🗣️ Stalin and the secret speech
In February 1956 Khrushchev attacked Stalin's rule in a secret speech. Mao thought it harmed the communist cause. Historians also think he was uneasy because he too was praised as a great leader.
The Cultural Revolution and Its Impact, 1965-76 » The Sino-Soviet Split and the Chinese Economy
What you'll learn this session
Study time: 30 minutes
Edexcel spec: Paper 2 Section B, Breadth study B4, Key topic 4
- Why Mao and Khrushchev fell out between 1956 and 1960
- How the Soviet Union pulled out its experts and help in 1960
- What this did to China's factories, trade and growth
- Why China turned to self-reliance
In the 1950s China and the Soviet Union were close allies. By the early 1960s they were bitter rivals. This lesson explains why, and what it meant for the Chinese economy. The quarrel was open by 1960, several years before the Cultural Revolution began in 1966.
Key terms:
- Sino-Soviet split: the break in relations between communist China and the Soviet Union, which grew from 1956 and became open in 1960.
- Peaceful coexistence: Khrushchev's policy that communist and capitalist countries could live side by side without war.
- Revisionist: the insult Mao used for a communist who, in his view, had given up the true, revolutionary ideas of Marx and Lenin.
- Self-reliance: making what the country needs by its own efforts, without outside help.
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Unlock This CourseFriends in the 1950s
After 1949 the new communist government needed a partner. The Soviet Union, led by Stalin until his death in 1953, signed a treaty of friendship with China, lent it money and sent experts to help build its factories. The two countries were both communist, and each said it was leading the cause. Nikita Khrushchev became the Soviet leader after Stalin.
Mao respected Stalin but was less impressed by Khrushchev. Mao saw himself as the senior figure in world communism, with more experience of revolution. That pride made quarrels more likely.
Why did Mao and Khrushchev fall out?
🌎 Peaceful coexistence
Khrushchev wanted peace with the USA. Mao believed capitalist powers should be opposed, and he called Khrushchev a revisionist for going soft.
🏭 The Great Leap Forward
In 1958 Mao said communes would let China race ahead. Soviet leaders criticised the idea as a mistake. Mao felt China no longer needed to copy Moscow.
💥 Atomic weapons and borders
The Soviet Union stopped helping China build an atomic bomb in 1959-60. In 1959 it also stayed neutral when China had a border clash with India, and Khrushchev met US President Eisenhower. In October 1959 he visited Beijing and had a bitter argument with Mao.
By 1960 each side was attacking the other in public. The quarrel was about ideas, but also about power and national pride: who led the communist world, and whether China would take orders from Moscow.
The withdrawal of Soviet help, 1960
In the summer of 1960 Khrushchev took a drastic step. The Soviet Union recalled its experts from China, well over a thousand of them, and cancelled many agreements. Many left in a few weeks, some taking plans and drawings with them.
China could not hide how much it needed them. Many of its new factories and mines had been built to Soviet designs and with Soviet machinery.
Effects on the Chinese economy
- Unfinished projects. Factories and power stations half built with Soviet help were halted or finished slowly. Chinese engineers had to work out for themselves what the experts had left unexplained.
- Shortages of parts and technology. Machines of Soviet design needed Soviet spare parts. New technical knowledge stopped arriving, which held back heavy industry.
- Repayments. China still had to repay the loans it had taken. This was a heavy burden when the great famine was killing millions and food had to be bought abroad.
- A worse crisis. The split came on top of the failure of the Great Leap Forward, so industry fell sharply in 1961 and 1962. Historians disagree on how much to blame the split, but most think the Great Leap Forward did more damage.
- Trade changed. China traded less with the Soviet bloc and more with Japan and Western countries, including grain from Canada and Australia.
The turn to self-reliance
Mao made a virtue of necessity. China, he said, must rely on its own efforts. Self-reliance became the main slogan of the economy. The Daqing oilfield became the model: from 1964 factories were told, “In industry, learn from Daqing”, as an example of Chinese workers doing a big job with little help. In October 1964 China exploded its first atomic bomb, built by its own scientists.
Self-reliance gave China pride, and its leaders could say they owed nothing to Moscow. But it also left China more cut off from foreign technology, at a time when it was poor.
Change and continuity
What changed: China went from heavy reliance on the Soviet Union in the 1950s to going it alone in the 1960s. What stayed the same: China was still a communist one-party state, and Mao still led it. The factories built with Soviet help also stayed and kept producing. Relations with the Soviet Union stayed bad for many years.
Common mistakes
Common mistakes
- Saying the split began in 1960. It grew from 1956, and 1960 was the point at which it became open and damaging.
- Blaming the Soviet withdrawal for the whole crisis of 1959-62. It made things worse, but the Great Leap Forward was the main cause.
- Writing only one cause when asked for two. One cause alone can score no more than half marks.
- Saying the Soviet Union stopped being communist. The quarrel was between two communist states.
Exam-style question
Explain TWO causes of the Sino-Soviet split. [8 marks]
Model answer
One cause was the disagreement over how to deal with the West. In 1956 Khrushchev began to talk of peaceful coexistence with capitalist countries, and in 1959 he met President Eisenhower in the USA. Mao believed that capitalist powers had to be opposed, and he called Khrushchev a revisionist who had given up revolutionary ideas. This mattered because each man claimed to lead the communist world, so the disagreement turned into a public quarrel about who was right.
A second cause was Mao's pride in China's own path, shown in the Great Leap Forward. In 1958 Mao launched the communes and claimed that China could build socialism faster than the Soviet Union. Soviet leaders criticised the communes as a mistake, and in 1959-60 the Soviet Union also stopped helping China build an atomic bomb. Mao saw this as an attempt to keep China weak and dependent, so he felt less need to follow Moscow. The quarrel became so bitter that in 1960 the Soviet Union withdrew its experts from China.
What lifts this to the top level: each cause is backed by precise knowledge and explained as a reason why relations broke down, rather than just listed.
Exam tip
For each cause, write what it was, give a date or fact, then finish with a sentence that begins “This led to the split because...”.
Recap
- China and the Soviet Union were allies in the 1950s, but Mao and Khrushchev fell out from 1956.
- The causes were Khrushchev's attack on Stalin, peaceful coexistence, the Great Leap Forward, atomic weapons and Mao's pride.
- In 1960 the Soviet Union withdrew its experts and cancelled many agreements.
- China suffered unfinished projects, parts shortages and loan repayments, and traded more with Japan and the West.
- Mao turned the crisis into a policy of self-reliance, shown by Daqing and the atomic bomb of 1964.