Two Suns in the Heavens: The Sino-Soviet Struggle for Supremacy, 1962-1967

The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars presents a discussion on Sino-Soviet relations during the 1960s.

Sergey Radchenko, author of Two Suns in the Heavens The Sino-Soviet Struggle for Supremacy, 1962-1967, the latest edition in the CWIHP Book Series and Mark Kramer, director of Harvard University's Cold War Studies Center, will discuss the deterioration of relations between the USSR and China in the 1960s, whereby once powerful allies became estranged, competitive, and increasingly hostile neighbors.

Sergey Radchenko's account, based on newly available archival sources, reveals the dynamic of the Sino-Soviet alliance and shows how its intrinsic inequality - seen as entirely natural by the Soviets but bitterly resented by the Chinese - resulted in its ultimate collapse. Through a comprehensive investigation of policymaking in both Moscow and Beijing, Radchenko creates a new framework for understanding the role of power struggle, ideology, personalities, and culture in Sino-Soviet relations.

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Sergey Radchenko is a fellow with the International History Department at the London School of Economics (LSE). Dr. Radchenko has written on the history of the Cold War, on the Soviet foreign policy during the Cold War years, and on the regional history of North East Asia, including China, Mongolia, Korea (South and North) and Japan. In addition to Two Suns in the Heavens, Radchenko is the author, with Campbell Craig, of The Atomic Bomb and the Origins of the Cold War as well as a number of journal articles on the Cold War in Asia. A longtime CWIHP Partner, Radchenko has also authored “North Korea's Efforts to Acquire Nuclear Technology and Nuclear Weapons: Evidence from Russian and Hungarian Archives” (CWIHP Working Paper No. 53) with Balazs Szalontai, and "The Soviet Union and the North Korean Seizure of the USS Pueblo: Evidence from Russian Archives" (CWIHP Working Paper No. 47).

Mark Kramer is the director of the Cold War Studies Project at Harvard University and a senior fellow of Harvard's Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies. He has taught international relations and comparative politics at Harvard, Yale, and Brown Universities, and was formerly an Academy Scholar in Harvard's Academy of International and Area Studies and a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University. Kramer has written extensively on various aspects of Soviet foreign policy, drawing on recently declassified materials from the archives of former Soviet allies.