Editor's Note

This issue begins with an article by Deborah Kaple discussing Sino-Soviet relations in the 1950s from the perspective of Soviet advisers stationed in the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the Chinese officials with whom they worked. Almost all recent analyses of the decade-long Sino-Soviet alliance have approached the topic from the standpoint of the highest policymakers on the two sides, whereas Kaple sets out to understand how the relationship was viewed by those working at ground level. Drawing on archival materials, memoirs, interviews, and other sources, Kaple shows that the Soviet advisers who came to China transmitted the concepts and practices they knew best: Stalinist economic planning, rigid centralization, and hierarchical political control. These practices were fully in line with what the leader of the PRC, Mao Zedong, had been intent on pursuing from the very start. The transfer of expertise from the Soviet advisers went smoothly for several...