Sören Urbansky
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780691181684
- eISBN:
- 9780691195445
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691181684.003.0009
- Subject:
- History, Russian and Former Soviet Union History
This chapter examines the development of Sino-Soviet relations and their impact on the Argun borderland from the post-Mao and post-Brezhnev years to the early 1990s. It explores how the boundary ...
More
This chapter examines the development of Sino-Soviet relations and their impact on the Argun borderland from the post-Mao and post-Brezhnev years to the early 1990s. It explores how the boundary between the two communist states gradually became permeable again through center-driven political and economic reconciliation between the two countries and how, with slackening control at the border and the simultaneous political and economic power breakdown of the Soviet Union, informal cross-border contacts grew as well. While the border was still heavily guarded, the borderland soon slipped out of the control of the metropole, at least on the Soviet side of the barbed-wire fence. Indeed, the chapter argues that local initiatives accelerated the process of rapprochement between the two sides. Officially approved contact channels were quickly replaced by zones created by the local border people.Less
This chapter examines the development of Sino-Soviet relations and their impact on the Argun borderland from the post-Mao and post-Brezhnev years to the early 1990s. It explores how the boundary between the two communist states gradually became permeable again through center-driven political and economic reconciliation between the two countries and how, with slackening control at the border and the simultaneous political and economic power breakdown of the Soviet Union, informal cross-border contacts grew as well. While the border was still heavily guarded, the borderland soon slipped out of the control of the metropole, at least on the Soviet side of the barbed-wire fence. Indeed, the chapter argues that local initiatives accelerated the process of rapprochement between the two sides. Officially approved contact channels were quickly replaced by zones created by the local border people.
Sören Urbansky
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780691181684
- eISBN:
- 9780691195445
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691181684.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, Russian and Former Soviet Union History
This chapter considers further breakdowns in Sino-Soviet relations. It introduces collectivization and other radical early Soviet programs of domestication that prohibited rather than regulated ...
More
This chapter considers further breakdowns in Sino-Soviet relations. It introduces collectivization and other radical early Soviet programs of domestication that prohibited rather than regulated cross-border contacts and shows how they altered the political, ethnic, economic, and social landscapes in the upper Argun basin. After 1917, the new leadership in Moscow professed commitment to anti-imperialism, declaring equality with China. When the Soviet regime started consolidating its power along its borders with China, disregarding earlier promises to renounce tsarist privileges in that nation, it continued down the avenue that the tsarist government had pursued decades earlier. For its part, ignoring Bolshevik diplomatic maneuvers, the Chinese sought to exploit the roiling disorder of revolutionary Russia.Less
This chapter considers further breakdowns in Sino-Soviet relations. It introduces collectivization and other radical early Soviet programs of domestication that prohibited rather than regulated cross-border contacts and shows how they altered the political, ethnic, economic, and social landscapes in the upper Argun basin. After 1917, the new leadership in Moscow professed commitment to anti-imperialism, declaring equality with China. When the Soviet regime started consolidating its power along its borders with China, disregarding earlier promises to renounce tsarist privileges in that nation, it continued down the avenue that the tsarist government had pursued decades earlier. For its part, ignoring Bolshevik diplomatic maneuvers, the Chinese sought to exploit the roiling disorder of revolutionary Russia.
