Abstract

Roy Medvedev's new book reflects an important change among ruling circles in the Soviet Union, a willingness fundamentally to transform and improve Moscow-Beijing relations by making concessions to China away from the hard-line stance long backed by Soviet conservatives. Anti-Stalinist historian Medvedev details the assumptions underlying this major redirection of Soviet policy. Even the errors and omissions in Medvedev's important book are illuminating. In contrast to Andrei Sakharov, however, Medvedev's nationalism blinds him from seeing some key China-Soviet Union realities. While Medvedev acknowledges that Brezhnev in 1970 sought United States support for a Soviet attack on China, nonetheless, “the chief part in creating the danger of war on the Sino-Soviet border was played by the Chinese leadership” (p. 55).