Dictation of N.S. Khrushchev on the Draft Treaty with China on Resolving Border Disputes

Dictated by N. S. Khrushchev

18 September 1964

(to our draft treaty with China about the resolution of border disputes between the Soviet Union and China)

The Chinese have written down that our borders developed as a result of unjust treaties imposed on China by Tsarist governments.

I would say approximately this: (yesterday we talked, but I do not want to help them).

Maybe take from the time when peoples had already transitioned to a settled way of life and countries were formed, and with the development of capitalism all the countries of the world waged internecine wars for the expansion of territory and to subordinate others to themselves, and pursued the goals of exploitation by capitalist landowner governments. And their governments, tsars, and kings began to perform the functions of landowners and capitalists, but they themselves were landowners and capitalists. Therefore, bloody wars were imposed on peoples, and it was declared that they were fighting for the sacred rights of their people, but actually they were predatory wars.

This was not an exception for the policy of Russian tsars and Chinese emperors, who also waged annexationist wars, bloody wars, and imposed terms on the others which were defeated at the time; but after some time, it was the other way around.

But right now these times have passed for a large number of peoples of the world; these people have carried out revolutions and a just social structure has been established, and they are developing their economies and their state institutions on the basis of Marxism-Leninism. And this ought to put an end to those unjust relations based on brute force which existed previously between peoples of those countries where the working class was victorious, where peoples had moved to the path of building socialism.

There were also the same relations between the Russian tsars and Chinese emperors. Right now, after the revolutions in Russia and in China, the conditions have been created to build relations on the basis of brotherhood and friendship between our peoples.

We are the heirs of those territories and possessions which we obtained as an inheritance from the old system in Russia and from the old imperial, bourgeois system in China, and therefore right now we are clarifying the historical borders which have formed, which have come to us as a heritage from the old systems of the exploiters which were replaced by our peoples (etc.)

(They insist [navyazyvayut] that only our tsars were predators. But we say: both ours and theirs. Let them then object then.

This needs to be cut out. It is hardly necessary in this treaty to make a big historical digression.

The preamble is Chinese, but we are giving this. They gave us a draft; here we took it and wrote that we reject it. It is not necessary to reject [it]. This was correct. But it is also correct with respect to the predatory policy of the Russian tsars, this is correct also with respect to the annexationist policy of the Chinese emperors. Therefore let’s write down that all these acts were directed against our predecessors by one side or another. But now we are the inheritors of that territory which China and the Soviet Union had before the socialist revolutions. And therefore we want right now to look over and clarify the boundaries where they require clarification and decide all the questions in a fraternal way so that the borders not be [an object of] contention between our peoples and not provoke conflicts, but be borders of peace and friendship between the peoples of the Soviet Union and the peoples of China.

We will publish this afterwards: what we propose, and what they propose.

How will we justify the policy of the tsarist government? If [we] argue, then [we] need to be armed with material in the negotiations that the Russian tsars waged an annexationist policy, but the Chinese emperors did the same thing.

Therefore those territories which are now credited to the Chinese which were unjustly annexed by the Russian tsars, the Chinese emperors unjustly claimed these territories because it was not Chinese who lived in these territories, but other peoples lived [there] and obviously the Chinese came there, collected taxes, and plundered, and therefore considered that these territories were theirs. But the Russian tsars also lived according to these laws and also plundered. Eventually they came to agreement among themselves and established some borders.

Therefore to say now who acted justly and who unjustly in our time with respect to our ancestors whom we overthrew, it is evident that they and other were unjustified because not Chinese, but Manchurians and Mongols, lived in these territories of which we speak. The Mongolian people are divided right now as a result of the past.

(This is already argumentation when it is necessary to discuss [it])

If one talks about Kazakhstan, if they claim now that its lands were unjustly seized, this is Kazakhstan, and not China. If it was seized from China then evidently China annexed these lands at one time, enslaved these peoples, and subordinated [them] to itself. And now the Kazakh Socialist Republic has been formed which is part of the Soviet Union and enjoys equal rights, even the right to leave the Soviet Union, and there is  also a part of the land and people which are in the [People’s] Republic of China.

Therefore if one talks about justice then it would seem to us Communists, Marxist-Leninists, to grant the most just right to peoples who were divided, to solve this problem as they want: whether they want to have a single country, a socialist one, which would include all the territory and all the people of this nation, to have an independent state, or to be within the Soviet Union or in the Chinese state. To give them this right, and they have a right to this because the sociopolitical systems are the same in China and the Soviet Union, therefore there are no longer any arguments here that this is class warfare, but here the opportunity is afforded to the peoples to choose themselves, to decide their fate.

This also relates to the Uzbeks and Tajiks (Pamir). This also relates to the Kirgiz.

But in the Far East, the Chinese have already agreed with these borders with the exception of a clarification. There the questions are more easily solved because these territories did not previously belong to China; therefore, they were established by agreement between our former governments and evidently these borders should also be considered the borders between our countries. [There is] only the clarification of the placement of signs in order that there be no misunderstanding because there are neither Chinese nor others there. But the cities and villages on this territory settled by Russian people and other peoples of the Soviet Union live and are developing there on a socialist basis.

[Here is something like argumentation] 

They say that this is a treaty of such and such a year. But the Chinese emperors invaded it. Xinjiang, but it’s not China, and these are Uyghurs. But Uyghurs, these are Uzbeks and Tajiks. Right now they claim the lands of Kirgizia. So these are the same lands of the Kirgiz and they live there; there are no Chinese there and there weren’t, but right now the Kirgiz border the Kirgiz in China. 

(Just now I read just now that thousands of young men and women are being sent from Shanghai to Xinjiang. They want to settle [Xinjiang] with a Chinese population. This is the policy they are pursuing right now.)

I would have considered that this part would be necessary (the border guards won’t do this) for Cdes. Ponomarev, Andropov, and Kuznetsov to work out. This is the political part, it is a question of disputes, [both] political and theoretical.

5ng

18 September 1964