Was Maoist China a Clone of the Soviet Union?

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Prophets unarmed: Chinese Trotskyists in revolution, war, jail, and the return from limbo

In October 1961 the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) adopted a policy of tacit struggle against the program of the 22nd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). The CPSU's resumption of de-Stalinization alarmed the Chinese leader, Mao Zedong, but he did not yet want to discard a limited rapprochement with Moscow. However, when high-level Sino-Soviet talks in July 1963 collapsed, the relationship between the CPSU and the CCP became irretrievable. Through the subsequent great polemics, the CCP intended to project itself as the spokesman of true Marxism-Leninism and the natural leader of world Communism. After the CCP attacked the top leaders of the CPSU by name, hostility between the two parties intensified. The breakdown of the CCP-CPSU organizational relationship was only a matter of time. Relying on a large array of Chinese-language sources, including records of Chinese leaders' speeches and comments at secret party meetings, this article reassesses the most critical period in the Sino-Soviet split from October 1961 to July 1964.

Disagreements between the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the Soviet Union in the late 1950s over both foreign policy — China's bombardment of Jinmen in August 1958 and border clashes with India in 1959 — and domestic policy — the Great Leap Forward in 1958–60 and the People's Communes Movement in 1958 — provoked a more contentious ideological dispute: which party, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) or the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), more accurately represented orthodox Marxism? which party pointed the international Communist movement in the right direction? and which party should lead the movement? After the Moscow Declaration of November 1957, by which the twelve parties in power in socialist countries endorsed the decisions of the twentieth congress of the CPSU, to demonstrate the unity of the socialist bloc, the CCP moved to the left while the CPSU moved to the right.

The Conference of World Communist and Workers' Parties held in Moscow in November 1957 was the largest gathering of world Communists since the birth of Marxism. Scholars have long assumed that the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) dominated the conference. Newly declassified archival records and memoirs indicate that the idea of convening a conference and issuing a joint declaration was proposed by both the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the CPSU. During the conference the CCP leader, Mao Zedong, played an important role. Mao's extemporaneous remarks at the conference shocked the leaders of the CPSU. His comments on the Soviet intraparty struggle, his blunt remarks about nuclear war, and his declaration that China would overtake Great Britain within fifteen years created doubts and dissatisfactions in the minds of the delegates and cast a cloud over the conference. The Moscow Declaration also revealed incipient Sino-Soviet disagreements, portending Beijing's challenge to Soviet leadership in the socialist bloc. Thus, the Moscow Conference was a turning point for Sino-Soviet relations.

The Chinese and Russian Revolutions, despite many similarities, have culminated in societies with important differences in social organization and patterns of state-guided economic development. This essay argues that these differences in revolutionary outcomes can in significant part be attributed to the influence of differences in the sociopolitical structures and patterns of economic development of the prerevolutionary societies, Romanov Russia and late Imperial China. Old-regime structures helped to shape specific variations in the revolutionary outcomes not merely by surviving, but because they set different limits for successful revolutionary efforts for gaining state power and for using that power once consolidated to promote national development. The essay helps to account sociologically both for differences between broadly similar revolutions and for continuities, despite basic changes, between preand postrevolutionary regimes. From a broad comparative and historical perspective the Russian and Chinese revolutionary transformations-two of the most momentous happenings of the tumultuous twentieth century-seem very similar indeed (Moore, b; Skocpol; Wolf). Both revolutions broke out in huge agrarian empires that had become subject to intense pressures from more industrialized nations abroad. Massive peasant rebellions contributed indispensably to each revolutionary drama. Aristocratic, semi-bureaucratic, and autocratic old regimes gave way to centralized, bureaucratic and mass-mobilizing collectivist regimes, as the revolutionary conflicts led to the expropriation of the traditional state officials and landed upper classes, as well as foreign and domestic capitalists, and brought to the fore in their stead the Bolshevik and Chinese Communist parties. Certainly these similarities in the causes and outcomes of their revolutions are sufficient to mark the national trajectories of modernizing Russia and China as examples of one distinctive developmental pattern in contrast to the diverse alternative paths that have been followed by other countries-routes such as liberal or authoritarian capitalist industrialization or neocolonial dependent development. Nevertheless, as the Chinese Revolution has progressed into its third decade since the consolidation of national political power by the Communists, important contrasts to the Soviet outcomes have become strikingly apparent-differences both of official ideologies and policies and of actual patterns of socioeconomic and political organization. This essay will attempt to show how differences in the Chinese versus Soviet revolutionary outcomes can be attributed in part to effects of differences in the prerevolutionary sociopolitical and economic *In revising an earlier draft of this paper, I have had the benefit of critical comments and suggestions from Barrington Moore, Jr., Betty Moore, Ann Swidler, Shmuel Eisenstadt, Victor Nee, Jim Peck, Kay Trimberger, and Bill Skocpol. Since I have not been wise enough to acceptall of the advice offered to me, I alone am responsible for the problems and inadequacies that remain.

Did there exist a chance in 1949–50 for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the United States to reach an accommodation or, at least, to avoid a confrontation? Scholars who believe that Washington “lost a chance” to pursue a non-confrontational relationship with the CCP generally base their argument on two assumptions – that the Chinese Communists earnestly sought U.S. recognition to expedite their country's postwar economic reconstruction and that the relationship between the CCP and the Soviet Union was vulnerable because of Moscow's failure to offer sufficient support to the Chinese Revolution. These scholars thus claim that it was Washington's anti-Communist and pro-Guomindang (the Nationalist party or GMD) policy that forced the CCP to treat the United States as an enemy. This claim, though seemingly critical of Washington's management of relations with China, is ironically American centered, implying that the CCP's policies toward the United States were simply passive reactions to what Washington was doing toward China. This essay, with insights gained from new Chinese and, in some places, Russian materials, argues that, in the final analysis, the CCP's confrontation with the United States originated in the Party's need to enhance the inner dynamics of the Chinese Revolution after its nationwide victory, and that from a Chinese perspective, no chance existed for Communist China and the United States to reach an accommodation in 1949–50.

Reviewed by: Prophets Unarmed: Chinese Trotskyists in Revolution, War, Jail, and the Return from Limbo ed. by Gregor Benton Alan Hunter (bio) Gregor Benton, editor. Prophets Unarmed: Chinese Trotskyists in Revolution, War, Jail, and the Return from Limbo. Historical Materialism Book Series, vol. 81. The Netherlands: Brill, 2015. xvii, 1289 pp. Hardcover $263.00, isbn 978-90-04-26976-7. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2017. Paperback $55.00, isbn 978-1608465545. Opposition to Chinese communist policies by a variety of political actors—for example the Guomindang—has been well documented. Less well known is the dissident movement that emerged within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) itself, namely the Left Opposition or Trotskyist movement. As in the Soviet Union, which played a key role in the events, this opposition was based on a revolutionary socialist critique of the CCP leadership, not on an anti-communist platform. Prophets Unarmed is by far the most authoritative study of the Chinese Trotskyists. Editor Gregor Benton, Emeritus Professor at Cardiff University, Wales, has a very distinguished record of publications on Chinese history and society. He has made a unique contribution to the historiography of the Chinese revolution, the New Fourth Army, and other political and military campaigns of the 1930s and 1940s. One of his major achievements has been to analyze and document strands of dissidence within and around the CCP. Based on decades of interviews, friendships, discussions, and archival research, Benton's studies have included work on Chen Duxiu and Mao Zedong, on many of the CCP leadership factions, and on writers such as Wang Shiwei and Hu Feng. Prophets Unarmed is a comprehensive collection of documents on the Chinese Trotskyists who, from the late 1920s, challenged the political analyses and practices of the CCP. Benton explains that the Chinese Left Opposition was "was among the largest of the Trotskyist organisations outside Russia, and the best prepared and the most mature and able. Trotsky himself saw it as the cream of the crop" (p. 30). Analysis is therefore highly relevant to the Chinese revolution overall, to an understanding of trends within the CCP, and to the unfolding dramas within the international communist movements. Apart from Benton's earlier publications, this opposition itself has been almost unknown both in China—where it was thoroughly silenced, crushed, and written out of history—and in the West. Prophets Unarmed provides a wealth of material to [End Page 231] break the silence, showing the political perspectives of the revolutionaries, together with accounts of their motivations and fates. Part 1 is a translation of the first book on Chinese Trotskyism to appear in Chinese, Wu Jimin's Purgatory: The Chinese Trotskyists' Ordeal and Struggle. This book was published in Singapore in 2008 after being rejected for political reasons by publishers in the PRC. Wu's study introduces us to the birth of Chinese Trotskyism at the Sun Yat-sen University in Moscow in 1927 and traces the story through to the 1980s by means of interviews with survivors of the revolutionary years. The oppositionist survivors of wars, prison, and persecution were few in number since the Trotskyists were persecuted, arrested, and often tortured and killed by a wide variety of authorities: Stalinist, Maoist, Japanese, and colonial. There are altogether 18 parts and well over a thousand pages in Prophets Unarmed. Just a brief indication of the contents would include: chapters of auto-biography, letters, and studies by several of the main leaders, Chen Duxiu, Zheng Chaolin, Peng Shuzhi, and Wang Fanxi; articles and speeches by Trotsky on the Chinese revolution and the Trotskyists correspondence with him; reflections on Maoism, Stalinism, and guerrilla warfare; literary studies, memoirs, and biographies; and oral histories and obituaries. These are the first English language publications of many of these texts. There are also a small number of contributions by scholars from outside China, including on Chinese students in Moscow, and on Stalin's efforts to persecute Chinese oppositionists in the 1930s. The whole collection is edited and referenced to a very high standard and the English is a pleasure to read. The book will surely remain the definitive collection of texts on the Chinese Left Opposition. So, why study these events and persons with such...

The class discourse of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was a core component of its meta-discourse – the Chinese Revolution. It continues to have a critical impact on the identities and subject positions of the Party as well as the course of events in its history. The chapter is concerned with the meaning of class as articulated by the Chinese Communists since they burst onto China’s political scene. It concentrates on three overlapping questions: What has class meant to the CCP and what is its utility to the Party at different times? How and why has the meaning changed? How has the Party used Marxist class concepts and theories when pursuing the goals of its political projects? The chapter demonstrates that, while class has in varying degrees retained its centrality, its meaning has been re-articulated following sporadic shifts. Examination of the discourse is roughly divided into three phases: 1921–1949, 1949–1978, and 1978 to the present. During the first phase, the CCP treated class primarily as an ideological-political tool, claiming that class affiliation gave the Party a leading role in the ‘new democratic revolution’ and the Chinese Revolution, and treating class as a criterion by which the Party separated their friends from enemies. The utility of class to the CCP during the second phase was mostly normative in that classes represented values that the Party promoted and condemned. During the current phase, class has become an empty signifier, which, retained to maintain a semblance of ideological consistency, constrains the Party’s articulation of alternative discourses.

This article explores the political influence of V. I. Lenin and the Russian Revolution on the lives of two Chinese revolutionaries: Cai Hesen (1895–1931) and Zhao Shiyan (1901–1927), who were critical to the early ideological development of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the spread of mass politics. A Plutarchian comparative case study of Zhao Shiyan and Cai Hesen provides a more nuanced view of the commonalities and differences in their youth group experiences, politicization in France, travel to the Soviet Union, political-agitation activities, and martyrdom. One of the key unifiers of these two life histories is the role of Lenin—his ideas and revolutionary practice. In addition to collected writings, archival materials, and memoirs, the article utilizes oral interviews conducted in 1985 and 1990 with relatives and friends of Cai Hesen and Zhao Shiyan and with CCP scholars.

Previous articleNext article No AccessReviewsRed at Heart: How Chinese Communists Fell in Love with the Russian Revolution, by Elizabeth McGuire. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. vii+462 pp. US$34.95/£22.99 (cloth); also available as an eBook.Roy ChanRoy ChanUniversity of Oregon Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The China Journal Volume 82July 2019 Published on behalf of the Australian Centre on China in the World at the Australian National University Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/703273 Views: 36Total views on this site For permission to reuse, please contact [email protected]PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

"Red at Heart. How Chinese Communists Fell in Love with the Russian Revolution." Europe-Asia Studies, 71(3), pp. 528–529

Red at Heart: How Chinese Communists Fell in Love with the Russian Revolution. By Elizabeth McGuire. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. viii, 462 pp. Appendixes. Notes. Bibliography. $34.95, hard bound. - Volume 78 Issue 2

Working with notions of realism, communism, and feminism in The Golden Notebook, Doris Lessing speaks to our current, multivalent postmodern condition. Yet in 1962, the fractured aesthetic of the novel seemed to some too narrowly focused on personal issues among women rather than on wider social concerns of interest to the Left in its time, which could arguably be captured through realistic representation. Through the complex portrayal of two independently minded single women—novelist Anna Wulf and her closest friend, London stage actor Molly Jacobs—the novel examines issues of concern among the British Left of the fifties. Another figure in The Golden Notebook—Paul Tanner—emphasizes the way class and gender concerns can be seen as distinct from one another: he says, “the great revolution of our time …. The Russian Revolution, the Chinese revolution—they’re nothing at all. The real revolution is, women against men.”1 Today—more than fifty years hence—Lessing’s deconstructive undermining of binary, logocentric notions, such as the oppositions between the Russian and Chinese revolutions, women and men, or the personal and the political, is accepted among much of the academic community.

Throughout the history of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), disagreement has existed concerning the extent to which Chinese Communism might be considered authentically Marxist. In general, most of the available literature tends to simply accept the Chinese Communist self-identification as Marxist. No binding consensus among independent Sinologists, however, is found and resistance has taken on a variety of forms throughout the history of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)—some partisan and some genuinely analytic. The academic literature produced during the entire period of CCP rule in China has been characterized by wide differences in the acceptance of its Marxist authenticity. It has always been tacitly or explicitly accepted that the Marxism of the CCP at its founding in 1920–1921 was in a form acceptable to the Bolshevik rulers of revolutionary Russia. Having been founded directly through the influence of the Third (or Leninist) International, the CCP had to conform to the Bolshevik interpretation of Marxism. Since Lenin had taken “creative” liberties with the original doctrine, some have maintained that the Marxism of the CCP had never been truly Marxist. To add further difficulty to any analysis of the Marxism of the CCP, it is generally understood that Mao Zedong, who gradually assumed the leadership of the CCP, was not particularly well versed in any variant of Marxism. Over the years and under the pressure of circumstances, Mao delivered varied formulations of his revolutionary ideology. How much those formulations accorded with any variant of Marxism became a matter of interpretation. Some scholars hold that by the time of the “Great Leap Forward,” Mao had devised his own ideology. All of this speculation generated controversy within the CCP leadership. By the time of Mao’s demise in 1976, the doctrine of a “second revolution” animated Deng Xiaoping and his followers. It is still a matter of considerable controversy whether that post-Maoist doctrine, in any sense, is Marxist in content or aspiration.