Mao's Criticisms of Stalin

["Chris, London" <100423.2040@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Rolf has referred to criticisms the Chinese made of Stalin in 1956,
following Khrushchev's secret speech.

I have still not been able to lay my hands on my photocopies of the
article called "The Historical Expererience of the Dictatorship of
the Proletariat" and "More on the Historical Experience of the Dictatorship
of the Proletariat" [also published as a pamphlet by Foreign Languages Press,
Peking 1956], but I recently realised that the main points of the
former, are quoted in Stuart Schram's "The Political Thought of Mao Tse Tung"
Praeger, USA 1963, Pelican, UK 1969.

This article makes points about the normality of contradictions and
problems existing under socialism. It summarises the achievements of Stalin, and
then makes some criticisms:

1. "..having won such high honour among the people both at home and abroad
by his correct application of the Leninist line, Stalin erroneously
exaggerated his own role and counterposed his individual authority to the
collective leadership, and as a result certain of his actions were opposed
to certain fundamental Marxist-Leninist concepts he himself had propagated..."

2."... when any leader of the Party or the state places himself over and above
the Party and the masses instead of in their midst, when he alienates himself
>from the masses, he ceases to have an all-round, penetrating insight into the
affairs of the state. As long as this was the case, even so outstanding a
personality as Stalin could not avoid making unrealistic and erroneous
decisions on certain important matters... "

3. "During the latter part of his life, Stalin took more and more pleasure in
this cult of the individual and violated the Party's system of democratic
centralism and the principle of combining collective leadership with individual
responsibility. As a result, he made some serious mistakes:

4. for example, he broadened the scope of the suppresssion of 
counter-revolution;

5. he lacked the necessary vigilance on the eve of the anti-fascist war;#

6. he failed to pay proper attention to the further development of agriculture 
and
the material welfare of the peasantry;

7. he gave certain wrong advice on the international communist movement, and,
in particular made a wrong decision on the question of Yugoslavia.

8. On these issues, Stalin fell victim to subjectivism and one-sidedness and
divorced himselve from objective reality and from the masses.

9. Stalin put forward a formula that in different revolutionary periods the main
blow should be so directed as to isolate the middle-of-the-road social and
political forces of the time. This formula of Stalin's should be treated
according to circumstance and from a critical, Marxist point of view.
In certain circumstances it may be correct to isolate the middle forces, but it
is not correct to isolate them under all circumstances.
Our experience teaches us that the main blow of the revolution should be 
directed
at the chief enemy and to isolate him, whereas with the middle forces, a policy
of both uniting with them and struggling against them should be be adopted so 
that
they are at least neutralized; and as circumstances permit, efforts should be 
made
to shift them from their position of neutrality to one of alliance with us in 
order
to facilitate the development of the revolution, But there was a time - the ten
years of civil war from 1927 to 1936 - when some of our comrades crudely applied
this formula of Stalin's to China's revolution by turning their main attack on
the middle forces, singling them out as the most dangerous enemy; the result was
that, instead of isolating the real enemy, we isolated ourselves and suffered
losses to the advantage of the real enemy.
In the light of this doctrinarie error, the Central Committee of the Communisst
Party of China during the period of the anti-Japanese war formulated a policy of
'developing the progressive forces, winning over the middle-of-the-roaders, and
isolating the diehards' for the purpose of defeating the Japanese aggressors ...

10. ...Stalin was a great Marxist-Leninist, yet at the same time a 
Marxist-Leninist
who committed several gross errors without realisizing they were errors.
We should view Stalin from a historical standpoint, make a proper and all-round
analysis to see where he was right and where he was wrong, and draw useful
lessons therefrom. Both the things he did right aand the things he did wrong 
were
phenomena of the international communist movement and bore the imprint of the 
times.



I have extracted and numbered the negative comments. It is difficult to quote
objectively, also because the analysis of Stalin differed according to the time
that it was written, the information that was available, and the significance of
any statement.

On 10th March 1958 (Talks at the Chengtu Conference) [see Stuart Schram,
"Mao Tse-tung Unrehearsed", Penguin UK, 1974] Mao said -

"When Stalin was criticized in 1956, we were on the one hand happy, but on the
other hand apprehensive.
It was completely necessary to remove the lid, to break down blind faith, to
release the pressure, and to emacipate thought. But we did not agree with
demolishing him at one blow. ...


"In 1950 I argued with Stalin for two months.

"The Chinese revolution won victory by acting contrary to Stalin's will. The
fake foreign devil [in Lu Hsun's True Story of Ah Q] "did not allow people to 
make
revolution". ... If we had followed Wang Ming's or in other words, Stalin's
methods the Chinese revolution couldn't have succeeded. When our revolution
succeeded, Stalin said it was a fake. We did not argue with him, and as soon
as we fought the war to resist American and aid Korea, our revolution became
a genuine one [in his eyes].

"The Soviet Union stesses unity, and doesn't talk about contradictions, 
especially
the contradiction between the leaders and the led."

By 1962 the Chinese Party saw Khrushchev's handling of the question of Stalin
primarily as an example of revisionism. It was very suspicious of the 
hypocritical
position of Khruschchev in view of his past record, and Mao personally
was resisting the efforts of his opponents within the party to run
China more according to the Soviet model. There are few specific criticisms
in that article.

I understand from the BBC World Service that Stalin's picture was removed from
Tien An-men Square only in 1989 and only this year is it planned to rename the
main street of Changsha from "Stalin Avenue" to "People's Avenue".

Chris
London.



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