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accident that the ambush on the Soviet border unit was staged by the Chinese agencies at a time when Bonn started its provocation of holding the election of the Federal President in West Berlin.

The provocation in the area of the Island of Damansky is part of the Maoists' policy which aims at forcing a radical reversal in the foreign and domestic policies of the PR [People's Republic] of China and at transforming the country de facto into a power hostile toward the socialist countries.

The Mao Zedong group has prepared the organization of armed provocations along the Soviet-Chinese border for a long time. The Chinese authorities have been creating artificial tensions at the Soviet-Chinese border since 1960. Since this time the Chinese have undertaken several thousand border violations with provocative goals.

At the beginning of 1967, the number of border violations by Chinese authorities increased sharply. In some districts they tried to install demonstratively border patrols on the islands and those parts of the rivers belonging to the USSR. In December 1967 and in January 1968, the Chinese undertook large provocative actions on the island of Kirkinsi on the Ussuri [River] and in the area of the Kasakevich Canal. On January 23, 1969, the Chinese staged an armed attack on the Island of Damansky.

The border in the area of the Island of Damansky was established according to the Treaty of Beijing of 1860 and the enclosed map which the representatives of Russia and China signed in June 1863. According to the then drawn-up demarcation line the Island of Damansky is located on the territory of the USSR. This line has always been protected by Soviet border guards.

Confronted with the Chinese provocations at the border, the Soviet side, for years, has taken active steps towards a regulation of the situation.

The question of the borderline was discussed in the bilateral Soviet-Chinese Consultations on the Determination of the Borderline in Certain Controversial Areas of 1964. The Soviet side made a number proposals regarding the examination of the controversial border question. The Chinese leadership, however, was determined to let these consultations fail. The Chinese delegation put up the completely untenable demand to recognize the unequal character of the treaties delineating the Soviet-Chi

nese border and raised territorial claims against the Soviet Union about an area of against the Soviet Union about an area of altogether 1,575,000 square kilometer. On July 10, 1964, Mao Zedong declared in a conversation with Japanese members of parliament with regard to the Chinese territorial demands against the Soviet Union that "we have not yet presented the bill for this territory."

On August 22, 1964, the consultations were interrupted. Despite our repeated proposals the Chinese did not resume the conversations and did not react even when the question was mentioned in the Soviet foreign ministry note of August 31, 1967.

Meanwhile the Chinese authorities continued to violate grossly the Soviet-Chinese agreement of 1951 on the regulation of the navigation in the border rivers. In 1967 and 1968 they blew up the consultations of the mixed Soviet-Chinese navigation commission which had been established on the basis of the agreement of 1951.

In the Chinese border areas large military preparations set in (construction of airports, access routes, barracks and depots, training of militia, etc.).

The Chinese authorities consciously conjure up situations of conflict along the border and stage provocations there. On our part, all measures have been taken to avoid an escalation of the situation and to prevent incidents and conflicts. The Soviet border troops have been instructed not to use their arms and, if possible, to avoid armed collisions. The instruction on the non-use of arms was strictly enforced, although the Chinese acted extremely provocatively in many cases, employed the most deceitful tricks, picked fights, and attacked our border guards with stabbing weapons, with steel rod and other such things.

The armed provocation in the area of the Island of Damansky is a logical consequence of this course of the Chinese authorities and is part of a far-reaching plan by Beijing aiming at increasing the Maoists' anti-Soviet campaign.

Since March 3, 1969, the Soviet Embassy in Beijing has been exposed again to an organized siege by specially trained groups of Maoists. Brutal acts of force and rowdylike excesses against the representatives of Soviet institutions are occurring throughout China every day. All over the country, an unbridled anti-Soviet campaign has been kindled. It is characteristic that this whole

campaign assumed a military coloration, that an atmosphere of chauvinistic frenzy has been created throughout the country.

Faced with this situation the CC of the CPSU and the Soviet government are undertaking the necessary steps to prevent further border violations. They will do everything necessary in order to frustrate the criminal intentions of the Mao Zedong group which are to create hostility between the Soviet people and the Chinese people.

The Soviet Government is led in its relations with the Chinese people by feelings of friendship and is intent on pursuing this policy in the future. Ill-considered provocative actions of the Chinese authorities will, however, be decisively repudiated on our part and brought to an end with determination.

[Source: SAMPO-BArch J IV 2/202/359; translation from German by Christian F. Ostermann.]

* *

Document No. 2: Telegram to East German Foreign Ministry from GDR Ambassador to PRC, 2 April 1969

Council of Ministers of the German Democratic Republic The Minister for Foreign Affairs

Berlin, April 2, 1969

Comrade Walter Ulbricht
Willi Stoph
Erich Honecker
Hermann Axen

Berlin

Dear Comrades!

The following is the text of a telegram from Comrade Hertzfeld, Peking, for your information:

"Soviet Chargé stated that there is talk in Hanoi that Ho Chi Minh wants to go to Beijing soon to negotiate at the highest level with the Chinese side since the Vietnamese side is very concerned about the aggravation of Chinese-Soviet relations.

The Ambassador of the Hungarian People's Republic reported that the PR China

and the DRV [Democratic Republic of Vietnam] [earlier] this year signed an agreement on Chinese aid for Vietnam in the sum of 800 million Yen. [.....]

The Chargé was called on the evening of March 21 by Kosygin on direct line from Moscow. Com. Kosygin informed him that he had attempted to contact Mao Zedong through the existing direct telephone line. He was not put through by the Chinese side. If need be the conversation could also be held with Zhou Enlai. (Com. Kosygin was acting at the request of the politburo of the CPSU.)

After various attempts by the Soviet Embassy to contact the Foreign Ministry in this matter, a conversation between Kosygin and Mao Zedong was refused [by the Chinese] under rude abuse of the CPSU. Desire for talks with Zhou was to be communicated [to the Chinese].

3/22 Aide-mémoire by the deputy head of department in the foreign ministry; it stated that, because of the currently existing relations between the Soviet Union and the PR China, a direct telephone line was no longer

The Cold War in Asia: Khabarovsk Conference Highlights Role of Russian Far East

by David L. Wolff

On 26-29 August 1995 an international, interdisciplinary conference focusing on the borderland nature of the Russian Far East took place in Khabarovsk, Russia. Brought together by funds from the Center for Global Partnership (Abe kikin), the Cold War International History Project (CWIHP), and the International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX), 40 scholars made 38 presentations about their papers and responded to questions from the other participants.

A number of papers focused directly on Cold War issues, as can be seen in the full schedule printed below. There was an approximately equal number of papers covering events prior to the Cold War and those more contemporary. General themes touched on in discussions included:

1) the special nature of the Russian Far East as a borderland, historically much more in contact with neighbors than most of Russia:

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2) Russo-Chinese, Russo-Japanese, Russo-Korean and Russo-American diplomatic, economic and cultural relations in Northeast Asia;

3) the special role of the military as a social and economic force in the borderland;

4) the great importance of migration in this region, whether as colonization, intraregional mobility or expulsion, and

5) diaspora communities of the Russian Far East: Chinese, Germans, Japanese, Jews, Koreans and Russians;

The working language of the conference was Russian, although several talks were delivered in English with interpretation into Russian. There were a surprising number of people at the table (actually a big square of tables) fluent in three or more languages and I think everyone met and talked with just about everyone else.

Representatives from local archives presented papers on specific areas of strength and exhibited lists of holdings, covering such themes as Russo-Chinese relations, Chinese and Koreans in the Russian Far East, Russians in China and Birobidzhan. Additionally, aside from myself, six other scholars worked in the Khabarovsk Provin

The CC CPSU considers it necessary to inform you about A.N. Kosygin's conversation with Premier of the State Council of the PRC Zhou Enlai which took place on September 11 of this year in Beijing.

As is well known, relations between the USSR and China, and the leadership of the PRC is to blame for this, are extremely aggravated. The Chinese authorities are exacerbating tension on the border with the Soviet Union. In the PRC, appeals to prepare for war against the USSR are openly made. Trade relations have been reduced to a minimum, scientific-technological and cultural exchanges have ceased, contacts along diplomatic lines are limited. For more than three years ambassadors have been absent from Moscow and Beijing. The antiSoviet policy of the Chinese leadership is being used by the imperialist powers in the struggle against world socialism and the

Communist movement.

In the report of CC CPSU General Secretary L.I. Brezhnev to the Moscow meeting

cial Archive and Russian State Archive of the Far East in Vladivostok. These sites hold materials on such Cold War related topics as border disputes and clashes, mobilizations, the draft, voluntary organizations to aid the Army, civil defense, military education, the military-industrial complex and cross-border contacts (trade, tourism, intergovernmental negotiations, etc.). Two interesting documents from the Khabarovsk archive concerning Sino-Soviet border-tensions appear in translation by Elizabeth Wishnick in this issue of the Bulletin. Russian participants have also made declassification requests in the course of preparing conference papers.

Significantly, a large group of the region's archivally active scholars, Americans, Chinese, Japanese and Russians became aware of the Cold War International History Project's past accomplishments, present activities and future plans. Several are now undertaking research on the Cold War and plan to attend the January 1996 CWIHP conference at the University of Hong Kong on the Cold War in Asia to present findings.

continued on page 206

of Communist and Workers' Parties the course of our policy in relation to China was clearly set forth. The CPSU and the Soviet government, proceeding from its unchanging policy oriented towards an improvement in relations between the USSR and the PRC, has repeatedly appealed to the Chinese leadership with concrete proposals about ways to normalize relations. The pronouncements of the government of the USSR of March 29 and June 13 of this year are very well known. The message of the Council of Ministers of the USSR to the State Council of the PRC sent in July of this year, in which concrete proposals regarding the improvement of contacts between the Soviet Union and China along government lines were put forth, including the organization of a bilateral summit meeting, also served the aims of putting to rights SovietChinese inter-governmental relations.

Undertaking these actions, the CC CPSU and the Soviet government proceeded from and proceeds from a principled course in Soviet-Chinese relations. According to our deep conviction, a softening of tensions in relations between the USSR and the PRC would correspond to the interests of our two countries, and also of the whole Socialist commonwealth overall, would facilitate the activation of the struggle against imperialism, would be an essential support to heroic Vietnam and to the peoples of other countries which are leading the struggle for social and national liberation.

Guided by these considerations, the CC CPSU decided to undertake one more initiative aimed at a softening of the situation in relations between the USSR and the PRC.

The Chinese side responded pretty quickly to our proposal to hold a meeting of A.N. Kosygin, who was present in Hanoi at Ho Chi Minh's funeral, with Zhou Enlai. However, the Chinese response arrived in Hanoi an hour after the departure of the Soviet Party-State delegation to Moscow via Calcutta, and therefore A.N. Kosygin set off for Beijing already from the territory of the Soviet Union.

The meeting of the Soviet delegation headed by Comrade A.N. Kosygin with Zhou Enlai, Li Xiannian, and Xie Fuzhi continued for about four hours. From the Soviet side efforts were applied to assure that the conversation took place in the spirit of a concrete consideration of the knotty issues of inter-governmental Soviet-Chi

nese relations. In this regard, Zhou Enlai's various attempts to introduce into the conversation polemics on issues of ideological disagreements were decisively deflected. The Soviet side firmly declared the immutability of our principled positions and political course in the area of domestic and foreign policy.

A consideration of the situation on the Soviet-Chinese border occupied the central place in the conversation. The sides recognized the abnormality of the existing situation and exchanged opinions regarding the search for paths to the settlement of the border issues. Zhou Enlai declared that "China has no territorial pretensions toward the Soviet Union." At the same time he repeated his previous assertions about the unfair nature of the agreements which define the border, although he said that the Chinese side does not demand that they be annulled and "recognizes the border which exists in accord with these treaties." From the Soviet side a proposal was introduced to move toward the practical preparation for negotiations on border issues. Vis-a-vis these goals, we proposed to organize over the next week or two a meeting between delegations headed by the deputy ministers of foreign affairs of the two countries. In this regard it was noted by us that the place where these negotiations will be held has no particular significance for us. Zhou Enlai responded to our proposal about negotiations and expressed a wish that the negotiations would be held in Beijing.

As the bases for normalization of the situation on the border during the period before a final settlement which could be achieved as the result of negotiations between the delegations of the USSR and the PRC, the following principles were put forth: observance of the existing border, the inadmissibility of armed confrontations, the withdrawal of troops of both sides from direct contact in controversial sectors. It was agreed that issues which arise in relation to the economic activity of citizens of both countries in the controversial sectors will be decided according to the agreement between representatives of the border authorities. Both sides agreed to give an instruction to the appropriate border organizations to resolve misunderstandings which arise in the spirit of benevolence via the path of consultation.

Guided by the instructions of the CC CPSU, the Soviet side put forth concrete proposals on the establishment and development of economic contacts between the USSR

and the PRC. An initiative was revealed by us regarding an expansion of trade, the fulfillment of contracts which had been concluded, the signing of trade protocols for the current and next year, the working out of measures on trade and economic cooperation during the present five-year plan. Zhou Enlai promised to present these proposals to the Politburo of the CC CPC, and expressed his agreement to exchange supplemental lists of products for 1969.

We proposed to the Chinese side to normalize railroad and aviation connections between the two countries, and to reestablish the high-frequency link which had been interrupted by the Chinese authorities in March of this year.

From the Soviet side there also was raised the issue of mutually sending Ambassadors and the creation of conditions for the normal activity of diplomatic representatives.

Zhou Enlai stated that these proposals will be submitted to Mao Zedong.

During the consideration of issues of Soviet-Chinese inter-governmental relations Zhou Enlai stressed that the leadership of the CPC does not intend to curtail its political and ideological speeches against the CPSU and the other fraternal parties. He justified the current forms of "polemics" which are being used by the Beijing leaders as having nothing in common with theoretical discussions, and referred to the statement of Mao Zedong to the effect that "polemics will continue for 10 thousand more years.”

The Soviet side stressed that the CPSU believes that polemics on controversial issues are permissible; however, it is important that they be conducted in an appropriate tone, and argued on a scientific basis. Lies and curses do not add persuasiveness and authority to a polemic, and only humiliate the feelings of the other people and aggravate the relations.

From our side it was also underlined that disagreements between the USSR and the PRC play into the hands of the world imperialism, weaken the Socialist system and the ranks of fighters for national and social liberation. It was noted that over the whole history of the struggle with Communism, imperialism has never received a greater gain than that which it has as a result of the deepening, which is not our fault, of the PRC's differences with the Soviet Union and other Socialist countries.

We declared the provocative nature of the contrived imperialist propaganda to the effect that the Soviet Union allegedly is preparing a preventive strike on China. It was stressed that in the Soviet Union neither the Party nor the government has ever spoken about the unavoidability of war and has not summoned the people to war. All of our documents, party decisions summon the people to peace. We never have said to the people that it is necessary to "pull the belt tighter," that war is unavoidable. Zhou Enlai, in his turn, said that "China has no intentions to attack the Soviet Union." He stressed that from the Chinese side measures will be undertaken not to allow armed confrontations with the USSR.

The conversation took place overall in a constructive, calm atmosphere, despite the sharp posing of a range of issues.

We evaluate the meeting which has taken place with representatives of the Chinese leadership as useful. The CC CPSU and the Soviet government made a decision about the members of the delegation and time frames for their meetings with the Chinese representatives for the realization of the concrete proposals which were put forth in the course of the conversation.

demonstrate a sober and serious approach to the proposals which were put forth by us, that this will frustrate the designs of the imperialist circles to intensify the SovietChinese disagreements, to provoke a conflict between our countries and in this way to weaken the common front of the anti-imperialist struggle.

The normalization of relations between the USSR and the PRC, if they will demonstrate a desire to do this in Beijing, undoubtedly will facilitate the growth of the power edly will facilitate the growth of the power of the camp of Socialism and peace, will correspond to the interests of a strengthening of unit of the anti-imperialist forces and to the successful resolution of the tasks which were posed by the International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties.

[Source: SAMPO-BArch J IV 2/202/359; translation from Russian by Mark H. Doctoroff, National Security Archive.]

1. I would like to thank Malcolm Byrne and Jim Hershberg for their support and advice. Translations of documents nos. 1 and 2 are mine; translation of document No.3 from Russian was provided by Mark Doctoroff (The National Security Archive).

2. On the changing international system see Raymond L. Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation: AmericanSoviet Relations from Nixon to Reagan, rev. ed. (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1994), 228-242; Warren I. Cohen, America in the Age of Soviet Power, 1945-1991 (Cambridge History of American Foreign Relations, vol. IV), (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 186-187.

It goes without saying that for the time being it is still early to make conclusions about the results which this meeting will bring. The anti-Soviet campaign which is continuing in the PRC and also the fact that the agreed text of the communiqué about the meeting was changed, put us on our guard. Upon its publication in the Chinese press it plomacy of Power: Soviet Armed Forces as an Political

had been omitted that both sides conducted "a constructive conversation." Time will tell whether Beijing's intention to move along the path of normalization will be serious or if this is only a tactical move dictated by the circumstances of the aggravated domestic struggle in the PRC and also of that isolation in which the Chinese leadership has found itself as a result of the consistent and firm policy of the Socialist countries, Communist parties, and all forces who have condemned the peculiar positions of the Chinese leadership. We believe it necessary to follow attentively and vigilantly the further development of the situation in China itself, the activity of the Beijing leadership in the sphere of Soviet-Chinese relations, and also the international arena overall.

The CC CPSU and the Soviet government believe that if the Chinese leaders

3. The best study of the crisis based mainly on published U.S., Soviet and Chinese sources is Thomas W. Robinson, "The Sino-Soviet Border Conflict," in Di

Instrument (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1981), 265-313. See also Thomas W. Robinson, "The Sino-Soviet Border Dispute: Background, Development and the March 1969 Clashes," American Political Science Review 66 (December 1972), 1178-1182; and his The Sino-Soviet Border Situation, 1969-1975: Military, Diplomatic, and Political Maneuvering, HI2364-RR (Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y.: Hudson Institute, November 1975). Other accounts of the crisis include Arthur A. Cohen, "The Sino-Soviet Border Crisis of 1969," in Avoiding War: Problems in Crisis Management, ed. Alexander L. George (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1984), 269-296; and Richard Wich, Sino-Soviet Crisis Politics: A Study of Political Change and Communication (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1980). On U.S. policy see National Security Archive, ed., Presidential Directives on National Security From Truman to Clinton (Alexandria, VA: Chadwyck-Healy, 1994), 286.

4. On research in the SED Archives see my "New Research on the GDR," Cold War International History Project Bulletin 4 (Fall 1994), 34, 39-44. 5. Tai Sung An, The Sino-Soviet Territorial Dispute (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1973).

6. Cohen, "Sino-Soviet Border Crisis," 270. 7. Harvey W. Nelson, Power and Insecurity: Beijing,

Moscow & Washington, 1949-1988 (Boulder: Lynne Riener, 1989), chap. 1; Oleg B. Borisov/B. T. Koloskov, Soviet Chinese Relations, 1945-1970 (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1975), 327.

8. Cohen, "Sino-Soviet Border Crisis," 271; Wich, Sino-Soviet Crisis Politics, 27-28; Robinson, "SinoSoviet Border Conflict," 266.

9. Nelson, Power and Insecurity, 68.

10. Cohen, "Sino-Soviet Border Crisis," 275; Nelson, Power and Insecurity, 70; Robinson, "Sino-Soviet Border Conflict,” 268.

11. Nelson, Power and Insecurity, 72.

12. Richard Solomon and Masataka Kosaka, eds., The Soviet Far East Military Buildup, (Dover, MA: Auburn House, 1986), 26-27; Avigdor Haselkorn, The Evolution of Soviet Security Strategy 1965-1975 (New York: Crane & Russak, 1978), 39-42; Nelson, Power and Insecurity, 70.

13. Cited in Nelson, Power and Insecurity, 68. 14. Cohen, "Sino-Soviet Border Crisis," 270-276. 15. On foreign minister Zhou En-lai's role see Han Suyin, Eldest Son: Zhou Enlai and the Making of Modern China (New York: Hill and Wang, 1994), 359. 16. Neville Maxwell, "The Chinese Account of the 1969 Fighting at Chenpao," The China Quarterly 56 (October/December 1973), 730-739; Cohen, "SinoSoviet Border Crisis," 278.

17. Arkady N. Shevchenko, Breaking with Moscow (New York: Knopf, 1985), 164-165. 18. Nelson, Power and Insecurity, 73.

19. Lowell Dittmer, Sino-Soviet Normalization and Its International Implications, 1945-1990 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1992), 191-193. 20. Cohen, "Sino-Soviet Border Crisis," 179. 21. According to Han Suyin, Eldest Son, 369-70, Kosygin was "more alert to the changing situation than Brezhnev," and tried to reach Zhou Enlai but failed "because the young telephone operator in Beijing, full of Cultural Revolution spirit, told Kosygin, "We do not speak to revisionists." See also Dick Wilson, The Story of Zhou Enlai, 1898-1976 (London: Hutchinson, 1984), 270.

22. Wich, Sino-Soviet Crisis Politics, 178.

23. Robinson, "Sino-Soviet Border Conflict," 280. See also O. Edmund Clubb, China & Russia: The "Great Game" (New York: Columbia UP, 1971), 501-506. 24. Wich, Sino-Soviet Crisis Politics, 200. 25. The Kosygin-Zhou Enlai meeting is not mentioned in Suyin, Eldest Son. But see Wilson, Zhou Enlai, 359. Neville Maxwell, "The Chinese Account, 270; Seymor Topping, Journey between Two Chinas (New York: Harper, 1972), 356.

26. Robinson, "Sino-Soviet Border Conflict," 295-313.

Christian F. Ostermann, a doctoral candidate at the University of Hamburg based at the National Security Archive in Washington, D.C., contributes frequently to the Bulletin and authored CWIHP Working Paper 11, "The United States, the East German Uprising of 1953, and the Limits of Rollback." This article was adapted from a longer analysis of SED archival documents on the Sino-Soviet border conflict to be presented at the CWIHP Conference on New Evidence on the Cold War in Asia at the University of Hong Kong in January 1996.

IN THE REGION AND IN THE CENTER: SOVIET REACTIONS TO THE BORDER RIFT

by Elizabeth Wishnick

How did Soviet Communist Party officials and activists in the regions bordering the People's Republic of China respond to the news of Aleksei Kosygin's 11 September 1969 meeting with Zhou Enlai in Beijing? The two documents below, from the State Archive of Khabarovskiy Kray (territory) in the Russian Far East, show the reactions of several leading party members in the frontier region to Central Committee and Soviet government efforts to defuse the rupture with China.

One document is the stenographic record of a 22 September 1969 meeting of the regional and city party aktiv convened to discuss the Central Committee's account of Kosygin's discussion of the border conflict with Zhou. The second document is the Khabarovskiy Kray party committee's report of the same meeting to the CPSU CC in Moscow.

In comparing the two documents, it is particularly interesting to note their differences in emphasis. The Khabarovskiy Kray report to the CPSU CC accentuates the positive, stressing that Kosygin's meeting with Zhou represented a step toward resolving Soviet-Chinese differences through peaceful means. According to the stenographic record, however, many of the speakers described the problems in the border region in much greater detail than was reported to Moscow. Although they all applauded Kosygin's meeting with Zhou, some speakers noted that little change in the border situation had been observed since their encounter eleven days before. Comrade I.K. Bokan', for example, the head of the political department of a military district in the region, noting that there had been over 300 incidents of incursions by Chinese citizens onto Soviet territory in his district in 1969 alone, commented that no substantive changes were observed following the Kosygin-Zhou meeting. The Secretary of the Khabarovsk City committee of the CPSU, comrade V.S. Pasternak, made a similar remark, describing Sino-Soviet relations as "increasingly tense" and observing that the anti-Soviet hysteria and propa

ganda in Beijing had not been abated. Bokan' urged his comrades to be prepared for any provocation on the border, while his colleague in the military district, comrade Popov, noted that Chinese ideological positions were dangerous for the international communist movement "and cannot but evoke alarm" among the Soviet people. Comrade N.V. Sverdlov, the rector of the Khabarovsk Pedagogical Institute, called attention to the fact that Zhou had told Kosygin that China's ideological struggle with the CPSU would continue for another 10,000 years.

In its report, the Khabarovskiy Kray committee expressed the region's support for the Center's policy toward China. In so doing, the regional committee at times inserted comments which were not in the stenographic record, for example, praising the Kosygin-Zhou meeting for being mutually beneficial.

Because the region's reporting function had the result of legitimating the Center's policies, comments by the regional aktiv which raised uncomfortable questions for the party leadership were omitted. For example, the secretary of the Komsomolsk-naAmure city committee of the CPSU, Comrade Shul'ga, restated the standard line that Soviet efforts to improve relations with China would resonate with the healthy forces2 in Chinese society (i.e., among communists) and then noted that in Czechoslovakia the Soviet Union had correctly intervened in support of communists when the revolution's gains were endangered. Comrade Kadochnikov, a Khabarovsk worker, commented that he had trouble reconciling Chinese anti-Soviet propaganda with the PRC's claim to be a socialist state. Comrade Sverdlov stated that in the past polemics had some value for the international communist movement, and then cited the polemics with Palmiro Togliatti, the long-time leader of the Italian Communist Party, as an example. Still, he concluded that Chinese policies were so unrestrained that they went beyond the definition of useful polemics.

These two documents are valuable for showing the reluctance of the Khabarovskiy Kray committee to address substantive problems in their reports to the Central Committee in Moscow: the Center only found out what it wanted to hear. However, the documents also demonstrate that as far back as 1969 regional views on China policy did not always run exactly in step with Moscow's.

The new opportunities to examine the holdings of regional party archives will further expand our knowledge of regional concerns and center-regional relations in the Soviet period.

Document I: Stenographic Record of Meeting of Khabarovsk regional and city party officials, 22 September 1969

STENOGRAPHIC RECORD

of the meeting of the Khabarovsk regional and city party aktiv

22 September 1969

First Secretary of the Khabarovsk regional committee of the CPSU, comr. A.P. Shitikov, opened the meeting:

Comrades, we brought you together to familiarize you with the information of the Central Committee of the Communist party of the Soviet Union about the question of the visit by the Soviet party-governmental delegation to Hanoi and the discussion between comr. A.N Kosygin and Zhou Enlai. Today I will acquaint you with the information. (Reads the information aloud).

Comr. Shitikov - The floor goes to comrade Pasternak, secretary of the Khabarovsk city committee of the CPSU.

Comr. PASTERNAK

Comrades, the communists of the Khabarovsk city party organization and all the workers of the city of Khabarovsk directed particular attention to the report of the meeting in Beijing between the President of the Council of Ministers of the USSR and the President of the State Council of the PRC Zhou Enlai. It explains the increasingly tense situation between the PRC and the Soviet Union, which is the fault of the Chinese leaders.

Khabarovsk residents are well aware of the bandit-like character of the armed provocations, and therefore the mendacity of the Maoists' propaganda, the malicious attacks on the policy of our party and government, the kindling of hatred towards the Soviet Union, and the direct call for war with the Soviet Union, were particularly clear to us.

All this requires our government to pur

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