ABSTRACT
The onset of interactions between Russia and China took place at a relatively late date in the historical evolution of the two states and was influenced by the expansionary movement of both states on their frontiers. Despite sharing a border stretching thousands of kilometers, Russia and China developed separately, with little interaction between cultures. The generation of Chinese leaders who were trained in the Soviet Union was coming to close. Movement toward the normalization of relations between the Soviet Union and China was a protracted process. Its subsequent association with the Soviet Union exemplified in the 1950 Friendship Treaty was voluntary. The initiation of Russian military operations served to cement the Russian-Chinese relationship, as Russia found increased meaning in China's longtime insistence on the principle of noninterference in internal affairs and the primacy of state sovereignty. By the end of the Boris Yeltsin era, certain basic parameters of Russian-Chinese relationship had been, or were in the process of becoming, institutionalized.
