Uncertain Partners: Stalin, Mao, and the Korean War

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Stanford University Press, 1993 - Political Science - 393 pages
Uncertain partners tells for the first time the inside story of the creation of the Sino-Soviet alliance and the origins of the Korean War. Using major new documentary sources, including cables and letters between Mao Zedong and Stalin, and interviews with key Russian, Chinese, and Korean participants, the book focuses on the domestic and foreign policy decision-making in all three countries from 1945 through October 1950.

The authors examine the complex relations between Stalin, Chiang Kai-shek, and Mao during the last year of the Chinese civil war and the emergence of the Cold War. They show how the interplay of perceptions, national security policies, and personalities shaped those relations and were used by the North Korean leader Kim Il Sung to win backing for the invasion of South Korea. The authors also examine the Sino-Soviet alliance, drawing on hitherto unknown secret protocols and understandings and the records of high-level planning that led to the invasion and to the Chinese intervention in Korea.

The book is illustrated with 42 photographs and two maps and is the fourth volume in the series, Studies in International Security and Arms Control, sponsored by the Center for International Security and Arms Control at Stanford University.

 

Contents

Stalin Mao and the Chinese Civil War 19451948 I
1
Prelude to Negotiations
36
The Making of the Alliance
76
End Game
110
The Decision for War in Korea
130
China Enters the Korean War
168
Summing Up
203
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About the author (1993)

Sergei Goncharov, formerly with the Far Eastern Institute at the Academy of Sciences, Moscow, is now an advisor to Boris Yeltsin and a member of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. John W. Lewis is Haas Professor of Chinese Politics at Stanford University. Xue Litai is Research Associate at the Center for International Security and Arms Control at Stanford.

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