This volume brings together young scholars from China, Russia, the United States, and Western Europe who, drawing on much newly available documentation, analyze the complicated and often stormy history of the Sino-Soviet relationship from World War II to the 1960s. The book offers new insights and many revaluations of the various apsects of the alliance between China and the Soviet Union—its creation, aims and instruments, its strains and conflicts, and its final collapse. Revising earlier views, the contributors emphasize the role of ideology and cultural aspects of interaction, the links between alliance policies and domestic politics, and the way the partners' differing perceptions of the United States influenced the fate of the alliance.

Preface
Odd Arne Westad

Introduction
Odd Arne Westad

1. The Origins of the Sino-Soviet Alliance
Niu Jun

2. Stalin, Mao, and the End of the Korean War
Kathryn Weathersby

3. Soviet Advisors in China in the 1950s
Deborah A. Kaple

4. Sino-Soviet Military Cooperation
Sergei Goncharenko

5. The Sino-Soviet Alliance and the United States
Odd Arne Westad

6. Sino-Soviet Economic Cooperation
Shu Guang Zhang

7. Nikita Khrushchev and Sino-Soviet Relations
Constantine Pleshakov

8. Chinese Politics and the Collapse of the Sino-Soviet Alliance
Chen Jian and Yang Kuisong

Appendix: Some Documents on Sino-Soviet Relations, 1948–1963

“These first-rate essays inform the reader about the outpouring of primary source materials on the early Cold War from Russian and Chinese archives during the past decade.”—D. L. Wilson, Choice

“Never before has such a wealth of in-depth information the Sino-Soviet alliance appeared in one place.”—Bruce A. Elleman, Slavic Review

“Those who have read John Lewis Gaddis’s We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History are advised to read Westad’s book as well.”—Allen Whiting, China Journal

“The documented analysis shows that facile explanations of ideological or geopolitical causes do not suffice for understanding the complex reality of the emergence first of alliance and then of conflict between the two countries.”—Raymond L. Garthoff, Brookings Institution

“The volume is essential reading for anyone interested in the highly dynamic and increasingly international field of Cold War Studies.”—Michael H. Hunt, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill