Mending Fences: The Evolution of Moscow's China Policy from Brezhnev to Yeltsin Book

Mending Fences illuminates the forces driving Moscow's China policy, from the Ussuri River clashes in 1969 to the "strategic partnership" of the 1990s. Elizabeth Wishnick, noted expert on the Russia and China, analyzes the efforts of Soviet leaders simultaneously to maintain their supremacy in the international communist movement, defend their borders from a perceived China threat, and insure the compliance of regional authorities in enforcing China policy. Although a consensus in favor of containing China prevailed within the Moscow policy community throughout the 1970s, by the early 1980s debates emerged between members of the "containment coalition" and their reform-minded colleagues who argued for greater trade and other contacts with the Chinese. Major shifts in China policy came with changes in the Soviet leadership, most notably in the mid-1980s. Parallel reform efforts in the two countries facilitated a rapprochement, which culminated in a dramatic summit meeting in May 1989 in Beijing, just as student demonstrations enveloped the Chinese capital. After years of confrontation, Soviet and Chinese leaders struggled to insulate their renewed friendship from a series of domestic upheavals, from the Tiananmen Square massacre to the collapse of the Soviet Union. In the post-Soviet era, as many Russians became disenchanted with Western models of market-democracy and with their country's sharply curtailed role in international affairs, the Yeltsin administration touted a growing "strategic partnership" with China. Wishnick outlines the successes of Russian-Chinese cooperation and analyzes the main barriers to full-scale partnership, including historical grievances, limited economic ties, tensions in regional relations. Despite ongoing efforts by Russian and Chinese leaders to resolve these issues, she concludes that the future of the Sino-Russian partnership will depend on an unpredictable interplay of forces of domestic and international change. Mending Fences is the result of a decade of research in Moscow, Beijing, and the regions along the Russo-Chinese border. Fluent in Russian and Chinese, the author has drawn on recently declassified documents from the archives of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party, the Soviet Foreign Ministry, the KGB, and the Khabarovsk Regional Communist Party; numerous interviews with influential Russian and Chinese officials and scholars; and regional and national periodicals and books from both Russia and China. The first work in recent years to analyze Russian-Chinese relations from Moscow's perspective, Mending Fences is a necessary addition to the literature on the late Cold-War era and the strategic triangle between the United States, the Soviet Union, and the People's Republic of China. It provides critical new insights for policymakers, scholars, and other analysts of post-Cold-War foreign policy who are seeking to understand and respond to patterns of great power relations in Northeast Asia. As a significant case study of the politics of foreign policymaking, the book will be of great value to readers with a general interest in international relations, as well as to specialists in Russian and Chinese studies.Read More