The memcon between Nixon and Mao (with Kissinger present) is also pretty interesting[1].
[1]: https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/memorandum-...
[1]: https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/memorandum-...
> Mao: That is to say, I voted for you [Nixon] during your election. [...] I like rightists. People say you are rightists, that the Republican Party is to the right, that Prime Minister Heath is also to the right. [...] They also say the Christian Democratic Party of West Germany is also to the right. I am comparatively happy when these people on the right come into power.
> Kissinger: [...] those on the left are pro-Soviet and would not encourage a move toward the People’s Republic, and in fact criticize you on those grounds.
> Mao: Exactly that. Some are opposing you [Nixon]. In our country also there is a reactionary group which is opposed to our contact with you. The result was that they got on an airplane and fled abroad.
(I know this is just small talk and people don't always say what they mean, but...)
The public are usually fed simplistic, emotional propaganda by their governments, all of them: good vs evil, right thing to do, freedom, whatever. But in fact policies are based on interests and cold calculations.
Luckily Xiaoping entered the chat and the rest is Chinese history.
(I have always liked the Chinese for their pragmatism. Americans are too far up their own ass).
I think Deng Xiaoping is a direct result of these developments during the Mao years.
Things would have been very different for China, without the rapprochement with the west. Without friendly terms with the west they would have to maintain an enormously big army.
Think of a China today that is more like North Korea.
They don't?
Yes, just like during the "Great Leap Forward" and the cultural revolution. Sure...
Washington shaped the nation, but also massacred Native Americans and didn't free his slaves until after his death.
The Chinese see Mao as someone who gave them their pride back, but most of his socioeconomic policies were failures.
I'm not trying to do a "whataboutism" here, just trying to bring some perspective of how the average Chinese person thinks of Mao.
But yeah I get your point, it's unfortunate that China never had its Khrushchev moment.
I'm not somebody who can say to what extent that comparison does or doesn't make sense, but your response is irrelevant because they weren't saying that Mao and Washington were comparable in terms of their aspirations or specific actions.
It is unfortunate that you feel that way because it's not all ambiguous.
I mean for instance a German person could say "that Bismarck and Hitler were comparable in terms of their aspirations or specific actions" and they would technically be correct in a certain way (much more so than someone comparing Mao and Washington anyway). However that would be in no way a morally sensible comparison.
Apply the logic for why Mao was as bad as Hitler, read up on the Bengal famine, and you'll come to the conclusion that Churchill was also Hitler. But of course he wasn't Hitler, and famines aren't on the same scale as the Holocaust.
While you're educating yourself, perhaps read up on Mao's nationalist counterpart in the Civil War, a fascist dictator and war criminal named Chiang Kai-Shek. I would find the comparison to George Washington and Chiang Kai-Shek to be quite distasteful. George Washington was not a bad man by the standards of his time, he was not a dictator, and he was not a war criminal.
Conversely, Chiang Kai-Shek was a murderous tyrant even by contemporary standards. During the White Terror of 1927, he infamously stated he'd prefer to kill 1000 innocent people "by mistake" than let one communist live. Over 300,000 people were murdered during this purge alone, and that's a floor. Some estimates put the death toll in the millions. We'll never know the true body count. Unfortunately, it was not difficult to kill people without a trace in rural China at this time. At any rate, it was a crime against humanity within an order of magnitude of Stalin's Great Purge. And this was just one of the many, many atrocities committed by Chiang Kai-Shek. I don't think anyone could fight this monster and win, without becoming a monster themselves.
And yet, I have no trouble understanding why Taiwanese people might have mixed feelings about this heinous man. Without Chiang Kai-Shek, there would be no Taiwan. As it stands, only 12 UN nations recognize Taiwan as an independent country. Nationalism is a helluva drug...
Why is it that we all know Mao Zedong's name in infamy, and not Chiang Kai-Shek? Because we are always eating from the trashcan of ideology.
I don't think Mao was a crook in the sense of "stealing money and the country be damned". I think he was motivated by a vision for his country, why else fight so fiercely against the nationalists and the Japanese? He believed in something.
Whether the Great Leap Forward or any one of his policies was a disaster is orthogonal to whether he believed in doing a great good for China.
Claiming Mao "believed in violence" adds nothing new, really. Most revolutionaries believed in violence as a means to reach an end. Nationalists did, too.
I think it's not controversial that Mao had a vision for his country which he tought would make China great, he was a visionary and an ideologue. You don't have to agree with his vision to acknowledge he had one.
Also, if the great leap forward and the cultural revolution were as bad as the propaganda says it was, china wouldn't have been able to industrialize. China would have crumbled and become a vassal of the US or the Soviet Union.
The Weimar republic was a great example of that, the liberal/socialist government which was in power during it’s entire lifetime was so unstable and eventually collapsed because a significant proportion of the electorate continued voting for the bolsheviks. They wouldn’t even cooperate to prevent the far-right from coming to power (of course it’s not like they had a choice, moderate voters would have immediately shifted to the right if the socialists tried working with communists).
So it’s not that surprising. Stalin had no issue working with Hitler and supplying Germany with raw material which were necessary for their conquest of France (during the period western communist parties suddenly became rabidly pro-nazi..) until all of that blew up in his face…
Of course that was already quite different in the 60s and 70s after the Soviet were no longer as focused on ideological purity (and mass murder by extension).
To be honest, the other european powers (France, but especially the UK) also had a big trust issue with Stalin, and provably had a big role in making the unthinkable (the communist-nazi alliance) happen.
Stalin spent the last few years murdering millions of people. Without the benefit of hindsight Hitler clearly seemed like the more benign options prior to 1939..
It's interesting that Stalin tried to get the West's help against Hitler before he giving up and making a truce with Germany to buy time.
Keep in mind that Germany was close and Hitler had stated he intended to expand eastwards towards Russia and he had declared that "Bolshevik Jews" were the ultimate enemy of Germany. If Stalin felt the Soviet Union wasn't ready for that fight, it makes sense that he would try to stall it. (Yes, then there's Poland and all that jazz. History is complicated).
Arguably without Stalin and USSR supporting German communists most of their voters (~10% of the country) would've shifted to the Socialists party. Strengthening the Socialist-Liberal-Christian Democrat coalition and making it harder for far-right parties to take power.
UK had a socialist government between 1929 and 1931 and the Labor prime minister continued running the government until 1935 supported by the Conservatives after the Labour party split (and unlike today the Labour party considered themselves to be actual socialists). Socialists also had significant influence in the French republic as well.
> Herr Hitler looked like a respectable man because he was very much against socialism
Or rather the French and the British were much more preoccupied in dealing with their internal issues during the Great Depression to pay too much attention to what was happening in Germany.
Also The British prime minister at the time when first came to power and for the 4-5 years after that was a self-avowed socialist. Which would have made it a bit weird if what you're saying was right.
> In the case of Stalin, the issue was lending credibility to socialism
Why are you equating Bolshevism/Communism with Socialism? The bolsheviks overthrew a Socialist government to come to power after all and suppressed all socialist parties whenever and wherever they could.
I think the rest wouldn’t change much: the things you mention don’t have much to do with having moral scruples against Stalin’s mass murders. It seems to me that the main reason was still “we don’t do business with bolsheviks”. Of course the main reason is not the only one, and had the other powers realized who was leading Germany they maybe would have been more open to Stalin’s requests…
I don't agree ( if you also include Lenin's mass murders). Of course a lot of it has to do with the fear the the Bolsheviks would do the same in their countries in they ever came to power.
> It seems to me that the main reason was still “we don’t do business with bolsheviks
Main reason of what? Poland had some pretty good reasons to not want any soviet troops in it's territory.
> would have been more open to Stalin’s requests…
Like allowing him to have Eastern Europe? Well the Anglo-Polish treaty even had a secret clause saying that it only applied in case Germany specifically attacked Poland and Britain was not obliged to join the war in case the Soviets invaded.
Again it's not that relevant. It's highly unlikely that Germany could have defeated France in 1940 without Soviet support. Germany had almost no oil and many other vital resources left after the invasion of Poland (it imported most of it's oil from America). So the Soviets simply had to stay out it. They chose to support Germany instead. I really don't see how anything that the allies did could be considered to be more foolish and/or shortsighted than the German–Soviet Commercial Agreement of 1940.
Amongst other things Germany would've entirely ran out of grain, rubber, manganese and oil by the Autumn of 1941 or much earlier without the imports form the USSR but Stalin had a better plan which resulted in millions of unnecessary deaths..
Please could you provide some reference?
Seems to still be the case today: the far left fighting with the moderate left.
From Maoist to Green Party Member and government funded NATO war hawk.
There are many ex-Maoists who have found a home in the right wing of the Greens.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kommunistischer_Bund_Westdeuts...
Please expand on that. The only thing that backing the Soviet Union and current day Russia seem to have in common is that they are both aggressive, authorities regimes. Maybe I’m missing some nuance here.
Does it make sense? None at all. Russia and the Soviet Union share nothing today. Putin likes to remember past military glories of the USSR but rebukes communism and his country is the land of oligarchs. Ideologically Russia and the USSR are nothing alike.
I've not read anything from Maoists on Russia's current invasion, but I likewise can believe they oppose it, for the same broken thought process: if they identify Putin's Russia with their hated historical enemy, the Soviets, then of course they are against it!
Completely bonkers, I know, but it has some bizarre logic.
Agreed about the "not leaping" too soon comment, though.
In the end I think Mao simply saw the USSR as the more immediate threat, and faraway rightists in America were less of a concern -- and if they opposed the Russkies, so much the better!