De-Maoization

Abstract

Three years after the death of Joseph Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev surprised the world with his dramatic de-Stalinization speech at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Unlike deStalinization, which began only after the death of the dictator, deMaoization got under way long before Mao Tse-tung died. It has been a protracted process involving several factions in the Chinese Communist Party; and it has usually been heavily veiled, and often interrupted. Mao was the CCP leader responsible for victory in the civil war, but he consolidated his power largely by utilizing the talents of others, such as Chu Teh, P'eng Teh-huai, and Lin Piao in military affairs, Chou En-lai in administration and diplomacy, Liu Shao-ch'i in the labor movement and internal security;and by playing one faction against the other, always liquidating the most powerful secondary leader. For example, Chang Kuo-t'ao, Kao Kang, Yao Shu-shih, P'eng Teh-huai, Liu Shao-ch'i, and Lin Piao were all purged and disgraced while occupying a position in the CCP second only to Mao. Chou En-lai barely escaped because of his usefulness as an administrator and diplomat, his value as a counterweight to Liu and Lin, and his long illness. Teng Hsiaop'ing was pushed aside quickly when Chou died. In the Soviet Union, de-Stalinization was carried out by lesser dictators who feared Stalin but were not substantially opposed to his policies. In Communist China, most of the purged secondary leaders had rigorously opposed Mao's policies. If one can still argue that the purges of Chang Kuo-t'ao, Yao Shu-shih, and Kao Kang were the result primarily of a power struggle, one must recognize that P'eng, Liu, and Teng were against Mao's policy of the Three Red Flags (the Great Leap Forward, the communes, and the General Line of Socialist Construc-