Constraining Unipolarity } 541
The overthrow of the CPSU state by Russian liberals led by Boris Yeltsin
was, in fact, one of the great anticommunist revolutions of the twentieth cen-
tury. The objective of many in Yeltsin’s camp was to transform Russia into a
European-style liberal democracy that would become part of Europe. There
was a strong voice within the Russian democratic movement that insisted that
Europe was Russia’s natural “home,” to which it should return by integrating
itself with the West. If those impulses took Russia into the Western camp,
the consequences for the PRC could be dire. China might find itself com-
pletely surrounded by not-very-friendly powers. Already under Gorbachev,
Moscow’s policy had become increasingly cooperative with Washington, for
example with Moscow’s support for Washington’s 1991 war to restore Kuwait’s
sovereignty. And there was the example of the ex-communist East European
countries that were moving swiftly to join the West with its prosperity, free-
dom, and security. Russia might switch sides and join the United States, just
as China itself had done in 1972 and as Mao had long feared the United States
itself would do.
On the other hand, if Russia could be persuaded to disassociate itself
from the US-led camp, it might serve as a friendly rear area for China in
the event that Beijing found itself in a protracted contest with the United
States. These strategic calculations outweighed the dislike of CCP leaders
for the Russian counterrevolutionaries who had destroyed the proletarian
state of Lenin and Stalin. As often happens in history, geostrategic interest
trumped ideology. It is one of the ironies of history, and also a testament
to the power of national interest, that the new liberal democratic Russian
state moved into alignment with the world’s last remaining major Marxist-
Leninist state, the PRC.^30 Although CCP leaders viewed the overthrow of
the Soviet state by Boris Yeltsin’s party as a monumental betrayal of world
socialism, they nonetheless set aside those ideological views and worked
effectively to normalize Russo-Chinese ties—and detach Russia from the
emerging anti-China bloc.^31
On December 7, 1991, as the USSR slid rapidly toward extinction, a Russian
parliamentary delegation arrived in Beijing to deliver a letter from President
Yeltsin to President Yang Shangkun. The letter said that Russia was the suc-
cessor state to the USSR and would continue to implement that former state’s
treaties and undertakings. NPC head Wan Li accepted the letter and replied,
“China’s economic development needs a peaceful international environment.
Therefore China is willing to live on good terms with all other countries.”^32
On December 25, the day that Gorbachev resigned his post as president of the
USSR, China recognized Russia as an independent state and the successor
to the USSR. At the same time, Beijing recognized the independence of the
other fourteen states that had made up the former Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics. Russia for its part promised to “respect and support” Beijing’s pos-
ition regarding Taiwan.