• RedDawn [he/him]
    ·
    3 years ago

    This was also a result of the Sino-Soviet split and the jockeying between USSR and PRC for "leader of the world revolution" which forced the USSR to spend a lot supporting revolutions abroad in order to avoid losing leadership of global communism to Mao's China.

    • BeamBrain [he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      Kind of wonder how things would've turned out without the Sino-Soviet split.

      • RedDawn [he/him]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Likely much better for the Soviet Union, much worse for the US and hard to say for China. But it's kind of pointless to speculate on hypotheticals like that, better to look at how things actually unfolded and draw what lessons can be drawn from the failure of the USSR and success of the PRC.

        • RedDawn [he/him]
          ·
          3 years ago

          Mao definitely billed China and himself as the leaders of world Communism and particularly the example for Asia, Africa and Latin America, as opposed to the revisionist Soviets.

      • Mardoniush [she/her]
        ·
        3 years ago

        They were scared. The SU openly talked of a nuclear attack on China in a CC meeting, and it got filtered back to Mao. That said, Deng was head of the negotiations and heavily favoured the split. After this, and more so after Nixon in China developed a detente with the US they began to do whatever they thought they had to to maintain their independent policy against the SU.

        Khruschev undoubtedly was revisionist and a bad choice in many ways, but there's a saying Catholics have, "Better to be a heretic than a schismatic." Unless someone has gone full Pol Pot, don't fucking split.

      • RedDawn [he/him]
        ·
        3 years ago

        I'm not sure, but I'll look into what their contemporary justification was if you specify which support specifically you are talking about?

      • vccx [they/them]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Only thing I can think of would be if they were trying to curry favor with the Americans to eventually open up trade relations.