^* This article, under the original title of “Chinese and Soviet Views on Mao as a Marxist Theorist and on the Significance of the Chinese Revolution for the Asian Revolutionary Movement,” was published on 8 September 1953 in the Central Intelligence Agency, where the authors were employed at the time as propaganda analysts. The article was based wholly upon analysis of open literature. It has not been published elsewhere, although it was referred to and briefly quoted from in Donald Zagoria, The Sino-Soviet Conflict 1956–61 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962), pp. 15, 405 and 464. Some editorial changes have been made in the original text by The China Quarterly. A summary of the conclusions has been omitted and the conclusions themselves, which appeared before the main analysis, placed at the end of the article. A list of “Publications surveyed,” all of which are referred to in the present footnotes, has also been omitted. Some lengthy quotations have been shortened or omitted, in particular from the material referred to in footnotes 14, 24, 29, 30–2, and 41. Apart from other minor changes for style or presentation, the text is unaltered.Google Scholar

^1. Ch'ang-chiang Jih-pao (Yangtze Daily), 19 02 1951.Google Scholar

^2. Jen-min Jih-pao (People's Daily), 7 01 1952.Google Scholar

^3. Study the “Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung, Volume I” (Peking: Hsin Chien-she, 20 01 1952), pp. 19 and 25–6.Google Scholar

^4. Mitin, M., “First Volume of the Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung,” Bol'shevik, No. 17, 09 1952, p. 60.Google Scholar

^5. Ibid. pp. 61–3.

^6. Yudin, P., “First Volume of the Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung,” Pravda, 26 08 1952.Google Scholar

^7. Mitin, , “First Volume,” p. 67.Google Scholar

^8. See also the review by Sobolev, A. I., “An outstanding example of creative Marxism,” Voprosy Filosofii, No. 6, 1952.Google Scholar

^9. “Military Report on the Seventh Congress of the CCP,” 25 April 1945, republished (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1952).Google Scholar

^10. Kuan, Meng-chueh, “Read ‘Strategic problems of China's revolutionary wars,’” in Study the “Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung, Volume I,”Google Scholar p. 144. The authoritativeness of Kuan's statement is affirmed by the fact that he took it verbatim from the official CCP history by Hu, Chiao-mu, Thirty Years of the Chinese Communist Party (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1951).Google Scholar

^11. “Struggle for people's democracy and socialism: some questions of strategy and tactics,” by the Editorial Board of Communist (Bombay), Vol. II, No. 4, 06–07 1949, pp. 37–8.Google Scholar

^12. Ibid.

^13. Liu, Shao-ch'i, “Opening address to the Trade Union Conference of Asian and Australasian Countries,” Wen-hui Pao (Shanghai), 25 11 1949.Google Scholar

^14. “The tremendous progress of the national liberation movements in colonial and dependent countries,” For a Lasting Peace, for a People's Democracy, 27 01 1950Google Scholar, reprinted in Jen-min Jih-pao, 3 02 1950.Google Scholar

^15. Statement by the Editorial Board of Communist, Vol. III, 07–08 1950, pp. 1–35.Google Scholar

^16. “Isn't it true that an armed people opposing an armed counterrevolution is the unique characteristic of China's revolution?” Jen-min Jih-pao, 16 06 1950.Google Scholar

^17. Chang, Chih-i, “The whole world's peoples sing praises of China's revolutionary victory,” Shih-chieh Chih-shih (World Knowledge), 30 06 1951, p. 8.Google Scholar

^18. Ibid.

^19. Lu, Ting-yi, “The world significance of the Chinese revolution,” Hsueh-hsi (Study), 1 07 1951, pp. 26–7.Google Scholar

^20. Ch'en, Po-ta, “Mao Tse-tung's theory of the Chinese revolution is the combination of Marxism-Leninism with the Chinese revolution,”Google Scholaribid. p. 20.

^21. Ch'iao-mu, Hu, “Thirty years of the Chinese Communist Party,”Google Scholaribid. p. 39. The work of Mao's here cited is “A single spark will kindle a flame,” 01 1930.

^22. Ssu, Mu, “The October Revolution and the destiny of the Asian people,” Shih-chieh Chih-shih, 3 11 1951, p. 9.Google Scholar

^23. ibid. The editorial revealed that a special relationship between the Chinese and Vietnamese revolutionary movements had existed previously for several decades by the statement: “The Vietnamese Communist movement is one which has received the influence of the 1925–7 Chinese Great Revolution as well as the influence of the October Revolution.”

^24. “On the character and peculiarities of People's democracy in countries of the East,” Izvestiya Akademii Nauk S.S.S.R., Seriya Istorii i Filosofii, Vol. IX, No. 1, 07–08 1952, pp. 80–7. For discussion of the proceedings of this conference see below pp. 687–9.Google Scholar

^25. “Policy manifesto of the Indian Communist Party, reprinted in Shih-chieh Chih-shih, 10 11 1951, pp. 15–6.Google Scholar

^26. Ibid.

^27. Of the various items examined in other leading Soviet organs for this period, only one contained any reference which could be construed as holding up the Chinese revolution as a model for other Asian revolutions. This reference appeared in “Successes of peaceful construction of the Chinese People's Republic,” Vestnik Akademii Nauk S.S.S.R., No. 3, 03 1951, which discussed the reports read at the first scientific session of the reorganized Oriental Studies Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R. The session had been called to consider the “achievements of peaceful construction in the People's Republic of China and the struggle of the Chinese people for peace.” In a very brief and general paraphrase of the report by the historian V. Ya. Avarin on the “Chinese Communist Party as organizer of the great victories of the Chinese people,” the following statement appears (p. 106): “The road traversed by the Chinese Communist Party is now a model for revolutionary parties in other colonial and semi-colonial countries. Its experience is being studied by the Communist Party of India and by Communists of other colonies and countries under imperialist enslavement.”Google Scholar

^28. Kovalev, Ye., “Historic victory of the Chinese people,” Bol'shevik, No. 19, 10 1949, pp. 42–54, passim.Google Scholar

^29. Fedorov, I., “Book of the heroic history of the Chinese people,” Bol'shevik, No. 7, 04 1950, pp. 68–73.Google Scholar For further Soviet analysis along the same lines, see Kheyfets, A. N., “Problems of the Chinese revolution in the works of J. V. Stalin,” Voprosy Filosofii, No. 3, 1950 (published 01 1951) pp. 53–74.Google Scholar

^30. “The thirtieth anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party,” Bol'shevik, No. 12, 06 1951, p. 8.Google Scholar

^31. Sobolev, A., “People's democracy as a form of political organization of society,” Bol'shevik, No. 19, 10 1951, p. 37.Google Scholar

^32. See above, p. 683. The question of national peculiarities as the determinant for the specific road which a nation is to take for liberation was an important feature of several of the Soviet articles already mentioned, including those by Kovalev, Ye. and Kheyfets, A. N., and the 06 1951 Bol'shevik editorial. The practical application of this tenet to the problem of the relation of the Chinese revolution to other Asian revolutions was clearly expounded in the June 1951 manifesto of the ICP and may be viewed as the basis for Sobolev's placing of the Indian programme alongside the “experience of the Chinese revolution.”Google Scholar

^33. “On the character and peculiarities of people's democracy in countries of the East,” pp. 80–7.Google Scholar

^34. Kyuichi, Tokuda, “The basis of the Japanese Communist Party's new programme,” Shih-chieh Chih-shih, 8 03 1952, p. 17.Google Scholar

^35. “The Problems of the Colonial Peoples,” Hsueh-hsi, 16 03 1952, p. 30.Google Scholar

^36. The pertinent passage from the Cominform journal editorial reads: “Learning from the experience of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolshevik) and following Comrade Stalin's counsel, the Communist and Workers' Parties are creatively applying the Marxist-Leninist theory in the concrete conditions of their countries. The programmes of the Communist Parties of Great Britain, India, and Japan are examples of the creative development of Marxism. These programmes express the interests of the working class, of all working people, and correctly outline the concrete aims of the struggle and ways for achieving them.” (“Great strength of creative Marxism,” For a Lasting Peace, For a People's Democracy, 20 06 1952.)Google Scholar

The first significant feature of this statement is the leading role assigned to Stalin in the activities of all Communist Parties, two of the three listed being Asian. The second is the tribute paid to the programme of the Japanese and Indian Communist Parties as “examples of the creative development of Marxism.” When it is recalled that such praise had previously been reserved only for the programme of the Chinese Party or Mao's writings, there is reason to believe that this may have been another veiled criticism of the pretensions to doctrinal originality or to Asian leadership which the Chinese Communists had entertained prior to 11 1951.Google Scholar

Yet, an article in the Chinese publication, Shih-chieh Chih-shih seemed to indicate that these pretensions were still being entertained. A correspondent, reporting from an international industrial fair in Karachi, quoted a young Pakistani student as saying: “After seeing your pavilion, I realize deeply the true happiness of the Chinese people! Mao Tse-tung is the leader of the Chinese people, but your people must not forget that he also is the leader of the Asian people.” And the article concluded: “The Asian people are turning toward China and toward the leader of the Chinese people, Comrade Mao Tse-tung.” Chi, Yin, “New China is the East's light of Dawn,” Shih-chieh Chih-shih, 21 06 1952, p. 21.Google Scholar

^37. Kyuichi, Tokuda, “Thirtieth anniversary of the Communist Party of Japan,” For a Lasting Peace, For a People's Democracy, 4 07 1952.Google Scholar

^38. Zhukov, Ye., “China's revolutionary victory and its influence over the liberation movement of the various peoples of Asia,” Shih-chieh Chih-shih, 27 09 1952, p. 7.Google Scholar

^39. Ibid.

^40. Pravda, 26 08 1952.Google Scholar

^41. For similar Soviet interpretations, see further the reviews by Mitin and Sobolev already cited in footnotes 4 and 8.Google Scholar