ABSTRACT
After creating the People’s Republic of China (PRC) on 1 October 1949, Mao Zedong traveled to Moscow. It was his first trip abroad. He arrived in Moscow in December 1949 for eight weeks of talks with Joseph Stalin. The two leaders discussed whether to renegotiate the terms of the 1945 Yalta Agreement and the Sino-Soviet friendship treaty signed by the Nationalists. For Mao, this question was important not only to determine the status of Manchuria and Xinjiang, where the USSR acquired important privileges, but to determine the future of Outer Mongolia, which the Nationalists had granted formal independence. Stalin rejected modification of the Yalta Agreement, while Mao agreed to respect the terms of the 1945 friendship treaty, but hoped that particular issues would be renegotiated.
