34 THE RED GUARD TRAGEDY

The January revolution in Shanghai led to the creation throughout China of new organs of power, the so-called revolutionary committees including representatives of three sides: Red Guard and Rebel leaders, PLA officers, and some “revolutionary” old cadres who survived. Local party organizations stopped functioning. Friction that not infrequently escalated into bloody confrontations developed between the military and the radicals regarding the division of provincial and municipal portfolios. In some places army units suppressed the leftists instead of supporting them at the same time that the Red Guards and the Rebels were trying to “revolutionize” the army by inciting the youthful soldiers against their commanders. Particularly heated clashes took place in Chengdu (Sichuan province) and Xining (Qinghai province), where about two hundred people died. More than ten thousand Sichuanese Red Guards and a sizable number from Qinghai were imprisoned.¹

The first provincial revolutionary committee was established in Heilongjiang on January 31, 1967, but efforts to form new organs of power elsewhere dragged on for a long time. The Rebels and the Red Guards were unable to create anything new; all they could do was destroy. Thus revolutionary students from several universities in Beijing seized control of the Municipal Party Committee in January, but all they could do was to carry out a pogrom. Not until three months later, on April 20, 1967, did the CCP Central Committee and the Cultural Revolution Group succeed in establishing a Beijing Revolutionary Committee.² The Great Helmsman appointed Xie Fuzhi, the minister of public security, to head it.

Mao was probably unconcerned, believing that everything would take care of itself. The people would sort out who was right and who was guilty. However, the radicals' attack on the army, the crisis in the party, and the Red Guards' seizure of power everywhere distressed a group of veteran Politburo members, including five deputy premiers, Tan Zhenlin, Chen Yi, Li Fuchun, Li Xiannian, and Nie Rongzhen, as well as Xu Xiangqian, deputy head of the Military Committee of the Central Committee, and Ye Jianying, the secretary of the Military Committee. Four of them—Chen, Nie, Xu, and Ye—were also marshals. At two meetings of the central leadership that included both Politburo members and members of the Central Cultural Revolution Group in early and mid February 1967 they sharply criticized the seizures of power and the Cultural Revolution as a whole.

Mao was responsible for creating this opportunity to criticize the Cultural Revolution. On the eve of the “anti-party” speeches of the Politburo members, he personally criticized Chen Boda and Jiang Qing at one of the meetings of the Cultural Revolution Group. He had long ago noticed that instead of efficiently handling the tasks assigned to them, the members of the CRG were perpetually squabbling with each other. Kang Sheng never agreed with Chen Boda, who in turn could not stand the “honorable” Kang. Jiang Qing often tried to bring Chen around but frequently failed. The imperious and hysterical Jiang was no diplomat, and she was not well versed in politics, let alone economics. Mao was also annoyed that Jiang and Chen sometimes took matters into their own hands and did not always consult with him. Irritated, he shouted at his instantly cowed associates.

“You, Chen Boda,” he flung at Chen. “In the past, as far as relations between [Liu] Shaoqi and myself have been concerned, you've always been an opportunist. As many years as I know you, you've never sought me out unless the matter involved you personally.”

The mortified Chen immediately asked permission to speak in order to engage in self-criticism, but Mao waved him off and attacked his wife.

“As for you, Jiang Qing, you have grandiose aims but puny abilities, great ambition but little talent. You look down on everyone else.”

Then, turning to Lin Biao, he added, “See, it's still just like it was before! I don't get reports. Things are being kept secret from me. The sole exception is the premier. Whenever there's something important going on, let it be not so important, he always reports to me.”³

Li Fuchun and Ye Jianying, who were present at this meeting, reported this outburst to their comrades in the Politburo. Because of this scent of change in the air, they spoke out against the Cultural Revolution.

At the following meeting of the central leadership in Zhongnanhai on February 11, 1967, the day after the Chairman's blow-up against Chen Boda and Jiang Qing, the party veteran Ye Jianying attacked the unfortunate Chen, whom he considered a convenient target. (Mao normally did not attend such meetings, although he followed them through trusted confidants.) Ye accused Chen of “making a mess of the party, a mess of the government, a mess of factories and the countryside,” and “still you're not satisfied. You insist on making a mess of the army as well! What are you up to, going on like this?”

Xu Xiangqian supported Ye Jianying: “The army is a pillar of the dictatorship of the proletariat, but the way you're making a mess of it, it's as if you didn't want this pillar. Are you suggesting that none of us are worth saving? What do you want? For people like Kuai Dafu [the Red Guard leader at Tsinghua University who in December 1966 organized the first mass demonstration against Liu Shaoqi] to lead the army?” Zhou Enlai, chairing the meeting, became nervous, and the initiative passed to Kang Sheng: “The army does not belong to you, Xu Xiangqian.” He wanted to add something, but he was cut off by Ye Jianying: “Can the revolution do without the party leadership? Does one not need an army?” He was backed by Nie Rongzhen: “Only persons with despicable intentions could persecute veterans and strike them from behind.”

An oppressive silence hung over the hall. Kang Sheng, Chen Boda, and Wang Li, another member of the Cultural Revolution Group, looked daggers at the party veterans sitting across from them. Zhou Enlai abruptly ended the session, after which Deputy Premier Chen Yi whispered to Ye Jianying, “My duke, you are truly courageous!” Zhou resumed the discussion five days later, after emotions had supposedly cooled. It was a huge mistake. Party veteran Tan Zhenlin immediately attacked Zhang Chunqiao and defended the first secretary of the Shanghai Municipal Committee, who had been overthrown by the Rebels. Zhang calmly replied that the masses would sort out this question by themselves. Tan interrupted, “What masses? Always the masses, the masses. There's still the leadership of the party! [You] don't want the leadership of the party, but keep talking from morning till late about the masses liberating themselves, educating themselves, and making revolution by themselves. What is this stuff? It's metaphysics!”

Taking a breath, he continued with increasing agitation:

Your aim is to purge the old cadres. You're knocking them down one by one, until there's not a single one left The children of high-level cadres are all being persecuted, every one of them Of all the struggles in the history of the party, this is by far the cruelest Had I known at the outset that we would live to see something like this, I would never have joined the revolution or entered the communist party. I would not have had to live till 65 and follow Chairman Mao for forty-one years.

He wanted to leave, but Chen Yi spoke out: “Don't go. We must fight!”

For the next three hours, the veterans and the members of the Cultural Revolution Group yelled at each other while the powerless Zhou vainly tried to make them come to their senses. Chen Yi was the most aggressive. He told the snarling radicals:

If you seize power you will be practicing revisionism. Already back in Yan'an Liu Shaoqi, Deng Xiaoping, and Peng Zhen pretended to be the most energetic bearers of Chairman Mao Thought! They never came out openly against Chairman Mao It is we who came out against Chairman Mao for which we were criticized. Wasn't the premier likewise criticized? Didn't history [in the end] prove who [in reality] opposed Chairman Mao!? The future will prove it again. Khrushchev seized power soon after Stalin's death. But didn't he viciously attack Stalin once he himself was in power?⁴

Chen had gotten carried away. None of the other Politburo members engaged in such sharp criticism. Again, Zhou had to terminate the meeting. Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan, and Wang Li hastened to inform Jiang Qing, who immediately ordered them to report everything to Mao. Zhang Chunqiao contacted the Leader and requested an audience.

Mao listened attentively but apparently did not attach great significance to the rebellion of the Politburo members. He even laughed several times, finding some of the veterans' words amusing. His mood darkened only when he heard what Chen Yi had said, but it was not merely the insult that ruined his mood. He suddenly realized that he was confronting the most implacable opposition, and that it would be difficult to crush it.

But his long experience of political intrigue made it virtually impossible to gain the upper hand over him. He understood that he could conquer the Oppositionists by dividing them, which is exactly what he did. He instructed Zhou Enlai to publish an editorial in People's Daily and Red Flag stating that no blows should be directed against any of the veterans. “Cadres must be handled properly,” the article said. Then he invited Zhou Enlai, Kang Sheng, minister of public security Xie Fuzhi, Lin Biao's wife, Ye Qun (Lin was again unwell), and three of the “disturbers of the peace,” namely, Li Fuchun, Ye Jianying, and Li Xiannian, to his private quarters late at night.⁵ Quite a scene ensued. Mao began shouting at the top of his lungs:

The CCRG [Central Cultural Revolution Group] has been implementing the line adopted by the Eleventh Plenum [i.e., the August (1966) plenum]. Its errors amount to 1, 2, maybe 3 percent, while it's been correct up to 97 percent. If someone opposes the CCRG, I will resolutely oppose him! You attempt to negate the Great Cultural Revolution, but you shall not succeed! Comrade Ye Qun, you tell Lin Biao that he's not safe either. Some people are trying to grab his power, and he should be prepared. If this Great Cultural Revolution fails, he and I will withdraw from Beijing and go back to the Jinggang Mountains to fight a guerrilla war. You say that Jiang Qing and Chen Boda are no good; let's make you, Chen Yi, the head of the CCRG, and arrest Chen Boda and Jiang Qing and have them executed! Let's send Kang Sheng into exile! I'll step down, too, and then we can ask Wang Ming to return to be Chairman.⁶

Not until dawn did Mao calm down. He ordered Zhou Enlai to force Chen Yi to engage in self-criticism, Li Fuchun and Xie Fuzhi to pressure Tan Zhenlin, and Ye Jianying, Li Xiannian, and Xie Fuzhi to lean on Xu Xiangqian. He did not ask for any apologies from Li Fuchun, Ye Jianying, or Li Xiannian.

Thus Mao aimed his blows at the most active of the “plotters” of division. Chen, Tan, and Xu found themselves in a crossfire. On one side were Li Fuchun, Ye Jianying, and Li Xiannian, who had betrayed them; on the other side were the members of the Cultural Revolution Group. Naturally, Jiang Qing, Kang Sheng, and Chen Boda were the most vicious, labeling their enemies as “capitalist roaders.” No less aggressive was Zhang Chunqiao, who labeled the veterans' attacks as the “February reverse current.” Tan, Chen, and Xu, totally isolated, had no recourse but to admit their guilt. Zhou Enlai also engaged in self-criticism for failing to control the refractory members of the Politburo.⁷

The Politburo and State Council practically ceased to exist. The Chairman assigned their functions to the Cultural Revolution Group.⁸ Jiang Qing, triumphant, could not resist taking a jab at Zhou: “You, Zhou Enlai, also have to come over to our meetings, because your meetings do not work anymore.”⁹

Rumors about the statements of the marshals and major party leaders against the Cultural Revolution loudly echoed throughout the country and evoked an upsurge of resistance against the Red Guards and the Rebels on the part of the military and civilians who were indignant at the hooliganism of the leftists. Consequently, a real civil war erupted in 1967 between the radicals and members of the Cultural Revolution Group and those who were trying to rein in Red Guard outrages. Anti-extremist groups emerged in all the cities.

Such organizations had also surfaced in 1966 but at that time had not enjoyed popular support. One such anti-leftist organization was the United Action Committee, established in Beijing by the children of high-ranking cadres. Members of the committee swore loyalty to “Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought prior to 1960” and called for the “complete destruction of left opportunism.” In late January 1967, 139 members of this organization were arrested on charges of slandering Jiang Qing and Chen Boda and defending Liu Shaoqi, but they were freed three months later on Mao's orders, because he feared a massive outburst of dissatisfaction from party cadres.¹⁰

In the spring of 1967, similar organizations sprang up everywhere. Their members attacked Red Guards and Rebels, arrested and beat them up, and sometimes even killed them. They reviled the leaders of the Cultural Revolution, Jiang Qing, Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan, and others, but they excepted Mao, whom they continued to regard as the great and infallible helmsman. The situation was complicated by the fact that the Red Guard movement had long since splintered into a multitude of mutually hostile groups and factions that accused each other of being capitalist roaders and revisionists.

Mao continued to believe that everything was going in the right direction. “You are constantly talking about disorders,” he observed to one of his bodyguards. “But you did not see what is most important, that this is a movement, a revolution taking place under the leadership of the proletariat. There's no need to be afraid of it Let the masses learn something in the course of the movement, acquire experience.”

He offered the same explanation to foreign guests.

Disorders are a result of class struggle, struggle between two factions. The leftist faction is struggling against the rightist faction. The disorders are not a calamity; the sky will not fall down. I once told some other foreign friends, “First, the sky will not fall down, second, the grass and the trees on the mountain slopes will continue to grow as before, if you do not believe, go up there and you will see, third, fish will continue to swim in the rivers, fourth, women will continue to give birth to children.”? Our government depends upon the masses. One can do nothing without the masses.¹¹

By early summer, the Chairman's insouciance notwithstanding, the civil war intensified. (Mao acknowledged this fact only six months later, in December 1967, when in a conversation with one of the foreign delegations, he inadvertently let slip, “Armed conflict employing fire-arms began [in our country] in June 1967.”)¹²

The focal point of clashes was Wuhan, where in late May, fifty-three anti-extremist organizations united to form an organization called A Million Heroes. It had a large and very militant membership. Eighty-five percent of them were party members, and in turn many of them were simultaneously part of the so-called Red People's Militia—armed workers' detachments in Wuhan. Chen Zaidao, commander of the Wuhan and Hubei military districts, a straight-talking warrior who was a hero of the anti-Japanese and civil wars, provided direct moral and material support to the alliance.¹³ In the summer of 1967, the Million Heroes instigated a series of bloody incidents in which more than a hundred Red Guards and Rebels were killed and about two thousand seriously wounded.

Mao decided to intervene. In mid-July he traveled to Wuhan, against the objections of most party leaders, who were unsure his safety could be guaranteed in the turbulent city. Mao brushed off their doubts. “I'm not afraid of disturbances,” he declared. “I will go.”¹⁴ On the eve of his departure he sent the faithful Zhou to Wuhan to make arrangements for his visit.

He stayed in his beloved Donghu Guest House, but this time he did not feel quite himself. The situation in Wuhan was complicated and the city had slipped out of his control. Here and there posters plastered on the walls proclaimed, “Down with Chen Zaidao, the old Wuhan Tan [Zhenlin]! Let us completely liberate the Central plain!” Bitter clashes among the warring sides continued. On the day following Mao's arrival a bloody fight took place between the radicals and the moderates in which ten people were killed and forty-five wounded. Zhou increased the guard in the hotel, although the situation there was itself cause for alarm as the hotel staff was divided into two factions.¹⁵

After analyzing the situation Mao understood that “[a]t present the party and the government are powerless; only the army can resolve the task [of restoring order].” On the evening of July 18, meeting with Chen Zaidao and the political commissar of the district, Zhong Hanhua, he was much more patient than during his conversation with the February Oppositionists. It might be dangerous to yell at Chen and Zhong. Might they arrest him, as Zhang Xueliang had done with Chiang Kai-shek? He had to act cautiously.

He focused on the unification of the army with the revolutionary students, and chastised both the military and the insurgents for committing mistakes. He even condemned the Red Guards of the capital for their excessively rough treatment of Liu Shaoqi, which elicited sympathy on the part of the politically inexperienced generals. Only once during the conversation did he play with fire. “Why can't we arm the workers and students?” he suddenly asked his nonplussed guests, and not waiting for a reply, he said, “I say we should arm them!”¹⁶ Then, turning to the attendants in the room, some of whom were Red Guards, he laughed, “You won't try to overthrow your commander again, will you? I personally have no intention of doing so.”¹⁷ Toward the end of the conversation he gently but firmly persuaded the generals to engage in self-criticism, which they did the next morning at the headquarters of the Wuhan Military Region.

Their self-flagellation, however, angered not only the Wuhan Heroes but also many army officers who despised the leftists. Early on the morning of July 20, about two hundred Heroes burst into the Donghu Guest House, where Wang Li and Minister of Public Security Xie Fuzhi, radicals from Beijing who had just arrived in town, were staying. (They did not know that Mao was also in the hotel, since the Chairman's visit to Wuhan was a secret.) Loudly shouting and gesticulating, they seized Wang Li and dragged him to their headquarters. There they cruelly beat him, breaking his leg in the process.¹⁸

Mao, incensed, ordered Chen Zaidao to return Wang Li. Then he hurriedly flew to Shanghai, not entirely certain that the general would execute his orders, since he did not yet know whether Chen himself was behind the arrest of Wang. The situation was critical. Arriving in Shanghai and lodging at one of the best hotels in town, the Hongqiao binguan (Rainbow), he stayed up all night, discussing the crisis with the officials who had accompanied him. He vacillated between the supposition that Chen himself had raised the rebellion and his feeling that General Chen was actually a good comrade.

“Could he have acted against me?” he anxiously asked Yang Chengwu, chief of the general staff.

Yang emphatically argued against the worst-case scenario.

“Chairman, no one could oppose you. The army, the cadres, the party members and the people all view you as their great liberator. All the old comrades in the army made the revolution with you.”

“That's true. That's what I also think,” Mao agreed. “If Chen and Zhong had wanted to have done with me, they wouldn't have allowed us to leave Wuhan!”¹⁹

He calmed down only two days later after deciding to disband the Million Heroes immediately as well as the Wuhan garrison that had supported them. Then he promptly demanded that Zhou Enlai summon Chen Zaidao and Zhong Hanhua to Beijing.

Meanwhile, General Chen, who had no intention of rebelling against the Great Helmsman, succeeded in freeing Wang Li, who returned to the capital. On July 25, a mass rally against capitalist roaders in the army was organized by Jiang Qing in Beijing.²⁰ Afterward, Chen Zaidao and Zhong Hanhua, who had come to Beijing, were reprimanded at an enlarged meeting of the Politburo Standing Committee chaired by Zhou.²¹ On July 27 they were removed from all their positions, and soon thereafter troops dispatched by Lin Biao forcibly disarmed the Wuhan garrison. The arrested soldiers and officers were sent to labor camps. Next the Million Heroes were smashed.²²

Emboldened, on July 31, Zhang Chunqiao requested Mao's permission to establish a workers' militia in Shanghai to defend the leftists. Assenting, Mao promptly wrote to the other members of the Cultural Revolution Group as well as Lin Biao and Zhou Enlai, welcoming Zhang's initiative. Then, on August 4, he sent another letter to Jiang Qing expressing his conviction that 75 percent of the officers in the PLA were unreliable because they stood on the side of the rightists. He called for establishing a dictatorship of the masses in the country, seizing power in the organs of public security and justice, establishing “revolutionary” courts and arming the leftists everywhere. Jiang quickly passed this message to the Politburo Standing Committee and soon armed Red Guard units were formed throughout the country.²³

Before three weeks had passed, Mao, to his own surprise, understood he had gone too far. Buoyed by his support, the most frenzied members of the Cultural Revolution Group, Wang Li and a certain Guan Feng, had initiated the seizure of power in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where armed Red Guards had destroyed valuable diplomatic papers. Then the same two had provoked rebels to storm the Beijing office of the British chargé d'affaires. The more than ten thousand young anti-imperialist warriors beat up the diplomats in the building, smashed precious furniture, and burned the office and car of the chargé d'affaires. This is how they expressed their protest against the British occupation of Hong Kong.²⁴

The formation of armed Red Guard detachments did not put an end to civil war. On the contrary, it only exacerbated the conflict. On average in August around thirty bloody clashes between the radical and the moderate rebels occurred daily in the provinces.²⁵ Both radicals and moderates continued to be involved in conflicts with the army.

Grasping that the Red Guards would not calm down on their own, Mao finally initiated action against them. In late August 1967, at the request of Zhou Enlai, who was mortified by the attacks on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the office of the British representative, Mao ordered the arrest of Wang Li and Guan Feng. Six months later, Qi Benyu, another ultraleftist member of the Cultural Revolution Group, was taken into custody. At Mao's request, an investigation into their “counterrevolutionary activity” revealed that all three were supposedly Guomindang and Soviet spies.²⁶ Indignant at this “revelation,” Mao wrote on a document related to the Wang Li affair, “Big, big, big poisonous weed!” Afterward he carried out a sweeping purge of leftist organizations as well as another periodic purge of all state and public institutions. This time, on his orders, extremists were ferreted out and held to account.

Now Mao's rhetoric changed sharply. He asserted that “[t]he overwhelming majority of our cadres are good and only a tiny minority are not. True, those persons in power taking the capitalist road are our targets, but they are a mere handful.”²⁷ In early September 1967, Mao began to mention the possibility of rehabilitating the majority of repressed party cadres, and in mid-September, setting out from Shanghai to Beijing, he elaborated this theme in all the places he visited en route.²⁸ In Wuhan he even hinted at the likely return of Deng Xiaoping to high office. “Do we need to protect Deng Xiaoping?” He addressed this provocative question to the perplexed new leaders of Wuhan and, as if thinking out loud, he continued, “First, he has already endured a number of blows, second, he is not a Guomindang agent, third, he does not harbor any black thoughts.”²⁹ He said nothing more specific, but everyone supposed that the Chairman was thinking about “pardoning” Liu Shaoqi's main associate. In mid-October, the Chairman ordered the prompt resumption of studies in schools and universities. At the end of October he ordered the Central Committee and the Cultural Revolution Group to issue a directive reviving the party organizations in all places where Revolutionary Committees existed.³⁰

By this time, revolutionary committees had been formed in only seven of the twenty-nine provinces, autonomous regions, and provincial-level municipalities. By March 1968, they would be established in an additional eleven provinces. The process of forming revolutionary committees did not conclude until September. (The last Provincial Revolutionary Committee was set up in Xinjiang.) The army took the lead in the creation of new organs of power and sought to establish its control in the revolutionary committees. There was no equality in the participation of the “three sides.” The overwhelming majority of the 48,000 members of the new organs of power above the district level were serving PLA officers. Six of the twenty-nine chairs of provincial-level revolutionary committees were colonel generals, five were lieutenant generals, and nine were major generals. The rest were political commissars. Twenty-two of the twenty-nine first secretaries of the newly reorganized provincial, autonomous region, and provincial-level municipal party committees were likewise high-ranking PLA officers.³¹

Since the fall of 1967, after returning to Beijing from Shanghai, the Chairman also began to talk about “Grasping Revolution and Stimulating Production.”³² The faithful Zhou and the former Oppositionist Li Fuchun, who were responsible for working up the Third Five-Year Plan (1966–70), regularly delivered reports about the catastrophic fall in production, caused not only by the “sabotage of the capitalist roaders” but by the idleness of the “revolutionary” workers.³³

Calming the impassioned young people turned out to be difficult. Having tasted “freedom,” no one wanted to return to the “kingdom of necessity.” Detachments of young people marched through the cities and villages shouting, “Long Live Chairman Mao!” “We Will Smash the Dog's Head of Liu Shaoqi, Chief of the Black Gang!” and “Down with Revisionism!” They continued to drag out the “capitalist roaders” and their families, set up kangaroo courts, shouted, and created an uproar. They dragged elderly professors and party officials from their apartments and paraded them in front of improvised tribunals under the burning sun or the fierce cold, crowned them with dunce caps, and hung humiliating placards around their necks. The ignorant youngsters were still battling the Four Olds—old ideas, culture, customs, and habits. In many cities the leftists introduced new rules, for example, crossing the street when the light is red, because red is the color of revolution. Ancient monuments were demolished; archives destroyed; veteran specialists, including medical personnel, engineers, and technicians, not allowed to work. The mass chaos increasingly threatened catastrophe.

On July 3, 1968, Mao demanded that disturbances cease immediately. On July 27 more than thirty thousand workers from more than sixty industrial enterprises in Beijing, organized into so-called Mao Zedong Thought Propaganda Teams, entered into Tsinghua University. Clashes occurred and ten people were killed, but the frenzied Red Guards refused to surrender.

Mao was infuriated. The next day he convened a meeting of the party leadership in the Great Hall of the People, including Lin Biao, Zhou Enlai, Jiang Qing, Kang Sheng, Chen Boda, Xie Fuzhi, and the new chief of the general staff of the PLA, Huang Yongsheng. The Red Guard chiefs of Beijing were summoned to serve as scapegoats.

Mao seemed outwardly calm, and he even tried to crack jokes, but his humor was sinister.

“Kuai Dafu,” he began,

wants to seize the black villain. After all so many workers “suppress” and “oppress” Red Guards. But just who is this black villain? This black villain has still not been captured. This black villain is none other than I I am the one who dispatched the guard regiment of the CC and the Xinhua typographers and the knitwear factory workers. I said, “Go, do your work, observe, and figure out how to resolve the question of armed struggle in the higher education institutions.” Thus, 30,000 persons set out.

“Peking University [also] wants to seize the black villain,” he said, turning to Nie Yuanzi, the author of the “first Marxist-Leninist dazibao,” “but this black villain is not I but Xie Fuzhi. I do not suffer from such ambition.”

The Red Guard leaders listened, their heads downcast. Mao continued:

You have been engaged in the Cultural Revolution for two years by now. With respect to struggle, criticism, and reforms, first, you do not struggle, second, you do not criticize, and third, you have not achieved any reforms. It's true that you struggle, but you conduct armed struggle. The people don't like this, the workers don't like this, the peasants don't like this, the people of [Beijing] don't like this, the majority of students at educational institutions don't like this, and even some people in groups that support you don't like this. And is this how you wish to unite our country?

“Important events are taking place in the country,” Lin Biao observed portentously and then paraphrased the beginning of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms: “That which was long broken up must be united; and that which was long united must be broken up.³⁴ The fortifications that were built for armed struggle [in the higher education institutes must] be completely dismantled; all firearms and side-arms, knives, and rifles [must be] handed over to the depots.”

The Red Guard leaders understood this was the end. None of them, except for Kuai Dafu, who began sobbing, even tried to justify themselves. Nie Yuanzi, who had suddenly seen the light, even asked the Chairman to dispatch the PLA to Peking University.

Mao concluded:

Confusion and bitter struggle are rife Perhaps this time you will expel me from the party? Expel me for bureaucratism, moreover I am a black villain and I suppress the Red Guards The masses do not like engaging in civil war We must address an appeal to the whole country. And if anyone continues to destroy order, attack the Liberation Army, destroy communications, kill people or commit arson, then he will be treated as a criminal. If a handful of people do not heed these warnings, and stubbornly refuse to mend their ways, they will turn into robbers and Guomindang elements, and they will have to be surrounded on all sides. If they resist they will have to be destroyed.

“Progress cannot be achieved instantaneously, history always takes a zigzag path,” he added, ending the meeting.³⁵

In August, PLA troops went into action. Only they were able to restore order and gain control of the universities, which, in the Chairman's words, had become “ ‘independent kingdoms,' big or small.”³⁶

Of course, there were now new victims. Sensing the Chairman's inclinations, the military began to suppress the Red Guards in the cruelest manner. The clashes that took place in August 1968 between the army and young people in Nanning, the capital of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, were particularly bloody. The streets of the city literally ran in blood; the urban districts controlled by the young people's organizations were wiped from the face of the earth. The number of victims was 2,324; about 10,000 were imprisoned and more than 50,000 people were left homeless.³⁷ Hearing of this, Mao placed all the responsibility on the extremists among the Red Guards and Rebels, asserting that their uprising against the army was “a kind of death throes of the class enemies.”³⁸

Beginning in the second half of 1968, some twelve million disillusioned youth were deported to the countryside over the next seven years, most of them to education-through-labor camps where the overwhelming majority remained until the death of the Great Helmsman in 1976. Theirs was a bitter education. Many of them could have spoken the words of the hero of one of the writer Wang Meng's stories: “It's just rotten luck to be born Chinese The Chinese race, so great and yet so tragic.”³⁹

In October 1968, the next enlarged plenum of the Central Committee summed up the period of Sturm und Drang. By then more than 70 percent of the members and alternate members of the Central Committee had been labeled “anti-party elements,” “traitors,” and “spies” who were “maintaining secret ties with abroad.” Ten of the ninety-seven members of the Central Committee had died since August 1966.

Only 40 members and 19 alternates of the 87 members and 96 alternates chosen at the Eighth Party Congress were present at the plenum. To attain a quorum, Mao gave full voting rights to 10 alternates from the Central Committee, of which 9 were high-ranking military officers. He also granted voting rights to 74 members from the Cultural Revolution Group, the Military Commission of the Central Committee, as well as leaders of provincial revolutionary committees and military regions together with a number of Central Committee officials. The plenum expelled Liu Shaoqi “forever” from the party and emphasized that the “unmasking” of his “counterrevolutionary physiognomy” was a “great victory” for Mao Zedong Thought. The former head of state was called a “hidden provocateur and scab, a running dog of imperialism, contemporary revisionism, and Guomindang reaction who had committed egregious crimes against the masses.”⁴⁰

Yet, under pressure from Mao, the plenum allowed Deng Xiaoping to remain a member of the party. “You all want to kick him out, [but] I'm not keen on the idea,” Mao Zedong said.⁴¹ This was enough. Mao also did not allow the radicals to expel the former February Oppositionists, the marshals and party officials who had opposed Red Guard mayhem in February 1967. Moreover, he insisted they be “chosen” as delegates to the party congress scheduled for the following year. This despite the considerable attention devoted at the plenum to criticism of the February reverse current. “Comrade Chen Yi,” Mao said to the “ideologue” of the February Oppositionists, “you will participate [in the congress] as the representative of the Right.”⁴² No sooner said than done. The plenum enthusiastically supported Chen.

The battle first with the “moderates” and then with the Red Guards was practically over. Mao now decided to convene a new party congress, the Ninth, which took place April 1–24, 1969, in Beijing. It was attended by 1,512 delegates representing almost 22 million communists. It resulted in the unanimous adoption of new party statutes in which Mao Zedong Thought was again declared to be the theoretical foundation of the CCP. Now it was called “Marxism-Leninism of the era in which imperialism is heading for total collapse and socialism is advancing to world-wide victory.”⁴³

The composition of the leading organs of the CCP underwent a radical change. The new Central Committee, consisting of 170 members and 109 alternates, followed the principle of combining “three sides,” namely the leading figures of the Cultural Revolution, the main commanders of the PLA, and the “revolutionary” party leaders who were the most loyal to Mao. He also retained on the Central Committee several former opponents, including Deng Zihui, and the February Oppositionists—Chen Yi, Ye Jianying, Xu Xiangqian, Nie Rongzhen, Li Fuchun, and Li Xiannian. All the “comrades” named by the Leader received the requisite number of votes.

At the First Plenum of the newly chosen Central Committee, the power-hungry wives of Mao and Lin Biao, Jiang Qing and Ye Qun, were included in the Politburo, as were the heroes of Shanghai, Zhang Chunqiao and Yao Wenyuan. Chen Boda, Zhou Enlai, and Kang Sheng were included in the Politburo Standing Committee along with Mao and Lin. Lin Biao was returned as the sole deputy chairman, and the entire country began to learn from the army with renewed enthusiasm, especially since it was PLA troops that ultimately had restored order in the country.

The plenum concluded with stormy applause. The cries of “Long Live the Victory of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution,” “Long Live the Chinese Communist Party,” “Long Live Invincible Mao Zedong Thought,” “Long Live Chairman Mao, Wan sui! Wan wan sui! (10,000 years, 100 million years!)” long echoed in the hall.

One of the important themes emphasized at the congress and the plenum was the struggle against Soviet revisionism. Mao said:

The Soviet revisionists now attack us. Some TASS broadcast or other, the Wang Ming material, and the long screed in Kommunist [a Soviet Party journal] all say we are no longer a party of the proletariat, and call us a “petit-bourgeois party.” They say we have imposed a monolithic order and have returned to the time of the bases, which means we have retrogressed. What is this thing they call becoming monolithic? They say it is a military-bureaucratic system I say let them talk. They can say whatever they want. But their words have one characteristic: they avoid branding us a bourgeois party, instead they label us a “party of the petit bourgeoisie.” We, on the other hand, say that they are a bourgeois dictatorship, and are restoring the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.⁴⁴

The Central Committee report that Lin Biao delivered at the congress was also sharply anti-Soviet. In 1969 the polemics that had ignited in the early 1960s reached their apogee.

In March, on the eve of the congress, armed clashes occurred on the Far Eastern border between the USSR and the PRC. Soviet and Chinese border troops fought over Damansky (Zhenbao) Island in the Ussuri River. There were dead on both sides: on the first day alone, March 2, twenty-nine soldiers and two officers on the Soviet side and seventeen servicemen on the Chinese side. Forty-nine persons were wounded and one Soviet soldier was taken prisoner and later died in captivity.⁴⁵ Some in the West exulted over the “first socialist war.”

Relations between China and the USSR had gone steadily downhill after the sudden withdrawal of Soviet specialists in 1960. At various meetings Soviet and Chinese representatives engaged in sharp exchanges regarding the nature of the current era and the question of Stalin's cult of personality. The Chinese accused the leaders of the CPSU of being “social democrats,” while the Soviet communists screamed about the “ultra-leftism” of the CCP leaders.

Finally, in 1963, Khrushchev had had enough. In response to a letter from the Central Committee of the CCP, dated June 14, 1963, and titled “A Proposal Concerning the General Line of the International Communist Movement,” the Central Committee of the CPSU on July 14 sent an open letter to all communists in the Soviet Union. It referred to the “erroneous and fatal” policy of the Chinese Communist Party, the “glaring contradiction” in the actions of the Chinese leadership “not only to the principles of mutual relations among socialist countries, but, in a number of cases, to the accepted rules and norms all states should abide by.”⁴⁶

In response, People's Daily and the journal Red Flag erupted with a joint editorial in which they excoriated the shameful united front of Moscow, Washington, New Delhi, and Belgrade “against socialist China and against all Marxist-Leninist Parties.” “Khrushchev revisionists” were condemned as betrayers “of Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism.”⁴⁷ The Chinese press then published eight more so-called critical articles developing this theme. In May 1964, at one of the meetings of the Chinese leadership, Mao, making no attempt to check his anger, asserted, “In the Soviet Union there is now a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, a dictatorship of the big bourgeoisie, a German-fascist dictatorship of the Hitler type. This is a gang of bandits who are worse than De Gaulle.”⁴⁸

At the same time, both sides raised contentious new issues. The Chinese asserted territorial claims vis-à-vis the Soviets. “In discussions with our advisors in China, the Beijing leadership stated in a very hostile way that the Russians had taken what was then the Soviet Far Eastern region from China, along with other adjacent territories,” Khrushchev recalled.

Some misunderstandings arose between us in regard to the border along the Ussuri River and along some other rivers. As is generally known, rivers tend to change course over time, and new islands are sometimes formed. Under the treaty signed between China and the tsarist government, the Chinese bank of the river formed the border, not the middle of the river channel, as is the usual practice under international law. Thus, if new islands were formed they were considered Russian Later the situation became more strained.⁴⁹

In 1962 Moscow agreed to secret border talks with Beijing which began in February 1964. Khrushchev broke them off in October, however, because the Chinese, in addition to the question about the river channel, insisted on discussing the problem of czarist expansion in Siberia and the Far East. Nevertheless, the Soviet side agreed that a new border treaty with the PRC should replace the czarist one. According to this treaty, Damansky Island should go to the Chinese since it was west of the main channel of the Ussuri River. In other words, if one followed international practice, it was in Chinese territorial waters. A treaty was not signed, however, but the Chinese, noting that the USSR had agreed to conclude it according to international principles, began to consider Damansky theirs.⁵⁰

For a time, following Khrushchev's ouster in October 1964, there was hope that a constructive dialogue might be revived. In early November, a Chinese delegation headed by Zhou Enlai came to Moscow by invitation of the Soviet side to celebrate the anniversary of the October Revolution. It was greeted by the Soviet premier Alexei Kosygin, the most active supporter of normalizing ties with China. However, the chance to arrange even normal businesslike relations with what had once been a good neighbor collapsed. In the words of Andrei Aleksandrov-Agentov, an assistant to Khrushchev's successor, Leonid Brezhnev, this occurred because of “an absurd incident or under the influence of the military leadership which was infuriated at the Chinese. In any event, at a festive banquet in the Kremlin, a highly intoxicated Marshal Malinovsky, the minister of defense, approached the Chinese premier and in the hearing of everyone said, ‘Well, we have done our part, we got rid of our old galosh Khrushchev. Now if you will chuck out your old galosh Mao, then our problems will be over.' Outraged, Zhou Enlai immediately stalked out of the banquet.”⁵¹ The following day Brezhnev tried to smooth over the matter: “Malinovsky is not a member of the Presidium [of the CPSU], he drank too much and blurted out something. Moreover, the translation was imprecise. We are prepared to apologize.”⁵² But Zhou said, “There is nothing for us to talk about.”⁵³

Kosygin and several other members of the Soviet leadership who favored improving relations with China were shaken by this. They advised Brezhnev to pay a visit to Mao, but Brezhnev was obdurate. Finally, he challenged Kosygin: “If you consider this so essential, then go yourself.” Kosygin actually did. In February 1965, he met in Beijing with Zhou and then with Mao and Liu. “The conversation was pointed and rather unpleasant,” writes Aleksandrov-Agentov. “Our comrades were reminded of all the injustices Khrushchev committed vis-à-vis China, and the accusations about the CPSU's ‘revision of Leninism' were repeated. In a word, it became clear that there was no possibility of returning to the former ‘fraternal friendship,' and that China would never again play the role of ‘younger brother' to the Soviet Union.”⁵⁴ Mao expressed his wish to continue the polemics with the CPSU even if they lasted another ten thousand years, and only when he was wrapping up the talks did he soften and shorten this by one thousand years.⁵⁵

A year later, however, when the Cultural Revolution commenced, Mao sharply intensified attacks on the USSR, even accusing the Soviet leadership of wishing to unleash a war against China. “The Soviet Union is planning to violate the state border in Siberia and Mongolia, to carry out incursions into Inner Mongolia and Northeast China and to occupy China,” he declared to the whole world. “This may result in a situation in which the People's Liberation Army and the Soviet Army will face each other across opposite sides of the Yangzi River.”⁵⁶

Attempting to force the government of the USSR to sign a border treaty, the Chinese side began acting in an increasingly threatening manner. From 1964 to 1969, there were 4,189 incidents—not armed, it is true—along the Soviet-Chinese border. The situation deteriorated sharply after the dispatch of Soviet troops to Czechoslovakia in late August 1968, and the assertion by the Soviet leadership of the so-called Brezhnev Doctrine, which stated that the USSR had the right to intervene in the internal affairs of any socialist country where socialism was in danger. In October 1968, PRC minister of defense Lin Biao put the armed forces of the PRC on alert. Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai were initially skeptical of Lin Biao's anxiety, but they raised no objections to these precautionary measures.⁵⁷

Thus the gunfire on Damansky was no accident. Who fired the first shot is still not known to this day. Most likely everything happened spontaneously. Someone's nerves simply snapped. But the incident brought Sino-Soviet relations to a new level. The gunshots echoed in both capitals. Each side loudly accused the other of provocations. According to several sources, the Soviet government was in a state of panic. Minister of Defense Andrei Grechko was insisting on an atomic attack against the PRC's industrial centers. Others suggested blowing up Chinese atomic sites. Instead Brezhnev authorized a massive strike on Chinese territory with Grad rockets to a depth of 20 kilometers. This was done on the night of March 14–15 in the same vicinity of Damansky. More than eight hundred Chinese died.

Speaking soon afterward at the First Plenum of the Ninth Central Committee, Mao devoted a significant portion of his speech to the question of preparing for war with the USSR.⁵⁸ He really thought a Soviet armed attack against China was likely. After the plenum he even issued secret instructions for preparing to evacuate the majority of party leaders from Beijing.⁵⁹

If only he had known that in late January 1967, in a conversation with officials of the Department of Socialist Countries of the Central Committee of the CPSU, Wang Ming, who lived in the Soviet Union, had advised the Soviet leaders to carry out armed intervention in the affairs of the PRC. “The current situation in China is even more dangerous for the socialist camp and the international communist movement than the events in Hungary in 1956,” Wang said. “We cannot let the opportunity pass by we [must] provide them [the healthy forces in the Chinese Communist Party] not only political, but also material support via arms and possibly by sending a force composed of the proper nationalities from Central Asia and the Mongolian People's Republic.” Wang was even prepared to hold secret talks with the leaders of Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia, whom he considered his secret supporters.⁶⁰

Of course, no such incursion took place. In April, May, June, and August 1969, however, new clashes occurred both in the Far East and along the Xinjiang sector of the border. The situation was soon brought under control during another meeting between Kosygin and Zhou Enlai at the Beijing airport on September 11.⁶¹ Following this, negotiations over the contentious border issues commenced. The Soviets had to give up Damansky. Yet until his death Mao continued to view the Soviet Union as China's worst enemy. The uncompromising struggle against “frenzied” revisionism continued at home and abroad.

¹ See MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, Mao's Last Revolution, 177–83.

² See ibid., 94–99, 156–61, 171–73; Borisov and Titarenko, Vystupleniia Mao Tsze-duna, ranee ne publikovavshiesia v kitaiskoi pechati (Mao Zedong's Speeches Previously Unpublished in the Chinese Press), series 5, 180; Pang and Jin, Mao Zedong zhuan (1949–1976) (Biography of Mao Zedong [1949–1976]), vol. 2, 1470–71.

³ Quoted from Chen Xiaonong, ed., Chen Boda zuihou koushu huiyi (The Last Oral Reminiscences of Chen Boda) (Hong Kong: Xingke'er chuban youxian gongsi, 2006), 325–26; Pang and Jin, Mao Zedong zhuan (1949–1976) (Biography of Mao Zedong [1949–1976]), vol. 2, 1480; MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, Mao's Last Revolution, 189.

⁴ Quoted from MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, Mao's Last Revolution, 191–94; Li and Ma, Zhou Enlai nianpu (1949–1976) (Chronological Biography of Zhou Enlai [1949–1976]), vol. 3, 125–27; Ye Jianying zhuanlüe (Short Biography of Ye Jianying) (Beijing: Junshi kexueyuan chubanshe, 1987), 269; Nie, Inside the Red Star, 740–42; Pang and Jin, Mao Zedong zhuan (1949–1976) (Biography of Mao Zedong [1949–1976]), vol. 2, 1481–82.

⁵ See Li and Ma, Zhou Enlai nianpu (1949–1976) (Chronological Biography of Zhou Enlai [1949–1976]), vol. 3, 129. Li Fuchun and Li Xiannian were also active in the debate during the second meeting at Zhongnanhai.

⁶ Quoted from MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, Mao's Last Revolution, 195–96. See also Pang and Jin, Mao Zedong zhuan (1949–1976) (Biography of Mao Zedong [1949–1976]), vol. 2, 1482–83. Wang Ming had lived since early 1956 in the Soviet Union, where he had received medical treatment. He would pass away in Moscow from a heart attack on March 27, 1974.

⁷ See MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, Mao's Last Revolution, 196; Pang and Jin, Mao Zedong zhuan (1949–1976) (Biography of Mao Zedong [1949–1976]), vol. 2, 1483; Li and Ma, Zhou Enlai nianpu (1949–1976) (Chronological Biography of Zhou Enlai [1949–1976]), vol. 3, 129–30.

⁸ See History of the Chinese Communist Party—A Chronology of Events, 336.

⁹ Quoted from Jin, The Culture of Power, 105.

¹⁰ See MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, Mao's Last Revolution, 197–98; Borisov and Titarenko, Vystupleniia Mao Tsze-duna, ranee ne publikovavshiesia v kitaiskoi pechati (Mao Zedong's Speeches Previously Unpublished in the Chinese Press), series 5, 188.

¹¹ Pang and Jin, Mao Zedong zhuan (1949–1976) (Biography of Mao Zedong [1949–1976]), vol. 2, 1486–87.

¹² Quoted from ibid., vol. 2, 1490.

¹³ See MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, Mao's Last Revolution, 203.

¹⁴ Quoted from Pang and Jin, Mao Zedong zhuan (1949–1976) (Biography of Mao Zedong [1949–1976]), vol. 2, 1491.

¹⁵ See ibid., 1493, 1494.

¹⁶ Quoted from MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, Mao's Last Revolution, 215.

¹⁷ Quoted from Pang and Jin, Mao Zedong zhuan (1949–1976) (Biography of Mao Zedong [1949–1976]), vol. 2, 1495.

¹⁸ See ibid., 1496; MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, Mao's Last Revolution, 204–12.

¹⁹ Quoted from Pang and Jin, Mao Zedong zhuan (1949–1976) (Biography of Mao Zedong [1949–1976]), vol. 2, 1496–97.

²⁰ See History of the Chinese Communist Party—A Chronology of Events, 338.

²¹ See Li and Ma, Zhou Enlai nianpu (1949–1976) (Chronological Biography of Zhou Enlai [1949–1976]), vol. 3, 173.

²² See Wang, Failure of Charisma, 159–60; MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, Mao's Last Revolution, 213–14.

²³ See MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, Mao's Last Revolution, 215.

²⁴ See History of the Chinese Communist Party—A Chronology of Events, 338.

²⁵ See MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, Mao's Last Revolution, 216.

²⁶ See ibid., 232; Pang and Jin, Mao Zedong zhuan (1949–1976) (Biography of Mao Zedong [1949–1976]), vol. 2, 1502–4.

²⁷ History of the Chinese Communist Party—A Chronology of Events, 340.

²⁸ See Pang and Jin, Mao Zedong zhuan (1949–1976) (Biography of Mao Zedong [1949–1976]), vol. 2, 1500, 1504–6.

²⁹ Quoted from ibid., 1506.

³⁰ See History of the Chinese Communist Party—A Chronology of Events, 338–40.

³¹ See MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, Mao's Last Revolution, 240, 245–46; Pang and Jin, Mao Zedong zhuan (1949–1976) (Biography of Mao Zedong [1949–1976]), vol. 2, 1450, 1512, 1519.

³² Pang and Jin, Mao Zedong zhuan (1949–1976) (Biography of Mao Zedong [1949–1976]), vol. 2, 1455–56.

³³ See MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, Mao's Last Revolution, 174.

³⁴ “The empire, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide. Thus it has ever been,” says this book. Luo Guangzhong, Three Kingdoms: A Historical Novel, abridged ed., trans. Moss Roberts (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 3.

³⁵ See Borisov and Titarenko, Vystupleniia Mao Tsze-duna, ranee ne publikovavshiesia v kitaiskoi pechati (Mao Zedong's Speeches Previously Unpublished in the Chinese Press), series 6, 226–28, 237–38, 244, 245, 256.

³⁶ History of the Chinese Communist Party—A Chronology of Events, 342.

³⁷ See MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, Mao's Last Revolution, 244–45.

³⁸ Borisov and Titarenko, Vystupleniia Mao Tsze-duna, ranee ne publikovavshiesia v kitaiskoi pechati (Mao Zedong's Speeches Previously Unpublished in the Chinese Press), series 6, 239.

³⁹ Wang, Bolshevik Salute, 55, 95.

⁴⁰ Velikaia Proletarskaia kul'turnaia revolitsiia (vazhneishie dokumenty) (The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution [Key Documents]), 165–67.

⁴¹ Quoted from Deng, Deng Xiaoping and the Cultural Revolution, 75.

⁴² Quoted from Barnouin and Yu, Ten Years of Turbulence, 175.

⁴³ James T. Myers et al., eds., Chinese Politics: Documents and Analysis, vol. 1 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1986), 393.

⁴⁴ Schram, Chairman Mao Talks to the People, 282.

⁴⁵ In the period of March 2–21, 1969, the Soviet army total loss was 54 soldiers and four officers dead, and 85 soldiers and nine officers wounded. The exact number of Chinese casualties is unknown. According to Chinese sources, 29 servicemen were killed, 62 wounded, and one missing. According to Soviet sources, 800 Chinese were killed. See Geroi ostrova Damanskii (Heroes of Damansky Island) (Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia, 1969); Krivosheev, Grif sekretnosti sniat (The Stamp of Secrecy Is Removed), 398; Christian F. Ostermann, “East German Documents on the Border Conflict, 1969,” CWIHP Bulletin, nos. 6–7 (1995/1996): 188–90; Michael Clodfelter, Warfare and Armed Conflict: A Statistical Encyclopedia of Casualty and Other Figures, 1494–2007, 3rd ed. (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2008), 676; D. S. Riabushkin, Mify Damanskogo (Damansky's Myths) (Moscow: AST, 2004), 73–75, 78–81.

⁴⁶ The Polemic on the General Line of the International Communist Movement, 573, 576.

⁴⁷ Ibid., 57.

⁴⁸ Borisov and Titarenko, Vystupleniia Mao Tsze-duna, ranee ne publikovavshiesia v kitais-koi pechati (Mao Zedong's Speeches Previously Unpublished in the Chinese Press), series 4, 119.

⁴⁹ Khrushchev, Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev, vol. 3, 471–72.

⁵⁰ See Ostermann, East German Documents on the Border Conflict, 186–87.

⁵¹ A. M. Aleksandrov-Agentov, Ot Kollontai do Gorbacheva: Vospominaniia diplomata, sovetnika A. A. Gromyko, pomoshchnika L. I. Brezhneva, Iu. V. Andropova, K. U. Chernenko i M. S. Gorbacheva (From Kollontai to Gorbachev: The Reminiscences of a Diplomat, and Adviser to A. A. Gromyko, and Assistant to L. I. Brezhnev, Iu. V. Andropov, K. U. Chernenko, and M. S. Gorbachev) (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniia, 1994), 169.

⁵² Quoted from Li and Ma, Zhou Enlai nianpu (1949–1976) (Chronological Biography of Zhou Enlai [1949–1976]), vol. 2, 686.

⁵³ Quoted from Lichnoe delo Mao Tszeduna (Personal File of Mao Zedong), RGASPI, collection 495, inventory 225, file 71, vol. 4, sheet 149.

⁵⁴ Aleksandrov-Agentov, Ot Kollontai do Gorbacheva (From Kollontai to Gorbachev), 169–70.

⁵⁵ See Snow, The Long Revolution, 175. See also Lichnoe delo Mao Tszeduna (Personal File of Mao Zedong), RGASPI, collection 495, inventory 225, file 71, vol. 4, sheets 49, 51–52, 149.

⁵⁶ Lichnoe delo Mao Tszeduna (Personal File of Mao Zedong), RGASPI F. 495, inventory 225, file 71, vol. 3, sheet 80.

⁵⁷ See Ostermann, “East German Documents on the Border Conflict, 1969,” 187.

⁵⁸ Borisov and Titarenko, Vystupleniia Mao Tsze-duna, ranee ne publikovavshiesia v kitaiskoi pechati (Mao Zedong's Speeches Previously Unpublished in the Chinese Press), series 6, 266.

⁵⁹ See Barnouin and Yu, Ten Years of Turbulence, 91.

⁶⁰ Lichnoe delo Van Mina (Personal File of Wang Ming), vol. 2, 48, 49.

⁶¹ See A. Elizavetin, “Peregovory A. N. Kosygina i Chzhou En'laia v Pekinskom aeroportu” (Talks between A. N. Kosygin and Zhou Enlai at the Beijing Airport), Problemy Dal'nego Vostoka (Far Eastern affairs), no. 5 (1992): 39–63; no. 2 (1993): 107–19. For a version of the talks by the PRC Ministry of Foreign Affairs, see “Meeting between Zhou Enlai and Kosygin at the Beijing Airport,” http://www.fmprc.gov.cn/eng/5691.html.