The Sino-Soviet Split was the deterioration of relations between the Soviet Union and Communist China (the People’s Republic of China) during the Cold War. Although they were both Marxist, the two countries had been ideologically drifting apart since 1956. In 1961, the Chinese Communists formally denounced the Soviet leaders as "the Revisionist Traitor Group of Soviet Leadership." In the 1960s, this intellectual divergence became critical, continuing until the late 1980s. This divergence of doctrines was due to Chinese and Russian national interest and their different interpretations of the Marxist ideology.
The Sino-Soviet Split had its roots in the 1940s, when the Communist Party of China, led by Mao Tse-tung, conducted a war of resistance against the Empire of Japan during the Japanese occupation of the country, while simultaneously fighting the nationalist forces, led by Chiang Kai-Shek, in the Chinese Civil War. Mao ignored most of the political and military advice and direction from Stalin and the Comintern on conducting the Chinese revolution, since applying literally the traditional Leninist revolutionary theory proved difficult and unpractical as more than a million Russians had died during the first two years of Communist government, when Lenin literally applied pure Marxist doctrines, which later proved unviable.
In 1959, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev met with US President Dwight Eisenhower to decrease Soviet–American tensions and with the Western world. Besides, as the the Soviet Union had become alarmed by the Chinese "Great Leap Forward" policy, it stopped aiding the Chinese nuclear weapons development, refusing to side with them in the Sino-Indian War of 1962, by maintaining a moderate relation with India, which was offensive to Mao as Chinese Leader. Hence, he perceived Khrushchev as too conciliatory with the West, despite Soviet prudence in international politics that threatened nuclear warfare.
