29 THE EMANCIPATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS

Another event in 1956 profoundly shook China and the whole world. At a closed session of the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in Moscow on February 25, Nikita Khrushchev delivered a report in which he condemned the cult of personality of Stalin. The deceased dictator was accused of numerous crimes. Khrushchev asserted that Stalin had committed serious errors in the early period of World War II, had violated the principle of collective leadership, and had established a personal dictatorship. He spoke about Stalin's errors in nationality and agrarian policies as well as in the international relations of the USSR. Nothing was said, however, about Stalin's mistrust of Mao Zedong; however, Khrushchev did speak of Stalin's errors with respect to Tito.¹

Mao was not at the congress. Zhu De, Deng Xiaoping, and some other party officials represented the CCP, and it was they who first informed the Chairman of this “staggering news.” Mao was stunned. In the name of the Central Committee he had sent greetings to the Twentieth Congress in which, as always, he had sung the praises of the late Stalin. The letter spoke about the “invincible Communist Party of the Soviet Union, created by Lenin and nurtured by Stalin.”² The “venerable Zhu” was no less embarrassed; he had read the letter from the rostrum of the congress to stormy applause in the hall. The impression arose that Khrushchev did not care how his speech would be received in the communist world. He even did not give a text of his report to foreign communists, and Mao had to read a Chinese translation done by Xinhua (New China) News Agency from a copy published in the New York Times on March 10.³ Khrushchev simply wanted to resolve his own problems. In other words, in condemning Stalinism, the new Soviet leader acted like Stalin, doubting not at all that Moscow's satellites would accept everything that came out of the Kremlin.⁴ They had accepted the inconceivable Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939, which completely reversed relations with Hitler's Germany and they would also accept the censure of Stalin.

After reflecting for a while, however, Mao suppressed his first unpleasant feeling. Be that as it may, the censure of the Kremlin ex-dictator emancipated him once and for all. The process that had begun with Khrushchev's visit in 1954 had now reached its logical conclusion.⁵

Some time later official information arrived from Khrushchev, and Mao could not help notice that the “demolisher of Stalin” was not fully confident. He was obviously trying to elicit Mao's favor. This pleased the Chairman; it confirmed his initial impressions of Khrushchev as a weak partner. Informing Mao in a private letter of the resolution adopted with respect to Stalin, the first secretary of the CPSU offered to help the Chinese build fifty-one military projects and three scientific research institutes. He also expressed willingness to cooperate in building a railroad from Urumqi in Xinjiang to the Soviet-Chinese border. In other words, Khrushchev was trying to win Mao over. On April 7, 1956, Khrushchev's personal representative Anastas Mikoyan and the Chinese signed an agreement regarding Soviet assistance in building fifty-five new industrial enterprises, including plants to produce rockets and atomic weapons.⁶

All of this radically altered the balance of forces in relations between China and the USSR. From now on Mao no longer had to look to the Soviet Union and feel obliged to copy its experience. If in 1955 and early 1956, while carrying out a Stalinist collectivization like that in the USSR, he had dared only to call for a faster tempo of cooperativization than the Soviets, now he was fully able to grope toward his own path of development. He could even try to catch up with and overtake the Soviet Union and turn China into the mightiest industrial power.

Soon after familiarizing himself with Khrushchev's report, on March 31, Mao invited Soviet ambassador Yudin, who had returned to China from Moscow after taking part in the Twentieth Congress, for a visit. Yudin himself had wanted a meeting with Mao. Khrushchev, who again badly needed the support of the Chinese Communist Party, had requested this of the ambassador. Mao, however, pleading illness, put Yudin off for a long time before he finally agreed to see him. The conversation lasted three hours. Mao was in an exhilarated frame of mind, and despite the serious subject matter he was constantly making jokes. He wanted to give the impression of a man who had grown wise from his experience in life, and who calmly faced the storms of the world. It was obvious, however, that he found it difficult to talk about Stalin.

He started off by telling Yudin that, as before, he considered his former mentor “unquestionably …… a great Marxist, a good and honest revolutionary.” At the same time, according to Yudin, Mao said that “the materials from the congress had produced a strong impression upon him.” Mao emphasized that “the spirit of criticism and self-criticism and the atmosphere following the congress had also helped us …… to express our view more freely on a number of questions. It was good that the CPSU had posed these questions. It would have been …… difficult for us to take the initiative in this matter.”⁷

Mao was well aware of what he was saying. As we have seen, throughout the entire history of the communist movement in China, its leaders, including Mao Zedong, had been almost invariably dependent ideologically, organizationally, and politically on Moscow. Although what Mao knew of Stalin's perfidy was more than enough for him to feel relief after Stalin's death, naturally he could not undertake to criticize openly his “leader and teacher.” It is true that he was unaware of the full scope of Stalin's perfidy. For example, he did not know that in 1938 the Kremlin dictator was planning to stage a massive political trial of Comintern officials. In this connection, pondering those to be targeted, he included on the list of those who would be accused such communists as Zhou Enlai, Liu Shaoqi, Kang Sheng, Chen Yun, Li Lisan, Luo Fu, Wang Jiaxiang, Ren Bishi, Deng Fa, Wu Yuzhang, Yang Shangkun, Dong Biwu, and even Qu Qiubai, who had already been executed by the Guomindang in 1935.⁸ NKVD investigator Aleksandr Ivanovich Langfang beat accusations against these persons out of an official of the Personnel Department of the ECCI, Guo Zhaotang, who was arrested in March 1938.⁹ There is no doubt that Langfang did not do this on his own initiative.ⁿ⁶⁵

Stalin proposed to stage a Comintern show trial in late spring 1938, in addition to the three that had already taken place against Zinoviev and Kamenev, against Radek and Piatakov, and against Bukharin and Rykov. This time the main accused would be the secretary of the Executive Committee of the Comintern, Josef Aronovich Piatnitsky. Other leading targets would be ECCI officials Bela Kun and Wilhelm Knorin,¹⁰ while the Chinese were supposed to play supporting roles. The decision to arrest massive numbers of Comintern officials was taken back in May 1937. At 1 A.M. on May 26, Dimitrov was summoned to the office of People's Commissar Yezhov, who told him, “Important spies are at work in the Comintern.” Arrests took place during the second half of 1937 and the early part of 1938; however, the majority of Chinese working in Moscow were not arrested. There's no way of knowing, but had Stalin not dropped his plan to stage a trial, it is possible that many CCP leaders would have become his victims. He did not include Mao Zedong on his “blacklist,” but who really knows how many such lists there were?

Knowing nothing about this proposed trial, in his conversation with the ambassador Mao devoted most of his attention to Stalin's mistaken policy toward China and the Chinese communist movement. He also shared several of the insults that had piled up during his contacts with Stalin.¹¹ In conclusion, he informed Yudin of the forthcoming publication in People's Daily of an editorial devoted to the question of the cult of personality in the USSR.

This article, written by Chen Boda¹² and edited by Mao himself and several others, only some of whom were Politburo members,¹³ was published on April 5, 1956. It was titled “On the Historical Experience of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat,” and since it was intended for a broad audience it did not contain unusual criticism of the former communist idol. The leaders of the CCP, Mao in the first instance, did not want anyone to oppose their own dictatorship by waving an anti-Stalinist banner. Later, on April 28, at an enlarged meeting of the Politburo, Mao Zedong acknowledged that “we do not intend to divulge …… to the masses” everything “bad that Stalin and the Third International did.”¹⁴ For now Mao also did not want to reveal his own plans regarding his search for his own development path. Stalin's merits and demerits were summed up in a ratio of 70:30, but the Soviet Union was praised nevertheless for its “selfless criticism …… of past mistakes.”

The next day Mao spoke on this theme to Khrushchev's personal representative Mikoyan, who had come to China on April 6 for a two-day visit. In the spirit of the article he devoted a lot of attention to criticizing Stalin's “serious mistakes” with regard to the Chinese revolution; however, he noted that “Stalin's achievements surpass his mistakes.”¹⁵ In reply, Mikoyan invited Mao to come to Moscow. The Chairman asked, “What for?” Mikoyan parried, “There must be something to do there.”¹⁶ Mao was not pleased by his guest's paternalistic tone.

On May 1, during the traditional May Day parade in Tiananmen Square, the marchers carried giant portraits of the late head of the Soviet Union just as they had the year before.¹⁷ It was the same in cities all over China.

The next day, on his own initiative, Mao paid a call on Yudin. According to the recollections of Soviet diplomat Konstantin Krutikov, once again Mao expressed the Politburo's position regarding the “merits and mistakes” of Stalin; however, he observed that after his last meeting with Mikoyan, “it had become clearer why Stalin did not trust him…… Apparently, Stalin considered even his closest associates Voroshilov, Molotov, and Mikoyan as scarcely better than foreign protégés.”¹⁸ His main reason for coming, however, was something else. Mao had come to Yudin to express his disagreement with Khrushchev's position set forth in his report to the Twentieth Congress on “peaceful coexistence of the two systems” and on “the possibility of preventing war in the present era.” Up till then the CCP Politburo had quietly let it be known that it simply did not agree with the thesis contained in the same report regarding the possibility of a “peaceful transition from capitalism to socialism.”¹⁹ In an article on the Twentieth Congress published in People's Daily on February 19, 1956, this latter idea of Khrushchev's had been deliberately ignored.²⁰

Now Mao decided to express his views on “peaceful coexistence” as well. He did this, to be sure, in a very circumspect manner, not making a direct attack. He told the ambassador that during the period of the Three Kingdoms (220–280 CE), as a result of constant warfare the population of China had diminished by forty million people, and that during the rebellion of An Lushan (755–63 CE) against Xuanzong, the emperor of the Tang dynasty, it had shrunk even more. His meaning was that there was no need to fear a nuclear war with imperialism. Even if the imperialists succeeded in seizing the European part of the USSR and the coastal regions of China, socialism would still ultimately triumph. Imperialism, he concluded, was just a “paper tiger.”²¹ For some reason, he liked the expression “paper tiger” (in Chinese zhilaohu), and he used it on various occasions. He even playfully called Jiang Qing a “paper tiger.”²² In this instance, he was simply repeating in veiled form what he had already said in late January 1955 to Carl-Johan Sundstrom, the Finnish ambassador to China:

The Chinese people are not to be cowed by U.S. atomic blackmail. Our country has a population of 600 million and an area of 9,600,000 square kilometres. The United States cannot annihilate the Chinese nation with its small stack of atom bombs…… Should the United States launch a third world war and supposing it lasted eight or ten years, the result would be the elimination of the ruling classes in the United States, Britain and the other accomplice countries and the transformation of most of the world into countries led by Communist Parties…… [T]he sooner they make war, the sooner they will be wiped from the face of the earth.²³

He had expressed himself more simply on this same subject earlier, in October 1954, in conversation with Jawaharlal Nehru, the Indian prime minister, who was paying a friendly visit to China. “If your government is destroyed by an atomic bomb,” Mao “reassured” his flabbergasted guest, “the people will establish a new government, and it will be able to conduct peace negotiations.”²⁴ He wanted now to communicate this to Khrushchev, who, from Mao's perspective, had overestimated the power of American imperialism.

Just recently, in late April, Mao Zedong had delivered an unusual speech at a four-day enlarged meeting of the Politburo. Presented on April 25 and titled “On the Ten Major Relationships,” it had far-reaching consequences. In essence, this speech marked a critical turn in Mao Zedong's entire worldview, reflecting a new atmosphere of the emancipation of consciousness taking shape in the CCP. In general terms it defined the party's new policy with respect to building socialism, a course that differed from the Soviet model. First, the Chairman offered a devastating critique of the Soviet experience and called openly for the party to take a new path:

[T]here are some problems in our work that need discussion. Particularly worthy of attention is the fact that in the Soviet Union certain defects and errors that occurred in the course of their building socialism have lately come to light. Do you want to follow the detours they have made? It was by drawing lessons from their experience that we were able to avoid certain detours in the past, and there is all the more reason for us to do so now.²⁵

It was clear that he had begun to reexamine the Stalinist model, deeming it insufficiently radical and the Soviet pace of development too slow.

Mao did not present a detailed program for building Chinese-style socialism; however, he designated a number of strategic elements and emphasized the need to follow the principles of “more, faster, better, and more economically.”ⁿ⁶⁶ What he had in mind was a substantial increase in capital investment in light industry and agriculture, the rapid development of interior provinces, and curtailment of investment in the defense sector, as well as an acceleration of economic construction as a whole. Mao spoke also about strengthening spiritual rather than material incentives for work, reducing the scope of the economy under centralized bureaucratic administration, and developing relatively autonomous production complexes. He did not conceal the difference between the new strategy and the Soviet strategy:

[W]e must learn with an analytical and critical eye, and we mustn't copy everything indiscriminately and transplant mechanically…… Some people never take the trouble to analyze, they simply follow the “wind.” Today, when the north wind [i.e., the Soviet Union] is blowing, they join the “north wind” school…… It would lead to a mess if every single sentence, even of Marx's, were followed…… [I]n those cases where we already have clear knowledge, we must not follow others in every detail…… [M]any people in the Soviet Union are conceited and very arrogant.²⁶

That Mao's speech was not published at the time is hardly surprising. The Chairman was not simply openly criticizing the Soviet Union. His ideas ran directly counter to the concepts of many Chinese leaders themselves. Among these latter were Liu Shaoqi, Zhou Enlai,ⁿ⁶⁷ and Chen Yun. Deng Xiaoping also failed to understand it.²⁷ In late April 1956, for example, Zhou Enlai openly took issue with Mao at an enlarged Politburo meeting when Mao called for increasing investments in capital construction by two billion yuan. Zhou asserted that this would make it very difficult to supply the population with essential commodities and lead to an extraordinary growth of the urban population. Mao was stung by this observation,²⁸ and on May 2 he presented most of his new ideas to members of the Supreme State Council.²⁹

In this situation, the Central Committee felt obligated to distribute the text of his April 25 speech, but only to upper- and mid-level party cadres.ⁿ⁶⁸ At this time, Zhou Enlai, Chen Yun, and other economists were busy drawing up the Second Five-Year Plan, and they did not fully grasp Mao's unorthodox ideas. In essence, they ignored them. Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping did likewise. All of them were preoccupied with daily party and government affairs, and they had no time for further discussions with the “great theoretician” about his new ideas.

Mao was offended by the lack of response to his ideas, and in mid-1956 he flew from Beijing south to Canton to undertake a new inspection tour, hoping, as before, to elicit support from local cadres. The heat was unbearable and the Cantonese were plagued by mosquitoes. There was no air-conditioning in the villa where Mao was staying, but he was in no hurry to return to Beijing. He had to solve a pile of problems, meet with people he needed, assess their frame of mind, and secure their support in his ongoing struggle with the “die hard moderates.” These persons, taking advantage of the Leader's absence, published an editorial in People's Daily that criticized “voluntarism” and “blind advances.” Mao's reaction was touchingly childish: “I will not read it. Why should I read an article in which they abuse me?”³⁰

How wearisome he found these “zombies with a slave psychology” who entirely lacked “courage and determination.”³¹ No, he had to show them that he was more powerful than all of them put together.

Thus he decided to fulfill an old dream, to swim across three great rivers, the Pearl River in Canton, the Xiang River in Changsha, and the Yangzi River in Wuhan. He was indeed an excellent swimmer, but the idea that had entered his head seemed like true folly. All three of the rivers were unusually wide, and the Yangzi had numerous whirlpools and a swift current to boot. But trying to get him to change his mind was a waste of time. In late May 1956, he plunged into the turbid waters of the Pearl River, which was more than 1.5 miles across. “The water …… was filthy,” recalled his doctor, who was duty-bound to swim with him. “I saw occasional globs of human waste float by. The pollution did not bother Mao. He floated on his back, his big belly sticking up like a round balloon, legs relaxed, as though he were resting on a sofa. The water carried him downstream, and only rarely did he use his arms or legs to propel himself forward.”³² For two hours he floated with the current a distance of more than six miles. Soon afterward he left Canton and headed for Changsha, where he swam across the one-mile-wide Xiang River, which was no cleaner than the Pearl River, twice. His delight knew no bounds. “The Xiang River is too small,” he cried. “I want to swim in the Yangtze [Yangzi]. On to the Yangtze River!”³³

Mao finally arrived in Wuhan in early June. Soon, accompanied by his forty-odd bodyguards, he was on the bank of the famous river. He was unable, to be sure, to swim across it; that would have been a nonsensical undertaking. The power of the stream was so great that Mao was simply carried along by the current. Therefore, as in the Pearl River, he simply let himself go with the flow, which carried him more than eighteen miles. Nonetheless, he was inexpressibly happy, the more so since the journalists, who were prepared for anything, immediately disseminated the “good” news of the conquest of the mighty river “by our beloved helmsman.” During the several days Mao spent in Wuhan, he swam in the Yangzi River three times.³⁴ “There is nothing you cannot do if you are serious about it,” he said enthusiastically afterward.³⁵ It was understood that what he had in mind were the “moderates” in the Politburo.

Full of enthusiasm, he turned again to his Muse:

水调歌头·游泳

Just drank Changsha water.

才饮长沙水，

Now eating Wuchang fish.

又食武昌鱼。

I swim across the thousands-of-miles long Yangtze [Yangzi],

万里长江横渡，

looking as far as the endless Chu skies,

极目楚天舒。

ignoring wind's blowing and waves' beating:

不管风吹浪打，

better than walking slowly

胜似闲庭信步，

in the quiet courtyard.

Today I am relaxed and free.

今日得宽馀。

Confucius said by the river:

子在川上曰：

All passing things flow away like the river.

逝者如斯夫！

Boats sail with the wind.

风樯动

Turtle and Snake mountains stay,

龟蛇静，

while great plans grow.

起宏图。

A bridge flies across north to south,

一桥飞架南北，

natural barrier turns into an open road.

天堑变通途。

High in the gorges a rock dam will rise,

更立西江石壁，

cutting off Wu Mountain's cloud and rain.

截断巫山云雨，

A still lake will climb in the tall gorges.

高峡出平湖。

Mountain goddess—

神女应无恙，

I hope she is still well—

will be startled at a changed world.³⁶

当惊世界殊。

A new disappointment awaited him in Beijing, however. The “moderates” in the Politburo who were busy making preparations for the forthcoming Eighth Congress of the Chinese Communist Party were ready to place the question of the cult of personality on the agenda. The atmosphere in Beijing was supercharged, and Mao for a time stayed away from party affairs, in the quiet resort town of Beidaihe, on the shore of the Yellow Sea. He gave his opponents carte blanche, having decided to put them to the test on the entire program. “Do you want to show what you are capable of? Go right ahead, we'll see!” is how he probably reasoned, again adopting his favorite tactic: “The enemy advances, we retreat; the enemy camps, we harass; the enemy tires, we attack; the enemy retreats, we pursue.” It was not for nothing that one of his pseudonyms was Desheng—“Retreat in the Name of Victory.” At the end of the summer, he declared to his associates that he intended to give up the post of chairman of the PRC for “reasons of health,” keeping for himself only the position of chairman of the Central Committee of the CCP.³⁷

Liu Shaoqi and several other members of the Politburo, not wishing to ignore Mao, also went off to Beidaihe. As before, the Chairman remained their leader. All they wanted from him was a somewhat more collective leadership. But this was precisely what Mao could not agree with. He was convinced that with Khrushchev's thaw, which threatened not only China but the entire socialist cause with unpredictable consequences, the CCP needed to unite around him as never before.

The Eighth Congress was convened in this setting of conflict between two points of view. Its official sessions took place in Beijing from September 15 to 27. There were 1,026 voting delegates and 107 alternates representing almost 11,730,000 members of the party. The formal sessions were preceded by closed discussions (a so-called preparatory conference) from August 29 to September 12. It was during these discussions that all of the basic decisions of the forum were made. Behind closed doors the delegates discussed and adopted drafts of all the resolutions and texts of all the basic reports and speeches. They also settled personnel matters.

During this time Mao was extremely cautious. As before, feeling out his opponents, he presided over none of the sessions and made not even a single report. He gave the most active roles to Liu Shaoqi, Zhou Enlai, and Deng Xiaoping. He himself demonstrated his “modesty.” He greeted the assembled delegates with just two brief speeches, one at the first session of the preparatory conference on August 30 and the second at the opening of the congress on September 15.³⁸ At the same time, he did everything he could to popularize his ideas. In particular, in both of his brief speeches he returned to the ideas in “The Ten Major Relationships” and, correcting the draft “Political Report of the Central Committee” that Liu Shaoqi was supposed to deliver, he added the following paragraph:

The Chinese revolution and [socialist] construction in China are naturally in the hands of the Chinese people themselves in the first instance. It must be clear. The need for foreign assistance is secondary. It is completely incorrect to lose faith and suppose that you yourself can do nothing on your own; it is wrong to suppose that the fate of China is not in the hands of the Chinese themselves, and to rely wholly on foreign assistance.³⁹

Consciously demonstrating his rejection of Soviet paternalism, Mao even refused to attend the September 17 session of the congress at which Khrushchev's representative Mikoyan gave a speech.⁴⁰

The basic tone of the congress was different from Mao's intentions, however. Under the leadership of Liu Shaoqi, Zhou Enlai, and Deng Xiaoping, the delegates gave the Soviet model its due and supported only those social experiments of Mao's that were aimed at accelerating the achievement of Stalinization. The congress officially proclaimed that the “proletarian-socialist revolution” in China was basically victorious. All the speakers enthusiastically praised the results of the socialist transformation of the countryside and the cities.

The most important thing, however, was that the congress adopted a resolution that must have been particularly painful for Mao. In the new atmosphere created by Khrushchev's speech, the delegates agreed to remove from the party statutes the sentence that the Chinese Communist Party “guides its entire work” by Mao Zedong Thought.⁴¹ It was replaced with the following statement: “The Chinese Communist Party is guided by Marxism-Leninism.”⁴² In his report “On Changes in the Party Statutes,” Deng Xiaoping placed special emphasis on the need to struggle “against the intrusion of personality, against its glorification.” “Our party,” he declared, “rejects the alien concept of deifying personalities.” To be sure, he noted that Mao Zedong was playing an important role in the fight against the cult of personality in the CCP; however, it was very difficult to take these words seriously.⁴³ The congress reinstated the post of general secretary of the CCP, which was also quite remarkable. Mao himself proposed that Deng be promoted to the position. Even though Deng did not understand “The Ten Major Relationships,” Mao considered him “quite an honest man”⁴⁴ since Deng did not display his opposition to Mao's adventurism as overtly as Liu and Zhou.

The opponents of Mao's voluntarist experiments prepared a resolution of the congress on Liu Shaoqi's report, inserting in this document the thesis that from now on, following the construction of a socialist society,

the main contradiction inside our country has become the contradiction between the demand of the people to build an advanced industrial country and the backward condition of our agrarian nation, as well as the contradiction between the rapidly growing economic and cultural demands of the people and the incapacity of the contemporary economy and culture of our country to satisfy these demands of the people.⁴⁵

After the congress, in November 1956 at a meeting of officials from the Ministry of Trade, Deputy Premier Chen Yun and several other economists spoke of the need for a rational combination of economic construction with an improvement in the lives of the people.⁴⁶

Mao was understandably dissatisfied with many of the resolutions of the congress. The issue of the cult of personality was among the most troublesome. Soon after the congress he decided to counterattack. Receiving a delegation from the Yugoslavian Communist Union he noted, as if in passing, that “[f]ew people in China have ever openly criticized me. The [Chinese] people are tolerant of my shortcomings and mistakes. It is because we always want to serve the people and do good things for the people.” These words sounded as a warning to Mao's opponents, the more so since, as the Chairman explained, “bossism” was not an actual problem in China. He also added, “When some people criticize me, others would oppose and accuse them of disrespecting the leader.”⁴⁷ At this time, within his close circle of intimates he began to express caustic criticism of Khrushchev's anti-Stalin policy. Stalin should have been “criticized but not killed,” he complained to his interpreter Li Yueran. Khrushchev is not “mature enough to lead such a big country,” he said in a fit of temper to another interpreter, Yan Mingfu. People like Khrushchev “do not adhere to Marxism-Leninism,” he said to others of his associates.⁴⁸

Quickly reacting to the slightest change in the political climate, on October 1, Zhou Enlai expounded Mao's new, critical position regarding the cult of personality to Boris Nikolaevich Ponomarev, a member of the Central Committee of the CPSU who had attended the Eighth Congress. Zhou criticized the CPSU for the “mistakes” it had made during its debunking of Stalin: in the first place, he said, “no preliminary consultation was carried out with fraternal parties”; secondly, “an all-around historical analysis was completely lacking”; and, finally, the leading comrades of the CPSU “lacked self-criticism.”⁴⁹

The anti-Stalinist events in Poland and in Hungary in 1956 greatly increased the cultlike mood in the Chinese leadership and consequently strengthened Mao's position. In October 1956, the new communist leader of Poland, Wladys aw Gomu ka, who had come to power on a wave of workers' demonstrations, expelled the Stalinists from the Politburo of the Polish Workers' Party. Among them was Marshal Konstantin Konstantinovich Rokossowski, Poland's minister of defense and concurrently deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers. He had been appointed to these posts by Stalin. The anti-Soviet mood, which was already strong among the Poles, began to grow rapidly. Meanwhile, in Hungary, as a result of a democratic revolution power in the government passed to a popular liberal communist, Imre Nagy. The crisis of socialism in Eastern Europe was undoubtedly triggered by Khrushchev's speech against Stalin.

Mao understood this very well, and he did not hide his dissatisfaction with Khrushchev's actions. On the evening of October 20 Mao convened an enlarged session of the Politburo, at which for the first time he condemned the Soviet Union for “great power chauvinism.” News had reached him that Khrushchev intended to use force against Gomu ka, and he did not want to see this happen. Soviet intervention against Poland might explode the whole socialist camp. After the session, Mao immediately summoned Soviet ambassador Pavel Yudin, whom Mao received in his bedroom dressed in his bathrobe, contrary to all protocol. Extremely irritated, Mao asserted, “We resolutely condemn what you are doing. I request that you telephone Khrushchev right away to convey our opinion: if the Soviet Union moves troops we will support Poland.”⁵⁰

Having received Yudin's information, Khrushchev panicked and on October 21 decided “considering the circumstances …… [fully] to refrain from armed intervention. Show patience.”⁵¹

Mao felt victorious. Around 1 A.M. on October 23, he again summoned the unfortunate Yudin to his bedroom; in the presence of Liu Shaoqi, Zhou Enlai, Chen Yun, and Deng Xiaoping, the entire leadership of the Politburo, he noted with irritation that the Russians had completely discarded the sword of Stalin. The result, he added, was that enemies had taken up the sword to kill communists. This, he continued, was the same as lifting a rock and dropping it on one's own feet.⁵²

That same night, Mao, Liu, Zhou, Chen and Deng decided to help the leadership of the CPSU manage the situation. They did this in response to a telegram about “the need for consultation,” sent to the Central Committee of the CCP from Moscow on October 21. Khrushchev sent similar requests to the central committees of the communist parties of Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, and the German Democratic Republic.⁵³ Early on the morning of October 23, a Chinese delegation including Liu, Deng, Wang Jiaxiang, who was then the director of the International Liaison Department of the Central Committee, and Hu Qiaomu, a member of the Secretariat of the Central Committee, flew off to Moscow.ⁿ⁶⁹ The delegation stayed on for eleven days. From October 23 to 31, Liu and the others held conversations with Khrushchev, Molotov, and Bulganin at Stalin's former dacha in Lipki. On several occasions Khrushchev invited Liu, Deng, and other members of the Chinese delegation to meetings of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU. On the very first evening Liu Shaoqi conveyed Mao's point of view on the “discarded sword” and on “great power chauvinism” to Khrushchev, who was forced to swallow all of this.⁵⁴ By this time the Soviet leadership had decided on its own not to intervene in Poland.⁵⁵

The main thing now bothering Mao was the situation in Hungary. It had gotten much tenser on October 23. A genuine popular revolution had begun in Budapest. Thus the issue of Hungary was at the center of Khrushchev's discussions with Liu. Liu was in constant contact with Mao, and Mao initially recommended to Khrushchev that he adopt the same peaceful position he had taken in Poland. He believed that “the working class of Hungary” would be able to “regain control of the situation and to put down the uprising on its own.”⁵⁶ But everything changed on the afternoon of October 30. It was then that Mao received reports from his ambassador in Hungary as well as from Liu Shaoqi that state security officers were being lynched in Budapest,ⁿ⁷⁰ and his patience was exhausted. He decided that it was impossible just to let things go. The revolution in Hungary differed, it seemed, from the liberal communist reforms of Gomu ka. It might fundamentally affect the situation throughout the socialist camp. Liu informed Khrushchev and other members of the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee of Mao's new point of view: “[Soviet] troops should remain in Hungary and Budapest.”⁵⁷ This was a green light for the suppression of the Hungarian democratic movement.

At the same time, Mao and Liu pressured the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee, demanding that it adopt a special “Declaration on the Foundation and Further Strengthening of Friendship and Cooperation between the Soviet Union and Other Socialist Countries.” They did this in order to avert further manifestations of Soviet great power chauvinism with regard to the socialist countries. It was just such chauvinism they deemed one of the main reasons for the “unhealthy” situation that had occurred in Eastern Europe. The declaration stated, “The countries of the great community of socialist nations can construct their mutual relations only on the basis of the principles of full equality, respect for territorial integrity, state independence and sovereignty, and noninterference in each other's internal affairs.”⁵⁸

Seeing off the Chinese delegation at the airport on the evening of October 31, Khrushchev, evidently heeding Mao's changed position, informed Liu Shaoqi that the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU had decided “to restore order in Hungary.” “There were no arguments,” Khrushchev recalled later. “Liu Shaoqi said that if in Beijing it turned out people were thinking differently, he would notify us.”⁵⁹ But Mao did not change his position. The result was that the Soviet leader decided “to pull out all the stops,” especially since it soon became known that the Hungarian government, having declared its intention to withdraw Hungary from the Warsaw Pact, had turned to Western countries and the Pope for aid. On November 4, Soviet tanks entered Budapest. The Hungarian popular revolution was drowned in blood.

Despite this, Mao Zedong and other Chinese leaders were profoundly shaken by the very fact of a liberal democratic movement in the socialist countries. In mid-November, at the Second Plenum of the Eighth Central Committee, Mao developed his idea about the “discarded sword.” His attack on the USSR was without precedent. Unable to restrain his indignation, he even asserted that a number of Soviet leaders had discarded “the sword of Lenin …… to a considerable extent.” Moreover, he outlined another sphere of disagreement with Moscow, for the first time openly criticizing Khrushchev's thesis about the possibility of a “peaceful transition from capitalism to socialism.” “Khrushchev's report at the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union says it is possible to seize state power by the parliamentary road, that is to say,” Mao emphasized, “it is no longer necessary for all countries to learn from the October Revolution. Once this gate is opened, by and large Leninism is thrown away.”⁶⁰

Of course, the polemic that he unleashed was obviously contrived: after all, no one could predict the future. Nonetheless, from then until the late 1970s the Soviet and Chinese leaderships would engage in pointed discussions about the possibility of “peaceful transition from capitalism to socialism.”

Mao also made claims to leadership in a number of Eastern European countries whose basic problem, he believed, was that their communists were not waging class struggle properly. The result was that in these countries they “left so many counter-revolutionaries at large.”⁶¹

Taking advantage of the situation, at the same time he tried to push his ideas concerning acceleration of the tempo of economic development in the PRC by renewing his attack on the group of “moderates” who, as before, were oriented toward the Soviet economic experience. “Something good came out of the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU,” he noted in this connection on the eve of the plenum, “namely, that [the congress] revealed the true state of affairs, emancipated consciousness, and led to a situation in which people stopped thinking that everything that was done in the Soviet Union was the absolute truth which was not subject to change and must be implemented as is. We must use our own wits and decide questions of the revolution and construction in our country.”⁶²

At this same plenum, after again criticizing the “moderates,” Mao called for a new rectification campaign in the CCP to take place next year.⁶³ He did not name these “moderates,” but the delegates understood that he had in mind Liu Shaoqi, Zhou Enlai, and Chen Yun, who presented key reports at the plenum.⁶⁴ Mao's dissatisfaction was aroused by the fact that Liu, Zhou, and Chen tried to set a course for “temporary retreat” in the sphere of industrial construction, fearing that the “economy would overheat.”⁶⁵ What irritated him most of all, however, was that the reports by Liu and Zhou linked the events in Eastern Europe with the “miscalculations” of Polish and Hungarian leaders regarding the economy, in particular their persistent attempts to force the pace of industrialization and collectivization.⁶⁶ Typically, on the opening day of the plenum, November 10, People's Daily published an article that, in keeping with the ideas of Liu and Zhou, asserted that Hungarian leaders had mistakenly pushed industrialization and forcefully implemented collectivization. And although everyone who spoke at the plenum, including the “moderates,” shared Mao's indignation regarding the “mistakes” of the Soviet leadership, the Chairman remained dissatisfied.

In early November he had already voiced the need to prepare a new article on Stalin—“particularly in connection with the Hungarian events.”⁶⁷ In December the Politburo had assigned this task to the editors of People's Daily. Six versions were prepared. All of them were discussed at an enlarged meeting of the Politburo. Mao made a number of revisions, the most important of which was deletion of the following phrase from the sixth draft: “Rapid progress in the matter of socialist construction in China is largely the result of learning from the Soviet experience.” At the same time, he wrote in the margins, “The future will tell whether the path taken in construction in China was correct. As of now it is impossible to say.”⁶⁸ The article, titled “Once More on the Historical Experience of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat,” was published in the People's Daily on December 29, 1956. In it the criticism of Stalin was significantly curtailed. If the initial publication in April spoke of “the great contributions” of the Soviet people and the CPSU to the history of humanity, the new article emphasized “the great contributions” of Stalin “to the development of the Soviet Union and …… the international communist movement.”

Following this, Mao sent a delegation headed by Zhou Enlai to the Soviet Union, Poland, and Hungary in January 1957.⁶⁹ Its mission included cooperating in the further management of problems linked to the crisis in Eastern Europe. Zhou had to explain to Khrushchev once again that “those in the Soviet Union who may wish again to pursue [a policy] of great power chauvinism will inevitably confront difficulties.” “These people,” Mao told Zhou, “are blinded by their thirst for gain. The best way to deal with them is by giving them a dressing-down.”

Zhou energetically followed Mao's “advice” even though up till then he had maintained a noncommittal stance regarding the issue of relations with the USSR. Meeting with Khrushchev, Bulganin, and Mikoyan, who gave him a “splendid grandiose reception,” on the very next day he went on the attack. He began with the new position of his Politburo on the question of Stalin, and he drew their attention to the recent article in People's Daily. But, as he reported later to Mao, all three of them asserted that “the criticism of Stalin” contained in this article “made them displeased (or put them in a difficult position, I can't remember the exact words).”⁷⁰

Nonetheless, sensing danger, Khrushchev tried to soften his position in relation to Stalin. On January 17, in a welcoming speech at a PRC embassy reception on the occasion of the arrival of Zhou's delegation, he unexpectedly began to speak about Stalin. According to Lev Petrovich Deliusin, a Pravda correspondent who was standing not far from him, Khrushchev was quite drunk and often tripped over his words.⁷¹ Nonetheless, he was able to convey his main thought to those around him. It was that Soviet communists, as before, were Stalinists. “We criticized Stalin not for being a bad communist,” Khrushchev said. “The name of Stalin is inseparable from Marxism-Leninism.”⁷² This did not move Zhou, however. This is what he reported later to Mao: “Spelling out a good deal of inappropriate words [we can only guess at what Zhou was referring to], however, he made no self-criticism. We then pushed him …… how can those comrades, especially those [Soviet] Politburo members, who had worked with Stalin, decline to assume any responsibility?” At this Khrushchev and Bulganin simply replied that they were afraid of being shot, and therefore, “they could not do anything to persuade Stalin or prevent his mistakes.” However, Zhou persisted: “I …… expressed our Chinese Party's conviction that open self-criticism will do no harm to, but will enhance, the Party's credibility and prestige.” Underlining everything that had been said, Khrushchev, arriving at the airport, explained to Zhou “that [the Soviets] could not conduct the same kind of criticism as we [Chinese] do; should they do so, their current leadership would be in trouble.”⁷³

Mao reacted to this in a measured fashion. And although he did not change his negative opinion of Khrushchev, he issued instructions not to go overboard in the propaganda. “In the future,” he indicated, “we shall always remain cautious and modest, and we shall tightly tuck our tails between our legs. We still need to learn from the Soviet Union. However, we shall learn from them rather selectively; only accept the good stuff, while at the same time avoiding picking up the bad stuff.”⁷⁴ Still, in late January and early February he stepped up his attacks against the Soviet Union in a series of closed-door speeches.⁷⁵ At this same time, a large amount of negative information began to appear in classified information bulletins about life in the USSR and Soviet foreign policy, especially on the eve of World War II (the incursions into Poland, Finland, and Romania).⁷⁶

At the end of February, however, Mao toned down the criticism somewhat. In an open speech “On the Correct Handling of Contradictions among the People,” given at an enlarged meeting of the Supreme State Conference on February 27, he again called for learning “conscientiously from the advanced experience of the Soviet Union.” To be sure, he made it clear that he had in mind only that experience that was relevant to Chinese conditions.⁷⁷ In a conversation on March 17 with top officials from Tianjin, Mao explained that he put special emphasis on the word “advanced.”⁷⁸ At this time, however, the Soviet Union was not his major theme. In his speech at the conference, Mao expounded the theoretical foundations of his review of the political and economic course set out by the Eighth Congress. Once again going over the heads of the higher party organs, he appealed to mid-level ganbu, the kind of party functionaries who attended the conference. He tried to win them over to his side by discussing, if briefly, the further acceleration of modernization. His speech was inconsistent: on one hand he affirmed the victory of socialism; on the other he expressed doubts about the ability of the party to transform China into a great military and economic power in a historically brief period of time. In order to reinvigorate the party, he called upon the masses of nonparty persons, especially members of the “democratic” parties and other intellectuals, to criticize Marxism and the members of the CCP and provide bold and honest assessments of party policy. He called for a broad-scale ideological campaign directed against bureaucratism. He probably hoped to channel criticism from below against his opponents in the communist leadership. He proposed that the campaign develop under the slogan “Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom, Let a Hundred Schools of Thought Contend.”⁷⁹

Mao had first introduced this slogan in December 1955, at a Politburo meeting, but at that time it did not catch on because of opposition from the party apparatus and skepticism on the part of intellectuals.⁸⁰ Now Mao made one more attempt to launch the campaign. Although his speech was not published until June, on April 27, 1957, the Central Committee adopted measures to implement Mao's instructions by making them the basis of its “Resolution on a Rectification Movement.” This resolution became a program of renewal for the CCP, which, Mao believed, had become too conservative and bureaucratized and therefore incapable of adopting his radical political and economic principles. Intraparty bureaucratism, subjectivism, and sectarianism became the targets of intensive criticism.

On May 10, the Central Committee published a new resolution calling upon party cadres to return to the populist practices of the “Yan'an Way” in order to overcome “bourgeois ways.” The Yan'an Way meant harmonious relations between party cadres and the masses, which, according to Mao, had been characteristic of the Sino-Japanese War period of 1937–45. As a means of reviving the “Yan'an spirit,” the Central Committee proposed that all ganbu regardless of their positions devote a certain amount of time to physical labor together with the workers and peasants.⁸¹ On the eve of the new and unprecedented upsurge in the realm of economic and social development that Mao had already anticipated, the party had to be wholly prepared to reexamine the traditional Soviet model of social development.

In May, the new Hundred Flowers campaign was officially launched. Mao, apparently, had granted complete freedom of speech to the people. He spoke now in favor of ideological and political pluralism. From early May and continuing for almost a month all Chinese newspapers and other means of mass propaganda were open to anyone who wanted to express critical views on political issues. Many, however, criticized not “individual mistakes” but the entire system of communist dictatorship. The very ideological foundation of the CCP, namely, Marxism-Leninism, was subjected to a withering fire of criticism. Members of the democratic parties such as Zhang Naiqi, Zhang Bojun, and Luo Longji were particularly active. Their anticommunist articles won the sympathy of many university instructors. Unrest gripped the student population.

The leadership of the CCP and Mao himself had obviously not expected such a passionate response. They were not ready for serious discussions with their opponents, who, it appeared, enjoyed considerable popularity. Mao had apparently miscalculated. The intellectuals were not so much helping him as they were demonstrating their rejection of communism. There was nothing to do but terminate the campaign. On June 8, at Mao's initiative, the Central Committee adopted an inner party directive, “Master Our Forces to Repulse the Rightists' Wild Attacks.” Freedom of speech was liquidated and the communists returned to their previous methods of political and ideological terror. On the same day, an editorial in People's Daily tried to explain such an unexpected turn of events as follows:

From May 8 to June 7, our newspaper and the entire party press, upon orders of the Central Committee, almost without exception did not speak out against incorrect views. This was done so that …… the venomous weeds could grow luxuriantly and the people could see this and shudder at the realization that such things existed in the world. Then the people would destroy such vile things with their own hands.

In essence, the paper was acknowledging a massive political provocation staged by the leadership.

A new campaign of repression, unprecedented in scale, was now launched against the intellectuals. For the first time in the history of the CCP, the label of “rightist bourgeois elements” was affixed to millions of educated people. About half a million were incarcerated in labor reform camps.⁸² Not all of them had criticized the regime; many were loyal to the new authorities but had fallen victim to intrigue and “the logic of class struggle.”

The atmosphere of terror enabled Mao to overcome his main opponents in the sphere of economic construction, Zhou Enlai in the first instance. In late summer 1957, Mao attacked Zhou, saying that the premier had committed serious errors in trying to pursue balanced economic development in China. The Chairman proclaimed that he himself was an adventurist at heart and that he was not afraid of upsetting things in order to accelerate China's transition to socialism and communism.⁸³

In the autumn of 1957 the Third Enlarged Plenum of the Central Committee summed up some of the results of the massive political campaigns. It assessed them as having been entirely successful. Even Mao was satisfied. “No one refuted me, I got the upper hand and was encouraged,” he said sometime afterward. “The Third, September, plenum of the CC in 1957 heartened us. The party and the whole people rather clearly defined the path of development.”⁸⁴ Toward the end of the plenum Mao decided to attenuate the Rectification Movement. Now he could address a rhetorical question to the party: “Can't we avoid the Soviet Union's detours and do things faster and better?” The answer was foreordained: “We should of course strive for this.”⁸⁵

It was at this plenum that Mao first began to speak of the possibility of colossal growth in agricultural production, and proposed to revive the forgotten slogan of “more” and “faster.” “If we carefully work the earth, our country will become the most productive in the world,” he asserted. “Already …… there are districts where they harvest 1,000 jin [1 jin is 1.1. pounds] of grain per mu [0.16 acre]. Can the indicators of 400, 500, and 800 be raised to 800, 1,000, and 2,000? I think it is possible…… Earlier I also believed that man could not fly to the moon, but now I believe.”⁸⁶

What made him believe was not only his personal bent toward adventurism (“I am the kind of person who is inclined [to assess events] adventuristically,” Mao loved to say), but also the Soviet launch on October 5, 1957, of the first artificial satellite, Sputnik. Although Mao still believed that one should not copy the Soviet Union in all respects, he was shaken by this event. To be sure, he saw this not so much as an indicator of the power of the USSR as of the superiority of socialism in general. The Americans with their 100 million tons of steel “have thus far not launched so much as a sweet potato into space,” he rejoiced, secretly dreaming of the time when his country, too, would soar into the cosmos.⁸⁷

In the meantime, the anti-rightist movement continued to pick up steam. A struggle was launched against party cadres who acted according to the principle of the “Three Many, and the Three Few.” They spoke a lot, but unmasked few counterrevolutionaries; they were excessively tolerant but rarely exposed “those who had crawled into the revolutionary ranks”; they often exposed those in the lower ranks, but very rarely those in the leading organs. A competition began in party organizations to see who could unmask the largest number of covert rightists. The higher party organs began to send out detailed orders specifying the precise number of those who had to be called to account. Posters appeared all over the country demanding that the rightists be punished.

Meanwhile, Mao received an invitation from Khrushchev to attend the celebration of the fortieth anniversary of the October Revolution, following which it was proposed to convene a conference of representatives of communist and workers' parties. Mao Zedong's presence at both the celebration and the conference was of vital importance to Khrushchev. The Moscow congress of communists was intended to demonstrate the “monolithic unity” of the socialist camp around the ideals of the Great October.

After thinking it over, Mao decided to visit the Soviet Union for a second time.⁸⁸ Khrushchev was overjoyed and sent two TU-104 planes to ferry Mao and the members of his delegation.

At 8 A.M. on November 2, Mao and his retinue, including Madame Song Qingling, Deng Xiaoping,⁸⁹ and Peng Dehuai, and some others, flew out of Beijing.

On the eve of his departure Mao asked his interpreter Li Yueran:

“How do you say zhilaohu?in Russian?”

“Bumazhnyi tigr [paper tiger],” Li replied.

Mao repeated the same expression in English in a heavy Hunanese accent and burst out laughing.⁹⁰ He was prepared for the summit meeting of communist leaders.

Khrushchev himself, looking hale, hearty, and sleek, greeted his guests at Vnukovo Airport. With him were Voroshilov, Bulganin, Mikoyan, and a crowd of lesser dignitaries. They all radiated cordiality. Several months earlier, in June, Khrushchev had smashed the “anti-party” group of Molotov; therefore he again was in need of Mao's support. He knew of the Chinese leader's dissatisfaction with his “arbitrariness,” but he tried not to attach too much significance to this. He felt he could do this because just before the arrival of the PRC delegation, Averkii Borisovich Aristov, a member of the CPSU Presidium, had visited China in September–October 1957 and informed him that in their conversation Mao had emphasized the “unity of the PRC and the USSR.” To be sure, the head of the CCP had expressed his perplexity regarding the June events, but had done so only in passing. “We are always with you,” he said to Aristov, “but sometimes one shouldn't hasten to resolve certain problems. Now, for example, we were very fond of Molotov [Stalin's right-hand man], and the decision of the June plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU concerning Molotov produced some confusion among us.” On this occasion he said nothing more on this theme,⁹¹ but, as usual, returned to the question of Stalin. “Today you have seen a big portrait of Stalin displayed in our square,” Mao said to his guest from Moscow. “Do you think we bear no grudge against Stalin? No, we bear him a huge grudge. Stalin was the cause of many difficulties for the Chinese revolution…… Nevertheless, Stalin's portrait is hung on the occasion of important holidays in the PRC. This is done not for the leaders, but for the people.” Mao added, “In my home I have no portrait of Stalin.”⁹²

Khrushchev was troubled by the peculiar position of the Chinese on the question of Stalin. Nevertheless, he probably hoped that in private conversations he would succeed in mollifying Mao.

But the Chairman had not come to the USSR to make friends with Khrushchev. He already understood the Soviet leader's meaning very well. Mao felt that time was on his side. Socialism in China had been basically constructed, industry had developed, and the dictatorship of the Communist Party in the world's most populous country was absolute. It seemed that Moscow, once all-powerful, had irretrievably forfeited its authority in the communist world; the Polish and Hungarian events were graphic examples. Of course, Khrushchev possessed nuclear weapons, and in October 1957 the Russians launched Sputnik. Still, Mao wanted to show all these communist comrades just where the center of the world communist movement was now.

Khrushchev pulled out all the stops for Mao, housing him and all of the Chinese in the Kremlin despite the fact that a majority of the delegates from other communist parties were lodged in dachas outside Moscow; he called on the Chinese every morning, showered them with gifts, escorted them to all the cultural events, and held “intimate friendly” conversations. He was beside himself with joy and was relishing the role of chief host. But Mao was “reserved and even a bit cool.”⁹³ Of course, he was pleased to receive the royal treatment this time. The contrast between Stalin's and Khrushchev's treatment of him was striking. “Just look how differently they treat us,” he said with a contemptuous smile to his entourage.

But he did not reciprocate Khrushchev's feelings. The more Khrushchev courted Mao, the more Mao thumbed his nose at him. From time to time he did not even bother to conceal his contempt for the leader of the CPSU who was fussing over him. Thus, arriving at the Bolshoi Theater with Khrushchev to see Swan Lake, after the second act he suddenly got up and left. “Why did they dance that way, prancing around on their toes?” he said to the perplexed Khrushchev. “It made me uncomfortable. Why don't they just dance normally?”⁹⁴

On his first visit to Moscow, he did not indulge himself like that even when Stalin was absent. As Shi Zhe, his interpreter on that earlier occasion, recalled, Mao sat through the ballet Baiaderka in the Kirov Theater, and after the performance he even presented a bouquet of flowers to the prima ballerina.⁹⁵

On occasion Mao was even quite rude. According to the reminiscences of his interpreter Li Yueran, once during a banquet Mao sharply interrupted Khrushchev, who, oblivious to the world, was enthusiastically talking about what a major role he had played during the war. “Comrade Khrushchev,” Mao said, throwing down his napkin after wiping his lips, “I have already finished eating, but have you finished the history of the Southwest front?”⁹⁶

But the main surprise awaited Khrushchev at the conference of representatives of communist and workers' parties. It was not for nothing that Mao had asked his interpreter how to say “paper tiger” in Russian. This was the theme he talked about, asserting that all reactionaries were paper tigers. This would have been quite enough, but he then added the following:

Let's try to suppose, how many people would die if war breaks out? Of the 2.7 billion people on earth, the losses might be one-third, or perhaps, somewhat more, say half of mankind…… As soon as war begins, atomic and hydrogen bombs will be used in abundance. I once argued about this with a foreign political leader. He said that in case of an atomic war absolutely everyone would die. I said that in the worst case half the people would die, but the other half would survive, and that imperialism would be wiped off the face of the earth and the whole world would become socialist. A certain number of years would pass, and the population would again reach 2.7 billion and most likely even more.⁹⁷

Obviously, he was developing ideas that he had expressed earlier to Nehru, the Finnish ambassador Carl-Johan Sundstrom, and to Yudin as well in veiled form. On this occasion, to be sure, his figures were more concrete, and his offhand juggling with hundreds of millions of lives produced a horrible impression on everyone. There was silence in the hall. Everyone felt uncomfortable.

Later, at the banquet, he again turned the conversation to the utility of nuclear war in advancing the cause of socialism. Khrushchev did not know what to think. Then the head of the Italian communist party, Palmiro Togliatti, asked, “Comrade Mao Zedong? And how many Italians will survive an atomic war ” Mao calmly replied, “None at all. But why do you think that Italians are so important to humanity?”⁹⁸ Oleg Aleksandrovich Grinevskii, one of Khrushchev's speechwriters, who was in the hall at the time serving as an interpreter, recalls that Mao did not even smile when he said these words. (Grinevskii, who did not know Chinese, was interpreting from Russian to English for the English-speaking audience after a Soviet Sinologist, Vasilii Sidikhmenov, had first translated Mao's remarks from Chinese into Russian.)

What did this mean? Could Mao really have been so ignorant as not to know that his argument was nonsense? No, of course not. He was knowledgeable enough, at least with respect to politics and military affairs. So why did he say this? Many who have pondered this question have expressed the thought that he obviously wanted to push the USSR into a nuclear conflict with the United States. Others disagree: Mao was just behaving too rudely. They conjecture that Mao simply wished to head off a rapprochement between the superpowers. However, neither of these explanations of Mao's behavior is correct. In reality, he was simply shocking his public, openly mocking both Khrushchev as well as the old Comintern warhorses who only recently had fawned upon Stalin. He hated all of these Togliatti types, who had once been assigned to the ECCI, where they had befriended Wang Ming and had sneered at the likes of Mao.ⁿ⁷¹ At one time they had been ready to applaud any stupidity on the part of the “Leader of Peoples” and tried to decipher his riddles and jokes. Now it was his turn.

Mao felt his greatness and wanted everyone else to acknowledge it. He wanted to take his revenge for all the humiliation he had endured at the hands of the sullen Kremlin tyrant who liked to indulge his black humor. This is why he tried so obviously to imitate Stalin. He spoke in a patronizing tone, played the role of Boss, and tried to make savage and strange jokes just like Stalin. Consequently, he returned to the theme of nuclear war and the prospects for victory over imperialism on more than one occasion. He would also expound on this theme during his official talks with Khrushchev. And each time Khrushchev would ponder Mao's views and “what he based them on.”⁹⁹ Thus he never understood what Mao Zedong was up to.¹⁰⁰

Before his departure, Khrushchev gave his guest many souvenirs as well as a large jar of granular caviar. It was of excellent quality, but Mao could not eat it since Chinese generally do not include raw fish in their diet. He took the jar, however, and brought it with him to Beijing. Several days later he invited his secretaries and bodyguards to dinner, and urged them to taste the exotic food, which had been carefully arranged on a porcelain plate. “Try it, try it,” he said laughing. “This is socialist caviar!” One of the invitees picked some caviar up with his chopsticks and put it in his mouth. It was obvious that he was not eager to eat it, but he got control of himself and swallowed it. He almost threw up.

“Well, how is it? Delicious?” Mao asked, and a burst of laughter shook his corpulent body.

“It looks so beautiful,” the unfortunate one replied, “but it doesn't taste good. I don't like it, and I can't eat it.”

“Well, okay! If you can't gobble it down, then don't!” Mao said to him simply.¹⁰¹

He was especially pleased that the people in his entourage found Khrushchev's gift not to their liking. This was all very symbolic.

After he returned to China, Mao began to develop the ideas for a special, Chinese road to socialism that he had first expressed in “The Ten Major Relationships.” He pondered over and over variations of a Great Leap, a new model of accelerated economic development grounded fundamentally in the utilization of China's comparative advantages, in the first place its inexhaustible human resources. “Our country produces too little steel,” he lamented. “We have to do everything we can to increase our material strength. Otherwise, people will look down on us.”¹⁰²

In Moscow he had already begun to boast that after fifteen years China would overtake Great Britain in the production of metal. “England annually produces 20 million tons of steel,” he said to the representatives of communist and workers' parties. “In 15 years it may achieve a production of 30 million tons of steel annually. And China? In 15 years China may produce 40 million tons. So won't it overtake England?”¹⁰³ Mao was inspired to such boasting by none other than Khrushchev who, as is well known, was boastful by nature. About two weeks prior to Mao's speech, at an anniversary meeting of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, Khrushchev had loudly proclaimed that in the coming fifteen years the USSR would be able not only to catch up with but to overtake America.¹⁰⁴ Thus Mao Zedong's speech was a response to “Elder Brother.”

Mao, speaking generally, was being modest. In reality he was overcome by the desire to overtake the Soviet Union itself, to show everyone, and especially Khrushchev who had now launched two Sputniks, that he, Mao, was not born yesterday. Just how much sarcasm and anger permeated the words he spoke to his comrades in early 1957: “What is their [Soviet leadership's] asset. It involves nothing more than 50 million tons of steel, 400 million tons of coal, and 80 million tons of oil. How much does this count? It does not count for a thing. With this asset, however, their heads have gotten really big. How can they be communists [by being so cocky]? How can they be Marxists?”¹⁰⁵ Thus Mao's new path was fraught with the inevitable further deterioration of relations between China and the Kremlin traditionalists.

At conferences in Hangzhou (Zhejiang province) and Nanning (Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region) in January 1958, Mao intensified his criticism of those who opposed “haste” and “blindly rushing forward.” He again censured those who followed the Soviet model. “If we did everything like the Soviet Union did after the October Revolution,” he declared, “then we would have no textiles, and we would have no foodstuffs (when there are no textiles there is nothing to exchange for foodstuffs), there would be no coal, no electricity, no nothing.” In Hangzhou he declared that the Rectification Movement, which he had only recently, at the Third Plenum, decided to relax, would be carried through to the end. In Nanning on January 18, he warned party cadres that the struggle against “blindly rushing forward” would inevitably “dampen the enthusiasm …… of 600 million people.”¹⁰⁶ Moreover, he also informed Zhou Enlai that he and several other “comrades were only some 50 meters distance from the rightists.”¹⁰⁷ The ganbu supported Chairman Mao and the premier was forced to engage in self-criticism. Later Zhou explained to his secretary that the main reason he had made mistakes was that ideologically he lagged behind Comrade Mao Zedong. “I must carefully study Mao Zedong Thought,” he said sadly.¹⁰⁸ However, Mao even proposed replacing Zhou with Ke Qingshi, head of the Shanghai Bureau of the Central Committee. Sometime later Zhou agreed to step down, but in the end Mao generously forgave him.¹⁰⁹

Once more Mao triumphed. On January 31 he summed up the results of both conferences in an important document, “Sixty Theses on Work Methods,” which basically laid out the course for the Great Leap and put forward the slogan of “Three Years of Persistent Work.”¹¹⁰ This became the most important part of his program for Chinese socialism.

Thus, Mao's concept of a special Chinese path of development, initially expressed in April 1956 and subsequently developed in 1957–58, could arise only in the post-Stalin environment that Khrushchev created in the world communist movement. It was Khrushchev who stimulated Mao not only to accelerate Stalinization, but also, against his (Khrushchev's) intentions, to reject the Soviet path of development decisively.

The Stalinist model of socialist construction that had earlier inspired Mao had run out of steam. The result was that the entire epoch of Stalinization, beginning with the establishment of New China in 1949, had come to an end. From now on it was no longer appropriate to talk about Stalinization, but rather about the Maoization of the People's Republic of China. At the same time, we should not forget that in the sphere of politics and ideology Maoism itself was nothing more than a Chinese form of Stalinism, in other words Chinese national communism. And even though the Soviet Stalinization of the PRC was concluded, the influence of Stalinism as a totalitarian political and economic system of power remained unchanged in the PRC.

¹ See N. S. Khrushchev, Speech Before a Closed Session of the XXth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union on February 25, 1956 (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1957).

² Stenographicheskii otchet XX s”ezda KPSS (Stenographic Report of the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU), vol. 1 (Moscow: Gospolitizdat, 1956), 230.

³ See Wu Lengxi, Shinian lunduan: Zhongsu guanxi huiyilu (1956–1966) (The Ten Year Debate: Memoirs of Sino-Soviet Relations [1956–1966]), vol. 1 (Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe, 1999), 4–5.

⁴ See K. Aimermakher, ed., Doklad N. S. Khrushcheva o kul'te lichnosti Stalina na XX s”ezda KPSS. Dokumenty (N. S. Khrushchev's Report on Stalin's Cult of Personality at the Twentieth CPSU Congress: Documents) (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2002), 24, 37; see also Vittorio Vidali, Diary of the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, trans. Nell Amter Cattonar and A. M. Elliot (Westport, CT: Lawrence Hill, 1974), 26–27.

⁵ See “Mao Tszedun o kitaiskoi politike Kominterna i Stalina” (Mao Zedong on the China Policy of the Comintern and Stalin), 103; M. S. Kapitsa, Sovetsko-kitaiskie otnosheniia (Moscow: Izd-vo vostochnoi literatury, 1958), 357, 364; Zhanhou zhongsu guanxi zouxiang (1945–1960) (The Development of Sino-Soviet Relations After the War [1945–1960]) (Beijing: Shehui kexue wenhua chubanshe, 1997), 78.

⁶ See M. S. Kapitsa, Na raznykh paralleliakh. Zapiski diplomata (On Various Parallels: Notes of a Diplomat) (Moscow: Kniga i biznes, 1996), 63.

⁷ “Mao Tszedun o kitaiskoi politike Kominterna i Stalina” (Mao Zedong on the China Policy of the Comintern and Stalin), 107, 108.

⁸ See Pantsov and Levine, Chinese Comintern Activists: An Analytic Biographic Dictionary, 48.

⁹ Ibid., 48, 71–72.

¹⁰ See Boris A. Starkov, “The Trial That Was Not Held,” Europe-Asia Studies 46, no. 8 (1994): 1297–1316; Reinhard Müller, “Der Fall des Antikomintern-Blocks—ein vierter Moskauer Schaoprozeβ,” Jahrbuch für Historishche Kommunismusforschung, 1996, 187–214.

¹¹ Later, in conversations with Soviet representatives, Mao would often say that he himself would write a book about Stalin's errors and crimes. “It will be so terrible that I will not allow it to be published in 10,000 years.” See, for instance, Mao, Mao Zedong on Diplomacy, 257.

¹² Concerning Chen Boda's authorship, see Mao Zedong, Jianguo yilai Mao Zedong wengao (Mao's Manuscripts), vol. 6 (Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe, 1992), 59.

¹³ For Mao's corrections and additions to the text of the article, see ibid., 59–67. Concerning the Politburo's discussion of Khrushchev's speech and different versions of the article, see the reminiscences of the former director of the New China News Agency Wu Lengxi, who took part in several of the sessions. The discussion stretched from March 17 to April 4. Wu Lengxi, Yi Mao zhuxi: Wo qinshen jinglide ruogan zhongda lishi shijian pianduan (Remembering Chairman Mao: Some Important Historical Events from My Own Life) (Beijing: Xinhua chubanshe, 1995), 2–7; Wu, Shinian lunduan (The Ten-Year Debate), vol. 1, 12–33.

¹⁴ Borisov and Titarenko, Vystupleniia Mao Tsze-duna, ranee ne publikovavshiesia v kitaiskoi pechati (Mao Zedong's Speeches Previously Unpublished in China), series 1, 93.

¹⁵ Quoted from Chen and Yang, “Chinese Politics and the Collapse of the Sino-Soviet Alliance,” 263.

¹⁶ Mao, Mao Zedong on Diplomacy, 251.

¹⁷ William Taubman, Khrushchev: The Man and His Era (New York: Norton, 2003), 339.

¹⁸ Krutikov, Na kitaiskom napravleniu (Pointed Toward China), 212–13.

¹⁹ See N. S. Khrushchev, Report of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to the 20th Party Congress (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1956), 38–46.

²⁰ See the analysis of Mao's speech on this subject at an enlarged Politburo meeting on March 12, 1956, published in Wu, Yi Mao zhuxi, 4–5.

²¹ Krutikov, Na kitaiskum napravleniu (Pointed Toward China), 212.

²² Li, The Private Life of Chairman Mao, 238.

²³ Mao, Selected Works of Mao Tsetung, vol. 5, 152–53.

²⁴ Quoted from O. E. Vladimirov (O. B. Rakhmanin), ed., Maoizm bez prikras: Nekotorye uzhe izvestnye, a takzhe ranee ne opublikovannye v kitaiskoi pechati vyskazyvaniia Mao Tszeduna: Sbornik (Maoism Unembellished: Some Already Known Sayings of Mao Zedong and Others Previously Unpublished in the Chinese Press: A Collection) (Moscow: Progress, 1980), 238; Mao Zedong, Mao Zedong wenji (Works of Mao Zedong), vol. 7 (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1999), 412; see also Mao, Mao Zedong wenji (Works of Mao Zedong), vol. 6, 367–70; Mao's recollection of his conversation with Nehru published in Edgar Snow, The Long Revolution (New York: Random House, 1972), 208.

²⁵ Mao, Selected Works of Mao Tsetung, vol. 5, 284.

²⁶ Ibid., 303–6; see also Schram, Chairman Mao Talks to the People, 61–83.

²⁷ See Yang Shengqun and Yan Jianqi, eds., Deng Xiaoping nianpu, 1904–1974 (Chronological Biography of Deng Xiaoping, 1904–1974), vol. 3 (Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe, 2010), 1421.

²⁸ See Li Ping, Kaiguo zongli Zhou Enlai (Zhou Enlai, the First Premier) (Beijing: Zhonggong zhongyang dangxiao chubanshe, 1994), 356. See also Chen and Yang, “Chinese Politics and the Collapse of the Sino-Soviet Alliance,” 287.

²⁹ See Mao, Jianguo yilai Mao Zedong wengao (Mao Zedong's Manuscripts), vol. 6, 105.

³⁰ Borisov and Titarenko, Vystupleniia Mao Tsze-duna, ranee ne publikovavshiesia v kitaiskoi pechati (Mao Zedong's Speeches Previously Unpublished in the Chinese Press), series 2, 123.

³¹ Li, The Private Life of Chairman Mao, 234.

³² Ibid., 158.

³³ Ibid., 154.

³⁴ See ibid., 162–68, 177; Liao Gailong et al., eds., Mao Zedong baike quanshu (Encyclopedia of Mao Zedong), vol. 6 (Beijing: Guangming ribao chubanshe, 2003), 3108.

³⁵ Quoted from Li, The Private Life of Chairman Mao, 165.

³⁶ Mao, Poems of Mao Tse-tung,97.

³⁷ See Li, The Private Life of Chairman Mao, 181, 183, 192.

³⁸ See Mao, Selected Works of Mao Tsetung, vol. 5, 312–23; Materialy VIII Vsekitaiskogo s'ezda Kommunisticheskoi partii Kitaia (Materials from the Eighth Congress of the Communist Party of China) (Moscow: Gospolitizdat, 1956), 3–6.

³⁹ Mao, Jianguo yilai Mao Zedong wengao (Mao's Manuscripts), vol. 6, 148.

⁴⁰ Mao, Mao Zedong on Diplomacy, 251–52.

⁴¹ It was suggested by Peng Dehuai (see The Case of Peng Dehuai 1959–1968 [Hong Kong: Union Research Institute, 1968], 445), who may have recalled that on numerous occasions Mao himself had balked at the term “Mao Zedong Thought.” See Shen Zhihua, “Zhonggong bada weishenma bu ti ‘Mao Zedong sixiang' ” (Why did the Eighth Congress not Raise “Mao Zedong Thought” ), Lishi jiaoxue (Teaching of history), no. 5 (2005): 6. However, Mao did not suggest removing the sentence from the party statutes.

⁴² Materialy VIII Vsekitaiskogo s”ezda Kommunisticheskoi partii Kitaia (Materials from the Eighth Congress of the Communist Party of China), 508.

⁴³ Ibid., 98.

⁴⁴ Mao, Mao Zedong wenji (Works of Mao Zedong), vol. 7, 110. See also Mao, Jianguo yilai Mao Zedong wengao (Mao's Manuscripts), vol. 6, 165; Wingrove, Mao's Conversations with the Soviet Ambassador, 1953–1955, 36.

⁴⁵ Materialy VIII Vsekitaiskogo s”ezda Kommunisticheskoi partii Kitaia (Materials from the Eighth Congress of the Communist Party of China), 472.

⁴⁶ See Meliksetov, Istoriia Kitaia, 647.

⁴⁷ “Minutes, Mao's Conversation with a Yugoslavian Communist Union Delegation,” 151.

⁴⁸ Quoted from Taubman, Khrushchev, 339.

⁴⁹ Quoted in Westad, Brothers in Arms, 378.

⁵⁰ Quoted from Wu, Shinian lunduan (The Ten-Year Debate), vol. 1, 35.

⁵¹ A. A. Fursenko, ed., Prezidium TsK KPSS, 1954–1964 (Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU, 1954–1964), Chernovye protokol'nye zapisi zasedanii. Stenogrammy. Postanovleniia (Draft Notes of the Sessions. Stenograms. Resolutions), vol. 1 (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2003), 174–75; A. A. Fursenko, ed., Prezidium TSK KPSS, 1954–1964 (The Presidium of the CC of the CPSU, 1954–1964), vol. 2, Postanovleniia 1954–1958 (Resolutions of 1954–1958) (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2006), 471–72.

⁵² Quoted from Li and Ma, Zhou Enlai nianpu (1949–1976) (Chronological Biography of Zhou Enlai [1949–1976]), vol. 1, 631; “Records of Meetings of the CPSU and CCP Delegations, Moscow, July 5–20, 1963,” 378. See also Wu, Shinian lunduan (The Ten-Year Debate), vol. 1, 42–45.

⁵³ See Istoricheskii arkhiv (Historical archive), nos. 4–5 (1996): 184–85.

⁵⁴ See Pang and Jin, Mao Zedong zhuan (1949–1976) (Biography of Mao Zedong [1949–1976]), vol. 1, 602–3; Vozniknoveniie i razvitiie raznoglasii mezhdu rukovodstvom KPSS i nami: Po povodu otkrytogo pis'ma TsK KPSS (The Origin and Development of Disagreements Between the Leadership of the CPSU and Us: On the Open Letter of the CC CPSU) (Beijing: Izdatel'stvo literatury na inostrannykh iazykakh, 1963), 12; “Records of Meeting of the CPSU and CCP Delegations, Moscow, July 5–20, 1963,” 378.

⁵⁵ See Fursenko, Prezidium TsK KPSS, 1954–1964 (Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU, 1954–1964), vol. 1, 175.

⁵⁶ Quoted from Taubman, Khrushchev, 297.

⁵⁷ Fursenko, Prezidium TsK KPSS, 1954–1964 (Presidium of the CC CPSU, 1954–1964), vol. 1, 188.

⁵⁸ Kurdiukov, Sovietsko-Kitaiskie otnosheniia (Soviet-Chinese Relations), 319.

⁵⁹ Khrushchev, Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev, vol. 3, 651. See also the remarks of Liu Shaoqi on this subject at the Second Plenum of the Eighth Central Committee of the CCP, November 10, 1956, published in Pang and Jin, Mao Zedong zhuan (1949–1976) (Biography of Mao Zedong [1949–1976]), vol. 1, 603–5.

⁶⁰ Mao, Selected Works of Mao Tsetung, vol. 5, 341. It is interesting that in maneuvering prior to the Eighth Congress, in August 1956, he did not oppose inclusion in the draft of Liu Shaoqi's Political Report a statement asserting that “[t]he Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union …… has made an outstanding contribution to the slackening of international tension and the struggle for world peace and the progress of mankind.” Mao, Jianguo yilai Mao Zedong wengao (Mao's Manuscripts), vol. 6, 137–38. This statement, somewhat revised, was also in the final text of the report.

⁶¹ Mao, Selected Works of Mao Tsetung, vol. 5, 342.

⁶² Quoted from Pang and Jin, Mao Zedong zhuan (1949–1976) (Biography of Mao Zedong [1949–1976]), vol. 1, 606.

⁶³ Mao, Selected Works of Mao Tsetung, vol. 5, 347–49.

⁶⁴ See Bo, Ruogan zhongda juece yu shijian de huigu (Recollections of Several Important Political Decisions and Their Implementation), vol. 1, 555–59.

⁶⁵ Ibid., 556–57; Zhou, Zhou Enlai xuanji (Selected Works of Zhou Enlai), vol. 2, 229–38. For a more detailed treatment see Shevelev, Formirovanie sotsial'no-ekonomicheskoi politiki rukovodstva KPK v 1949–1956 godakh (The Formation of the CCP's Socioeconomic Policy in 1949–1956), X-2-10.

⁶⁶ See Shevelev, Formirovanie sotsial'no-ekonomicheskoi politiki rukovodstva KPK v 1949–1956 godakh (The Formation of the CCP's Socioeconomic Policy in 1949–1956), X-9-10.

⁶⁷ Pang and Jin, Mao Zedong zhuan (1949–1976) (Biography of Mao Zedong [1949–1976]), vol. 1, 606.

⁶⁸ See Mao, Jianguo yilai Mao Zedong wengao (Mao's Manuscripts), vol. 6, 285.

⁶⁹ See Liu and Chen, Liu Shaoqi nianpu, 1898–1969 (Chronological Biography of Liu Shaoqi, 1898–1969), vol. 2, 378; Li and Ma, Zhou Enlai nianpu (1949–1976) (Chronological Biography of Zhou Enlai [1949–1976]), vol. 2, 4–14; CWIHP Bulletin, nos. 6–7 (1995/1996): 153–54; Khrushchev, Vremia, Liudi, Vlast' (Time, People, Power), Book 3, 49–52.

⁷⁰ CWIHP Bulletin, nos. 6–7 (1995/1996): 152, 154.

⁷¹ See Taubman, Khrushchev, 339.

⁷² Kurdiukov, Sovetsko-kitaiskie otnosheniia (Soviet-Chinese Relations), 329.

⁷³ CWIHP Bulletin, nos. 6–7 (1995/1996): 153.

⁷⁴ Ibid.

⁷⁵ Mao, Selected Works of Mao Tsetung, vol. 5, 350–83; Borisov and Titarenko, Vystupleniia Mao Tsze-duna, ranee ne publikovavshiesia v kitaiskoi pechati (Mao Zedong's Speeches Previously Unpublished in the Chinese Press), series 1, 117–19, 124, 126–28, 138, 139; Chen and Yang, “Chinese Politics and the Collapse of the Sino-Soviet Alliance,” in Westad, Brothers in Arms, 266.

⁷⁶ See Krutikov, Na kitaiskom napravleniu (Pointed Toward China), 226–27.

⁷⁷ Mao, Selected Works of Mao Tsetung, vol. 5, 420.

⁷⁸ Borisov and Titarenko, Vystupleniia Mao Tsze-duna, ranee ne publikovavshiesia v kitaiskoi pechati (Mao Zedong's Speeches Previously Unpublished in the Chinese Press), series 1, 242–43.

⁷⁹ Mao, Selected Works of Mao Tsetung, vol. 5, 408–14.

⁸⁰ See Roderick MacFarquhar, The Hundred Flowers Campaign and the Chinese Intellectuals (New York: Praeger, 1960).

⁸¹ See Meliksetov, Istoriia Kitaia (History of China), 647–48.

⁸² Ibid., 649.

⁸³ See Chen and Yang, “Chinese Politics and the Collapse of the Sino-Soviet Alliance,” in Westad, Brothers in Arms, 265.

⁸⁴ Borisov and Titarenko, Vystupleniia Mao Tsze-duna, ranee ne publikovavshiesia v kitaiskoi pechati (Mao Zedong's Speeches Previously Unpublished in the Chinese Press), series 2, 122, 273.

⁸⁵ Mao, Selected Works of Mao Tsetung, vol. 5, 491.

⁸⁶ Borisov and Titarenko, Vystupleniia Mao Tsze-duna, ranee ne publikovavshiesia v kitaiskoi pechati (Mao Zedong's Speeches Previously Unpublished in the Chinese Press), series 2, 50, 55–56.

⁸⁷ Ibid., 93.

⁸⁸ Li, The Private Life of Chairman Mao, 218.

⁸⁹ During this trip Mao introduced Deng Xiaoping to Khrushchev with these words: “See that little fellow over there …… He's a very wise man, sees far into the future.” Quoted from Khrushchev, Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev, vol. 3, 439. Then he added: “He is not only a man of principle, but also versatile, he is a rare talent.” Quoted from Li, Waijiao wutai shang de xin Zhongguo lingxiu (Leaders of the New China in the Diplomatic Arena), 143.

⁹⁰ Li Yueran, “Mao zhuxi di erci fangwen Sulian” (Chairman Mao's Second Visit to the Soviet Union), in Li, Zhenshide Mao Zedong (The Real Mao Zedong), 567; Li, Waijiao wutai shang de xin Zhongguo lingxiu (Leaders of the New China in the Diplomatic Arena), 125. On Mao's visit to the USSR in 1957, see also Yang Shangkun, Yang Shangkun riji (Yang Shangkun's Diary), vol. 1 (Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe, 2001), 284–96.

⁹¹ He returned to the question of Molotov later, just before his departure to Moscow, in conversation with Ambassador Yudin. “Talking about what's going on in our party,” he observed, “many comrades cannot understand how such an old party veteran, who fought for the revolution over the course of several decades, could become an anti-party element.” Yudin heard the same thing from Peng Dehuai, who queried the ambassador, “Why did you put it [‘anti-party group'] that way Couldn't you think of something wiser ” Quoted from Taubman, Khrushchev, 340.

⁹² Quoted from Vereshchagin, V starom i novom Kitae (In Old and New China), 94–95.

⁹³ Li, The Private Life of Chairman Mao, 220.

⁹⁴ Quoted from ibid., 221, 222.

⁹⁵ Shi and Li, Zhongsu guanxi jiancheng lu (Eyewitness Notes on Sino-Soviet Relations), 56.

⁹⁶ Li, Waijiao wutai shang de xin Zhongguo lingxiu (Leaders of the New China in the Diplomatic Arena), 142–43; Lu Zhen and Liu Qingxia, “Mao Zedong chong Heluxiaofu fahuo” (How Mao Zedong Got Angry at Khrushchev), Zhuanji wenxue (Biographical literature), no. 4 (2004): 25.

⁹⁷ Borisov and Titarenko, Vystupleniia Mao Tsze-duna, ranee ne publikovavshiesia v kitaiskoi pechati (Mao Zedong's Speeches Previously Unpublished in the Chinese Press), series 2, 94.

⁹⁸ Alexander V. Pantsov's interview with O. A. Grinevskii, Columbus, Ohio, April 4, 2004.

⁹⁹ Khrushchev, Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev, vol. 3, 461.

¹⁰⁰ In 1965, in response to Edgar Snow's question, “[D]o you still believe as before that the [atomic] bomb is a paper tiger ” Mao replied that all of his talks on this theme were “just a way of talking …… a figure of speech.” Quoted from Snow, The Long Revolution, 208; see also Mao, Mao Zedong wenji (Works of Mao Zedong), vol. 8, 401.

¹⁰¹ Quoted from Ye, Ye Zilong huiyilu (Memoirs of Ye Zilong), 190.

¹⁰² Li, The Private Life of Chairman Mao, 224.

¹⁰³ Borisov and Titarenko, Vystupleniia Mao Tsze-duna, ranee ne publikovavshiesia v kitaiskoi pechati (Mao Zedong's Speeches Previously Unpublished in the Chinese Press), series 2, 94. Mao said essentially the same thing in his meeting with Andrei Gromyko, minister of foreign affairs of the USSR, that took place during this time. See A. A. Gromyko, Pamiatnoe (Remembered), vol. 2 (Moscow: Politizdat, 1988), 131.

¹⁰⁴ See Pravda (Truth), November 7, 1957.

¹⁰⁵ CWIHP Bulletin, nos. 6–7 (1995/1996): 152.

¹⁰⁶ Borisov and Titarenko, Vystupleniia Mao Tsze-duna, ranee ne publikovavshiesia v kitaiskoi pechati (Mao Zedong's Speeches Previously Unpublished in the Chinese Press), series 2, 102, 105, 106.

¹⁰⁷ Ibid., 123; Li, Kaiguo zongli Zhou Enlai (Zhou Enlai, the First Premier), 359.

¹⁰⁸ Quoted from Li, Kaiguo zongli Zhou Enlai (Zhou Enlai, the First Premier), 361.

¹⁰⁹ See ibid., 362–63.

¹¹⁰ Borisov and Titarenko, Vystupleniia Mao Tsze-duna, ranee ne publikovavshiesia v kitaiskoi pechati (Mao Zedong's Speeches Previously Unpublished in the Chinese Press), series 2, 134–55.

ⁿ⁶⁵ That NKVD investigators did not conduct inquiries on their own say-so is attested to in Khrushchev’s report “On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences.”

ⁿ⁶⁶ Two versions of Mao’s speech exist, the uncorrected stenographic report and a partially edited canonical text. A translation of the first appeared in the West and in the Soviet Union in the 1970s. The official document was published in the PRC in 1976. The formula “build socialism more, faster, better, and more economically” is only in the stenographic account. In a note, however, the editors of the fifth volume of the Selected Works of Mao Zedong confirm that in his speech Mao did indeed propose this idea as the general line for socialist construction.

ⁿ⁶⁷ Zhou Enlai was the first to put forward the formula of “socialist construction according to the principle of ‘more, faster, better, and more economically.’ ” He did this on January 14, 1956, in a report to a conference about intellectuals convened by the Central Committee at which he developed Mao’s ideas presented on December 6, 1955. However, he did not impart any “revolutionary” meaning to this formula.

ⁿ⁶⁸ Nevertheless, it soon became known outside China. For example, members of a delegation from the Yugoslavian Communist Union referred to “The Ten Major Relationships” during their talk with Mao Zedong in September 1956.

ⁿ⁶⁹ In his memoirs, Khrushchev mistakenly asserts that Kang Sheng was a member of Liu Shaoqi’s delegation.

ⁿ⁷⁰ Liu learned of this from information provided him by Khrushchev, who had received it from Mikoyan and KGB head Ivan Aleksandrovich Serov, then in Hungary.

ⁿ⁷¹ Palmiro Togliatti (pseudonym Mario Ercoli) (1893–1964) was a member of the Presidium of the ECCI from 1938 to 1943 and also a member of the Secretariat of the ECCI from 1935 to 1943.