The Marriage of Mao and Stalin : UNCERTAIN PARTNERS: Stalin, Mao, and the Korean War, <i> By Sergi N. Goncharov, John W. Lewis and Xue Lital (Stanford University Press: $45; 393 pp.)</i>

Two of the most tantalizing mysteries still remaining after glasnost are the closeness of the Sino-Soviet alliance that followed World War II and the origins of the decision to start the Korean War. “Uncertain Partners” offers a number of chilling and important revelations about both.

Illuminating the intrigue, manipulation and paranoia of Russia’s Josef Stalin, China’s Mao Zedong and North Korea’s Kim Il Sung, “Uncertain Partners” depicts the arm-twisting that led North Korea to invade South Korea and outlines the dimensions of Russia and China’s volatile, decade-long alliance.

The authors--Sergei Goncharov is a senior adviser to Boris Yeltsin; John Lewis, a professor of Chinese politics at Stanford; and Xue Litai, a research associate at Stanford--wrote this book (“a child of discovery”) after mining Soviet archives and the Hoover’s Institution’s East Asian Collection.

Their sketches of Mao and Stalin portray flawed and sometimes petty leaders, ensnared by past experience and ruthless and conniving in pursuing foreign policy goals. Mao’s principles in dealing with Moscow and Washington were the ancient ones of “playing one barbarian off against the other,” the authors write, and of “uniting and dividing by political manipulation.”

Following World War II, Mao was faced with no small dilemma: the need for total victory in the civil war in China; the need to reunify and rebuild China after the conclusion of the civil war; and the need to align China with one of the two world blocks--the Soviet Union or the U.S. These he had to accomplish without compromising too much sovereignty or becoming a satellite to the new partner.

Stalin, on the other hand, focused on national security. Fixated on “the coming confrontation between communism and capitalism, the inevitable Third World War that would deliver the death blow to world imperialism,” Stalin, the authors write, wanted to control the timing of the confrontation. He had to walk a fine line to complete his Asian agenda without going to war with the U.S. in Asia. To do so, he needed to maintain the fiction of non-involvement in Asian affairs.

For Stalin, the battlefield would be in Europe, but he “needed to control Mao’s relations with the Americans; only then could Mao’s power be employed against the United States and coordinated with Soviet actions. In addition, Stalin needed to ensure that the Soviet bufferzone in China would be preserved.”

The writers argue that Mao allied with Stalin to seek national security, while Stalin turned to Mao in order to get a “safety belt” to counter the U.S. encirclement he thought was imminent. The necessity to isolate China from the U.S. drove Stalin’s alliance with Mao Zedong.

How did the Korean War fit into the national interests of China and the Soviet Union?

The authors make it clear that the Soviets were “firmly in the saddle” in North Korea with Kim Il Sung installed as the national leader and with “Soviet Koreans”--those educated and trained in Russia--in positions of military authority.

They argue that the Chinese, with obvious interest in neighboring North Korea, were in no position to vie with the Soviet Union for influence because China was consumed with its civil war. Thus, the authors conclude, the North Korean invasion of South Korea on June 25, 1950 “was pre-planned, blessed, and directly assisted by Stalin and his generals, and reluctantly backed by Mao at Stalin’s insistence.” (Mao was reluctant in part because he intended to use his military to invade Taiwan.)

Stalin, hoping to avoid a Soviet-American confrontation in Korea, wished to stay in the background. He “determined that the way to do this was to implicate Mao in the decision and thereby make him bear the full burden for ensuring Kim’s survival if the Americans intervened.”

With Mao’s armies--called the Chinese People’s Volunteers--committed in the fight in Korea, his plan to invade Taiwan evaporated.

A fuller portrait of the birth and demise of the Sino-Soviet alliance and of the origins of the Korean War--still shadowed by secrecy and intrigue--is likely to emerge as more Soviet archives open and as former Soviet, Chinese, and Korean officials go public with their stories.

In the meantime, we benefit greatly from this uniquely multinational study of an alliance that incited brutal combat in Korea through what the authors rightly call “reckless war-making of the worst kind.”