Taiwan and the Soviet Union During the Cold War: Enemies or Ambiguous Friends?

Abstract

The article questions Michael Share's thesis concerning the reasons behind the continued hostility between the Soviet Union and Taiwan during the Cold War, irrespective of re-established contacts in the late 1960s–early 1970s. It argues that the newly emerged evidence concerning Soviet–Taiwanese relations during the Cold War validated John Garver's conclusions, published in 1977, while Share fails to provide sufficient evidence to support his major argument. Moscow and Taipei remained hostile to each other for geo-political, rather than ideological, reasons. Taiwan's anti-Sovietism stemmed from its awareness that closer relations with the Soviets would have affected the US commitment to the ROC's defence, scared off foreign investors and possibly provoked military action by China. Moscow, for its part, being aware that any collaboration with the ROC would have been counterproductive to its efforts to mend fences with the PRC and could have accelerated a Sino-American rapprochement, consistently supported the ‘one China’ principle.

Notes

[1] Share, ‘From Ideological Foe to Uncertain Friend’, 1.

[2] Toder, ‘Istoria izuchenia Taivania v Rossii’.

[3] Wu, Belye piatna v otnosheniakh Rossiei i Taivanem.

[4] Bazhanov, ‘Russia and Taiwan’; Ivanov, ‘Russian–Taiwanese Relations’.

[5] Garver, ‘Taiwan's Russian Option: Image and Reality’, 762–3.

[6] Share, ‘From Ideological Foe to Uncertain Friend’, 4.

[7] Usov, ‘Tysiacha dvadtsat’ piatoe preduprezhdenie Mao Tsetunga’, 39.

[8] Bazhanov, Kitai i Vneshnoi Mir, 36.

[9] Chudodeyev, ‘Skhvatka dwukh tigrov’, 31.

[10] Ledovskii, SSSR i Stalin v sudbakh Kitaia, 125–6. While broadly agreeing with the main tenets of Ledovskii's arguments, Goncharov et al. offer a different interpretation of Stalin's Taiwan strategy. See Goncharov et al., Uncertain Partners, 99–100.

[11] Share, ‘From Ideological Foe to Uncertain Friend’, 7, 9.

[12] Kapitsa, KNR: Tri desyatiletiya – tri politiki, 204–9.

[13] Usov, ‘Tysiacha dvadtsat’ piatoe preduprezhdenie Mao Tsetunga’.

[14] Usov, ‘Tajwanskij krizis 1958 g.’, 44–56.

[15] ‘Memuary Nikity Sergeevicha Khrushcheva’, 80–81. Kramer's research supports Khrushchev's account of the events. See Kramer, ‘The USSR Foreign Ministry's Appraisal of Sino-Soviet Relations’, 174–5.

[16] ‘Memuary Nikity Sergeevicha Khrushcheva’, 81–2.

[17] Share, ‘From Ideological Foe to Uncertain Friend’, 6.

[18] Of those who stayed in Taiwan, three died in 1975, 1984 and 1986, three returned to the USSR in 1988 and one decided to remain in Taiwan. Zhongyang Ribao, 26 October 1988. Four sailors who returned to the USSR in 1958 via Brazil were accused of high treason and imprisoned in the gulags for eight years. Lagunina and Khrobostov, ‘”SOS” protyazhennost'yu v 34 goda’, 42–3.

[19] Bazhanov, Russia and Taiwan, 7. However, by the late 1980s, the film was forgotten by the Soviet public. Irina Lagunina & Mikhail Khrobostov, ‘Troye iz ada’ (Three From Hell), Novoye Vremya, 35, 1988, 30–33.

[20] The repatriation of the sailors received wide publicity in the USSR. TASS News Agency, Moskovskii Komsomolets and Novoye Vremya, among others, published articles on their return. See Novoye Vremya, no. 51 (1988): 40–43 and no. 52 (1988): 40–43.

[21] Share, ‘From Ideological Foe to Uncertain Friend’, 22–3, 28–9.

[22] Wei, Sulian tewu zai Taiwan. See also Ivanov, ‘Russian–Taiwanese Relations’, 3–4; Bazhanov, ‘Russia and Taiwan’, 7; Li, Taiwan yu Qiansulian jiaowang milu, esp. Vol. 2; Yu, ‘Taiwan yu Sulian de mimi jiechu’, 34–9.

[23] For more on his Taiwan visits and contacts in Europe, see Wei, Sulian tewu zai Taiwan; Li, Taiwan yu Qiansulian jiaowang milu, Vol. 2, 560–61; Far Eastern Economic Review, 27 June 1975; Yu, ‘Taiwan yu Sulian de mimi jiechu’, 34–9; Bellows, ‘Taiwan's Foreign Policy in the 1970s’, 597.

[24] Ivanov, ‘Russian–Taiwanese Relations’, 4.

[25] Wei, Sulian tewu zai Taiwan, 21.

[26] Wei, Sulian tewu zai Taiwan, 77–98.

[27] Bellows suggests that Foreign Minister Chou Shu-kai (Zhou Shukai) arranged Louis' visit to Taiwan in November 1971. Bellows, ‘Taiwan's Foreign Policy in the 1970s’, 597.

[28] Share mentions the visit twice. In October 1968, Ku supposedly travelled to Moscow as a member of both the ROC Legislative Yuan and Academia Sinica. In March 1969, the same Ku reportedly travelled to Moscow as Taiwan's Vice-Minister of Education, reciprocating Victor Louis' visit. Wei is silent on Ku's visits to the Soviet Union.

[29] Garver, ‘Taiwan's Russian Option’, 756–7.

[30] Li, Taiwan yu Qiansulian jiaowang milu, Vol. 2, 560–61.

[31] In 1990, ROC Vice Foreign Minister Chang Hsiao-yen (Zhang Xiaoyen) told the press about his numerous contacts with the Soviet officials in Washington in the early 1970s. Two years later, the ROC Foreign Minister, Chien Fu (Qian Fu), in an interview with a Russian newspaper, acknowledged that while representing the ROC in Washington, he had ‘close ties’ with Soviet Ambassador A. Dobrynin. Ivanov, ‘Russian–Taiwanese Relations’, 2–3.

[32] In 1990, ROC Vice Foreign Minister Chang Hsiao-yen (Zhang Xiaoyen) told the press about his numerous contacts with the Soviet officials in Washington in the early 1970s. Two years later, the ROC Foreign Minister, Chien Fu (Qian Fu), in an interview with a Russian newspaper, acknowledged that while representing the ROC in Washington, he had ‘close ties’ with Soviet Ambassador A. Dobrynin. Ivanov, ‘Russian–Taiwanese Relations’, 4.

[33] Kapustin, Taivan i Yuzhnaia Korea, 183.

[34] Garver, ‘Taiwan's Russian Option’, 754–5, Ivanov, ‘Russian–Taiwanese Relations’, 5; Wu, Belye piatna v otnosheniyakh Rossiei i Taivanem, 42–4; Zhongyang Ribao, 31 March 1992.

[35] Garver, ‘Taiwan's Russian Option’, 755.

[36] Xu, Razvite Taivan'sko-Rossiiskikh otnoshenii, 51.

[37] See Suslov's draft report for the Central Committee of the CPSU Plenum, ‘About the Visit of the Soviet-Party-Government Delegation to the PRC’, 69.

[38] Share, ‘From Ideological Foe to Uncertain Friend’, 29–30.

[39] Admiral Sidorov, during his visit to Taiwan in the early 1990s, revealed that in 1981–82 Soviet war plans, devised for hypothetical nuclear war with the United States, included a nuclear attack on Taiwan. Wu, Belye piatna v otnosheniakh Rossiei i Taivanem, 48.

[40] The same point is reiterated by Ivanov, ‘Otnoshenia mezhdu Rossiei i Taivanem’, 209.