ing, rooted in the ideologically motivated belief that sooner or later "objective" forces would compel the capitalist enemies to behave that way he wanted them to behave. It is also possible, and not mutually exclusive, that he was making a disingenuous argument to persuade the Chinese to go on fighting, thus perpetuating their dependence on him while keeping the United States engaged. He is certainly not helpful in advancing any practical proposals to induce an armistice, insisting instead on demands that he knew were unacceptable to the U.S. side.

Playing a weak hand as a demandeur, Zhou has the difficult task of convincing the Soviet ruler to provide enough material assistance for both the prosecution of the war and China's economic development while dissuading him from blocking a compromise that alone could lead to the termination of hostilities. By dwelling on China's determination to fight on for several more years, if necessary, rather than to make any concessions, Zhou secures Stalin's promises of huge military and economic assistance. He makes good use of the Soviet leader's fascination with turning China into the "arsenal of Asia" and his support for the Chinese conquest of Tibet, though he sidetracks Stalin's unsolicited advice to expel the Portuguese "scum" from the enclave of Macau. At the same time, they both agree not to provoke the Americans by acceding to the North Korean request for the bombing of South Korea-an escalation Stalin refuses to authorize with the priceless explanation that the air force belongs to the state and could therefore not be used by the Chinese "volunteers."

Zhou Enlai fares less well in trying to break the deadlock in the armistice negotiations caused by the disputes about the disposition of the Chinese and North Korean prisoners of war unwilling to be repatriated. While professing China's insistence on the complete repatriation of all prisoners, he nevertheless outlines to Stalin his plan for the transfer of the unwilling ones to a neutral country, such as India; noting the inconsistency, Stalin demurs. Nor does Zhou succeed any better with his alternative proposal that the armistice be concluded first and the question of the captives be settled later. The inconclusive outcome of the discussion about this key issue was a victory for Stalin, which Zhou papers over by gratefully accepting his "instructions," which the Soviet leader pre

The records of the 1949/50 Stalin-Mao conversations—the only face-to-face meeting between the two dictators have topped the secret documents wish-list of many a Cold War historian. As often happens in such cases, when the parcel is finally unwrapped the contents prove to be somewhat disappointing. Gone is the high drama of various memoirs, according to which the monologues of the two giants circled each other but never touched, each too preoccupied with his own agenda to address the concerns of the other. On the contrary, these conversations are rather businesslike, not unlike discussions recorded when the head of the new subsidiary is visiting the company president.

But the transcripts help us to set the record straight. They show the Soviet leader in the role of the cautious statesman, whose experience in international relations and the building of socialism enabled him to dispense "advice" to his Chinese friends. On foreign affairs, Stalin told the Chinese not to engage the United States or other imperialists in armed conflict, not on Taiwan nor anywhere else. The reference here goes back to Stalin's unfortunate remarks to Chinese communist emissary Liu Shaoqi the previous summer on the Chinese taking up "the leading position" in making revolution in the East. When Mao took Stalin on his word, and in October-November 1949 had presented plans for a Chinese intervention in Indochina, he had had his fingers slapped by the vozhd (supreme leader). While in Mos

cow, Mao and Zhou Enlai guarded themselves well against bringing up regional problems unless invited to do so by their hosts.

The most interesting part of the conversations concerns Sino-Soviet relations. Stalin initially turned down Mao's wish for a new treaty between the two countries, and instead proposed limited changes to the 1945 treaty, using U.S. and British complicity at Yalta in wrestling Soviet concessions from Jiang Jieshi's [Chiang Kai-shek's] regime as his main reason to leave the main part of that treaty intact. Only after Mao's long and idle wait in Moscow over the New Year holidays and the Chairman's increasingly desperate conversations thereafter with various Soviet officials-Molotov, Vyshinski, Mikoyan, and ambassador Roshchin-did Stalin relent.

The January 22 conversation, held just after Zhou Enlai had arrived in Moscow and talks on a new treaty had started, showed Stalin at his magnanimous best. “To hell with" the Yalta treaty, Stalin said. He was willing to restore to China some of the concessions Chiang had given him five years earlier, even if the imperialists undoubtedly would protest such an altruistic act on Stalin's behalf. (It would have been interesting to know how this absurd line of argument struck the Chinese on that winter's night 45 years ago.) We can still only guess about Stalin's real motives. A wish to keep the advantageous provisions of the 1945 treaty? Very likely. An unwillingness to proclaim the Sino-Soviet alliance to the world (and especially to the United States)? Quite possibly, although Stalin's fears of a confrontation with the Americans seem to have been at an ebb that winter.

The rest of the conversation really formed the start of the detailed negotiations of a new treaty which Zhou Enlai and Andrei Vyshinski continued and which ended in the Treaty of Friendship, Alliance, and Mutual Assistance and other agreements signed on February 14. Throughout these negotiations the Soviets held to a hard bargain, insisting on getting new advantages in return for their economic and military assistance and their relinquishing of old prerogatives. The Soviet negotiating strategy both offended and puzzled the Chinese-on the one hand they were treated like “a vassal, not an ally," on the other hand they just could not make economic sense of many of the Soviet demands. What really hurt Mao and his col

leagues were Soviet references to Xinjiang, Mongolia, and (to a lesser extent) Manchuria: in Mao's image six years later these areas were "turned into spheres of influence of the USSR." (See Mao's conversation with Yudin, 31 March 1956, reprinted elsewhere in this issue of the Bulletin.)

The centerpiece of Stalin's conversations with Zhou Enlai in Moscow in the summer of 1952 is the search for an armistice in Korea, a solution which at this stage both allies wanted, but which was held up by Stalin's ceaseless maneuvering on the issue. The Soviet leader most likely wanted the Chinese to go firmly on record in requesting a ceasefire (possibly to be arranged by Moscow) and to back away from their position from the previous summer, when Stalin had wanted an end to the war and Mao had turned him down. In his conversations with Zhou, Stalin paid lip-service to Mao's previous position, while underlining that the Chinese and the North Koreans should not undertake further offensives and could postpone the contentious POW issues until after an armistice had been signed. But neither Stalin nor Zhou would admit to the other that they were looking for a way out of the war against the United States and its allies.

*

"To hell with Yalta!”— Stalin Opts for a New Status Quo

by Vladislav Zubok

The two transcripts of conversations during the Stalin-Mao talks in December 1949-February 1950 provide a unique insight into Stalin's doubts and second thoughts about the creation of the SinoSoviet alliance. Although the groundwork for holding the summit meeting had been laid during an exchange of secret high-level missions over the previous year (Anastas Mikoyan's visit to China in February 1949 and Liu Shaoqi's trip to Moscow in JulyAugust), there were still unresolved issues and obstacles on the path to the new alli

ance. One issue was the matter of Soviet interests in Northeast China. Another was the invisible presence of the Americans at the Sino-Soviet negotiating table and the possible consequences of the alliance for vital Soviet broad interests, not only in the

Far East. Many other issues involving Chinese and Soviet interests were also on the table.

But the delicate and complicated question of establishing a personal relationship between Stalin and Mao also mattered greatly, and the tacit struggle between the two great revolutionary personalities is as important in understanding the talks between them in Moscow as their substance. At first, Stalin seems to have succeeded in impressing Mao with his posture as world leader and magnanimous emperor. Shi Zhe, Mao's interpreter, recalls that at the welcoming banquet Stalin seemed strongly interested in developing a new relationship with China. "The victory of the Chinese revolution will change the balance of the whole world," he quoted Stalin as saying. "More weight will be added to the side of international revolution."1 According to the official Soviet record of the 16 December 1949 conversation, Mao asked what was the likelihood that a peaceful "breathing spell" would last for the next 3-5 years. Stalin seemed to sound even more optimistic than the previous July, when Liu Shaoqi had asked a similar question. There was no immediate threat to China, he said, because "Japan has yet to stand up on its feet and is thus not ready for war; America, though it screams war, is actually afraid of war more than anything; Europe is afraid of war; essentially, there is nobody to fight with China...." In the most significant breach with the framework of Yalta, Stalin suggested that "peace depends" on the alliance between the two communist powers. "If we continue to be friendly, peace can last not only 5-10 years, but 20-25 years and perhaps even longer."

Shi Zhe recalls that the conversation became uneasy, because Mao avoided speaking about the terms of a future Sino-Soviet treaty, waiting for Soviet initiative. Mao presented a different version to the USSR ambassador to the PRC, Pavel Yudin, six years later: "During my first meeting with Stalin I submitted a proposal to conclude a [new] state treaty, but Stalin evaded a response. Subsequently, Stalin avoided any meetings with me."2 The official Soviet record of the meeting provides a much more vivid picture of this episode.3

When Mao asked about the treaty, Stalin immediately presented him with three options: to announce the preservation of the 1945 treaty, to announce "impending

changes" to the treaty, or (without announcement) to proceed with changes “right now." In other words, Stalin had flatly reneged on his commitment-relayed to Mao via Mikoyan the previous February4-to discard what the Chinese regarded as an "unequal" treaty. Stalin reminded Mao that the 1945 treaty "was concluded between the USSR and China as a result of the Yalta Agreement which provided for the main points of the treaty (the question of the Kurile Islands, South Sakhalin, Port Arthur, etc.). That is, the given treaty was concluded, so to speak, with the consent of America and England. Keeping in mind this circumstance, we, within our inner circle, have decided not to modify any of the points of this treaty for now, since a change in even one point could give America and England the legal grounds to put forward a proposal to raise questions about modifying also the treaty's provisions concerning the Kurile Islands, South Sakhalin, etc."

Why this sudden change of mind? One plausible explanation is that the cautious Soviet leader still wanted to know more about the American reaction to the creation of the People's Republic of China and to the Sino-Soviet talks. While the Truman Administration and the U.S. Congress coped with the "loss of China" and nervously monitored the news from Moscow, Stalin preferred to wait. However, his last argument shows that there were not only immediate concerns at play. Even in late 1949, after the Cold War had unmistakably broken out, Stalin still found it pyschologically difficult to part decisively with the Yalta agreements, which had represented a cornerstone of Soviet diplomacy. He understood that the issue of new Soviet borders in the Far East and the existence of Soviet outposts in Manchuria constituted one facet of an indivisible foreign policy package, linked to the peace treaty with Japan. To destroy this package, which was the crowning achievement of Stalin as a statesman and a foundation of the USSR's international legitimacy, was not an easy thing to do. For decades after Stalin's death, Soviet leaders from Molotov and Khrushchev to Brezhnev and Gromyko considered themselves duty-bound to safeguard and confirm "the results of Yalta" which signified international recognition and acceptance of Soviet legitimacy and the boundaries of its "external empire."

The Soviet leader must have known

from previous months of contacts and correspondence that it would be hard for the Chinese, and Mao in particular, to retain the old treaty which Stalin had concluded with the Guomindang (GMD). Therefore, he tried to sweeten the bitter pill by telling Mao that it would be possible to preserve the existing treaty only "formally," while changing it “in effect,” that is, “formally maintaining the Soviet Union's right to station its troops in Port Arthur while, at the request of the Chinese government, actually withdrawing the Soviet Armed forces currently stationed there." (He quickly added, however, that if the Chinese desired the Soviet troops to remain, they could do so “by request of the Chinese government" for the next 2, 5, 10, or even 20 years.) Stalin also expressed willingness to alter some points concerning the ownership and exploitation of the ChineseChangchun railroad.

Stalin's new position must have struck Mao like a bolt of lightning (the final proof, though, will come only in the Chinese leader's correspondence surrounding the meeting). But Mao did not explicitly object. Instead, he humbly admitted that during the discussions in Beijing of a future Sino-Soviet treaty the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership had "not taken into account the American and English positions regarding the Yalta agreement. We must act in a way that is best for the common cause," Mao said, according to the Soviet record. "This question merits further consideration. However, it is already becoming clear that the treaty should not be modified at the present time." Mao also admitted that Soviet control over Port Arthur (Lushun) and the Chinese-Changchun railroad "corresponds to the interests of China."

No language, however, could conceal the divergent priorities of the two leaders. When Mao indirectly asked the Soviet leader "to send volunteer pilots or secret military detachments to speed up the conquest of Formosa [Taiwan]," Stalin promised only "to consider" such assistance and advised Mao to "organize an uprising" on the GMDcontrolled island as a possible alternative to a military assault. Stalin was careful not to indicate that he wished to curb the nationalist ambitions of the Chinese revolutionaries, yet in essence that was what his words implied. Again and again, Stalin repeated that the "most important" thing was to avoid giving the Americans a "pretext to inter

vene." At the same time, Stalin encouraged the Chinese to "frighten the imperialists a bit" by probing the positions of the British and French in Hong Kong, Burma, and Indochina, i.e. in the South and far from the Soviet security perimeter.

Eventually, in their initial conversation, both leaders decided to drop the issue of the treaty, and moved to discuss other issues. When Mao inquired whether Zhou Enlai should travel to Moscow concerning the treaty, Stalin replied benignly and cryptically that this was a question that "you should decide for yourselves. Zhou may be needed in regard to other matters." The ambiguity of this response, perhaps aggravated by translation, may well have contributed to Mao's impression that Stalin did not want to discuss a new treaty. The meeting ended without any specific proposals from either side, and in the coming weeks Stalin and Mao engaged in a tacit war of nerves. Some other factors intervened as well, particularly a report from Soviet advisor I.V. Kovalev (who had been a Stalin emissary to Mao) stating that Mao was neither a real "Marxist" nor strong enough to resist pressure from "the right-wing of the [Chinese] national bourgeoisie, which has pro-American inclinations."5

For whatever reason, Stalin decided to let Mao cool down (and cool his heels), and to gain more time himself to gauge the international response to their meeting, and suggested resuming talks only on 2 January 1950, more than two weeks later. Before calling Mao, however, Stalin sent Molotov and Mikoyan for a reconnaissance to his Blizhnita dacha where Mao was quartered. Molotov recalled that "Stalin hadn't received him [Mao] for some days after he arrived. Stalin told me, 'Go and see what sort of fellow he is."" Molotov returned and allegedly reported that it would be a good idea to receive Mao for another meeting. "He was a clever man, a peasant leader, a kind of Chinese Pugachev [a Russian peasant revolutionary]. He was far from a Marxist, of course...."6 The concerns about Mao's political and ideological face played, however, a secondary role in Stalin's change of mind the international situation was far more important. Finally, as Molotov informed Mao on January 2, Stalin decided to jettison the old Sino-Soviet treaty and with it his commitment to the Yalta arrangements in the Far East. Mao jubilantly reported the news to

Beijing: "Comrade Stalin has agreed to Comrade Zhou Enlai's arrival here and to the signing of a new Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Alliance, as well as agreements on credit, trade, civil aviation, and others."7

In Mao's estimate, the crucial factor was that Great Britain and India recognized the PRC in January. In fact, a more important development was the conclusion of the Truman Administration's reassessment of its Far Eastern strategy. Washington decided to keep a hands-off policy toward Taiwan and to focus instead on the defense of its essential interests in other Pacific areas it deemed critical, particularly Japan and Southeast Asia, including Thailand, Malaya, and Indonesia. The new American policy was enshrined secretly on 30 December 1949 in a classified document, NSC-48/ 2, announced by Truman in a press conference on 5 January 1950, and spelled out publicly a week later by Secretary of State Dean G. Acheson in his "defense perimeter" speech at the National Press Club.8 One may speculate that Stalin learned about the essence of this new policy before these official pronouncements, from various leaks and intelligence sources in Washington and London. It is even possible that, as with his reversal of the initial Soviet response to the Marshall Plan in the spring of 1947,9 an intelligence coup might have been a pivotal factor in prompting Stalin to reassess his Far Eastern strategy.

From Stalin's perspective, all this appeared as a new American doctrine for the Far East, a crucial change in the international situation which seemed to signify a U.S. retreat from the Asian mainland and implicit acceptance of the Sino-Soviet alliance as a new geopolitical fait accompli. Stalin might also have suspected that he no longer had anything to lose if he openly rejected a now-outmoded "spirit of Yalta." On the other hand, Stalin knew from many sources (Kovalev among them) that other members of the CCP leadership, such as Zhou Enlai, had been enthusiastic about the prospect of balancing Soviet influence in China with an American presence. By sticking to the old treaty, Stalin could only play into the hands of the British and of Acheson, who eagerly sought to discover an opening through which to drive a wedge between Stalin and his most promising and significant potential ally in the Far East.

Interestingly, Stalin did not tell his subordinates about this turnabout in his attitude toward signing a new treaty. On January 6, Mao met with Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Vyshinsky, in the presence of Kovalev, the Chinese ambassador in Moscow, and interpreters Nikolai Fedorenko and Shi Zhe, to discuss joint Sino-Soviet tactics at the United Nations, where the Nationalists continued to occupy China's seat on the Security Council. When Mao mentioned the necessity of a new treaty, Vyshinsky repeated the official line that any change in the 1945 treaty "could be used by the Americans and the British as a pretext for revision of those parts of the treaty, whose change would hurt the interests of the Soviet Union and China. This is undesir

able and must not happen."10 Soviet actions at the United Nations, however, had already begun to reflect Stalin's new line: the alliance with communist China against the U.S.-led coalition of capitalist states.

At the second official meeting with Mao (now accompanied by Zhou Enlai, who had arrived in Moscow two days before), on 22 January 1950, Stalin sounded like a changed man. "We believe that these agreements [of 1945] need to be changed, although earlier we had thought that they could be left intact," he said. "The existing agreements, including the treaty, should be changed, because war against Japan figures at the very heart of the treaty. Since the war is over and Japan has been crushed, the situation has been altered, and now the treaty has become an anachronism." The most salient feature of the discussion was the omnipresence of the Japanese threat and a virtual absence of discussion of the United States and the new American policy; nor did anybody then raise Acheson's speech of January 12. Only later, during the discussion of the specific provisions of the new treaty, did the following exchange occur:

Mao Zedong: We must act so as to take into account the interests of both sides, China and the Soviet Union. Stalin: True. We believe that the agreement concerning Port Arthur is not equitable.

Mao Zedong: But changing this agreement goes against the decisions of the Yalta Conference?!

Stalin: True, it does-and to hell with it! If we make a decision to revise

treaties, we must go all the way. It is true that for us this entails certain inconveniences, and we will have to struggle against the Americans. But we are already reconciled to that.

Mao Zedong: With regard to this matter, we are only concerned by the fact that it could lead to undesirable consequences for the USSR.

Stalin sought to convince Mao that the Soviet Union would risk a conflict with the United States for the sake of its new Asian ally. Yet, he wanted to extract from the Chinese a proper price for this willingness, primarily in the form of recognition of Soviet security interests in Manchuria. This time Stalin did not miscalculate. Mao now accepted Stalin's proposal, put forth at the first meeting, that the Soviet Union would retain its legal rights in Port Arthur, at least until a peace treaty with Japan was signed. The Chinese leader also agreed to keep the Dairen port closed to the Americans.

The Chinese attempted to bargain when it came to Soviet rights to control the Chinese Changchun railroad, the main strategic artery between the USSR and Liaotung (the Port Arthur peninsula). But Stalin and Molotov defended those rights tooth and nail. During the talks on the ministerial level, the Soviet side succeeded in imposing on the PRC several secret agreements. The Additional Agreement to the treaty stipulated that "on the territory of the Far Eastern region and the Central Asian republics, as well as on the territory of Manchuria and Xinjiang," both the USSR and the PRC "would not provide to foreigners the rights. for concessions, and would not tolerate activities of industrial, financial, trade and other enterprises, communities and organizations, with the participation, directly or indirectly, of the [financial] capital of the third countries or the citizens of those countries." Chinese also signed a "Protocol on the unimpeded transportation of Soviet troops and military property on the Chinese Changchun railroad in case of the threat of war in the Far East." This secret agreement allowed the Soviets to transport troops and military equipment and supplies quickly, without paying any tariffs to the Chinese and without any Chinese customs control. 12

The

The Sino-Soviet Treaty, signed on 14 February 1950, satisfied Stalin's search for the preservation of the status quo (where it

benefitted the USSR) in times of upheaval. It also made the CCP leadership feel more secure in its international isolation. At the same time, the treaty created a new revolutionary-imperial synergy in the Far East. The Chinese communists, backed by Moscow, wanted to complete the reunification of the country and to carry the banner of revolution further, to Burma and Indochina. For Stalin the alliance marked the end of the status quo strategy of Yalta and the opening of a second Cold War against the United States in the Far East. Notwithstanding the fact that in both countries hundreds of millions of people yearned for peace and reconstruction, the new alliance in reality signalled military mobilization and confrontation-as events in Korea would soon demonstrate.

1. Shi Zhe's account is quoted in Chen Jian, China's Road to the Korean War: The Making of the SinoAmerican Confrontation (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 79-80.

2. P. Yudin, "Zapis besedy s tovarischem Mao," Problemi Dalnego Vostok [Problems of the Far East] 5 (1994), 105-106.

3. This difference was previously noted in Sergei N. Goncharov, John Lewis, and Xue Litai, Uncertain Partners: Stalin, Mao, and the Korean War (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993), 85-86, as one of the authors, Sergei Goncharov, had seen the minutes of the Stalin-Mao talks, which were then still classified, in the Foreign Ministry archives in Moscow.

4. In an undated cable sent to Stalin during the 31 January-7 February 1949 talks with Mao, apparently near the end of the discussions, Mikoyan reported that he had told the Chinese leader that the Soviet government had decided "to repeal this unequal [nespravedlivii] treaty and withdraw its troops from Port Arthur as soon as the peace [treaty] with Japan will be concluded. But if the Chinese communist party... would find expedient an immediate withdrawal of [Soviet] troops [from Port Arthur], then the USSR was ready to do so. As to the accord on the Chinese-Changchun railroad, we [the Soviet] do not consider this treaty unequal, since this railroad had been built primarily with Russian means. Perhaps... in this treaty the principle of equal rights is not fully observed, but we are ready to consider this question and decide it with the Chinese comrades in a

fraternal manner." See Archive of the President, Russian Federation (APRF), f. 39, op. 1, d. 39, Il. 78-79, as quoted in Andrei Ledovskii, “Sekretnaia missiia A.I. Mikoyana v Kitai" [Secret Mission of A.I. Mikoyan to China], Problemy Dalnego Vostoka 3 (1995), 94-105, quotation on p. 100; see also Ledovskii, "Sekretnaia missiia A.I. Mikoyana v Kitai," Problemy Dalnego Vostoka 2 (1995), 97-111.

5. See Goncharov, Lewis, and Litai, Uncertain Partners, 91, 247-249.

6. Molotov Remembers: Inside Kremlin Politics: Conversations with Felix Chuev, ed. Albert Resis (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1993), 81; for the original Russian see Felix Chuev, Sto sorok besed s Molotovim [One hundred and forty conversations with Molotov] (Moscow: TERRA, 1991), 114.

7. See the text of Mao's cable to Beijing of 2 January 1950, as reprinted in Goncharov, Lewis, and Litai, Uncertain Partners, 242.

8. Goncharov, Lewis, and Litai, Uncertain Partners, 98, 101; Melvyn P. Leffler, A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992), 336-337.

9. On the importance of espionage data in the reversal of Soviet policy toward the Marshall Plan, see Mikhail M. Narinsky, "The Soviet Union and the Marshall Plan," in Cold War International History Project Working Paper No. 9 (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 1994), 45-46. 10. See record of meeting in f. 0100, op. 43, d. 8, papka 302, 11. 4-6, Archive of Foreign Policy, Russian Federation (AVPRF), Moscow, cited in B. Kulik, "Kitaiskaiia Narodnaiia Respublika v period stanovleniia (19491952) (Po materialam Arkhiva vneshnei politik RF)" ["The Chinese People's Republic in the founding period (Materials from the Archive of foreign policy of the Russian Federation"], Problemi Danego Vostoka 6 (1994), 77.

11. AVPRF, f. 07, op. 23a, d. 235, papka 18, 1. 134; also in SSSR-KNR (1949-1983): Dokumenti i materiali [Documents and materials on USSR-PRC relations, part one (1949-1983)] (Moscow: Historico-Documentary Department and Far Eastern Department, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the USSR, 1985), 31-32; see also Goncharov, Lewis, and Litai, Uncertain Partners, 121. 12. SSSR-KNR (1949-1983), p. 35.

We are waiting for your answer.

not received any answer from these governments yet. Neither has the Soviet government given its answer. Obviously, the government's proposal Filippov [Stalin] had been inspired by the Americans. The aim of this proposal is to present the Nanjing government as the advocate of the termination of war and a peaceful settlement, while the Communist party of China would be presented as the advocate of the continuation of war, if it would directly reject peace negotiations with Nanjing.

We think we will give the following answer: the Soviet government was and continues to be in favour of the termination of war and the establishment of peace in China, but before agreeing to mediation it would like to know whether the other side the Chinese Communist party-agrees to accept Soviet mediation. Therefore the USSR wishes that the other side-the Chinese Communist party-would be informed of the peace action by the Chinese government, and that the other side would be asked for its agreement to the mediation by the USSR. That is how we are planning to answer and we ask you to inform us whether you agree to this. If you do not, give your advice for a more expedient answer.

We also think that your answer, in case you will be asked for it, should be something like this:

The Chinese Communist party has always been a supporter of peace in China, because the civil war in China had not been started by it, but by the Nanjing government, which should bear all responsibility for the consequences of the war. The Chinese Communist party is in favour of talks with the Guomindang, but without the participation of those war criminals who provoked the civil war in China. The Chinese Communist party is in favour of the direct negotiations with the Guomindang, without any foreign mediators. The Chinese Communist party especially finds it impossible to accept the mediation by a foreign power which takes part in the civil war against the Chinese Popular Liberation forces with its armed forces and navy, because such a power cannot be regarded as neutral and impartial in the liquidation of the war in China.

We think that your answer should be approximately like this. If you do not agree, let us know of your opinion.

As for your visit to Moscow, we think that in the view of the abovementioned circumstances you should, unfortunately, postpone your trip again for some time, because your visit to Moscow in this situation would be used by the enemies to discredit the Chinese Communist party as a force allegedly dependent on Moscow, which, certainly, could bring no benefit to the Communist party of China or to the USSR.

[Source: Archive of the President of the Russian Federation (APRF), f. 45, op. 1, d. 330, pp. 9596.]

* *

Stalin to Mao Zedong, 11 January 1949

As you can see from what you have already received, our draft of your reply to the Guomindang proposal is aimed at the undermining of the peace negotiations. Clearly, the Guomindang would not agree to peace negotiations without foreign powers' mediation, especially that of the USA. It is also clear that the Guomindang will not agree to negotiate without the participation of Jiang Jieshi [Chiang Kaishek] and other war criminals. We assume therefore that the Guomindang would reject peace negotiations on CCP terms. The result will be that the CCP agrees to the peace negotiations and it will be impossible to accuse it of being eager to continue the civil war. The Guomindang, however, will receive the blame for breaking the peace talks. Thus, the peace maneuver of the Guomindang and the USA will be frustrated, and you will be able to continue your victorious war of liberation.

We are waiting for your answer.

Filippov [Stalin]

[Source: APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 330, pp. 97-99.]

Mao Zedong to Stalin, 13 January 1949 Comrade Filippov,

I received your telegram of January 10. 1. We think that the government of the USSR should give the following answer to the note by the Nanjing government proposing that the USSR accepts mediation in the termination of the civil war in China:

The government of the USSR has always wished, and still wishes, to see China as a peaceful, democratic and united country. But it is for the people of China itself to choose the way to achieve peace, unity and democracy in China. The government of the USSR, relying on the principle of noninterference in the other countries' internal affairs, cannot accept mediation between the two sides in the civil war in China.