Sarah Paine

Khrushchev is apoplectic because Mao hasn't given him any advance warning.

And by the way, this sort of thing could trigger some of the security clauses of the Sino-Soviet friendship treaty with nuclear follow-on effects.

And while this is going on, Khrushchev wants to have a combined sub-fleet vase.

If we're going to take all these risks, we need to have subs in different places.

Mao says, no way.

And then Khrushchev is fed up and said, well, you're not going to get the plans for the atomic bomb.

Okay.

And the whole thing becomes public in 1960 with anger all around.

And the two, Russia and China, squabbled incessantly over the Vietnam War.

And the North Vietnamese were interested in getting maximum aid for both, from both, which it did.

And they begged the Chinese to allow the Russians to ship things over land through China and

So the Chinese felt obliged to do it.

But the terms of that overland trade were just a food for all kinds of squabbling.

It just didn't end.

So the story of the reversal and the balance of power between Russia and China arose from multiple factors.

Doesn't happen all at once.

It is both a story of China's rise and of Russia's decline.

And step one for China is getting its own atomic weapon.

which it does in 1964 so that it can get itself free of Soviet bondage.

And so this is in 1964 after they've detonated that bomb where Mao goes, okay, there are too many places occupied by the Soviet Union.