Sarah Paine

How does that work?

The Yalta Agreement also stipulates that the status quo shall be maintained in Mongolia.

So then you have to look at, well, what was the status quo?

It was called Russian sphere of influence in the north, Chinese continuing control in the south.

that Mongolia, which had always been both those places, had been part of the Qing Empire, never been part of the Russian Empire.

And moreover, Stalin had already taken Tanatuvai in 1944, and it looks small on this map, but it's bigger than England, had lots of gold, which the Soviets had monetized long ago.

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.