March 11, 1969 – Sino-Soviet Border Conflict: Demonstrators in Beijing besiege the Soviet Embassy in protest for the attack on the Chinese Embassy in Moscow
Fighting broke out between Soviet and Chinese units on onDamansky/Zhenbao Island on March 2, 1969. Following this incident, sensationalist news reports by the mediastirred up the general population in both countries. On March 3, 1969 in Beijing, large protests were held outside theSoviet Embassy, and Soviet diplomatic personnel were harassed. In the Soviet Union, demonstrations were heldin Khabarovsk and Vladivostok. In Moscow,angry crowds hurled stones, ink bottles, and paint at the Chinese Embassy.
On March 11, 1969 in Beijing,demonstrators besieged the Soviet Embassy in protest for the attack on theChinese Embassy. Then when Soviet mediareported that captured Russian soldiers during the Damansky/Zhenbao incidenthad been tortured and executed, and their bodies mutilated, largedemonstrations consisting of 100,000 people broke out in Moscow. Other mass assemblies also occurred in other Russian cities.
On March 15, 1969, a second (and larger) clash broke out inDamansky/Zhenbao Island, where both sides sent a force of regimental strength,or some 2,000-3,000 troops. The Chineseclaimed that the Soviets fielded one motorized infantry battalion, one tankbattalion, and four heavy-artillery battalions, or a total of over 50 tanks andarmored vehicles, and scores of artillery pieces. The two sides again claimed victory in the10-hour battle, and also accused the other side of firing the first shots. Both sides suffered heavy casualties.
(Taken from Sino-Soviet Border Conflict – Wars of the 20th Century – Twenty Wars in Asia: Vol. 5)
Background Historically,the communist parties of Russiaand Chinahad not had close ties, and were even hostile to each other. During the early years of the ChineseCommunist Party, in 1923, the Soviet government under Vladimir Lenin encouragedthe Chinese communists to join the non-communist Kuomintang (ChineseNationalists). Then in World War II,Stalin urged Mao to form an alliance with Chiang Kai-shek to fight theJapanese. In the 1930s, Mao began toview traditional Marxism, like that applied in the Soviet Union, as relevantonly in the industrialized countries, and not consistent with China’s agricultural society. Mao soon developed a new branch of Marxismcalled Maoism, which stated that in agricultural societies, the revolutionarystruggle should be led by the peasants.
In September 1963-July 1964, Mao published a series ofpapers condemning Khrushchev and Soviet policies. In October 1964, Leonid Brezhnev succeeded asthe new leader of the Soviet Union, and overturnedsome of the liberal reforms of his predecessor, although he generally continuedto implement party policies. Brezhnevadopted a hard-line stance on the West, which did not lead to improvedSino-Soviet relations. Instead, tiesbetween the two communist countries continued to decline. By 1963, the Sino-Soviet split involved thelong-standing territorial dispute along the two countries’ poorly defined4,380-kilometer shared border. In July1964, Mao stated that the territory of the Soviet Union was excessive, and thatSoviet regions of Lake Baikal, Vladivostok, Khabarovsk, and Kamchatka formerly belonged to China. Mao then said that Chinahad “not yet presented our bill for this list” to the Soviet Union.
Chinathen declared that two 19th century treaties with the Soviet Union, the Treatyof Aigun (1858) and the Convention of Peking (1860), were “unequal treaties”,in that the then ruling powerful Russian Empire had forced the war-weakenedChinese Qing Dynasty to cede one million square kilometers of territory inManchuria and Siberia to Russia. Mao’s government also stated that throughother “unequal treaties” which the Qing court was forced to sign in the 19thcentury, China lost some 500,000 square kilometers of land in its westernborder, lands which now are part of the Soviet Union.
The Chinese government soon made the clarification that bybringing up the matter of “unequal treaties” with the Soviet Union, China didnot seek to reclaim these territories, but that it wanted the Soviet Union to acknowledgethat the treaties indeed were unjust, and that the two sides must negotiate afinal border agreement on the basis of present-day boundaries. In this respect, for China, the disputed territoryamounted to only 35,000 square kilometers along the common border. And of this figure, 34,000 square kilometerswere located in the western side bordering the SovietSocialist Republicsof Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. Another 1,000 square kilometers were locatedalong the eastern side running along the length of three rivers: the Argun,Amur, and Ussuri (Figure 20).
Both the Treaty of Aigun and the Convention of Peking, whichcodified the border along the eastern side, stipulated that the Sino-Russianborder was located on the Chinese side running the whole length of the threerivers, thus giving the Russians full sovereignty along these rivers, includingthe many hundreds of islands located therein. Chinawanted to negotiate a readjustment of this river border, and proposed that thenew border line be placed at the midpoint of the rivers. The Soviet Unionrejected any readjustments, stating that the existing treaties had alreadyfixed the border.
Furthermore, the Soviet Uniondenied that the 19th century treaties were “unequal treaties”, and countered bystating that the Chinese rulers themselves were territorially ambitious at thattime. The Soviets also stated that inrecently signed land treaties between Chinaand the Soviet Union, Mao’s government had notbrought up the matter of the earlier “unequal treaties” in these areas, andthus constituted a tacit acknowledgment of Soviet sovereignty of theseareas. In February 1964, the two sidesheld border talks, which collapsed later that year when Mao raised newcriticisms against the Soviet government.
Both sides now increased their forces at the border, raisingtensions. The Soviet government alsostrengthened its relations with Mongolia(a socialist client state of the Soviet Union). In January 1966, the two countries signed amilitary alliance that allowed Soviet troops to deploy in Mongolia to help defend the countryagainst a possible Chinese attack.
In 1966, Mao launched the Cultural Revolution, where hepurged his political rivals and took full control of the Chinese CommunistParty. But the Cultural Revolutionbrought widespread turmoil in China,and also exacerbated the ideological clash between Chinaand the Soviet Union, increasing tensionsbetween them.
In August 1968, the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia, and overthrew thesocialist government there that had tried to implement liberal reforms. Mao saw this aggression as one which theSoviets could potentially undertake against China. By the mid-1960s, the Soviet-Chinese borderwas heavily militarized, and hundreds of skirmishes took place, which increasedin frequency in 1968 in the highly volatile eastern border region. Soviet soldiers used physical force to removeChinese fishermen and worker groups, as well as Chinese military patrols, whichhad entered the river islands. InJanuary 1968, China filed adiplomatic protest when Soviet troops attacked and killed Chinese workers in Qiliqin Island.
