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An argument over ownership of a few hundred square kilometres was the insane reason why the two communist giants of the Soviet Union and China nearly embarked on nuclear annihilation in 1969. Along the 4,380 km (2,738 miles) border, tension had built up in the late 1960s as 658,000 Soviets squared off against 814,000 Chinese troops as each country claimed the communist high ground of being the true Marxist revolutionary state. Then on March 2, 1969, rhetoric was discarded for automatic weapons when a Soviet patrol was ambushed on Damansky Island in the Ussury River which runs parallel to the Trans-Siberian railway. The Soviets suffered a humiliating 31 dead and 14 wounded. Two weeks later the Soviets retaliated by bombarding Chinese troop concentrations in Manchuria and by storming Damansky Island. The result was a stunning Soviet victory with at least 800 Chinese soldiers killed or wounded while the Soviets only had 60 killed or wounded. Sixteen battles later each side prepared for nuclear confrontation and it was only when the Soviet Premier Aleksey Kosygin unexpectedly stopped off in Beijing on his way home from the funeral of Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam, that a political solution cooled the situation. Since then, various committees have continued to work on border demarcation. Finally on October 17, 1995 agreement over the last 54 km (34 miles) stretch of the border was reached, however the question of control over three islands in the Amur and Argun rivers has yet to be settled and will be left for 'future generations'.
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