Sarah Paine

So if you add up

All the territory that the Russians took from the Chinese sphere of influence from the 1858 Treaty of Aigun and 1860 Treaty of Peking, fast forward to detaching outer Mongolia from the Chinese sphere of influence, here's what it really is.

It's greater than all U.S.

territory east of the Mississippi.

This is not your normal land ground.

So talk about derailing somebody.

That would do it.

To be fair to the Russians, they did, albeit slowly, turn over all this Japanese stockpiled military equipment in Manchuria, turned it over to the communists.

And they also, albeit belatedly, they trained them how to use the equipment and also how to run the Manchurian railway system.

And the Chinese communists, as a rural peasant movement, how would they know how to do these things?

They wouldn't.

And it allows...

this conventional aid and logistics of being able to move people around, it transforms the communists from a lightly armed guerrilla movement to a very heavily armed conventional forces capable for the showdown phase of the Chinese Civil War.

So, like the Huangpuo Military Academy, this is essential aid for the communist victory.

So, neither the communists or the nationalists complain about the deindustrialization of Manchuria.

And the communists probably traded that industry for all the conventional aid that they got.

And the nationalists are trading that and also outer Mongolian independence for a promise from Stalin not to aid the communists, which a promise that he promptly breaks.

So Mao starts to figure out that something is up here.

So when he's on a roll in his offensives in the Civil War, there's really bitter fighting.

And the real movement in the last phase, the post-1940 phase of the Chinese Civil War, is in 1948.