(Concerning the leadership of the negotiation delegation) It should be divided into the first, the second, and third lines. Qiao Guanhua and Chai Chengwen belong to the first line Ji Pengfei,70 Huang Yongsheng" belong to the second line. The third line is the Party's Central Committee.

(Concerning the preparations for the negotiation:) All members of the delegation should put down all other work and be concentrated, and should go all out to prepare for the negotiation. They should first get familiar with the statements of, as well as notes, between the two governments. They should also get familiar with the history and current status of the [Sino-Soviet] border. The temporary measures, which should be solved as the first step in handling the negotiation, are closely related to the whole situation. You are not just negotiating to settle the border dispute; you are negotiating about the relationship between the two countries.72

[Source: Zhonghua renmin gongheguo shilu, vol. 3, part 1, pp. 523-524.]

Chen Jian, an associate professor of history at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, is the author of China's Road to the Korean War (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994) and a frequent contributor to the Cold War International History Project Bulletin. David L. Wilson is professor of history at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.

1

' [Editor's note: See John H. Holdrige, Crossing the Divide: An Insider's Account of Normalization of U.S.-China Relations (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1997), p. 25. Thanks to William Burr (National Security Archive) for drawing attention to this source.]

Beqir Balluku was defense minister of the Albanian People's Republic and a Politburo member of the Albanian Labor Party. Later the Albanian dictator Enver Hoxha charged Balluku as a "Chinese spy" and ordered his execution.

3 Liu Shaoqi was the People's Republic of China's second most important leader from 1949 to 1966. Labeled as China's “largest Khrushchev" during the Cultural Revolution, he was purged and died in disgrace in 1969.

* Deng Xiaoping served as Chinese Communist Party (CCP) general secretary from 1956 to 1966, but was then purged and labeled as China's "second largest Khrushchev" during the Cultural Revolution. However, he reemerged in China's political scene in the 1970s. For a discussion of Deng's purge and his reemergence, see Chen Jian, “Deng Xiaoping, Mao's 'Continuous Revolution,' and the Sino-Soviet Split," Cold War International History Project Bulletin 10 (March 1998), pp. 162-165.

and administrative authorities were replaced by new Revolutionary Committees in China's cities and countryside. The composition of the Revolutionary Committee usually adopted a "three-in-one" formula, meaning that it should include representatives of the revolutionary masses, the leading revolutionary cadres, and the People's Liberation Army (PLA). 7 Todor Zhivkov served as first secretary of the Bulgarian Communist Party from 1954 to 1989.

8 Alexander Dubček, first secretary of the Czechoslovakian Communist Party in 1968, initiated a wide-ranging program to liberalize and democratize all aspects of communism in Czechoslovakia. This reform effort ended abruptly when Soviet troops invaded Czechoslovakia on 21 August 1968.

9 Joseph Tito, the communist leader of Yugoslavia from 1944 until his death in 1980, was famous for his independent stand against Soviet domination.

10 E. F. Hill, chairman of the Australian Communist Party (Marxism-Leninism) Central Committee (CC), frequently visited China during the Cultural Revolution.

11 Yao Wenyuan was then a member of the Central Cultural Group. He would be elected a member of the CCP Politburo at the Party's Ninth Congress in April 1969. As one of the "Gang of Four" (together with Wang Hongwen, Zhang Chunqiao, and Jiang Qing, Mao Zedong's wife), he was arrested in October 1976.

14

12 Mao Zedong alluded to the period from 1912 to 1928. 13 Zhou Enlai was the premier of the PRC State Council and, then, a member of the CCP Politburo Standing Committee. Kang Sheng was then a member of the CCP Politburo Standing Committee and an advisor to the Cultural Revolution Group. He had been in charge of the CCP's external liaison affairs, as well as the Party's secret service for many years.

15 Harold Holt was Australia's prime minister from January 1966 to December 1967. On 17 December 1967, while swimming at Portsea, Victoria, he disappeared and was presumed to have drowned.

16 John Gorton was Australia's prime minister from December 1967 to March 1971.

17 Lin Biao was then vice chairman of the CCP CC, defense minister, and Mao Zedong's designated successor. In September 1971, after the failure of an alleged coup attempt aimed at assassinating Mao Zedong, Lin Biao, together with his wife and son, escaped by plane from China. They all died, however, when the plane crashed in Outer Mongolia after failing to make an emergency landing.

18 China tested its first atomic (fission) bomb in October 1964 and the first hydrogen bomb in May 1967.

19 Chen Boda was then a member of the CCP Politburo Standing Committee and head of the Cultural Revolution Group. He would be purged by Mao Zedong in 1970 and disappeared from China's political arena.

20 Yang Chengwu, acting PLA chief of staff from early 1966 to March 1968, was purged in March 1968 for alleged involvement in activities against Lin Biao. After Lin Biao's death, he was "rehabilitated" in the 1970s. Mao Zedong here referred to an article, published in Yang Chengwu's name, entitled "Thoroughly Establish the Absolute Authority of the Great Supreme Commander Chairman Mao and His Great Thought." For an English translation, see Peking Review, 10 November 1967, pp. 17-24.

21 Yao, Shun, and Da Yu were all legendary figures in predawn Chinese history.

22 King Zhou, an infamous tyrant, was the last king of the Yin

dynasty, which existed in the middle-reach of the Yellow River from around the 17th to 11th centuries BC.

23 Mao refers to the Chinese civil war between the CCP and the Guomindang in 1946-1949, ending with the CCP's victory. 24 The Northern Expedition occurred in 1926-1927, and the Land Revolution War lasted from 1927 to 1936.

25 On 20 January 1969, Richard M. Nixon delivered his inaugural address, in which he suggested American willingness to develop relations with all countries in the world. When Renmin ribao and Hongqi, both CCP's mouthpieces, planned to publish a commentator's article, entitled "Confession in an Impasse A Comment on Nixon's Inaugural Address and the Contemptible Applause by the Soviet Revisionist Renegade Clique," and sent it to Mao for approval for publication, Mao wrote down these comments. Following Mao's instructions, all major Chinese newspapers published the complete text of Nixon's speech. For Nixon's speech see Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Richard Nixon, 1969 (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1971), pp. 1-4.

26 On 2 March 1969, a bloody armed conflict occurred between Chinese and Soviet border garrison forces on Zhenbao Island (Damansky Island in Russian), a small island located near the Chinese bank of the Ussuri River on the Chinese-Soviet border. According to the Xinhua News Agency: "At 9:17 AM on March 2, large numbers of fully armed soldiers, together with four armored vehicles and cars, dispatched by the Soviet border authorities, flagrantly intruded into the area of Zhenbao Island, which is indisputably China's territory, to carry out blatant provocation against the Chinese border garrisons on normal patrol duty. They first opened cannon and gun fire, killing and wounding many Chinese soldiers. The Chinese border garrisons were compelled to fight back in self-defense when they reached the end of their tolerance. The grave incident was entirely and solely created by the Soviet authorities." (See Renmin ribao [People's Daily], 3 March 1969). [Editor's note: For the Soviet version of the 2 March 1969 incident as related to the East German leadership, see Christian F. Ostermann, "New Evidence on the Sino-Soviet Border Dispute, 1969-71," Cold War International History Project Bulletin 6/7 (Winter 1995/96), pp. 189-90.]

27 On March 15, a second bloody battle occurred between Chinese and Soviet troops on Zhenbao Island.

28 [Editor's Note: For more information on the refusal to receive phone calls from the Soviet side, see Ostermann, “New Evidence on the Sino-Soviet Border Dispute, 1969-71,” pp. 19091 (Telegram from GDR Ambassador to PRC to East German Foreign Ministry, 2 April 1969).]

29 Mao Zedong added these sentences to the text of Lin Biao's political report to the CCP's Ninth Congress. Lin Biao's report was published by Renmin ribao [People's Daily] on 28 April 1969.

30 Mao Zedong commented on the report: "This is fine." 31 Based on a different version of the Chinese original of the speech, Stuart Schram translated the speech into English and included it in his Chairman Mao Talks to the People (New York: Random House, 1974), pp. 282-289.

32 Wang Ming (Chen Shaoyu) was one of the leaders of the "international section" within the CCP in the 1930s. Since 1956, he had lived in the Soviet Union and frequently published books and articles criticizing Mao Zedong. He died in Moscow in 1974. 33 Mao Zedong refers to the new Central Committee elected at the CCP's Ninth National Congress, held from 1 April to 24 April 1969.

34 All of them were members of the CCP's Politburo Standing Committee.

35 The three elements were revolutionary masses, revolutionary cadres, and PLA representatives. Please refer to note 5 for explanations of the "three-in-one" combination.

36 The Sanmin Zhuyi Youth League was the Guomindang's youth organization. Sanmin zhuyi was Sun Yat-sen's political ideology and philosophy, sometimes translated as the "Three Principles of the People."

37 The "cattle pens," unofficial prisons created by the “revolutionary masses” to detain "bad elements,” widely existed during the Cultural Revolution, especially between 1966-1969. Wang Xiaoyu was then chairman of the Revolutionary Committee of Shandong province and a member of the CCP CC. Yang Dezhi was then vice chairman of the Revolutionary Committee of Shandong province, commander of the PLA's Jinan Military Region, and a member of the CCP CC.

39

40 Xu Shiyou commanded the PLA's Nanjing Military Region and served as chairman of the Revolutionary Committee of Jiangsu Province. At the Party's Ninth Congress, he was elected a member of the Politburo.

41 The "Red Headquarters" was a "revolutionary rebel organization" in Jiangsu Province.

42

The "August 27th" was another "revolutionary rebel organization" in Jiangsu Province, opposed to the "Red Headquarters.”

43 Xie Fuzhi, then chairman of the Revolutionary Committee of the Beijing City, was elected a member of the Politburo at the CCP's Ninth Congress. He died in 1973 of cancer.

44 Pi Dingjun, then vice chairman of the Revolutionary Committee of Fujian province, vice commander of the PLA's Fuzhou Military Region, was a member of the CCP CC.

45 One jin is equal to half kilogram and is composed of sixteen qian.

46 Jiang Jieshi [Chiang Kai-shek] ruled the Chinese mainland from 1927-1949 as the leader of Nationalist China.

47 Wang Li, Guan Feng, and Qi Benyu were all members of the Central Cultural Revolution Group during the early stage of the Cultural Revolution. Wang and Guan were arrested in August 1967, and Qi was arrested in February 1968.

48 Yu Lijin was political commissar of the Chinese air force until his purge, together with Yang Chengwu and Fu Chongbi, in March 1968. He would be rehabilitated after Lin Biao's death. 49 Fu Chongbi was commander of the People's Liberation Army's Beijing garrison headquarters until his purge, together with Yang Chengwu and Yu Lijin, in March 1968. He would be rehabilitated after Lin Biao's death.

50 Chen Yi was one of China's ten marshals in the 1950s and 1960s. In 1969, he was China's foreign minister and a member of the CCP CC. He had been a member of the CCP Politburo from 1956 to 1969. During the Cultural Revolution, he was repeatedly criticized for his "rightist tendencies and mistakes," and, after summer 1967, his position as China's foreign minister became no more than nominal.

51 Ye Jianying, a member of the CCP Politburo and vice chairman of the CCP Central Military Commission (which did not have a single meeting between March 1968 and early 1972), was another one of the ten marshals. During the Cultural Revolution, he was also criticized, especially for the leading role he played in challenging the Central Cultural Revolution Group in February 1967, known as the "February Counter Current" (eryue niliu).

52 Xu Xiangqian, another one of the ten marshals, was then a member of the CCP CC and vice chairman of the CCP Central

Military Commission. During the early stage of the Cultural
Revolution, he was appointed the head of the PLA's Cultural
Revolution Leading Group, but lost the position in late 1967.

53 Nie Rongzhen, also one of the ten marshals, was then a member of the CCP CC and vice chairman of the CCP Central Military Commission. He had been in charge of China's national defense industry (including the building of China's A bomb and H bomb) and, during the Cultural Revolution, was the least criticized of the four marshals.

54 After the CCP's Ninth Congress in April 1969, Mao Zedong instructed the four marshals to study the international situation together and to present to the Party's central leadership a written report. Zhou Enlai then assigned Xiong Xianghui, one of his long-time top aids, to assist the four marshals in preparing the report. From June 7 to July 10, the four marshals held six meetings for a total of 19 hours. On July 11, they completed this report and presented it to Zhou Enlai. Xiong Xianghui took detailed notes at these meetings. The except of the report translated here is based on the material released in his memoir, "The Prelude to the Opening of Sino-American Relations," Zhonggong dangshi ziliao (CCP History Materials), no. 42 (June 1992), pp. 56-96.

55 We now know, however, that China dispatched a total of 320,000 engineering and anti-aircraft artillery troops to Vietnam in 1965-1969. For a discussion, see Chen Jian, "China's Involvement in the Vietnam War, 1964-1969," China Quarterly 142 (June 1995), pp. 357-386.

56 This refers to the Sino-Indian border war of 1962.

57 The four marshals are probably alluding to Nixon's press conference remark of 14 March 1969. Nixon's reference to "a potential Chinese Communist threat" is cited in Raymond L. Garthoff, Detente and Confrontation: American-Soviet Relations from Nixon to Reagan, rev. ed. (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1994), p. 246, citing Presidential Documents, vol. 5 (March 17, 1969), p. 404. The context for Nixon's statement was the new administration's announcement that it would proceed with an antiballistic missile (ABM) system, which had been justified by the Johnson Administration by the need to be prepared for a potential Chinese danger, and the implication that the Soviets, too, had an interest in containing the Chinese threat: "I would imagine," Nixon said, "that the Soviet Union would be just as reluctant as we would be to leave their country naked against a potential Chinese Communist threat." We thank William Burr (National Security Archive) for alerting us to this quotation.

58 Sato Eisaku served as Japan's prime minister from 1964 to 1972.

59 The CCP CC issued the order on 28 August 1969. The order, primarily intended to bring about a general mobilization in border provinces and regions, especially Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, and Helongjiang, was also widely carried out in other parts of China. The order thus resulted in a nationwide mobilization in China late in 1969.

60 On 23 July 1969, using Shanxi province as a case, the CCP CC ordered that all mass organizations should end "struggle with violent means," that the PLA should take resolute measures to restore order, that transportation and communication systems should be unconditionally restored, that all counterrevolutionaries should severely punished, and that production should be unconditionally resumed. See Jianguo yilai Mao Zedong wengao, vol. 13, pp. 54-55.

61 Alexei Kosygin was a member of the Soviet Party Politburo and chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union.

62 On 11 September 1969, Kosygin, after attending Ho Chi Minh's funeral in Hanoi, made a short stop in Beijing and met with Chinese premier Zhou Enlai at the Beijing airport. The meeting lasted for 3 hours and 40 minutes. According the Chinese records, the two sides reached four tentative agreements at the meeting: (1)The two sides agree to maintain the status quo of the border; (2) the two sides agree to avoid military conflict on the border; (3) the two sides agree that their military forces should avoid contact in disputed areas; and (4) the two sides agree to let their border authorities consult and negotiate with each in case a dispute emerges. Zhou Enlai and Kosygin also agreed that, after reporting the results of the meeting to the two Party's central leadership, they would confirm these results by exchanging formal letters. (Zhonghua renmin gongheguo shilu, vol. 3, part 1, pp. 510-511.) For Zhou Enlai's letter to Kosygin dated 18 September 1969, see Document 13. [Editor's Note: for English translations of Soviet records pertaining to the meeting see Ostermann, "New Evidence on the Sino-Soviet Border Dispute, 1969-71," pp. 191-193; and Cold War International History Project Bulletin 6/7 (Winter 1995/96), pp. 197-199.] 63 Richard Nixon made a round-the-world journey in JulyAugust 1969, and spent time in Asia. During a stop in Guam, Nixon announced at a news conference that while in the past Asian nations had received both men and money from the United States to fight communist threats, in the future, to receive American military and financial support, they would have to furnish their own troops. This notion of a new American Asian policy became the "Nixon Doctrine." In China, Caokao xiaoxi (Reference news), an internally circulated daily newspaper, immediately reported Nixon's remarks.

64

Following his agreement with Kosygin reached at their 11 September 1969 meeting at the Beijing airport, Zhou Enlai wrote the letter to Kosygin with the expectation that he would receive a letter with the same content from Kosygin. However, Kosygin did not reply positively to Zhou because of opposition from other Soviet leaders, especially those from the military.

65 Choi Yong Kun was a member of the Presidium of the Political Committee of the Korean Workers' Party and chairman of the supreme People's Commission of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. He headed a North Korean party and governmental delegation sent to attend the celebrations for the 20th anniversary of the People's Republic of China. This visit substantially improved Sino-North Korean relations, which reached a low ebb during the Chinese Cultural Revolution, paving the way for Chinese premier Zhou Enlai to lead a highranking Chinese Party and Governmental delegation to visit North Korea in April 1970 (the first such visit by Chinese leaders since 1966).

By Kathryn Weathersby

In January 1998 the Japanese newspaper Sankei

Shimbun published excerpts from a collection of documents purportedly obtained from the Russian Presidential Archive (known formally as the Archive of the President, Russian Federation, or APRF) by its Moscow-based reporter, Yasuo Naito. These remarkable documents provide the first Soviet evidence yet to emerge regarding the longstanding allegations that the United States employed bacteriological weapons during the Korean War. Sankei Shimbun subsequently agreed to make the documents available to scholars; a translation of the complete texts is presented below.

The circumstances under which these documents were obtained are unusual. Because the Presidential Archive does not allow researchers to make photocopies, the texts were copied by hand and subsequently re-typed. We therefore do not have such tell-tale signs of authenticity as seals, stamps or signatures that a photocopy can provide. Furthermore, since the documents have not been formally released, we do not have their archival citations. Nor do we know the selection criteria of the person who collected them.

In these regrettable circumstances, how do we evaluate the authenticity of the new evidence? Until the Presidential Archive begins granting access to its important holdings through regular channels rather than through the ad hoc arrangements it has used thus far, we must rely on textual analysis and our experience working in other Russian archives. Are the contents of the documents persuasive enough to overcome the skepticism

raised by their irregular provenance? Their style and form do not raise suspicion. The specifics of persons, dates and events are consistent with evidence available from a wide array of other sources.' As is apparent from the translations below, their contents are so complex and interwoven that it would have been extremely difficult to forge them. In short, the sources are credible.

They are, however, fragmentary. The contents address and appear to answer-the key question of the veracity of the allegations, but far more documentation, particularly from China, is needed to give a full account of this massive propaganda campaign. In an accompanying article, Milton Leitenberg discusses the history of the allegations and analyzes the disclosures made in these new sources. This commentary examines the context in which these documents originated, discussing not only what they reveal about the Soviet/Chinese/North Korean campaign falsely to accuse the U.S. of using bacteriological weapons in Korea, but also about the power struggle within the Soviet leadership after Stalin's death, the determination of the new leadership to distance itself from Stalin's foreign policy, and the impact of these developments on Moscow's relations with China and North Korea.

Except for the first brief excerpt from a Mao to Stalin telegram of 21 February 1952 [Document No. 1], the context of these documents is the byzantine power struggle within the Soviet leadership in the first months after Stalin's death in March 1953, and the attempt by that leadership to alter those policies of their predecessor which they regarded as most harmful to Soviet and/or their

personal interests. An important part of this succession struggle and policy realignment was the successful effort by Lavrentii P. Beria, the former NKVD head and a possible successor to Stalin, to remove Semen D. Ignatiev, a Khrushchev protegé, from his post as Minister of State Security. Ignatiev was a rival for control of the security services and had also overseen the "Doctor's Plot," the deadly new purge Stalin had begun in the weeks before he died. With the entire leadership determined to end the purge so as not to become its victims, Beria was able to arrest M.D. Riumin, the subordinate of Ignatiev who was directly responsible for carrying out the "Doctor's Plot." The security chief himself, however, was only removed from his post and then expelled from the party. He was not arrested, presumably because his patron provided sufficient protection. Pravda explained on 6 April 1953 that Ignatiev had been removed because of "blindness and gullibility," relatively mild charges in that environment. After Khrushchev succeeded in arresting Beria in June of that year, he reinstated Ignatiev in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee (CPSU CC).

The documents below show that Beria prepared two formal charges against Ignatiev. The second charge has long been assumed his participation in the Doctor's Plot. This is the meaning of the Party Control Commission's claim [Document No. 12] that he was guilty of "gross violations of Soviet legality and the falsification of investigative materials" according to which "Soviet citizens were subjected to groundless arrests and charged with false accusations of committing serious state crimes." The first charge, however, has not been known. The Commission declared that during his tenure as minister of state security of the USSR he "received a document of special political importance in April 1952" but did not report it to the government, with the result that "the prestige of the Soviet Union, [and of] the camp of peace and democracy suffered real political damage."

The documents below indicate that the information Ignatiev allegedly concealed from the government was the falsity of the Chinese allegations that the Americans were using bacteriological weapons in the Korean War, claims which formed the basis of a massive international political campaign the Soviet Union had conducted over the previous year. To support his case against Ignatiev, Beria obtained testimony from three Soviet officials who had dealt with this matter while they served in North Koreatwo former advisers and the current Soviet ambassador to the DPRK. The statements of these three describe in detail [Documents Nos. 2, 3, 4] remarkable measures taken by the North Koreans and Chinese, with the assistance of Soviet advisers, to create false evidence to corroborate their charges against the United States.

Since it had long been standard operating procedure in the Soviet Union for security services officials to obtain false confessions from an accused person or false incriminating testimony from the associates of the accused, it is possible that these blandly stated accounts of

outrageous activities have as little relation to reality as the countless coerced "confessions" collected during Stalin's reign. In this case, however, the censure of Ignatiev for allegedly hiding knowledge of the baselessness of the Chinese claims against the U.S. was accompanied by a decision of the entire leadership to cease the campaign on this issue, apparently because of the risk of embarrassment to the Soviet Union should the claims be revealed as fabrications. The Central Committee Presidium ordered the Soviet delegation in the United Nations not "to show interest in discussing this question or even more in 'fanning the flames' of this question" [Document No. 6]. It also commissioned Molotov to present within a week a proposal on the position the Soviet government would take on the issue in the future [Document No. 7]. Even more significantly, the Presidium of the USSR Council of Ministers dispatched an emissary to Beijing and Pyongyang with the harsh message that the Soviet government was now aware that it had been misled regarding the claims that the U.S. was using bacteriological weapons and that it "recommended" that the Chinese and North Korean governments cease their accusations [Documents Nos. 8, 9, 11]. Beijing and Pyongyang followed the Moscow's instructions; all three states ceased their campaign regarding these allegations in April 1953. The post-Stalin leadership therefore took significant action on the basis that the allegations of American use of bacteriological weapons were false and consequently potentially damaging to the Soviet Union.

While the testimony contained in these documents regarding the fabrication of evidence of bacteriological weapons use are credible, the claim that Ignatiev and V.N. Razuvaev, the Soviet ambassador to Pyongyang, removed from his post for the same alleged offense, kept this information from the Soviet leadership seems disingenuous. Documents from the Russian Foreign Ministry Archive (available through normal research procedures) indicate that Soviet officials at many levels, from embassy advisers to Stalin himself, were involved in managing the North Korean propaganda campaign about American use of bacteriological weapons so as to prevent the falsity of the claims from being revealed. For example, in March 1952, the month after the Chinese and North Koreans first made their allegation, Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko ordered Korea specialist G.I. Tunkin2 and two other officers then serving with him in the Foreign Ministry's First Far Eastern Department, to inform him immediately about the provisions of the Geneva Conventions of 1929 [sic] and 1949 regarding investigations of claims alleging violations of rules of warfare. Gromyko's order was prompted by alarm over U.S. Secretary of State Dean G. Acheson's request to the chairman of the International Committee of the Red Cross that the ICRC investigate the charge that bacteriological weapons were being used in Korea. Gromyko anticipated that the ICRC might soon ask permission from the DPRK to conduct such an