“Moscow-Peking!!! Under the banner of freedom, the peoples of the world are marching forward!!!” This was the happy song blasting out of the loudspeakers, as our train pulled into the railway station in Peking in late summer of 1954. Oh what a triumph of hypocrisy! How could anybody possibly believe that the two great nations Russia and China could ever get along in a relationship where Moscow refused to see Peking as an equal partner, but wanted to boss over the other unconditionally. It is only today, when these two nations have become genuine partners, joining hands on the crest of the anti-American global tidal wave of the post-Soviet world order, that the Russian-Chinese relationship can fully blossom. Curiously, this new relationship is an organic projection of their two separate national strategies of the past century, yet only today has it been able to overcome the longstanding climate of mutual distrust and false preconceptions.
But then, ever since the People’s Republic of China had come into existence, on October 1, 1949, especially after Comrade Mao had brilliantly outsmarted all parties concerned, notably including Stalin and the USSR, these two eternal friends would have nothing but choicest rattlesnake venom for each other in private, while publicly singing all those sweetheart tunes.
Chairman Mao had turned out to be a big disappointment for Comrade Stalin: the Soviet postwar plan had been counting on two Chinas: Northern, under Mao, and Southern, under Chiang Kai-shek. With these two at each other’s throats, Mao would have made such a perfect client! But as the leader of half-a-billion-and-counting Chinese Comrades he had grown too big for the special shoes cobbled for him in the Kremlin. In retrospect, it would have been better for Moscow to have had him dead, back in 1934, when, with Moscow quietly looking on, the Chinese Communist Army, to which Mao belonged, was routed by the Kuomintang forces. The Commander of that Red Army had been Comrade Chu Teh, a fairly reliable client of Moscow, who, subsequent to the Communist defeat, went on to cooperate with the Kuomintang (as Moscow wanted), like nothing nasty had happened. But Comrade Mao, at the head of 100,000 men, then started a punishing 10,000 km-long retreat to a safe haven in northern China, going down in history as The Long March, which was survived by just 5,000 of his loyal followers, but started a powerful legend, which would propel him to the heights of an unchallenged dictatorship over this most populous nation in the world.
Perhaps, at that time already Mao Tse-Tung well understood the role played by his Soviet Comrades, and he would never trust them in anything for as long as he lived. Nor would he ever trust his erstwhile elder associate Comrade Chu Teh, although publicly, he stopped short of a full renunciation.
It was therefore slightly unwise of Stalin to expect that Mao could be relied on to follow the Soviet script, in the events following the end of World War II in Asia. On the other hand, he did not have much choice in the matter: Mao was by now the unchallenged Communist leader in China, his legend having fully blossomed, and all that Stalin could hope for was that the forces of Mao and Chiang might be fairly evenly matched, to sustain his dream of two Chinas. But that was not to be the case. It was not even a close contest, but a full-sized rout, sweeping Chiang Kai-shek off the Chinese mainland into the last-ditch retreat on the island of Taiwan, where Washington now reassured him of its support, gladly and gratefully accepted.
What happened thereafter, past October 1, 1949, was an intense game of cat and mouse, immersed in a lot of smoke and deceptively reflected in a hundred crooked mirrors. The two key centerpieces of the years from 1949 to 1953 are to be featured in my last China entry, which follows, but the rest of my present story will be wrapped up in the remainder of this entry.
Cautious and alert, Mao had thwarted Stalin’s assassination attempts, and in 1954, he hosted the next Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in Peking, for the big festivities, surrounding the fifth anniversary of the People’s Republic of China. My personal memories of that Khrushchev’s 1954 visit to Peking are related in my book Stalin, and Other Family. In a nutshell, there was an abundance of personal spite between the two leaders, covered up by a profusion of disingenuous smiles and a public profession of the eternal friendship between the two great nations. But the telltale signs of the actual sorry state of the Sino-Soviet relationship were all out there, for everybody to see, only the West preferred not to see it, maintaining the self-serving fiction of an unbreakable Sino-Soviet bloc, most probably for sheer cold-war propaganda purposes. Ironically, this West-perpetuated myth was exactly how the two Communist enemies wanted the world to see it. The state of deceit would continue until the official Sino-Soviet rift was publicly announced in 1961.
But then, ever since the People’s Republic of China had come into existence, on October 1, 1949, especially after Comrade Mao had brilliantly outsmarted all parties concerned, notably including Stalin and the USSR, these two eternal friends would have nothing but choicest rattlesnake venom for each other in private, while publicly singing all those sweetheart tunes.
Chairman Mao had turned out to be a big disappointment for Comrade Stalin: the Soviet postwar plan had been counting on two Chinas: Northern, under Mao, and Southern, under Chiang Kai-shek. With these two at each other’s throats, Mao would have made such a perfect client! But as the leader of half-a-billion-and-counting Chinese Comrades he had grown too big for the special shoes cobbled for him in the Kremlin. In retrospect, it would have been better for Moscow to have had him dead, back in 1934, when, with Moscow quietly looking on, the Chinese Communist Army, to which Mao belonged, was routed by the Kuomintang forces. The Commander of that Red Army had been Comrade Chu Teh, a fairly reliable client of Moscow, who, subsequent to the Communist defeat, went on to cooperate with the Kuomintang (as Moscow wanted), like nothing nasty had happened. But Comrade Mao, at the head of 100,000 men, then started a punishing 10,000 km-long retreat to a safe haven in northern China, going down in history as The Long March, which was survived by just 5,000 of his loyal followers, but started a powerful legend, which would propel him to the heights of an unchallenged dictatorship over this most populous nation in the world.
Perhaps, at that time already Mao Tse-Tung well understood the role played by his Soviet Comrades, and he would never trust them in anything for as long as he lived. Nor would he ever trust his erstwhile elder associate Comrade Chu Teh, although publicly, he stopped short of a full renunciation.
It was therefore slightly unwise of Stalin to expect that Mao could be relied on to follow the Soviet script, in the events following the end of World War II in Asia. On the other hand, he did not have much choice in the matter: Mao was by now the unchallenged Communist leader in China, his legend having fully blossomed, and all that Stalin could hope for was that the forces of Mao and Chiang might be fairly evenly matched, to sustain his dream of two Chinas. But that was not to be the case. It was not even a close contest, but a full-sized rout, sweeping Chiang Kai-shek off the Chinese mainland into the last-ditch retreat on the island of Taiwan, where Washington now reassured him of its support, gladly and gratefully accepted.
What happened thereafter, past October 1, 1949, was an intense game of cat and mouse, immersed in a lot of smoke and deceptively reflected in a hundred crooked mirrors. The two key centerpieces of the years from 1949 to 1953 are to be featured in my last China entry, which follows, but the rest of my present story will be wrapped up in the remainder of this entry.
Cautious and alert, Mao had thwarted Stalin’s assassination attempts, and in 1954, he hosted the next Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in Peking, for the big festivities, surrounding the fifth anniversary of the People’s Republic of China. My personal memories of that Khrushchev’s 1954 visit to Peking are related in my book Stalin, and Other Family. In a nutshell, there was an abundance of personal spite between the two leaders, covered up by a profusion of disingenuous smiles and a public profession of the eternal friendship between the two great nations. But the telltale signs of the actual sorry state of the Sino-Soviet relationship were all out there, for everybody to see, only the West preferred not to see it, maintaining the self-serving fiction of an unbreakable Sino-Soviet bloc, most probably for sheer cold-war propaganda purposes. Ironically, this West-perpetuated myth was exactly how the two Communist enemies wanted the world to see it. The state of deceit would continue until the official Sino-Soviet rift was publicly announced in 1961.
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