The Sino-Soviet Split, the Cultural Revolution, and China's Opening to the World

Relations between Beijing and Moscow soured after Stalin's death in 1953, as Mao criticized Khrushchev's de-Stalinization at the 1956 Soviet Party Congress and rejected the Soviet policy of 'peaceful coexistence' with the West as a betrayal of revolutionary principles. The USSR withdrew its technical advisers from China in 1960, crippling ongoing industrial projects, and border tensions escalated into direct armed clashes along the Ussuri River in 1969. China developed its own nuclear weapons independently, testing its first atomic bomb in 1964, and the split shattered the Western image of a monolithic communist bloc while pushing China toward a pragmatic rapprochement with the United States.