Mending Fences: The Evolution of Moscow's China Policy from Brezhnev to Yeltsin (review)

Few relationships between major powers have undergone more dramatic changes than the ties between the Soviet Union/Russia and the People's Republic of China (PRC) since the years of Leonid Brezhnev. Elizabeth Wishnick begins her book with the clashes along the Sino-Soviet border in the late 1960s and follows the story through the expanding conflict of the 1970s, the reconciliation after Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in Moscow in the mid-1980s, the conflict following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, and yet another reconciliation during the "strategic partnership" under Russian President Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s. She focuses on the Soviet/Russian views of these changes, giving close attention to the ongoing domestic debates and political conflict affecting policy toward the PRC. She brings to this important subject a mastery of Russian and Chinese sources, an impressive command of the relevant scholarship, much new material from Soviet state and party archives, and extensive interviews with Russian policy makers and with leading Russian specialists on China.

Wishnick's book is of great value for both specialists and more general readers interested in Russian and Chinese history and politics, the history of the Cold War, and the history of world Communism. She lucidly explains the major stages and causes of the complex evolution of the Soviet/Russian-Chinese relationship. For each stage she skillfully provides an analysis of the changing relationship, combining it with attention to contemporary domestic politics, bilateral relations, and relationships vis-à-vis other states.

Wishnick's discussion of the impact of the Sino-Soviet conflict on the world Communist movement provides much new information and insight. China's denunciation of the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia was a blow to the Soviet Union, and Beijing was able to entice East European leaders who wanted leverage with the Soviet Union. The vigorous challenge to the Soviet economic "model" posed by the reforms of Deng Xiaoping in the late 1970s strengthened the resolve of some East European officials to press for reforms of their own economic systems. China's example, both in economic reform and in bold challenges to the traditional Soviet dominance of the world movement, was also favorably received by the West European Communist parties, especially those in Italy and Spain, further weakening Soviet control within the Communist world.

The book is also informative in showing how U.S. efforts to expand cooperation with China in the 1970s affected the Soviet Union. The burgeoning U.S.-Chinese relationship greatly magnified Soviet security concerns and added huge costs to an already overburdened defense budget. The relationship also lent weight to the arguments of Soviet experts on China who wanted to seek a better relationship with the PRC—experts who found new opportunities during the Gorbachev years.

Wishnick's analysis of the Soviet Union's reconciliation with China under Gorbachev offers much new insight both on the issues and the leading personalities. The removal of the main opponents of policy change and the introduction of the new policy under the leadership of Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze were highly effective. However, Gorbachev's triumphal visit to Beijing in the spring of 1989, when he was warmly greeted by Chinese democratic activists, was followed a few weeks later by the crushing of the Chinese democracy movement at Tiananmen Square. The visit also was soon followed by the collapse of Communist power in Eastern Europe and, two years later, by the demise of the Soviet Union itself.

The book provides much new insight into the Russo-Chinese relationship during the Yeltsin era. After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Chinese leaders held Gorbachev responsible for the fate of Soviet and East European Communism, and they found the democratizing policies of Yeltsin at least equally objectionable. But the Russian government's growing disillusionment with...