when did relations between china and the soviet union begin to improve
Sino-Soviet relations Since the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship resulted in the Soviet Union losing its naval bases in Port Arthur and Dalian, the issue that Stalin had to face was to find a new ice-free port as a Soviet naval base. This issue motivated Stalin's support for allowing Kim Il-Sung to launch the Korean War.[4] However, both Kim Il-Sung and Stalin did not consider that the United States would intervene into that war immediately, if at all. Kim Il-Sung could not sustain the attack against the US Army. When Kim Il-Sung required military assistance from the Soviet Union and China, Mao agreed to send Chinese troops, but asked the Soviet Air Force to provide air cover. As the two leaders distrusted each other, Stalin agreed with sending Chinese troops to Korea, but refused to provide air cover.[5] Since without the air cover from the Soviet Union, Mao once considered that China did not send troops into Korea, and Stalin at one time decided to give up the Korea Peninsula.[5] After much cogitation, Mao solely sent Chinese troops into Korea on 19 October 1950 under an extremely hard Chinese economic and military situation. This activity ultimately changed the Sino-Soviet relationship. After 12 days of Chinese troops entering the war, Stalin allowed the Soviet Air Force to provide air cover, and supported more aid to China.[5] Mao sending Chinese troops to take part in the Korean War was followed by large-scale economic and military cooperation between China and the Soviet Union, and the friendly relationship of the two countries changed from titular to virtual. In one less known example of the Sino-Soviet military cooperation, in Aprilâ€“June 1952 a group of Soviet Tupolev Tu-4 aircraft were based in Beijing to perform reconnaissance missions on American fusion bomb tests in the Pacific.[6]
Cold War The Cold War split the temporary wartime alliance against Nazi Germany, leaving the Soviet Union and the United States as two superpowers with profound economic and political differences. The USSR was a Marxist–Leninist state led by its Communist Party, which in turn was dominated by a leader with different titles over time, and a small committee called the Politburo. The Party controlled the state, the press, the military, the economy and many organizations throughout the Second World, including the Warsaw Pact and other satellites, and funded Communist parties around the world, sometimes in competition with Communist China, particularly following the Sino-Soviet split of the 1960s. In opposition stood the capitalist West, led by the United States, a federal republic with a two-party presidential system. The First World nations of the Western Bloc were generally liberal democratic with a free press and independent organizations, but were economically and politically entwined with a network of banana republics and other authoritarian regimes throughout the Third World, most of which were the Western Bloc's former colonies.[1][2] Some major Cold War frontlines such as Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Congo were still Western colonies in 1947.