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Uncertain Partners: Stalin, Mao, and the Korean War. By Sergei N. Goncharov, John W. Lewis, and Xue Litai. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993. xvi, 393 pp. $45.00, ISBN 0-8047-2115-7.)
A Revolutionary War: Korea and the Transformation of the Postwar World. Ed. by William J. Williams. (Chicago: Imprint, 1993. xiv, 265 pp. Paper, $24.95, ISBN 1-879176-16-5.)
Uncertain Partners is the product of collaboration between a professor and a research associate at Stanford University with a member of the Russian Ministry for Foreign Affairs. In addition to using printed works on the 1945-1950 period, the authors interviewed key Soviet, t Chinese, and Korean participants and gained access to some previously unavailable documents. The result is the most complete account yet of the complex relationships among Joseph Stalin, Mao Tse-tung (Mao Zedong), and Kim Il Sung and the convergence of their policies and maneuverings before the Korean War.
The book provides further documentation of Stalin's almost paranoid suspicions of Mao. Less confident than many in the West that a common ideology would bond Mao to him, Stalin was not convinced that Mao was a true Communist. Of Mao's theoretical articles, he exclaimed, "What kind of Marxism is this! It is feudalism!" Stalin feared that Mao was basically a nationalist, potentially an Asian Tito, who might collaborate with the United States against Soviet interests.
In 1949, concluding that the United States would not help Chiang Kai-shek defend Taiwan, Mao was moving troops to China's southern coast for an invasion of Taiwan, which, all predicted, would eliminate the regime that had been the chief source of...