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Moscow's China-watchers in the Post-Mao Era: The Response to a Changing China

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Gilbert Rozman
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Extract

The year 1982 was marked by repeated signs of Soviet interest in improving relations with China. Negotiations to chart a new course in the relationship between these two countries finally began in October. While the fate of these negotiations remained uncertain at the time this article was being written, the onus was largely on the Soviet leaders to show that they were capable of the sort of flexibility that the Nixon Republicans had demonstrated barely a decade earlier in wooing the Chinese. The Sino-Soviet talks provided a test of Soviet tolerance for diversity in international communism and of willingness to take tangible steps towards demilitarization. They also raised questions about the internal process of evaluating conditions in other countries, reporting on them to the Soviet people, and advising leaders on their significance. After 20 years of negative assessments of communist policies in China, what basis could be found for an optimistic outlook in 1982? In the six years after Mao's death what was the role of Moscow's China-watchers in preparing the way for overtures to China's leaders? This article examines the background behind the Soviet initiative of 1982 and the different outlooks found among China specialists.

Type
Research Article
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 94 , June 1983 , pp. 215 - 241
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1983

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References

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3. Ibid. Vol. 34, No. 21 (23 June 1982), p. 23.

4. Ibid. Vol. 34, No. 39 (27 October 1982), p. 2.

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8. An exchange of materials that are not available for public sale occurs through the auspices of the U.S.–U.S.S.R. Binational Commission in the Humanities and Social Sciences, administered in the U.S. by the International Research and Exchanges Board. In return for papers from conferences on China supported by the American Council of Learned Societies and the Social Science Research Council, New York, the American side receives collections of conference papers on pre-modern China including the annual three-volume set of papers from the conference, “Obshchestvo i gosudarstvo v Kitae” (“Society and State in China”), and the latest bibliographies of Soviet publications on China.

9. The host for my visits was the Institute of Oriental Studies, Academy of Sciences and, within it, the Department of China, whose director is L. P. Deliusin. Most of the staff in this department specialize on China prior to 1949. Meetings were arranged with researchers on pre-modern and contemporary China at other institutes and universities.

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