Co-Winner of the 2010 Marshall Shulman Book Prize, Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies Winner of the 2008 Edgar S. Furniss Book Award, Mershon Center for International Security Studies at The Ohio State University An astonishingly well-documented, densely detailed history of the causes and development of the Sino-Soviet conflict from virtually every relevant perspective... The Sino-Soviet Split ... Read moreis a major achievement in Cold War history and the standard against which future scholarship on this subject likely will be judged for many years to come.
Charles K. Armstrong, The Moscow Times [The Sino-Soviet Split] is well-researched and compellingly-argued, and helps illuminate a critical portion of the Cold War.
R.M. Farley, Choice This is a solid study of the breakup of the Sino-Soviet alliance... Of all the available English-language works on this topic, this study stands out as the most extensive as well as balanced in using both Russian and Chinese materials... [T]his book is a welcome addition, not only to the Cold War international history literature, but also to the studies on contemporary alliance politics. Methodologically, too, it stands as a wonderful example of how effectively a multiarchival and multilinguistic approach can and should be used in Cold War studies.
Shu Guang Zhang, Slavic Review Lorenz M. Luthi's well-informed book supersedes the others in its thoroughness in covering the critical events and drawing on archival evidence and memoirs that were unavailable until recently. It nicely balances treatment of both countries, carefully follows changing emphases as the split widened from 1956 to 1966, and keeps the focus on identifying the causes.
Gilbert Rozman, International History Review Luthi offers new insight into numerous foreign policy relationships central to the Cold War, while also directing our attention to a series of still unexplored issues pertinent to the vast socialist bloc and the fascinating alliance between the Russians and the Chinese.
Austin Jersild, American Historical Review The Sino-Soviet Split is an excellent study of how China's domestic politics (and particularly Mao's efforts to remain at the helm of China's political and socioeconomic development) informed its foreign policy in general and relations with the Soviet Union in particular. Seen in the context of China's domestic-foreign policy nexus, Luthi's monograph will be of great value to scholars who are interested in China's Cold War diplomacy and, more generally, an analysis of Chinese foreign policymaking.
Czeslaw Tubilewicz, Russian Review It is clearly the work of an industrious and skilled researcher in control of his material. The Sino-Soviet Split is a valuable work that provides a bounty of raw material and research leads for others who seek to understand the course of the Sino-Soviet split.
Steven M. Goldstein, China Quarterly This persuasive, thorough, and balanced history of the breakdown of Sino-Soviet relations in the late 1950s and 1960s should be considered essential reading for scholars interested in the Cold War.
Peter C. Pozefsky, Historian Show Less