Uncertain partners tells for the first time the inside story of the creation of the Sino-Soviet alliance and the origins of the Korean War. Using major new documentary sources, including cables and letters between Mao Zedong and Stalin, and interviews with key Russian, Chinese, and Korean participants, the book focuses on the domestic and foreign policy decision-making in all three countries from 1945 through October 1950. The authors examine the complex relations between Stalin, Chiang Kai-shek, and Mao during the last year of the Chinese civil war and the emergence of the Cold War. They show how the interplay of perceptions, national security policies, and personalities shaped those relations and were used by the North Korean leader Kim Il Sung to win backing for the invasion of South Korea. The authors also examine the Sino-Soviet alliance, drawing on hitherto unknown secret protocols and understandings and the records of high-level planning that led to the invasion and to the Chinese intervention in Korea. The book is illustrated with 42 photographs and two maps and is the fourth volume in the series, Studies in International Security and Arms Control, sponsored by the Center for International Security and Arms Control at Stanford University. This title, the first using newly available resources from China and Russia, represents the opening of a new era in the study of Sino-Soviet relations and their effect on international politics. The credentials of the authors are of the highest: Goncharov is a member of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, while John Lewis and Xue Litai (co-authors of China Builds the Bomb , Stanford Univ. Pr., 1988) are at Stanford University. Together they examine the delicate relations among Stalin, Chiang Kai-shek, and Mao and their approval of Kim Il Sung's invasion of South Korea in 1950. The use of three different ways to transliterate the Chinese resources presents a problem, as does the mixture of footnotes and endnotes. These drawbacks are offset by several strong points, including the extensive references and the translations of primary documents, which appear in the appendix. Strongly recommended for any library supporting graduate programs in Sino-Soviet relations. - John Sandstrom, Houston P.L. Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. The Great Teacher (Stalin) and the Great Helmsman (Mao) did not get along well, and scholars have long speculated on their excruciating negotiations, which were, in turn, the subject of vitriolic recriminations after the Sino-Soviet alliance fell apart. With access to Stalin and Mao's correspondence, much of it reprinted in the appendix, Goncharov and two other writers--an American, John W. Lewis, and a Chinese, Xue Litai--sort through the details. When the two bosses met in December 1949, they presented a united and intimidating Communist front. Behind the facade, however, Stalin haggled over Soviet rights in Manchuria, and Mao complained about Soviet meddling in his party. The two were not even in accord over the war that Kim Il Sung wanted in his Korea. Mao preferred to attack Taiwan instead. The war their ruthless decision making ignited did, however, produce a more equal relationship between them--a process that takes on an exceptionally cold-blooded cast considering the human cost. Hefty, serious documentation on a hitherto Byzantine case of Cold War politics. Gilbert Taylor An informed and revelatory reappraisal of Sino-Soviet relations from the close of WW II through October 1950, when the People's Republic of China entered the Korean conflict. Drawing on hitherto untapped archives (including a collection of Mao's papers), Goncharov (a Russian academic and advisor to Boris Yeltsin), Lewis (Chinese Politics/Stanford), and Litai (a researcher at Stanford's Center for International Security and Arms Control) shed much fresh light on an alliance that was appreciably more complex than previously imagined. In particular, they dash any notion that Kim Il Sung's assault on South Korea was a carefully coordinated conspiracy. Indeed, they argue, the decision to invade (though backed by Stalin) was a reckless gamble, coming as it did in bits and pieces. But while China's rulers were reluctant dragons in Korea, Mao clung to the lessons he'd learned from enervating civil strife in his dealings with Stalin. For both strongmen, personal visions of national security were paramount in their foreign policies and negotiations with one another; among other consequences, each believed that he could bend Kim's adventurism to his own ends. But while Mao was intent on unifying China and keeping it independent of the Kremlin (whose economic and military aid he nonetheless needed), by mid-1949, events had narrowed his strategic options. Meanwhile, the formation of NATO presented Stalin with the prospect of stalemate in Europe, inducing him to look for protection along his vast domain's eastern flanks. For all their ruthless resolve, however,