After the Chinese Communists finally achieved victory, Stalin no longer had grounds to avoid Mao’s visit. Furthermore, given the new situation, a face-to-face meeting would be extremely helpful in resolving key questions regarding the Sino-Soviet relationship. Mao left Beijing on 6 December 1949. After a ten-day trip he arrived at Moscow’s Yaroslavl Station on 16 December, exactly at noon. Mao’s interpreter recalled that the station clock struck twelve just as they pulled up, making the arrival all the more dramatic.78 A famous photograph capturing the meeting on the station platform shows the head of the honor guard in the front row with his saber drawn, Bulganin in his marshal’s uniform, Molotov, and Mao. The Chinese Communist leader, tall and stout next to the slight Molotov and Bulganin, looked imposing in his large fur collar and high fur hat. Later that evening Stalin received Mao in his Kremlin office.
Did the Soviet and Chinese leaders like each other? They certainly had much in common. Both were born in remote provinces to families that were poor but not destitute. Both despised their fathers and loved their mothers. Despite material deprivations, each had obtained an education, joined the revolutionary underground in his youth, and overcome his modest social origins. Each had received much of his education through independent, unguided reading and showed a penchant for abstract, philosophical topics and radical ideas. Both wrote verse and enjoyed literature idealizing rebels and brigands with forceful personalities, physical strength, and indomitable will. Neither had a talent for languages, knew a single foreign language, or even spoke his dominant language very well. Stalin’s accent was strongly Georgian, Mao’s Xiang (Hunanese).79 Both were ruthless and decisive. Mao fully shared Stalin’s views on attaining sole dictatorial powers and governing and largely borrowed the Soviet leader’s methods, carrying out purges, liquidating former comrades, embracing forced rapid industrialization, and presiding over a great famine. The characterization of Mao prepared for the Soviet leadership in 1949 by the doctor and radio communications specialist A. Ya. Orlov describes the Chinese leader as “Unhurried, even slow.… He moves steadily toward any goal he sets, but not always following a straight path, often with detours.… Is a natural performer. Is able to hide his feelings and can play whatever role is needed.”80 This description greatly resembled Stalin. In December 1949, when Stalin was celebrating his seventieth birthday, Mao was about to turn fifty-six. Understandably, Mao looked up to Stalin. Among the Chinese leadership, the Soviet leader was referred to as “the old man.”81
Mao showed his respect for Stalin during the 16 December meeting. He made no demands and did not insist on anything, instead asking for advice and listening to it attentively. Stalin approved of this form of interaction. On hearing Mao’s unwelcome but not unexpected question about the fate of the 1945 Sino-Soviet agreement, he launched into a lengthy explanation. The Soviet side wanted to “formally” preserve the existing agreement, he stressed, but was prepared to make certain changes that would be advantageous to China. Spelling out the political drawbacks of scrapping the agreement altogether, Stalin explained that it had been part of the Yalta agreements with the United States and Great Britain. Annulling it would “give America and England the legal grounds to raise questions about modifying also the treaty’s provisions concerning the Kurile Islands and South Sakhalin.” It is unclear whether Mao immediately understood how spurious this argument was; he certainly grasped it later. In any event, he took an understanding tone, and the conversation moved on to pleasanter subjects. Stalin agreed to requests for aid. The talks ended on a high note. Stalin even paid Mao the compliment of proposing to collect and publish his works in Russian.82
Despite the atmosphere of goodwill and warmth, the meeting must have left Mao with mixed feelings. Of course the Chinese leader was given many promises and generous displays of respect. In the end, however, Stalin had refused to give him an item near the top of his wish list: an accord that would supersede the 1945 agreement. Politically, such an accord was a high priority for Mao. As subsequent events would show, he decided to bide his time.
The following days were a bustle of activity not conducive to the discussion of weighty matters. A number of foreign guests arrived for Stalin’s seventieth birthday. On 21 December a grand celebration was held at the Bolshoi Theater. Mao was seated in the first row of the presidium with Stalin and was the first foreign guest to give a speech. “When Mao Zedong stepped up to the podium,” the Hungarian Communist Party leader Matyas Rakosi later recalled, “an ovation erupted the likes of which the Bolshoi Theater had probably never seen. I could see that this exultation and such a reception had an effect on Mao Zedong.”83
Despite this show of respect, when the fanfare subsided Mao found himself in an unenviable position. Stalin’s refusal to sign a new treaty left a major purpose of his visit unfulfilled. Most historians view the events that unfolded over the rest of his stay in Moscow as a subtle war of nerves. Stalin was clearly showing Mao who was boss. Mao, in response, applied his own form of pressure. After Stalin’s death he claimed to have insisted on his demands, but he was probably exaggerating. In fact, claiming illness (he was indeed in a poor physical state), he demonstratively went into seclusion, refusing to take part in various events on his schedule and announcing that he had decided to return to China a month earlier than planned.84 This tactic was to bear fruit.
Scholars have offered a variety of explanations for Stalin’s change of position, but probably he had been prepared to strike a deal from the start. Skilled negotiator that he was, Stalin began the talks with a refusal because he was wary that China’s strongly nationalistic new leaders might make excessive demands. This was an effective ruse. Mao apparently sensed what Stalin was up to and proved himself a worthy sparring partner. After Stalin agreed to continue negotiations, Mao began to drag his feet. Negotiations were to begin after the arrival of a group of Chinese leaders, but Mao instructed them to take their time. At first they delayed their departure from China, and then they chose a slow means of transportation to the Soviet capital—train.
It was not until 22 January 1950 that talks resumed among Stalin, Mao, and Mao’s associates in Stalin’s office. Stalin and Mao both reaffirmed their intention of concluding new agreements and gave instructions on drafting them. After some tough negotiating, on 14 February the Treaty of Friendship, Alliance, and Mutual Assistance was signed in the Kremlin by the USSR and the PRC, along with a number of ancillary treaties. The Soviet side lost almost all of the huge advantages it had gained through the Yalta compromises and the 1945 Sino-Soviet treaty. Under the 1945 agreement, the Chinese-Changchun Railway and Port Arthur were given to the Soviet Union for thirty years, but under the 1950 agreement they were to be returned to China by the end of 1952. China was to take back property leased by the USSR in the port of Dalny almost immediately. As a result, the Soviet Union lost its ice-free port on the Pacific and material resources of significant value. Some authors have described these agreements as “generosity unprecedented in international treaties.”85 The new Chinese leaders did, however, pay a price. They renounced all claims to Outer Mongolia and also signed a secret protocol banning citizens of third-party countries from being given concessions or conducting business in Manchuria and Xinjiang, thereby allowing the USSR to retain exclusive privileges in these border zones.