Editor's Note

This issue begins with an article by Xiaoming Zhang analyzing the Chinese authorities' decision to go to war against Vietnam in early 1979. Until recently, observers could only speculate about why, in the space of just four years, the People's Republic of China (PRC) went from being an ally of the Vietnamese Communists against the United States to launching a military attack on Vietnam. Zhang shows that the decision was shaped by domestic factors in the PRC, especially the ongoing power struggle that had resulted in the ascendance of Deng Xiaoping, and by key international considerations, including China's continued enmity toward the Soviet Union, the alliance that had emerged between the USSR and Vietnam, and Vietnam's invasion of Cambodia, which the Chinese perceived as a proxy for Soviet expansion. Deng Xiaoping played the leading role in the decision yet suffered no adverse consequences when the war turned into a fiasco. Even though U.S. officials did not welcome China's decision to attack Vietnam, the warming of relations between the PRC and the United States was a facilitating factor in the decision.

The next article, by Dong Guoqiang, discusses the "2 June Incident" at Nanjing University (NJU) in 1967, one of the most important early events in the PRC's Cultural Revolution. Even though the NJU incident was officially depicted at the time as similar to an incident a few days earlier at Beijing University, the two events were actually very different. The Beijing University incident resulted directly from high-level political maneuvering, whereas the NJU incident stemmed from local causes (specifically the students' dissatisfaction with the university president's decision to establish a branch campus) and was then exploited by a radical group around Mao Zedong, who wanted to push China further into revolutionary chaos. Dong's article makes clear that the local actors—the university president, local Communist Party officials, and students—were not sure of Mao's intentions but tried to use the fledgling Cultural Revolution to their own advantage. A series of misunderstandings and miscommunications caused the NJU incident to escalate, a dynamic that stemmed directly from Mao's iron rule.

The third article, by Vojtech Mastny, discusses the close but peculiar relationship that developed between the Soviet Union and India during the Cold War. The relationship began with high hopes under Nikita Khrushchev and Jawaharlal Nehru in the 1950s and made considerable progress, but it ran into problems at the end of the 1950s when severe tensions emerged between India and China and between the Soviet Union and China. By the early 1960s, especially after a Sino-Indian border clash in October 1962 against the backdrop of the Cuban missile crisis, the PRC was increasingly seen by both the Soviet Union and India as an enemy. This perception intensified under Leonid Brezhnev, who offered extensive Soviet political and military support for India, helping the Indians to consolidate their dominant position in South Asia. The closeness of the relationship was symbolized by the signing of an Indo-Soviet friendship and cooperation treaty in August 1971, which, despite not being strong in content, was something the Indians could tout. Even though Soviet leaders did not welcome India's war with Pakistan in late 1971, they blocked action by the United Nations Security Council until India could crush the Pakistani forces and achieve a decisive victory. Soviet-Indian relations were particularly close during the authoritarian reign of Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, but Soviet military supplies to India actually increased after Gahdhi's successor, Morarji Desai, took office and returned India to a more democratic polity. The Soviet-Indian relationship remained cordial after Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in Moscow in 1985, but it took on a different character in Gorbachev's partnership with Rajiv Gandhi, the son of the assassinated Indira. Ultimately, neither Gorbachev nor Gandhi proved able to deal with acute internal problems, and bilateral relations gradually eroded. Although the two countries were still on friendly terms, the extraordinary closeness of the Brezhnev years was mostly a thing of the past by the time the Soviet Union disintegrated.

The next article, by Ieva Zake, discusses the Soviet...