ABSTRACT
In the face of the massive Chinese attacks that started in October 1962, Moscow appeared confused. Nevertheless, the Soviet leadership had much time at its disposal beforehand to prepare for a potential conflict at the Sino-Indian border. The year 1959, with intensive Sino-Indian exchanges as well as with bloody skirmishes, had revealed that Soviet-Indian cooperation was hardly compatible with unqualified Soviet-Chinese friendship. Thus, the Soviet activities in 1962 were more than just desperate attempts to react to dramatic parallel developments on Cuba and at the Sino-Indian border. In fact, Moscow’s approach to the war displayed basic problems and contradictions of Soviet multidimensional international policies towards the dynamic, interconnected processes of decolonization, the global cold war and the embedded emergence of inner-socialist rivalries since the 1940s.1
