China and Russia

by EDWARD CRANKSHAW

NEARLY half a century ago, when Imperial Germany was trying to persuade Imperial Russia to join her in strengthening a disintegrating China against Japan, the Russian Foreign Minister, Sazonov, replied: “Germany is interested in China as a market and she fears China’s disintegration. . . . Russia, on the contrary, as a nation bordering China, and with a long, unfortified frontier, cannot wish for the strengthening of her neighbor: she could therefore view with equanimity the collapse of modern China.”

That was in 1912, only seven years after Japan had inflicted a crushing and humiliating defeat on the Russians and was growing stronger from year to year. On the face of it, one would have said, the Russian Foreign Office should have welcomed any opportunity to rescue China from disintegration so that she could act as a counterpoise to Japan. This, however, was not the view taken in St. Petersburg, which was obsessed with that long, remote frontier and the teeming masses on the other side of it. The general policy vis-à-vis Japan was for Russia to outflank her by developing her underpopulated Far Eastern territories and probing and pushing ever southward. It is a historical fact, moreover, that power balances have never appealed to Russian statesmen. Russia trusts nothing that she cannot dominate: she prefers to stretch herself to the limit, and beyond, to achieve absolute control of a contested area, even though she may know this control to be precarious, rather than to let another government, no matter how friendly, share as an equal ally in the maintenance of her interests.

Yet today the Communist Government in Moscow is somehow pledged to assist a Communist Government in Peking to push a unified China through an industrial revolution which, if all goes according to plan, will one day transform China into the strongest and most irresistible power in the world. China is ruled by Chinese, not Russians. China has 600 million people and is supposed to be increasing at a rate of 20 million every year. She is already heavily overpopulated by all reasonable standards. The Soviet Union has about 220 million people, increasing at the rate of about 3 million a year. She is an underpopulated country, and the emptiest areas of all are to be found in her own Far East.

Facts of this kind, I think, should always be in front of our minds when we try to think sensibly about Russia and China. But we overlook them all too easily. The sort of global map so fashionable nowadays, which shows a monstrous and dominating mass, in black or red, embracing the North Pole and curling down almost to the equator, does not seem to me to assist clear thinking. If we really believe that the Communist bloc, consisting of the Soviet Union, hilf of Europe outside Russia, the Mongolian People’s Republic, North Korea and Viet Minh, and China with her 600 millions, is to be counted as a single homogeneous force, with India, Burma, and large tracts of the Middle East leaning toward that force, and with the rest of the world, including the signatories of NATO, at sixes and sevens— if we really believe this is the world picture, then there is nothing to be done but eat, drink, and be merry, or queue up for a Party card. If we do not really believe it, then we had better stop looking at those maps and use our heads.

Copyright 1956, by The Atlantic Monthly Company, Boston 16, Mass. All rights reserved.

Of course, we do not believe it. The trouble is that there is very little to go by in the way of immediate hard fact about the true situation inside the so-called Soviet bloc. And it is this absence of information which strengthens immeasurably the impression of solidarity between the two great Communist empires.

2

ONE of the first things to remember is that the Chinese revolution was achieved by Mao Tse-tung far sooner than Stalin expected. It would be wrong to say that Mao had no support from Stalin; of course he received support, but not of a positive and convincing kind. Stalin, in assisting Mao, was less interested in the swift victory of the Chinese Communists than in the chronic weakening of the existing regime. When the revolution succeeded, Stalin was surprised, certainly, and probably upset: it put an end to his probing southward. Russia had either to accept the People’s Republic as a more or less equal partner, or else to move in and dominate it entirely, as she moved in and dominated Yugoslavia for a time. There was no halfway house. And, of course, China was too big to be dominated entirely.

As an example, would Stalin have succeeded in creating the Mongolian People’s Republic as an obedient satellite of the Soviet Union if he had had Mao to deal with instead of Chiang Kai-shek? In 1949, Dr. David Dallin, contemplating Soviet expansionism in the Far East, wrote as follows: —

The new situation that arose in the Far East in 1945 would make it possible to convert the Russian Far Eastern lands into peaceful provinces and to provide certain guarantees of normal life. The danger from Japan has disappeared. China will be no threat for generations to come. Further economic development and increased utilisation of its resources would make it possible for the people of the region at least to stand on their own feet and to become an organic element of the great organism of Russia.

The Moscow government has given its answer to the all important problem of the Far East. In pursuit of its policy of expansion, in its boundless dynamism, it is developing the area into a new fortress, subjected once again to all the vicissitudes of military operations. Its dynamism has increased far beyond the accomplishments of its imperial predecessor at the peak of its successes in the Far East, in the decade from 1895 to 1904. The contemplated Soviet sphere in eastern Asia is considerably bigger than was the “Kuropatkin” sphere 50 years ago. The inclusion of Mongolia, Manchuria and North Korea into the Soviet orbit is almost completed, while the drive to the South continues in the process of the Chinese civil war.

I don’t know what Dr. Dallin would have to say now; but the situation no longer looks like that to me. Moscow still holds the Mongolian People’s Republic; but she no longer has any “moral" pretext for this. Manchuria with its developing industries is once again firmly Chinese. And the Korean War gave China her great opportunity, which she took, to get Russia out of Nort h Korea — an aspect of that climacteric conflict which we in the West all too easily overlooked. It was not overlooked in Moscow.

It seems to me, in a word, that we cannot have it both ways. Either there does exist a Russian dynamic — and history tells us there is—which drives Russia forward to ever new conquests along the line of least resistance, or else there is not. If there is, then Russian expansion has been stopped in the Far East by the Chinese revolution. It is only if the Russian dynamic is entirely exhausted — which is not the view commonly held by the NATO planners — and replaced by a benevolent and undemanding Communist internationalism that we can expect Moscow to welcome the growth of an independent Communist China with unreserved rejoicing.

This is a point missed very often by people who talk about Mao Tse-tung one day becoming another Tito. Mao has been a Tito from the very beginning. What Tito did in 1948, after three years of subservience to Stalin, was to cut himself free at the risk of war with the Soviet Union and with the strongest likelihood of finding himself crushed by economic pressures. With Western help he managed to hold out until Stalin died and the new leadership decided to call the quarrel a day. But Mao Tse-tung was never dominated by Stalin, though goodness knows what blackmailing pressures Stalin contrived to submit him to in the early days of his revolution. Communist China is an independent power. For a variety of reasons, economic and strategic, it has been in her strong interest to maintain the closest possible alliance with the Soviet Union, and it is probably true to say that without Soviet support Mao Tse-tung would not have made good. There is also the community of outlook induced by the Marxist faith; but that this is not proof against all conflict has been demonstrated clearly enough by Tito.

There was a time when some Western observers believed that the Chinese revolution had nothing in common with the Russian Bolshevik revolution; but I imagine this time is past. China’s leaders are devoted Marxists. More than that, they are Leninists and Stalinists too. That is to say, just as Stalin did when he got rid of Trotsky in 1928, they are staking the future of their regime on a forced industrial revolution accompanied by the collectivization of agriculture. This has implications for Moscow which are not wholly reassuring from the Soviet point of view.

At the start of the October Revolution it was generalIv understood by the Bolsheviks that this cataclysm was merely an incident in the global revolution. The Communist International in those days stood for something. It stood for the workers of the world uniting. As far as Lenin was concerned, he was prepared, at least theoretically, to see the Communist Party of the Soviet Union as a branch of the supranational Comintern. He wanted world revolution for its own sake — not world revolution run by, and for the benefit of, the Moscow comrades. Very soon, of course, when it was clear that the Moscow comrades were the only ones capable of decisive action, they assumed, Lenin among them, a position of seniority. But although the policies of Zinoviev’s Comintern were soon in conflict with the policies of Chicherin s Foreign Office — a dualism that persisted until Stalin assumed absolute control —the idea of the Soviet Communist Party as primus inter pares was not abandoned for ten years.

Looking at the matter in the most utilitarian way, it was desirable (Trotsky said necessary) for other countries to carry out revolutions quickly so that they could help the Russians to consolidate and exploit their own revolution. And through all the quarrels with Trotsky and his insistence on permanent revolution, Stalin, with his insistence on consolidating the Russian base—if necessary at the expense of comrades outside Russia — was moving further from the idea of a genuine international and closer to the reality of Russian hegemony over the Communist world. In the end it became the first duty of Communists everywhere to serve the Soviet Union, seen theoretically as the base of the world revolution, practically as an expanding power in its own right. Tito dissented from this proposition and staked his own life on it. Mao Tse-tung has never subscribed to it. The Communist leaders of Eastern Europe are powerless to dissent, even if they wish to.

Even now the Chinese leadership pay at least lip service to the seniority of the Soviet Communist Party. At the 20th Party Congress, which took place in Moscow last February, the chief Chinese delegate read a message from the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The message was signed by Mao Tse-tung. It spoke in flattering terms of Soviet achievement, but it spoke as an admiring equal. It contained a curious phrase: “Together with the Communist Parties of the countries in the camp of Socialism headed by the Soviet Union, and the Communist Parties of other countries, the Communist Party of China will always work untiringly to strengthen world peace and promote the progress of mankind.” Mao Tse-tung’s other relevant observation was as follows: “The Communist Party of the Soviet Union has always been and always will be an outstanding example to the Communist Parties of all countries. It is the foremost ‘shock brigade’ of the world revolutionary and working-class movement.”

This is very far from swearing subservience to Soviet leadership. So was the manner of its delivery. Poland sent Bierut and Cyrankiewicz; Czechoslovakia seat Novotny and Zapotocky; East Germany sent Ulbricht and Grotewohl; Rumania sent Gheorgiu-Dei; Bulgaria sent Chervenkov; Hungary sent Rakosi; but China sent neither Mao Tse-tung nor Chou En-lai — only the Party elder, Chu Teh, who made a little speech and delivered Mao’s message.

That the Soviet Union is now helping the Chinese People’s Republic is evident. “The building of socialism in our country on such a vast scale and with such speed,” said Chu Teh in his speech to the Moscow Congress, “is inconceivable, it should be pointed out, without the disinterested, all-round and systematic assistance of the Soviet Union.”The scale and speed he had indicated earlier: “China is at presen, being borne along on the high tide of the great socialist revolution. Since last winter the socialist transformation of agriculture has been proceeding at a rapid rate. To date, 78 per cent of the country’s peasant households have joined agricultural producer coöperatives. It is expected that the semi-socialist form of agricultural coöperation will be for the most part completed by the coming autumn and the wholly socialist form by the end of 1958.”He went on to say: “The changeover of capitalist industrial and commercial enterprises to state-private enterprises is also proceeding rapidly and by whole trades. To date, all the private industrial and commercial enterprises in such major cities as Peking, Shanghai, Tientsin, Shenyang, Chungking, Wuhan, Canton and Sian and in many medium-sized cities have already been converted into state-private enterprises. Handicraft cooöeration is likewise advancing with great strides.”The grand conclusion from this was that “the socialist revolution will for the most part be completed on a nation-wide scale in about three years.”

For the world at large there was nothing new in this. We have been watching China. Chu Teh’s announcements were punctuated in Moscow by “thunderous” and “prolonged” applause. But it is permissible to wonder whether the real opinions of the more sophisticated leaders at that Congress were expressed by that applause.

In private conversation well-informed Soviet Communists show a marked disinclination to expatiate on the wonders of the Chinese revolution. Not to put too fine a point on it, I have not found a single one in recent months who would talk about it at all. The more expansive grin, it seems to me a little wryly, when the subject of China is raised, and shrug their shoulders in a highly expressive manner; the less expansive change the subject with celerity. They are not going to talk about China to strangers — that much is evident.

Mr. Khrushchev, on the other hand, is said to have been talking a good deal about China in private. I was told in Belgrade on very good authority that last summer he expressed to Marshal Tito his deep concern about the impatience of the Chinese Communists. “They are going to make all the mistakes we made,” he said in effect, “and with far less excuse. They are rushing ahead at a breakneck speed, and nothing we say will restrain them. I think that unfortunate country is in for a period of suffering which will make our own experience in the nineteen-thirties seem like nothing. If only they would learn to walk before they start to run. If only they would profit by our mistakes. . .

That was long before the 20th Congress with its emphasis on Stalin’s mistakes; and in this connection it is perhaps not irrelevant to remark that Mao Tse-tung in his letter to the 20th Congress went out of his way to give praise to Stalin. It was the only word of praise offered during the whole performance. He spoke of “the invincibility of the Communist Party founded by Lenin and fostered by Stalin and his close comrades-inarms,” and his words sounded odd at a meeting so largely devoted to putting on record how much Stalin had damaged the Party. He had nothing to say about the “personality cult.” Instead, he spoke of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union “headed by Comrade Khrushchev.” It was a discordant note.

3

I HAVE no idea how much sleep the Soviet leadership loses when it thinks of the suffering that is being brought to China by her own highly Stalinist leadership. But I am sure it is deeply concerned by the ruthless tempo with which Mao Tse-tung has set about following the Soviet pattern. The point to get hold of and keep hold of is that according to Leninist doctrine, as now preached by Stalin’s successors, it is not necessary, or even desirable. Stalin’s forced industrial revolution, with the accompanying collectivization of agriculture, was carried out under the general thesis of Socialism in One Country which was forced upon the Soviet Union by the particular circumstances of the time. In Lenin’s original view the only way the revolution in Russia could succeed and consolidate itself was by helping other more advanced countries to carry out their own revolutions, so that the Soviet Union could then receive outside help in the slow business of her own industrialization. It was only when it was clear that neither Germany nor any other of the advanced industrial nations possessing a highly organized proletariat was going to oblige, that the Soviet Union was forced willy-nilly to develop her own resources and industrialize herself, with a minimum of help from the capitalist West, at a breakneck speed and at the cost of infinite suffering.

It was not until 1931 that Stalin himself in his celebrated speech about the fatality of Russian backwardness, and thinking in terms of national survival as well as in terms of the preservation of the world revolutionary base, put the terms of this struggle into words of one syllable: —

No, comrades . . . the pace must not be slackened! On the contrary, we must speed it up to the limit of our powers and possibilities. This is dictated to us by our obligations to the workers and the peasants of the U.S.S.R It is dictated to us by our obligations to the working class of the whole world. To slacken the pace would mean to lag behind; and those who lag behind are beaten. We do not want to be beaten. No, we do not! We are fifty or a hundred years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this lag in ten years. Either we do it or they crush us.

That, and that only, was the justification for pushing ahead at all costs with the Soviet industrial revolution in the shortest imaginable time. The Soviet Union stood alone in a hostile world. She had to industrialize and arm herself fast or perish.

But China? China is in the very position that Lenin yearned for, so that he could set about the peaceable and comparatively painless transformation of Soviet society. The Chinese revolution came into a world already largely conquered by Communism. China, the infant People’s Republic, has at her side one of the two greatest powers in the world, a colossal industrial power by any standards. China and the Soviet Union between them are invincible, except in a war in which the other side would also be annihilated. China has no reason at all, doctrinal or strategical, to follow painfully and breathlessly in the footsteps of the Soviet Union, the trail-blazer. She has all time in front of her. She has all the experience and might of the Soviet Union to draw on in developing a steady and orderly progress towards Communism. Instead she is flinging herself into the red-hot furnace which the Soviet Union had to pass through years ago because there was no other way.

Why? I said she had no reason for this. But of course there is a reason, and that is the determination to be able to stand up to the Soviet Union in the shortest possible time. It is the only reason.

And the Soviet Union must be well aware of this. I am inclined to think that this awareness is partly responsible for the marked revival of an amended Leninism which has been such a feature of recent months. The main cause of this I have no doubt is the need of the new leadership to base their own pretensions to power in an authority beyond themselves. But hand in hand with this goes the need to reassert the seniority of the Soviet Communist Party vis-à-vis Mao Tse-tung; and, more specifically, the need to find doctrinal sanction for their criticisms of Mao Tse-tung. It would not surprise me in the least if it could be shown one day that the casting down of Stalin, which makes such grateful reading inside the Soviet Union, makes less happy reading in Peking: for Mao Tsetung is also a noted exploiter of the personality cult.

When he returned to East Germany after the 20th Party Congress, Herr Ulbricht wrote a very remarkable article for Neues Deutschland, which was reprinted in Pravda. Speaking of the correction” of some of Stalin’s “theoretical errors” at the Congress, Ulbricht went on to say:

Also corrected was the view upheld by Stalin that with the successful progress of Socialist construction in the Soviet Union the class struggle becomes more acute. Lenin’s teaching that the use of force is provoked by the need to break the resistance of the exploiting classes referred to a period when the0 exploiting classes were still strong in Soviet Russia. But once the social and political basis of the old capitalist classes had been destroyed, Lenin immediately changed his methods.

That statement carries important implications for the Soviet Union today as well as the East European satellites. It is a scarcely veiled criticism of the whole policy of forced collectivization, which was justified, precisely, by the sharpening of the class struggle on the road to Socialist construction. It may also be read as a criticism of Mao Tse-tung and the Chinese Communist Party.

The Russians may seem Asian in character to West Europeans, but to the Chinese they do not. Admittedly, inside the Soviet Union there are innumerable Asian nationalities, and there has been some intermingling of blood. But the Soviet Union is ruled from Moscow by Great Russians and, increasingly, Ukrainians. And these belong firmly to Europe, though affected by Tartar domination in the past. To the Chinese the Russians in Asia can appear as nothing but colonizers, no matter how admirable certain of their qualities must seem. In the eyes of the Chinese Communists the liberation and awakening of Asia is and must be the historic mission of China. It is inconceivable that they should regard Russian penetration as anything but undesirable. It is far from inconceivable that they should regard the Asian people of Soviet Central Asia and Siberia as their own lost kin.

When Marshal Bulganin and Mr. Khrushchev made their celebrated tour of India, Burma, and Afghanistan last year, the Western world was so excited about Soviet penetration and so affronted by Mr. Khrushchev’s obiter dicta about the doom of capitalism and the iniquities of colonial rule that it overlooked what was one of the most important aspects of the whole affair. In Britain and America it was immediately assumed that in planning their Indian appearance the Soviet leaders were thinking exclusively about its effect on the West. And, indeed, Soviet penetration into India, Burma, and Afghanistan — no less than the Soviet penetration into the Middle East effected a little earlier with such a masterly economy of means — fits perfectly into the new era of “economic competition” which, in the shadow of the hydrogen bomb, has superseded the era of the cold war. The triumphant entry of the Communist leaders of the Soviet Union onto the stage which had been for so long the center of Tsarist ambitions — ambitions rendered vain by one thing and one thing only: the existence of the British Empire — was indeed a smack in the eye for the West.

But, on consideration and with calming passions, the West will come to realize that it cannot have things both ways. And then it may be in a position to reflect that Messrs. Bulganin and Khrushchev had their eyes on another place besides Washington or London: no other place than Peking. Because in the eyes of the proud and jealous Chinese, the spiritual leaders of the new Asia, how can the demonstrative appearance of these pinkskinned Russians as the patrons of ihe new India, of the new Burma, bordering China herself, be regarded as anything but a challenge, a new manifestation of the southward-probing dynamic of the old, old Russia? How can the new China, tearing hell for leather into her own industrial revolution. needing urgently all the machines and steel that the Soviet Union can spare, regard with enthusiasm Moscow’s lavish promises of these desiderata to countries which have not had a revolution?

There is no need to continue ibis line of thought. It may be followed in many directions; and I am sure that in the years to come we shall discover that many more words and actions of the Soviet leaders—to say nothing of the Chinese leaders — bear more closely on the hidden Sino-Russian conflict than on the East-West conflict. To imagine that everything done in Moscow and Peking is concerned directly with Washington or London is not much more sensible than to believe that we have offended the gods when our house is struck by lightning.