The United States offered to fully back the PRC’s bid to assume control of the Nationalist Chinese’s UN Security Council position; along with international recognition as being the legitimate successor government to the preceding Chinese government.

Realpolitik moment

[–] sourquincelog@hexbear.net 22 points 21 hours ago

Blowback podcast has a whole season on this. Shared distaste for Soviet-aligned Vietnam was a unifying factor for the khmer rouge, the US, and PRC

[–] Objection@lemmy.ml 21 points 21 hours ago

There was a tendency in this era to adopt extremist positions in reaction to the USSR and Kruschev and the fear of something similar happening in China. Even in China itself, this led to the excesses of the Cultural Revolution, with student-led militias killing each other, committing atrocities, performing show trials, etc. There was overcompensation that, afaik, went beyond anything that happened during the actual revolution, and some of it was just maximalist rhetoric thrown around to performatively demonstrate how unlike the revisionist Soviets they were, sometimes without really meaning it.

The Khmer Rouge was kinda like a kid getting relationship advice from someone going through a messy breakup. They took the most extreme rhetoric going around in China and internalized it. The Chinese communists didn't really educate the Cambodian movement on basic tenets like "don't be racist," that the fledgling Cambodian movement actually needed but which the Chinese likely took for granted, and instead just emphasized, "don't be revisionist." For the same reason, the PRC wasn't really watching out for the possibility of them becoming too violent/genocidal.

[–] Andrzej3K@hexbear.net 37 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Rivalry with Vietnam, desire to improve relations with the Great Satan

[–] Red_Scare@lemmygrad.ml 42 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I think it wasn't so much rivalry as a side effect of the Sino-Soviet split, Vietnam didn't want to cut ties with the USSR so China supported Cambodia against them.

Same reason China supported jihadists in Afghanistan really. What came out of it was the fall of the USSR (Afghan war wasn't the only or even main cause but a major one for sure), and China ended up with an extremist state on their borders which exported terrorism into Xinjiang, and the rest is history.

The immense misery of both China and post Soviet peoples in the 90s could probably be avoided if Sino-Soviet split didn't happen, if they worked together against religious extremists and counter-revolutionaries.

And if the Tito-Stalin split also didn't happen...

[–] EmmaGoldman@hexbear.net 23 points 1 day ago

Very plausibly the Soviet Union would still exist without the Sino-Soviet split.

[+] majster@lemmy.zip -7 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

If Tito-Stalin split didn't happen, there would be great chance that Yugoslavia would splinter even earlier. Resulting level of Serbian centrism if they leaned on Russians would certainly not be tolerated.

[–] bookwhyrm@lemmygrad.ml 21 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

firstly, the ussr was a multicultural internationalist project, not just russia, as it is often mischaracterised by the west. while there was a certain amount of russian cultural domination in some respects, this was mostly due to that nationality having the largest population, as well as baggage from the russian empire, not government policy, which was, if anything, geared towards the opposite.

also, i can't quite see what "serbian centrism" you are referring to in regard to the sfrj. living standards in slovenia and croatia were generally much higher than in the more southern republics, and the central government's policy regarding kosovo and metohija was anything but pro-serbian. in fact, the serbian right wing constantly whines about how socialism allegedly "weakened their nation".

[–] majster@lemmy.zip 5 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

Exactly. There was no serbian centrism in SFRJ. In part because of split from USSR. Those who favored the split also favored federalism which prevailed. Constitution of 1974 which was very federalist was largelly pushed by faction that was also in favor of anti-Stalinism before. Of course serbian centrists like Milošević didn't like that constitution one bit.

[–] bookwhyrm@lemmygrad.ml 8 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

didn't the federal system lead to the various republics becoming increasingly economically independent from each other, competing for resources, and thus laying the seeds for future political conflict? to me, it seems like exactly the kind of system that produced people like milošević in the first place!

also, a federal system risks exacerbating, instead of relinquishing, needless national differences, creating opportunities for people to primarily identify with their petty national groupings, rather than the internationalist project as a whole, and risking giving breathing space to reactionary movements hiding behind the shield of this or that national cultural grievance.

from the mid-'80s onward, the soviet government was granting greater and greater degrees of cultural and, more importantly, economic independence to its various republics, imitating some aspects of the yugoslav system. this policy ultimately led to nothing but further decomposition of social unity, which went on contributing to the country's collapse.

[–] cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml 6 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago)

This. We should seek to learn from mistakes of the past, not praise them and ignore their disastrous consequences out of misguided idealist notions. The federalism of Yugoslavia and the national policies of the USSR both failed and led to fratricidal wars.