A. N. Kosygin and Zhou Enlai: the difficult path to dialogue
On the threshold of a nuclear apocalypse
Let's continue what we started in the previous material conversation, but only now in a different context. Let's talk about the Asian direction of our country's foreign policy during the period of the agony of South Vietnam (I don't think that any of the readers will object to this phrase when mentioning the USSR - our country was ruined by the stroke of a pen by extremely narrow-minded caliphs for an hour).
In 1972, Washington signed SALT I (about this, see: here), reluctantly admitted: Moscow managed to achieve military parity. However, on the way to it, the Soviet Union almost collapsed into the maelstrom of a nuclear war with China, moreover, when the United States was seriously thinking about using an atomic bomb against North Vietnam. The Pentagon hatched corresponding plans in 1968, and the following year, when the fighting began on Damansky, a real threat arose of the use of nuclear weapons. weapons already by us.
The reasons for the aggravation of Soviet-Chinese relations are well known, just as the military component of the above-mentioned armed conflict is no secret. And the humiliating fact for us that Gorbachev handed over the blood-soaked Soviet soldiers and officers of Damansky to the PRC is also not a secret. However, Brezhnev, who did not want a further escalation of the conflict, had essentially come to terms with the seizure of the island by the Chinese.
Less known are the details of the subsequent negotiations between Kosygin and Zhou Enlai at Beijing airport in 1969.
Oil on fire
The prelude to them was not only an armed conflict, but also the failure of bilateral border negotiations in 1964.
Here we need to make a small digression: the Russian-Chinese border was formed as a result of a number of treaties: Nerchinsky - 1689, Aigun 1858, confirmed a couple of years later by the Beijing Treaty.
And if the first agreement was concluded between equal partners, then the document signed in Aigun is difficult to consider from the point of view of the balance of interests of St. Petersburg and Beijing.
The two Opium Wars revealed the military-technical backwardness of the Celestial Empire, and the Taiping uprising demonstrated its internal instability, which the Governor-General of Eastern Siberia, Adjutant General Muravyov, took advantage of by initiating the Treaty of Aigun.
The PRC remembered very well - and still does not forget - about this, moreover, the negotiations that started took place within the framework of serious ideological disagreements and ended in failure.
The conclusion of the Soviet-Mongolian “Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance” in 1966, which was not without reason seen by the Chinese side as a military convention, added fuel to the fire: the USSR deployed forty divisions on the Chinese-Mongolian border.
And until the mid-eighties, Beijing will demand the withdrawal of Soviet troops from the MPR, which Gorbachev promised in 1986. But this will happen much later than the events discussed here.
Let's go back to 1968.
That year, the DRV and the DPRK supported, unlike the PRC, the entry of Soviet troops into Czechoslovakia, causing concern in Beijing. Moscow’s actions, firstly, fit into the strategy of limited sovereignty of the countries of the socialist camp (the Brezhnev Doctrine, however, affected the internal affairs affairs to a greater extent), and secondly, they demonstrated the indifferent attitude of the West towards the suppression of the “Prague Spring”.
In general, 1968 showed Beijing that the Chinese side could not count on even indirect support from any external force in the event of a military conflict with the USSR moving from the diplomatic to the military stage. And yet Mao went on an escalation, as did analysts in the West, probably believing that after Stalin’s death the world communist movement had no true leader, and it was the “Great Helmsman” who should fill the vacant position. In this case, was there any point in being afraid of the Soviet, in Mao’s eyes, revisionists?
The Unjustified Optimism of Zhou Enlai
Following the results of the March battles, at one of the closed meetings, Zhou Enlai optimistically spoke about the tactical successes of the PLA, the inability, according to him, of Soviet soldiers to conduct night and close combat, and also told the audience about the absence of fear in the PRC of the possibility of a nuclear strike from the Soviet Union . The prime minister drew attention to the scale of the territory of the Celestial Empire and the huge size of its population, which is little sensitive to losses.
However, the Chinese military, both in the PLA General Staff and on the border with the USSR, did not share such optimism. Those who read the book “Military Strategy”, published in 1968, edited by Marshal Sokolovsky, were especially frowning. It spoke of our country’s readiness to quickly use nuclear weapons in the event of an armed conflict with any of the powers.
Yes, the population of the PRC was probably really insensitive to losses in the event of nuclear strikes, but they could lead to the destruction of strategic facilities, in particular, the only Jiuquan cosmodrome at that time (the first Chinese satellite was launched into orbit in 1970), from where ballistic missiles were launched, and an aircraft plant in Harbin and Xi'an, where long-range Xian H-6 bombers (a licensed copy of the Tu-16) were assembled, serial production of which began in 1968. The USSR could also destroy the nuclear weapons testing site located in Lop Nor and the nuclear reactor at the Atomic Energy Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
China could not deliver an adequate blow. The Xian H-6 had subsonic speed, and our air defense system was too tough for it, and the Dongfeng 1966A ballistic missile tested in 2 did not reach the European part of the USSR.
In addition, the Chinese military recognized the superiority of the Soviet Union in conventional weapons, primarily as armored forces.
Let me remind you that during the March battles on Damansky, the Chinese managed to capture the newest T-62 tank at that time (its commander, Colonel Democrat Leonov, was killed, and private Alexander Kuzmin was mortally wounded). Somewhat distracting: the tank is now exhibited as an exhibit in the Beijing PLA Museum - as an example, from the Chinese point of view, of valor in the struggle for territory.
For 1969, the main combat a tank The PLA had a T-54, on the basis of which the Chinese created their own - Type-59, which was significantly inferior in its performance characteristics to the T-62.
And the use of the then-secret Grad MLRS also became for the PLA evidence of their ever-increasing military-technical lag behind the USSR, aggravated by the chaos of the Cultural Revolution (about the Chinese MLRS, see the interesting materialSergei Linnik).
Nevertheless, Zhou rightly believed that it was unlikely that Moscow would switch military efforts from the Western direction (after all, tension in Europe remained after the introduction of troops into Czechoslovakia) to the Eastern direction. And Brezhnev was not a supporter of escalating the conflict. That is why a meeting took place at the Beijing airport between Kosygin, who was returning from the funeral of Ho Chi Minh, and his Chinese colleague.
Kosygin in search of a compromise
The Soviet premier, on behalf of the Politburo, wanted to talk with Mao and Zhou back in March, immediately after the end of the active phase of the fighting on Damansky. However, this attempt ended in vain. At the same time, the Soviet embassy received an order from Moscow to evacuate women and children, but managed to insist on the cancellation of this order, rightly considering its misinterpretation by the Chinese side as a rupture in relations fraught with open war.
Advisor to the USSR envoy to the PRC, Elizavetin, cites in his memoirs the words spoken by Kosygin in March:
In Moscow they are closely monitoring what is happening near the walls of the embassy (its actual siege by the Red Guards - Author's note), we have everything to protect you.
The diplomat knew about the Chinese listening in on conversations and correctly assessed the effect the last words of the Soviet prime minister had on them: the situation at the embassy after Kosygin’s call became calmer, and the need for evacuation disappeared.
On the part of the Kremlin, steps towards dialogue were accompanied by harsh rhetoric, including for the world community:
Attempts to speak - it was emphasized in one of the statements - with the Soviet Union, with the Soviet people, in the language of weapons will be met with firm rebuff.
Beijing reacted in an interesting tone:
We will give you an answer, we ask you to calm down and take your time.
In May, his official statement followed, also quite harsh in form, but at the same time indicating readiness for negotiations. In response, Brezhnev proposed resuming the consultations interrupted in 1964 in two or three months. Actually, they, affecting the sphere of navigation along the Amur, began in the summer, during which skirmishes on the border did not stop, irritating our leadership, but beneficial to Beijing.
The fact is that minor clashes leveled out our military-technical superiority, and in the conditions of the chaos of the Cultural Revolution, they somehow united Chinese society, exaggerating the theme of the Soviet threat.
However, at the beginning of autumn, Moscow already made it clear that if armed provocations on the border do not stop, the conflict will move to the next stage with predictable consequences for the military infrastructure of the PRC.
They heard it in Beijing. It is interesting that in September Kosygin and Zhou met first not at the Beijing airport, but in Hanoi - at the funeral of Ho Chi Minh, but without really talking, and only when the plane of the Soviet premier flying home reached Tashkent, the Chinese side agreed to negotiations. The plane changed course and landed on September 11 at the airport of the Chinese capital.
Why did the meeting take place there?
Firstly, for security reasons: who knows how the Red Guards would react to Kosygin’s appearance in the center of the capital. And Zhou, already reproached for excessive liberalism, did not want to irritate the radicals within the Central Committee of the CPC. And so the Minister of Defense, Marshal Lin Biao, having learned about the negotiations, became indignant and tried to inflate a new round of anti-Soviet military hysteria.
The meeting itself at the airport demonstrated the tense nature of the relationship. In addition, Beijing emphasized its initiation by the Soviet side, which allowed it, as the weakest, to save face and the outward appearance of the meeting as equals.
The chronicle of the dialogue, which lasted 3 hours and 40 minutes, has now been sufficiently reconstructed.
Zhou did not hide his concern about rumors, as he put it, about a possible preemptive strike on Chinese nuclear facilities (and this concern differs from the tone of his optimistic speech following the results of the March battles).
He assured Kosygin, on the one hand, of China’s intention to inflict a nuclear strike on the USSR to the end (given the implementation in China of Project 131 to build a network of underground tunnels for the command post of the PLA headquarters, Zhou was not bluffing), on the other hand, he emphasized Beijing’s reluctance to war . Zhou drew attention to the weakness of the Chinese Air Force in comparison with the Soviet Air Force (let me remind you that we already had the Tu-95 in service, which the Chinese air defense had nothing to oppose).
From ideological contradictions to geopolitical ones
The continuation of the bilateral dialogue was, a week after the meeting at the airport, a confidential message from Zhou Kosygin with a proposal for mutual non-use of weapons, including nuclear ones. Agree, the proposal looked more like a request, given the balance of power.
Kosygin responded a week later, and also confidentially, emphasizing the parties’ non-violation of borders. The hint was unambiguous: it was the Chinese who violated.
Result: negotiations began in Beijing in October. They were not easy: Chinese diplomats insisted on the concept they formulated of “disputed areas,” meaning by them Soviet territory, and from where we should withdraw troops, in some places a hundred kilometers from the border.
Of course, Moscow’s reaction to such proposals was negative, but further negotiations are beyond the scope of the given topic. The only thing I note is that ideological differences gradually transformed into geopolitical ones, which have not been overcome to this day.
Main sources:
Goncharov S., Usov V. Negotiations between A. N. Kosygin and Zhou Enlai at Beijing airport // Problems of the Far East. 1992. No. 5,
as well as the memoirs of A.I. Elizavetin.
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