Sergey Radchenko uses materials from both Russia and China to explore the aftermath of the “Great Friendship” and Sino-Soviet split. The Soviets abruptly withdrew their advisors and experts in July 1960, but a curious sort of diplomatic relations endured until the violent Chinese attacks on the Soviet embassy in Beijing in 1967. Radchenko's Russian archival work has left him familiar with the reports of the International Department of the Central Committee as well as those of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and its embassy in Beijing. Russian diplomats in China in the 1950s and 1960s had a unique vantage point on the implications of the interpenetration of the two systems well before the rest of the world, and their reports offer fascinating source material for contemporary China scholars. They discussed topics that have become routine in recent scholarship, among them the relationship between domestic and foreign policy, the disturbing ability and willingness of the CCP to mobilize the population, and the character of Chairman Mao and the nature of his authority. “Foreign and domestic agendas were mutually interrelated,” emphasizes Radchenko, and reconciliation from the Chinese side was increasingly impossible (pp. 56, 176).

More interestingly, Radchenko wants to make a similar argument about the role of China and Sino-Soviet relations in Soviet domestic culture and politics. Khrushchev's attacks on artistic expression (famously at the exhibit at the Manezh near Red Square in December 1962) and the general crackdown on dissent and “bourgeois” influence in culture, claims Radchenko, unfolded with a sensitivity to Chinese criticism of Soviet practices and values. He portrays the politics of Soviet reform and de-Stalinization as entangled with Sino-Soviet relations (p. 63). To better make this case Radchenko might offer a more sustained treatment of particular characters illustrative of this issue within Soviet politics and culture. Leonid Il'ichev, for example, the head of the ideology department of the Central Committee, was simultaneously involved in both the policing of “bourgeois” culture and the polemics with China (pp. 52–56). Former Foreign Minister Viacheslav Molotov would make another interesting character to study in this regard, as he routinely liked to embarrass Soviet “reformers” with pointed references to China, the bloc, and the global cause of international socialism. Other kinds of material beyond high politics and the world of the powerful might also be useful to test Radchenko's hypothesis about the dilemmas posed by Chinese revolutionary purity in an era of reform. Citizen letter-writing to newspapers such as Pravda, reports from local meetings led by ideological workers in the party, security reports on the “mood” of the population, and surviving material from the enduring Friendship Society exchanges might provide different kinds of insight into the problem.

Radchenko shows that the Russians kept trying to salvage at least the political dimensions of the alliance, hopeful that the Chinese might be diverted from the descent into what Leonid Brezhnev himself referred to as the “unbelievable madness” of the Cultural Revolution (p. 186). The vast exchanges and diverse forms of technical and industrial collaboration were over, but Radchenko shares evidence of numerous Soviet attempts at reconciliation: Khrushchev courting Ambassador Liu Xiao at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis (p. 28), Khrushchev still reluctant to burn bridges even after the fierce exchanges in the fall of 1963 (p. 88), the hopes of the new leadership for improved relations after the removal of Khrushchev in October 1964 (p. 138), and the efforts of Kosygin to improve relations through the removal of Ambassador Stepan Chervonenko in April 1965 (p. 151). Even in the summer of 1966 Soviet and Chinese military officials were co-operating in the transit of Soviet aircraft specialists and military equipment across China to Vietnam and Laos (p. 174). The Soviets had given up by this time on the effort to revive socialist collaboration among “friends” in favour of the traditional attempt to cultivate diplomatic relations among states, and Radchenko might speculate further about the nature and significance of this evolution.

The Russian overtures were perpetually undercut by the enduring legacy of their traditional civilizing mission in the East. Russian cultural arrogance and presumptions about the benefits of their “fraternal” aid and support apparently knew no bounds, emphasizes Radchenko, and played a large role in dooming the relationship. The author describes the stunning return in February 1965 of apparently serious Soviet plans to establish an airbase in Kunming, equipped with Soviet fighter plans and some 500 technicians (pp. 152–56). The Chinese were outraged, and Radchenko as well finds it difficult to fathom the absence of sensitivity among Russian officials who so quickly forgot the tensions surrounding their 1958 efforts to establish a joint submarine fleet and long-wave radio station in China. “[I]nternationalist solidarity” for both Stalin and Khrushchev meant the “solidarity of other socialist countries with the Soviet Union and its national interests – not vice versa” (p. 92). The Russians knew a lot about the Chinese, but not much about themselves. Radchenko's excellent book is a fascinating contribution to the new international history of the Cold War.