23 STALIN, MAO, AND THE NEW DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION IN CHINA

It is quite possible that within his circle of intimates Stalin referred to Mao as a “cave Marxist,” just as it is likely Mao had reason to be offended that Stalin did not trust him. But whom did Stalin trust? Which of his most devoted henchmen did he not despise? Whom did he consider a great Marxist? All of them were just figures on his chessboard.

Pacing in his office, Stalin simultaneously contemplated his moves in multiple games. In China a complicated and important party was in play; its victory would determine the outcome of his life's work. The triumph of the Chinese Communist Party would radically alter the correlation of forces in the world arena in favor of the USSR. If only he and Mao could succeed in neutralizing America and make Washington and its allies take at face value the New Democratic plans of the Chinese communists. If only Roosevelt, then Truman, would accept the concept of New Democracy and support the Communist Party. Then the CCP would be able gradually to “squeeze” Chiang Kai-shek and his supporters out of positions of power and next, by maneuvering among the Guomindang left and the liberals, ultimately seize power.

The game was played on a vast field. Mao did his part through interviews, articles, and speeches. The books by Edgar and Helen Foster Snow, Agnes Smedley, and other journalists as well as Evans Carlson's dispatches all hit the same target. Rapturous stories about Mao and his comrades by British journalists Freda Utley and Claire and William Band, and by American reporters T. A. Bisson, Harrison Forman, and others, all produced a substantial impression upon the public. With one voice, they all assured the world that the Chinese communists had nothing in common with Marxism-Leninism.¹ The surly dictator Chiang Kai-shek and his regime steadily lost ground in the eyes of many Americans to the “liberal” nationalist Mao and his “people's” government.

The high point of this game came in 1944–45 when Mao, Zhou, Zhu De, and other members of the Chinese communist leadership held direct talks with U.S. officials. They began in late July 1944, when a Douglas C-47 carrying nine passengers touched down at the Yan'an airport. This was the first group of the so-called Dixie Mission, composed of personnel from the State Department, the War Department, and the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the predecessor of the CIA. It was headed by Colonel David D. Barrett, a chunky man of fifty-four who had once served as the assistant military attaché in Chongqing. He was considered a specialist on Chinese affairs, knew Chinese history and culture well, and spoke Chinese fluently. The second-ranking member was John Stewart Service, second secretary in the U.S. embassy in Chongqing, and whom Ambassador Clarence Gauss called “our government's expert on Chinese communism.” In early August, a second contingent of the Dixie Mission arrived, headed by another diplomat, Raymond P. Ludden. After this, Americans came to Yan'an with increasing frequency, and they even organized trips to several “liberated areas.” At the end of July 1945 there were thirty-two members of the so-called American Observer Group in Yan'an.²

The major conclusion that Barrett, Service, and many other members of the mission arrived at after conversations with Mao and from their personal observations was as follows:

Politically, any orientation which the Chinese Communists may once have had toward the Soviet Union seems to be a thing of the past. The Communists have worked to make their thinking and program realistically Chinese, and they are carrying out democratic policies which they expect the United States to approve and sympathetically support.

Economically, the Chinese Communists seek the rapid development and industrialization of China for the primary objective of raising the economic level of the people. They recognize that under present conditions in China, this must be accomplished through capitalism with large-scale foreign assistance. They believe that the United States, rather than the Soviet Union, will be the only country able to give this economic assistance and realize that for reasons of efficiency, as well as to attract American investment, it will be wise to give this American participation great freedom ……

The conclusion, which is the continual statement of the Communist leaders themselves, is that American friendship and support is more important to China than Russian.

The members of the mission advised the American government to change its orientation toward the Chinese communists, warning that they might turn “back toward Soviet Russia if they are forced to in order to survive American-supported Kuomintang [Guomindang] attack.”³

It is amazing how easily Mao, Zhou, and the other CCP leaders were able to deceive these experienced American intelligence officers. There was nothing they didn't promise them. In order to neutralize Washington, in the summer of 1944 Mao was even prepared to change the name of the Communist Party to New Democratic. In October 1946 this was precisely how the Communist Youth League of the “liberated areas” was renamed, and in April 1949 the entire Chinese Communist Youth League became the New Democratic Youth League. Ultimately, the party was not renamed, but all the other changes played the Americans for fools.

At the same time, Stalin and Foreign Minister Molotov, with equal mastery and cynicism, were manipulating the Americans on the diplomatic front. Molotov told W. Averell Harriman, the American ambassador to the USSR, and General Patrick J. Hurley, the new American ambassador to China, in early September 1944, “The so-called Chinese Communists are not in fact Communists at all …… The Soviet Government is not supporting the Chinese Communists.” He confirmed this during another meeting on April 15, 1945, this time in Stalin's presence. Hurley immediately reported this to Washington.⁴

Neither Harriman nor Hurley, however, was taken in by Stalin's guile. Nor did the intelligence officers in Washington believe the communists. After analyzing the reports from China of their colleagues as well as an enormous body of other literature about the CCP, in the summer of 1945 officials of the Military Intelligence Division of the U.S. Department of War concluded, “The Chinese Communists are Communists …… The ‘democracy' of the Chinese Communists is Soviet democracy …… The Chinese Communist movement is part of the international Communist movement, sponsored and guided by Moscow.”⁵ Therefore, in the final analysis neither Mao nor Stalin succeeded in deceiving the American leadership.

When World War II ended in mid-August 1945, China was still divided. The Guomindang's Central Government, backed by the United States, controlled only two-thirds of the country. The Communist Party held the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Special Region embracing thirty counties as well as eighteen large “liberated areas” in the north, east, and south of China with a total population of 95.5 million.⁶ Northeast China (Manchuria) was occupied by the Soviet Army. But for the first time in many years there appeared to be a real possibility of a peaceful, democratic reunification of the country. The United States and the Soviet Union did not want a new war in China and feared that a serious conflict there could easily spill over into a much wider war.⁷

In his geopolitical calculations from 1945 to 1949, Stalin had to reckon with the U.S. monopoly of nuclear weapons. Unprepared to withstand a nuclear attack by the United States, he had to make every effort to avoid provoking Washington.⁸ “The two US atomic bombs shook Stalin, making him eager for a compromise,” Zhou Enlai later recalled.⁹ The secret Yalta Agreement, signed by the Great Powers in February 1945, as well as the Soviet-Guomindang Treaty of Friendship and Alliance, concluded on August 14, 1945, the day Japan surrendered, also constrained initiatives on the part of the Kremlin dictator. Through them the USSR received vital economic, political, and territorial concessions in the Far East. Particularly important was the agreement with Chiang Kai-shek that Stalin himself called “unequal.”¹⁰ Special protocols that accompanied the Soviet-Guomindang Treaty gave the Soviet side the right to maintain a naval base at Lüshun (Port Arthur) for thirty years, to control the port of Dalian in Northeast China, and to exercise joint management of the Chinese Eastern Railroad.¹¹ This is why Stalin after World War II began to voice doubts about the CCP's ability to take power. He did not want to risk through unconditional support of the CCP what he had already achieved by aiding the United States and China in the war against Japan. He even advised Mao to come to a “temporary agreement” with Chiang Kai-shek and insisted that Mao must go to Chongqing for a personal meeting with his sworn enemy. As an explanation for this he could come up with nothing better than the assertion that a new civil war might lead to the destruction of the Chinese nation.¹²

Mao was appalled by Stalin's “treachery,” but he had to submit and go talk to Chiang. “I was compelled to go since Stalin insisted,” Mao said later.¹³ On August 23, 1945, at an enlarged meeting of the Politburo, he declared, “The Soviet Union, acting in the interest of world peace and bound by the Chinese-Soviet treaty, cannot provide us assistance.”¹⁴ On August 28, he flew to Chongqing with Zhou Enlai even though the Central Committee had received letters protesting negotiations with the Guomindang from various party organizations.¹⁵ Accompanying the CCP leaders were the Guomindang general Zhang Zhizhong and U.S. ambassador Hurley, who had arrived in Yan'an the day before. At the airport Mao smiled while saying good-bye to Jiang Qing and members of the Politburo, but according to Soviet intelligence agent Vladimirov, it was obvious that he was unhappy. Mao approached the gangway of the airplane as if “he were going to his execution.” Unembarrassed in front of the others, Mao kissed Jiang Qing on the lips in public for the first time.

The negotiations, however, led nowhere. Mao spent six weeks in Chongqing in meetings with Chiang and other Guomindang leaders as well as with representatives of liberal public opinion, and even signed a peace agreement, but he had no intention of abandoning his struggle for power. He was simply making a concession to Stalin since he knew that the CCP could succeed only if the USSR provided military and economic aid.

Now he had to wait until Stalin (“this hypocritical foreign devil,” as Mao later called him)¹⁶ changed his position. Meanwhile, he had to listen to instructions from Rodion Malinovsky, the Soviet commander in Manchuria. On Stalin's insistence, Malinovsky refused to allow Eighth Route Army forces to occupy the cities of Northeast China until after the Soviet army had withdrawn from them. “We are not interfering in domestic Chinese politics,” he said. “The domestic problems of China must be resolved by the Chinese themselves.”¹⁷

Stalin slowly began to get over his “deviation” as soon as Mao Zedong was able to assure him that the CCP could cope with all the difficulties it faced. In the fall of 1945, the Chinese communists on their own initiative managed to defeat some Guomindang troops in two consecutive battles in north China. Stalin began to waver. In October 1945, he decided to transfer to CCP troops in Manchuria part of the arms of the Kwantung Army seized by Soviet soldiers. In this connection, to be sure, he did not want to advertise his participation in the Chinese civil war, although he evidently began to consider it a reality. “All of our officers, liaison personnel, and other persons must be withdrawn from Yan'an and the zones where Mao Zedong's troops are engaged as quickly as possible,” he said in reprimanding his assistants at this time. “The civil war in China is taking a serious turn, and I'm afraid that our enemies will subsequently accuse our people in these areas, who actually have no control over anything, of being the instigators of civil war in China. The sooner we withdraw them from there the better.”¹⁸

In February–March 1946, through an irony of fate, it was Chiang Kai-shek himself who, under pressure from rightists, was beginning to conduct a shortsighted policy vis-à-vis the USSR that nudged Stalin toward unconditional support of the CCP. The Guomindang and public opinion began at this time to express dissatisfaction with the conduct of the Soviet Army in Northeast China. It goes without saying that the Soviet occupation forces were engaged in outrageous plunder: they dismantled and shipped to the Soviet Union large-scale industrial enterprises and appropriated the property not only of Japanese but of Chinese citizens as well. The result was that Manchurian industry suffered a loss of $858 million. On March 6, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of China issued a protest in this connection and demanded the immediate withdrawal of the Soviet Army.¹⁹ Did Chiang Kai-shek understand then that the Chinese communists would replace the Russians? Probably not. Relying on U.S. support, he counted on his own forces occupying the cities vacated by the Soviets. But he miscalculated.

A week later, on March 13, Stalin began to withdraw his troops, an operation completed on May 3. At the same time, he called on his Chinese comrades to act vigorously and openly, even criticizing them for their excessive deference toward the United States.²⁰ In other words, he agreed to the entry of CCP troops into Manchurian cities, and he even insisted that Mao's army occupy them as quickly as possible, having ordered the Soviet Army to cooperate with the Chinese communists in establishing control over the local lines of communication.²¹

By then the Cold War had already commenced and Stalin finally began to provide real assistance to the Chinese communist armies. Manchuria was turned into a base for the CCP. In June 1946, a new full-scale civil war erupted in China.

Initially, it began inauspiciously for the communists. The Guomindang's 4.3 million troops significantly outnumbered the 1.2 million officers and men of the CCP armies. In the first months communist forces were forced to abandon 105 cities and towns. Chiang Kai-shek launched a broad attack along the entire front—from Shaanxi province in the west to the shore of the Pacific Ocean in the east. He also waged war in Manchuria. The Americans, to be sure, considered Chiang's actions “overambitious” and warned him that such a military campaign “would plunge China into economic chaos and eventually destroy the National Government” inasmuch as Chiang, by extending his front, was exposing his “communications to attack by Communist guerrillas,” compelling his soldiers “to retreat or to surrender their arms together with the munitions which the United States has furnished them.”²²

But meanwhile the communists were losing one battle after another. On March 12, 1947, Chiang Kai-shek's air force bombed Yan'an itself and the surrounding cave encampment. In the city itself little had remained to destroy after repeated bombing by Japanese planes starting in November 1938. All that was left of Yan'an were its destroyed fortress walls and two or three streets. The party and political leadership had long since moved to caves in the northern outskirts of the city where Mao, too, lived. This was the area subjected to intensive bombardment by the B-24s and P-52s in Chiang Kai-shek's air force. Nonstop flights by about fifty planes continued over the course of a week and Guomindang infantry launched a large-scale attack on the city from the south.²³

By March 18, Guomindang troops had advanced to within a couple of miles of the city. Mao gave the order to abandon Yan'an and that same evening departed the cave encampment with Jiang Qing and Li Na. Before climbing into his old army jeep, Mao ordered Peng Dehuai, in charge of the evacuation, to make sure that the rooms in all the caves were swept clean and that the furniture was not broken.²⁴ He did not want the Guomindang troops to think that the communists had fled in a panic.²⁵

He set out for northern Shaanxi, where all summer, fall, and winter he led his thoroughly exhausted army along the mountain roads. At the end of March 1947, the army was renamed the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA). Mao's eldest son, Anying, who had returned from the USSR to Yan'an in early January 1946, experienced the bitter taste of retreat with him and Jiang Qing.

This tall and handsome youth of twenty-three with kind and sad-looking eyes had experienced a great deal. In May 1942 he had graduated from the International Orphanage; moved by an internationalist impulse, he wrote to Stalin requesting to be sent to the front against the Nazis: “I will seek to revenge the thousands and tens of thousands of Soviets who have been killed.”²⁶ He was sent to study military science and in August 1944, Lieutenant Sergei Yunfu, as he was called, was sent to the Second Byelorussian Front as a probationary officer. He served there for only four months, but long enough to “get a whiff of powder.” In November 1944, he was summoned back to Moscow, this time to study in the Institute of Oriental Studies.²⁷ He repeatedly requested that he be sent to China. Finally, at the end of 1945, he was granted permission. On the eve of Anying's departure, Stalin met with him at the Kremlin, wished Anying a good journey, and presented him with an engraved revolver.²⁸ Anying flew to Yan'an with the revolver and was never without it thereafter.

His relations with his father were complex. Anying had almost no memory of Mao, felt pity for Mama He, and was always on guard, if not worse, with Jiang Qing, who frequently complained about him to Mao. “Soon disagreements between father and son arose over theoretical issues,” we read in the reports of Soviet intelligence officers.

Mao Zedong deemed his son a “dogmatist” who knew theory, but was unfamiliar with life and working conditions in China. Mao Zedong asserted that his son had been spoiled in the USSR, and he expressed his dissatisfaction with the education he had received. In order to “teach him about life” in China, in April 1946, Mao [An]ying was sent to the countryside to work as a laborer for a rich peasant Wu Ma-you. Mao [An]ying worked as a laborer for about three months.²⁹

Only then was his father satisfied. “Everyone should taste some bitterness in his life,” Mao said.³⁰ He added, “Earlier you ate bread and drank milk, but now in China you must try northern Shaanxi millet gruel, it is very good for your health.”³¹

After this he sent his son to work in the Propaganda Department of the Central Committee, and in March 1947, Anying, along with other Central Committee workers, left Yan'an and followed Mao into the mountains of northern Shaanxi. Soon Mao's other children, Anqing and Jiaojiao, returned to China from the USSR with He Zizhen. They arrived in Harbin, where they were taken care of by local CCP officials. The children chattered away in Russian (they knew almost no Chinese), but Zizhen was in a terrible state. The last two years in the USSR had been traumatic. In 1945, Jiaojiao suddenly fell terribly ill. She was diagnosed with pneumonia and was thought to be dying. Panic-stricken, Zizhen took her from the hospital, fearing the loss of her last child. The daughter pulled through, but Zizhen was pushed to the brink of insanity. The ordeal had been too much for her. Soon after her daughter's recovery, Zizhen was placed in a psychiatric hospital in the village of Zinovo, about twenty miles southwest of the city of Ivanovo. It was not until March 1947, after repeated requests by Wang Jiaxiang, who was in Moscow for medical treatment, and his wife that Zizhen was released into their care. Only then was she able to see her daughter again. Jiaojiao herself (Li Min) recalled the reunion: “I was conducted into some sort of hotel. Entering the room, I saw a middle-aged woman. I was floored! Was this mama? Pale, thin, worn out! Even her smile was feeble and her eyes were lifeless.”³² Two months later, escorted by Wang Jiaxiang and his wife, mother and children departed for their homeland.³³ Arriving in Harbin, Zizhen began to sob. “Finally, I have escaped those terrible days, from a life dependent on foreigners! Now I am really free!” she asserted.³⁴

Meanwhile, in the summer of 1947, Mao carried out a brilliant plan: he dispatched a part of his forces to Chiang Kai-shek's rear to establish a new military base in the high mountain region of Dabie, in the Central Plain. This diversionary maneuver was intended to compel Chiang Kai-shek to redeploy some of his military units from the northwestern and northeastern fronts to defend the major cities of the Central Plain: Wuhan, Jiujiang, Nanchang, Shanghai, and the capital city of Nanjing itself. In this way the generalissimo's strategic plans were ruined. This operation initiated a new phase in the war—the counteroffensive of CCP forces.³⁵ On April 25, 1948, the communists retook Yan'an. By June 1948, the Guomindang army had contracted to 3,650,000 troops while the armed forces of the CCP had increased to 2,800,000.³⁶

In the spring of 1948, after fording the Yellow River, Mao and his troops crossed into Shanxi province and continued into western Hebei at a forced march. The Working Committee of the Central Committee, headed by Liu Shaoqi and Zhu De, had been located here since the spring of 1947. Liu and Zhu lived in the village of Xibaipo, located 350 miles southwest of Beiping in the relatively inaccessible Taihang Mountains. At the end of May 1948, Mao Zedong's forces arrived in Xibaipo, which became the new capital of communist China for almost the rest of the civil war.

In Xibaipo, Mao and Jiang Qing lived in a cozy one-story house with an inner courtyard paved in stone. There was little furniture but Mao was content with the bare necessities. He spent most of his time in his office, sitting at a massive wooden table, in an oval armchair with four crooked legs. Here he met with party comrades, worked on military operations with Zhu De, and drafted party documents. Here, too, in June 1948 he had a disagreeable confrontation with his eldest son that long cast a shadow over their relationship. The straight-talking and rather naive Anying, in a state of high excitation, accused his father of creating a “cult of the Leader” and even called him a “false Leader.” He had already progressed enough in party circles to sense the atmosphere. It is impossible to say how this would have ended had Jiang Qing and Zhou Enlai not criticized Anying and demanded he write an explanation.

Somewhat chastened, the fighter against the cult of personality threw himself on the mercy of the victor. He admitted that “my action …… has undermined father's authority.” He explained that one of the reasons for his “conceit” was the respectful treatment he had received in the USSR, where he had been “treated like a ‘little Leader' …… [and] he had enjoyed comfortable material conditions and had not experienced any difficulties in his life.” After Mao, Zhou, and Jiang pondered his case, a resolution was adopted to “utilize Mao [An]ying in low-level technical work in the Central Committee apparatus under the control of [Mao's secretary] Chen Boda.” It was stipulated that his “living conditions should not be any different from those of other workers at this level.” Mao refused to meet his son until February 1949. Anying was forbidden to show up in his father's house without permission.³⁷

His family problems, of course, did not divert the Chairman from his struggle for power with Chiang Kai-shek. There in Xibaipo, Mao, Zhu De, Zhou Enlai, Liu Shaoqi, and other party leaders elaborated measures to rout the armies of Chiang Kai-shek despite the numerical superiority of Guomindang forces, U.S. support for Nanjing, and the PLA's dearth of technology and arms. Over a period of five months, from September 1948 through January 1949, the communists conducted three major strategic operations. The first was in Manchuria, the second in eastern China, and the third in the region of Beiping-Tianjin. More than half a million enemy officers and men were eliminated and several large cities, including Beiping, were taken. Just a year or two earlier, very few people had believed this possible. Back then, Mao's statement “All reactionaries are paper tigers,” spoken during an interview with the American correspondent Anna Louise Strong in August 1946, had only elicited smiles.ⁿ⁵⁰ His assertion that “[w]e have only millet plus rifles to rely on, but history will finally prove that our millet plus rifles is more powerful than Chiang Kai-shek's aeroplanes and tanks” could be taken as an eloquent polemical flourish.³⁸ Nonetheless, the PLA triumphed. On January 31, 1949, per agreement with General Fu Zuoyi, who was defending the city, PLA forces entered Beiping. Nanjing was taken on April 23, Shanghai on May 27, and Qingdao on June 2. The Guomindang government first fled to Canton, then to Chongqing, to Chengdu, and, finally, in early December, to Taiwan. The tens of millions of dollars that the Soviet government had spent on the Chinese revolution had paid off. Mainland China was now in the grip of a communist dictatorship.

What were the reasons for the CCP victory? How did the PLA succeed in making its breakthrough? First of all was the traditional guerrilla method of warfare that Mao's armies actively employed in the initial stage of the conflict. Retreating in the first months, the communists tried to keep the enemy on the run, their purpose being “to tire him out completely, reduce his food supplies drastically and then look for an opportunity to destroy him.” Mao called this method the tactics of “wear and tear.”³⁹ As early as the summer of 1947, PLA units began attacking enemy positions.⁴⁰

Second, the Guomindang forces were falling apart and the generals and officers were powerless to improve the situation. The fighting spirit of the soldiers had collapsed while “in the Chinese Communists the fervor became fanatical.”⁴¹ Chiang Kai-shek's army demonstrated a complete incapacity to fight. Corruption and localism flourished in all of the units. The vestiges of militarism were also strong. Commanders did not want to risk their units, viewing them primarily as sources of their own political influence in society as well as of enrichment.

Third, the government's inability to stimulate economic development was also quite evident. In 1946 inflation gripped the country. From September 1945 to February 1947 the value of the yuan dropped by a factor of thirty. In 1947 the monthly rate of inflation reached 26 percent. The crisis continually worsened. An eyewitness reported: “Inflation was creating tremendous financial insecurity …… Inflation was so severe that the pile of money that would purchase three eggs in the morning would buy only one egg by the afternoon. People carried their money in carts, and the price of rice was so high that citizens who in ordinary times would never have dreamed of stealing were beginning to break into grain shops and make off with what they could.”⁴²

The number of strikes soared. In 1946, in Shanghai alone there were 1,716 strikes. By the spring of 1948 the government was forced to introduce rationing in all the major cities, and in order to increase grain reserves introduced compulsory purchase of grain at reduced prices.⁴³ This measure alienated the Guomindang's natural ally, the well-to-do peasants. The broad masses of the population grew dissatisfied with Chiang Kai-shek's domestic policies.

The CCP took advantage of the situation and rallied various political forces around itself. It came to power not under the banner of socialism, communism, or Stalinism, but under the slogan of New Democracy, which was of decisive importance.

Fourth, the position of the USSR was also significant. Despite the fact that Stalin initially took a cautious position with respect to the Chinese conflict, he did not seem to oppose the communist revolution in China, as some historians have erroneously suggested.⁴⁴ To be sure, at first he spoke of the possible division of China into two parts along the dividing line of the Yangzi River (the CCP in the north, the Guomindang in the south).⁴⁵ However, he refused any form of mediation between the warring sides despite several requests from Chiang Kai-shek's government.⁴⁶ Although he repeatedly sent categorical directives to his embassy in China demanding that it not intervene in the conflict, he had no desire to rescue the Guomindang.⁴⁷ Prior to the fall of Nanjing, it is true that he ordered his ambassador Nikolai Roshchin to follow Chiang Kai-shek to Canton at the same time that the American and British ambassadors remained in the capital, but in his own words, he did this “to secure intelligence, so that he [Roshchin] could regularly inform us [Stalin] of the situation south of the Yangzi, as well as among the Guomindang higher-ups and their American masters.”⁴⁸ Stalin secretly informed Mao to this effect. As far back as early 1948, that is, before Mao's arrival in Xibaipo, in conversations with Bulgarian and Yugoslav delegations in the Kremlin, Stalin acknowledged that the Soviet side had been mistaken and the Chinese communists correct in their assessment of the prospects for the civil war. He also spoke of this in July 1949 when he met with Liu Shaoqi, who was paying him an unofficial visit. “Did my telegram sent in August 1945 obstruct your war of liberation?” he asked Liu. The answer, of course, was no, but feeling that his interlocutor was merely saying this to please him, and to absolve him of responsibility for his prior cautious policy in China, he added, “Now I am quite old. My concern now is that after my death, these comrades [he pointed to Marshal Kliment Voroshilov, Molotov, and others] will be afraid of imperialism.”⁴⁹

Stalin did not want to intervene in the conflict, but he helped out the CCP quite a lot with weapons and advice. He conducted a particularly extensive correspondence with Mao during this period. Maintaining secrecy, he signed his coded telegrams either with the Russian pseudonym Filippov or the Chinese one Feng Xi [Fyn Si] and transmitted them to Mao via his representatives. One of these was Dr. Andrei Orlov and the other was General Ivan Kovalev, who arrived in Xibaipo in January 1949 and had earlier served as people's commissar of communications for the USSR. Stalin's fear regarding the possibility of direct U.S. intervention in China was entangled with his persistent hope of duping the West. Throughout the civil war he outdid Mao Zedong in attempting to demonstrate that the CCP had supposedly distanced itself from the Bolshevik party. Beginning in late 1947, Mao regularly expressed his desire to visit Stalin, but Stalin refused to receive him until military operations in China were basically concluded. He did not want to give the West and Chiang Kai-shek further grounds for labeling Mao a “Soviet agent.”

Throughout the 1946–49 civil war in China, Stalin consistently cooled the genuine communist enthusiasm of Mao. The documentary sources demonstrate that during this period Mao Zedong was more radical than Stalin. In 1946–49 Mao already adhered to the concept of New Democracy passively. He changed his attitude to New Democracy as soon as he realized he could defeat the Guomindang. He had developed this line during the Sino-Japanese War for tactical reasons because the CCP was weak, but when he realized that he could defeat Chiang, he began to ask Stalin to let him abandon it. Mao opposed this line not infrequently even though in formal terms he continued to follow it so as not to irritate the Muscovite leader.⁵⁰ Stalin's circumspection is explicable not only in terms of his fear of a nuclear conflict with the United States or his desire to deceive Washington. As a Russian national communist, when Stalin thought about the consequences of a CCP victory he must have been concerned about the future emergence of a powerful new center of communist power. A communist China that achieved rapid economic modernization along the Soviet model through dictatorial means might pose a threat to his hegemony in the communist world. By seeking to limit Mao's ambitions to “democratic” goals, Stalin might bind Mao to himself and subordinate the CCP's tactical line to his own political course of action.

At the same time, Stalin's suspicion of Mao grew in proportion to the CCP's success in the civil war. It further intensified after the “Yugoslav shock” of 1948, that is, after Stalin's break with the Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito, whom Moscow had considered one of its most loyal satellites until he suddenly became disobedient. Soon after the “Tito affair,” in private conversations with his intimate supporters, Stalin began to express his growing anxiety about a possible new threat, this time from China. “What kind of man is Mao Zedong? He has some sort of special views, a kind of peasant's outlook. It's as though he's afraid of the workers and keeps his armies away from cities,” he mused.⁵¹ His right-hand man Molotov, whom Stalin asked to visit Mao and see “what sort of fellow” he was, also had doubts about Mao, calling him a “Chinese Pugachev” in conversations with Stalin.ⁿ⁵¹ “He was far from a Marxist, of course,” Molotov said. “He confessed to me that he had never read Marx's Das Kapital.”⁵² In early 1949, Stalin even requested a written opinion from Borodin, the former “chief adviser” to Sun Yat-sen and the Wuhan government in 1923–27, regarding Mao. Obviously grasping what the paranoid leader wanted, Borodin wrote:

His independence of character and, even more so, his tendency to “go it alone” were already evident in those years. At meetings, it seemed that he was bored and disengaged when others were speaking, but if he was speaking himself, it was as if no one else had said anything before him …… Mao Zedong's distinctive characteristic is overweening self-assurance. He has long since considered himself a theoretician who has made his own contributions to social science …… He possesses a mistaken view of …… the superiority of the peasants over other classes …… and a concomitant underestimation of the leading role of the proletariat. Mao Zedong repeatedly expressed this point of view in personal conversations with me.

KGB colonel Georgii Mordvinov, who had supervised the Chinese Communist Party in the late 1930s and 1940s, also gave an unflattering testimonial regarding Mao Zedong. He emphasized “Mao Zedong's patriarchal inclinations, his pathological suspicion, his extraordinary ambition, his megalomania that developed into a cult.”⁵³ Might this latter characterization have caused Stalin any embarrassment inasmuch as it fit him to a T? Borodin's assessment caused Stalin to sit up and take notice.

Until the situation became clarified, Stalin would not agree to receive Mao, though he permitted Jiang Qing and their daughter Li Na entry into the USSR. The visit was secretive; Jiang Qing traveled under the name of Marianna Yusupova. The formal reason for the journey was illness. Life in the caves of Yan'an and long, exhausting travels through the mountains of Shaanxi, Shanxi, and Hebei had undermined Jiang's health. She was five foot four inches tall but weighed only ninety-seven pounds. This is why Mao thought to send her and their daughter to the Soviet Union for rest and medical treatment.⁵⁴ At the same time, Jiang was supposed to explore life in the Soviet Union and make contact with important people. Thus Stalin's and Mao's interest in her visit coincided.

She and Li Na were in Moscow from May through August 1949. On May 18, Jiang Qing first checked into the therapeutic and then the otolaryngology clinic of the Kremlin hospital on Granovsky Street, where she was diagnosed as suffering from general exhaustion. She spent more than a month in the hospital. She complained about weakness, rapid fatigue, stomach pain, intermittent diarrhea, disrupted sleep, and extreme excitability. She requested that the temperature in her room be kept at a constant 65 degrees. She said that she had twice suffered from dysentery, and that since childhood she had several attacks of angina every year. After consulting with professors, on June 13, 1949, Jiang Qing had her tonsils removed, and two weeks later was sent to the Barvikha Sanatorium, outside Moscow. After that she and her daughter rested at a government dacha for a time, and on August 29 she was sent to Crimea. Stalin provided a special railroad car for her trip. By an amusing coincidence, she took her rest in Koreiz, the former home of the famous Prince Felix Yusupov, Rasputin's killer, whose Russian surname she now shared. She occupied the entire lower floor. General Ludvik Svoboda, the future president of Czechoslovakia, and his wife, Irena, occupied the second floor. Jiang Qing spent most of her time playing billiards with them and strolling in the neighborhood. The Central Committee of the CPSU assigned to her a junior staff member, Anastasia Kartunova, who had just graduated from the Moscow Institute of Oriental Studies two years earlier.⁵⁵

In July 1949, a CCP delegation headed by Liu Shaoqi came to the USSR on an unofficial visit.⁵⁶ At the end of November, at Mao Zedong's request, the Soviet government granted permission for Ren Bishi to enter the country for medical treatment.⁵⁷

As always, Stalin closely followed developments in China. He had his own secret informers even within the Politburo of the CCP, and he was able to exert influence, more or less effectively, on the Chinese communist leadership. For their part, Mao Zedong and the other CCP leaders constantly informed him of their plans and intentions, and regularly consulted with Moscow even on trifling matters. In February 1949, for example, they requested “Comrade Filippov's” opinion on whether they should transfer the capital of China from Nanjing to Beiping. And on September 28, the eve of the proclamation of the People's Republic of China, they expressed interest in his point of view as to whether they should contact all of the countries of the world regarding the restoration of diplomatic relations “via radio in a generic form or to each individual state via separate telegrams.”⁵⁸ “Comrade Master-in-Chief” is how Mao Zedong addressed Stalin in his coded telegrams to Moscow. It is quite possible that Mao lacked “much good feeling”⁵⁹ toward Stalin, but he understood perfectly that he had to be especially loyal to him in both words and deeds, particularly since he could hardly help knowing about Stalin's suspicious nature. This is why, for example, in an August 28, 1948, telegram informing Stalin of the questions he would like to discuss with him during his future visit to the Soviet Union, Mao had declared, “We need to come to an understanding so that our political course will fully coincide with that of the USSR.”⁶⁰

Instead of an invitation for Mao to visit Moscow, in January 1949 Stalin sent his representative Anastas Mikoyan on a secret mission to Xibaipo to discuss the most important questions. Mikoyan was accompanied by two men with the same surname: Ivan Kovalev, whom we have already encountered, and Evgenii Kovalev, director of the Far Eastern Sector in the International Foreign Policy Department of the Central Committee of the CPSU. “One was a fool, and the other a coward,” the dour Mikoyan later told Stalin.

One of the questions Stalin entrusted his representative to discuss with Mao was the nature of New Democracy in China. In a telegram of November 30, 1947, Mao had written to Stalin: “In the period of the decisive victory of the Chinese revolution, following the example of the USSR and Yugoslavia, all political parties with the exception of the CCP, must leave the political stage; this will significantly strengthen the Chinese revolution.”⁶¹ This thesis openly contradicted what Mao had written in “On Coalition Government” and contradicted the entire course of New Democracy, which aimed at creating a multiparty system in China. In a telegram of April 20, 1948, Stalin expressed his disagreement with Mao's proposal.

We do not agree with this. We think that various opposition parties in China which are representing the middle strata of the Chinese population and are opposing the Guomindang clique will exist for a long time. And the CCP will have to involve them in cooperation against Chinese reactionary forces and imperialist powers, while keeping hegemony, i.e., the leading position, in its hands. It is possible that some representatives of these parties will have to be included into the Chinese people's democratic government and the government itself has to be a coalition government in order to widen the basis of this government among the population and to isolate the imperialists and their Guomindang agents.⁶²

Mao, apparently, wholly accepted Stalin's point of view and in a telegram of April 26, he laid all the blame for these “leftist tendencies” on local CCP leaders, and informed the “Master-in-Chief” that these tendencies “have already been thoroughly corrected.”⁶³ In September 1948, however, he again tried to radicalize the political course, this time approaching the question from the standpoint of economics. In his report to a Politburo meeting in Xibaipo from September 8 to 13, he asserted that the socialist sector would become the leading sector in the national economy during the period of New Democracy, since after the revolution bureaucratic capital as well as large enterprises belonging to bureaucratic capital would become the property of the state.⁶⁴ In January–February 1949, during his meetings with Mao, Mikoyan again expounded the Soviet position. He did so rather arrogantly, not so much advising as instructing. Mao was offended, but he concealed his dissatisfaction and affirmed his acceptance of Stalinist directives. To Mikoyan he presented what was essentially a compromise variation of his ideas. In a rambling talk with his guest in early February on current and future policies of the CCP, in referring to cooperation with the national bourgeoisie and carrying out land reform without confiscating “kulak” property he emphasized that even though the coalition government would include several “democratic parties,” the future Chinese state would be in essence “a dictatorship of the proletariat.” He also asserted that the construction of New China would take place on the foundation of the Soviet experience.⁶⁵

In order to win over the “Master-in-Chief,” Mao asserted to Stalin's emissary that his ideological formulations derived from Stalin's theses concerning the nature of the Chinese revolution.⁶⁶ In reality, his compromise position did not fundamentally contradict Stalin's views. In the final analysis, Stalin was himself hardly a moderate. He merely worried about whether the communists' power in a future unified China would be sufficiently camouflaged and worried, too, about the potential rapidity of China's modernization. Therefore, he was quite satisfied to learn that his directives had been formally accepted.⁶⁷

Meanwhile, in early 1949, anticipating victory over the Guomindang, Mao again tried to return to his radical ideas, striving to escape from the bounds of New Democracy. In his report to the Second Plenum of the Central Committee meeting in Xibaipo in March 1949, Mao almost entirely avoided mentioning the term “New Democracy,” employing instead the formula of the popular democratic revolution. The resolution of the Second Plenum indicated how Mao distinguished between these two terms, namely, that in the countries of Eastern Europe that were termed people's democracies “the existence and development of capitalism …… the existence and development of free trade and competition …… was limited and constrained.”⁶⁸ The concept of New Democracy, by contrast, implied considerable economic freedom.⁶⁹ After the plenum the concept of New Democracy virtually disappeared from the texts of Mao's speeches and articles. His new programmatic text, which he would publish on June 30, 1949, would be titled “On the People's Democratic Dictatorship.”⁷⁰ Many years later, Mao acknowledged, “In essence, the basic proposition about destroying the bourgeoisie was contained in the decisions of the Second Plenum of the Seventh Central Committee.”⁷¹

Stalin was able to correct this position in December 1949, after the victory of the Chinese revolution. Nevertheless, his tactical maneuvers helped Mao Zedong achieve an impressive victory over Chiang Kai-shek. In late 1947 and early 1948, the Chinese communists, masquerading as New Democrats, even succeeded in splitting the Guomindang with the aid of Song Qingling, the widow of Sun Yat-sen, who had long collaborated with the CCP and Moscow. On January 1, 1948, leftists within the Guomindang, meeting in Hong Kong, declared the formation of the so-called Revolutionary Committee of the Guomindang. Song Qingling herself became its honorary chairman and such well-known persons as Feng Yuxiang and Tan Pingshan were among its leaders.

On March 23, Mao and other Central Committee officials left Xibaipo for Beiping, two months after its capture by PLA troops. Before departing, Mao laughingly said to Zhou Enlai, “We're going to the capital to take our exams.”

“We must pass them,” Zhou replied. “We won't give up.”

“Giving up would be equivalent to defeat,” Mao said seriously. “However, we will not become like Li Zicheng.ⁿ⁵² Let's hope that we pass the exams with flying colors.”⁷²

The communists managed to do everything they wanted to. On September 30, 1949, they organized a multiparty coalition government;ⁿ⁵³ Mao became the chairman and Liu Shaoqi, Zhu De, and Song Qingling were his deputies. On October 1, in Beiping, which ten days earlier the CCP had restored to its former name of Beijing, Mao Zedong proclaimed the establishment of the People's Republic of China.

This was his finest hour. He stood in the rostrum of Tiananmen Gate, its palace tower behind him rising above the entrance to the Forbidden City of the emperors. He gazed out at the gigantic crowd that filled the central square beneath him to overflowing. (More than four hundred thousand people took part in the celebration.) Before his feet lay a great country with an ancient history and culture, and now he was its all-powerful master. What was he thinking about? Power? The years of painful struggle? His friends and comrades who had perished? Perhaps he was thinking about what lay in the future for him and the long-suffering people of China? We don't know.

Standing next to him were his comrades-in-arms: Zhou Enlai, Liu Shaoqi, Zhu De, and many other members of the communist leadership and of the coalition government, among them Song Qingling. Mao was cheerful and lighthearted, smiling continuously, showing his even teeth. He did not want to conceal his triumph. Fastened with a safety pin to the left side of his new dark brown jacket was a red ribbon with two yellow characters—zhuxi—Chairman. For many long years this word would be of utmost importance in the lives of all those living in the PRC.

¹See Freda Utley, China at War (New York: John Day, 1939); Claire and William Band, Dragon Fangs: Two Years with Chinese Guerrillas (London: Allen & Unwin, 1947); T. A. Bisson, “China's Part in a Coalition War,” Far Eastern Survey, no. 12 (1939): 139; Harrison Forman, Report from Red China (New York: Henry Holt, 1945). See also Kenneth Shewmaker, Americans and Chinese Communists, 1927–1945 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1971), 239–62.

²See David D. Barrett, Dixie Mission: The United States Army Observer Group in Yenan, 1944 (Berkeley, CA: Center for Chinese Studies, 1970); Carrole J. Carter, Mission to Yenan: American Liaison with the Chinese Communists 1944–1947 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1997); Vladimirov, Osobyi raion Kitaia 1942–1945 (Special Region of China 1942–1945), 306–7, 313, 626.

³Joseph Esherick, ed., Lost Chance in China: The World War II Dispatches of John S. Service (New York: Random House, 1974), 308, 309.

⁴See United States Relations with China: With Special Reference to the Period 1944–1949 (New York: Greenwood Press, 1968), 92–93, 94–96; “Statement by General Patrick J. Hurley on December 5 & 6, 1945,” United States–China relations. Hearings before the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, Ninety-second Congress, First Session on the Evolution of U.S. Policy Toward Mainland China (Executive Hearings Held July 21, 1971; Made Public December 8, 1971) and Hearings Before the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, Seventy-ninth Congress, First Session on the Situation in the Far East, Particularly China. December 5, 6, 7, and 10, 1945 (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1971), 78, 122.

⁵Lyman P. Van Slyke, ed., The Chinese Communist Movement: A Report of the United States War Department, July 1945 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1968), 1, 258.

⁶See Mao, Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung, vol. 3, 219.

⁷See Dieter Heinzig, The Soviet Union and Communist China, 1945–1950: The Arduous Road to the Alliance (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2004), 51–125.

⁸See A. V. Torkunov, Zagadochnaia voina: Koreiskii konflikt 1950–1953 (The Enigmatic War: The Korean Conflict 1950–1953) (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2000), 6–29.

⁹O. Arne Westad et al., eds., “77 Conversations Between Chinese and Foreign Leaders on the Wars in Indochina,” CWIHP Working Paper, no. 22 (May 1998): 105.

¹⁰Quoted from A. M. Ledovsky, SSSR i Stalin v sud'bakh Kitaia: Dokumenty i svidel'stva uchastnika sobytii, 1937–1952 (The USSR and Stalin in China's Fate: Documents and Witness of a Participant, 1937–1952) (Moscow: Pamiatniki istoricheskoi mysli, 1999), 61. See also “Zapis' besedy tovarishcha Stalina I. V. s Predsedatelem Tsentral'nogo narodnogo pravitel'stva Kitaiskoi Narodnoi Respubliki Mao Tsze-dunom 16 dekabria 1949 g.” (Record of Comrade J. V. Stalin's Conversation with the Chairman of the Central People's Government of the Chinese People's Republic Mao Zedong, December 16, 1949), RGASPI, collection 55, inventory 11, file 329, sheets 9–17; “Zapis' besedy tovarishcha Stalina I. V. s Predsedatelem Tsentral'nogo narodnogo pravitel'stva Kitaiskoi Narodnoi Respubliki Mao Tsze-dunom 22 ianvaria 1950 g.” (Record of Comrade J. V. Stalin's Conversation with the Chairman of the Central People's Government of the Chinese People's Republic Mao Zedong, January 22, 1950), ibid., 29–38; CWIHP Bulletin, nos. 6–7 (1995/1996): 5–9; Niu Jun, “The Origins of the Sino-Soviet Alliance,” in Westad, Brothers in Arms, 70.

¹¹See Kurdiukov, Sovetsko-kitaiskie otnosheniia, 1917–1957: Sbornik dokumentov (Soviet-Chinese relations, 1917–1957: A Collection of Documents), 196–203.

¹²See Yugoslav and Bulgarian records of the secret Soviet-Bulgarian-Yugoslav meeting in the Kremlin, February 10, 1948, at which Stalin referred to this fact. The texts of the records are published in CWIHP Bulletin, no. 10 (March 1998): 128–34. See also Vladimir Dedijer, Tito Speaks (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1953), 331; “Minutes, Mao's Conversation with a Yugoslavian Communist Union Delegation, Beijing, September [undated] 1956,” CWIHP Bulletin, nos. 6–7 (1995/1996): 149; Shi Zhe, Zai lishi juren shenbian (At the Side of Historical Titans), rev. ed. (Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe, 1995), 308; “Mao Tszedun o kitaiskoi politike Kominterna i Stalina” (Mao Zedong on the China Policy of the Comintern and of Stalin), Problemy Dal'nego Vostoka (Far Eastern affairs), no. 5 (1998): 107; Vladislav Zubok, “The Mao-Khrushchev Conversations, July 31–August 3, 1958 and October 2, 1959,” CWIHP Bulletin, nos. 12/13 (Fall/Winter 2001): 255; David Wolff, “ ‘One Finger's Worth of Historical Events': New Russian and Chinese Evidence on the Sino-Soviet Alliance and Split, 1948–1959,” CWIHP Working Paper, no. 30 (August 2000): 54, 77; Westad, “77 Conversations between Chinese and Foreign Leaders on the Wars in Indochina,” 105–6.

¹³“Mao Tszedun o kitaiskoi politike Kominterna i Stalina” (Mao Zedong on the China Policy of the Comintern and of Stalin), 107.

¹⁴Pang, Mao Zedong nianpu, 1893–1949 (Chronological Biography of Mao Zedong, 1893–1949), vol. 3, 10.

¹⁵See Westad, “77 Conversations Between Chinese and Foreign Leaders on the Wars in Indochina,” 106.

¹⁶O. Borisov [O. B. Rakhmanin] and M. Titarenko, eds., Vystupleniia Mao Tsze-duna, ranee ne publikovavshiesia v kitaiskoi pechati (Mao Zedong's Speeches Previously Unpublished in the Chinese Press), series 2 (Moscow: Progress, 1975), 168.

¹⁷Quoted from Peng Zhen nianpu, 1902–1997 (Chronological Biography of Peng Zhen, 1902–1997), vol. 1 (Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe, 2002), 280.

¹⁸“Pismo I. V. Stalina V. M. Molotovu, L. P. Beria, G. M. Malenkovu, A. I. Mikoyanu, 10 noiabria, 1945 g.” (Letter from J. V. Stalin to V. M. Molotov, L. P. Beria, G. M. Malenkov, A. I. Mikoyan, November 10, 1945), RGASPI, collection 558, inventory 11, file 98, sheet 81.

¹⁹Odd Arne Westad, Cold War and Revolution: Soviet-American Rivalry and the Origins of the Chinese Civil War, 1944–1946 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 152.

²⁰See Heinzig, The Soviet Union and Communist China, 1945–1950, 98.

²¹Ibid., 98–101; Westad, Cold War and Revolution, 161.

²²Dean Acheson, “Letter of Transmittal,” in United States Relations with China, xv.

²³See Witke, Comrade Chiang Ch'ing, 199; Wu, Mao Zedong guanghui licheng dituji (Atlas of Mao Zedong's Glorious Historical Path), 75.

²⁴See Peng, Memoirs of a Chinese Marshal, 453.

²⁵General Hu Zongnan, one of Chiang Kai-shek's most faithful officers, was at the head of the Guomindang troops that took Yan'an. Based just on the fact that he, like General Zhang Zhizhong, had been at the Whampoa Academy in the mid-1920s, Chang and Halliday conclude that he, too, was a “Red ‘sleeper.' ” Chang and Halliday, Mao, 312.

²⁶Quoted from Huang Zheng, “Mao Anying,” in Hu Hua, ed., Zhonggongdang shi renwu zhuan (Biographies of Persons in the History of the CCP), vol. 21 (Xi'an: Shaanxi renmin chubanshe, 1985), 151.

²⁷See Lichnoe delo Mao Anyina (Yun Fu) (Personal File of Mao Anying [Yong Fu]), 22.

²⁸See Huang, “Mao Anying,” 152.

²⁹Lichnoe delo Mao Tszeduna (Personal File of Mao Zedong), RGASPI, collection 495, inventory 225, file 71, vol. 1, sheet 25.

³⁰Quoted from Li, The Private Life of Chairman Mao, 82.

³¹Quoted from Li, Moi otets Mao Tszedun (My Father Mao Zedong), 59.

³²Ibid., 21.

³³See Xu, Wang Jiaxiang nianpu, 1906–1974 (Chronological Biography of Wang Jiaxiang, 1906–1974), 348; Zhu Zhongli, Cancan hongye (A Bright Red Leaf) (Changsha: Hunan renmin chubanshe, 1985), 115–17, 124.

³⁴Li, Moi otets Mao Tszedun (My Father Mao Zedong), 23–24.

³⁵See Deng Xiaoping, Deng Xiaoping zishu (Autobiographic Notes of Deng Xiaoping) (Beijing: Jiefangjun chubanshe, 2004), 118.

³⁶See Wu, Mao Zedong guanghui licheng dituji (Atlas of Mao Zedong's Glorious Historical Path), 81.

³⁷Lichnoe delo Mao Tszeduna (Personal File of Mao Zedong), vol. 1, 26.

³⁸Mao Zedong, Selected Works, vol. 4 (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1969), 100, 101.

³⁹Ibid., 133–34.

⁴⁰See Wu, Mao Zedong guanghui licheng dituji (Atlas of Mao Zedong's Glorious Historical Path), 81.

⁴¹Acheson, “Letter of Transmittal,” vi.

⁴²Li, The Private Life of Chairman Mao, 37.

⁴³See A. V. Meliksetov, ed., Istoriia Kitaia (History of China) (Moscow: Izdatel'stvo MGU, 1998), 582–88; Jonathan D. Spence, The Search for Modern China (New York: Norton, 1990), 473–80.

⁴⁴See Brian Murray, “Stalin, the Cold War, and the Division of China: A Multi-Archival Mystery,” CWIHP Working Paper, no. 12 (June 1995): 1–17.

⁴⁵See Westad, “77 Conversations Between Chinese and Foreign Leaders on the Wars in Indochina,” 108.

⁴⁶See RGASPI, collection 17, inventory 162, file 40, sheets 1–2.

⁴⁷Ibid.

⁴⁸RGASPI, collection of unsorted documents.

⁴⁹Quoted from Westad, “77 Conversations Between Chinese and Foreign Leaders on the Wars in Indochina,” 108; see also Problemy Dal'nego Vostoka (Far Eastern affairs), no. 1 (1989), 141; record of Kang Sheng's speech at the meeting of the CPSU and CCP delegations, July 13, 1963, published in CWIHP Bulletin, no. 10 (1998): 182.

⁵⁰See John W. Garver, Chinese-Soviet Relations, 1937–1945: The Diplomacy of Chinese Nationalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 261.

⁵¹Khrushchev, Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev, vol. 3, 409.

⁵²Chuev, Molotov Remembers, 81.

⁵³Lichnoe delo Mao Tsze-duna (Personal File of Mao Zedong), RGASPI, collection 495, inventory 225, file 71, vol. 2, sheets 249, 250.

⁵⁴See RGASPI, collection 17, inventory 162, file 40, sheet 183; Lichnoe delo Tszian Tsin (Personal File of Jiang Qing), RGASPI, collection 495, inventory 225, file 3217, n.p.

⁵⁵See A. I. Kartunova, “Vstrechi v Moskve s Tszian Tsin, zhenoi Mao Tszeduna” (Meetings in Moscow with Jiang Qing, the Wife of Mao Zedong), Kentavr (Centaur) 1–2 (1992): 121–27.

⁵⁶See “Zapis' priema tovarishchem Stalinym delegatsii TsK KPK” (Report on Comrade Stalin's Reception of a CC CCP Delegation), RGASPI, collection 558, inventory 11, file 329, sheets 1–7.

⁵⁷See RGASPI, collection 17, inventory 162, file 41, sheet 49.

⁵⁸RGASPI, collection of unsorted documents.

⁵⁹“Minutes, Mao's Conversation with a Yugoslavian Communist Union Delegation,” 151.

⁶⁰Quoted from Ledovsky, SSSR i Stalin v sud'bakh Kitaia (The USSR and Stalin in China's Fate), 53.

⁶¹Quoted from Westad, Brothers in Arms, 298.

⁶²Quoted from telegram, “Stalin to Mao Zedong, April 20, 1948,” ibid., 298–99.

⁶³Quoted from Westad, Brothers in Arms, 300.

⁶⁴Mao, Mao Zedong wenji (Works of Mao Zedong), vol. 5, 140–41, 145.

⁶⁵See Pang, Mao Zedong nianpu, 1893–1949 (Chronological Biography of Mao Zedong, 1893–1949), vol. 2, 449; Sergei Goncharov, John W. Lewis, and Xue Litai, Uncertain Partners: Stalin, Mao, and the Korean War (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993), 40; Wolff, “One Finger's Worth of Historical Events,” 55; B. N. Vereshchagin, V starom i novom Kitae. Iz vospominanii diplomata (In Old and New China: Reminiscences of a Diplomat) (Moscow: IDV RAN, 1999), 124; Heinzig, The Soviet Union and Communist China 1945–1950, 135–56.

⁶⁶See Ledovsky, SSSR i Stalin v sud'bakh Kitaia (The USSR and Stalin in China's Fate), 65.

⁶⁷See A. I. Mikoyan, Tak bylo: Razmyshleniia o minuvshem (How It Was: Reflections on the Past) (Moscow: Vagrius, 1999), 528–29.

⁶⁸Quoted from Zhou Enlai, “Rech' na Vsekitaiskom finansovo-ekonomicheskom soveshchanii” (Speech at the All-China Financial-Economic Conference), Arkhiv vneshnei politiki Rossiiskoi Federatsii (Archives on the Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation) [hereafter AVP RF], collection 0100, inventory 46, file 374, folder 121, sheet 9.

⁶⁹Ibid.

⁷⁰See Mao, Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung, vol. 4, 411–24.

⁷¹Borisov and Titarenko, Vystupleniia Mao Tsze-duna, ranee ne publikovavshiesia v kitaiskoi pechati (Mao Zedong's Speeches Previously Unpublished in the Chinese Press), series 2, 181.

⁷²Pang, Mao Zedong nianpu, 1893–1949 (Chronological Biography of Mao Zedong, 1893–1949), vol. 3, 469.

ⁿ⁵⁰ It is worth noting that several years later, in early 1949, the pathologically suspicious Stalin wrote to Mao, “We have reliable information that the American writer Anna Louise Strong is an American spy. . . . She has long served the Americans as a spy. We advise you not to allow her into your midst or into areas occupied by the CCP.” Naturally, this was typical Stalinist gibberish. In reality, Anna Louise Strong was a passionate supporter of the communist movement in China. In 1958 she even moved to the PRC, where she lived out her days. (She died in 1970.) She was buried in Beijing in Babaoshan, the cemetery for heroes, and on her gravestone the following words were inscribed: “Friend of the Chinese people, progressive American journalist.” Incidentally, Agnes Smedley, who died in 1950, was also buried at Babaoshan.

ⁿ⁵¹ Pugachev was a famous Cossack leader of a large-scale Russian peasant rebellion in the eighteenth century.

ⁿ⁵² Li Zicheng (1605 or 1606–1645) was the leader of a vast popular uprising at the end of the Ming dynasty. In 1644 he captured Beijing and was proclaimed emperor, but he could not maintain control in the city—that is, in Mao’s figure of speech, he couldn’t pass the exams. Under the blows of the Manchus he had to retreat, and he was killed in the summer of 1645.

ⁿ⁵³ Ever since then in the PRC, in addition to the ruling CCP there have been eight minuscule so-called democratic parties that formed a united front with the communists. They have never constituted a real opposition to the CCP one-party dictatorship and have been a kind of democratic window-dressing. In the early 1950s some of their members even held positions in the so-called coalition government.