The first organized regular army battles between socialist countries occurred in March 1969 on the uninhabited inter-riverine island called Damansky on the frozen East-Asian River, the Ussuri. Although previously there had been conflicts, disagreements, and military escalations all along the 7,000-kilometer Sino-Soviet border, never had such a large contingent of forces and wide spectrum of conventional weapons been used to settle differences between two Communist countries. The military exchange erupted on Damansky Island because of territorial demands made by China beginning in 1963. These demands were based on China’s loss of territory from the so called ‘unequal’ treaties between Tsarist Russia and China. Soon after the Cuban Missile Crisis, Sino-Soviet relations came to a crisis. Through a series of escalating events, a power struggle between Maoist and Soviet nationalism developed with the Chinese and Russians vying for leadership in the Communist Community. The Sino-Soviet polemical battle and border tensions reached new heights again in August 1968 with the Soviet-sponsored Warsaw Pact invasions of Czechoslovakia. This invasion was justified under the Brezhnev Doctrine, which called for Soviet intervention in any Socialist state threatened by counterrevolution. At the time, Moscow indicated that what had happened in Czechoslovakia could very well be repeated in China. Peking, of course, was enraged by this suggestion, as were other Communist countries. China subsequently increased her verbal attacks on the USSR which led to the violence on the Ussuri in March 1969. This thesis attempts to show that the Ussuri River clashes reflected a long history of Sino-Soviet conflict. Its repercussions ushered in a new phase of intensive cold war propaganda and extensive military buildup. The West finally recognized the seriousness of the conflict and began to use it to its advantage. First published in December of 1983 as US Army 2Lt. Mark Clay Grove’s master’s thesis, Department of History, James Madison University (JMU). No part of this book was devised or manipulated by Artificial intelligence. Mr. Grove has gone on to write many books, papers, short stories, all of which are available on Amazon and wherever books are sold.


