Dittmer, Lowell

East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine (EASTM - Universität Tübingen)

 149 
REVIEWS 
 
Thomas P. Bernstein and Hua-yu Li, China Learns from the Soviet Union, 
1949-Present, New York: Lexington Books (The Harvard Cold War 
Studies Book Series), 2010. 
Lowell Dittmer 
[Lowell Dittmer is Professor of Political Science at the University of California at 
Berkeley and editor of Asian Survey. Recent works include China, the 
Developing World, and the New Global Dynamic (Boulder, CO: Lynne 
Rienner, 2010), Burma or Myanmar? The Struggle for National Identity 
(2010), and many scholarly articles. His most recent book is (with Maochun Yu, 
ed.), Routledge Handbook of Chinese Security (2015). Contact: 
dittmer@berkeley.edu] 
Sino-Russian relations have grown close lately, as their relations with the 
United States have cooled. One fortunate consequence has been a revival of 
interest in the tumultuous history of the relationship. But how close are 
they really, as heirs to such an ambivalent legacy? This very well-re-
searched and informative anthology sheds a good deal of light on this 
question. It covers essentially every major aspect of Sino-Soviet relations 
over the past seven decades, focused mainly on the “learning” dimension 
and chronologically on the period from 1949 to the collapse of the USSR in 
1991 (but not exclusively in either case). The articles are intensively re-
searched based on a myriad of materials: Sources include memoirs and 
biographies of leading Chinese and Soviet leaders and foreign affairs offi-
cials, unpublished documents for internal distribution, the Foreign Policy 
Archive of the Russian Federation, the Russian State Archive of Contempo-
rary History, U.S. State Department papers, the Hungarian National Ar-
chive, and provincial archives in China that have become accessible to 
international scholars in the reform period. Featured is an international 
roster of brilliant historians and social scientists from the People’s Republic 
of China (PRC), Taiwan, the US, Canada, Germany, Macau, and Hungary.   
The overall theme of the collection, learning, is a rich one, for there were 
several models to learn from, and the learning went both ways. The Chi-
nese at the beginning were enthusiastic students, but they soon became 
sensitive to the hierarchical dimension of the teacher–student relationship 
and began to rebel against it. Bernstein in his introduction perceives three 
Soviet learning models: Leninism (of the relatively moderate New Eco-
nomic Policy period, carried on by Bukharin), revolutionary Stalinism, and 
bureaucratic Stalinism. During Mao’s era the inner-Party struggle pitted 
the “left” (revolutionary Stalinist) faction against the “right” (bureaucratic 
150                                                                                                  EASTM 43 (2016) 
 
Stalinist). At the very time the Chinese were beginning to question rote 
learning the Soviet model in the mid-1950s, Mao embraced Stalin in a filial 
reaction against Khrushchev’s posthumous lèse majesté at the 20th CPSU 
Congress. This was not however the bureaucratic Stalinism embraced by 
his colleagues but the revolutionary Stalinism of the collectivization of the 
kulaks and the great purge. Using the dead dictator against his unworthy 
successors Mao made Moscow a “negative model,” the opposite of which 
would define China’s goals in the Cultural Revolution. Then, beginning 
with the advent of “reform and opening” in China in 1978 and the later rise 
of Gorbachev in the Soviet Union, learning became more reciprocal, though 
each side observed the other’s experience with considerable caution. By the 
late 1980s the Russians had become impatient with political impediments 
to reform and radicalized their approach, while the Chinese drew back in 
alarm and consternation. 
It is a massive tome, divided into seven parts and 19 chapters (not even 
counting the introduction and a “concluding assessment” bringing us up to 
the present), altogether 550 pages. The organization of the book consists of 
a chronological narrative at the beginning and end, with a large central 
section focused on particular aspects or sectors of the relationship. After an 
excellent introduction by Thomas Bernstein, the historical narrative is car-
ried forward in chapters 1 and 3, and in the last three chapters. In chapter I, 
Lorenz Luethi provides a long and informative review of the “Mao Years” 
(1949-1976), beginning with the negotiation of the alliance but focusing 
naturally on the epoch-making dispute that took up most of this period 
after a surprisingly brief honeymoon. As in his previous book, Luethy 
gives pride of place to ideology in the genesis of the dispute. At the same 
time he allows that ideology itself was very plastic in the hands of intensely 
passionate and headstrong (and implicitly nationalistic) revolutionary dic-
tators on both (but especially the Chinese) sides. Helping to explain their 
seemingly impulsive policy zigzags are such circumstantial factors as the 
Soviet refusal to back Chinese moves against Taiwan in 1954-1955 and their 
reluctance to do so in 1958, Khrushchev’s “secret speech” denouncing 
Stalin (and implicitly Mao), and the exhaustion of Soviet financial and 
military support for Chinese modernization efforts in the late 1950s. Peter 
Vamos then reviews the slow and deliberate reconciliation under Deng 
Xiaoping and a series of post-Brezhnev Soviet leaders, ironically beginning 
with China’s demurral of Brezhnev’s offer to renew the alliance. This was 
however quickly followed by agreement to hold “talks” working toward 
conditional “normalization” of party-to-party relations. The procedure con-
sisted of seven years of biannual meetings between the two sides pending 
Chinese approval of Soviet removal of the “three obstacles” Deng had 
stipulated as a precondition (fortunately the Chinese proved in the end 
flexible about the Cambodian “obstacle”). The normalization summit oc-
Reviews                                                                                                  151 
 
curred amid massive democracy demonstrations making Tiananmen 
Square inaccessible. Wisely declining invitations to speak to the demonstra-
tors Gorbachev observed events obliquely and with great discretion, appar-
ently determined not to pursue the sort of bloody crackdown that ensued 
three weeks after his departure. This opened the way to the anticommunist 
upheaval in Eastern Europe and Soviet Union that left China a (nearly) lone 
communist survivor and temporarily embittered relations, but both sides 
soon picked up the pieces and resumed a reconciliation that has flowered 
since. This leaves us in the quandary discussed in the final three chapters of 
which of these two disparate models of neighborly relations is likely to 
prevail henceforth. Gilbert Rozman, Minglang Zhou and Guan Guihai are 
guardedly optimistic: the “strategic partnership” is now less ideologically 
encrusted and more balanced and hence likely to endure, provided China 
does not take undue advantage of its increasingly predominant position.  
The other chapters are focused on specific aspects or sectors of the rela-
tionship. Economic transfer arrangements are examined by Shengfa Zhang 
(chapter 3) regarding the return of the Changchun Railway, and chapters 
by Kong Hanbing, Xiaojia Hou, and Gregory Rohlf review various twists 
and turns in transplanting Soviet agricultural institutions to China. You Ji 
looks at the massive transfer of weaponry and organizational templates 
from the Soviet to the People’s Liberation Army during the Korean War 
period when cooperation was deemed most essential. The Chinese were 
grateful at the time but later complained of the sacrifice of revolutionary 
egalitarianism and Mao erupted at Soviet proposals for naval cooperation 
suspecting an infringement on Chinese sovereignty. There is a great deal of 
new information here on the cultural and intellectual impact on China, 
including Hua-yu Li’s chapter on the translation and wholesale distribu-
tion of Stalin’s Short Course (which continued throughout the dispute, 
thanks to Mao’s repudiation of Soviet de-Stalinization), Miin-ling Yu’s 
chapter on the emulation of Stakhanovism in China’s “model worker” 
program, Jian Zang on Chinese emulation of Soviet gender equality, and in 
chapters by Izabella Goikhman, Douglas Stiffler, Laurence Schneider, and 
Elizabeth McGuire on various aspects (including Lysenkoism) of the schol-
arly exchange. Donghui He and Tina Mai Chen provide fine overviews of 
the impact of Soviet novels (spotlighting the famous How the Steel Was 
Tempered) and the depiction of gender relations in Soviet films. 
A few nits might be picked: the introduction has many typos, a chapter 
might have been included on the organization of industry (to complement 
the excellent coverage of agriculture), and a Russian scholar or two might 
have been included in the international cast of scholars. But most certainly, 
this is a very comprehensive, readable, and useful addition to the literature, 
highly recommended for graduate and undergraduate courses on China, 
Russia, or on relations between them as well as for interested lay audiences.  


Thomas P. Bernstein and Hua-yu Li, China Learns from the Soviet Union, 1949-Present

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Thomas P. Bernstein and Hua-yu Li, China Learns from the Soviet Union, 1949-Present

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