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The Sino-Soviet Split: Borkenau's Predictive Analysis of 1952

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

John E. Tashjean
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Extract

At a meeting of the Association for Asian Studies in March 1961, Professor Bernard Morris read a paper on Sino-Soviet relations which began as follows:

Almost a decade ago, the late Franz Borkenau wrote that a profound conflict between the communist regimes of Russia and China is in the long run as certain as anything in politics. He based his prediction on the strength of two arguments. First, it is in the very nature of totalitarian regimes to establish their absolute control as far as they can; they therefore cannot have genuine allies but must seek to dominate. Secondly, the unity of the communist world movement is axiomatic for every Leninist. Hence it follows that the Kremlin must exert control over all communist parties. This thrust of Soviet totalitarianism, Borkenau argued, is therefore incompatible with Mao Tse-tung's clear desire to be a leader in his own right and to preserve Chinese national independence.

Type
Research Notes
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 94 , June 1983 , pp. 342 - 361
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1983

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References

1. Morris, Bernard, “Sino-Soviet relations,” Survey, No. 39 (12 1961), p. 41Google Scholar.

2. Borkenau, F., “MaoTse-tung,” The Twentieth Century (London), 08 1952Google Scholar; this never entered the mainstream of specialist literature.

3. Tashjean, John E., Where China Meets Russia: An Analysis of Dr Starlinger's Theory (Washington, D. C: Central Asian Collectanea, 1959)Google Scholar, Chap. 1.

4. See Garrett, Banning, “The United States and the great power triangle,” in: Segal, Gerald (ed.), The China Factor, Peking and the Superpowers (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1982), pp. 76–102Google Scholar. This is, essentially, an updated version of Garrett's public testimony in: House Subcommittee on Asian and Pacific Affairs, The United States and the People's Republic of China: Issues for the 1980's (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1980), pp. 96–119Google Scholar. See Garrett's The “China Card” and its Origins (forthcoming; publisher and date unknown). The most recent American phase is covered by Garrett in his “China policy and the constraints of triangular logic,” in Kenneth Oye, Donald Rothschild and Robert Lieber (eds.), Eagle Defiant: U.S. Foreign Policy in the 1980's (forthcoming).

5. “In Memoriam Franz Borkenau,” Der Monat (July 1957); cf. Dempf, Alois, “Franz Borkenau,” Stimmen der Zeit, Vol. 165 (01 1960), pp. 305–309Google Scholar.

6. Borkenau, Franz, End and Beginning, On the Generations of Cultures and the Origins of the West. Edited with an introduction by Lowenthal, Richard (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981), pp. 1–8Google Scholar; hereinafter cited as Lowenthal. Lowenthal has, unfortunately, mistaken the Benedictine primary education of Borkenau at the Schottengymnasium in Vienna for a Jesuit one, and thus overlooks the possible Benedictine stimulus to Borkenau's interest in Irish monasticism and the first millennium A.D.

7. Lowenthal, p. 3.

8. “Borkenau-Pollak, Franz: a universal history of the world from the earliest account of times etc. 1736ff. [Maschinenschrift.] 218S. 4.° [Lag nicht vor.] – Auszug nicht gedruckt. Leipzig, Phil. Diss., v. 28. Nov. 1924 [1925].” Jahresverzeichnis der deutschen Hochschulschriften (Berlin: Preussische Staatsbibliothek, 1927), Band XLI (1925), p. 582Google Scholar.

9. Schulin, Ernst, Die weltgeschichtliche Erfassung des Orients bei Hegel und Ranke (Goettingen: Vandenhoech und Ruprecht, 1958), p. 1Google Scholar, n. 3.

10. Ibid. p. l, n. 4.

11. Lowenthal, p. 3; see, esp. the chapter entitled “Thinking beyond Spengler“ in End and Beginning.

12. Lowenthal, p. 3.

13. Borkenau, , Der Übergang vom feudalen zum büirgerlichen Weltbild (Paris: F. Alcan, 1934), p. viiGoogle Scholar.

14. “Deborin graduated from the faculty of philosophy of the University of Bern in 1908. Beginning in 1905 he conducted a struggle against Machism.… In the 1920s he criticized mechanism in defending materialist dialectics.” “Deborin, Abram Moiseevich” in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia (New York: Macmillan, 1975), Vol. 8, p. 62Google Scholar; the article goes on to specify the “Menshevizing idealist” errors of Deborin and his circle, for which they were criticized by other Soviet thinkers in the late 1920s and early 1930s. One may assume that Borkenau was aware of these criticisms when he published Vbergang in 1934. Cf. Joravsky, David, Soviet Marxism and Natural Science 1917–1932 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961)Google Scholar, esp. Chaps. 6–12.

15. Lowenthal, p. 4.

16. See the bibliography of Borkenau's publications in Tashjean, John E., “Franz Borkenau: a study of his social and political ideas” (Georgetown University Ph.D. dissertation, 1962)Google Scholar.

17. See note 2, supra.

18. “First, as far as questions of personality are concerned, any one step in a Soviet leader's career must be interpreted in the light of everything ascertainable about his rprevious career, which in turn has to be interpreted through the chevstvo system. Second, political issues must be interpreted in the light of formulas, doctrinal and otherwise, and their history; and such interpretation cannot be safely concluded until the whole history of the given formula has been established from its first enunciation.” Borkenau, , “Getting at the facts behind the Soviet facade,” Commentary, Vol. XVII (04 1954), p. 399Google Scholar. For a Isfuller statement of Borkenau's, Kremlinological method, see his “Was ist Kreml-Astrologie?” Der Mona/ (04 1955), pp. 32–39Google Scholar.

19. Foot, Michael, Aneurin Bevan (London: Davis-Poynter, 1973)Google Scholar, two vols. passim.