Sino-Soviet Border War of 1969, Volume 1: First Clash at Damansky Island

Sino-Soviet Border War of 1969, Volume 1: First Clash at Damansky Island


The victory of the communists in the Chinese civil war resulted in the formation of a new socialist state in Asia - the People's Republic of China (PRC). The Soviet leadership was the first to recognise the PRC, and subsequently provided China with considerable economic, scientific, and military assistance. After Stalin's death, however, relations between Moscow and Peking began to rapidly deteriorate, the main reasons being the disagreements regarding Stalin's legacy and the principles of co-existence with capitalist states. With the beginning of the so-called 'cultural revolution' in the PRC, these disagreements intensified: the two sides in the ideological conflict accused each other of revisionism, dogmatism and nationalism. Economic failures and social chaos forced the PRC leadership (first and foremost, Mao Zedong personally) to seek a method for divesting itself of the responsibility for what had taken place. As a solution, they organised a military conflict on the border with the Soviet Union - one that was adequate enough to mobilise and rally the people around the PRC leadership, while at the same time insignificant enough in scale to prevent it from escalating into a full-fledged war. On 2 March 1969, a specially prepared Chinese army detachment made a surprise attack on the Soviet border guards who were patrolling the border sector in the area of Damansky Island on the Ussuri River. In the subsequent battle, the dead alone on both sides numbered more than 50. Two weeks later, on 15 March 1969, a much larger battle took place in this same area, in which the two sides used artillery and armoured vehicles; the casualties numbered in the hundreds.