A review
By K.S.Subramanian
When a towering historical personality is brought down to the dimensions of an impostor, there is a deafening hiss of indignation and disbelief. It happened to Stalin but much of his depredations were already reported in the Western media.
After the disintegration of the Soviet Union in the 90s,KGB became ironically an open book. Now Mao ze-Dong faces what his mentor went through - debunking of his entire role in China's history by a duo, Juan
Chang and Jon Halliday in the new best seller - Mao - the Unknown story. And for this massive epoch-shaking exercise they have relied hugely on China's bete noir, the KGB storehouse - a kind of deja vu on Mao - and anonymous sources inside China.
In the late 50s Khrushchev was reported to have seen Mao as a perfect copy of Stalin. He may have been right.
Besieged by famine and the death toll close to 30 million, China had shot itself in the foot with its Great Leap Forward. Largescale collectivisation was the driving motto in agriculture with equal stress on light and heavy industry but it had all collapsed in 1960 through a combination of natural fury and Soviet volteface. A strong lobby under Liu Shao Chi and Peng Deh huai was pushing for reform. It was also bidding for barring polemics, opening trade to the West and conciliation with Moscow. Then came Mao's counter attack in ideological garb - the Cultural Revolution.
Juan Chang's
book has to be viewed in this
time zone as also the preceding ones in Mao's history. Juan Chang was also a Red Guard, whose father went through torture and humiliation despite protestations to being a communist.
Juan Chang's claims on inner-party conflicts from the late 30s, the lcrossing of Ludong bridge against heavy fire and casualties and the Korean war and Sino-Indian conflict in 1961, are based on debatable sources. First, the very claim that Mao had no role in the launch of the
party in 1921 at Shanghai is self-defeating. There are enough experts who had affirmed that Mao was the brain behind the exercise which was to project a political alternative to Kuomintang. Also the Kuomintang-CCP alliance in 1928 had been myopically viewed by the author to buttress her basic premise that Mao, a fake Marxist in her eyes, was using it from then on to consolidate his power in the party. It is a grave charge in a situation when Chiang Kai Shek himself needed the communists to divest China of the nefarious reign of the warlords.
The inner party struggles - with Wang Ming and Chang Kuo tao - had emerged at a time when Kuomintang was losing its political standing at home; Communists were still seen as bandits on the run, a colourful phrase used by Chiang. Also Chiang's forces were suffering reverses and the Long March was stabilising communists' rule in the areas liberated. This was the time when Edgar Snow came out with his revealing book. To say by way of unravelling the monstrous streak in Mao that he tried to poison Wang Ming is only a self-serving device towards Mao demolition. It is a hypothetical claim which cannot be verified with reasonable certainty. Also she had quoted an anonymous source to substantiate the charge that the Red Army fought no battle at Ludong bridge; that Chiang Kai shek's son was held prisoner in Moscow for Stalin to negotiate a deal with him i.e let the Red Army retreat peacefully while Kuomintang watched from the other end. There were counter claims that another 93-year-old woman had seen the battle when she was 15 and that it was led by Mao.
An insurmountable problem with anonymous sources is that they wish to remain so for reasons of protection and it throws a cover as to their reliability or motive. Juan Chang says that Indo-China war of 1962 was Mao's clear violation of the accord signed around 1810 and that China had Moscow's unstinted backing. This was the time when the Sino-Soviet split had become irrevocable; officially Moscow was maintaining a neutral position. Further Kuomintang ao the official stand that the accord had become obsolete and needed review in view of the changed boundaries. It is debatable whether Juan Chang was aware of the history behind the boundary dispute. Also China's occupation of Tibet was a stinker in world's eye and condemned by all.
Mao's scant regard for human lives was apparent when he flippantly spoke of losing a few millions in the process of reconstruction; the excesses of cultural revolution later reinforced the general impression of the callous streak in his character. All that the author says about his treatment of senior and long-term associates - Liu Shao Chi left to suffer the pangs of mistreatment, Pend deh huai tortured and humiliated by the Red Guards, Chou en-lai denied treatment for his cancer - smack of impenitent pursuit of power or the extinction of humanity.
The loss of millions of lives during 1948-76 in the name of reconstruction or ideology remains an unforgivable indictment of the amoral streak in Mao. The enormous bibliography of the book, running into over 800 pages, as a backdrop to the stunning revelations shows that the negative side of Mao merits the reader's scrutiny.
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