To be frank, I’ve come to the position that the primary contradiction in Soviet relations with any of its fraternal socialist states was not principally any ideological discrepancies but the anxieties of its fellow state at being a victim of “big brother chauvinism” where its own individual state interests were subordinated to the interests of the socialist bloc - as set and determined by Moscow. I would say this contradiction is a leading reason for why the CPSU was unable to resolve any ideological gulfs with the other socialist parties it came into conflict with.

This was seen first with Yugoslavia, where Tito and the CPY tried to push for some market-based reforms and, as a result, was kicked out of the Comintern by Stalin, who also attempted to depose Tito from the CPY. Tito sympathizers were ousted from Communist Parties across socialist Europe and Yugoslavia was left to fend for itself, forcing it to ask the West for aid. To be a “Titoist” thereafter became the Comintern equivalent of the McCarthyist “Reds.” Churchill also accounted in his memoirs how Stalin decided with him to split Europe down the middle, leaving the Communist Party of Italy and the Greek Partisans out to dry in the Western orbit, where both were ultimately dismembered. Victor Grossman’s memoirs of his time in the DDR also recounts how a large amount of people were openly relieved that Stalin was succeeded by Khrushchev because of the reparations that was deeply hampering the state’s recovery and exacerbating its brain drain to West Germany.

This is not to say that the CPSU did not do a great deal for the assistance of its fellow socialist states and there are justifiable explanations for all of this conduct but nonetheless, just because something is justifiable doesn’t mean it fails to incur a cost. That cost was the view that Soviet interests took precedence over any Soviet aspirations of establishing equal fraternal relationships with its fellow socialist states and parties. In material terms, the USSR had a towering disparity in all measures - military, land, economy - and when this was coupled with perceptions of the CPSU’s “first among equals” attitude in the Comintern, it led to deep resentment that had catastrophic consequences for the socialist world.

It could be said that the CPSU’s attempt at this “inter-state democratic centralism” can be seen charitably as a “well-intentioned” attempt to take the first step towards that internationalist dream of breaking down the divisions of the states that divide humanity, but this was an ideal ahead of its time and failed to consider the conditions of its fellow socialist states. Most (actually, every single one with the sole exception of the DDR) of the newly socialist states were countries with a long history of foreign subjugation and torturous struggles for their sovereignty and when they finally achieved this sovereignty after WWII and yet were immediately expected to subordinate themselves to the CPSU’s leadership, it led to bitter feelings all around, even when Soviet side was acting with entirely good intentions, which was not universally the case.

This pattern continued all the way to the end of the USSR, with one of the most notorious cases being Honecker’s writing on how Gorbachev completely went past him to sell out socialist Germany by negotiating with the US and the West Germans without him. In short, there was a view that the CPSU failed to treat any of its fraternal socialist parties as equals, which is the source of the CPC’s accusation of the Soviet “big brother chauvinism” during the height of the split.

First impressions are important in all relationships and Sino-Soviet relations began distinctively on a bad note. The Comintern under Soviet direction demanded that the CPC join into the ranks of the KMT, which ended disastrously when Chiang Kai-Shek brutally purged all communists from the KMT and murdered thousands of communists and perceived communists. The understandable distrust from the CPC after the 1927 massacres led to a cooling down of inter-party relations and this lack of engagement led to a further lack of understanding which led to distrust from the CPSU when the CPC took power in 1949. It took Chinese military intervention in the Korean War for Stalin to finally trust Mao and see the CPC as a genuinely Communist Party - but the negative associations from the botched first impressions would be hard to let go of, as the later split would show.

When Deng Xiaoping met with Gorbachev in 1989, this is how he summarized his perspective on the Sino-Soviet split:

For many years there has been a question of how to understand Marxism and socialism. From the first Moscow talks in 1957 [among delegations from the Soviet Union, China and Hungary] through the first half of the 1960s, bitter disputes went on between our two parties. I was one of the persons involved and played no small role in those disputes. Now, looking back on more than 20 years of practice, we can see that there was a lot of empty talk on both sides. […]

[…] In 1963 I led a delegation to Moscow. The negotiations broke down. I should say that starting from the mid-1960s, our relations deteriorated to the point where they were practically broken off. I don’t mean it was because of the ideological disputes; we no longer think that everything we said at that time was right. The basic problem was that the Chinese were not treated as equals and felt humiliated. However, we have never forgotten that in the period of our First Five-Year Plan the Soviet Union helped us lay an industrial foundation.

If I have talked about these questions at length, it is in order to put the past behind us. We want the Soviet comrades to understand our view of the past and to know what was on our minds then. Now that we have reviewed the history, we should forget about it. That is one thing that has already been achieved by our meeting. Now that I have said what I had to say, that’s the end of it. The past is past.

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/deng-xiaoping/1989/196.htm

the way many western communists think of the split is deeply inaccurate and damaging. cpc propagandists and their (former) allies in western intelligence services have pretty much succeeded in creating a ridiculously negative image of the ussrs role in that development. they accuse the soviet union of ridiculous bullshit like “social imperialism” while managing to completely ignore that it was the chinese side who were the ones to betray proletarian internationalism, anti-imperialism and possibly even socialism as a whole.

the continued propagation of these narratives in an era where the ussr sadly no longer exists to defend itself against them (in no small part due to the collaboration of the cpc-traitors with western imperialism) is a historic injustice and truly shows the levels of immorality those interests have sunk to.

the communist party of china (cpc), under the leadership of mao zedong and his successors, accused the soviet union of “social imperialism” and deviation from the principles of marxism. however, the beijing seemed to have forgotten how back during the war of resistance against japanese aggression the chinese were only surviving thanks to food aid from the soviet people, as well as the fact that it was the heroic red army that liberated manchuria for them. instead, in an unparalleled act of ingratitude, both to the ussr and to the domestic victims of japanese imperialist criminals, they decided to support the japanese, who by then were already loyal dogs of the americans, in the kuril Islands dispute and other international issues.

this, combined with their actions after the visit of notorious war criminal richard nixon to the chinese capital proves that their rhetoric in this regard was merely a smokescreen to cover up the chinese governments own betrayal of proletarian unity and its support for imperialist forces around the world.

generally speaking, the term “social imperialism” ironically fits much better to describe the policy of beijing, since for a good chunk of the xxth century they never failed to side with western imperialism while moralizing and pointing fingers at soviet bases in mongolia.

for example, after the chilean coup of 1973, the cpc provided diplomatic support to the fascist dictator augusto pinochet. this was in stark contrast to the soviet union, which had provided aid to allende’s government and condemned the putsch. similarly, the cpc provided support to the murderous apartheid regime in south africa, as well as their unita puppets in angola and the mujahedeen in afghanistan. these groups were all fighting against socialist or anti-imperialist forces, and the chinese supporting for them was a clear betrayal of socialist principles.

generally speaking, the soviet union always provided crucial support to anti-colonial movements around the world and was committed to helping aspiring socialist revolutions everywhere, oftentimes leading to pro-soviet states (in western and chinese propaganda erroneously referred as “soviet satellites”) having much higher living standards than the ussr itself. meanwhile, the only people willing to fight for the prc were reactionary clanists like siyaad barre, compradores like jonas savimbi, misogynist drug barons like gulbeddin hekmatyar and utter monsters like pol pot.

the other major line of chinese criticism towards the soviet union, the one regarding revisionism, sadly has quite a lot of truth to it. khrushchev and his collaborators had been incredibly damaging to world socialism and should obviously be denounced. nevertheless, beijings own record on revisionism was equally as bad, if not worse, than that of the ussr. after maos death in 1976, the cpc, under the leadership of deng xiaoping, implemented a series of neoliberal economic reforms that completely superseded even the worst excesses of khrushchevs liberalizations. these reforms, which included the privatization of state-owned enterprises and the opening up of china to foreign investment, led to the creation of a new capitalist class in china and dramatic widening of economic inequality. even today, the wages of the chinese proletariat are purposefully depressed for the benefit of western imperialist exploiters and many workers, especially those toiling abroad, have to live in conditions not even fit for animals. the county has an unemployment rate of 6% (youth unemployment rate at 20%), an issue literally unheard of in soviet society, and the right to strike has been removed from the constitution in the mid 1980s.

and as the cherry on top, beijing has established diplomatic relations with the illegal settler-colonial state of israel and has continued being the occupations biggest trading partner despite the current genocide. even in its darkest moments the ussr wouldnt have stopped so low.

currently, communists should still critically support the prc and its allies in any efforts against american hegemony, but for any historically literate person it should be clear that the soviet union was the correct side during the split. if the ussr hadnt been strangled to death by the west and their collaborators in china, the world would be a much better place.

Revisionist aren’t “bad” socialists, they are Liberals. What makes an idea revisionist is if it will reverse the progress of socialism and reinstate liberalism. Revisionists are more dangerous than liberals because they twist socialist language and ideas into supporting liberalism. They have negative revolutionary potential.

It was not about revisionism. It was nationalism of both countries

Personally, I think people exaggerate the “revisionist” ideology involved in the sino-soviet split as the only major factor at play, and they miss the other huge factor at play. China just came out of its Century of Humiliation. There was naturally an incredibly strong paranoia that they would get imperialized again. The Soviets did not help assuage these fears when they started to become heavily influential in China’s direct bordering neighbors; Korea, Mongolia, Vietnam, and later Afghanistan.

If the sino-soviet split was purely about Mao trying to fight Soviet “revisionism,” why did it continue after Mao’s administration ended? It’s not like the Deng administration adhered to the Stalin Model at all, yet the split remained. Well, actually relations did start to finally normalize in the later 1980s culminating in the Sino-Soviet Summit. The reason was that Gorbachev had agreed to some of China’s long-standing demands: to withdraw troops from places like Afghanistan and Mongolia.

You see, Mongolia is on China’s northern border, Vietnam+Cambodia is on China’s southern border, and Afghanistan is on China’s western border. (The eastern border is just the sea.) In all those three land borders, there was huge Soviet presence, so they were basically surrounded by the Soviet military and given their history, they were naturally paranoid of any big country surrounding them and viewed it as an existential threat.

China has a very long history of constantly breaking apart and reforming again in new eras. This process is very messy, a lot of violence and, more importantly, border changes. Many times in history that his led to Vietnam being invaded by China. So, naturally, the Vietnamese also are a bit fearful of China and do not have the best relationship.

Vietnam sought very close relations with the Soviets as a way to offset this, to the point of having a Soviet military presence in Vietnam. The Chinese did not like a foreign country having a military presence in a bordering power that they have mixed relations with, so they, under Mao’s administration, tried to ally closely with Cambodia to offset this.

However, Cambodia decided to attack Vietnam and then lost the war they started. As the losers, the Vietnamese got to replace their government, and thus Cambodia became a borderline Vietnamese puppet state, which increased tensions between China and the Soviets even more since this meant by proxy more Soviet influence in the region also extended to Cambodia. Just look at what the Cambodia’s People Party did after the USSR fell apart. They immediately flip-flopped from a Marxist-Leninist party to a right-wing monarchist party basically overnight. Unlike the Vietnamese, the Cambodian leadership didn’t really actually embrace Marxism-Leninism and were largely just propped up by a foreign power.

That’s why the Deng administration attacked Vietnam, not with the intent of actually conquering it but as a show of force to say basically “we’re still the boss of this region” since the fall of Cambodia meant a fall of Chinese influence in Cambodia and its replacement by Vietnamese influence and, by proxy, Soviet influence.

A lot of the conflict was realpolitik of China very untrustworthy of any other big powers due to the Century of Humiliation and viewing the Soviets as an expansionist power and thus an existential threat to China, and so relations did not really start normalizing until the Soviets agreed to reduce their influence in the region. But by that point the USSR was already falling apart.

Ideology did play a role but it was moreso tangential and not the fundamental reason for the split. Given China’s history, they were already very uneasy about a major power like the Soviets having so much influence in the region, and Mao viewed de-Stalinization as a betrayal, and so ideology played a role as a tipping point. But you then have to ask the question, why were the relations so fragile in the first place that de-Stalinization was enough to cause friendly powers to suddenly become incredibly hostile towards each other? It’s because the relations were already built upon sand, given China’s historical situation combined with the Soviet’s desire to expand their influence.

Revisionism is defined as modifications to Marxism that make it compatible with liberalism.

Intellectually, this is solvable through education. Historically, however, when a Marxist state becomes revisionist, as happened in the USSR, the only solution is revolution. This is because the ruling class of a revisionist state diverges from the working class via liberalism and reproduces a class distinction.

As we know, the only way we have discovered of resolving class contradiction requires revolution. Maybe there’s another way, but we haven’t found it.

In this way, the solution to a capitalist society and a revisionist society are the same: revolution .