June 17, 2024, 7:58 a.m.
(Photo: Wikipedia)
In 1969, a strange thing happened. It turned out that a nuclear power could be attacked. And not just to take away some colonies in the Indian Ocean, but to attack right on the border of the metropolis. Why did China decide to show its teeth to its senior comrade and mentor, the USSR, in the article by Intent.
How China lost territories and later tried to regain them
The "Cultural Revolution" is not about culture at all
After its heyday in the eighteenth century, the Qing Dynasty empire went through hard times in the next century. China lost two opium wars to the Europeans, and between them, the Taiping rebellion led to the secession of the Taiping state. During the Second Opium War, when China was being defeated by British and French forces, the Russian Empire "unexpectedly" expressed a desire to revise the Russian-Chinese borders. Fearing the opening of a second front, China was forced to listen carefully to Russian proposals. The signing of the Aigun and Beijing treaties resulted in China's loss of part of Manchuria. The border between Russia and China from that time on had to run along the Amur and Ussuri rivers, and it was along the Chinese coast of the rivers. This meant that residents of the Chinese coast violated the treaty if they went fishing on the Amur or Ussuri.
Territories ceded to the Russian Empire as a result of the signing of the Treaties of Aigun and Peking. Map: Wikipedia
When the Treaty of Versailles was signed in 1919, the general principle of dividing borders along the fairway or midway of the river was adopted. However, it pointed to the possibility of exceptions in specific situations. Moreover, the principle did not have retroactive effect.
In 1949, the Communists won the Chinese civil war and began to revive a strong country. And with a sense of power, China had international ambitions. In particular, Mao Zedong dared to ask Stalin when China would be returned the territories taken away in the nineteenth century. Stalin cynically replied that everything should be common among communists and effectively closed the discussion. The question of revising the borders was also raised in the days of Nikita Khrushchev. Since China was an important partner in the socialist camp, Khrushchev was ready to discuss the border issue. In 1964, there were even a series of meetings on this issue, but the parties did not reach an agreement. Presumably, it was no longer possible to reach an agreement, as the relationship between the two leaders was quite tense.
At the 20th Congress of the CPSU, Nikita Khrushchev debunked Stalin's cult of personality, but he was criticized by Mao Zedong, who considered Khrushchev's policy a deviation from Lenin's ideals. Mao did not hide his position and promoted it publicly, which undermined the authority of the USSR in the socialist camp. In fact, China began to fight for the status of the No. 1 communist country. China's ambitions had to be kept under control. Khrushchev refused to transfer nuclear technology to China. Against the backdrop of the conflict between China and India in the late 1950s, the USSR began to move closer to the latter. A certain culmination of mutual dissatisfaction was the fact that in mid-1960 the USSR recalled the entire corps of Soviet specialists who had worked in China under the international cooperation program. Trade between the two countries dropped threefold, and the supply of Soviet machinery and equipment decreased 40 times, effectively ending China's internal "Great Leap Forward" campaign.
The tension on the Soviet-Chinese border was no mere coincidence. As noted, the border on the Amur and Ussuri rivers ran along the Chinese coast. However, the good relations between the countries led to the fact that the imperial and later Soviet border guards looked down on border violations by Chinese fishermen, for whom this was the main way of earning a living. Now the border guards have begun to harass fishing boats. It is difficult to say at what point Chinese fishing turned into a deliberate provocative activity. Soviet-Russian sources claim that this happened in the early 1960s.
One of the centers of Soviet-Chinese tension was Damansky Island on the Ussuri River. The island has an area of about one square kilometer. During floods, it is completely covered by water. Damansky is located close to the Chinese coast, so when the river is covered with ice in winter, the island can be reached on foot. The island has no strategic importance and is not inhabited by people. However, there are floodplain meadows on Damansky that are economically important because of their large harvests.
Damansky Island. Photo: Photo.
In the 1960s, Chinese peasants began to regularly enter the territory of Damansky and engage in economic activities there, such as mowing and grazing. To expel the Chinese, Soviet border guards had to move to the island. The deportation of illegal immigrants took place in a routine manner without the use of weapons. However, over time, the situation began to deteriorate.
There is no doubt that Mao Zedong was an iconic figure for the twentieth century. At the same time, a number of his projects can be safely called horrific. The so-called "cultural revolution" refers to such projects. In a nutshell, young people were allowed to look for enemies of the people inside the country who were hindering the path to communism. Representatives of students and school youth, who became known as Hongweibin, organized themselves into groups and searched for traitors. The first to be targeted were representatives of the intelligentsia-teachers and professors. At first, the Hongweibin simply humiliated and beat the "traitors," then they began to torture and kill them. Later, they switched to directors of enterprises. Finally, the signal came from above to take on Mao's political enemies in the Chinese Communist Party. Using the internal hysteria, Mao Zedong began to gradually turn the "warmed-up" audience against the USSR.
Hongweibins in Tiananmen Square in 1966. Photo: Wikipedia
From a certain point on, instead of fishermen and peasants, groups of several dozen people with placards demanding the return of Chinese lands began to make their way to Damansky Island. In the mid-1960s, events regularly unfolded according to the same scenario: border guards let the Chinese make some noise and then squeezed them off the island. The border guards called it "belly tactics."
Later, groups with bagrams, sticks, and iron rods appeared on the island and engaged in quite violent fights with the border guards. The first reports from the Soviet-Chinese border of fierce hand-to-hand fighting appeared in November 1967. According to the first reports, there were injuries among the Soviet border guards, including punctured heads, broken arms and ribs, and facial injuries. Yurii Babanskyi, a hero of the Soviet Union and a participant in the Damansky conflict, recalled the first time he was stationed at the border guard unit near the island: "I came to the outpost, and there was no one there except the cook. "Everyone is on the shore, fighting with the Chinese," he said. I, of course, put my assault rifle on my shoulder and went to Ussuri." Neither side uses firearms during the clashes. The Soviet border guards had a direct order to do so. In 1968, the number of attackers increased to several hundred. On February 20, a particularly violent clash takes place: dozens of wounded on both sides, four Chinese killed. After that, provocations cease for a while.
Another fight with the Chinese on Damansky Island. Photo: BBC
On the morning of March 2, it became known that a group of about 30 Chinese crossed the ice to Damansky. To meet the Chinese, 32 border guards from 2 outposts in GAZ vehicles and one armored personnel carrier moved forward. A group of border guards led by the head of the outpost, Ivan Strelnikov, approached the border violators, demanding that they leave the island. At this time, one of the Chinese raised his hand, which was the signal to open fire. Strelnikov's group was destroyed on the spot. It became apparent that the border guards had fallen into a well-planned trap and that a large group of Chinese had entered the island undetected.
Upon learning of the shooting on the island, the head of the 1st outpost, Senior Lieutenant Vitaliy Bubenin, and 23 border guards went to the rescue in APCs and GAZ trucks. Upon arriving on the island, they took up the defense with the survivors. In the snow, the border guards' forces were melting right before their eyes, but no one retreated. The offensive was supported by mortars from the Chinese coast. In this situation, Vitaliy Bubenin decided to go around the Chinese from the rear in an armored personnel carrier. As Bubenin was rounding the island, he met a detachment of Chinese who were coming to the aid of the Damansky on the ice. The detachment was an ideal target on the ice and was destroyed by APC fire. The APC was subsequently hit, but Bubenin and his men moved to Strelnikov's APC. Moving along the Chinese positions, the border guards managed to find and destroy the aggressor's command post. The second APC was also hit, and Bubenin was injured. The battle lasted about two hours, after which the Chinese retreated. The incident killed 31 Soviet border guards and 39 Chinese soldiers.
In the wake of the events of March 2, both sides began to bring personnel and equipment to the island. Interestingly, there are disagreements about the culprit of the next clash. In particular, American researcher Thomas Robinson argues that in the second case, the USSR should be recognized as the culprit, as it wanted to take revenge. It is not entirely clear how the USSR could have provoked the Chinese, at least in theory. According to very specific treaties, China controlled exclusively its coastline. In other words, to provoke China, the USSR had to attack the coast, which could have led to a full-scale war. On the other hand, any move by the Chinese beyond the coastline automatically violated the USSR's border and, in the context of the events of March 2, was to be perceived as an act of aggression.
On the morning of March 14, Soviet border guards on Damansky saw a group of Chinese moving toward the island. The border guards opened fire on the group, and it retreated to its own coast. In the afternoon, all Soviet border posts were removed from the island on orders from the district. However, when Chinese soldiers began to occupy Damansky, Soviet border guards drove them out with eight armored personnel carriers. Forty-five border guards and four armored personnel carriers were entrenched on the island.
The next morning, the Chinese military, backed by artillery and mortars, marched on the island. At that time, new T-62 tanks and Grad multiple rocket launchers were stationed on the Soviet coast. However, the army command, without an order from the center, did not want to take responsibility. After all, as long as the regular army did not enter the conflict, the events could be qualified as a border clash.
The Soviet border guards began to retreat under pressure from the enemy, who had a numerical and technical advantage. Colonel Demokrat Leonov of the Border Troops received permission and led four T-62 tanks to support them in order to launch a flanking attack. In the process, his tank was hit, and he was shot dead when he tried to get out of the burning vehicle. Finally, in the evening, around 17:00, the Soviet army got involved. Artillery, Grad rockets, and mortars carried out a massive bombardment of Chinese positions, including the enemy's coastline. After that, the military, together with border guards, launched a counteroffensive and drove the Chinese off the island. Some sources say that the commander of the Far Eastern Military District, Oleg Losik, personally took responsibility for the army's intervention, while others say that an order was received from Moscow. Be that as it may, it should be noted that the army's indecision in the morning does not quite fit with the Soviet general's desperate determination in the evening. He must have been well aware of the consequences of amateurishness in the Soviet army, which could lead to war with China.
A fragment of a topographical map of Damansky, which belonged to Colonel Demokrat Leonov, with a bullet hole. Photo: Wikipedia
Although the main events on Damanskoye occurred on March 2 and 15, the conflict was not over until the fall. The fact is that Colonel Leonov's tank remained on the island. The T-62 at that time was an advanced piece of equipment that should not have fallen to the Chinese. At first, the Soviets tried to tow the tank away, but the Chinese started shelling the island. Later, the Soviet military decided to destroy the T-62 with artillery fire, but failed to hit it. Subsequently, sappers were sent to the island to destroy the tank, but they encountered a Chinese unit and failed to complete the task. In mid-April, the tank was finally buried underwater by Soviet artillery. At the same time, the Chinese managed to pull it to the coast and raise it. Between May and September 1969, Soviet border guards opened fire on the intruders near Damansky more than 300 times. In September, a ceasefire was ordered, and the island was occupied by Chinese troops.
Colonel Leonov's captured T-62 in the Museum of the People's Liberation Army of China. Photo: Wikipedia
On September 11, 1969, Chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers Alexei Kosygin and Premier of the State Council of China Zhou Enlai agreed to end hostilities and that the troops would remain in their positions. The latter actually meant the transfer of Damansky Island to China. In 1991, Damansky and a number of neighboring islands were officially ceded to China.
In 2004, Putin and Jiang Zemin defined the state border along the main channel of the Ussuri River.
The losses of the parties in the conflict vary greatly depending on the perspective. Chinese casualties range from 100 to over 800 killed. Soviet sources indicate 58 Soviet border guards killed. The Chinese believe that they killed and wounded more than 230 people.
One of the important consequences of the conflict was the redistribution of forces in geopolitics. Taking advantage of the discord in the socialist camp, the United States began to establish diplomatic relations with China. The transformation of the dual confrontation into a triangle is considered a significant achievement of Richard Nixon's team.
The Sino-Soviet conflict over Damansky Island was a unique event for several reasons. First, it was the first attack on the USSR since 1941. Second, the territory of a nuclear power was attacked in the conflict. Thirdly, two socialist countries, both leaders of the anti-capitalist camp, faced off on equal terms.
China had several reasons to start a conflict on Damansky Island. First, China continued to fight for hegemony in the socialist camp. Damansky was a kind of test to see if the USSR was weakening, deviating from the hardline Stalinist line. Secondly, China did not like the warming of relations between the US and the USSR. In 1969, a meeting between representatives of the two countries was scheduled to take place to discuss disarmament. The word "détente" began to be heard in the media. Thirdly, Mao Zedong was concerned about the Hongweibin movement, which had gotten out of control in the domestic arena. The search for an external enemy could distract from internal problems and buy time to solve them.
Of course, China was not going to start a full-scale war with a powerful nuclear power. This is evidenced, in particular, by the fact that the small Damansky Island has no strategic importance. At the same time, the island could become a symbol of China's victory over a powerful rival and strengthen the authority of the government in the domestic arena. Psychological stability testing is a popular military and political method in the arsenal of aggressive states. If the opponent is not ready for confrontation at a particular moment, the "prize" can be obtained for free. By the way, this method was later well mastered by Putin's Russia.
Could the USSR have been "offended" and started a full-scale war? The probability of such a development was extremely low. Waging war with a totalitarian country with a zombified population of a billion people is an extremely ungrateful business. By the way, the Soviet leadership considered the option of nuclear strikes, but it is unlikely that this method of resolving the conflict could have been universally approved. We should not forget that at that time China had its own nuclear weapons. In addition, China remained an important ally in the Cold War that was not worth losing.
The conflict on Damansky Island once again demonstrated that the lives of individuals do not matter much to the empire. The injustice of the nineteenth-century Russian-Chinese treaties was not even that one empire seized the territory of the other, but in the way the border was drawn. The senseless drawing of the border actually turned on the regime of a permanent pre-conflict situation, which could turn into a conflict at any time. Despite the existing trends in international law, arrogance did not allow Soviet leaders to resolve the problematic situation on the border. And ordinary border guards, whose honor and dignity did not allow them to retreat in the face of death, had to pay the price.
Олег Пархітько
Dec. 12, 2025
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