Mao: The Real Story by Alexander V . Pantsov & Steven I. Levine

Author:Alexander V . Pantsov & Steven I. Levine
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

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SOCIALIST INDUSTRIALIZATION

Stalin’s death facilitated Mao’s victory at the Conference on Financial and Economics Work. Only now could Mao accelerate the tempo of revolutionary transformation, in other words, the complete and decisive Stalinization of China. Naturally, he never displayed his innermost feelings. On the contrary, arriving at the embassy of the USSR to pay his respects to the late Kremlin boss, he was almost in tears. “He tried to maintain his self-control and not display any emotions, but he did not succeed,” recalled an eyewitness. “There were tears in [his] eyes.” Zhou Enlai cried along with the new Soviet ambassador, Alexander Panyushkin.1

Mao, however, did not wish to attend the funeral of the “Father of Nations.” Perhaps he was afraid of catching pneumonia—there was frost in Moscow in early March. Perhaps it was because just two months earlier he had discovered that Stalin had been listening in on his conversations with members of the Politburo in Zhongnanhai itself. At the end of 1950, Stalinist technicians from the MGB who were working in Beijing installed microphones in Mao’s bedroom and several other rooms in Mao’s residence, obviously with the help of their Chinese agents. When this was discovered, Mao was furious and even sent Stalin a note of protest. The latter replied disingenuously that he had no idea what sorts of unseemly activities these MGB agents were up to in China. He conveyed to Mao his formal apology.2 In his last year Stalin caused one more unpleasant incident that again clouded his relations with Mao. This resulted from the screening in the Soviet Union of Przheval’skii, a film that depicted the Chinese people in an unfavorable light, according to the CCP leadership. The screenwriters may have tried to create an objective picture of the great traveler Nikolai Przheval’skii who disliked the Chinese on account of their “hypocrisy, craftiness, and cunning.”3 But Stalin, who was the chief censor in matters of cinematography, saw nothing amiss, and not only approved showing the film in the USSR, but also sent a copy to an international film festival in Czechoslovakia. Dissatisfied, the Chinese requested that their Soviet comrades not show the film. Then Stalin, in the name of Minister of Cinematography Ivan Bol’shakov, sent a sharply worded telegram to Beijing saying that he considered the Chinese criticism “incorrect and deeply mistaken.” The dictator, unaccustomed to criticism, accused the Chinese of nationalism. “It must be said,” he noted,

that here in the Soviet Union at a certain time among a certain number of historians and artists of a nationalist persuasion we also observed and still encounter attempts to embellish history as well as to conceal historical truth. . . . We Russian communists view such persons as dangerous, as chauvinists who infect the masses with the poison of nationalism and undermine the bases of criticism and self-criticism that are the foundation of the communist method of educating the masses.4

Mao was of course offended by the tone of the telegram and the reproaches it contained.

A meeting of the Central Committee selected Zhou Enlai to head the Chinese delegation to Stalin’s funeral.

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