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Zedong and other CCP leaders reacted with incredulity when Soviet forces offered no consistent support for CCP objectives in the Northeast, and, on the contrary, began blocking some of the party's alms. At the regional level, the confusion over Soviet actions was total. Peng Zhen, head of the CCP Northeastern Bureau, blasted the Soviets over their November 1945 order for the Chinese Communists to quit the Manchurian cities: "The army of one Communist Party using tanks to drive out the army of another Communist Party. . . . Can this kind of action be acceptable?" 18
These first experiences of working with the Soviets taught the CCP leaders two important lessons. First was that the party had to work even harder to align its policies with those of the Soviet Union. Quite a few of the CCP leaders including Liu Shaoqi and Ren Bishi felt that their party had not been fully accepted by Moscow because they had been found wanting in terms of "socialist" and "internationalist" consciousness. But the other lesson learned from the events of the hard winter of 1945 was that the. party could not, under any circumstance, depend on Soviet support to attain its ultimate goal of political control of China. This lesson would stick with the party leadership until Mao threw it overboard in agreeing to Kim Il Sung's attack on South Korea in the spring of 1950. 19
Origins, 1946-1950
By the early summer of 1946, as Mao decided to counterattack against the GMD offensives in Manchuria, Soviet attention was directed squarely at the

     

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new Cold War tensions in Europe. Mao kept in close touch with Moscow on all important questions of military or political strategy, even after the complete Soviet withdrawal from Manchuria, but he was unable to secure any major long-term commitments from the Soviets to aid his revolution. Although Soviet material assistance to the CCP Japanese arms, communications equipment, money kept coming in, there is no indication that Stalin expected or intended this aid to help the CCP to victory in the civil war.
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On the contrary, Stalin was not interested in squandering scarce Soviet resources in pursuit of a revolutionary victory that he considered implausible, at least in the short term. The Kremlin preferred to continue dealing both with the CCP and the GMD government, thereby getting maximum leverage for its own short-term aims in China. Judging from Soviet contacts with both Chinese parties in this period, these aims consisted of controlling the Chinese northeastern provinces, Xinjiang, and Mongolia, or at least making sure that Western influence did not extend into these Soviet border areas. 21
As the foundations of the Guomindang regime began crumbling in 1948, Stalin could not adjust his policy to the CCP advances. Not even after the September-October 1948 Liaoning-Shenyang campaign, in which the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) broke the government's hold on north China, was Moscow willing to make a substantial investment in the CCP. Soviet aid remained very limited, although in some areas such as radio communications, transport, and air defense Moscow's contributions did provide a critical edge to the PLA's war effort. 22
Stalin's doubts persisted well into the spring of 1949 and spawned the first crisis in the Soviet-CCP relationship since 1945. As the PLA was racing to the South and West, and as one city after another Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin surrendered to the CCP, Stalin could not believe that some intrigue or intervention would not in the end thwart a complete Communist victory. The Guomindang could regenerate its strength in the South, Stalin feared. There could be local anti-Communist rebellions in central China and along the coast. The different armies of the PLA could start fighting each other. The Americans could issue an ultimatum not to cross the Yangzi River and threaten to use nuclear weapons. In Stalin's view, a full CCP victory was in no way assured, and the Soviet Union would