Mao's Conversations with the Soviet Ambassador, 1953-55

48 Pages·2002·0.12 MB·English

by  Paul Wingrove

WOODROW WILSON INTERNATIONAL CENTER FOR SCHOLARS

Mao’s Conversations with the Soviet Christian Ostermann,
Lee H. Hamilton, Director
Director Ambassador, 1953-55

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Introduction

The years covered by these documents, 1953-55, were years of transition in the
People’s Republic of China (PRC), an interlude of relative calm, but with severe storms
still ahead. This is reflected in the documents published here which show an expansive
Mao Zedong, occasionally anxious about his health, but confident in his control of major
policy issues and alert to emerging problems. In Sino-Soviet affairs, the death of Stalin in
March 1953 had ushered in a tenuous, but not untroubled, modus vivendi with the new
Moscow leadership; in foreign affairs there emerged the brief and comparatively benign
Bandung phase, and the moderation of the 1954 Geneva conference on Indochina and
Korea. In domestic affairs, while the intellectuals were troublesome and needed to be
reminded of their duty to their new masters—as Mao saw it—this would be a relatively
low-key process. This interlude turned out to be short-lived, for shortly after the first
rumblings of the Sino-Soviet dispute became audible, imperialism became the target of a
more shrill foreign policy, and the intelligentsia the objects of the brutality of the 'anti-
Rightist' movement.
No single theme emerges from these records of Mao's conversations with Soviet
Ambassador Pavel Yudin. Mao ranges over foreign and domestic policy with ease, often
seemingly at random. One topic, however, takes more of his attention than any other, and
also spans this three year period quite precisely. It arises sporadically but repeatedly in
these conversations as Mao ruminates, soliloquizes, and occasionally throws out some
outrageous assertions. This topic is the “Gao Gang-Rao Shushi affair,” which emerged in
1953 and concluded in 1955. By that time the key figure in the affair, Gao Gang, had
1
committed suicide. Nonetheless, as a struggle which impinged on the unity of the Party
itself, it was thought expedient to bring it to a formal conclusion despite the death of the
leading protagonist, in order to punish Gao's allies and warn against imitation. For
students of the Cold War this brief, intense conflict turns out to be significant for what it
reveals about the state of Sino-Soviet relations in the mid-1950s.
The “affair” arose from the alleged “careerist” and “factional” activity of Gao,
who after 1949 became the senior Chinese Communist Party (CCP) figure in northeastern
China. By early 1954 he was to face a special party plenum, answering charges of having
conspired against Liu Shaoqi and Zhou Enlai, and intending to replace Liu as second to
Mao in the party hierarchy.1 Rao Shushi,2 whose political base was in Shanghai, was part
of this still somewhat mysterious “anti-party conspiracy,” although in effect the junior
partner, as it developed from the middle of 1953. Even at the time of the writing of this
article, some of the basic facts of this episode are in dispute. Russian historian
Constantine Pleshakov, for example, claims that Mao “killed” Gao,3 although the
conventional view (which receives tangential support from documents I have obtained
from Russian Foreign Ministry archives but not published here 4) accepts that Gao

1 F. C. Teiwes has written in great detail about this affair in his two excellent books: Politics and Purges in
China: Rectification and The Decline of Party Norms (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1979) and Politics at
Mao's Court: Gao Gang and Party Factionalism in the early 1950s (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1990).

2 Head of the Party’s Organisation department and the leading figure in the CCP’s East China Bureau.

3 See his article in the invaluable collection O.A.Westad, (ed.): Brothers in Arms: The Rise and Fall of the
Sino-Soviet Alliance (Washington D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press and Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 1998). The reference to Gao is on p. 229.

4 Zhou Enlai and Liu Shaoqi informed Yudin, in a briefing on the case, of Gao’s propensity to suicide:
AVPRF (Foreign Policy Archive of the Russian Federation) ‘Iz dnevnika P. F. Yudin: Zapis besedi s
sekretarem TsK KPK Liu Shaoqi i presedatelem gosudarstvennogo administrativnogo soveta i ministrom
inostrannix del KNR Zhou Enlaem’, 9 March 1954, AVPRF fond 06, opis 13a, papka 39, delo 227.

2
committed suicide in 1954. Chinese historians Chen Jian and Yang Kuisong go a step
further and suggest that the USSR was told very little about the Gao-Rao affair as it
unfolded, concluding that this suggests poor relations between the two parties at that
time.5 In fact, the documents presented here show Mao himself making a significant
number of references to the Gao-Rao affair, and it is quite clear that Yudin was very well
informed about the case. While Mao's own conversational style with Yudin inclined to
the vague and did not disdain the use of the unverifiable assertion, he gave instructions to
both Liu Shaoqi and Zhou Enlai to brief the ambassador on the detail of the charges and
the course of proceedings, which they did, in detail and on several occasions.6 It is quite
clear that the Chinese went out of their way to keep the Russians informed, but it is less
clear what that implied about relations with the USSR. Perhaps it suggests simply a more
confident Mao, one who, after Stalin's death, felt comfortable enough to speak plainly
and without prevarication to senior Soviet figures.
This aside, there is a compelling question raised by some of Mao's apparently
offhand remarks in these conversations, namely the degree to which Gao's fate was a
consequence of the closeness of his contacts with the Soviet Union on the one hand, and
the death of Stalin on the other. In some of the major accounts, Gao's alleged pro-Soviet
sympathies are of relatively little import, secondary to his inner-party factionalist
activity.7 Certainly, Gao's “factionalism” is the major part of the case as related by Mao
himself, as well as by Liu and Zhou in their extended briefings for Yudin. Yet for some

5 Westad, ed., Brothers in Arms, p.259

6 As well as the conversation cited in note 5 above, there is additionally a conversation of 2 February 1954
between Liu, Zhou and Yudin, where a lengthy account of the case is given: AVPRF, fond 0100, opis 47,
papka 379, delo 7. I also have copies of these briefings, but they are not published here.

7 See Teiwes, Politics and Purges in China: Rectification and The Decline of Party Norms.
3
years there have been suggestions that Gao's personal and political closeness to Moscow
may have been a significant but deliberately minimized part of the case8—publicly
minimized by Beijing to soften the Soviet response. This theme pervades the Mao-Yudin
conversations, and the Liu-Zhou briefings, sometimes referred to tangentially, but
occasionally forcefully, bluntly and undiplomatically. Certainly Mao seems to have
worried little about the impact some of his claims may have had on Ambassador Yudin—
for example that Gao Gang became more active in his “factionalism” after returning from
Moscow in 1953.
Evidence from other sources which has emerged in recent years buttresses the
case for a Soviet dimension to the Gao-Rao affair. The already well-used recollections of
Ivan Kovalev,9 for example, suggest that Mao's suspicions about Gao's pro-Soviet
inclinations may have been fuelled by events which took place in 1949-50. The main
item of Kovalev's account revolves round an alleged incident in July 1949 when Gao was
a member of a secret Chinese mission, headed by Liu Shaoqi, sent to Moscow to conduct
talks with Stalin. During a meeting of the delegation with the Soviet leadership, Gao is
said to have called for Manchuria to become the seventeenth republic of the USSR;
reportedly he also made other suggestions which seemed intended to bring Moscow into
Chinese affairs as a bulwark against potential American actions. Kovalev reports that
Stalin wisely poured scorn on Gao and his proposal. This is a pretty outlandish story, to

8 Khrushchev, for example, was aware that some Chinese thought of Gao as Moscow’s man: see
Khrushchev Remembers: The Last Testament, vol. 2, ed. S. Talbott (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books,
1977), p. 292. Mao, too, in a speech of March 1958 made the point that “Stalin was very fond of Kao
Kang…” See Mao Tse-tung Unrehearsed (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1974), p.100.

9 Kovalev was in effect a personal emissary from Stalin to Mao in the years 1948-49, although ostensibly
assigned to assist railway reconstruction in north China.

4
put it mildly. Although fleshed out with some credible detail by Kovalev, it has to be
viewed skeptically, even given Kovalev's status as an eyewitness. Further recollections
by Kovalev, to the effect that Gao was providing information about the CCP’s internal
affairs to Kovalev and to Stalin, is perhaps more firmly founded since it receives support
from other sources—including Zhou Enlai (who makes the charge that Gao talked
irresponsibly to Soviet figures10) and Mao himself. Stalin, for unknown reasons, handed
over Kovalev's reports to Mao at the time of the Mao-Stalin meetings in 1949-50, a step
which had a marked impact not only on a number of Russians who learned of this
action,11 but evidently also on Mao, for he refers to Kovalev’s infamous “letter,” and
Gao's involvement in it, in one of the conversations published below (conversation of 26
March 1954), and offers to show this “letter”—which had been ‘preserved’—to Yudin.
Kovalev additionally recounts some other stories of lesser significance but with
the same implications—that Gao was too sympathetic to the USSR for his own good, and
in consequence Mao chose to remove or weaken him, but—crucially—only after Stalin
had died and could no longer protect his client. These are interesting recollections, but the
value of this material needs to be set against the fact that Kovalev was, by his own
admission, highly sympathetic to Gao (whom he refers to as a “true comrade” and “an
exceptional man”), even to the extent of briefly withholding criticism of Gao in a
telegram sent by Stalin to Beijing.12 This friendship was critically commented on in Zhou
Enlai’s recital to Yudin of the main points of the case against Gao in March 1954.13

10 This constitutes part of one of a number of points made by Zhou and Liu Shaoqi, talking to Yudin. ‘Iz
dnevnika P. F. Yudin: Zapis besedi s sekretarem TsK KPK Liu Shaoqi i presedatelem gosudarstvennogo
administrativnogo soveta i ministrom inostrannix del KNR Zhou Enlaem’, 9 March 1954, AVPRF fond 06,
opis 13a, papka 39, delo 227. This document is not published here.
11 Khrushchev, for example: “God only knows what Stalin thought he was doing,” Khrushchev Remembers,
p.291.

5
But Kovalev was not alone in his sympathy for Gao. His account finds support
from another Soviet commentator who, like Kovalev, was a personal acquaintance of
Gao: the former Soviet diplomat (and later scholar) Andrei Ledovsky. His biography of
Gao Gang is little known in the West, but is a valuable source and perhaps more reliable
than Kovalev’s recollections.14 Ledovsky developed a friendship with, and admiration
for, Gao, whom he came to know while serving as Consul-General in Mukden in the
period 1950-52. In part his feelings toward Gao were political rather than personal. He
offers a defense of Gao as an orthodox pro-Soviet Communist, sympathetic to the Soviet
model of economic planning, hostile to the bourgeoisie and to the non-Communist parties
in the PRC, appreciative of the work of Soviet specialists in China and of the helpful role
of the USSR in Manchuria after 1945.15 By implication, Mao had none of these qualities,
while Gao was a “great friend of the Soviet Union.” This is not simply hagiography,
however; Ledovsky has interesting information to offer not only from his personal
knowledge of Gao, but also from being able to use (without attribution) secret documents
from the Russian Foreign Ministry archives.
His argument is similar in tone to Kovalev's—that Gao had so offended Mao by
his (in Ledovsky's view, perfectly correct) contacts with Russians over a number of years
that, not long after the PRC’s founding in 1949, Mao determined to weaken Gao's
political base in Manchuria.16 Possibly the plan was put on hold as Gao played a crucial
role during the Korean War but then, in 1952, Gao was called to Beijing to take control

12 Kovalev's account can be found in The Journal of Northeast Asian Studies (Winter 1991), pp. 45-76.
13 ‘Iz dnevnika P. F. Yudin: Zapis besedi s sekretarem TsK KPK Liu Shaoqi i presedatelem
gosudarstvennogo administrativnogo soveta i ministrom inostrannix del KNR Zhou Enlaem’, 9 March
1954, AVPRF fond 06, opis 13a, papka 39, delo 227.
14 A. M. Ledovsky, Delo Gao Gana-Rao Shushi (Moscow: Institut Dalnego Vostoka, 1990).
15 These views are scattered around the Ledovsky biography, see chapters 2, 3, 4.
16 See Ledovsky, Delo Gao Gana-Rao Shushi, p.111.
6