in the early 60s, a new theory of "intermediate zones" is being created, which will be further expanded and refined by Chairman Mao within a few years. To this arbitrary concept, ignoring their class nature and political structure, all countries located between the socialist camp and the United States were recorded, as well as consolidated by the danger of being victims of imperialist aggression from the Pentagon.

But at the same time, Mao Zedong divided these countries into two conditional zones. Thus, the first zone was assigned by the leadership of the Communist Party of China to the states of Latin America, Africa and Asia, called the "Great Helmsman" by the "world peasantry". [11] And the second "intermediate zone" already included industrial countries, including Western Europe, for example, France, where the supposedly local national monopolistic bourgeoisie was "able to fight against American imperialism." [12]

Apparently, then the Chinese leaders were impressed by the conflict between De Gaulle and Washington, which led to France's withdrawal from NATO, but in fact, such a theory untied Beijing's hands in rapprochement with European capitalist powers, which Belgrade did back in 1949 and in the 50s during the conflict with Moscow. Here Mao Zedong actually repeated the political evolution of Joseph Broz Tito, although moving from the left under the guise of the need to foment a world revolution.

In fact, the President of the People's Republic of China set a goal, relying on contacts with the monopolistic bourgeoisie (which also justified China's cooperation with imperialist countries in the above period) and using the contradictions in the camp of capitalism, to mobilize the anti-imperialist potential of the second "intermediate zone". As a result, this theory formed the basis of the foreign policy doctrine of the Chinese leadership, which built up the interstate relations of the People's Republic of China, relying precisely on the theory of "intermediate zones".

Of course, on the one hand, Beijing thus declared the beginning of the struggle for primacy and influence on the third world countries and from among the non-aligned powers, but in fact the turn was made precisely in the direction of the monopolistic and financial bourgeoisie of developed capitalist countries. In particular, ties with the Chinese foreign oligarchs "Huaqiao" have intensified. This suggests that long before Deng Xiaoping's market reforms, an ideological justification for such a shift away from the socialist path of development was being prepared in the depths of the CPC leadership and the establishment of economic and political ties with capitalist countries was justified, ostensibly to repel imperialism.

We see here a typical following of the theory of stages, when in a Menshevik way capitalist countries were divided into zones where bourgeois-democratic revolutions were to take place first, and instead of relying on the working class and the workers of the developed industrial powers, a stake was placed on the monopolistic bourgeoisie, which, according to the Chinese Communists, was ready to resist Washington. This concept, however, later in the early 70s did not interfere at all, but even helped China to fraternize with the United States.

In 1964, after Nikita Khrushchev was removed from all posts, the Soviet leadership attempted to normalize relations with Beijing, but the CPC Central Committee sent an ultimatum to the Kremlin, demanding to cancel all decisions taken at the last congresses of the CPSU and make territorial concessions. If Moscow was ready to discuss controversial issues on the delimitation of borders, it could not abandon the approved concepts of peaceful coexistence. As a result, the ideological and propaganda pressure of the PRC on the USSR not only did not weaken, but also intensified.

By 1965, the Soviet Union was finally elevated to the status of an enemy inside China. The term "threat from the North" has entered propaganda usage. When the first test of atomic weapons took place in the PRC in 1964, it was officially stated that it was done "in the name of protecting sovereignty, against threats to the United States and the great power of the USSR." Although its development itself took place with scientific and technical assistance from Moscow.

The final rupture of relations between the two parties occurred already in March 1966. In an official letter dated March 22, 1966, the CPC Central Committee announced its refusal to send a delegation to the XXIII Congress of the CPSU, thereby effectively announcing that it was openly opposing the CPSU. It is noteworthy that this coincided with the beginning of the "Cultural Revolution", which was announced a little later, when all those who disagreed with the course of Mao Zedong and his supporters inside the CPC were declared Soviet agents.

Accompanied by mutual ideological criticism, the series of unsuccessful attempts by the leadership of the two powers to come to a consensus has ended. All this finally untied the hands of the two opposing sides and gave rise to a structural crisis of Soviet-Chinese relations, affecting all aspects of cooperation between the USSR and the PRC and causing a real split in the international communist movement.

Since the complete break between the CPC and the CPSU, Beijing has raised the issue of the return of lands allegedly seized by tsarist Russia from the Celestial Empire at various times. In particular, it was about the territories of the Far East, part of Eastern Siberia, as well as certain regions of Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. Mao Zedong insisted on the revision of the Russian-Chinese treaties of the XIX century. Beijing has put forward the thesis that tsarist Russia has seized more than 1.5 million square kilometers of "native Chinese lands." 

From this period it is necessary to count the period of the already armed escalation of the situation on the border of the two states. However, contradictions and incidents in the border zone between the countries began to arise since the middle of 1960, and two years later more than five thousand different violations were recorded. One of the first such conflicts was the incident in the Buz-Aigir district in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR). Then thousands of cattle breeders from China crossed the border and then refused to return to their homeland.

Two years later, there was a simultaneous mass resettlement of Kazakhs, Kirghizs, Tatars and Uighurs to the Soviet Union among 68 thousand people who subsequently received Soviet citizenship. Although the flow of migrants from the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region began in 1955 and was associated with different living standards, as well as with national contradictions. Even then, on the outskirts of the PRC, local authorities carried out a chauvinistic Great Han policy towards ethnic minorities, preventing education in the national language and bringing immigrants from the interior regions of China to these lands.

Such migration of ethnic minorities to the USSR was blamed by the Chinese authorities on Moscow, which allegedly carried out "subversive activities" and hostile actions through the Soviet consulates in Kuldzha (YIning) and Urumqi. [13] As a result, after a series of provocations and arrests of diplomats, the Soviet government was forced to liquidate the Consulate General and another representative office in the XUAR.

However, despite this, Beijing's claims grew. Mao Zedong openly touched on territorial disputes with the USSR when, in an interview with the Japanese delegation on July 10, 1964, he announced the seizure by Russia of more than 1.5 million km2 of "native Chinese lands": "They cut off everything that could be cut off. Some say that in addition they want to cut off Chinese Xinjiang and Heilongjiang... More than 100 years ago they cut off the lands east of Lake Baikal, including Boli (Khabarovsk), and Haishenwei (Vladivostok), and the Kamchatka Peninsula. This account has not been repaid, we have not yet settled with them on this account." [14]

But a new round of territorial claims occurred after the famous XI plenum of the CPC Central Committee of the VIII convocation of August 8, 1966, where "the great proletarian cultural Revolution" was announced. [15] Although this decision concerned internal issues related to Mao Zedong's desire to conduct a mass purge of the party and the state apparatus, no one had any doubts about unleashing a new campaign to escalate the conflict with the USSR.

After all, the purges took place under the slogan of fighting revisionism, which was allegedly planted in the party by the long-term influence of Moscow. Since that moment, the anti-Soviet campaign has only intensified throughout the country, which introduced the image of the Soviet Union as a "threat from the North" [16] and destroyed the very idea of friendship between the two countries in the minds of millions of Chinese. We will touch on the results of the cultural revolution later, but it played a very important role in whipping up aggressive sentiments against the first socialist state, as well as in the development of border clashes.

Following Mao and after the epoch-making plenum of the CPC Central Committee, Foreign Minister Chen Yi also announced the existence of territorial disputes with the USSR in May 1966, repeating literally every word of the helmsman and announcing the beginning of an open struggle for the return of "native Chinese lands." It is noteworthy, but the Soviet leadership did not refuse to hold negotiations on disputed territorial issues and in 1964 an agreement was already reached that the islands, including Damansky Island, along the border riverbeds in the Far East should eventually move to the PRC.

However, this agreement has not been officially signed, that is, it has not yet entered into legal force, and the Chinese side has already begun economic development of these territories from that moment. That is, the leadership of the People's Republic of China already considered the islands their own, which was clearly not in the interests of the Kremlin, since in the event of their actual alienation, all other border agreements concluded by the two countries earlier lost their meaning and force. It is through this prism that it is necessary to consider all the bitterness of the struggle that unfolded around these small pieces of land along the Ussuri River.

In the future, after the unhindered capture of these islands and the same Damansky, Beijing could extend its expansion further to the sparsely populated areas of the Far East and Eastern Siberia. Correctly assessing the large preponderance in China's human resources, as well as the internal political instability caused by the cultural revolution, Moscow feared that the CPC leaders might order an offensive on Soviet territories in order to strengthen their positions in a situation of acute power struggle.

And there were such reasons when, under the cries of the Red Guards (Khun Vey Bin) and the official Chinese press about the "inequality" of the existing treaties between the USSR and the PRC, the number of clashes on various sections of the border has increased many times since 1966. Already in December 1967 and January 1968, serious clashes occurred on the island of Kirk, on January 26, 1968 - on the island of Damansky, as well as other islands on the Ussuri River. At that time, namely on January 5, 1968, Soviet border guards arrested Chinese fishermen, but four Chinese citizens died as a result of the incident, which is considered the first fact of bloodshed.

As a result of this escalation, both countries only strengthened their military groups on the border. So, according to the materials of the Soviet special services, the PLA command in 1967 transferred over four hundred thousand fighters to the Amur, Ussuri and Yalu border rivers, where abandoned Japanese defensive structures, overcome by the Red Army in August 1945, were being revived with might and main. [17]

The Soviet Government, for its part, signed with the Mongolian People's Republic in January 1966 the "Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance between the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the Mongolian People's Republic". This agreement was considered by the Chinese leadership as a military alliance, and the territory of the MNR as a springboard for an attack on the PRC. These fears were reinforced by the fact that the Soviet army was building missile bases there and had transferred forty divisions to the Chinese border.

In fact, the two powers in which the Communist parties ruled began to measure their military forces and actively prepare for war. The leadership of the CPC Central Committee seriously considered the prospect of a strike on the nuclear facilities of the People's Republic of China, which was capable of destroying all stocks of atomic weapons overnight. Tensions increased at such a pace that already in October 1968, Zhou Enlai declared that "everything can be expected from the USSR, including an attack on China." [18]

In this regard, the Chinese leaders, according to archival data, at the beginning of the 1969, gave the PLA a command to seriously begin preparing an operation to conduct military operations on Damansky Island and adjacent territories. This decision was justified by the fact that an open armed clash was necessary in order to push through the Soviet leadership in order to make concessions, as well as to attract the attention of the world community to the greatest degree of confrontation between the two countries. The latter was necessary in establishing relations and cooperation with the main capitalist countries fighting the USSR.

As a result, the highest point of the conflict was the fighting in March 1969 between the PLA units and the Soviet border guards just for the very island of Damansky, which lasted two weeks. For another five months, new armed clashes arose along the entire perimeter of the Soviet-Chinese border. As a result, such provocative actions of the Chinese army could cause a real war between the two countries.

Only active forceful opposition from the Soviet border guard became the main factor that pushed Beijing to conduct a diplomatic probe in order to carry out negotiations. At the end of March of this year, the USSR government made a statement on the events on Damansky Island, in which it invited the Chinese authorities to resume negotiations on the border, interrupted in 1964. And already in May, the Government of the People's Republic of China issued its statement, in which it called for preserving the borders in the same form and introducing a ban on the use of weapons on both sides.

Already on September 11, 1969, a personal meeting of the heads of government took place, during which A.N. Kosygin reasonably told Zhou Enlai: "The Western press and all forces led by the United States are making every possible effort to push the USSR against the PRC, and in this regard they hope to end socialism and communism. Therefore, the issue of relations between the USSR and the People's Republic of China is of great global importance". [19]

As a result of this meeting, on October 20, 1969, full-scale negotiations on disputed border issues began in the capital of the People's Republic of China, which continued until September 1971, consolidating the status quo. However, the disputed territorial issues were not resolved and new negotiations were resumed only after 1982. It was also not possible to come to an agreement on the resumption of economic cooperation, and the general relations remained hostile. But the most important thing is that after that it was possible to prevent the transition of the critical line, and the very possibility of a full-scale war sharply decreased.

Thus, with the beginning of the Chinese cultural revolution, the relations between the USSR and the PRC became even more aggravated, and 1969 became a truly "black page" in the history of Soviet-Chinese relations, rare threads of economic, scientific, technical and cultural cooperation in which were finally severed, which in fact nullified the results of two decades of cooperation between the two countries. During this period, ideological differences that took place in the second half of the 50s - the first half of the 60s of the XX century were translated into the plane of national contradictions of the USSR and the PRC.

The leadership of the People's Republic abandoned the idea of friendship with the "elder brother", provoking both political conflicts at the international level and local clashes within certain border territories with the Soviet Union, which resulted in a bloody armed confrontation. Despite the attempts made in the autumn of 1969 to normalize relations, which allowed both sides to move away from the prospect of a large-scale conflict, residual tensions also continued to exist in relations between the USSR and the PRC in the following decades.

The new foreign policy of China was formed precisely under the influence of an open armed confrontation with the Soviet Union on its borders and was fixed by the IX Congress of the CPC, held from April 1 to April 24, 1969. The main current goal adopted by the congress was the struggle of the Communist Party and the people of the country against imperialism, the center of which was declared the United States, and at the same time modern revisionism led by the CPSU.

Also at this congress, the concept of the rebirth of the USSR into a social-imperialist state was adopted, which only intensified after the election of Leonid Brezhnev as general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party. According to the new theory, the leadership of the CPSU began to "instill social imperialism and social fascism even more furiously," suppress the Soviet people, carry out a comprehensive restoration of capitalism, and also strengthen the "threat of aggression against our country." [20]

A large place at the IX Congress was devoted to the topic of the upcoming world War, which was covered from the standpoint of the "Great Helmsman" about the international military conflict, according to which "there are only two possibilities: either the war will cause a revolution, or the revolution will prevent a war." [21] At the same time, the main instigators of the global armed struggle were equally indicated by the USA and the USSR.

Most importantly, as a result of the discussion, the Soviet Union was declared the main enemy of the Chinese people. Mao Zedong even agreed in his report that the USSR poses a greater danger to the cause of socialism and world revolution than the United States: "American imperialism is a paper tiger that has long been pierced by the peoples of the world, "social imperialism" is much more deceptive compared to the imperialism of the old brand and therefore much more dangerous."

The threat of Soviet aggression against the PRC seemed quite real to the leadership of the CPC for a number of reasons. First of all, as a result of the direct armed clashes that took place on Damansky Island, which were presented by Chinese propaganda as proof of Moscow's expansionist goals. Another reason for such reasoning was the entry of Soviet troops into Czechoslovakia, since the Central Committee of the CPSU could allegedly repeat this already in relation to China.

And the most important reason for Mao Zedong's idea was that the "threat from the North" was a convenient tool for implementing the tasks of China's economic growth in order to overcome backwardness. This was due not only to the mobilization of economic forces and the development of the military-industrial complex in the country, which became a single militarized camp, but also to the prospects of increasing trade and economic cooperation with capitalist countries.

Subsequently, the leadership of the People's Republic of China justified this approach with data that the country's GDP doubled from 1968 to 1976. [22] To put it more simply, the leaders of the CPC, based on the interests of modernization, used the armed conflict with the USSR to implement favorable conditions for cooperation with the West, primarily with the United States.