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Defining the Borderlands: Sino-Soviet Border Talks and the Nationalities Issue (1987–1991)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 May 2022

Alsu Tagirova Open the ORCID record for Alsu Tagirova [Opens in a new window]
Alsu Tagirova*
Affiliation:
Academy of History and Documentation of Socialism, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China
*
Email: sai@history.ecnu.edu.cn
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Abstract

In the 1980s, the Soviet Union and China resurveyed their border in order to restart their long-stalemated border negotiations. These negotiations resulted in only a partial border settlement: the agreement was signed in 1991. By the end of 1989, nationalities openly expressing their wish to secede from the Soviet Union caused the Soviet government to slow down the negotiation process, and Moscow insisted on setting aside the most contentious sections. China’s nationalities issue had the opposite effect on Zhongnanhai: Chinese leaders wished to settle the entire Sino-Soviet border as quickly as possible. However, once the collapse of the Soviet Union became imminent, the Chinese saw advantages of delaying the negotiations on the disputed sections of the border. They calculated that would allow for China to negotiate with weaker, newly independent countries.

Keywords

Sino-Soviet borderChinathe USSRnationalismborderlands
Type
Article
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 51 , Issue 2 , March 2023 , pp. 299 - 316
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Association for the Study of Nationalities

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