Propaganda and Perceptions: The Selling of the Soviet Union in the People's Republic of China, 1950-1965 7614700800

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H A R VA RD UNIVERSITY T H E G R A D U A T E SC H O O L O F ARTS A N D SC IE N C E S

THESIS ACCEPTANCE CERTIFICATE The undersigned, appointed by the Division Department

G overnm ent

Committee have examined a thesis entitled

"P ro p ag an d a an d Perceptions: T h e Selling of the Soviet U nion in the People’s R epublic of C h in a, 1950-1965"

Ju lia n Po-keng C hang

presented by

candidate for the gree of Doctor of Philosophy and acceptance hereby certify thpt-i

Roderick M acF arquhar

Signature. Signature . . . . HJt. Signature,

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Stanley H o ffm a n n B ern a rd M . Frolic

D ate: 23 M ay 1995

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Propaganda and Perceptions: The Selling o f the Soviet Union in the People’s Republic o f China, 1950-1965

A thesis presented by Julian Po-keng Chang to The Department o f Government in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor o f Philosophy in the subject of Political Science Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts

June, 1995

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UMI Number: 9538877

Copyright 1995 by Chang, Julian Po-keng All rights reserved.

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©1995 by Julian Po-keng Chang All rights reserved

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Abstract: “Propaganda and Perceptions: The Selling o f the Soviet Union in the People’s Republic o f China, 1950-1965” This dissertation examines propaganda about the former USSR in 1950s China as both a case study of integrative propaganda and a consequence of the Chinese leadership’s view of China’s role in the Sino-Soviet relationship. It reviews discussions about the role o f language in creating social and political community and outlines the treatment of propaganda in international relations. The dissertation describes and classifies three schools o f propaganda analysis: “classical,” “communications research” and “neo­ classical.” It then defines propaganda against the context of these three schools as an act of governance through the conscious manipulation o f language by the State or its representatives to achieve a desired behavioral response upon the part o f a defined audience in specific policy areas. A distinction is made between various types o f propaganda differentiated by function. Former Soviet and contemporary Chinese visions of propaganda are examined as separate cases and a comparison o f their respective propaganda apparatuses provides detail about the extent of Chinese “borrowing” in this area. The impact o f propaganda on perception is the focus of the discussion o f three aspects o f the myth o f the Soviet Union: the Soviet economy, its foreign policy and its leadership. The dissertation’s analysis of the impact o f propaganda is augmented by new interview material which explores lasting perceptions o f the Soviet U nion in China created by propaganda in the 1950s. The dissertation concludes that previous categories of propaganda analysis do not provide a satisfactory framework in which to place Chinese propaganda, which combines many traditions and is consciously didactic and educative. The structures of propaganda production in 1950s C hina succeeded at several tasks: the dissemination o f strictly controlled information, the creation of specific myths and the formation o f lasting perceptions about the Soviet Union.

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TABLE O F C O N T E N T S

Preface..........................................................................................................................................i Introduction. The Riddle o f the Soviet Union..................................................................... 1 Propaganda as a form of political life................................................... 4 Propaganda in international relations: a brief review........................... 14 Appendix 1: Survey Translation Appendix 2: Table o f interviewees Chapter 1.

The Analysis o f Propaganda............................................................................29 Schools o f propaganda analysis................................................................33 Defining propaganda................................................................................. 50 The Soviet and Chinese concepts o f propaganda.................................. 53 Chinese attitudes towards xuanchuan..................................................... 93

Chapter 2.

The Mechanics of State Propaganda: The People’s Republic o f China and the Soviet Union in the 1950s...........................................................110 The Chinese context: before 1949.................................................................112 A Comparison of Soviet and Chinese propagandaproduction...................120 Personnel..................................................................................................... 165 Effectiveness...............................................................................................177 Chinese departures.....................................................................................182 Appendix 1: Sino-Soviet Friendship Association propaganda points Appendix 2: “Ratified” graphics

Chapter 3.

The Myth o f the Soviet Union........................................................................ 192 Images o f the Soviet Union after 1950.................................................. 205 The Economy.............................................................................................213 Engineering achievements.................................................................. 232

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Wonderful life...................................................................................... 236 The 20th Party Congress and the Soviet economy.......................... 243 The East W ind will prevail................................................................ 245 The propaganda slowdown................................................................. 249 Summary......................................................................................................250 Chapter 4.

The Soviet Union in World Affairs............................................................... 254 Introduction: fifteen years of foreign policy propaganda.................... 254 Bipolarity: the two camps........................................................................ 259 The end o f bipolarity.................................................................................273 Issues in the struggle for peace.................................................................. 283 Soviet support for China on the world stage...........................................305 Conclusions: the Soviet foreign policy myth.........................................310

Chapter 5.

Soviet Leaders................................................................................................... 312 Portraying Lenin......................................................................................... 315 Memories o f Lenin...............................................................................317 Portraying Stalin........................................................................................ 319 Memories o f Stalin..............................................................................327 Nikita Khrushchev.......................................................................................332 Memories o f Khrushchev......................................................................342 Comparative impressions.......................................................................... 348 Appendix: Shijie Zhishi and the Soviet leadership

Concluding Reflections on Propaganda................................................................................... 353 Selected Bibliography................................................................................................................ 365

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I would like to thank my parents for their patience; Lisa Davis for her support; my committee, Professors Roderick MacFarquhar, Stanley Hoffinann and Bemie Frolic for “getting me through it;” and Cabot House for a (sometimes) quiet place to write.

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PREFACE Why should we worry about the effects o f Chinese propaganda? The great fears o f Orwell’s 1984 seem not to have materialized. In 1991 the Soviet Union collapsed. Any visitor to China today can see that totalitarian unity is only a gleam in the eyes of nostalgic centralists. The language of communism in China gave way during the 1980s to the language of markets and international finance. The relationship between the Soviet Union and China has disappeared, replaced by Russian-Chinese trade and military and diplomatic contacts that seek mutual economic and strategic benefit. Yet the importance of the past Sino-Soviet relationship can not be swept under the rug o f Sino-Russian trade. It is in that past that the conditions of the present were bom. The individuals who grew up in China believing that the Soviet Union was the workers’ paradise on earth are now fearing the contagion o f disintegration. It is against the vision of the Soviet workers’ paradise established in the 1950s that today’s Chinese economic successes ring so resonandy. The real message o f the five-year plans, of the space achievements, of the seeming victories of Soviet industry was not the superiority of the socialist system, but the superiority of success. Thus, the economic Faustian bargain struck in China today — the purchase o f political time with economic prosperity — is rooted in the Soviet promises of the socialist heaven on earth. While those promises proved empty in the Soviet Union, in China they have become the myths that bind the nation together. As part of the myth-making apparatus, the media is still an important component o f government authority. Although the old notion of monolithic dissemination of Party and state policy has given way somewhat to the demands of the market, the Communist party refuses to relinquish control over the media. Ding Guang’en, the head of the Central Committee’s propaganda department, told journalists from the People's Daily that their

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“general principle” in news reporting should be “serving the people and socialism.”1 Even in Hong Kong two years before the return to Chinese rule, the local press is suffering the “growing influence o f mainland China.”2 Nevertheless, market forces have drastically changed the bulk of the press and publication sector of the Chinese economy. Thousands o f new journals and newspapers have been publishing everything from celebrity gossip to racy tales of sex and violence. And they sell. Which means that the People’s D aily and its ilk no longer set the political agenda for the public’s reading habits. But precisely because the media scene in C hina has changed so drastically, it is important to realize that the old model can n ot be jettisoned simply because much o f the media no longer follows the mouthpieces o f the Party and the State. The role that Chinese propaganda developed in the years before the Cultural Revolution has not completely faded away. We must re-examine the past in order to understand its effects on the present. Propaganda is not the sole dominion of the government. In China, xuanchuan is used by anybody with a clear message. In order to understand how those messages may be received, it is important to understand how the culture of xuanchuan developed and was nurtured. It is in this spirit that this dissertation takes on the task of delineating anew the Chinese perceptions o f the Soviet Union in the “Golden Age” o f Sino-Soviet relations. The dissertation begins with a brief discussion of the role of propaganda in international relations. It establishes the use o f language in the construction o f state identity in order to provide a theoretical understanding of the importance o f state language in the domestic development and inculcation of national myths. It classifies the relevant literature on propaganda in the W est into three different schools of analysis. It then places Chinese concepts o f propaganda, xuanchuan, into the context o f propaganda analysis as defined by these three schools. In doing so, the theoretical and practical debts

1UPI wire, 2/23/93 via China News Digest 2 /24/93. 2Charles Radin, “H ong Kong press feels Beijing pressure,” Boston Globe, 4/2/95, p. 14.

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owed to the Soviet model in propaganda studies and work are necessarily delineated for purposes of comparison. Chapter two examines the differences between the Chinese and former Soviet propaganda apparatuses. Drawing on the use o f myths in creating a national identity, the next three chapters present the Chinese portrayal o f various aspects o f the Soviet Union. In the myth o f the economy, a wonderful life for all is a part of the promise o f socialism as it was being played out in the Soviet Union of the 1950s. In its recounting o f the myth of a Soviet foreign policy oriented towards peace and the eradication o f war, the propaganda apparatus explains the international situation o f the Cold War. In its portrayals o f Soviet leaders, the Chinese Party leadership presents its own changing conceptions o f the relationship between the two states. The conclusion draws on the strands o f propaganda work theory and the selling o f the Soviet Union to underscore the reifying effects o f propaganda in the 1950s. It argues that the traditional schools o f propaganda analysis explain neither the attitudes o f the former Soviet Union nor o f the People’s Republic towards political language in general and propaganda in particular. It retraces how the work o f the Chinese propaganda apparatus o f the first decade and a half in “selling” the Soviet Union produced unifying myths and revolutionary dreams to inspire a generation. The relationship between the Soviet Union and China in the recent past has been an intriguing one. The period under study was a pivotal point in China’s re-emergence in international affairs. The Soviet Union played a crucial role in that re-emergence and Chinese words about the Soviet Union show us both how that relationship developed and how the Chinese state felt about itself internationally. In a period of development, the unification o f the Chinese state in the early-1950s depended heavily on the use of propaganda, xuanchuan, to succeed. This study integrates thoughts about language and nation in order to contribute to the study of propaganda in China.

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IN T R O D U C T IO N : T H E RID D LE O F T H E SOV IET U N IO N

Language in politics is more than just ostention, the assigning o f names to objects; it is both a form and a reflection o f power. Politics is, after all, “the site par excellence in which agents seek to form and transform their visions o f the world and thereby the world itself: it is the site par excellence in which words are actions and the symbolic character of power is at stake. Through the production of slogans, programmes and commentaries of various kinds, agents in the political field are continuously engaged in a labour of representation by which they seek to construct and impose a particular vision o f the social world, while at the same time seeking to mobilize the support o f those upon whom their power ultimately depends.”1 Propaganda is a particular subset o f political language which, for the moment, I will define as an exercise o f governance and a reflection of the manipulative powers of the state. Though it is usually considered instrumentally, propaganda is more than just a tool o f governance; in the manner of its use, in the content o f its messages, it can be read as both a consequence o f the world view o f the state that uses it and an indication of particular relationships of power. This dissertation analyzes how the institutions charged with disseminating the propaganda o f the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) inculcated specific images o f the Soviet Union in the 1950s within domestic audiences. Chinese propaganda in the 1950s did more than just tell the, captive, Chinese public what line to toe. It reified a “Soviet Union” that Chinese audiences accepted as reality and specified what China’s relation to it would be. As we will see, the initial acceptance o f this Soviet Union was accomplished through a variety of propaganda techniques, methods and structures which drew on traditional Chinese and Soviet attitudes towards the use of language in politics.

1Pierre Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, John B. T hom pson, ed., Gino Raymond and Matthew Adamson, trans. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 1991), p. 26.

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The portrayal o f the Soviet Union in Chinese political discourse stands out as an example o f CCP “integrative” propaganda.2 In 1949, Mao declared, for various reasons, that China would “lean to one side,” and both the Party bureaucracy and the people had to accept wholeheartedly that decision. Such acceptance would not only unite the country behind the Party but could also convince an initially skeptical Stalin of China’s dependability and commitment to the Communist cause.3 It was up to the Central Committee’s Propaganda Department (Zhongxuanbu, or ZXB) to “disseminate articles representative o f the Party’s foreign policy attitudes”4 and to introduce the Soviet Union through the creation o f a new political myth in Chinese cultural and political space. Even before 1949, the CCP leadership consciously tried to “sell” the Soviet Union to domestic publics as an ideological alternative to the familiar and attractive “imperialist” powers. B ut after the signing o f the Sino-Soviet treaties establishing the form o f the alliance in 1950, the sales pitch went into high gear. The C C P informed “all offices and organizations which carry out propagandistic education as well as all propaganda workers” in 1951 that one of their most important tasks was the wide-spread introduction o f the USSR to the masses so that everybody will get acquainted with conditions of the Soviet state and of Soviet social life. Such introduction seems a necessity because many people keep asking now: After all, what kind of a state is it that we have such close ties with? Why can this state help us so generously and unselfishly? W hy does this state always stand at the most advanced position in the world? How do Soviet workers live? How do their farmers live? We must use as much concrete

2Jacques Ellul, in Propaganda: The Formation o f M en’s Attitudes (N Y : Knopf, 1965/73), distinguishes between “agitation” and “integration” propagandas, see chapter 1. 3O ne proponent of this view o f the policy was the journalist Liu Binyan (personal interview, Cambridge, MA, 3/23/89). 4 Xinwcn Yanjiusuo, ed. Tantan Baozhi G ongzuo [News Research Institute, ed., On Newspaper Work] (Beijing: Xinwen Yanjiusuo, 1978), p. 58. Hereafter cited as On Newspaper Work.

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material as possible to introduce the various aspects o f the Soviet Union to the masses. 5

In posing these questions, the propaganda apparatus was addressing a real problem of new China: How to make wholesale aid from a country that was hitherto unknown, at best, to most of the country acceptable. In a country where the previous images and behavior o f foreigners had not been positive, a new set of foreigners was being praised as teachers, educators, experts and family. Neither the meaning o f communism nor the vision of the Soviet Union as the wellspring o f international communism had been well established in China. Yet, China was to receive aid and advice from this unfamiliar, and sometimes hated, country. Both Party cadres and the non-Party public had to recognize and accept the need for the Soviet advisers, technicians and planners who arrived in China en masse after the signing o f the Sino-Soviet Treaty o f Friendship and Alliance in February, 1950. They needed to be informed about the correct behaviour towards these comrades6 and persuaded that the Soviet developmental experience provided the best model for China, or at least that the CCP thought so. Mediating between an international reality (the post-war Soviet Union) and domestic perceptions o f it, the Party’s Propaganda Department created an image of solidarity and fraternal friendship between the Soviet Union and China to strengthen the alliance relationship. Any dissenting portrayal o f the Soviets in China was silenced.7 Once the decision had been made to ally with the Soviet Union, China’s place in the world was

^Xuexi, Vol. 4, N o. 12, 10/1/51, in American Consulate General, H ong Kong, Chinese Communist Propaganda Review (5 vols. August 1951-August 1953), page 244. Hereafter cited as “C C PR”. 6According to Li Rui, a CCP Party historian, this meant deferring to your Soviet co-worker in small matters and referring larger issues up the hierarchy for adjudication (personal interview, 1/17/89). 7As we shall see in Chapter 3, the Harbin writer Xiao Jun was made an example in 1948 o f what happened to writers who presented a different view o f the Soviets than was officially accepted. See also, James Wells, “Chinese Dislike o f Soviet Officials Reported Increasing,” New York Times, 3/5/51, p. 5-

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redefined. Thus, the propaganda apparatus would be transmitting not only a policy directive from the top, but also giving an indication of a new national identity for China: that o f an eager participant in a new world socialist movement.

Propaganda as a form o f political life As the link between perception and portrayal, language mediates between visions of the world and narrations of those visions. Consequendy, any examination of (state) propaganda as a representation o f national self-conception must start with the role of language in the creation of images. Assertions o f power are, short o f brute physical force, assertions o f the word. Discursive practices are the currency of politics, yet the problem o f language and politics is one that political science does not often examine in the Chinese context.8 This is not a project about a Chinese philosophy o f language, though o f the thousands of books on this subject in the West vety few are concerned with China.9 This section will provide a necessary background for examining Chinese propaganda within the larger context o f language’s role in shaping individual and communal perceptions within

8See Benjamin Schwartz, The W orld o f Thought in A ncient China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 1985), p. 11-12, for a brief discussion of the problems o f different language systems and comparative thought across “discourses”. See also David Apter, “Discourse as power: Yan’an and the Chinese Revolution,” in Tony Saich and Hans van de V en, eds., New Perspectives on the Chinese Communist Revolution (forthcoming). See also David Apter and T ony Saich, Revolutionary Discourse in M ao’s Republic (Cambrige, MA: Harvard, 1994). 9In fact, Lung-hsi Chang, The Tao and the Logos: Literary Hermeneutics, East a n d West (Durham: Duke University Press, 1992) is the only book comparing W estern and Chinese language philosophy available in English. Occasional speculations about the characteristics of a language based on ideograms do exist. George Steiner w ondered about the possibilities inherent in Chinese characters w hich he thought were arbitrary symbols im bued with commonly-accepted meanings. T he characters could be a kind of Ur-Sprache, which he had hinted at in his discussions o f universal translations, where an underlying meaning was accessible across languages. It was possible that “once a lexicon of [characters] had been agreed to, all messages could be read instantenously, whatever the language of the recipient, and the disaster at Babel would, on the graphic level at least, be mended.” [After Babel: Aspects o f Language and Translation (NY: Oxford, 1975), p. 75] W ittgenstein speculated whether his thoughts on language would be changed, or whether his examples would be relevant if he used Chinese and n o t G erm an (O n Certainty, para. 10, 70).

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polities. Propaganda will be treated primarily as a form o f political language “which functions to create meanings that serve to sustain or alter relations o f domination.”10 Interpreting language as a normative communicative practice that reflects relationships o f authority in any given society “implies a concern with the meaning- and value-producing practices in language rather than simply the relationship between utterances and their referents.”11 This dissertation will show that the Chinese propaganda apparatus prejudicially unwrapped the riddle o f the Soviet Union for domestic audiences and in so doing constructed a particular vision o f the world and China’s new place in it. In the end, the propaganda Soviet U nion became a real Soviet Union in Chinese discursive space, for many of the propaganda producers and recipients alike.

Language, the Individual and the Community Beginning with the individual and continuing through social interaction to collective state activity, language develops through the naming o f objects and communication with others; but between an object and our description o f it stand both the sign (that which we see in our mind) and the symbol (that which we use to tell others what we see). As we manipulate symbols to describe our versions o f reality, we betray our prejudices about the world and we include our audiences in our ways o f life. At the level of individuals, a theory of linguistic determinism defines an inescapable one-way link between language and perception in which “language constitutes a sort of logic, a general frame o f reference, and so molds the thought o f its habitual users.”12

10 Nicholas F.S. Burnett, “Ideology and Propaganda: Toward an Integradve A pproach,” in Ted J.Smith III, ed. Propaganda: A Pluralistic Perspective (NY: Praeger, 1989), p. 128. ^ M ich ael J. Shapiro, “Textualizing Global Politics” in James D er Derian and M ichael J. Shapiro, IntemationaUIntertesctual Relations: Postmodern Readings o f W orld Politics (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, D.C. Heath, & Co., 1989), p. 14. 12Paul Henle, ed. Language, Thought & Culture (Ann Arbor, MI: Michigan, 1958), p. 1.

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Leibniz suggested, in a 1697 tract on “the amelioration and correction of German,” that “language is not the vehicle o f thought but its determining medium.”13 In its strongest form, this belief is exemplified by the Sapir-Whorf thesis maintaining that both thought and the manner in which the environment is understood are dependent on language and, in particular, on the structure o f the language habitually used.14 This view of thought and language has not gone unchallenged and numerous examples have weakened some of the arguments for stria linguistic determinism, but the basic hypothesis is nevertheless quite simple. The way we see the world depends on the language we use to speak about it. But the relationship between language and thought is not as unidireaional as linguistic determinism implies. O n the contrary, it “is a process, a continual movement back and forth from thought to word and from word to thought. In that process the relation of thought to word undergoes changes which themselves may be regarded as development in the fiinaional sense. Thought is not merely expressed in words; it comes into existence through them.”15 This dynamic is fully realized only within a community, where language becomes language through social interattion. Marx wrote that “language, like consciousness, only arises from the need, the necessity, o f intercourse with other men.”16 The Soviet linguist Valentin Volosinov (1895-?) defined language as a quintessential social aaivity. “Every sign ... is a construct between socially organized persons in the process of their interaaion. Therefore, the forms o f signs are conditioned above all by the social organization o f the participants involved and also by the immediate conditions o f their

13As quoted in George Steiner, A fter Babel, p. 74. 14 See John B. Carroll, ed., Language, Thought, and Reality: Selected Writings o f Benjamin Lee W horf (Cambridge, MA: M IT Press, 1956/78). 15 L. S. Vygotsky, Thought and Language, ed. and trans. by Eugenia Hanfmann and Gertrude Vakar (Cambridge, MA: The M IT Press, 1962/79), p. 125. l6 “T he German Ideology” in Robert C. Tucker, ed. The Marx-Engels Reader (NY: N orton, 1978), p. 158.

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interaction. W hen these forms change, so does [the] sign.”17 Volosinov pointed out that Marxist ideology is intimately, if un-self-consciously, bound up with language philosophy: the basis o f the infrastructure is the way the sign is conditioned. A change in the process of interaction within a community will manifest itself in a change in the symbols o f that interaction, as the terms o f the discourse shift to reflea new linguistic relationships. These changes, in turn, evidence a new infrastruaure. In the Chinese case, Mao, in his essay On Practice, implied that struaural change is only possible when the relationships between men are made visible within and through society.18 Though On Practice does not reveal much about Mao’s attitudes towards the role o f language in mediating those relationships, it is clear that he believes that knowledge gained from the aialeaic interaaion between theory and praaice is best interpreted within its social context. The choice of language used to present such knowledge is a part o f that context.

Language-iod .thg.Siare At the national level the language o f the state and the “attions into which it is woven”19 constitute a linguistic community encompassing the state and its citizens. More than just describing the “existing social structures and facilities o f communication” o f a “language community,”20 the relationships between state and citizen comprise praaices and

17V.N. Volosinov, M arxism and the Philosophy o f Language, trans. Ladislav Matejka and I. R. T itunik (NY: Seminar Press, 1973), p. 21. Emphasis in the original. (Despite some confusions about this book’s authorship, I will follow tradition and cite Volosinov as its author.) 18Mao Zedong, “O n Practice” July, 1937, Selected Works vol. 1 (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1965/67), p. 295-309. All further references to M ao’s Selected Works will be cited as followed by the volume num ber. 19Ludwig W ittgenstein, trans. G.E.M . Anscombe, PhibsophicalInvestigations (NY: M acmillan, 1953/89), p. 20 See Karl W . Deutsch, Nationalism a n d Social Communication: A n Itujuiry into the Foundations o f Nationality (Cambridge, MA: The M IT Press, 1966), p. 77.

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traditions routinized through state language as “part o f an activity, or of a form o f life.”23 Wittgensteinian language games require the existence o f participants at the same time that they teach those participants a language, a way o f communicating. State language, a particular kind o f language game, does more than just delineate a nation and its people, it involves them in its own reproduction. It not only draws on a store of shared experiences, but in the didactic early stages o f state-building, state propaganda also creates those experiences. By moving away from the word-as-referent model o f language, we can see that words become important within a context, the “total speech-act” situation.22 Propaganda similarly situated in its context is the ultimate example of the social basis of language. As I will define it in the next chapter, propaganda is an inevitable consequence of the interactions between a state and its citizens. In addition to being the beneficiary o f a notional social contract between itself and its citizens, the state is also an imposition o f order on to chaos, its goal to create and ensure the acceptance o f an account of human nature and international society that values ordering and some kind of sense over disorder and no sense. An elite acting for the state makes up categorizing stories and chooses which versions of those stories to tell. In return, its citizens delegate many o f their responsibilities to the state in an investment o f “symbolic capital” in their national community. Symbolic capital, a fund of accumulated prestige derived from a variety o f sources, grants a regime initial credence and loyalty from persons seeking membership under it. Those sources may include military successes, economic advances or displays o f social justice. A mostly-willing Chinese population ready for some stability after decades o f war and hardship invested credit in the CCP after 1949. But that capital is effective only if the state works to remind its citizens o f its

23 Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, p. 11. ^A ustin, H ow To Do Things with Words.

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value. Symbolic capital thus depends on “representation, opinion, belief, fides”23 for its strength. The regime cannot afford to ignore the work of replenishing credence. That work is state propaganda. The state relies on creating and re-telling enduring myths to keep its community together. This project examines, through the lens of propaganda production, “/h]ow, amidst the diversity and change of texts and signifying practices of a culture, are knowledgeable practices normalized and orchestrated, resistances disciplined, and social energies focused”24 by state elites. It assumes that “what is said in the communication channels of any country at any time is ... part o f what is done in that country.”25 Chinese political community in the early post-1949 days depended on more than just the physical instruments of state power, propaganda also created the ties that bind.

W hat is true for the state’s relationship with its citizens is to a certain extent also true for the state’s relationship to other states. In the 1950s, linguistic fraternity was a form o f international relations. The collectivity o f international communism was bounded in large part by its own vocabulary and by the discursive relationships between that vocabulary and the underlying structures of the societies it was describing and attacking. By agreeing to use the language o f international communism, the Chinese government was agreeing not in mere opinion with the Soviet Union, but in a “form of life,”26 an agreement which was reified in the preamble to the 1954 Constitution, (as well as in numerous editorials and

25 Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, p. 192. ^R ich ard K. Ashley, “Living on Border Lines: M an, Poststructuralism, and W ar,” in Der Derian and Shapiro, International/Intertextual Relations, p. 283. 25 Harold D. Lasswell, Daniel Lerner, Itliiel de Sola Pool, The Comparative Study o f Symbols: A n Introduction (Stanford, CA: Stanford, 1952), p. 34. Emphasis in the original. ^W ittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, esp. §§ 19, 241.

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speeches): “China has already built an indestructible friendship with the great Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the People’s Democracies; and the friendship between our peoples and peace loving people in all other countries is growing day by day. Such friendship will be constandy strengthened and broadened.” The context for this agreement was the revolutionaiy camp of world peace and socialism, led by the Soviet Union. The field o f play was defined by the Soviet Union and the CCP acquiesced to it. By granting the Soviet Union the symbolic power of the leadership of the camp, the Chinese invested symbolic capital in an Elder Brother whose prestige derived from all the apparent successes o f the Soviet state.27 But credence also needed to be replenished by the Elder Brother. In a situation where Chinese filial norms remained influential, “China would anticipate protection, assistance, and moral purity to be conducted by the leader. A violation o f this ethic by the leader would arouse Chinese anxiety.”28 Until such violations drew down the symbolic capital accumulated by Soviet successes, Chinese propaganda continued to present a positive vision o f the Soviet Union. In creating that picture o f the Soviet Union, the CCP in the 1950s imposed a new form o f life on audiences that were in no position to object or to offer alternative forms. T he symbolic capital given to the CCP itself in 1949 allowed it to override its citizens’ personal experiences with the Soviet Union, if there were any, and write a myth of the Soviet state that structured an entire generation’s beliefs. That myth included an assessment of the new Chinese state’s relationship to an international role model and was part of a long quest for a new national identity. The concept of national identity is as basic as that o f personal identity. However, the relative unity of agreement on the importance and elements o f personal identity; its

27 See Benj amin I. Schwartz, Chinese Communism a n d the Rise o f M ao (Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 1951) for a presentation of some o f the sources o f this presdge and their impact on Chinese revolutionaries. ^ C h ih -y u Shih, “N ational Role Conception as Foreign Policy Motivation: T he Psychocultural Bases of Chinese Diplomacy” in Political Psychology, v. 9, no. 4 , Dec. 1988 (NY: Plenum Press, 1988), p. 624.

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genesis, morphosis and projection, is missing in discussions o f national identity. National identity is more than just the sum total o f the individuals and institutions delineated by state boundaries. It “involves national essence (guocut) - the core sentiments and symbols of the state - with which a mass o f people most commonly identify and on the basis o f which they have contracted to live together and to act in concert to defend and protect their common identity.”29 Starting from a linguistic, as opposed to a geographical or ethnic basis for an ontogeny of personal and national identity, the language of the state can be read as providing clues to assumptions about the world embedded in the stories it tells. National identity is then derived from the repeated myths and messages situating the storytellers and their audiences in the relationships that determine who they are. National identity becomes significant in the international realm because it “relates to the way in which a people, and especially a policy-making elite, perceive the essence of their nation in relation to others. It thus influences attitudes and policies alike, being the psychological foundation for the roles and behavior patterns of a country in the international arena.”30 It forms the basis o f a “causal map” of the world system and that nation’s place within that system.31 In the international system, states seeking to change, or determine, a national identity are able to find “reference groups” with which they can identify, either positively or negatively. In the Chinese case, the CCP identified with an international reference group, the “world peace camp.” Doing so provided it with a legitimacy derived from the idea that the “discovery o f a like-minded group beyond

^ S a m u e l S. Kim and Lowell D ittm er, “W hither China’s Q uest for N ational Identity?” in Lowell D ittm er and Samuel S. Kim, eds. China's Quest fo r N ational Identity (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993), p. 240. ^ R o b e rt A. Scalapino, “C hina’s Multiple Identities in East Asia: China as a Regional Force,” in D ittm er and Kim, eds. China’s Quest fo r N ational Identity, p. 215. 31 Shih, “National Role C onception.” See also his The S p irit o f Chinese Foreign Policy: A Psychocultural V iew (NY: Macmillan, 1990).

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national boundaries allows one to maintain that the principles on which one’s domestic political arrangements and development are based have generalizable validity.”32 The benefits o f the socialist camp were indeed proclaimed to be accessible to all o f humanity. O f course, conceptions o f national identity are n o t static. A national identity may change over time and vary “in political significance (priority and intensity) with the challenges immediately confronting the nation; ... it is constantly in flux, being altered by a host o f internal and external factors;... even in its most fundamental expression it is not without contradictions, some o f them basic; and ... the latter fact enables a political elite to play on its multiple and varied potentialities in fashioning images that will facilitate the exercise o f power and the effectuation o f policy.”33 In relating the way the Soviet Union was portrayed in China to Chinese conceptions of national identity, this dissertation moves away from the standard mass communications model o f the press, the party and persuasion in China.34 Derived from the Leninist conception o f the press as a “transmission belt,” this model combined ideology, practice and policy in a mass media system that carried out the “sole ideological mission dictated by the needs of the authority” or acted as its mouthpiece.35 Propaganda in this model is an

^L ow ell D ittm er, Sino-Soviet Norm alization and Its International Implications, 1945-1990 (Seattle: University o f Washington Press, 1992), p. 95. D ittm er also notes th a t membership in such a group implies chances for leadership roles as that group’s acceptance o f a new m em ber leaves room for suggestions and initiatives in achieving mutually beneficial goals. But such accom m odadon by older “members o f the club” is in no way guaranteed. ^Scalapino, “China’s M uldple Identities in East Asia,” p. 217. 34 For examples, see Franklin W . H oun, To Change A Nation: Propaganda and Indoctrination in Communist China!,NY: The Free Press, 1961); Alan P .L Liu, Communications and National Integration in Communist China (Berkeley, CA: University o f California, 1975); Frederick T .C . Yu, Mass Persuasion in Communist China (NY: Praeger, 1964); Godwin C. Chu and Francis L. K. Hsu, eds. Moving a M ountain: Cultural Change in China (Honolulu: The University Press o f H aw aii for the East-West Center, 1979). 35Tsan-kuo Chang, Chin-hsien Chen and Guo-qiang Zhang, “Rethinking the mass propaganda model: evidence from the Chinese regional press,” in The International Jou rn a l fo r Mass Communication Studies (Norwell, MA: Kluwer Academic Publishers) vol. 51, N o. 3, p. 176.

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instrument o f the Party. The media are the carriers of the messages and the center o f the model’s instrumental views o f Party propaganda. The mass propaganda model’s focus on the media, though, neglected the real impact of propaganda on its audiences. W hen propaganda is just the message, it can be accepted or refused by the intended recipients, who are influenced by the histoiy, identity and skills of the messenger. But when propaganda presents an acceptable framework for a changed world, when it presents an appealing explanatory vision of the world, it involves the recipients in its “way o f life” and effects long-term perceptual change. This dissertation studies the Soviet Union that Chinese propaganda created in the 1950s and traces longitudinally the effects o f that creation to examine the impact o f propaganda on perceptions. Audience integration o f those images into their own political vocabulary provide new evidence o f the efficacy o f Chinese propaganda. In order to assess the impact o f the 1950s propaganda portrayals of the Soviet Union, I contracted with a Chinese research firm, The China Survey Service, to interview 250 randomly chosen residents o f Beijing in the spring of 1991. T he interview questionnaire was derived from my prior interviews with Chinese propagandists, reporters and academics. T he English translation o f the interview questions is included as Appendix 1, a table of the Chinese respondents is included as Appendix 2. Each interview was conducted by a Chinese member o f the firm’s staff, who told the interviewees that the Chinese firm was itself embarking on a project about the Soviet Union and was interested in their perceptions. The language recorded was solely that o f the respondents. The interviews averaged an hour apiece and the verbatim records of the interviews were returned to me. My translations provide the raw materials for the sections describing the audience reception o f various propaganda images. By looking at the results of these interviews, we will find that the most potent images o f the early 1950s had not disappeared in China almost four decades later. We will also find that the successes o f the critical propaganda

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o f the later years depended on isolating and attacking specific elements of the myth o f the Soviet Union.

Certainly we could apply rational choice or negotiating and bargaining models to the propaganda relationship between a state and its citizens. But to do so would neglect the wealth of information provided by conceptualizing propaganda as a complex process of translating visions into portrayals rather than simply as a means to an end, or as a finished product for mass consumption. Seeing propaganda as a reflection o f linguistic processes that are bound up with authority and identity redirects the focus of analytic attention away from the concept o f state language as “merely propaganda.” By assigning propaganda a role in the construction of the propagandists’ self-image, this dissertation goes beyond the standard international relations literature’s instrumental view o f propaganda. In the end we will see that state language is an integral and indispensable part not only of how a state sees itself, but also how it presents itself to others.

Propaganda in International Relations: A B rief Overview “The way in which the world is imagined determines at any pardcular m om ent what men will do.”36

The international relations literature is a behaviorist-oriented one. State actions are assumed to be the fundamental signals o f international politics. State discourse is primarily seen as a disguise for non-verbal action, or as subsidiary to non-verbal signaling.37 The link between these actions are (mis-)perceptions mediated by linguistic practices, but the central role o f that mediation remains unrecognized in mainstream writings on international relations, even though the importance o f language is not new to the

^ Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion ( NY: Free Press, 1965), p. 16. 37 See, e.g., Robert Jervis, Perceptions and Misperceptions in International Relations (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1976), p. xxx.

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realist literature. Thucydides saw the effect o f revolution in Corcyra as a degradation of “men’s characters to a level with their fortunes.”38 Words tumbled into a chaotic arbitrariness where they “had to change their ordinary meanings and ... take those which were now given them .” W hat Thucydides may have considered undesirable qualities became, for the Corcyraeans, the opposite. “Reckless audacity came to be considered the courage of a loyal ally; prudent hesitation, specious cowardice ... Frantic violence became the attribute of manliness; cautious plotting, a justifiable means of self-defence.” This history o f the Peloponnesian Wars is replete with “speech-acts”39 o f different varieties: ultimatums, declarations, and surrenders. The global nature of the twentieth-century ideological debate combined with modern technological changes structured contemporary realist discussions o f propaganda. Writing in the shadow of two competing all-encompassing views o f the world, Hans Morgenthau set his discussion of propaganda within the context o f global struggles “for the minds of men” over “truth and falsehood” and “good and evil.”40 E.H. Carr described the use of propaganda in the normal course o f international relations as an innovation of the Bolsheviks, who, after the October Revolution, had no instrument of international power other than the power over opinion, which they exploited “to the utmost.”41 W ith two grand ideological blocs in opposition, propaganda “attempts to convince the governed, on the other side o f the line o f demarcation, that they are exploited, oppressed, abused.”42 The

38 Rex Warner, trans. History o f the Peloponnesian War (NY: Penguin, 1954). Q uotes from Book 111:82. 39 When, “in saying something we do something, or even by saying something we do something.” (J.L. Austin, How To Do Things W ith Words (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1975), p. 109.) 40 Hans M orgenthau, and Kenneth W . Thompson, Politics Am ong Nations: The Struggle fo r Power and Peace, Sixth Edition (NY: Knopf, 1985). 41 E.H. Carr, The Twenty Years Crisis, 1919-1939 (NY: Harper, 1964), p. 141. 42 Raymond Aron, trans., Richard Howard and A nnette Baker Fox, Peace and War: A Theory o f International Relations (Malabar, FL: Robert E. Krieger, 1981), p. 60.

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struggle for the minds o f those “on the other side” is shaped by the appeal o f a national philosophy. W hat “a nation does or does not do is held for or against it as a reflection of its political philosophy, system o f government, and way o f life. A domestic achievement that is intelligible to other nations in terms of their aspirations cannot (ail to increase the power o f the nation; a domestic failure, equally intelligible, is bound to decrease it.”43 Propaganda is regarded as merely an instrument o f foreign policy, typically classified as a “third force” in international relations, diplomacy and military force being the other two. The nation-state’s foreign policies seek to maximize influence in the international arena and propaganda is considered effective insofar as it furthers this aim. Propaganda in peacetime is a battle for the opinions o f populations in other countries, the “use and creation of intellectual convictions, moral valuations, and emotional preferences in support of one’s own interests.”44 Propaganda in wartime is a tactical and strategic weapon aimed at rousing the home front and demoralizing the enemy, the organization of “enthusiasm behind the lines as well as at the front” and o f “defeatism abroad.”45 The statist assumptions o f the realists are apparent. Propaganda is “psychological warfare” conducted by nations against the citizens o f other nations.46 T he lack of commonly shared universal values in international relations, the “heterogeneity o f the system” o f sovereign nations, requires a “constant effort o f persuasion and subversion” through propaganda.47 But “power over opinion cannot be dissociated from military and economic power ... [It] is ineffective as a political force until it acquires a national home

“^M orgenthau, Politics Am ong Nations, p. 155. “^M orgenthau, Politics Am ong Nations, p. 341. 45 Aron, Peace and War, p. 164,165. “^M orgenthau, Politics Am ong Nations, p. 340, 341. 47 Aron, Peace and War, p. 523.

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and becomes linked with military and economic power.”48 For example, Bolshevik international and domestic propaganda was much more powerful and effective with the force o f the Red Army behind it.49 Trotskyism severed from the power of the state declined into ineffectualness long before Trotsky’s assassination. Both Carr and Morgenthau briefly addressed the practice o f propaganda. One important goal o f international propaganda is the persuasion o f the domestic audiences o f your enemy o f the “rightness” o f your ideology. This persuasion is effected by relating the propaganda with the “life experiences and interests o f those whom propaganda tries to reach” and by remembering the importance o f “the relations between propaganda and the foreign policy as whose instrum ent propaganda serves.”50 Propaganda’s effectiveness requires “some measure of conformity with fact” 1 but more importantly propaganda content must resonate with “deeply felt intellectual and political needs,”52 or what has been called “receptive harbors”53 in targeted audiences. Receptive harbors are grounded in the personal and actual experiences o f the audiences and thus familiarity with the audiences is a crucial requirement for propagandists. For the realists, policy an d propaganda in international relations have to work together to achieve proper results. Policy formulation must include clear statements of objectives and methods, within the context o f particular situations, and a match of words to deeds in specific policy areas. In applying these principles to the case o f American involvement in

48Carr, The Twenty Years Crisis, p. 138-39. 49Carr, The Twenty Years Crisis, p. 138. ^M orgenthau, Politics Among N ations, p. 353. 51 Carr, The Twenty Years Crisis, p. 144. 52Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations, p. 353. 53G. Harry Jamieson, Communication and Persuasion (London: Croom Heim, 1985), p 24.

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Indochina, Morgenthau noted that American propaganda was not supported by American deeds in the form o f economic or technical assistance, thus producing a disparity between intention and result. Propaganda, in sum, should be applied in a sophisticated and targeted manner, supported by other actions, especially given the absence of a “common roof of shared values and universal standards of action”54 even among the audiences o f one country. Morgenthau implicitly belittled propagandas as derivative of foreign policy goals and only as strong and as effective as those policies themselves. Military propaganda as psychological warfare The study o f propaganda during war-time provides an obvious example o f the statist assumptions o f the realists. Military propaganda is a peculiar subset o f propaganda and a model case o f propaganda for some. “By far the most potent role of propaganda is to mobilize the animosity o f the community against the enemy, to maintain friendly relations with neutrals and allies, to arouse the neutrals against the enemy, and to break up the solid wall o f enemy antagonism. In short, it is the significance o f propaganda for international attitudes in war which renders it o f peculiar importance.”55 Analyses of military propaganda have provided much of the literature on propaganda, but as this dissertation is primarily concerned with the generation of domestic images in support of an alliance relationship, I shall only briefly discuss the role o f propaganda in military situations.56 Military propaganda aims primarily at the “organization o f enthusiasm” behind the front lines as well as “defeatism abroad,” to use Aron’s phrases. The “planned use o f any

^M orgenthau, Politics Among Nations, p. 359. 55 Harold D. Lasswell, Propaganda Technique in the World War (Cambridge, MA: M IT, 1927/71), p. 10. 56 For a sampling o f this literature, see George Creel, H ow we advertised America: the fir st telling o f the amazing story o f the Committee on Public Inform ation that carried the gospel o f Americanism to every comer o f the globe (New York: Harper &C Brothers, 1920); and especially Alexander L. George, Propaganda Analysis: A Study oflnferences made from Nazi Propaganda in W orld War //(E vanston, ILL: Row, Peterson, 1959).

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form o f public or mass-produced communication designed to affect the minds, emotions, and action o f a given group for a specific public purpose”57 during hostilities is a specific form of psychological warfare. As long as there have been attempts to intimidate an opponent prior to the use of physical force, there has been psychological warfare. Gideon’s use of lamps and pitchers in battle against the Midianites is one of the earliest examples.58 Political denunciation as a type of “organization of enthusiasm” is recounted in a passage from the ancient Chinese military classic, Tales o f the Three Kingdom , proclaiming the justness of the cause o f loyalist pro-Han rebels against government usurpers. The House o f Han has fallen upon evil days, the bonds o f Imperial authority are loosened. The rebel minister, Tung Cho, takes advantage o f the discord to work evil, and calamity falls upon honorable families. Cruelty overwhelms simple folk. W e, Shao and his confederates, fearing for the safety o f the imperial prerogatives, have assembled military forces to rescue the State. We now pledge ourselves to exert our whole strength, and to act in concord to the utmost limit of our powers. There must be no disconcerted or selfish action. Shouid any depart from this pledge may he lose his life and leave no posterity. Almighty Heaven and Universal Mother Earth and the enlightened spirits o f our forefathers, be ye our witnesses.59

Several o f these techniques o f military propaganda from the third century were also common in modern China. The denunciation names a specific enemy, the “rebel minister”; it appeals to “honorable” people while claiming to speak for the “simple folk”; it claims to support a legitimate government; it affirms one’s own strength and moral high

57 Paul M. A. Linebarger, Psychological W arfare (NY: Amo Press, 1972), p. 39. 58In Linebarger, Psychological Warfare, p. 3. 59 Lo Kuan-chung, San Kuo chih Yen-i, trans. C.H . Brewitt-Taylor, San Kuo or Romance o f the Three Kingdoms (Shanghai: n.p., 1929), vol. 1, p. 46, as cited by Linebarger, Psychological Warfare, p. 8.

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ground; and it appeals to unity while warning o f drastic consequences for those who stray from the group.

Perceptions and Propagandas Even in a literature that prioritizes the nation-state, the roles o f perceptions and misperceptions in international affairs are acknowledged, if only as the results of propaganda warfare. Rational actors in the normal course of diplomacy are supposed to act on the principles that they “try to project desired images, whether accurate or not, and skeptically view the images projected by others.”60 Misperception, the inaccurate assessment by one actor o f another actor’s preferences in international behavior,61 may be a desired result of one actor’s propaganda. In this case, Morgenthau would call the intended misperceptions a form o f diplomacy. Misperception o f received images by foreign policy decision makers is often an important variable in international relations and has been the subject of much research.62 Studies o f elite political images in China show that perceptions derived from those images not only “define a situation” but also “shape a response.”63 Diplomatic history is full o f anecdotal evidence o f leaders’ perceptions affecting their choices o f foreign policy decisions. Khrushchev was said to have thought lightly of Kennedy at Vienna and consequendy gambled, wrongly, on Cuba. Stalin somehow convinced himself that H ider was not going to attack in 1941.

60 Robert Jervis, The Logic o f Images in International Relations (NY: Columbia University Press, 1970, Morningside Edition, 1989), p. 1561 Arthur A. Stein, “W hen Misperception Matters,” W orld Politics V ol. 34, No. 4, July 1982, p. 505. 62 W hether that misperception tends to lead to conflict (Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception), or not (Arthur A. Stein, “W hen Misperception Matters”). 63David L. Shambaugh, “Elite Politics and Perceptions" in Gerald Segal, ed. Chinese Politics and Foreign Policy Reform (NY: Kegan, Paul International, for the Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1990), p. 103.

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The importance o f perception looms especially large in the language o f nuclear deterrence, which depended substantially on the internationally perceived strength of a country’s strategic arsenal. An illustrative example o f the study of perceptions in American-Soviet nuclear relations detailed the various ways that “perceptions have been invoked ... to justify particular Western nuclear programmes.”64 One such “invocation” based on a cultural relativist argument insisted th at the Soviet Union played by a different set o f rules and values than did the West, thus requiring that the West achieve a higher level o f deterrence than mere “sufficiency”. Another set o f arguments was based on the causal relationship between perceptions and actions. It forwarded the “claim that adverse consequences might flow if the [former] Soviet U nion appeared to be gaining the lead in the nuclear competition.”65 Finally, nuclear systems were used to symbolize larger political issues, such as American commitment to European defense, membership in a “nuclear club,” or foreign policy resolve. In the language game o f nuclear deterrence, planning hinges on assessments of the will to use nuclear weapons and thus perceptions form the basis o f policy decisions. Consequently, the accuracy o f those perceptions o f intentions and capabilities affect co­ operation and confrontation in nuclear weapons regimes. Influencing perceptions within the regime thus becomes a crucial task for regime participants.

Regimes and Propaganda An alternative to state-centered realism in international relations focuses on regimes, the “principles, norms, rules and decision making procedures around which actor

^ P h ilip A.G. Sabin, Shadow or Substance? Perceptions a n d Symbolism in Nuclear Force Planning, Adelphi Papers #222 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1987), p . 3. 65 Sabin, Shadow or Substance?, p. 4. Emphasis added.

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expectations converge in a given issue-area.”66 In the discussion o f regimes as conflict management in focused issue-areas in the international system, the question of propaganda per se is unexplored. But propaganda’s role in regimes is an important one: norms, rules and procedures are explained by governments in their own best interests. One nation’s use o f words to describe the nature o f its fundamental assumptions about the uses of the earth’s resources, the value of order or re-distribution, is another nation’s “propaganda”. States’ adaptations to the international environment depend on their dynamic visions o f reality, which vary according to the ontological foundations used to explain “interactions between man, culture, and nature.”67 Different “realities” jostle for authoritative space in die establishment o f regimes. Even once a particular reality is described and has “gelled” to shape the arrangements o f a regime, the process of adaptation does not end. “The actors’ perceptions o f reality result in policies that shape events; these effects create a new reality whose impact will then be perceived all over again, ad infinitum .”68 Propaganda is both a reflection of, and a participant in, that dynamic process. By defining the terms and limits o f co-operation, state language affects regime interactions. “Different perceptions of national interest, changeable in response to new information or altered values, will result in different processes and in a variety of regimes that will be considered rational by the actors.”69 The levels o f coordination and collaboration necessary for the success o f regimes are based on information from the participants in those regimes. An understanding of national

^ S te p h e n D. Krasner, “Structural causes and regime consequences: regimes as intervening variables” in Stephen D. Krasner, ed., International Regimes (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,1983), p. 1. 67 Ernst Haas, “W ords can hurt you; or, who said what to whom about regimes,” in Krasner,ed. International Regimes, p. 25. 68 Haas, “Words can hurt you,” p. 57. 69 Haas, “Words can hurt you,” p. 57.

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propagandas in light o f what they reveal about perceptions and self-identities may contribute to regime success. Propagandas can not be discounted as mere instruments of state, they m ust be understood as the result o f particular contexts and traditions.

An interpretive approach to international relations Alternatives to the positivist tendency in political science are few, but a recognition of the independent role o f language in politics moves us away from the imposition o f a conception o f exactitude imported from the natural sciences into politics, which is, after all, an interpretive enterprise. “O ur political practices are expressed and constituted by the language that is lodged in them, and the language that is lodged in them gets its sense from the form of political practice within which it grows.” Thus, “language cannot be understood outside of the practices and institutions within which it grows.”70 The influence o f Wittgensteinian attitudes toward language is strong in these approaches. “When backed up by political power and broad ideological precepts, language functions not as a mere cognitive tool nor as a means for particular aims, but rather as a cast or grid for an entire way o f life, that is, for preferred manners o f thinking, speaking, and acting.”71 Among the political processes that take place in international relations, whether in or across particular regimes, is “one o f legitimating ... structures o f meaning,”72 that is, imposing a rationalization and institutionalization o f particular hierarchical relationships. The propaganda o f international communism depended on selective acts o f forgetting, especially o f the post-revolution process by which “one set o f meanings has been

^ M ic h ae l T . Gibbons, cd., Interpreting Politics (NY: New York University, 1987), p. 2, 3. 71 Fred R. Dallmayr, Language and Politics: Why Does Language M atter to Political Philosophy? (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), p. 3. ^ M ic h a e l J. Shapiro, “Textualizing Global Politics,” in D cr D erian and Shapiro, International/Intertextual Relations, p. 15.

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institutionalized and various other possibilities... have been marginalized.”73 For example, the Leninist re-interpretation o f Marxism “forgot” th at predicted stages o f development were skipped. The appropriation o f Marxism by the Soviet Union rationalized, for a time, hegemonic foreign policies. Legitimation is to a great extent effected through the force of language. In international relations, that language constitutes the propaganda of nations. National propagandas attempt to create narratives, to construct meanings. Propaganda is no longer just a dependent variable, an instrument of state power, but becomes an intervening variable, one that structures practices and reifies knowledge. National narratives that give clues about how identities are construed and how knowledge is perceived are reproduced in the propaganda generated for domestic consumption. The relationship between domestic propaganda and international relations is a complicated one. While propaganda intended for domestic audiences may be different than a state’s international projections, those domestic images are inevitably analyzed by non-intended external audiences (as we will see in chapter 1). Robert Jervis, for example, speculated that contemporary Chinese press reports about the Korean War were “designed to prepare their own people for the coming conflict” and could have been a potentially important index of future Chinese external behavior.74 As well as hinting at specific actions, images from the domestic media can also illuminate a state elite’s conceptions of national identities and give clues about likely behavior in broader international situations. Shifts in those images hint at changing conceptions of national identity. In the 1950s no other foreign policy issue was more important for China than its relationship w ith the Soviet Union and “throughout the history o f Sino-Soviet relations, changing mutual perceptions have served as a useful barometer to the emotional climate of

^ S h a p iro , “Textualizing Global Politics,” p. 15. 74Jervis, Perceptions and Misperceptions; p. 27A.

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the relationship.”75 Chinese propaganda about the Soviet Union in the first decade after liberation is at the focal point of this project. At no point in China's history had the Chinese people been told to buy a foreign policy like the one they were being told to buy in the first few years o f the People’s Republic. Never before had another country been “sold” so wholeheartedly as a teacher and model as the Soviet U nion from 1949-1959. But the relationship between the Soviet Union and China was a dynamic one. The early successes of China’s “integrative” propaganda in creating a new alliance partner that was palatable to domestic audiences ran into changed political needs in the latter part of the decade. Changes in propaganda portrayals, especially the shift towards negative portrayals of the leadership and Soviet foreign policy after the early 1960s, reflected the political elite’s changing evaluation o f the relationship with the Soviet Union. The dismanding of the benevolent Soviet Union and its reconstruction into a revisionist imperialist took many years and accompanied the redefinition o f China’s role on the world stage. As we shall see in the next chapter, the study o f propaganda has normally been simply an inquiry into the power o f propagandists to affect the perceptions and the behavior o f the targeted audiences. But when language as a fundamental component of domestic and international relationships of hierarchy, Chinese propaganda becomes more than just a “brainwashing device” or the position papers of elite factions, neither mere instrument nor mere reflection. The fundamental question o f propaganda, who says what to whom and with what effect, restates Austin’s notion o f words as acts of speech and the feeling that words can act was nowhere stronger than in Beijing in the decade after 1949.

75 Ditnner, Sino-Soviet Normalization and Its International Implications, 1945-1990, p. 35.

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Introduction: Appendix 1: Survey Translation

1. Gender:

2. Birthplace:

3. Year o f birth:

4. Level of education recieved: college and over; school; lower middle; elementary;

higher technical; m iddle illiterate; semi-literate.

year of graduation, if applicable: Did you study any Russian?

for how long:

Did you have a teacher from the Soviet Union? 5. Occupation:

current:

in the 1950s:

where?:

6. Personal background: Have you ever worked with a Soviet technical specialist or foreign expert? If so, in what field?

for how long? did you ever have any contact again?

Have you ever studied in the Soviet Union? If so, what field did you study?

for how long?

where?

Did you ever see any Soviet films in the 1950s? If so, do you remember their names? Did you see more, less than ten? Did you ever read any Soviet magazines or books? If so, do you remember any titles? Did you read more than ten, or a few? 7. W hat are your impressions o f the Soviet Union today? 8. W hat were your impressions o f the Soviet Union in the 1950s? [To help jog memories, the following periodization, with salient events, was used:] 1949-1953, including the Korean War period. 1953-1957, including the period of Stalin’s death and the 20th PC of the CPSU 1957-1960, including the Anti-Rightist Movement, Great Leap Forward, withdrawal o f the Soviet advisers. 1960-1961, including the Nine Articles. 9. W hat are your impressions o f Stalin?

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10. W hat are your impressions o f Khpishchev? 11. W hat are your impressions o f the Soviet Red Army? 12. W hat are your impressions o f the following slogans? “The Soviet Union o f Today is O ur Tomorrow!” “The Peace and Democracy camp led by the Soviet Union.” “Glorious Teacher” “Model Mother” “Elder Brother” “Soviet Revisionist Socialist Imperialism” 13. Position in the 1950s: propagandist, Sources o f news:

propaganda worker,

propaganda audience

newspapers (which ones) magazines (which ones) radio television political study sessions wall newspaper (location) blackboard news (location) others.

Locations of news sources:

work

home

other

14. W hat kind of position does China occupy in international relations? Now: In the period from 1949-1961: 15. W hat kind o f role did propaganda play in the various periods of C hina’s revolution and development?

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Introduction: Appendix 2 The table below represents the targeted 120 respondents in each age group divided by the criteria of; role in propaganda network, contact with Soviets, and education. I also requested ten responses from people who had spent time in the Soviet Union during the 1950s, thus providing a total o f 250 responses. I returned to the United States with a total o f 277 completed surveys carried out by the China Survey Service. O f that total, I approved 250 as acceptable. The other 27 were incomplete for one reason or another. CONTACT?

propagandise

no

propaganda worker

10

10

10

non-college

10

10

10

college

10

10

10

non-college

10

10

10

college

yes

audience

The following two tables show the actual breakdown o f the surveys. It turned out to be very difficult to find and interview some categories o f respondents; for example, propagandists and propaganda workers without tertiary education. Table 1: Those bom 1931 and before.

yes no

propaganda worker

propagandist

CONTACT?

audience

college

5

8

10

non-college

7

2

8

college

12

9

18

non-college

8

10

26

Table 2 : Those bom after 1 9 3 1

yes no

propaganda worker

propagandist

CONTACT?

audience

college

6

10

18

non-college

2

college

19

5 12

27

non-college

19

6

15

5

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CHAPTER O N E: T H E ANALYSIS OF PROPAGANDA

State language that is focused, directed, and intended for a wide range of audiences is part of what I shall call propaganda. The language of Chinese domestic propaganda about the Soviet Union in the 1950s hints at an entire network o f relationships that defined the Chinese Communists’ vision of China in the world. By examining Chinese Communist propaganda as a relational indicator, I move away from the use of quantitative content analysis as a tool for predicting Chinese Communist behavior1 and toward a deeper understanding o f the role that words played in Chinese politics. In assessing Chinese manifestations o f the national image by looking at portrayals o f other countries, I assume that Chinese discursive practices are indicative o f real searches for national identity and/or international community.2 This chapter places Chinese propaganda within the analytical literature on propaganda. After having briefly reviewed the role of propaganda in writings on international relations, I now trace the development of the dominant schools o f propaganda analysis in the United States. I provide a detailed definition o f propaganda that distances itself from traditionally value-laden uses o f the word and clarifies just how propaganda hints at the self-consciousness o f the propagandists. A discussion o f Soviet and Chinese views of propaganda will introduce the rest o f the dissertation’s examination o f how the Soviet Union was “sold” in 1950s China.

'A n example o f such analysis is Franz Mogdis and Karen Tidwell, the Social Sciences D epartm ent, Bendix Corporation, Sino-Soviet Interaction: 1950-1967, Project Triad (Ann Arbor, MI: ICPR, 1971) which supplies tables aggregating bilateral diplomatic, communicadons and trade interacuon; and perception tables which code official documents for their percepuons of the other country. 2For a collecdon o f essays that explore the issue o f nadonal identity, see Lowell D ittm er and Samuel S. Kim, eds. C hina’s Quest fo r N ational Identity. I will return to this theme later.

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Concepts o f Propaganda “There is nothing that cannot be said and it is possible to say nothing.”3

Propaganda in the popular American consciousness has been equated with manipulative communication, “deliberately deceitful appeals, especially those directed to a mass audience.”4 But it was not always so. As a method o f persuasion, propaganda has many historical antecedents. The ancient Greek practice o f rhetoric codified rules o f argumentation and could be considered a system o f propaganda. The ancient Chinese military historian Sun Tzu called military propaganda a contributor to the “fog o f war.” But the modern meaning o f “propaganda” is rooted in the Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda Fide (Congregation for the Propaganda o f the Faith), which was established by Pope Gregory XV in 1622 as a “standing committee o f cardinals in charge o f missionary activities o f the Roman Catholic Church.”5 This committee was divided into three departments, “the first charged with the supervision o f liturgical books, the second created for the revision of reports coming from bishops and other officials abroad, and the third and most important, for the control o f the statutes o f those religious organizations that depended on propaganda.”6 As part of this propaganda enterprise, “in 1627 a college was established containing a wonderful printing office, a library, and a museum.... At this college, conferences and courses in foreign languages were held in order to educate priests for their duties as heralds for the greatness o f the Catholic

3Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, p. 41. 4Ted J. Smith, III, ed., Propaganda: A Pluralistic Perspective (NY: Praeger, 1989), p. 1. 5Smith, Propaganda: A Pluralistic Perspective, p. 579. Also in the OED, and Webster’s Third 6Edgar Stcrn-Rubarth, “The Methods o f Political Propaganda,” in Q uincy W right, ed., Public O pinion and World-Politics: Lectures on the Harris Foundation (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1933), p. 99.

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church.”7 Propagation o f the Catholic ideology was considered a noble enterprise and a high calling, but it seems that the transmission o f faith in the unquestioning service of an all-powerful organization has since become indelibly associated in many people’s minds with the propaganda o f a communist state. In the United States, sustained attempts at defining propaganda began with the publications of memoirs and revelations about propaganda techniques from World War I. Notable among these was George Creel’s exposition of American propaganda which surprised many by its admission that the American government worked just as hard as, and arguably even more successfully than, the war-time enemy in manipulating mass opinion.8 These works resulted in a flurry of academic and public interest in propaganda. But explanations and definitions varied from author to author, and sometimes from one definition to the next. Harold Lasswell in the Encyclopedia o f the Social Sciences wrote that “propaganda in the broadest sense is the technique o f influencing human action by the manipulation o f representations,” in spoken, written, pictorial or musical form. Acts, such as political assassination could be considered another form of propaganda.9 But elsewhere Lasswell wrote that political propaganda was simply “the dissemination o f words (and word-equivalents, like pictures);”10 or, the “manipulation o f symbols” as a “means of influencing attitudes on controversial matters.”11 In updating the Encyclopedia article,

7Stem-Rubarth, “The M ethods of Political Propaganda,” p. 100. 8Creel, How we advertised America. 9Harold D. Lasswell, “Propaganda” in Edwin R.A. Seligman, ed., Encyclopedia o f the Social Sciences, vol. 12 (NY: Macmillan, 1934), p. 521. 10 Harold D.Lasswell, N athan Leites, and Associates, Language o f Politics: Studies in quantitative semantics (Cambridge, MA: M IT Press, 1949/68), p. 199. 11H. D. Lasswell, “Communications Research and Politics” in Douglas Waples, ed., Print, Radio, and Film in a Democracy (Chicago: n.p., 1942), p. 106, as cited in Inkeles, Public Opinion in Soviet Russia: A Study in Mass Persuasion (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1950), p. 38.

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Bruce Smith added several qualifiers to strengthen the definition. “Propaganda is the relatively deliberate manipulation, by means o f symbols (words, gestures, flags, images, monuments, music, etc.), o f other people’s thoughts or actions with respect to beliefs, values, and behaviors which these people ... regard as controversial.”12 Propaganda was often typically divided into four categories: white, black, grey and propaganda of the deed. W hite propaganda is openly attributed biased pronouncements, usually from information programs, black propaganda is information from a fictitious declared source.13 Grey propaganda comes from a source that may or may not be its true source.14 Propaganda o f the deed transforms a non-symbolic act, an act which involves more than just “symbols,” such as the public execution of a criminal, or disbursement of opinion-winning foreign aid, into “symbolic” propaganda when an official “spin” is attached to them. W ithin these general categories fell different manifestations of propaganda such as demonstrations, publications, organizations, and supplementary media such as posters and placards.13 Many definitions do not address the problem o f measuring propaganda effectiveness. A recent American work on the Soviet experience defined propaganda as “nothing more than the attempt to transmit social and political values in the hopes o f affecting people's thinking, emotions and thereby behavior.”16 For one describer o f Soviet films, propaganda

12 Bruce L. Smith, “Propaganda” in David L. Sills, ed., International Encyclopedia o f the Social Sciences, vol. 12 (NY: Macmillan & T he Free Press, 1968), p. 579. 13 H. Bradford Westerfield, The Instrum ents o f Am erican Foreign Policy (NY: Thom as Y. Crowell, 1963), p. 444. 14Victoria O ’Donnell and G arth S. Jowett, “Propaganda as a Form o f Com m unication,” in Ted J. Sm ith, ed., Propaganda: A Pluralistic Perspective, p. 54. 13 Harold Lasswell and Dorothy Blumenstock, W orld Revolutionary Propaganda: A Chicago Study, (NY: Knopf, 1939). 16 Peter Kenez, The B irth o f the Propaganda State: Soviet methods o f mass mobilization, 1917-1929 (New York: Cambridge,1985). Emphasis added.

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“is concerned with the transmission o f ideas and/or values from one person, or group of persons, to another.”17 Walter Lippmann called propaganda “ the effort to alter the picture to which men respond, to substitute one social pattern for another?”18 In general, these definitions do agree on some common characteristics o f propaganda: subject matter that would be controversial if debated openly, a one-way flow of communication, conscious activity on the part of the propagandist, mass audiences, and multiple formats. In the next section, I classify various schools o f propaganda analysis and examine how they are differentiated by their views towards these common characteristics.

Schools of propaganda analysis Propaganda analysis as commonly construed identifies the subjects, objects, methods and content of propaganda communication to make deductions about motivations and intentions. It “focuses upon the use o f communication as an instrument of political policy” and has “two general purposes: (a) the summary, or selective description, of what is being said by the propagandist and (b) the interpretation o f the intentions, strategy, and calculations behind propaganda communications.”19 Analysis of propaganda in the United States can be roughly divided into three “schools”, each with their own organizing principles, adherents and teachers. The first was the classical school, whose major tenet was the usefulness o f propaganda analysis as a form o f domestic social criticism. This school predominated in propaganda studies between the two wars. Towards the end of the 1930s, the shift to the perceived value-neutral nature o f “communications research” by many propaganda analysts, notably Harold Lasswell, presaged a decline o f the classical

17 Richard Taylor, Film Propaganda: Soviet Russia and N a zi Germany (London: Croom Helm, 1979), p. 19. Emphasis added. 18 Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion, p. 16. Emphasis added. 19George, Propaganda Analysis, p. 4 and p. vii.

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school. T he primacy of the content analysis school of propaganda studies in the postWorld W ar II decades was related to the trend towards quantification that characterized the social sciences. This trend included many books on Chinese “brainwashing.” The third, a neo-classical, school of propaganda analysis expanded the realm of study o f the classical school into unconscious as well as conscious “manipulations” of audience perceptions. The neo-classicists reclaimed the social criticism o f the classical school but expanded the ranks of the agents o f propaganda much beyond the conscious actors of the classical school. The Classical School While establishing the academic paradigm of propaganda studies in the 1920s, the writers o f this school also fought the popular notion in the American consciousness o f propaganda as deceitful communications by enemy governments, especially during wartime.20 Propaganda, they argued, could come from any regime and an alert citizenry could protect itself against the persuasive effects o f propaganda by constandy seeking out the true sources of their information. It was the impact o f the technologically advanced mass media of the end o f the nineteenth century and the beginning o f the twentieth that gave rise to increasing concerns about the manipulative aspects o f propaganda. This was especially true in the “democracies”, where public opinion was believed to have had important effects on political behavior.21 The intersection o f technology, the role of public opinion, and all-out mobilization in the First World W ar made the selling o f government aims to its own public more necessary than ever before and the strategies utilized by the governments

^ M ilita ry propaganda, “psy-ops”, is a different sub-Held o f propaganda beyond the scope o f this section. 21 Sec, aside from Lippmann, E. Malcolm Carroll, French P ublic O pinion and Foreign Affairs: 18701914 (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1964), Leonard A. Kusnitz, Public Opinion and Foreign Policy: America's China Policy, 1949-1979 (Westport, C T : Greenwood Press, 1984) for two examples o f the interplay between domestic opinion and foreign policy. T he role o f the Hearst papers in the outbreak o f the SpanishAmerican w ar is another famous example o f this relationship.

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involved in war propaganda were international in scale. During that war, the belligerents were constantly warning their soldiers and civilians about the effects o f enemy propaganda, while casting their own propaganda as the truth. Post-war revelations about the extent o f the reach o f propaganda by successful propagandists, notably George Creel who ran the Committee on Public Information, “left Americans suspicious of organized government propaganda”22 or “secretly orchestrated persuasive campaigns.”23 Walter Lippmann noted a troubling lack o f institutions in American society which provided the general public a “reliable picture o f the world” instead of the “curious trivial.”24 He concluded that public opinion should be organized by political scientists for the press, to make the “unseen facts” intelligible to those who have to make the decisions. In other words, the press is not up to the task of presenting the facts without political science acting as a “formulator”. (In its suggestion of a vanguard guiding the activities o f the press, this is very similar to some Chinese attitudes towards the press and its publics.) Public awareness of propaganda in America was also aided by the propaganda o f Bolshevism and its responses, the success of depression-era demagogues and heroes, business groups conducting their own propaganda, and, later, Nazi propaganda and its rebuttals.25 Partially in response to this public awareness, the persuasive techniques of politics and advertising increasingly became the subject of academic study. In 1931 the Social Science Research Council set up a Committee on Pressure Groups and Propaganda to inquire into the state o f research in the area. In answering its own need

^ Garth S. Jow ett, “Propaganda and Com munication: The Re-emergence o f a Research Tradition,” in Journal o f Communication, winter, 1987, p. 99. ® J. Michael Sproule, “Propaganda Studies in American Social Science: T he Rise and Fall of the Critical Paradigm,” in The Quarterly Journal ofSpeech #73 (1987), p. 63. ^L ippm ann, Public Opinion, p. 230. ^L ippm ann, Public Opinion, p. 16 ff.

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for a survey of the field, the Committee prepared an annotated bibliography which served as a research tool as well as providing a sense o f the scope of studies on propaganda.26 Its four hundred pages included over 3200 authors from the United States and Europe in seven categories which outlined the analysis o f propaganda methods according to strategy, promoters, desired response, channels, effect measurement, the symbols used, and censorship. This bibliography was followed eleven years later by a reference guide containing over 2500 entries and which evidenced, in both its title and the works included, the trend towards communications research and statistical methods.27 The analysis o f propaganda for critical inquiry was the core o f the classical school of propaganda studies which was strongest from after W

I until the late 1930s. The

unreliability of government information had become an important lesson of the war years and propaganda analysis developed into a “necessary heuristic perspective for analyzing society,”28 especially political influence in modern society. According to one writer, propaganda analysis became a “full-fledged paradigm” as more and more writers in various academic fields applied propaganda analysis to their own fields.29 This paradigm revolved around the model case of government control over communication during the Great W ar and culminated in the establishment of the Institute for Propaganda Analysis in 1937. The Institute o f Propaganda Analysis (IPA) exemplified the reformist tendencies of the classical school. As “a non-profit corporation organized to assist the public in

^ H a ro ld D. Lasswell, Ralph D. Casey, and Bruce L. Smith, Propaganda a n d Promotional Activities: An Annotated Bibliography (Minneapolis: University o f M innesota Press, 1935.) 27 Bruce L Smith, H arold D. Lasswell, and Ralph D. Casey, Propaganda, Communication, and Public Opinion: A Comprehensive Reference Guide (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1946.) 28Sproule, “Propaganda Studies in American Social Science...” p. 65. ^S proule, “Propaganda Studies in American Social Science...” p. 65-

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detecting and analyzing propaganda,”30 the IPA believed that education was crucial to the inoculation of the public against abuse by manipulated media and published its own journal to explain the workings o f propaganda and how to recognize it.31 Each bulletin included academic articles on propaganda as well as worksheets to guide the analysis of the hidden meanings o f political statements by “all who desire periodic, objective appraisals of today’s propagandas, their sources and the channels through which they flow.”32 The IPA’s belief in a concerned and interested citizenry that would diligently interpret political statements reflected a faith in the civic mindedness o f propaganda audiences. “Surrounded by clouds of conflicting opinions and propagandas, citizens in a democracy live under a special challenge in the obligation to think clearly, logically, and rationally.”33 The IPA encouraged “the establishment of formal courses in ‘propaganda analysis’ in high schools and colleges” and published “more than fifty repons and manuals on propaganda analysis.”34 The IPA increased levels of public awareness o f propaganda and contributed to the permanent lexicon of propaganda studies with its “ABC’s of propaganda analysis,” a list o f basic devices, such as “name calling” and “jumping on the band wagon”. The onset o f W orld W ar II led to changed priorities concerning social inquiry. The Executive Secretary of the IPA lamented in 1940 that “there are those who tell us that we can no longer afford propaganda analysis. Critical thinking was all right in less critical

30 Propaganda Analysis, vol. 3, 1939-40 (NY: Institute for Propaganda Analysis, 1940), p. 131. 31 Propaganda Analysis: A M onthly Letter to Help the Intelligent Citizen Detect a n d Analyze Propaganda. 32 Propaganda Analysis, vol. 1, No. 1, October, 1937, p. 1. 33 Clyde Miller, “Letter to Subscribers to Propaganda Analysis,” in Propaganda Analysis, 1/11/38. ^Jo w ett, “Propaganda and Communication,” p. 100.

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times: in time such as these it serves to disrupt national unity, they say.”35 T he IPA was dissolved in 1942. The reformist spirit of the classical school’s attempts to educate citizens and encourage their participation in political society by questioning the political intentions and motives of their own government may have contributed to the replacement o f propaganda analysis by a research method based on statistical analysis which claimed to be more rational and objective.

The “Communications Research” School The “communications research” school of propaganda analysis, whose central thesis is that the study of political communications can be value-neutral, began to achieve prominence in the late 1930s as its claims of “greater methodological sophistication [and]... practical usefulness for policy makers”36 drew funding and interest away from the social criticism of the classical school. The competitive nature of academic research, “the confused and unfocused nature o f propaganda studies and the fear of political contamination”37 also acted to push the classical school into relative obscurity. In addition, the post-World W ar II years saw a continuation o f the wariness towards selfcriticism that had led to the decline o f the IPA. Propaganda was isolated from its social context and treated as a unit o f political communication, analysable as a predictor of behavior and intentions, especially on the international scene. Though he was an early expert on propaganda, Harold Laswell remained separated from the main trend of the classical school, focusing instead on the construction of a “comprehensive theory o f m odem social influence.”38 In 1941 the War Communications

35 Clyde Miller, “Preface” in Propaganda Analysis, vol. 1, p. iv. ^ S p ro u le ,“Propaganda Studies in American Social Science...”, p. 68. ^ Jo w ett, “Propaganda and Com m unication,” p. 101. ^ J . Michael Sproule, “Progressive Propaganda Critics and the Magic Bullet M y th ” in C ritical Studies

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Research Project led by Lasswell and sponsored by the Library o f Congress was set up “to analyze Axis communications by means o f statistical content analysis. At the same time, the Army established a research branch that brought in top statistical researchers to conduct surveys and experiments to aid the Army in training and general operations.”39 The research from the Lasswell group was meant to be an “appraisal o f language from an objective point of view.”40 In describing his objections to the approach of the classical school of propaganda analysis, Lasswell evidenced his frustration with the vagueness and inconsistency of their presentations o f war propaganda.41 Addressing these problems, quantitative content analysis seemed to offer several advantages over qualitative analyses in describing enemy communications. It could be used to make useful predictions about enemy intentions, it could aid in the detection o f enemy propaganda, it could provide a basis to judge how to efficiently use available resources and it could help to improve scientific understanding of attitudes.42 In the Chinese case, Allen Whiting examined the shifts in the domestic mass media lines concerning the belligerents in Korea to analyze how they prepared domestic audiences for future conflict.43 The Korean W ar also provided the opportunity for other studies that attempted to quantify the impact of Chinese “brainwashing” of American soldiers taken captive.

in Mass Communication, 6:3, Sept. 1989, p. 232. ® J. Michael Sproule, “Social Responses to Twentieth-Century Propaganda” in Ted J. Smith, III, ed. Propaganda: A Pluralistic Perspective (NY: Praeger, 1989). 40 Lasswell, Leites, et. al., Language o f Politics..., p. 4. 41 Lasswell, Leites, et. al., Language o f Politics..., pp. 42 ff. ^Lasswell, Leites, et. al., Language o f Politics..., pp. 48-51, passim. 43Allen S. W hiting, China Crosses the Yalu; the decision to enter the Korean War (New York: Macmillan, 1960), esp. pp. 50-8, 79-87, 98-112.

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Edward H unter’s Brainwashing in Red China: The Calculated Destruction o f M en’s M inds44 was the first book to bring the term to Western attention. Theodore Chen examined the reform of Chinese intellectuals who may have received a non-Communist education and who remained or returned to China after 1949.45 The instruments o f social science were used to analyze what seemed to be an astounding new level of success at the subsuming o f individuals into a community. The influence of communications research was also strong in later work on Soviet politics and “[c]ontent analysis of the press has long been one o f the major means o f collecting data on the attitudes o f communist regimes.”46 This school of analysis believed that communist states use their media to mobilize support, set the general policy line, and carry on public communication with foreign communist parties. Thus, it followed that statistical analysis of government communications could yield important policy suggestions. O f course, it was recognized that the relationship between what is articulated in the media and general regime attitude is complex “because (1) portions of the press may be under the control o f opposition factions within the elite, (2) some issues may be censored, (3) the audience being addressed is not always clear.”47 One example of the use of Lasswell’s techniques in the field of Soviet studies is

44 (NY: Vanguard, 1951/71). ^ Chen, Thought Reform o f the Chinese Intellectuals. 46 W illiam Mills, “Treatm ent o f Foreign Policy Issues in the Regional Chinese Press” in A sian Survey, Vol. XXI, N o. 7. July 1981, p. 795. Mills refers to Donald S. Zagoria, The Sino-Soviet Conflict, 1956-1961 (New York, Atheneum, 1964); W illiam Zimmerman, Soviet Perspectives on International Relations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University, 1969); Allen S. W hiting, Chinese Domestic Politics a n d Foreign Policy in the 1970's (Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, University o f Michigan, 1979); Liu, Communications and national integration in Com m unist Chinas and Roger E. Kanet, ed., The behavioral revolution and Com m unist studies; applications o f behaviorally oriented political research on the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe (New York: The Free Press, 1971). 47Mills, “T reatm ent o f Foreign Policy Issues in the Regional Chinese Press,” p. 795-

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Charles Gati’s “Soviet Elite Perception o f International Regions.”48 Gati examined several empirical indicators o f Soviet interest in international regions: Soviet trade commitments, economic and military aid, the number of accredited Soviet diplomats in the region, the length o f Radio Moscow’s broadcasts to the area, the scope of cultural exchanges, the frequency o f visits by top Soviet political leaders, and the quantity of press coverage on the region. The frequencies o f key words in Pravda and Izvestia reflected “the relative importance o f these items to the people who formulate and articulate [Soviet] foreign policy.” Gati concluded that “the quantity o f coverage o f international regions in Pravda and Izvestia [was] less an indication o f the ‘absolute’ importance o f particular world developments than that of the importance o f the region and the event to the Soviet leadership.”49 Gati assumed a relationship between the articulated attitudes expressed in the two major newspapers, and the level o f attention paid to particular regions. But he did not address the relevance of articulated attitudes for understanding the then Soviet leadership’s conception o f the former Soviet Union’s role in the world. An examination o f the views of Soviet Party and military leaders on defense spending, SALT II, the NATO INF modernization decision, military and political turmoil in Afghanistan, and political unrest in Poland tried to assess the tensions between the two groups through a quantitative content analysis of speeches attributed to selected individuals published by various translation services during the period from 1978-85.50 This study determined that quantitative content analysis “demonstrates trends in

48 Gati, in Roger E. Kanet, ed., The Behavioral Revolution..., pp. 281-299 49 Gati, p. 297. 5° Howard E. Frost, “A content analysis o f recent Soviet party-military relations” in American Journal o f Political Science#33 Fall, 1989, pp. 91-135. O th er articles using quantitative content analysis research on the former Soviet U nion include: Robert Axelrod and William Zimmerman, "T he Soviet press on Soviet foreign policy: A usually reliable source,” British Journal o f Political Science, #11, 1981, pp. 183-200: Philip Stewart, James W arhola and Roger Blough, “Soviet regions and economic priorities: A study in Politburo perceptions,” Soviet Union, #11.1, 1984:1-30, to list just two.

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leadership commentary on the given issues over tim e.”51 Those trends indicated a spirit of co-operation rather than conflict between Soviet elite groups. But the study also used qualitative content analysis to provide a “clearer view of individuals’ opinions and trends in policy preferences”52 and to place the themes in perspective. The potential for predicting foreign policy behavior through a detailed analysis of domestic media was one perceived advantage o f quantitative content analysis. In this model, state communications are carefully monitored for the correct positions. Indeed, in the articulation of regime attitudes in the 1950s towards the Soviet Union, public consistency generally reflected internal consensus. “The CCP leadership, including Liu Shaoqi, agreed that there had to be unity on the issue of Sino-Soviet relations.”53 Despite the persuasive capacity of quantitative studies, the emphasis on number counting misses both the essentially subjective nature of propaganda and its breadth. It was the ability to place linguistic trends within larger societal and political perspectives that was the best part of the qualitative analysis that the classical school provided. The communications research school was unable to see beyond governmental propaganda campaigns to “address the expanding fields of advertising, communications consulting, opinion polling, and market research; [it] regarded the rise o f television and its propaganda implications as incidental.”54 In a response to the seeming neutrality of quantitative content analysis which coincided with a period o f social upheaval in the 1960s, the new classicists broke away from the value-neutral concentration o f the communications researchers and re-injected a spirit of social inquiry into their research on propaganda.

51 Frost, “A content analysis,” p. 92. 52 Frost, “A content analysis,” p. 92. 53Personal interview, Liao Gailong, CCP Historian, (Cambridge, MA, 5/25/89). ^ C la u d e Steiner and Charles Rappleye, “Jacques Ellul: Quirky Trailblazer o f Propaganda Theory," in Propaganda Review, Summer 1988, p. 29.

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The “Neo-Classical” School W hat I call the neo-classical school is similar to its classical precursor in its belief that the recognition of propaganda in modern society is crucial to the analysis of political relationships. Neo-classicists say that they “want to name propaganda as a political issue, to make it visible and recognizable so that it can be resisted.”55 The neo-classical school is centered around the principle that propaganda is much more pervasive and multi-faceted than traditionally thought. To some, modern man lives in a “propaganda environment” much more insidious than “old-fashioned” political propaganda. This socially active faction o f the school believes that “[p]ostmodern propaganda has created new relationship o f powerlessness and cynicism between the rulers and the governed and ... a thoroughly propagandized contemporary culture.... [where] propaganda has virtually merged with political discourse and popular consciousness — so much so, in fact that its very ubiquity serves to conceal its pervasiveness and its danger as an obstacle to clear thinking and the preservation o f democratic freedoms.”56 The expansion of the concept o f propaganda by the neo-classical school was initiated by the publication o f the English translation of Jacques Ellul’s Propaganda in 1965.57 Ellul re-interpreted, through his Marxist and Christian lenses, propaganda as a symbiosis between the public and the state elite, especially in the Western democracies. He believed that “propaganda satisfies a strong need in people to resolve fundamental questions about

55 Marcy Darnovsky, Editorial, “Political Discourse in the Propaganda Environment” in Propaganda Review, Spring, 1988, no. 1, p. 1. ^F red eric Stout, “Propaganda and Postmodernism” in Propaganda Review, W inter 1988, p. 1. 57 Propaganda: The Formation o f M en’s Attitudes, trans. Konrad Kellen and Jean Lerner (NY: Vintage, 1965/77).

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their role in a bewildering world.”58 In fact, modern propaganda is predicated on the growth o f technological society in conjunction with alienation of citizens from their political lives. In addition to propaganda in the political realm, a “broader and more diffuse kind o f propaganda,” sociological propaganda, influences lifestyles through “advertising, public relations, human relations, human engineering, movies and television.”59 The diffuse nature o f this kind of propaganda would frustrate the communications researchers’ quest for methodological rigor and clarity. Ellul distinguished among several types of propaganda. His first distinction, between political and sociological propaganda, put Ellul squarely into the neo-classical school. Political propaganda is the proto-typical form of propaganda which “involves techniques of influence employed by a government, a party, an administrtion, a pressure group, with a view to changing the behavior o f the public.”60

Sociological propaganda includes all the

forms by which a collectivity “seeks to integrate the maximum number of individuals into itself, to unify its members’ behavior according to a pattern, to spread its style o f life abroad, and thus to impose itself on other groups.”61 Political propaganda uses various channels to guide and lead an audience while sociological propaganda encompasses those channels and is a part of the very culture within which they operate. Another distinction was between agitation and integration propaganda. Agitation propaganda “leads men from mere resentment to rebellion,”62 from opposition to revolution. Agitation, or offensive, propaganda is “designed to interrupt social action not

^ S te in e r and Rappleye, “Jacques Ellul...," p. 30. ^ S te in e r and Rappleye, “Jacques Ellul...,” p. 31. 60 Ellul, Propaganda, p. 62. 61 Ellul, Propaganda, p. 62. ^ K o n ra d Kellen, “Introduction”, in Ellul, Propaganda, p. vi.

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desired by the propagandist, or to predispose to social action which he desires, either through revolutionary means (within the same society) or international, either diplomatic or belligerent (between different societies).”63 But governments in power can also use agitation propaganda to pursue mobilization policies, such as war or large political campaigns. Integration propaganda, on the other hand, is a “propaganda of conformity”64 which seeks individual participation in, and identification, with the collectivity. It is “designed to maintain an accepted and operating form o f social or other public action.”65 Victorious revolutionary regimes must manage the transition from agitation to integration propaganda in order to become a successful regime o f governance. Ellul differentiated vertical and horizontal propagandas by their origins and methods of dissemination. Vertical propaganda comes from the top down, from outside o f a group. Horizontal propaganda is located within a group, though Ellul did not clarify how it arrives in the group, whether from a “ghost writer” or “police spy” within that group.66 Ellul (mis-) used the Chinese practice of the mass line to describe the functions of horizontal propaganda: “Only in speaking will the individual gradually discover his own convictions (which also will be those o f the group), become irrevocably involved, and help others to form their opinions (which are identical). Each individual helps to form the opinion of the group, but the group helps each individual to discover the correct line.”67 Though Ellul misread the source o f the correct line, he was impressed by the use of individual participation to elicit complicity and compliance within the collectivity.

63 Linebarger, Psychological Warfare, p. 46 64 Ellul, Propaganda, p. 74. 65 Linebarger, Psychological Warfare, p. 46. 66 Ellul, Propaganda, p. 81. ® Ellul, Propaganda, p. 81.

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Finally, propagandists can make appeals based on rational or irrational propaganda. “Rational” propaganda seeks to convince through the use of statistics, “technical descriptions or proved performance.”68 “Irrational” propaganda appeals to the emotions, it stirs passions, and it is what many people think all propagandas are. But at their foundations irrational propaganda appeals are also rational in their uses of certain nuggets of fact to enhance believability. “Rational and factual elements” are at the core of an “irrational response” which “must be fed with facts” so that “propaganda in itself becomes honest, stria, exact, but its effea remains irrational because of the spontaneous transformation o f all its content by the individual.”69 Unlike the classical writers, Ellul was pessimistic about the value o f education as an inoculant against the effects o f propaganda. In fea, propaganda would fell on deaf ears were it not for advances in literacy. The expansion o f universal education provided a foundation for propaganda appeals for two reasons. First, without basic literacy many of the channels o f propaganda would be ineffeaive. Secondly, education and propaganda, especially the integrative kind, complement each other. It is in the educational system that a state can ensure the inculcation o f its desired dispositions. N or is higher education exempt. Though “a high intelligence, a broad culture, a constant exercise of the critical faculties, and full and objeaive information are still the best weapons against propaganda,”70 Ellul was not impressed by the critical faculties o f many intellettuals. In fea, he wrote that it would be the most highly educated who were the most susceptible to propaganda “because [they are] convinced o f [their] own superiority”71 and therefore unaware of any threat from propagandas.

68 Ellul, Propaganda, p. 84. 69 Ellul, Propaganda, p. 87. 70 Ellul, Propaganda, p. 111. 71 Ellul, Propaganda, p. 111.

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Though the “propaganda environment” o f the neo-classical school is mostly derived from the political behavior o f the Western democracies, recent studies have also re­ examined the role o f propaganda in the former Soviet Union. Salient among these is Peter Kenez’s study of organizations involved in the former Soviet propaganda process.72 In an historical survey of the development of several components of the former Soviet state, Kenez provided an example of a super-developed “propaganda state” where revolutionary dreams animated daily vocabulary.

This state’s successes on the propaganda front derived

from Bolshevik “organizational strength, from dogged attention to problems, and, perhaps most importantly, from an ability o f the political system to isolate the Russian people from information and ideas that would have undermined the message.”73 The study of propaganda as a tool of mass persuasion has been rejuvenated and strengthened by several studies published in the mid-1980s. These provided new historical frameworks for the study o f propaganda in the United States, Europe, and the former Soviet Union.74 The reformist strand of the classical school has also been resuscitated by the publication of Propaganda Review, a newsletter founded in 1988 to revive “propaganda as a political issue, to make it visible and recognizable so that it can be resisted.”75 Components of propaganda production In their analyses o f the mechanics of propaganda dissemination, the schools of propaganda analysis implicidy describe three stages in the process o f propaganda communication. The first is the creation stage when the vision o f the propagandist is translated into a portrayal. The elements o f this stage are the propagandist and carriers,

72 The Birth o f the Propaganda State. 73 Kenez, Propaganda State, p. 8. 74 See the Jowett review article for brief introductions to these works. ^ M a rc y Darnovsky, “Political Discourse in the Propaganda Environment" in Propaganda Review, no. 1 (San Francisco: The M edia Alliance), p. 1.

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their communication methods and the propaganda portrayal. In the second, reception, stage, the elements are the audiences and their predispositions which influence their translations of the transm itted portrayals into personalized visions. The final stage encompasses behavioral change due to audience propaganda reception. The first stage of the propaganda process has been the primary focus o f propaganda analysis. Propagandists in the classical school o f propaganda studies could include everybody from Ministers o f Propaganda and heads o f state down to those who promote products or services, from radios to new ideologies.76 Gradually, the promoters of new products or business have successfully persuaded the public to call them public-relations specialists, or publicists, or advertisers. Since propaganda is still a dirty word in the American public consciousness no practitioner o f the art of persuasion would want to be called a propagandist. O n the other hand, as we shall see, in both the former Soviet Union and China, a propagandist, or xuanchuanzhe, was unashamedly assigned a propagandizing role. Keeping with this open tradition, a propagandist is defined here as someone engaged in propaganda work for the state and specially trained to convey the state’s messages to one or more audiences. The portrayal itself, the product o f the first stage o f the propaganda process, reflects the picture o f the world, or of a particular corner of reality o f the propagandist. By asking, o r demanding, their audiences to believe their portrayals, propagandists are including those audiences in their particular forms o f life. The carriers o f the propaganda portrayal have been primarily the mass media: the newspaper, radio, and film. In America these channels were shaped by the development of democracy combined w ith the technological advances o f the latter 19th century and urbanization. The successes o f the newspapers were largely attributed to the growth of a literate and involved population. Radio and film, born in a “lusty and confident

76See Bruce L Smith, “T h e Political Com munication Specialist o f our Times,” in Smith, Lasswell and Casey, pp. 31-73: Lasswell and Blumenstock, World Revolutionary Propaganda.

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democratic period,”77 even more fundamentally reflected the tastes and attitudes o f their surroundings. The impact o f technology on the quantity and speed of transmissions to greatly-increased audiences unquestionably enhanced the role o f the mass media. Television, of course, has become a propaganda channel o f extraordinary effect. Urbanization decreased the opportunities for “face-to-face intimacy” and increased the need for media-mediated information. Supplementary propaganda media in the United States have included demonstrations and other public gatherings, as well as various forms of publications and organizations.78 An important channel in the Soviet and Chinese propaganda networks in particular were the group meetings, or political study sessions. The media are “channels for symbols that knit together social groups and widen and deepen social life.”79 Language is therefore embedded in its social context, and we move conceptions of language away from the stress on “reference, correspondence, representation, [where] the meaning of a word is what in the world it stands for, and the function of language is primarily to express assertions about the world”80 towards its social nature. Propaganda is a “social event” because o f its nature as verbal interaction necessarily including two active components, a speaker and hearer. Propaganda is a social event bounded by the terms of interaction of the relationship between those individual components. It is a social event where the flow of verbal interaction is primarily from the top down. It is an interaction where the receiver is not supposed to assert any kind of individual power, where the propagandist works to make the receiver respond in a particular way. Propaganda is a verbally overt manifestation o f the hierarchical

77 Ralph Casey, “Communication Channels” in Smith, Lasswell and Casey, p. 7. ^Lassw ell and Blumenstock, W orld Revolutionary Propaganda, p. 43 ff. 79 Casey, “Communication Channels” , p. 8. 80 H anna Fenichel Pitkin, W ittgenstein and Justice: On the Significance o f Ludwig W ittgenstein fo r Social and Political Thought (Berkeley. University of California Press, 1973), p. 3.

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relationship that exists within any society. In a situation o f total control by the propagandist, dogmatism is expected, and “the more dogmatic an utterance, the less leeway permitted between truth and falsehood or good and bad in its reception by those who comprehend and evaluate, the greater will be the depersonalization that the forms of reported speech will undergo.”81

Defining Propaganda This project is neo-classical in its belief that the language of propaganda is more than a blunt instrument of deceit, it is also more than neo-classical in the assumption o f propaganda as a reflection of “national role conceptions”.82 The neo-classical approach is satisfied with the depiction o f propaganda at every level o f state interaction with its citizens, but does not examine the role conception of the state derived from its propaganda. This project is also different in that it does not conceive o f every state interaction with its citizen-audiences as a propaganda relationship. The provision o f routine police services, the routine collection o f taxes, for example, are not here considered propaganda although it could be argued in an Ellulian context that these are “propagandas of the deed” and reflea the power relationship between the State and its citizens. But an expansion o f propaganda into primarily non-linguistic relationships would devoid any definition o f propaganda o f analytical purpose. In the definitions reviewed earlier, propaganda is described as the object o f manipulation, the p iau re that is presented. But implicit, and sometimes explicit, in those descriptions is a process whereby a p ia u re is created, a symbol manipulated. It is that entire relationship that I call propaganda.

81 Volosinov, M arxism and the Philosophy o f Language, p. 120. ffiThis concept is explored in the Chinese context by Chih-yu Shih, “National Role Conception as Foreign Policy M otivation.”

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My expansion o f the neo-classical version is summed up by the following schematic diagram. The process o f a State, Si, communicating to its domestic audience Aj is defined as propaganda, Pj. The dotted line encompasses the traditional version o f the domestic propaganda relationship. Pi is directed at Ai. But, inevitably, states S2 -n also receive Pi, which is no longer merely a message from a regime to its citizens, but reveals to outside observers how Si conceives o f itself in relation to Ai. But, since Si is conscious o f states S2 -1, as observers, Pi can also be a manipulated reflection of S i’s relationship to S2 . 11>as represented by the double-headed arrow.

2-n

S - States(s) P - Propagandas A - Audiences

Figure 1

Propaganda, then, is the process o f a manipulation of language by the State or its representatives within a defined social context composed of the relationships between the propagandist (the storyteller) and the audiences. Its purported aim is to achieve a desired behavioral response or attitude change upon the part of a targeted audience in specific policy areas. W ithin a domestic context, it is an act of governance different from

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education in the specificity o f the hoped-for behaviour. In my formulation, commercial advertising which is not part o f a State-sponsored campaign is beyond the scope of this definition. But a health campaign sponsored by the United States Surgeon-General could be considered propaganda. Propaganda is targeted, directed, state-sponsored and of a mass nature. By reflecting particular perceptions of the world in general, certain types of propaganda also provide clues to a regime’s conception of its international role identity. Ultimately, I am not interested in making judgments about propaganda, but in focusing on propaganda as a technique devised by the State used particularly for national goals in the consolidation o f power and development. Propaganda as part of the linguistic behavior o f the government is a text that says something more about the transmitters and their audiences than just what is contained within the message. It is also a discursive relationship in which the speaker is asserting power over the listener, and the content of that discourse is more than “just propaganda”. W hat is said about a world is the result of a certain view of that world. Returning to the Sj-Pi-A i relationship we can see that Pi is actually a dynamic process which defines a relationship between Si and Aj. In fact, Pi consists of many types of propagandas, Pi-n, targeted at various audiences, A i.n. To the extent that audiences, Ai-n, accept, or evidence belief in, propagandas Pi-n, they become integrated into Si’s way of life. In return, Si provides a community for, and protection of, its audiences. In the classical school’s presentation, the process Pi is a product of deliberate manipulations by the state (when state propaganda is the subject o f discussion), which may or may not be overt, to effect certain behavioral changes within the audiences. The communications research school agrees on the state origins o f P i, but, with its focus on quantitative content analysis, narrowly examines the impact o f P i as a whole on outside, S2-n » perceptions, missing the effects o f the domestic reception by audiences Ai_n. The neo-classical school agrees with the classical school that Pj is composed of myriad forms o f propaganda but does not focus solely on the state’s role in producing P j.n. Rather, for the neo-classicists,

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Si and Ai are both involved in the production and consumption, conscious and unconsious, o f those, mostly domestic, propagandas. The former Soviet and the Chinese cases are closest to the neo-classical presentation in the ubiquity of their propaganda but, as we shall see in the next section, they are typified by a state-imposed unified and instrumental vision o f Pi-n, which in its transparency is reminiscent o f the Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda Fide.

The Soviet and Chinese Concepts of Propaganda This section oudines briefly the classic Soviet school of propaganda studies, which is substantially echoed in the presentation o f the contemporary Chinese analysis of xuanchuan, (the most common Chinese translation o f “propaganda”). It will then present the surprising findings of a recent survey of Beijing residents’ attitudes towards xuanchuan which found extensive acceptance of government xuanchuan cutting across educational, gender and other demographic divides.

Propaganda in the former Soviet Union As an ideologically distinct form o f propaganda analysis, the Soviet school departed fundamentally from the three Western schools presented above. The Soviet school was animated by an optimistic view o f the uses of propaganda, which was presented as a necessary and basic component in the progress o f history.’ The second edition o f the Great Soviet Encyclopedia defined propaganda as the “dissemination o f political, scientific and other kinds of knowledge, opinions, and ideas” which “demand deep and detailed explanation. In the USSR and other people’s

* Cynically, one could also say that Soviet propaganda was used to cover up the use o f “non-symbolic,” brute, violence. For example, forced collectivization was justified by appeals to national strength. Nevertheless, even within the former Soviet regime, there seemed to be a necessity for explanation which in its intensity and breadth seem beyond the scope of what would be required for mere rationalization. One could suppose that repeated narrative is an assertion of power in the lace o f the fear o f a loss o f power.

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democracies, propaganda systematically accompanies Party, Komsomol and Union organizations, government institutions and also voluntary societies.... Propaganda in the countries o f the democratic camp includes the most varied branches o f science, technology, industry and socialist production.”83 Party propaganda and industrial-technical propaganda were differentiated from propaganda in general. Party propaganda is the propaganda of governance and the subject of this paper. It was defined as the “oral and printed diffusion and dissemination of the ideas o f Marxism-Leninism, the politics o f the Com m unist Party; an integral and structural part of the work o f communist and workers’ parties in the ideological-political education of the Party masses and all workers in the spirit of the study of MarxismLeninism.”84 In the former Soviet Union, it played an “important role in the formation of the Soviet ideology, it [was] one o f the measures o f ideological and political tempering of cadres members and Party candidates, of all the Soviet people, a measure o f communist education o f the workers and the mobilization o f them for the successful completion of economic-political tasks as put forward by the Comm unist party and the Soviet government.”85 Industrial-technical propaganda was considered a subset o f Soviet political-ideology work, focusing on the “complex o f measures in the Soviet Union which is directed at the elevation o f the cultural-technical levels of the workers and the future development o f socialist emulation. [These measures included]: propaganda about

83 S.I. Vavilov, ed., Bol'shaya Sovetskaya Entsikbp'ediya, 2 n d ed., vol. 35 (Moscow, 1955), p. 70. (Hereafter cited as BSE.) Though Lenin believed that propaganda was more im portant than agitadon, this edidon o f the BSE devoted ten pages to “agitadon”, including eight examples: six posters, a 1917 draft o f a leaflet from Lenin, and a leaflet from Stalin. Volume 35 o f th e same edidon, published six years later, spent only four and a half pages on propaganda, three pages on party propaganda, one on “industrial-technical” propaganda and half a column to the word “propaganda”. (BSE, vol. 1, pp. 295-302; vol. 35, pp. 70-74.) For a discussion o f the propaganda-agitadon disdncdon, see below. ^ A S E v o L S S , p. 70. 85 BSE voL 35, p. 70.

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technical knowledge and economic production, the generalization and dissemination o f advanced industrial experiments, the achievements o f science and technology, agropropaganda.”86 A famous feature of Leninist propaganda was the functional differentiation between propaganda and agitation. In Plekhanov’s formulation, “a propagandist presents many ideas to one or a few persons; an agitator presents only one or a few ideas, but he presents them to a mass of people.”87 Agitation was defined as “political action, directed at influencing the recognition and attitudes o f the broad masses through the dissemination of specific ideas and slogans.”88 The agitator uses a glaring example to rouse the masses, “leaving a more complete explanation ... to the propagandist. Consequently, the propagandist operates chiefly by means of the printed word; the agitator by means o f the spoken w ord.”89 But the two methods of operation were not mutually exclusive. Oral reports and group consultations, group meetings, and group newspaper readings could be channels o f propaganda. Agitation could include written pamphlets and posters. The distinction was in the depth of explanation. All propaganda has instrumental functions, but in the former Soviet Union the role of propaganda in effecting Party and government policy was explicitly considered an indispensable complement to the Party’s existence. With the ownership of the means of producing propaganda remaining in the hands o f the state and the Party and the intertwined Party-state relationship, the needs o f the Party determined propaganda method and content. Propaganda was “subordinated to the work of creation and the strengthening o f the

vol. 35, p. 73. 87from Lenin’s Selected Works, II, p. 85, quoted in Inkeles, Public O pinion..., p. 39. 88 BSE, vol. 1 (Moscow, 1949), p. 295. 89 Lenin, W hat is to be Done! (NY: International Publishers, 1969/78), p. 67. Emphasis in the original.

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Soviet regime, the Soviet government and the work of building socialism.”90 The Party interpreted the voice of the people and the advance of history, and control by the Party over the message was taken for granted. The goals o f propaganda work were the goals set by the Party which “had no interest in supporting even the slightest degree of professional independence o f journalists; it wanted no mediators between its policies and the publicizing o f these policies.”91

Disagreement originated w ith class enemies and did not

have to be tolerated, consquently dissenting propagandas within the socialist state were impossible. The propaganda system also worked to strengthen the link between the ruling (Marxist-Leninist) Party and the public. The Party’s propaganda relationship with the people was defined by both the leading role o f the vanguard elite and the supportive role of the masses. The Party had both to shape and mold public opinion, and somehow determine the state of that opinion, “the key principle being th at it is equally as bad to rush ahead of the masses as it is to lag too for behind.”92 W ithout putting undue emphasis on this point, the goals of socialism were still to be dictated by the Party, but the tactics o f reaching it may, like socialist competition or Stakhanovism, be suggested by the masses. The tasks o f propaganda were to help the workers realize the goals that arose from their own experiences. Bolshevik propaganda claims to truth were also based on Marxism-Leninism’s derivation' from “objective laws o f history,” which meant th at an underlying reality (the class struggle) structured explanations of events. Propaganda had to be purposive and goal-

t>BSE, p. 71. 91 Peter Kenez, “Lenin and the Freedom o f the Press,” in Abbott Gleason, Peter Kenez and Richard Stites, cds., Bolshevik Culture: Experiment an d Order in the Russian Revolution (Bloomington, IND : Indiana University Press, 1985), p. 147. ®S. Pavlov, Slovo-oruzhiye: o ruiuchnykh osnovakh effektivnostipechati (W ordsas Weapons: On the Scientific Reasons fo r the Effectiveness o f the Press) (Minsk: Belarus Publishers, 1970), p. 18.

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directed, not subjective (presenting the views o f an individual qua individual). Thus, timeliness was n o t a concern when the general sweep of history was the background to all propaganda messages. Nor was the behavior o f individuals propaganda-worthy except insofar as it was aligned with the movement o f history, or helped to advance that movement towards the ultimate goal of a classless and stateless society. A reformist spirit animated the production o f Soviet propaganda. The Soviet propaganda apparatus was “designed to mobilize large numbers o f people for the attainment o f social goals, to disseminate new values, to mold patterns of motivation, and to assist in the process of social control.”93 In the words o f the same Soviet writer, the “journalists as a whole and the press in part occupied] key positions in the spiritual lives o f their people.”94 Soviet propaganda was uni-directional discourse, an elucidation of received wisdom, to be used to educate the populace and to reform society along a path determined by the Party. One of the inspirational claims made by the Bolsheviks was that they created a revolutionary state which presented a non-exploitative alternative method of ordering society. The idealized version o f that state and society appealed to millions around the world. Harnessed to the task of the creation o f that mythic ideal, Bolshevik propaganda served as an example of the global impact o f controlled information.95 It has been described as “one o f the main instruments o f the Kremlin’s aggressive foreign policy, ”96 a

93 Pavlov, Words as Weapons, p. 10. ^Pavlov, Words as Weapons, p. 11. 95 Soviet foreign propaganda was shaped by the many of the same factors as domestic propaganda but is beyond the scope o f this work. For discussions o f Soviet propaganda directed abroad, see Frederick C. Barghoorn, Soviet Foreign Propaganda (Princeton, N J: Princeton UP, 1964), and, The Soviet Cultural Offensive: The Role o f Cultural Diplomacy in Soviet Foreign Policy. (Princeton: Princeton, 1960). ^Frederick Barghoorn, The Soviet Image o f the U nited States: A Study in D istortion (NY: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1950), p. xi.

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necessary component o f Soviet ideological warfare which at various times reflected differing specific situations, but remaining essentially rooted in the class nature of international relations.97 Its impact was heightened by the “very high degree o f congruence between Soviet policy and propaganda.”98 The relationship between former Soviet propaganda and Soviet foreign policy has been well examined. These analyses have portrayed propaganda as real indicators of elite conflicts, foreign policy intiatives, and changing priorities, among others.99 By presenting propaganda as indicators o f held perceptions, these works derive nuanced pictures o f Soviet political behavior at the non-state level. This work in Soviet studies, though, has not had its counterpart in the study o f Chinese propaganda.

The Soviet blueprint for propaganda work provided an example for post-1949 Chinese propaganda, but it was not transposed in its entirety. Chinese Communist experiences in propaganda work, traditional Chinese attitudes towards language and specific historical circumstances combined to provide a context into which the Soviet example was integrated. T he next section will examine that context and then provide a description of current Chinese propaganda practices.

97 Barghoorn, The Soviet Image o f the United States, p. 9. 98 Barghoorn, Soviet Foreign Propaganda, p. 214. " F o r example, George Breslauer, “Is there a generation gap in the Soviet political establishment?: D em and articulation by RSFSR provincial party first secretaries,” in Soviet Studies, 36: 1-25, 1984; Philip Stewart, “Attitudes o f regional Soviet political leaders: Tow ard understanding the potential for change," in Margaret Hermann, ed., w ith Thomas Milburn, A psychological examination o f political leaders (NY: Free Press, 1977); Axelrod and Zimm erman, “The Soviet press on Soviet foreign policy;” Philip Stewart, James W arhola and Roger Blough, “Issue salience and foreign policy role specialization in the Soviet Politburo o f the 1970s,” American Journal o f Political Science., 28: 1-22, 1984; William Zim m erm an and Glenn Palmer, “W ords and deeds in Soviet foreign policy: The case of Soviet military expenditures,” Am erican Political Science Review, 77:358-67,1983.

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Language and Propaganda in China The Chinese Com m unist Party believed in the potential for consolidating its relationship to the masses by inculcating new forms o f consciousness. This belief was derived not only from its successes in revolution and civil war, but also from familiarity with a long history of government didacticism. The relationship between language and action in Chinese tradition is a venerable one. Contained within the Confucian concept of xin (to be reliable or trustworthy in word) are the concepts o f yan (word) and xing (deed).100 A promise o f future conduct binds the speaker to deeds which m ust match the words. A resolution, even a statement of fact, which fails in deed condemns the speaker to fail to be xin. Thus, one should be “quick in action but cautious in speech,” (1.14) and, again, the “gentleman desires to be halting in speech but quick in action” (IV.24). The Confucian tradition’s emphasis on the wordaction relationship also m eant that “words were invested with considerations of status”101 as hierarchical nomenclature defined patterns of authority. The following passage from the Analects is often quoted to illustrate Chinese conceptions o f language, to underline the concerns that order and disorder can follow from mis-naming, but the main point that Confucian gentlemen are not hasty about speech is usually overlooked. W hen names are n o t correct, what is said will not sound reasonable; when what is said does n o t sound reasonable, affairs will not culminate in success; when affairs do n o t culminate in success, rites and music will not flourish; when rites and music do not flourish, punishments will not fit the crimes; when punishments do not fit the crimes, the common people will not know where to put hand and foot. Thus when the gendeman names something, the

100Confudus, The Analects, D.C. Lau, trans. (NY: Penguin, 1979/83), p. 25 ff. All text references are to sections and paragraphs in this edition. 101Richard H . Solomon, M ao's Revolution and the Chinese Political Culture (Berkeley: U C Press, 1971), p. 106.

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name is sure to be usable in speech, and when he says something this is sure to be practicable. The thing about the gendeman is that he is anything but casual where speech is concerned. (XIII:3) The need for linguistic caution is echoed in Zhuang Zi, “Speech does not need words. One may speak all his life, and not have spoken a (right) word; and one may not have spoken all his life, and yet all his life been giving utterance to the (right) words.”102 But in the less orthodox tradition of Taoism, action, or rather, inaction, was louder than words, “the sage manages affairs without doing anything, and conveys his instructions without the use of speech.”103 In a land where access to the written language was not universal, the oral tradition of persuasion was well-established. Imperial manifestoes (xt), first used in the second century BC were meant to be appeals “for support to the population generally of a region in relatively straightforward terms, and [they] often call[ed] on local officials or local members o f the elite to present the case” of the government. They were “issued in the name o f someone with real, residual, or potential authority seeking the support or acquiescence of the population in a given region” and were “couched in far plainer language than the formal acts of governments or would-be governments.” In these manifestoes were contained the “usual promises o f moral satisfaction and political rewards for those who heed them .”104 The two elements of local re-transmittals o f central government policies and plain speaking in these direct oral appeals were also to be important in C CP propaganda work.

102Zhuang Zi, BookXXVII, P art 3, section 5, in James Legge, trans., The Texts o f Taoism (NY: Dover, .1962), p. 143. 103Lao Tzu, Dao dejing, D.C. Lau, trans. (NY: Penguin, 1984) p. 58. 104A rthur F. W right, “Chinese Civilization” in Harold D. Lasswell, Daniel Lerner, H ans Speier, eds. Propaganda and Communication in W orld History: Volume 1 - The Symbolic Instrument in Early Times (Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii for the East-West Center, 1979/80), pp. 234-37, passim.

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In the turn from an oral to a written tradition, the Chinese text acquired a position as a form of political authority. Hegel was fascinated by the role o f elite mastery of the “Written Language” in China that, to him, reflected a form o f political power different from that o f the West.105 Though his understanding was based on insufficient familiarity with ancient Chinese thought, others have noted the importance of control over the word in China. “The power o f the written word came from its association with knowledge — knowledge from the ancestors, with whom the living communicated through writing; which is to say, knowledge from the past, whose wisdom was revealed through its medium.”106 Writing is not just a means o f communication, but a legitimator of authority and those who controlled the medium, controlled the message. The imperial examination system, which forced an orthodoxy onto generations o f scholars, is a famous example of the use of moral indoctrination in maintaining society. The use of M ao’s notes during the Cultural Revolution is a recent example of reliance on the written w ord.107 The growth of the reform movement at the end of the imperial era was accompanied by a shift in attitudes towards moral indoctrination. The exam system was attacked for its suffocation o f innovation, political journals circulated open calls for political change. Public writings began to be seen as a method of transformation and reform, rather than conservative inculcation o f received values. In their use o f political writings, modern Chinese reformers such as Liang Qichao inaugurated a new tradition in China of openly biased journalism. “Writing in the service o f a political goal was considered by most Chinese a higher calling than dispassionate reporting detached from the national struggle

105See The Philosophy o f History, Part 1: The Oriental World. 106K.C. Chang, A rt, M yth, and R itu a l (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983), p. 88. 107See T im othy Cheek, “Textually Speaking: An Assessment o f Newly Available Mao Texts” in Roderick MacFarquhar, Tim othy Cheek, and Eugene W u, eds. The Secret Speeches o f Chairman M ao Harvard Contemporary C hina Series: 6 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1989), esp. page lOlff.

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for survival.”108 Competing viewpoints struggled for the attention o f small audiences and a cacophony of propagandas preceded the beginnings of the People’s Republic. Mao’s attitude towards propaganda will be discussed in more detail later, but it was reflected in his report to the 2nd Guomindang congress in 1926 where he concluded that propaganda work not only allowed the masses better to understand the Party and its goals but also contributed to internal unity.109 The victory o f the CCP not only ushered in a new government but also saw the imposition of a new vocabulary in a display o f political power. Sustained research into linguistic change in post-GMD China is rare, but Franz Schurmann did write that “the Chinese Communists have developed a rich vocabulary which has in many ways changed the Chinese language.”110 Not only have the Communists created new terms but also “given the Chinese a new manner of thinking.”111 The CCP has of course been heavily influenced by the need to translate Soviet practice. Drawing attention to this influence, A. S. Chang in 1956 noted that “the fact that even the mother tongue o f 600 million people has been changing under the Soviet influence is a matter of no small concern to students of Chinese culture.”112 Another examination of linguistic shift as a reflection of political power discussed the changing Chinese terms for “women” in the twentieth century.113 The imposition by the regime of a particular term , Junii, which carries the baggage o f female

108Andrew N athan, Chinese Democracy (NY: Knopf, 1985), p. 150. 109A/Li Fujun, “Report on the First Five-Year Plan for Development o f the National Economy,” in People's China, 8/16/55, supplement, p. 7. 210M ao, "O n the Correct H andling o f Contradictions A m ong the People,” Selected Readings from the Works o f M ao Tsetung (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1971), p. 476, 478.

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disappeared from this magazine, replaced by increased coverage of Asian and African countries. In 1960 Shijie Zhishi published only one article on the Soviet economy and that was a brief piece on Soviet residential construction, a “very important problem which concerned the people’s lives.”211 Shortages o f residential housing due to the growth o f the urban population was a problem even before the war, but by 1957 the total number of urban residential units was already four times as great as before the October Revolution. For audiences accustomed to reading about how wonderful Soviet life was, to be told that “the day when the phenomenon of insufficient housing is eradicated is not far o ff’ may have been somewhat surprising.

V. Summary An im portant task for Chinese propaganda in the period under study was the inculcation o f favorable attitudes in Chinese audiences towards the Soviet Union and Soviet habits, or “modes of conduct,” in many spheres o f Chinese life. One important way those habits were taught was through the telling of political myths, which were created and disseminated by the government. The success o f those myths relied on both propaganda about the achievements of the Soviet Union to supply ratified images and on rectification campaigns to weed out the subversive images. One measure o f the propaganda success is the extent to which the stories are remembered and used to describe the former Soviet Union three decades later. As one respondent noted, “China propagandized in a big way (dali) about how wonderful the Soviet Union was.”212 Political propaganda created cohesive stories about the former Soviet Union that inspired and motivated generations o f Chinese. Those political myths also served as guidelines to what the State decided what was important in the political behavior of its

21 *Yu Z hi, “The Unprecedented speed o f Soviet residential construction (zhuzhai jianshe),” S Z 1960:3, 2/5/60, p. 19. 212Respondent 1I-B, #23, an actor from Beijing.

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citizens. Xiao Jun and others like him stepped over those lines and were used to show just how strict those guidelines were. The coercion alone, though, could not have maintained the enthusiasm and energy for the transformation of China that was sought. A key part o f the propaganda myths o f the Soviet Union was the portrayal of the economic benefits o f Soviet socialism. Political choices dictated the nature of Chinese propaganda as a large increase in propaganda about Soviet economic development from 1952 marked the decision to adopt the Soviet system. From that time until the shift to the more radical economic dreams o f the Great Leap Forward, the oudines and benefits of the socialist system as it was implemented in the Soviet U nion were constantly touted. That praise was at the core o f this chapter’s examination of the myth of the superiority of the Soviet economic system. At the same time, though Western capitalism had been delegitimized by its identification with the policies o f the G M D , it may have still appealed to some Western-trained intellectuals, whom the Party needed. To root out Western leanings it was imperative that capitalism be equated with the old regime, with imperialist exploitation and the oppression o f both less developed countries and large parts of the populations in imperialist countries. Thus, complementing the portrayal o f the bounty of Soviet socialism, the dark side of life under American monopoly capitalism was also attacked. Those who had criticized the Soviet Union, such as Long Yun, the former governor o f Yunnan, were thoroughly and repeatedly castigated as rightists. In his self-criticism, Lung blamed his anti-Soviet sentiments on “his class origin, ... his birth in a feudal, landlord family, and ... his infatuation with ‘the ideology of bourgeois democracy and freedom’.”213 By the late 1950s, the alternative development paths towards communism chosen by the Chinese led away from many aspects of the Soviet developmental model. But that did not mean that individuals were free to speak out against the Soviet Union, as many did in

213Theodore H . E. Chen, Thought Refirm o f the Chinese Intellectuals (H ong Kong: HKUP, 1957) p. 186187.

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the “ 100 Flowers” period.214 Nor did it mean that other strands o f the myth about the Soviet Union could not be used to continue demonstrating the unity o f the “world peace camp” and the superiority of the socialist system. Those other strands included several that we have already looked at: the myth o f the superiority of socialism over capitalism; the myth of Soviet scientific and technological prowess, as demonstrated by the launching of the Sputnik satellite; the myth of ever-increasing material plenty in the Soviet Union. The general picture of the Soviet Union in the 1950s presented a vision o f prosperity and great hope for China’s own future. Chinese audiences saw a benevolent and powerful socialist state protecting the country, transforming nature, providing material goods and overseeing the welfare of society. As the survey respondents illustrated, the strength of this propaganda vision varied only slightly across Beijing audiences, depending on personal experiences with Soviet people, or in the Soviet Union. Because even the anti-Soviet propaganda o f the Cultural Revolution focused on ideology and Soviet international behavior, a myth o f a Soviet Union that excelled in heavy industry and military technologies while providing a comfortable material lifestyle remained fairly intact among Chinese audiences of the time. That vision was probably the most important legacy o f the propaganda myths of the socialist economy and all its components: centralized planning, an emphasis on heavy industry, the portrayals o f ever-increasing material welfare and wonderful scientific achievements. I began this chapter talking about the role of myth in the body politic. I have tried to show how the myth o f the Soviet Union in China was transmitted via the propaganda organs o f the State by examining one strand - the economy. In this chapter I presented a detailed picture o f the Soviet economy as portrayed in the Chinese press and the reactions to that picture. T he glowing portrayal may not be a surprise, but its continued resonance

214T he case o f Long Yon has already been noted. Another “rightist” who confessed to harboring antiSoviet sentiments was D an Diwu, "W hy Have I committed such serious errors?” RMRB, 7/17/57, in CB, #470, pp. 52-53.

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was. In the next chapter, I will look at how the Soviet leadership and its foreign policy were portrayed, with the corresponding responses from sample audiences.

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CH A PTER FOUR: T H E SOVIET U N IO N IN W O RLD AFFAIRS Chinese propaganda portraits of Soviet international actions in the 1950s were part of the broad-based regime effort to solidify domestic support for the Soviet model. The complex interplay between domestic developmental needs and the re-evaluation of an international identity after the establishment of the People’s Republic created a certain inevitable Chinese interpretation of international affairs and the role of the Soviet Union in the world. That interpretation was heavily influenced by both Soviet views o f the international environment an d its foreign policy behavior. Presentations o f Soviet foreign policy created desired audience impressions of the Soviet Union to complement the myth o f the economy that we saw in the previous chapter. O f course various groups within the leadership can maintain their own positions regarding foreign policy as well, positions which can be deduced from differences across journals or newspapers, but I will focus on similarities, not on differences.1 This chapter, then, presents propaganda portrayals of the Soviet Union’s foreign policy during significant moments in Chinese relations with the world and supplements those portrayals with audience memories.

Introduction: fifteen years o f foreign policy propaganda According to one recent Chinese analysis, the first decade and a half o f the People’s Republic’s foreign policy can be divided into two general periods.2 One starts with the establishment o f the People’s Republic on Oct. 1, 1949 and ends with the Bandung Conference o f April, 1955. “The chief characteristics o f this period were: Under the conditions o f American-Soviet ‘cold war’ and opposition after the Second W orld War, the victory of the Chinese revolution changed the balances o f forces between East and West to

^ o r a n a n a ly s is o f t h e p e r c e iv e d d iffe re n c e s a m o n g e lite g r o u p s ’ a ttitu d e s to w a rd s f o r e ig n p o lic y , s e e e .g ., W il l ia m

M ills , “T r e a t m e n t o f F o r e ig n P o lic y Issu e s in t h e R e g io n a l C h in e s e P r e s s ,”

p p . 7 9 5 -8 1 0 .

2 X i e Y i x i a n , Zhechongyu gongchu: X in Zhongguo dui wai guanxi sishi nian [Repulse the Enemy and Co­ existence: Forty years o f New China's Foreign Policy] ( Z h e n g z h o u : H e n a n P e o p l e ’s P u b l i s h i n g , 1 9 9 0 ) .

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the peoples’ advantage, greatly encouraging the liberation movements o f oppressed nationalities; with China’s support, the socialist countries of Asia near China were victorious in their struggles against American armed aggression and the threat o f military interference.”3 According to this view, the Bandung Conference marked the emergence of the “Third W orld” and ushered in the second stage in China’s foreign relations, which ended with the large-scale American involvement in Vietnam in March, 1965.

The

relaxation in international tensions during this period was indicated by the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Austria, the Soviet recognition of the Federal Rpublic o f Germany, and the Sino-American ambassadorial talks.4 In addition, various “previously restrained and unnoticed contradictions, such as those between socialist countries, those between socialist and democratic countries, arose and developed”5 during this period. This two-stage division of the first fifteen years o f China’s interactions on the world stage can be further considered as four discrete periods. The first period begins with the founding o f the People’s Republic and ends with the death o f Stalin and the conclusion of the Korean War, a period that Peter Van Ness called “communist internationalism”6; the second is the period from the end o f the Korean War to the 20th Party Congress o f the CPSU, a period of “peaceful coexistence”; the next four years until the withdrawal of Soviet advisers in 1960 comprise the third period, marked by rising militancy from the Chinese side (which Van Ness extends to 1965) directed against the Western camp; and the fourth period, until the eve o f the Cultural Revolution in 1965, is dominated by the increasingly public dispute with theSoviet Union. As I hope to show in this chapter, Chinese propaganda descriptions o f Soviet foreign policy and Soviet involvement in the

3 X ie ,

Repulse the Enemy, p .

2.

4 X ie ,

Repulse the Enemy, p .

3.

5X ie ,

Repulse the Enemy,

6 P e te r V a n N e ss,

p. 3.

Revolution and Chinese Foreign Policy ( B e r e k e l e y ,

CA :

U n iv e rs ity o f C a lif o r n ia P re ss,

1 9 7 1 ), p . 10 .

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world were indicative o f Chinese policy orientations which differed between these four periods, while at the same time also reflective o f some general attitudes towards the Soviet Union’s role in the world. Chinese commentary about international affairs in each o f these four periods was often issue-oriented, but some common principles unified that commentary. The first was the Leninist insistence that the inevitable transition from a capitalist international system to a socialist one would be accompanied by peace and friendly relations between fraternal socialist countries and conflict with the capitalist countries. This principle was reflected in the presentation o f the Soviet and American camps in opposition and protestations o f peace by and within the socialist camp. A second principle reminded Chinese audiences of China’s special place in the world. This principle manifested itself in proclamations of the significance o f the victory of the C C P for Asian and world history and for the success of the international communist movement, and in rejections o f international co-operation with non-socialist countries as leading to interference in China’s own affairs. These underlying principles o f Chinese foreign policy created a complicated interaction between the twin poles o f dependency and autonomy in China’s foreign affairs. W ithin the context of that complex interaction, the Soviet Union played an impossibly crucial role in how China interpreted its emergence in the international arena. Pre-determined by the mix o f ideology and native pride, Chinese propaganda in the 1950s generally showed an anti-imperialist Soviet Union aligned with the emerging post­ war forces challenging the Western colonial order. China, o f course, was a beneficiary o f this alignment. The 1950s Sino-Soviet alliance triumphantly declared China’s choice o f membership in a new world order and its rejection of any perceived subservience to Western countries. Publicly, Soviet aid and developmental assistance to the Chinese during and after the Korean W ar were trumpeted as concomitant with the Soviet principle o f fighting for peace and co-operation in international affairs. The promise of prosperity was a crucial component of the myth o f the Soviet Union and this logically necessitated a

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particular propaganda line on Soviet foreign behavior: that its actions worked toward the goal o f international peace and social development. Official depictions o f Soviet foreign policy were positive for many other reasons. First o f all, since China had chosen to lean to one particular side, that choice had to be justified in all aspects, including international policy. Consequently, because the Soviet Union was exemplary in foreign policy, it made more sense to copy it domestically. Secondly, ideological resonance demanded certain propaganda themes. A socialist victory in China naturally meant a socialist foreign policy, and the only model for such a foreign policy was defined by the experience o f the Soviet Union. Thirdly, as we saw in the economic aspect of the myth, clarity and simplicity demanded that Soviet international behavior be portrayed as Good. And since the source of everything good can do no harm, then o f course the foreign policy of the Soviet Union could only be described in a certain way. The public journal of the Foreign Ministry, Shijie Zhishi is once again the source for most of this chapter’s description of Soviet foreign behavior. As one of the pre-eminent journals presenting information about the world to Chinese audiences, Sbijie Zhishi co­ ordinated its coverage with the Department o f Propaganda (see chapter three) and the other organs of government. By reflecting an approved agenda for discussions o f international affairs, the journal provides a window into how the world was presented in the 1950s.

Revolutionary Inheritance Chinese propaganda about the Soviet Union in the 1950s did not come out of thin air. Beginning with the Karakhan Manifesto o f 1919, the Soviet Union’s own propaganda machinery laid out a consistent picture o f Bolshevik and Soviet policy in the international arena. When they reached Chinese audiences, these propaganda claims provided a positive contrast to the other Western powers and the Japanese whose behavior had long angered Chinese nationalists. The Karakhan pronouncements were met with “fervid demonstrations

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o f gratitude” and demands that the Beijing government recognize the new Soviet regime, which it finally did in 1924.7 Although isolated from most o f the world, the Chinese Communist Party in the revolutionary period owed ideological fealty and logistical support to the Soviet government. In 1939 Mao established the basic theme of peace that would weave through post-war Chinese descriptions of Soviet foreign policy. In an article written on the eve of the twenty-second anniversary o f the October Revolution, he rebutted criticisms that the Soviet treaty o f non-aggression with Germany represented international opportunism, by insisting that “the foreign policy of the Soviet Union over a very long period of time has consistently been one o f peace, a policy based on the close links between its own interests and those o f the overwhelming majority o f mankind.” Conceding the possibility of selfinterest as a foreign policy motivation, Mao noted that “for its own socialist construction the Soviet Union has always needed peace, has always needed to strengthen its peaceful relations with other countries.”8 In addition, the Soviet Union, Mao wrote, “supports just and non-predatory wars o f liberation.”9 Thus, for example, the entry o f the Soviet Red Army into Poland in September, 1939 was explained as helping the minorities in Poland avoid German oppression. The general foreign policy line of the People’s Republic concerning the Soviet Union were finally determined in the months just prior to the declaration o f the establishment of the new Chinese state. Mikoyan’s trip to Xibaipo, the site of the CCP headquarters, in January 1949 and Liu Shaoqi’s secret trip to Moscow in the summer, laid the groundwork for the subsequent development of Sino-Soviet relations. These discussions at the highest

7Chow Tse-tung, The M ay 4th Movement: Intellectual Revolution in M odem China, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960), p. 212,213-14. 8 Mao Zedong, “Sulian liyi he renlci liyi de yizhi,” [“The Identity o f Interests Between the Soviet U nion and All Mankind”] in SWTI, p. 275. 9Mao Zedong, “The Identity o f Interests Between the Soviet Union and All M ankind,” p. 277.

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Party levels led to understandings on “critical issues o f bilateral cooperation and the international situation.”10 Liu’s trip included dicussions and analysis o f loans and technical aid in the form o f foreign experts, the international situation, the content o f what was to be learned from the Soviet U nion, Soviet help in the establishment of a school for cadres, Sino-Soviet transport and communications links, cultural exchanges, and trade issues.11 These negotiations and the subsequent understandings between the top-level leadership of the two parties led to the enunciation by Mao o f the “lean to one side” policy which colored all the propaganda descriptions of the Soviet Union for the next decade.

Bipolarity: The Two Camps Bipolarity in the post-war world provided the backdrop for all Chinese propaganda presentations o f international affairs in the 1950s.12 This section will examine the depiction o f bipolarity in Chinese articles about Soviet international relations throughout the 1950s. The two-camp vision of the world was strongest in the Korean W ar period. The political myth benefits from simplicity. Although Mao in 1946 had introduced the concept of a buffer zone between the United States and the Soviet Union - “the United States and the Soviet Union are separated by a vast zone which includes many capitalist, colonial and semi-colonial countries in Europe, Asia and Africa”13 - in the public propaganda Stalin’s two-camp version o f international relations dominated. The idea of bipolarity required a Soviet ally to balance the existence o f the imperialist American

10 S.N. Goncharov, “Stalin’s Dialogue with Mao Zedong: Interview with Ivan Kovalev,” Journal of

Northeast Asian Studies, vol. X, no. 4, winter 1991/92, p. 48. 11 Bo Yibo, Ruogan zhongda juece yu shijian de huigu [Recollections About Some Important Decisions and Events] (Beijing: Central Party School, 1991), vol. 1, p. 37. 12See Shambaugh, Beautiful Imperialist for a description o f the interplay o f these strands in Chinese foreign policy as they affected Chinese views o f the United States. G ordon Chang, in Friends and Enemies: The United States, China, and the Soviet Union, 1948-1972 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990) also details the perceptions that affected high-level American policy on the Sino-Soviet relationship. 13 “Talk with the American Correspondent Anna Louise Strong,” in SW'IV, p. 99.

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enemy and Mao had acknowledged in 1946 that the “Soviet Union is a defender o f world peace and a powerful factor preventing the domination o f the world by the U.S. reactionaries. Because of the existence o f the Soviet Union, it is absolutely impossible for the reactionaries in the United States and the world to realize their ambitions.”14 According to Chinese analysts at the time, the bipolar nature o f the world resulted from a shift in the balance o f forces from imperialism to socialism at the end o f the Second W orld W ar.15 The forces o f imperialism, including the victorious allied powers as well as the defeated Axis countries, were weakened by the war, while those o f peace and socialism were strengthened by it, due primarily to the example and aid of the Soviet Union. This change in the balance o f forces added to divergent conceptions o f the post-war order led to the establishment o f two opposing “camps.” The imperialist camp was led by America and it acted to “establish {quell) an Anglo-American imperialist global hegemony and ‘rout’ (jikui) democracy.” On the other hand, the democratic camp led by the Soviet Union had as its basic aims the “destruction o f imperalism, the consolidation of people’s democracies and the ‘stamping out’ (chanmie) o f the remnants of Fascism.”16 In fact, “all the forces struggling on behalf o f democracy, peace and socialism have united around the Soviet Union.”17 They all consider “each achievement o f the Soviet Union as another guarantee o f world peace and another step in humanity’s progress towards a new world.” 18

14 “Talk with the American Correspondent Anna Louise Strong,” p. 100. ^ For example, H e Wushuang, “Shehui zhuyi shijie tixi de xingchcng,” [“The origins o f the socialist world system”] S Z 1957:6, 3/20/57, pp. 18-21. This was the first in a series o f five articles on post-war international relations published by Shijie Zhishi in 1957. 16Shen Zhi, “Sulian shi heping de baolei” [“The Soviet U n io n is the Fortress of Peace”], S Z 20:16, 9/30/49, p. 9. 17Shcn Zhi, “The Soviet Union is the Fortress o f Peace," p. 10. 18 Peng Shizhcn, “Sulian shi ri yi qiang da de heping m inzhu baolei,” [“T he Soviet U nion is an everstronger fortress o f peace and democracy”] S Z 1952:43,11/1/52, p. 5.

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In the second period, Chinese attitudes at the Bandung conference indicated a slight deviation away from strict bipolarity, as noted earlier. In addition, negotiations in late 1953 through the spring of 1954 between the Chinese and Indian governments over the issue of Tibet indicated a possibility o f the loosening of the strict bipolarity o f the first period. The Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence (mutual respect for another country’s territorial integrity and sovereignty, mutual non-aggression, mutual non-interference in internal affairs, equality and mutual benefit, and peaceful coexistence) were first described as a policy for negotiating bilateral agreements and was directed at the “vast zone” of countries that Mao mentioned in 1946 in his talks with Anna Louise Strong. But events would prove that the countries in this zone could not be lumped together and eventually Chinese foreign policy would pursue different propaganda policies toward, for example, Eastern Europe, Africa and Southeast Asia. In the late 1950s, the bipolar structure o f the world again became dominant, although the existence of internal ‘contradictions’ in the two camps was acknowledged. At this time, analysis of the capitalist world divided the camp into seven different groupings, ranging from the old imperialist countries such as America, England and France to those countries, such as South Korea, which were said to be entirely dependent on the stronger powers. Nevertheless, despite this differentiation between various kinds of countries within the “capitalist system”, the overwhelming propaganda images o f the 1950s portrayed a world divided by two competing systems existing in mutual opposition.19 In the early 1960s as the gap between the forces within the socialist camp increased, the notion o f strict bipolarity disappeared in Chinese propaganda. The Sino-Soviet alliance and the socialist camp As a “historically significant” component of the bipolar world, the relationship between the PRC and the USSR was an important part of the redefinition of Chinese

19Shi Lu, “Liang ge tixi de duili, douzheng, gongchu he jingsai,” [“T he Opposition, Struggle, C o ­ existence and Com petition o f the Two Systems”] S Z 1957:14, 7/20/57, pp. 13-16.

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national identity.

Portrayed in the Chinese press at the time as another step in the

consolidation o f the forces o f peace and progress, the Sino-Soviet Treaty o f Alliance and Mutual Assistance o f 1950, along with its two attendant treaties concerning the Changchun railway and economic credits, marked a watershed in China’s relationship with the world.20 These agreements proclaimed that the new China would not stand isolated and that it now had the ability to work towards the redress of old C hina’s grievances. As the image above shows, the signing of the treaties was portrayed from the beginning as a blow against the American-led camp. The treaty22 symbolized many things. First of all, it meant that the friendship between the

m

Soviet and Chinese peoples which had been repressed by thirty years o f Guomindang and imperialist obstruction

c=0

could finally express itself openly.23 The treaty also

“Long Live the Sino-Soviet Alliance!”21

formed an alliance that consolidated the common

aspirations of two countries seven hundred million strong for lasting peace, which naturally

20The volum inous political and historical literature on Sino-Soviet relations in this period retells the ups and downs o f this alliance relationship. I do not attem pt to recapitulate that treatment. In this section, I examine the propaganda value o f this facet of China’s search for a new role in world affairs. 21 Ai Ding, “From 1950 to 1951,” SZ23:1, 1/1/51, p. 6. 221 include the attendant agreements in all references to the treaty. ^ Jin Zhonghua, “Xin de lishi, xin de tiaoyuc,” [“A New History, a N ew Agreement”] SZ 21:7, 2 /2 0 /5 0 , p . 8.

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meant an “important and incomparable impact on the work of peace and democracy in the entire world.”24 T he treaty signified a new kind of international relations: one of fraternal aid oriented towards the good of all the people. In countering American claims that the $300 million o f aid in the agreements paled when compared to several billions previously given to China by the United States government, one writer noted that all the American aid to the corrupt Guomindang ended up fattening the coffers of four important families. In contrast, Soviet aid was said to consist o f large amounts of industrial infrastructure, production equipment, and transportation materials which would contribute to China’s industrial development.25 The new alliance relationship was greeted with proclamations o f solidarity. In typically salutary veins, the People’s Daily hailed the agreements with an editorial on February 16th, 1950,26 while Shijie Zhishi devoted its Feburary 20th, 1950 issue to the agreements. M ao’s remark on the Sino-Soviet Friendship Association’s first anniversary in October, 1950 as reprinted in the People’s Daily continued to reinforce the leadership’s message. He proclaimed that, due to the newly declared unity o f the Chinese and Soviet peoples, the “unity o f the world’s peoples will no longer be difficult.”2? The start of the new year, 1951, provided another occasion to mark the the importance of this alliance. “The unity of the victorious Chinese people and the Soviet people is not only a unity of the two most populous and territorially largest countries in the continents o f Europe and Asia, but is a unity of the two most progressive and supportive countries and that is why this

24 “bi ran de hui dui zhengge shijie de heping minzhu shiye, qi juda wubi de zuoyong.” Xia Yan, “Zhong-Su Youhao tongm eng wansui” [“Long Live the Friendly Alliance of C hina and the Soviet Union”] S Z 21:7,2/20/50, p. 6. 25Jin Zhonghua, “A N ew History,” p. 10. ^ “Gonggu Zhong-Su xiongdi tongmeng" [“Consolidate the Fraternal Alliance of China and the Soviet Union.”] 27 Mao Zedong, Jianguojilai Mao Zedong Wengao [Mao Zedong’s Post-Liberation Manuscripts] (Beijing: Central D ocum ents Publishing House, 1987), p. 637.

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unity is ‘without enemies’ (wudiyu tianxia).”28

Anniversaries of the Sino-Soviet Treaty Given the importance o f the new relationship between China and the Soviet Union as symbolized by the treaties, the anniversaries of their signing had to be judiciously and carefully celebrated. The early part of the decade set the tone for most o f the following years. Beginning with the articles marking the signing of the treaty, propaganda about the treaty typically discussed its significance for world peace, for the unity o f socialist countries and as a culmination of long-standing friendship between the Chinese and Russian peoples.29 The People’s Daily summed up the propaganda attitude typical o f early 1950s encomia: The Sino-Soviet Alliance is an unprecedentedly powerful alliance. It embraces 700 million peoples led by the ideology o f Marxism-Leninism, and the populations o f the People’s Democracies - 100 million strong. The two nations which form this alliance are practising the m ost advanced system o f socialism and the system o f people’s democracy which are immeasurably strong. This alliance covers a territory o f over 30 million square kilometers, and possesses the most abundant resources. It has the most powerful military strength in the world to defend peace, a military strength which has undergone the most serious test o f war known in history.30 As the fighting in Korea settled into a deadly stalemate, the alliance between China and the Soviet Union was painted in increasingly assertive terms as a fortress of peace. In the year since the signing o f the treaty, “events have proven that [the Sino-Soviet alliance] is the most powerful safeguard of world peace and democracy.” As shown by China’s efforts in the Korean conflict, and Soviet support at the U.N., the alliance has been a “great force

28 RMRB, 1/1/51, p. 1. 29 See e.g., Xia Yan, “Zhong-Su youhao tongmeng wansui,” [“Long live the friendly alliance between C hina and the Soviet U nion”]; G ao Lai, “Qingzhu Zhong-Su qianding xin tiaoyue yu xin xieding,” [“Celebrate the signing o f a new treaty and new agreements between China and the Soviet U nion”]; Jin Zhonghua, “Xin di lishi, xin de tiaoyue,” [“A new history, a new treaty”] et. al. in S Z 2 1:7, 2/20/50, p. 6 ff. 30 RMRB editorial, “Consolidate the Sino-Soviet Alliance, O ppose Rearming o f Japan by US imperialism,” 2/14/51 in SCM P, #67, 2/15/51, p. 5.

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in the protection of world peace.”31 Throughout the years o f the Korean conflict, the SinoSoviet treaties were celebrated as having “opened a new glorious page in the development of relations between the great peoples” o f China and the Soviet Union.32 The relationship of alliance and mutual aid that these treaties symbolized were “an indispensable condition for China’s security, prosperity, development, ‘strengthening’ (qiangda), for the peace of the East and the security o f the world.”33 The death of Stalin did n o t mean any lessening in the protestations of friendship and praise for the treaty relationship. In fact, as China embarked on the “general line for the transition period” {guodu shiqi zongluxianj in 1953, the Sino-Soviet alliance was seen as one of the “important sources for guaranteeing the realization” o f that development-focused policy.34 The annual reviews o f Soviet aid to China continued throughout the mid-1950s to provide a glowing picture o f Sino-Soviet co-operation and friendship within the context of a bipolar world. “The cooperative relations between Chin and the Soviet U nion are a new type o f international relations which seek shared economic growth and cultural development.”35 United, the two countries played an important role in “limiting and pushing back (daji) the aggressive plans o f the imperialists in the Far East.”36 Just before

31 W ang Minzhi, “Zhong-Su tongm en shi shijie heping minzhu de jianqiang baolei,” [“T h e SinoSoviet Alliance is the Strong Bulwark ofW orld Peace and Democracy”] SZ24:17, 11/3/51, p. 9 ^ E d ito rial, “Hao hao de he w om en de sulian mengyou tuanjie yizhi,” [“Unite as one w ith our Soviet allies”] SZ 1952:5, 2/9/52, p. 2. ^ E d ito rial, “Zhong-Su youhao tongmeng san nian,” [“Three years o f the friendly alliance o f China and the Soviet Union"] SZ 1953:3, 2/5/53, p. 3. 34 Zhang Mingyang, “Zhong-Su youhao tongmeng shi baozheng woguo shixian guodu shiqi zongluxian de zhongyao yinxu,” [“T h e Sino-Soviet alliance o f friendship is an important guarantee that China will realize the general line in the period of transition”] S Z 1954:3, 2/5/54, p. 6. 35 Editorial, “Wei da de Z hong-Su tongmeng wu zhou nian,” [“T he fifth anniversary o f the great SinoSoviet alliance”] SZ 1955:3, 2/5/55, p. 1. 36 “Fifth anniversary," p. 1.

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the 20th Party Congress of the CPSU, editorials were proclaiming the slightly dubious assertion that, after six years into the alliance, the “people see more and more clearly the ‘great function’ {weida zuoyong) o f the” treaty, which had been the “great factor in the curbing o f imperialist wars of aggression and in the safeguarding of world peace.”37 The 1953 Korean cease-fire and the 1954 Geneva agreement on Vietnam were portrayed as results o f Soviet and Chinese peace efforts which indicated that the international situation “was not developing in the direction o f the desires of the international aggressive powers who still hope to institute their policies o f force.”38 In the latter part of the decade, complementing the declarations o f a world-wide socialist upsurge, propaganda about the treaty resounded with continuing fervor. In celebrating the 1958 anniversary o f the alliance, one writer reviewed the benefits o f the Sino-Soviet relationship. “The fraternal alliance between China and the Soviet U nion had a great effect on curbing imperialist aggression, ensuring the security o f the two countries and protecting the cause of peace in the Far East and the world, and making sure th at China has a peaceful environment in which to engage in socialist construction.” In the sphere of economic co-operation, the “Soviet Union has all along acted in accordance w ith the principles o f internationalism in giving us long term, all-encompassing and selfless aid.” The history o f relations between China and the Soviet Union “showed that the alliance born in 1950 is the greatest alliance between two countries in the history of humanity.”39 Underscoring the unifying concept o f bipolar world relations, some of the propaganda about the alliance appealed for bloc unity. “Socialist countries, whether they are engaged in their own economic development or in peaceful competition with the capitalist world,

^ E d ito ria l, “Baowei shijie heping de gangqiang tiebi,” [“T he iron wall and steel ram parts protecting world peace"] S Z 1956:3, 2/5/56, p. 1. 38 “T he iron wall amd steel ramparts,” p. 1. 39Xiao Ping, et. al., “Jiaqiang Zhong-Su tongmeng shi women chonggao de yiwu,” [“Strengthening the Sino-Soviet alliance is our lofty responsibility"] S Z 1958:3, 2/5/58, p. 9, 10.

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should all acknowledge the Soviet U nion as the leader, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union as the center and work together.”40 Though the split between the two countries’ leadership began to widen as the decade drew to a close, anniversaries of the Sino-Soviet treaty were being celebrated publicly with more insistent commentary. From 1959 to I960, the number o f pages in Shijie Shizhi devoted to commemorating the treaty jumped from 2.5 to 10. The tenth anniversary celebrations o f the treaty were nothing if not effusive. For example, it was being asserted that the “fraternal relations o f unity and friendship between China and the Soviet Union have been unceasingly strengthened and developed” over the decade, despite attempts by the “imperialists ... who would stop at nothing to sow dissension among China and the Soviet Union, to destroy Sino-Soviet unity.”41 In the past ten years, the alliance has enabled the two countries to achieve unprecedented economic prosperity. It has “struck serious blows against the American imperialist-led military forces, protected the peace of the entire world, ... this great alliance will continue to exert a strong influence on humanity.” The signing of the tieaty so soon after the establishment of the People’s Republic “allowed the Chinese people to engage in peaceful development ‘secure in the knowledge o f strong support’ (youshi-wukong) and the nation’s economy and culture to flourish.”42 Even after Khrushchev suddenly withdrew all the Soviet advisers from China in July, 1960, propaganda about the treaty did not immediately change its tone. “In the past eleven years, the friendly cooperative relations o f mutual support between China and the Soviet Union in the political, economic, cultural and other areas have developed greatly in

^ Jia n g Chunfang, “Zui weida de ruanjie,” [“The greatest unity”] S Z 1959:3, 2/5/59, p. 13. 41 “Zhong-Su tongmeng wudi yu tianxia,” [“The Sino-Soviet alliance has no equal in the world"! S Z 1 9 6 0 :3 . 2 / 5 / 6 0 , p . 1.

^ Jia n g Chunfang, “Zhong-Su tongm eng he shijie hcping,” [“The Sino-Soviet alliance and world peace"] S Z 1960:3, 2/5/60, p. 6,7. The sentim ents of this article are echoed by the Renmin Ribao editorial of 2/14/60, “Long Live the Great Sino-Soviet Alliance, the Strong Bulwark o f W orld Peace!" in CB, #61 3, p. 53.

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all areas.”43 Gradually, though, discussions of the alliance shifted to a focus on the feelings and common wishes o f the peoples of the two countries. “The Soviet people have given our country’s socialist construction a great deal o f support, the Chinese people will never forget that the kind of fraternal support and aid that the Soviet people gave us in our revolutionary struggle and during the work o f construction.”44 In 1962, in the middle o f China’s “three bitter years” o f hunger and economic re-adjustment, the anniversary of the treaty was marked in Shijie Zhishi by one brief article which asseted that “the friendship be w een the peoples of China and the Soviet Union ‘goes back to ancient times’(yuan liu yuanchang [sic]).”45 Finally, in 1963 no article appeared in Shijie Zhishi to honor the anniversary of the treaty. The People’s Daily had already run its last commemorative editorial in 1961. Over the years, the portrayal of the alliance was presented in both positive and negative terms, it was both a force for peace and domestic construction, and a counter­ balance to American-led imperialism. Several themes ran through these celebratory articles. They underscored the importance o f the Sino-Soviet treaties to world peace. They noted the position of China in the world. They drove home the message that the Soviet Union and its people were genuinely interested in China’s development. What seemed to remain impressed upon the audiences, though, was mostly the aid that this alliance brought. As a Beijing professor who was a student at the time remembered, “W ith the signing of the Treaty of Friendship and Mutual Aid with the Soviet Union, China made an important contribution to the strengthening o f the unity of the socialist camp and to the

43 Cheng Guang rui, “Zuiwcida de tuanjie he zuiweida de you yi" [“The Greatest Unity and the Greatest Friendship”] S Z 1961:3, 2/5/61, p. 4. ^ “Jian ru panshi de zhongsu tuanjie,” [“Sino-Soviet Unity is as solid as a rock”] S Z 1961:4-5. 3/5/61, p. 1. 45“Zuiweida de xiongdi tongmeng," [“The Greatest Fraternal Alliance”] S Z 1962:3-4, 2/22/62, p. 1.

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securing (baozheng) of world peace.”46 And as a former soldier put it, the Treaty “at that time gave China selfless aid in revolution and development.”47 One respondent, a retired actor, seemed to attribute the following o f the Soviet model to the treaty. “Mao Zedong said to march along the path o f the Soviet U nion ...We signed the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Mutual Aid, ‘that’s just the way it was’ (jiushi zheiyang).”48 The alliance also meant support for those who felt threatened. “At that time, under the conditions of the Western encirclement, [the alliance] was ‘unavoidable’ (wu ke fei yi de).”49 Another respondent thought that “engaging in friendly alliance (gaoyou hao lian meng) was necessary. Otherwise, it would [have been] ‘impossible to counter’ (duifu buliao) imperialism.”50 For some, one result o f the alliance was a feeling o f support for the Soviet people. “The Soviet people are our friends. They assisted us, together in struggle against the Americans.”51

“The peace and democracy camp as led by the Soviet Union” In the Chinese bipolar view of the world, bad and good were divided and unequal and the Soviet Union was accorded leadership status o f China’s camp from the beginning of the 1950s. This status was symbolized by the Chinese phrase, “Sulian weishou de heping minzhu zhenying” (“the peace and democracy camp led by the Soviet U nion”), which was ubiquitous throughout the 1950s. Mao Zedong’s remarks at the Seventh Central Committee Third Plenary Session of June 6, 1950 provided an early ratification of the

“^Respondent II-A, #3. “^Respondent II-A, #34. Respondent I-B, #12. 40Respondent I-B, #9, an administrator at People’s University, Beijing. ^R espondent II-C, #33. a cadre from Hebei 51 Respondent I-B, #3, a journalist from Shanghai.

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Soviet Union’s position in the socialist camp. “The present international situation is favorable to us. The world front o f peace and democracy led by the Soviet Union is stronger than it was last year.”52 China’s role in world affairs was to be “one o f the great fortresses in the Soviet-led world peace and democracy camp.”53 In April 1960, Shijie Zhishi reported that Premier Zhou, in his opening speech at the second session o f the Second National People’s Congress on April 10, called the “power and the unity o f the socialist camp led by the great Soviet Union the main guarantee of world peace.”54 As late as 1961, the Sino-Soviet alliance was being called the “firm pillar o f the socialist cam p.”55 But by 1962 even the few articles celebrating the Sino-Soviet treaty no longer recognized Soviet leadership in the socialist camp.56 Even articles commemorating the O ctober Revolution in 1962 barely mention the Soviet Union at all, much less as the leader o f the socialist camp.57 By giving this shorthand description of the bipolar world wide currency, the PR C! propaganda apparatus, first o f all, identified the Soviet Union with the positive ideals of peace and democracy. O f course, the version of democracy was a particularly MarxistLeninist one, where the people are given voice by the Communist Party. Secondly, the Soviet Union’s leadership status in international affairs was reified and acceded to by the

5 2 “ Yi sulian weishou de shijie heping minzhu zhertxian bi qunian geng wei zhuangda." As quoted in Ye M ang, “Xin Zhongguo de waijiao zhengce," [“New China's Foreign Policy”] in SZ 23:3,1/20/51. p. 9. Also see “Fight for a fundamental turn for the better in the nation’s financial and economic situation” in Mao Zedong, SWV, p. 26.

53H u Weide, “Xin Zhongguo de guoji diwei” [“New C hina’s International Status”] S Z 2 4 : 11 . 9/22/51, p. 5.

54“W omen de pengyu bian yu quan shijie,” [“O ur friends are all over the world”] SZ 1960:8. 4/20/60, p. 1. 55Cheng Guangrui, “Zuiweida de tuanjie he zuiweida de you yi" [“The Greatest Unity and the Greatest Friendship"] SZ 1961:3, 2/5/61, p. 5. ^ “Zui weida de xiongdi tongm eng” [“The Greatest Fraternal Alliance”] SZ 1962:3-4, 2/22/62, p. 1. 57 For example: “Gaoju shiyue geming de daqi qianjin” [“Advance with the Banner o f the October Revolution raised high"] SZ 1962:22, 11/10/62, p. 1; “Gao ju makesileninzhuyi de geming qizhi" [“Raise H igh the Revolutionary Banner o f Marxism-Leninism"] SZ 1962:22, 11/25/62, p. 1.

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Chinese government. As a Harbin engineer remembered, “this was a ‘popular phrase’ (koutou pat) and a manifestation o f friendly relations between the two countries.”58 Audience responses to the old notion of the Soviet U nion as the leader of the peace and democracy camp can be divided into four general categories. First, the overwhelming majority remembered this slogan positively, as indicative o f a bipolar international situation w ith the Soviet Union in opposition to the U nited States. To many, the leadership o f the camp obviously devolved to the Soviets: they were the first socialist country, they should be the leader of the pack. A second, much smaller group, group remembered the slogan critically. To these people, the role o f the Soviet Union was much more nefarious, they were repelled by the pole of dependency and attracted to the pole of autonomy. A third group remembered the slogan but made no judgement about it, while a fourth group seemed to have little or no impression o f this slogan. Table 1 provides a numerical summary of these groups. Table 1: Categories of responses to “Sulian weishou de minzhu heping zhenying:”

Group 1

172/275 (63%)

agreed

Group 2

25/275 (9%)

critical

Group 3

39/275 (14%)

no judgement

Group 4

38/275 (14%)

unclear

For those respondents who agreed with the slogan, the bipolarity of international affairs was o f paramount importance. A female worker born in 1920 saw the international situation in stark terms. “At the time China was ‘in the midst of encirclement by the powerful imperialist camp’ (chuyu diguozhuyi qiangda zhenying baowei zhizhong). Only by leaning on the Soviet Union could we defeat imperialism.”59 A former editor noted that

58 Respondent 1-C, 36. 59 Respondent 1-C, #39.

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“the opposition o f the two great camps was one of the sources for the instability of the world situation at the time.”60 The im pact o f the myth of the bipolar world was strong for many respondents. “The world peace and democracy camp led by the Soviet Union was the ‘hope’ (xiangwang) of the people o f the world and even the ‘staunch rearguard’ (chiqiang houduti) o f their struggle for peace and democracy.”61 The Soviet Union’s leadership o f the camp in the 1950s was taken for granted. “At the time I thought the Soviet Union was the pillar o f the socialist camp. It was the primary strength in the protection of world peace.”62 Since “the Soviet economy was ‘advanced’ (fada) and politically they were the first socialist country, their being the leader o f the world peace and democracy camp was natural.”63 This impression was echoed by a former technical worker, “at the time I really thought that the Soviet Union should be the world peace and democracy camp’s ‘leader’ (shou ling). As history’s first socialist country, as a country with an extremely developed heavy industry, its ‘international position’ (guoji diwet) was ‘unshakeable’ (buke dongyao de).n(A The notion of a Soviet-led peace camp was used as an instrument “to encourage China’s people to ‘uphold’ {jianchi) the socialist road in order to speedily liberate the proletariat of the world and to establish socialist countries and so that the people could achieve peace and democracy.”63 Critics o f the Soviet Union may have been emboldened by hindsight and by the confusion reigning in the Soviet Union in 1991. An editor remarked that “the Soviet

60 Respondent II-B, #1. 61 Respondent II-A, #19, a former student. ^ R e sp o n d en t II-A, #19. 63 Respondent II-B, #21 a student at the time. 61 Respondent II-C, #34. 63 Respondent II-C, #32, a printer:

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Union itself‘did not pursue peace’ (bu gao heping). Furthermore, ‘there was no democracy domestically’ (guoneiye tanbushang minzhu), so this phrase is incorrect, but,” he continued, commenting on the coercive power of the state, “at the time who ‘dared to say anything else’ (bu gan shuo shenma). We ‘could only believe it’ (zhi nengxin).”66 A former engineering student attributed imperial intentions to the Soviet Union, “the Soviet Union wanted to be the ‘hegemon in the socialist camp’ (duba shehui zhuyi zhenying), it became revisionist.”67 Cynical about politics in general, a former medical student said that “everybody said they were for peace and democracy, in reality ‘everybody thinks of themselves’ (dou wei ziji dasuan).”68 Despite the dissident opinions, the impact o f ratified discourse about the Soviet Union in a bipolar world is still discernible even decades after its peak usage. Though usage does not imply agreement, it does indicate remembrance. One measure of propaganda’s effectiveness, as discussed previously, is the extent to which it shapes the vocabulary o f its recipients. Thus, when a retired mechanical engineer sums up the international situation of the 1950s with this description, “at the time the socialist camp led by the Soviet Union and the imperialist ‘cabal’ (jituan) led by the United States were confronting each other, it was the cold war,”69 one implication is that, for whatever reason, Chinese government messages did have a lasting influence on the vocabulary of their audiences.

The end of bipolarity After China went its own foreign policy way during the Cultural Revolution, another

^R espondent I-B, #17. ^R espondent II-C, #19. ® Respondent II-C, #35. 69 Respondent I-C, #18.

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slogan was used to potray the Soviet Union as a new force of imperialism. Derived from denunciations o f Titoism in the late 1950s, which after all were veiled attacks on the Soviet leadership, this slogan, “Suxiu shehui diguo zhuyi” (“Soviet revisionist socialist imperialism”), linked the Soviet Union with both “new revisionism” and old imperialism. Attributed to Chairman Mao, the identification o f the rulers of the Soviet Union as “revisionists” was a part of the ideological component of the split between the two Commuist Parties.70 A female teacher remembered that in the 1960s, “the Soviet Union became a superpower, switched its foreign policy from one of ‘benefiting the people’ (minzuliyizhuyt) to one of expansionist hegemonism, departing from MarxismLeninism.”71 A student reported remembering “th a t... the CPSU was not only revisionist but that the Soviet U nion expanded its foreign agression, engaged in the creation of ‘military blocs’ (junshi jituan) and in domestic oppression.”72 But the general propaganda overkill o f the Cultural Revolution meant that, for some audience members, this new slogan did not convincingly categorize the world. A military engineer born in 1925 dismissed it as “a product of political struggles, and a ‘product’ (ichanwu) of the Gang o f Four.”73 A Beijing factory worker remembered this as “a slogan that was ‘raised’ (tichu) during the Gang o f Four period. It was ‘extremely unpopular’ (fei chang de bu de renxin).”/4 Table 2 breaks down the audience responses to this slogan. Though the percentage of those who expressed some sort of agreement with the slogan is over 50%, it is still significantly lower than those who agreed (in 1991) with the slogan o f bipolarity - 63%

70 See Stuart Schram, The Political Thought o f M ao Tse-tung (NY: Praeger, 1969), p. 436 for a discussion o f M ao’s derogatory com m ents about the Soviet leadership. 71 Respondent I-A, #3. ^R espondent II-A, #19. 73 Respondent I-C, #27. 7 9 C 0 t£ '

towards atomic weapons was

lS3“The Great Significance...” 154Fu Ying, “Sulian dui jinzhi yuanzi wupin yu jianli guoj guanzhi de yiguan zhuzhang,” [“A consistent Soviet view on the prohibition o f atomic weapons and the establishment o f international control”] S Z 24:15, 10/20/51, p. 9.

“Under the bright lights o f atomic power.”155

155Yefimov, in S Z 1955:3, 2 /5 /5 5 , p. 2, originally from KrokodiU the Soviet hum or magazine. Soviet use o f atomic power are contrasted w ith the American grasping o f an atomic bomb.

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reinforced by reports throughout the mid-1950s of Soviet uses of atomic energy for domestic economic development. The 1954 announcement by the Soviet government o f the opening o f the first nuclear powered electric generation plant was greeted by proclamations o f joy. “This is ‘great tidings’ {da xixun) for the people o f the world! This is a great victory for the peace, democracy and socialism camp!”156 At the same time as Chinese readers were being shown the benefits of Soviet atomic power, the Soviet government forwarded various international disarmament proposals. For example, Voitinsky at the United Nations on September 13, 1954 raised a proposal, “O n the establishment of an international treaty to reduce arms, prohibit nuclear weapons, hydrogen weapons and other weapons o f mass destruction,” which had “as its goals the strengthening o f peace and international security.”157 Calls for demobilization and disarmament continued throughout the decade. The Soviet Union announced in May 1956 that in the next year it would be demobilizing another 1.2 million soldiers. This announcement came after the disarmament committee of the United Nations was unable to propose any measures to reduce the military infrastructure around the world.158 A nd in March of 1958 the Soviet government announced a unilateral moratorium on the testing o f atomic and hydrogen weapons. This was presented as a sign of the Soviet U nion’s desires to “use action to show their determination and good faith.”159 O f course, the Soviets had in October, 1957, secretly promised to help China develop its own bomb, as well as provide a sample bomb.

156Mei R u’ao, “Sulian yingyong yuanzi neng yu heping shiye fenshuai le Meiguo de yuanzi e’zha zhengce,” [“The Soviet Union used atomic energy on behalf o f the work o f peace to destroy the American policy o f nuclear blackmail”] S Z 1954:14, 7 /2 0 /5 4 , p. 10. 157“Sulian guanyu caijun he jinzhi yuanzi wupin de jianyi,” [“A Soviet proposal on disarm am ent and the prohibition o f nuclear weapons”] S Z 10/20/54, p. 3. 158“Sulian caijun xin bangyang,” [“A N ew Soviet Model o f Disarmament”] S Z 1956:11, 6/5 /5 6 , p. 3. 159Liang C hunfu, “Yinian lai Sulian dui heping shiye de weida gongxian,” [“The great contributions o f the Soviet U nion to the cause o f peace in the past year”] SZ 1958:24,12/20/58, p. 4.

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O n June 20, 1959 the Soviet government notified the Chinese government that it was scrapping the October 1957 agreement regarding atomic weapons and at the same time proposed a nuclear-free zone in the Far East. These actions have been seen as contributing to the break-up of the Sino-Soviet alliance relationship.160 Up to this point, official propaganda lauded the efforts o f the Soviet Union to control the nuclear arms race. In the June 20 issue of Shijie Zhishi Soviet attempts at disarmament were portrayed in stark contrast to an American policy of stationing tactical nuclear weapons in Germany. “Everybody knows that the Soviet government has consistently proposed that the two nuclear powers, American and England should sign a treaty to immediately and unconditionally stop the testing of hydrogen bombs.”161 The Soviet Union made these proposals in May and December of 1957 b ut to no avail. American testing o f nuclear weapons in the South Pacific continued in the face o f opposition from world opinion. Chinese vocal support for the test ban disappeared with the revocation of the Soviet offer. The next issue o f July 5, 1959 was conspicuously silent on the issue o f Soviet disarmament, though it did have one article, by a Soviet writer, on the benefits o f nuclear technology in science, electric power generation, industry and medicine.162 The article was accompanied by photographs of nuclear technology used in various fields. There were no other articles on Soviet disarmament or proposals for the rest o f the year. Few people seemed to remember the issue of nuclear weapons in particular, although one former student gave an impressionistic description o f his memories o f the Soviet Union, which included the nuclear issue. “Soviet scientists, agronomists, Michurin, Pavlov, biology, Volga River, Black Sea resorts. I’ve seen photos. Vast land, fertile resources (di

l60See, for example, W illiam E. Griffith, The Sino-Soviet R ifi (Cambridge, MA: T he M .I.T. Press, 1964), p. 12. The Soviet abrogation was not revealed by the Chinese until 1963. 161 Zhao Lihai, “Bixu wutiaojian di tingzhi gaiwupin shiyan,” [“T he testing o f hydrogen bombs m ust be stopped unconditionally”] S Z 1959:12, 6/20/59, p. 7. l62L. Bumyashev, “Yuanzineng wei renlei fuli fuwu," [“Nuclear power serving for the benefit of mankind”] SZ 1959:13,7/5/59, pp. 25-26.

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da umbo), fruitful. Nationalities costumes, songs and folk dances, circus, caviar, nuclear industry, atom bomb, space technology, Soviet aid, Mayakovsky. Vast sky, extremes of hot and cold. The leaders o f the two countries don’t stop arguing, but the friendship o f the peoples of the two countries survives.”163 M ore generally, memories o f Soviet scientific and technology prowess in the nuclear energy area were quite common, as we have seen in the previous chapter.

The Soviet Union and Foreign Aid Foreign economic assistance can be seen as a “strategic reflection o f a world outlook.”164 It was used by the former Soviet Union, as well as the United States, to “attain economic, military, political, and social conditions that ... contribute to a world order” conceived to serve the interests of the aid giver.165 In the 1950s, Soviet foreign economic assistance was portrayed in the Chinese press as selfless support for countries struggling against imperialist domination. W e have already seen how that economic assistance to China was portrayed. This chapter looks at how the use o f foreign aid contributed to the myth o f Soviet struggles for international peace. By the establishment o f the People’s Republic o f China, Soviet economic aid had already proven to be o f great help to the post-war recoveries o f the socialist countries of Eastern Europe. That aid came in many types, the most basic of which was trade based on completely equal relations o f mutual benefit, which enabled the people’s democracies to develop their own industrial bases. Long-term trade agreements were another type of aid, which allowed the people’s democracies to plan their economic development. Scientific and technical exchanges were another type of aid, as was the sharing o f advanced production

l63Respondent II-C, #27. l64John D. Montgomery, Foreign A id in International Politics (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: PrenticeHall, 1967), p. 18. l65Montgomery, Foreign Aid, p. 23.

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experiences. Joint enterprises based on comradely relations were yet another form of economic assistance. None o f these types o f selfless assistance was available from the capitalist countries which only wanted to “keep the European People’s Democracies as producers of agricultural raw materials and as export markets for capitalist goods.”166 Needless to say, that aid had also greatly benefited newly independent Asian countries as well, especially during the post-Stalin periods. We have already examined the propaganda about Soviet aid to China and explored its impact in the previous chapter. “Really the Soviet Union at the time gave [China] ‘sincere and selfless’ {zhengan wusi) help. Additionally in foreign policy they supported and encouraged [China] spiritually.”167 “Soviet economic relations with China, Vietnam, Korea, Mongolia and other countries are a new kind o f relations based on the principles of proletarian internationalism.”168 These principles encouraged the peaceful development and long­ term economic growth of recipient countries. In November, 1956 Bulganin and Khrushchev spent a well-publicized month touring India, Burma and Afghanistan. This visit was said to indicate not only “a great expansion in friendly cooperative relations between the Soviet Union and Asian countries, but at the same time it also indicated that Asian history has entered a new stage.”169 O f course, friendly new Soviet initiatives in Asia balanced predatory American ones. The difference between Soviet and American aid derived from their two different social systems and fundamentally different goals. Aid to ‘undeveloped countries’ (bufada guojia)

l6 6 Chen Zanwei, “Sulian dui Ouzhou rcnmin m inzhuguojia de wusi yuanzhu,” [“T h e selfless support o f the Soviet Union for the people’s democratic countries o f Europe”] S Z 1954:6, 3/20/54, p. 21-22. 167Respondent I-C, #6, a chemical engineer from H arbin. 168Zhong Yulin, “Sulian shi Yazhou guojia de pengyou he yuanzhuzhe,” [“The Soviet Union is the friend and supporter o f Asian Countries”] S Z 1955:23, 12/5/55, p. 12. l6 9 Feng Zhidan, “Sulianhe Yazhou guojia youhao hezuo guanxi de weida fazhan,” [“T he Great Development in friendly co-operative relations between the Soviet Union and Asian Countries”] S Z 1 9 5 6 :1 , 1 / 5 /5 6 , p . 13.

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from socialist countries “have an important effect on the development of their national economies, on the consolidation o f their national sovereignty and on changing their backwardness.”170 Soviet aid “comes purely from peaceful foreign policies and the principle o f peaceful co-existence between countries o f different systems.”171 O n the other hand, the “aid” given by the United States was said to be “in the service of achieving its aggressive military and political goals, to interfere in the internal politics of undeveloped countries, to guarantee the ‘enormous profits’ {ju’e lixi) o f the monopolists, to guarantee the export o f capital and goods, to control the economic fate o f the countries that receive ‘aid,’ to force them into dependent positions.”172 T h e following comparison o f Soviet and American foreign aid purports to show that Soviet foreign aid, diagrammed in the upper box, creates a cycle of productive development based on the principles o f equality and mutual benefit and non-interference in internal politics.173 This kind o f aid builds factories and an industrial infrastructure, extends favorable long-term loans, sends ‘exceptional advisers” as consultants. The fruits of such aid are a consolidation o f national sovereignty, multi-faceted development of the national economy and an improvement in the peoples’ lives. Closing the circle, the Soviet U nion ultimately provides a market for finished goods from the aid recipient.

170Xiao Chen, “Liangzhong bu tong xingzhi de duiwai yuanzhu,” [“Two Qualitatively Different Kinds o f Foreign Aid"] SZ 1960:14, 7/20/60, p. 11. 171Shi Yitao, “Lianzhong yuanzhu, liangzhong m udi,” [“Tw o kinds o f help, two kinds o f goals”] S Z 1956:2,1/20/56, p. 14. 172Xiao Chen, “Two Qualitatively Different Kinds o f Foreign Aid," p. 11. 173Z h u Yulian, “Liangzhong yuanzhu de duibi,” [“A comparison o f two kinds o f help"] S Z 1956:2, 1/20/56, p. 16.

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Soviet Support for China on the world stage The behavior of the Soviet Union during two periods o f crisis for China have been often cited as creating tensions in the relationship. In the handling o f the second Taiwan Straits Crisis o f the fall o f 1958, it appeared that “the Russians did fear that the Chinese might drag them into a war and that Peking resented insufficient Soviet support.”174 In October 1959, border clashes on the Chinese border with India again gave Khrushchev a chance to issue statements o f lukewarm support for China. His neutrality was ‘the first time in Bloc history that the USSR had taken a neutral position in a dispute between a Communist and a non-Communist state.”175 The following two sections examine the picture being given of the Soviet Union at these times.

The Soviet U nion during the Taiwan Straits Crises In the fall o f 1954 the Chinese Communist government began shelling Quemoy Island and carrying out air sorties against other islands in the Dachen group still held by Nationalist forces. This first iteration of the conflict with the Republic of China over these offshore islands elicited a strong but measured response from the Americans.176 In late August, early September, 1958, China and Taiwan renewed their hostilities over these islands off the coast of Fujian. The second iteration of this conflict seemed to be much tenser than the first. President Eisenhower noted that the islands o f Quemoy and Matsu were more im portant in 1958 than in 1955 and he talked about the use o f tactical nuclear weapons.177 These two episodes in a region considered part o f C hina’s sovereign territory were used by the Chinese propaganda organs to play up American’s aggressive actions in

174Zagoria, The Sino-Soviet Conflict: 1956-61, p. 217. 175Zagoria, The Sino-Soviet Conflict: 1956-61, p. 283. 176See, for example, President Eisenhower’s request to Congress for authority to commit military forces, text, The N e w York Times, 1/25/55, p. 3. 177For a transcript o f this conference, sec The N ew York Times, 8/28/58, p. 10.

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the Pacific.178 The September 20, 1958 issue o f Shijie Zhishi published photos of early September demonstrations throughout China against American involvement in the Taiwan straits. This American interference in Asia was also linked to the global dangers of American imperialism. For example, in the September 5, 1958 issue o f Shijie Zhishi, the dominant foreign policy issue centered on American and British actions in Lebanon and Jordan, with denunciations of military landings and introductions o f the “peaceful” sovereignty-threatened Arabic countries. The Soviet attitude in these episodes was less than supportive. Khrushchev did not come forward until late in the second crisis to say that the Soviet U nion would consider an attack on China as equal to an attack on the Soviet Union.179 Consequently Chinese propaganda about Soviet foreign policy in the Foreign Ministry journal was conspicuous by its absence. N ot until the final issue of the year did Shijie Zhishi publish an article on Soviet foreign policy, after the Offshore Islands crisis had passed its peak.180 Not including the November 5th issue which ran 24 pages worth o f commemorative articles celebrating the 41st anniversary o f the October Revolution, including a nine-page compilation of relevant articles by Mao, very few articles on the Soviet Union were published at all during this crisis period.181

178For example, Ai N a, “Zhongguo renmin jiefang Taiwan de juexin shi buke dongyao de,” [“The determination o f the Chinese people to liberate Taiwan is unshakeable”] S Z 1955:4, 2/20/55, pp. 6-8; Bing Fu, “Rang na ziji taoshang de jiaosuo de zhilaohu fadou ba!” [“Let the suicidal paper tiger tremble!”] S Z 1958:18,9/20/58, pp. 4-8. 179Scc, The New York Times 9/9/58, p. 1. The crisis was de-escalated when on O ct. 26 Peng Dehuai announced that China w ould shell the islands only on alternate days. 180Liang Chunfii, “T h e great contributions of the Soviet Union to the cause o f p eace..." op. cit. 181W u Fanyu, “Sulian zhuanjia shi zhongguo renmin de haopengyou,” [“T h e Soviet experts are the good friends o f the Chinese people”] S Z 1968:18, 9/20/58, pp. 27-28. O ne photo on the back cover o f this issue showed a stony-faced Soviet crowd with two placards that said, “Hands off o f China!” in English.

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The Soviet Union during the Indian border clashes The next year, 1959, would prove problematic for Sino-Soviet relations. In June, the Soviet government had notified the Chinese that it was abrogating an earlier commitment to provide a sample atom bomb and technical data on atom bomb production. The JulyAugust Lushan Plenum discredited those who, like Marshal Peng Dehuai, could not lightly follow Chairman Mao’s increasing disenchantment with the Soviet Union. In the fall of 1959, armed conflict along the unsettled Sino-Indian border presented the Soviet government w ith a foreign policy dilemma. The death of an Indian soldier near the border at Longju on August 25 “finally brought the border dispute into the open for the first time and forced the Soviet Unoin to take a public stand on it.”182 Khrushchev was scheduled to visit the United States in the latter half o f September and had been emphasizing the importance o f peaceful co-existence in relations with non-socialist countries. Against the backdrop of increasing differences between the Soviet Union and China over strategies o f economic development and bilateral cooperation, these SinoIndian battles elicited only a statement of neutrality from the Soviet Union. Shijie Zhishi, referred only to the part o f the Soviet statement that accused some in the United States of using the incident to complicate Soviet-Amcrican relations on the eve o f Khrushchev’s visit. “Tass issued a statement ‘condemning’ (qianze) ‘the hue and cry’ (jiaoxiao) o f the Western countries towards the Sino-Indian border question.”183 As a former Foreign Ministry official with responsibility for India remembered, “although [the Soviet statment] on its face seemed to ‘punish the innocent and guilty alike’ {geda wushi dabart), in reality it sided with India.”184

182Roderick M acFarquhar, The Origins o f the Cultural Revolution, 2: The Great Leap Forward, 1958i .960 (NY: Columbia University Press, 1983), p. 257. 183“Dashi rizhi,” [“A Journal o f Important Events”] S Z 1959:18, 9/20/59, p. 32. 184Zhang Tong, “D ui Yin ziweifanjizhan qianhou de huiyi,” [“Memories o f the self-defense counter­ attack against India”] in D iplom atic History Editorial D epartm ent o f the Foreign M inistry, ed. X in Zhongguo waijiao fengyun [Sudden Changes in New China’s Foreign Policy] (Beijing: Shijie Zhishi Press,

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Khrushchev visited the U nited States from September 15 to the 27th and then flew to Beijing on the 30th to participate in the tenth anniversary celebrations. He brought with him no public acknowledgement o f the objections that Beijing had been expressing over his foreign policy initiatives. N ot only did he praise President Eisenhower as being a reasonable man and re-assert the Soviet commitment to peaceful coexistence, but he also affirmed the Soviet Union’s intent to avoid military confrontation with the W est.185 Khrushchev was remembered as having said, “I don’t care who invaded whom, since so many Indians died, it is China who was in the wrong.”186 While articles at the time continued to extoll publicly the support of the Soviet Union to Chinese development187 and its contributions to world peace188, it would only be a few short months before the Chinese leadership’s decisive response to Soviet theoretical initiatives on the occasion of the 90th anniversary of Lenin’s birthday in April, 1960. By the beginning of the 1960s, articles about Soviet international behavior had been almost completely replaced in the pages o f Shijie Zhishi by articles introducing developing countries, particularly in Asia and Africa and highlighting their increasingly important roles in world affairs. This propaganda shift certainly reflected the growing rift between the Chinese and Soviet communist parties and China’s increasing independence and militancy concerning revolutionary movements around the world. In this final period articles about Soviet space science and technology continued to remind

1 9 9 0 ), p . 7 0 .

185Zagoria, The Sino-Soviet Conflict: 1956-1961, p. 278. 186Zhang Tong, “Memories o f th e self-defense counter-attack,” p. 70. 187See, e.g. Lin Haiyun, Vice-Minster o f Foreign Trade, “Shinian lai woguo tong sulian he qita shehuizhuyi guojia de maoyi,” (“Ten years’ of trade with the Soviet Union and other socialist countries") S Z 1959:18, 9/20/59, pp. 23-25. 188See e.g, Fu Ying, “Huluxiaofu fangwen meiguo de shisantian,” (Khrushchev’s thirteen days in America) S Z 1959:20. 10/20/59, pp. 4-6.

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readers o f the superiority of the socialist system (see previous chapter). The following table gives an indication of the decline in foreign policy coverage. In the category, “Sulian tiaoyue yu waijiao huodong” (Soviet treaties and foreign relations activities)189, a Chinese periodical index listed the following numbers o f articles190:

Year

Year 1956

305

1960

71

1957

176

1961

105

1958

187

1962

26

1959

220

The chart below repeats the information from the table above but gives a graphic indication o f the sharp decline in articles about Soviet international affairs. National newspapers and periodicals index: articles about Soviet treaties and foreign activities 350 y 300 < >.305 250 - . 200

\

- •

150 - -

100

..

50--

1956

1957

1958

1959

1960

1961

1962

189This category included all articles about cultural and economic treaties signed by the Soviet Union around the world. It included articles ab o u t visits o f Soviet dignitaries as well as analysis o f Soviet foreign affairs. '" S h a n g h a i Newspaper and Periodicals Library, ed., Quanguo zhongyao baokan ziliao suoyin [An Index to Materials in Important National Newspapers and Periodicals] (Shanghai: various years). T h e twohundred twenty articles in 1959 included forty-five on Khrushchev’s trip to the United States alone.

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Conclusions: The Soviet Foreign Policy Myth The important theme o f bipolarity was not just a Chinese invention, o f course. American imagery o f the Cold War certainly was no less stark than the Chinese versions of the camps of peace and o f imperialism. In this chapter I have looked at how bipolarity and its concomitant theme o f peace were portrayed and how they were remembered. The Soviet Union o f the 1950s was described in words and pictures as the strong leader of the camp o f socialism and democracy working for the establishment of a lasting peace in the world. This image of the Soviet Union in international affairs was, for much o f the period, placed into the framework o f a bipolar division o f the world which created an interpretation o f the Soviet Union that easily complemented the duality of unifying myths. When the Soviet Union was good, it was all good. W hen the world no longer fit into a bipolar framework and the People’s Republic delineated a third path of revolutionary development, the foreign policy component of the myth o f the Soviet U nion had to change. Change was first preceded by silence and when the silence was broken, the Soviet Union was no longer a monolithic unity of leader, party, people, state and country. The leadership had betrayed the people, the state had forsaken the country. The Soviet people remained warm and friendly, the country’s research into space travel and its scientific and technological progress continued to provide affirmation of the benefits o f socialism, both to domestic audiences and to watchful outsiders. But the Soviet leadership, personified by Nikita Khrushchev, had betrayed the revolution, the camp and its own people. In the confusion o f the unravelling o f the myth of the Soviet Union, the unified picture that preceded it evokes strong memories. The propaganda o f the foreign policy myth provided an easy framework of analysis, and a convenient view o f Soviet foreign policy. “At the time, our country had just been established, we had no experience with alliances in international affairs, towards foreign policy. We had to ‘lean to one side,’ this ‘caused us’ (daozht) to have a lot of enemies and few friends, we were isolated, with no support {guali

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wuzhu)."w

As the respondent quotes in this chapter indicated, the memory of a socialist

camp struggling for peace and democracy remained strong. Part o f that myth was the leading position o f the Soviet Union. But in this aspect of the myth, the assertion of Chinese autonomy in world affairs eroded the picture o f the Soviet Union as the “staunch rearguard” o f the world revolution, especially after the military clashes along the SinoSoviet border seemed to validate the Cultural Revolution portrayal o f a hegemonic revisionist Soviet Union. In the end, though the Soviet Union swung from Good to Bad, the memories of Soviet struggles for peace were strong and the vocabulary of bipolarity still resonant. In the next chapter, I examine the propaganda descriptions o f Soviet leaders in the same period, from 1950-1965. In much the same way that bipolarity in world affairs provided a coherent analytical framework, the leader became a clear personification of all that was good, and then bad, about the Soviet Union.

^ R e s p o n d e n t I-A, #10, an iron and steel worker.

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CHAPTER FIVE: SOVIET LEADERS This chapter examines the impact of the Chinese propaganda on Chinese perceptions o f the Soviet leadership. T he first section explains why the image o f the Soviet leadership is an important part of the propaganda relationship between the CCP and its people. The next sections will describe the propaganda images o f Lenin, Stalin and Khrushchev and corresponding audience memo ries.

The propaganda use o f leaders as metonymic representatives of larger communities, be they political parties, cities or countries, is well established.1 One need only refer to American portrayals of “Uncle Joe” Stalin during W orld W ar II, caricatures of the Kaiser in W orld W ar I and H itler in World War II, or even Boss Tweed in New York, to get a sense for how ubiquitous this device has been. T he leader is an example, a representative type used to embody preferred characteristics, and we have already seen the importance of examples in both Soviet and Chinese propaganda. Leaders, according to a CCP response to the question of de-Stalinization, “play a big role in history.

The people and their

parties need forerunners who are able to represent the interests and will o f the people, stand in the forefront of their historic struggles and serve as their leaders.”2 The idea o f the leader as representative of “the interest and will” o f his entire clan has a long history in China. In the clan-based leadership succession system o f imperial China, myths about the clan ancestors were indispensable. They provided the “charter, giving the

'F o r example, Alfred M cC lung Lee and Elizabeth Bryant Lee, in an early classic The Fine A rt o f Propaganda (1939), defined this use o f examples as the propaganda device o f “Transfer,” which “carries the authority, sanction, and prestige o f something respected and revered over to something else in order to make th e latter acceptable; or it carries authority, sanction, and disapproval to cause us to reject and disapprove som ething the propgandist w ould have us reject and disapprove.” (reprinted as one o f “T he Devices o f Propaganda” in Schramm, Mass Communications, p. 417). 2“O n the Historical Experience of the Dictatorship o f the Proletariat” in RM R B , 4 /5 /5 6 from Robert Bowie and John Fairbank, eds., Communist China 1955-1959: Policy Documents with Analysis (Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 1971), p. 145.

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raison d ’etre for such groups.”3 The lineage ancestors were said to have been the performers of “meritorious deeds” and therefore deserving o f ritual honor. Myths were a mechanism used by the ruling houses to “keep alive every scrap o f tradition that showed their forefathers as powerful sages and good lords, and their opponents and foes as rebels and miscreants, doomed to failure.”4 In extending the clan to the nation, the Chinese Communists drew on this tradition which had already been combined with modern conceptions of the nation in the final decades of the Q ing dynasty. And, with the further extension of China as a member of the socialist camp, it seemed “natural” to pick the Soviet Union as the clan leader, as we saw in the previous chapter. W ithout overstating the impact o f tradition, it is nonetheless unsurprising to see the amount of praise lavished upon both the Soviet Union as the leader o f the socialist camp and on the leaders o f the Soviet Union, especially the founding ancestor, Lenin and his immediate successor, Stalin. Leadership myths can also be used to combat the disappearance of charismatic authority. The repetition o f myths routinizes charisma and reminds audiences o f the sources and content of that charisma. Routinization, as Rustow wrote, combines “charismatic with rational-legal, or over time perhaps, also with traditional, authority.”5 Mao himself became the object o f such routinization. But, as we will see, the techniques of routinization used in conjunction with control of the propaganda apparatus can also be used to hasten the de-legitimization o f leaders. Separating the Soviet leader from his people was used in China to shift respect and merit from the leader to the led, making it easier for new and different propaganda about leaders to be accepted quickly. The “receptive harbour” in the case of the unravelling of the myths about the Soviet leadership remained the identification o f the people of China with the laboring peace-loving people o f the

3Chang, Art, Myth and Ritual, p. 41. ^Bernhard Karlgren, “Legends and cults in ancient C h in a,” Bulletin o f the Museum o f Far Eastern Antiquities 18 (Stodcholm: 1946) as quoted in Chang, Art, M yth and Ritual, p. 41. 5D ankw art Rustow, ed., Philosophers and Kings: Studies in Leadership (NY: George Brazillcr, 1970), p.

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Soviet U nion. The corrupted ship o f state and its captains, to indulge this metaphor, is allowed to drift away from the people, and then torpedoed. In the pages of Shijie Zhishi, the kind o f coverage devoted to Soviet leaders was one indication o f China’s changing relationship with the Soviet Union. The Soviet Party and state leaders that received the most coverage were Lenin, Stalin and Khrushchev, for obvious reasons. There were few articles about Lenin until the ideological dispute between the two communist parties demanded an independent assessment o f Lenin by the Chinese. Articles about Stalin peaked in the year of his death and then subsided to nothing for the rest o f the decade. The re-evaluations of Stalin in the People’s Daily and Hongqi necessitated by Khrushchev’s secret speech o f 1956 reflected the increasing amount of distance between the leadership o f China and the Soviet Union but were not included in this journal o f current events. The Shijie Zhishi images o f Khrushchev began with descriptions o f his late-1950s international diplomacy. After the withdrawal ofSoviet advisers from China in 1960 several years of silence about Khrushchev followed, until the magazine joined in the accusations of revisionism in 1965. By then, the People’s Daily had already published the theoretical attacks on the Soviet leadership known collectively as the “Nine Polemics” which appeared between September, 1963 and July 1964. O f course, other Soviet leaders were profiled in Shijie Zhishi both during the inter­ regnum between Stalin’s death in 1953 and Khrushchev’s ascension in 1955 and also during the period o f Chinese militancy just prior to the Great Leap Forward. Vyacheslav Molotov was called an “outstanding Soviet politician and foreign policy specialist”6 Nikolai Bulganin and Georgii Malenkov were portrayed in the context of Soviet struggles for peace. Klement Voroshilov led two visits to China while he was Chairman of the Soviet Council of Ministers and was favorably portrayed as “Old Vo” [You Lao, using the

6“Sulian jiechu de zhengzhi jia he waijiao jia,” [“The outstanding Soviet politician and foreign policy specialist, V. M. Molotov"] SZ, 1954:8, 4/20/54, p. 31-32.

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even more honorific inverted form o f “old” (lao)]7 The chans included in the Appendix show the relative amounts of coverage devoted to Soviet leaders during this period. Given the relative paucity of the coverage o f these other leaders, the following sections present the Chinese propaganda images of Lenin, Stalin and Khrushchev. Porrraving Lenin As the acknowledged founder of the Soviet state, Lenin’s position in the propaganda pantheon of the 1950s was unassailable. From the homage paid to Lenin’s intellectual and organizational abilities to the use of Lenin’s writings in the early 1960s as ideological ammunition against the Soviet leadership itself, Lenin’s public image remained essentially the same. Lenin was the “great revolutionary leader and teacher of the world’s working class.” He was more than just a leader, though. His name had become “the symbol o f the hopes o f humanity, the brilliant [huihuan^ banner for those peoples struggling for peace, democracy and socialism.”8 According to the History o f the Communist Party o f the Soviet Union (Bolshevik), parts of which were on the required reading list for CCP members9, Lenin’s “extremely

7Sec pictorial essay o f 1957 trip in SZ, 1957:10, 5/20/57, inside back cover. 8“Lienin zhuyi yongyuan huozhe, bing wu wang er bu sheng,” [“Leninism will live forever and is invincible”] S Z 1954:3, 2/5/53, p. 4. 9Mao wrote, ‘in studying Marxism-Leninism, we should use the History o f the Communist Party o f the

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profound knowledge o f Marx’s teachings, his ability to apply Marxism to the economic and political situation o f Russia at the time, his enthusiastic and unshakeable confidence in the inevitable victory o f the workers’ cause, and his outstanding organizational ability made him the acknowledged leader of the Petersburg Marxists” as far back as 1893.10 This image of infallibility and prescience remained untarnished in China. The image o f Lenin did not change during the period o f this study. In 1950, he was described as a great individual who rose to the demands of his times. “In every period of revolutionary change in human history, great individuals will always emerge according to the demands o f the times. Politicians, strategists, thinkers, artists, painters, scientists, etc., but the kind o f all-around multi-talented whole person such as Lenin, one could say, is ‘unique’ {jueum jinyou).... People such as us can not describe or even in several sentences or several hundreds o r thousands o f words explain the kind of great individual that Lenin was, his thought, his activities, his heroic ‘vision’ (qipo), his spirit of struggle, his serious sense of organization and discipline, his practice o f ‘seeking truth from facts,’ the scope of his prophetic and farsighted outlines of a new society for mankind.”11 In a special issue of Shijie Zhishi commemorating Lenin’s 90th birthday in 1960, apparently co-ordinated with the broad-based ideological attack on the Soviet Union, the particular images o f Lenin as “revolutionary teacher”12, as “the great friend o f the peoples’ revolutions”13, and as anti-

Soviet Union (Bolsheviks), Short Course as the principal material.” (“Reform our study” in S tt^IIl, p. 24.) Also see Ku Li-hung, “Stalin’s Works in China,” People’s Chino, 3/16/54, p. 16. 111Sugong (bu) dongshi jianmingjiaocheng (Moscow: Foreign Languages Press, 1949), p. 29. 11 Gao Lai, "Jinian Lienin,” [“Remembering Lenin”] 5 Z 21:3:3-4, 1/20/50, p. 3. 12G uo Jichu, “Lienin de xueshuo zhaoyao zhe zhengqu heping de daolu,” [“Lenin’s teachings illuminate the path to achieving peace”] SZ, 1960:8, 4/20/60, p. 4-11. 13 H e Lisan, “Lienin shi beiyapo minzu renmin de pengyou he daoshi,” [“Lenin is the friend and teacher o f oppressed nationalities and peoples”] S Z 1960:8, 4/20/60, pp. 12-15.

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imperialist intellectual14 were reaffirmed. Hagiographic films produced in the Soviet Union in the 1930s contributed to the propaganda image. O ne o f those films, Mikhail Romm’s 1937 Lenin in October, described Lenin’s role in the October Revolution and was one of the first Soviet cultural exports to China after 1949. “In commemoration o f the death of Lenin in January [1951], Lenin in October was shown in all New China’s great cities and in m any small places by mobile projection teams. Audience left the cinemas in reverent silence, deeply touched by the humanity and grandeur of this portrayal o f mankind’s greatest leader.”15 Whether they were still touched or not, the audiences certainly did remember movies about Lenin, as 207 out o f 275 respondents in 1991 remembered having seen either Lenin in October, or Lenin in 1918, a 1939 film by the same director, while forty-three remembered having seen both.

Memories o f Lenin The propaganda portrait of Lenin remained a glorious one throughout the 1950s. It had not been subject to the revisions and the revelations that rocked the images of Stalin and Khrushchev. Audience commentary about Lenin decades later reflected the reverence suffusing the portrait o f Lenin as teacher, prophet, founder and leader. Lenin was universally “held in deep respect” because “in theory, and in practice [he] lit a bright path for us, which ‘allowed us’ [shi women] to advance along the correct direction.”16 One common appellation for Lenin was that o f the respected teacher, yingming de daoshi (glorious teacher). “At the time Lenin was considered a glorious teacher. This is

14 F. Tsiyinlakov [from th e Chinese], “Lienin dui diguo zhuyi de fenxi he danjin de shidai,” [Lenin’s analysis o f imperialism and the contemporary period”] SZ, 1960:8, 4/20/60, pp. 16-18. 15 “Soviet Films in N ew China" People's China v. 3, n. 4, 2/16/51, p. 23. 16 Respondent I-A, #10, a worker.

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still so.”17 Among the responses, there was very little difference in memories o f this term of respect for Lenin. “W e used to say, ‘Lenin is the glorious teacher,’ Stalin was the great leader.”18

Lenin “really was [a glorious teacher.] I remembered this from some films

that I’ve seen, such as Lenin in 1918.... and others.”19 Remembering the various people who were, at one time or another called “glorious teacher,” one respondent insisted that “only Lenin deserves this nam e (zhi you Lienin cheng de shang)”20 Another respondent ranked Lenin even higher than Mao. “I can’t remember who this [slogan] refers to specifically. If it is Lenin, I can agree with it. If it is Stalin, I oppose it. If Mao Zedong, I also oppose it”21 The description o f Lenin’s theoretical additions to Marx and Engels as forming the underlying principles o f the Soviet and Chinese revolutions were a part o f the legitimation of CCP rule. Echoing the tradition o f respect for education and teachers as moral and spiritual guides, the image o f Lenin as teacher afforded him a stature that could not be matched by any other Soviet leader, a stature that apparently persevered even through some of the loss o f doctrine experienced in former Marxist-Leninist states. As the founding father o f the first communist state, Lenin’s place in Chinese propaganda history could not be assailed.

17 Respondent II-A, #17, a former student. 18 Respondent I-B, #16, a teacher. 19 Respondent I-C, #42, an office worker. 29 Respondent II-A, #11. 21 Respondent I-C, #6, an engineer from Harbin.

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Portraying Stalin In marked contrast to Lenin’s image, that of Stalin has changed over the years. Stalin’s role in both Soviet history and the Chinese revolution was re-examined after Khrushchev’s secret speech in 1956 and has been the subject o f many new memoirs and biographies recently published in both the Soviet Union and China.22 As the man identified most closely with perceived Soviet achievements in industrial development, military victory and economic growth, and as the leader o f the Soviet Union during most of the period o f the Chinese Communist revolution, Stalin cast a long shadow over China. It may be an understatement to say that Stalin’s image was omnipresent in Chinese society in the early 1950s. From his giant portraits in city squares to his statues in schools across the country, Stalin was physically a part of the political scene and the quotidian background of Chinese lives. In the following picture we see Stalin and Mao in the background of the typical factory’s club room.23

22For examples, see R. Medvedev, O Stalin’ye i Stalinismye[On Stalin and Stalinism] published in China as Sidalin he Sidalinzhuyi[Stalin and Stalinism] (Beijing: Chinese Social Sciences Press, 1989); V.M. Berezhkov, Stranits’y i diplomaticheskoi istorii [Pages o f a diplomatic history] (Moscow: International Relations Publishers, 1984) published as Wo shi Sidalin deyiyuan [I was Stalin's Translator] (Shanghai: Translations Press, 1991); Jie Lifii, Zongheng-baihe: Sidalin [The Political Strategist - Stalin] from a series, The Three Great Leaders of the Second World War (Beijing: Shijie Zhishi Press, 1989). In addition to the titles mentioned above, a period o f “Stalin fever” in the Soviet Union in th e latter 1980s saw m any more publications of reminiscences about Stalin. Some o f these were translated into Chinese and published in China as well. For representative titles, see also K. Simonov, Glazami cheloveka

moego pokol’eniye (razmyishlyeniya o I. V. Stalin’ye{With the eyes o f my generation: reminiscences ofJ.V. Stalin], published in Chinese as Wo zhei yi dai ren yanli de Sidali[Stalin in the eyes of my generation] (Beijing: C hina News Press, 1989); and D . Volkaganov [from the Chinese], Sidalin zhengzhi xiaoxiang[A political portrait o f Stalin] (Beijing: G uangm ing Daily Press, 1989). 23 People’s Fine Arts Publishers’ editorial department, Xuanchuanhua cankao ziliao huibian [A collection o f reference materials for propaganda art] (Beijing: People’s Fine Art Publishers, 1953), p. 48.

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In print, the predominant portrait of Stalin in China in the early 1950s was that o f a great military strategist, a unifier of his Party and country, and a leader who succeeded in achieving socialist construction in the Soviet Union and then shepherded his country through the hardships of war and reconstruction. Stalin was also a domineering figure on the international stage. After all, “Generalissimo Stalin was the great teacher of the world’s working peoples.”24 As early as 1939, Mao connected Stalin to the global victory o f socialism by writing that “mankind can free itself from suffering only by the road pointed out by Stalin and with his help.”25 Chen Boda echoed Mao’s praise ten years later on the eve of Stalin’s seventieth birthday in 1949. The “historic world events in the past ten years have further proved that Stalin is not only the Soviet people’s banner o f victory but also that o f all progressive humanity in the world.”26 Going beyond Mao’s 1939 praise, Chen celebrated Stalin as the “greatest figure in the world, this teacher of genius ... this great scientist of dialectical materialism, the teacher o f world revolution.” In particular, Chen pointed out that “Stalin’s many writings on C hina ... are models in the integration o f revolutionary theory with revolutionary practice; they constitute and im portant portion of the treasury of Marxist-Leninist theory concerning the fate of mankind.”27

24 Zhang Bi, “Xuexi Sidalin guanyu guoji xingshi de tanhua,” [“Study Stalin’s Conversation on the International Situation”] SZ, 23:8, 3/3/51, p. 8. 25 Mao Zedong, “Stalin, Friend o f the Chinese People,” in S W II, p. 335. ^ C h e n Boda, “Stalin and the Chinese Revolution” in CB, No. 181, 5/10/52, p. 2. 27 Cheng Boda, “Stalin and the Chinese Revolution,” p. 2.

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The themes o f Stalin as military, ideological and pedagogical genius, o f his prescience and global relevance continued to appear in subsequent portraits o f Stalin. An enthusiastic paean to Stalin in 1950 noted that “Stalin’s life is the life o f struggle for the liberation of mankind. Stalin’s name has become a beacon o f world peace.” Stalin was “Lenin’s most intimate, most loyal, most firm and persistent, most ‘courageous and resolute’(jianyi guogan), most ‘outstanding and remarkable’ (youxiu shuoyue) co-worker, comrade-in-arms and aide.” His “great achievements ... are the ‘glorious’ (buihuang} construction o f socialism and the destruction o f the German-Japanese-Italian Fascist armies.”28 As a result of his leadership in that war against Fascism, Stalin became known as the “Great Commander-in-ChieP’ (Da yuanshuai).2^ Stalin’s ruthless unification of the Soviet Communist Party during his struggles against the Trotskyites and the Bukharin faction was praised as the foundation for military and economic success. “ [The] entire Party from top to bottom had really become as one person, and this was the decisive factor in why one Five-Year Plan after another could be fulfilled early and the Fascists were defeated.”30 This lesson was undoubtedly not lost on Chinese readers in 1950 who were themselves being exhorted to unite behind the Party and the country to help Korea and to consolidate the victories of the revolution. Throughout the next three years, coverage o f Stalin continued to highlight his insights into world affairs, his work towards world peace and his theoretical acumen. On February 16, 1951, Stalin met with correspondents from Pravda to discuss the international situation as the World Peace Council, known as a Soviet front organization, was holding its first meeting in Berlin.31 In that interview Stalin “clearly analyzed the special characteristics of

28 Song Er-che, “Xuexi Sidalin,” [“Study Stalin”] 5Z21:1, 1/1/50, p. 9. 20For example, see "Sulian de heping de jinji he wcnhua jianshe jihua,” [“The Soviet U nion’s Plan for Peaceful Economic and Cultural Construction”] SZ 1952:34, 8/30/52, p. 2. 30 Song, “Study Stalin,” p. 10. See also Xuexi 11/1/52, for additional materials on Party unity. 31 “Sidalin dui muqian guoji xingshi de tanhua,” [“Stalin’s Talk on the C urrent International

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the current international situation and pointed out who both needs and is currently preparing to start war and who is the protector o f peace.”32 Stalin’s discussion with Pravda correspondents later in 1951 to announce the Soviet nuclear program was reported in the Chinese press as another sign o f the sincere Soviet desire for peace in the face o f American attempts at international control of nuclear technology.33 In a People’s Daily article marking the twenty-fifth anniversary of the publication of Stalin’s 1927 essay, The Problem o f the Chinese Revolution. Mao’s secretary, Chen Boda drew on his own earlier writing to call the book a “great creative Marxist-Leninist work” and “wise and sagacious direction,” prescient in its predictions for China. In noting that Stalin was “the mighty teacher o f the international Communist movement,” Chen extended his praise of the relevance o f this work to “the revolutionary movements of all colonies and semi-colonies” and not just China’s alone.34 Stalin was linked to the pursuit of world peace in tangible ways. The establishment of the Stalin Peace Prize by the Supreme Soviet on the eve of Stalin’s 70th birthday in 1949 was one manifestation o f the linkage. “This prize was established to ‘encourage’ (jiangli) opposition to ‘warmongers’ (zhanzhengfanzi), to strengthen outstanding contributions in the struggle for peace.”35 Among the recipients of the prize during its six year life-span were two prominent Chinese, the writer Guo Muoro and the widow o f Sun Yat-sen, Soong Ching Ling. The patriotic song “Protect Peace” also invoked Stalin’s

Situation” ] SZ, 23:8, 3/3/51 , pp. 11-12. 32 Zhang Bi,“Study Stalin’s Conversation ...,” p. 8. 33Editorial, “Sidalin guanyu yuanzi qupin tanhua de weida yiyi,” [“The great significance o f Stalin’s conversations concerning atomic weapons”] SZ24-.14, 10/13/51, p. 2. ^ C h e n Boda, “In Commem oration of the 2 5 th anniversary o f Comrade Stalin’s Great Work, T he Problem o f the Chinese Revolution” in Renmin Ribao 4/21/52 in CB, No. 175, 5/2/52, pp. 1-9, passim. 35Yi Fen, “The Stalin International Peace Prize,” S Z 23:19, 5/19/51, p. 22.

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name.36 Stalin was said to have had a crucial and long-standing role in achieving and maintaining Sino-Soviet friendship. Consequently, from the coverage o f M ao’s trip to Moscow in 1949-50 to the song, “Sino-Soviet Friendship,”37 Stalin was an integral part of the many celebrations o f SinoSoviet relations. According to one article written to celebrate the signing o f the 1950 treaties, Stalin had “always concerned himself with the liberation struggles o f the Chinese peoples, and very early on he had foreseen the great revolutionary victory” o f the Chinese people.”38 In Memory o f T.V. Stalin

(fm*>

!

“A toast to Sino-Soviet cooperation and to world __________________ peace!”39__________________

The death o f Stalin on March 6, 1953 elicited fulsome affirmations o f the previous years’ across-the-board praise for Stalin and re-affirmations o f the unity between the Soviet Union and China. Two days of mourning were declared, flags flew at half mast. O n the 9th all newspapers ran Mao’s

36“Q uail shijie wei heping de douzheng, juanqi le julang. Sidalin, Mao Zedong jiu shi wo men douzheng de qi hao.” [“The w hole world’s struggle for peace has become a great wave. Stalin and M ao are ou r banners.”] Li Tian, “Protect Peace,” Chinese Musicians’ Association, ed. Gcchang zuguo, [Songs o f Patriotism] (Beijing: Music Publishers, 1959), p. 21. 37The refrain o f the song includes, “long live Mao Zedong, long live Stalin.” (An E, “Sino-Soviet Friendship Song,” Chinese M usicians’ Association, ed., Songs o f Patriotism, , p. 15.) ^ J in Zhonghu, “Xin de lishi, xin de tiaoyuc,” [“A new history, a new treaty”] SZ, 21:7, 2/20/50, p. 8. 39 Feng Si, S Z 21:8,2/20/50, p. 4.

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memorial article about Stalin (see below) on the front page. An official memorial meeting was held in Beijing on the 9th, while nation-wide five minutes of silence were observed at the time of the funeral in Moscow. Millions of people attended other memorial meetings all over the country. Political study by government cadres was suspended from March 12 to the 25th so that they could study the documents written for this watershed event.40 RM RB announced that “Soviet films portraying [Stalin’s] life will be shown from March 10 to March 16 in all cinemas in China’s cities and brought to the countryside by mobile projection units.”41 Setting the tone for the official pronouncements, Mao began his eulogistic article, “The Greatest Friendship,” by calling Stalin the “greatest genius o f the present age, great teacher o f the world Communist movement, comrade-in-arms o f the immortal Lenin.” According to Mao, Stalin’s contributions included “leading the Soviet people in building into a magnificent socialist society the first socialist state in the world”; “comprehensively developing a Marxist-Leninist theory descriptive o f the era and advancing the development of Marxism to a new stage.” Stalin was also “the central figure in the world communist movement” and China’s “great teacher and most sincere friend.”42 Other similarly encomiastic official pronouncements included messages o f condolences from the Central Committee of the CCP to the Central Committee o f the CPSU and from M ao to Chairman Shvernik of the Soviet Council'of Ministers. A t the memorial meeting held in Beijing, Chu De, PLA Commander-in-Chief, told the 600,000 gathered mourners that Stalin was “a magnificent example for progressive mankind in creating a happy life.” Stalin led the successful Soviet struggle against Fascism; in the post-war period, he united the “peace-loving people throughout the world”

40“A Nation Mourns,” People's Chirm, 1953, No. 6, 3/1 6 /5 3 , p. 20. 41 “Filins portraying life o f Stalin” from RMRB, 3/9/53 in CCPR, p. 1414. 42 M ao Zedong, “Zui Wcida de you yi,” S Z 1953:6, 3/18/53, p. 10-11; “T he Greatest Friendship,” People's China 1953, No. 6, 3/16/53, p. 3-5.

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who were “waging a valiant struggle for lasting peace and people’s democracy.” He was, again, the “most respected and beloved friend and teacher o f the Chinese people.”43 At the same meeting, Li Zhishen of the Revolutionary Committee o f the Guomindang added that Stalin was “not only the closest friend and great teacher o f the Chinese people but also the source o f the strength that has led to the victory of the Chinese people’s revolution.”44 The occasion was also used to call for continued unity between the Soviet Union and China to safeguard the “world camp of peace and democracy headed by the Soviet Union”. The editorial in Shijie Zhishi marking Stalin’s death called him the “standard-bearer for the cause o f w orld peace, democracy and socialism, the great leader of the world’s working people, and the genius teacher.”45 The ripples from Stalin’s death lingered. In Korea, an armistice was signed three months later. In factories throughout China Stakhanovite production campaigns continued to engage the enthusiasm of countless workers who “launched special emulation campaigns in memory o f J.V. Stalin. They regard new production records as the most significant tribute they can pay to Stalin.”46 A t a memorial meeting marking the first anniversary o f Stalin’s death, Chen Yun focused on Stalin as the “great continuer of the work of Lenin ... [who] built up a socialist society over one-sixth o f the globe and defended it by the most brilliant foresight and resolute action.”47 30% bad. 70% good The re-evaluation of Stalin in the Soviet Union that began with Khrushchev’s 20th Party Congress speech in February forced a response from the Chinese party apparatus

^ C h u T eh, “Eternal Glory to the G reat Stalin!” in People's China 1953, No. 6, 3/16/53, p. 11. 44Li Chi-shen, “Stalin’s Teachings Lead Us Forward!” in People’s China 1953. No. 6, 3/16/53, p. 12. 45“T ongdao weida de daoshi Sidalin tongzhi,” [“Grieve for the G reat teacher, comrade Stalin”] SZ, 1953:6,3/18/53, p. 12. ^ “Stalin Continues to Inspire the Chinese People,” People’s China, 1953, No. 7, 4/1/53, p. 25. 47 C hen Yun, “In Memory of J.V. Stalin,” People’s China, 3/16/54, p. 8.

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which appeared in the public portraits o f Stalin in 1956. A collection of translations of prounounrements and editorials by foreign Communist party leaders was certainly available to interested publics soon thereafter.48 The immediate and most significant response to Khrushchev’s secret speech was an editorial which appeared in the People’s Daily on April 5, 1956, “O n the Historical Experience of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat,”49 a week after the publication o f a translation o f a March 28 Pravda editorial which attacked Stalin’s personality cult.50 After discussing the beneficial aspects of criticism and self-criticism, the People's Daily editorial addressed the focus of the Soviet discussion - the culpability of Stalin in creating a cult o f the individual. Leaders o f Communist Parties and socialist states in various fields are duty bound to do their utmost to reduce mistakes, avoid serious ones, endeavour to learn lessons from isolated, local and temporary mistakes and make every effort to prevent them from developing into mistakes o f a nationwide or prolonged nature. T o do this, every leader must be most prudent and modest, keep close to the masses, consult them on all matters, investigate and study the actual situation again and again and constantly engage in criticism and self-criticism appropriate to the situation and well measured. It was precisely because of his failure to do this that Stalin as the chief leader o f the party and the state, made certain serious mistakes in the later years of his work. He became conceited and imprudent. Subjectivism and one-sidedness developed in his thinking and he made erroneous decisions on certain important questions, which led to serious consequences.51 Admitting that Stalin made mistakes was o f course adm itting that the previous burnished image o f Stalin was no longer accurate. The process o f re-evaluating Stalin led to a distinction between his “great contributions” and his “mistakes.” At some point during the debates in the Politburo over the Chinese response to de-Stalinization, leading

4 8 Pipan Sidalin wenti wenji [A Collection o f criticisms on the Stalin issue] (Beijing: People’s Press, 1956) in two volumes was published in July and August o f 1956 in a run o f 100,000 copies.

49 Reprinted as Document 7 in Robert Bowie and John Fairbank, eds. Communist China 1955-1959, pp. 133-150. 50 “W hy is the C u lt o f the Individual Alien to Marxism-Leninism?” in RMRB, 3/30/56. 51 Bowie and Fairbank, eds., p. 146.

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up to the 8th Party Congress in September, 1956, it was decided that the official Chinese assessment o f Stalin would be “3 -7 kai,” or 30% bad and 70% good.52 Interestingly, while the People’s Daily was publishing the Party’s response to the issue o f de-Stalinization; Shijie Zhishi celebrated the arrival of a Soviet delegation to Beijing led by Mikoyan with a cover picture o f Premier Zhou and Mikoyan shaking hands.53 The next issue’s cover showed Khrushchev and Bulganin being warmly greeted by Attlee during their visit to England.54 Presumably the sensitive re-evaluation of Stalin was being left to the People’s Daily and the Party theoretical journal, Hong Qi [Red Fla$ , while Shijie Zhishi focused on current events. In fact, from 1955 until 1965 there were no articles on Stalin at all in this journal.

Memories o f Stalin In general, the image of Stalin from the early 1950s retained the most salience among

52 The editors speculate in Michael Y.M. Kau, John K. Leung, eds. The Writings o f Mao Zedong, 19491976 (Armonk, N .Y .: M .E. Sharpe, 1986), p. 119, note 12, that “the first public articulation o f this formula o f assessing Stalin’s faults versus his merits” was “probably” made in Mao’s speech, “Reinforce the Unity o f the Party and Carry Forward the Party Traditions” o f August 30 at the first preparatory meeting for the 8th Congress of the CC P. T he quote is “W e’ve said before that with regard to Stalin, we should [see him as having been] three parts [bad] and seven parts [good].” T his was repeated in the official CC P version of 1977, “As we have indicated elsewhere, the assessment of Stalin should be 70 per cent for achievements and 30 per cent for mistakes.” (5 W V , p. 317). T he official Selected Works version o f “O n the T en Major Relationships” speech a t an enlarged meeting of the Politburo includes a section in the discussion on relations between C hina and foreign countries (p. 304) which does not appear in K au and Leung’s unofficial version (p. 60). T his section contains the 30%-70% assessment which unofficial versions released during the Cultural Revolution (1967) did not. While the section certainly is well integrated w ith th e previous discussions o f the necessity o f analysis and not dogmatism, there is no certainty th at this section was part o f the original speech. Kao and Leung also noted that this “formula became quite ubiquitous in M ao’s own writings and speeches in subsequent years" (p. 119). As we will see later, many Chinese do remember and use this formula in their ow n assessments o f Stalin. I can only be certain that it became m uch more well known after the publication o f the fifth volume of the Selected Works than prior to the C ultural Revolution. For example, it was not used in the second polemic, “O n the Question o f Stalin” originally published in RMRB on September 13, 1963 and included in the compilation, The Polemic on the General Line o f the International Communist Movement (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1965), pp. 115-138. Many thanks to Nancy Hearst at th e Fairbank Center Library, Harvard University, for assistance in tracking down this reference. 53

SZ 1956:8, 4/20/56.

54

SZ 1956:9. 5/5/56.

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Chinese audiences. He was the “glorious leader o f the revolution (geming deyingming lingxiu) [who] made a huge contribution to the communist movement.” Recognizing that the propaganda about Stalin was one-sided, the same respondent admited that “at that time we basically didn’t talk about his mistakes.”55 Another respondent, a cadre and Party member, rememberd that “Stalin was a great Marxist-Leninist. H e was a proletarian revolutionist, a ‘political expert’ (zhengzhi jia). His whole life was an incomparable contribution to the international communist movement. His death was a great loss to the international communist movement.”56 Typically, the respondents who remembered Stalin positively pointed to his leadership o f the Soviet U nion during the Second W orld War. “Stalin was an ‘outstanding’ (chuse) military figure, he led the Soviet Union to victory over Fascism, this ‘can not be erased’ (buke mosha).”57 “In the Second W orld War, Stalin’s will {yizhi) and image (xingxiang) boosted the morale of the Soviet people and the Red Army. He really made a ‘lasting’ (buxiu) contribution.”58 “In the Second World W ar and the fight against Hitler, it was due to [Stalin’s] ‘line’ (luxian) [that Germany was] defeated and [the Soviet Union] was victorious.”59 One respondent who had seen the Soviet film, The Defense o f Moscow noted that “nobody can compare to [Stalin’s] contribution to the victorious defense of Moscow during the Soviet-German war.”60 Another who had seen the film, The Battle for Stalingrad remembered Stalin at that city, “Stalin was really great. During the

55 Respondent II-A, #13, an engineer. ^R espondent II-A, #19. ^ R espondent I-B, #19, a Foreign Ministry cadre. ^ R espondent I-A, #4, a professor o f Russian. 59 Respondnet I-B, #13, a cadre. 60 Respondent 1-A, #19, a cadre.

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period o f the Second W orld W ar, he led the defense o f Stalingrad.”61 Stalin’s contributions to Chinese development stood out in many memories. Sralin’s “support to the Chinese people was ‘without self-interest’ (wusi de), he didn’t want any repayment (buyao huibao). H e helped us ‘wholeheartedly and in good faith’ (zhengxinchengyi).”62 Forgetting that Stalin died before most o f the Soviet-aided large-scale construction projects in C hina began, one retired cadre insisted that Stalin “supported China’s one-hundred fifty-six construction projects. Chairman Mao signed the ‘SinoSoivet 156 Aid Projects’ in his 1957 visit to the Soviet Union. Stalin’s aid to China was not self-interested, it was fraternal in nature.”63 A retired textile worker remembered also that “when Stalin was alive, he gave us so much help, sent advisers and experts to guide and aid us, ‘to push us into a better era’ (shi women guosbangle haoshiJ.”64 They were echoed by many others. Stalin “gave a lot of support and aid to China’s ‘just’ (zhengyao) struggle and construction work.”65 Stalin’s death in 1953 was an important event for many Chinese. “W hen he died, steam whistles were pulled throughout the entire country. Everybody wore ‘black armbands’ (heizha).”66 Some admitted to real distress. “W hen he died we even cried.”67 “W hen he died, I was ‘extremely grieved’ {feichang beitong).”6& “I remember that when Stalin died on March 5, 1953, at the time everybody was very grieved, considering it a

61 Respondent I-A, #8, a cadre. ^ R e sp o n d en t I-A, #28, a retired soldier. 63 Respondent I-B, #27. & Respondent I-C, #43 . 65 Respondent II-B, #16, an editor: 66 Respondent I-C, #47, a bookstore clerk. ^R esp o n d en t I-A, #5, a professor. 63 Respondent I-B, #30, a form er actress.

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great loss to the revolution.”69 “ W hen Stalin died, a lot o f people cried. I cried with them, though I didn’t really know why.”70 “After Stalin died, we gave him four titles: ‘The Great Socialist Fighter’ (Weida de shehuizhuyi zhangshi), ‘The Great Com m unist Fighter’ (Weida de Gongchanzhuyi Zhanshi), ‘The Great Commander in C hief (Weida de tongshuai), and one other.”71 “W hen Stalin died, I ‘grieved automatically’ (zidong bei’a t)”72 The respondents who had negative impressions of Stalin based those impressions on relatively recent revelations concerning the purges and the deaths o f millions in the process of collectivization and forced industrialization. He was often remembered as a tyrant, but this vocabulary certainly did not appear in the 1950s press. He was a “tyrant, an executioner (guizi shod), and a despot (ducai zhe)”77> A retired office worker described Stalin as “a tyrant (baojun), a despot, a butcher. In the end, he was ‘opposed by the masses and deserted by his followers’ (zhong pan-qinlt). After his death, he was even dug out from his grave.”74 One retired engineer remembered Stalin as “short (xiao gezi), hot-tempered and irritable (piqi baozao), a Georgian. Politically, he was ‘dictatorial and despotic’ (zhuanzhi ducat), he cruelly persecuted his political enemies.”75 One respondent replied that his impressions of Stalin are “very wretched, to the point where I wonder if he was ‘schizophrenic’ (jirtgshen fenlie zhe), a butcher.”76

69 Respondent I-C, #56, a translator. ^R e sp o n d en t I-B, #33, a Peking O pera performer. 71 Respondent I-C, #7, then an assistant teacher. ^R espondent II-C, #56, at that time a student. ^ R esp o n d en t II-B, #18, a professor. 74 Respondent II-B, #31. 75 Respondent I-C, #32. 76 Respondent I-B, #3, a news worker.

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Where some saw Stalin’s support for China as iraternalism, others saw opportunism. “He had ‘wild ambitions’ {jida de yexin) towards China, [for example,] autonomy for Outer Mongolia, the joint companies in Xinjiang, the military port at Lu Xun. His ‘criminal hand’ {zui'e zhi shou) was everywhere.”77 And again, “he never saw us as a fraternal country, furthermore he always had an unrestrainable ‘wild ambition’ {yexin).”78 Stalin manifested “Great Power Chauvinism. ... He didn’t ‘honor’ {duixian) Lenin’s promises, didn’t return the occupied Chinese territories.”79 For most respondents, these negative actions did not outweigh Stalin’s contributions. A common phrase used to descibe Stalin was “gong dayu guo,” (one’s achievements outweigh one’s errors).80 Mao Zedong’s analysis of Stalin’s career as 30% bad and 70% good (3-7 kai) was repeated by many. “Chairman Mao said that Stalin’s contributions and excesses were 30-70 {gongguo 3 - 7 kai). I think that’s about right.”81 “We must look at Stalin as 30% -70% .”82 But a former librarian disagreed vehemently with this appraisal. “Some people think of 30%-70% (3 -7 kai). I don't think it’s a problem of 30%-70%. Maybe the other way around is more ‘even-handed’ {gongyun). 30-70 may have ‘overstated’ {kuada) his achievements and ‘erased’ (mosha) his crimes and excesses. One person had such a negative influence on the Soviet U nion’s economic development. To this day, [his] ‘spirit refuses to leave’ {yinhun-busan), it ‘lingers’ (panxuan) in the Soviet, and even in

77 Respondent I-A, #9, a teacher. ^R espondent I-A, #10, an engineer. 79 Respondent I-C, #20, a retired researcher. 80 See, e.g., “O n the Question of Stalin" in The Polemic on the General Line o f the International Communist Movement, p. 121. This second polemic also accused Khrushchev (p. 124) o f “abus[ing]Stalin as a ‘murderer,’ a ‘criminal,’ a ‘bandit,’ a ‘gam bler,’ a ‘despot o f the type of Ivan the terrible,’ the ‘greatest dictator in Russian history,’ ‘a fool,’ an ‘id io t.’" 81 Respondent II-A, #40, a worker. ^R espondent I-B, #27, a retired cadre.

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some Chinese people’s minds.”83 In general, though, it seems that among a certain generation of Chinese, Stalin’s positive image is still fairly intact. He was the strong national leader who brought a sense o f purpose and mission to the Soviet people and in the course of extending that mission globally contributed substantially to China’s own progress.

N ikita Khrushchev

As the leader of the Soviet Union who presided over, and contributed to the SinoSoviet split, perceptions of Nikita Khrushchev were markedly different from those of Stalin. But those perceptions were not formed by the propaganda of the late 1950s, as the press in that period Mao and Khrushchev in Beijing,

continued primarily to

reflect the alliance relationship between China and the Soviet Union and praise Khrushchev, primarily for his attempts to lessen international tensions. The changing images of Khrushchev reflected larger themes in both Soviet and Chinese

83 Respondent I-B, #1. 84 S Z 1959:20, 10/20/59, front cover.

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politics. In the Chinese propaganda portrait o f Khrushchev, years of praise were replaced by years of silence and then years o f condemnation in China. Finally, in the late 1980s, as the policies o f perestroika and glasnost in the former Soviet Union brought forth new reminiscenses and re-evaluations o f both Stalin and Khrushchev, so too did new Chinese perceptions o f Khrushchev’s role in Soviet politics emerge. Khrushchev, as it turns out, “was a complicated personality.”85 After Mikhail Gorbachev, then General Secretary of the CPSU, at the occasion o f the seventieth aniversary o f the October Revolution in Moscow, praised Khrushchev’s agricultural and foreign policy reforms as part of an ongoing process o f revolution and reform dating from 1917 to his own era, serious re-assessments of Khrushchev emerged in the Soviet Union (see below). Consequently, Khrushchev became somewhat “respected as a pioneer o f the Soviet reforms.”86

T he Emergence of Khrushchev Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev became first secretary o f the Central Committee o f the CPSU in September, 1953. N ot until 1958, when Bulganin was removed from his Party posts, did Khrushchev also become concurrendy the Chairman of theSoviet Council of Ministers, a post which he held until his ouster in 1964. In the period that Khrushchev was emerging from the collective leadership o f post-Stalin Soviet politics, Shijie Zhishi was occupied with the end o f the war in Korea and domestic development, thus there was little news about Khrushchev until 1956. A period o f relative “normalcy” in reporting about things Soviet had settled in for these few years between the end of the Korean War and the 20th Party Congress. Descriptions of visits to the Soviet Union, portrayals o f Soviet experts in China and general introductions to successes of Soviet policies presented the

^Burlatsky, ed., Si M o trans., Wo kan Huluxiaofu [Khrushchev in my eyes] (Beijing: W orld Culture Press, 1 9 8 8 ) , p . 1.

^T ranslator’s forward, Y. Okhshyujin (from the Chinese), ed., Li Shubo, et. al., trans., Huluxiaoju: tong shidai ren de huiyi [Khrushchev- In the Memories o f his Contemporaries (Beijing: Eastern Press, 1990).

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pictures of economic well-being and peace diplomacy that we have already seen in the previous two chapters. At that time, the leadership was described in collective terms. For example, Shijie Zhishis news about a late December, 1955 session of the Supreme Soviet highlighted a report by both Bulganin and Khrushchev on their recent trip to India, Burma, and Afghanistan which “showed the great sympathy and support of the Soviet government and people” for those countries coming out from under the “oppression of the im perialists.”87 Khrushchev’s stunning “secret speech” of 1956 had a lasting impact on Chinese audiences, as well as the Party elite, even though the public press was a bit slow to react. For example, as late as June 5, 1956 Shijie Zhishi published photos of the Soviet leadership hosting Tito in Moscow, b u t did not identify any o f the Soviet leaders. An editorial w ritten on February 10 had introduced the 20th Party Congress of the CPSU for the readers of Shijie Zhishi.88 T he next issue showed Khrushchev giving his public speech on the front cover but told readers in a half-page only that Khrushchev spoke on the international situation and domestic economy. Much has been written about the Chinese responses to these speeches as well as to Khrushchev’s attack on Stalin’s cult of personality.89 For our purposes here, it is enough to note that the relatively few articles in Shijie Zhishi about Khrushchev during this year continued to focus on him as representative o f a world force of peace and democracy. After the April 5, 1956 People's Daily article, “O n the Historical Experience of the Dictatorship o f the Proletariat” which provided the Chinese leadership’s responses to Khrushchev’s theoretical departures from Lenin and Stalin, Khrushchev’s diplomatic

^ “Meeting o f the Supreme Soviet,” SZ 1956:2, 1/20/56, p. 4. 88 “Xiang gongchanzhuyi shehui maijin de yi ge zhongyao lichengbei,” [“An im portant milestone in the m arch towards a communist society”] SZ 1956:4,2/20/56, p. 1. 89 For example, see G.F. H udson, Richard Lwenthal and Roderick MacFarquhar, The Sino-Soviet Dispute (NY: Praeger, 1962), p. 39fF.; MacFarquhar, The Origins o f the Cultural Revolution, I, p. 43 ff.; Zagoria, The Sino-Soviet Conflict, 1956-61, pp. 39-53.

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manifestations of peaceful co-existence were still portrayed as significant events in international affairs. Discussions o f Khrushchev in the late 1950s were mostly set in the context o f the world peace movement and Soviet attempts at relaxing tensions between the socialist and the capitalist camps. The team o f Khrushchev and Bulganin, who until 1958 was the Chairman of the Council o f Ministers, flew to England in April, 1956 in accord with the “sincere hopes o f the hundreds of millions o f peoples in the Soviet Union and other countries fcr improvement in Soviet-British relations which would make an important contribution to peace.”90 Khrushchev’s attempted rapprochement with Tito in June, 1956 was also described as a part o f continuing attempts by the Soviet leadership to “advance international co-operation, push forward the international workers’ movement.”91 Other visits by the team o f Khrushchev and Bulganin included a trip to Finland in June and to Czechoslovakia in July, 1957. Khrushchev also led a trip to Berlin in August. These trips provided plenty of photo opportunities for Khrushchev and Bulganin to shake hands and bask in the warm welcome o f appreciative crowds.92 O f course the most significant changes in the picture o f the Soviet leadership came during Khrushchev’s moves towards cooperation with the United States in the latter part of the decade. Though the Chinese would later condemn his initiatives as signs o f weakness and collaboration with the United States,93 at the time Khrushchev’s friendliness towards the United States fit into the picture o f a Soviet foreign policy based on peace and working for the interests of all mankind. In May, 1957 Khrushchev met with

" “Su-ying huitan de jiji jieguo,” [“The positive results o f the Soviet-British talks”] SZ 1956:9, 5/5/56, p. 1. 91 “Su-nan huitan de juda chengjiu,” ["The great results o f the Soviet-Yugoslav talks”] SZ, 1956:13, 7/5/56, p. 3. 92SZ1957:13, 7/5/57, front cover and inside front cover photos o f Finland trip; 1957:15, 8 /5/57, inside front cover photos o f Czechoslovakia trip; 1957:17, 9/5/57, cover p h o to of Berlin visit. 93 See, esp. “The Origin and development o f the differences between the leadership of the CPSU and ourselves,” the first o f the “nine polemics," published in RMRB, 9 /6 /6 3 . Reprinted in The Polemic on the General Line o f the International Communist Movement, pp. 55-114.

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correspondents from the New York Times and CBS radio. His appearance in the American media showed that “in the midst of the ‘growing clamor’ {gaozhang sheng)ot the world peace movement, the Soviet Union is actively working towards the amelioration of international tensions. ... A television interview with the leader o f the Soviet Union is really an im portant matter in contemporary international affairs.”94 As the previous chapter indicated, coverage of Soviet foreign policy was noticeably lacking during the crucial period of the second Taiwan Straits crisis in 1958. This was also true for presentations of Khrushchev. In September 1958, Khrushchev’s letter to Eisenhower warning him that any attack on China would be considered an attack on the Soviet Union was meant to show support for the Chinese in their confrontation with the United States and the Republic of China government over the offshore islands. The reaction in the Chinese press was underwhelming. A year-end analysis o f Soviet foreign policy noted only that “in whole-hearted support for the Chinese people’s struggle against American imperialist war provocations and military threats in the Taiwan Straits region, the Soviet U nion issued the ‘stern warning’(yanlijinggao): ‘An attack against China is an attack against the Soviet Union’, [which is] a serious blow to the aggressive plans o f the American imperialists, and another important contribution to the protection of peace in the Far East and the world.”95 M ilitant language about international affairs in the latter part of the decade reflected domestic Chinese radicalism in the Great Leap period as well as international posturing for the Cold W ar. Khrushchev’s international initiatives struck “serious blows” (chengzhong de daji) against the Cold W ar forces in America, not only when he supported the Chinese in the Offshore Islands crisis of 1958, but also when he visited the United States in the latter

'^ “H uluxiaofu dadong mciguo renxin de tanhua,” [“Khrushchev’s Conversation tug at the hearts o f the American people”] SZ, 1957.12, 6/20/57, p. 2-3. 95 Liang D unru, “Yi nian lai Sulian dui heping shiye de weida gongxian," [“T he Soviet U nion’s great contributions to the cause o f peace in the past year”] S Z 1958:24, 12/20/58, p. 5.

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half of September, 1959.96 This visit was said to show the true extent of the division between the people o f America and its “ruling clique.” The American security cordon around Khrushchev demonstrated to the world that the “ruling clique was afraid that once it let Khrushchev have contact with the American masses, his influence in America would be expanded.”97 Khrushchev, the “outstanding messenger of peace,... achieved one victory after another during his more than ten days o f ideological struggle in America because he represented truth and an advanced system.”98 But in the final analysis, Khrushchev’s efforts in America proved that “peace does not come to those who wait, but has to be achieved through struggle.”99 In 1960 Shijie Zhishi followed the ideological lead of the People’s Daily and dedicated its April 20 issue to Lenin. In May, the editorial board of Shijie Zhishi wrote in support o f Khrushchev’s cancelling of the summit meeting in the wake of the downing of an American U-2 spy plane in Soviet airspace. This cancellation was called “a great victory in the Soviet government’s struggle to achieve peace and is a ‘serious blow’ (chengzhong daji) against American imperialism.”100 In the summer of 1960, though, Soviet space achievements and domestic economic progress provided the content for articles about the Soviet Union. The visit o f a Chinese delegation led by Liu Shaoqi to attend the 1960 October Revolution celebrations in Moscow provided photo opportunities o f handshaking and group amity and some assertion of the unbreakable nature o f Sino-Soviet friendship. But that assertion was undermined by a lack o f any substantive analysis or written

90 Fu Ying, “Xuluxiaofu fangwen Meiguo de shisan naan,” [“Khrushchev’s Twenty-three days in the United States”] S Z 1959:20,10/20/59, p. 4. 97 Fu Ying, “Khrushchev’s Twenty-three days ...”, p. 5. 98 Fu Ying, “Khrushchev’s Twenty-three days ...”, p. 5, 6. 99 Fu Ying, “Khrushchev’s Twenty-three days ...”, p. 6. 100Members o f the editorial board, Shijie Zhishi, “W anquan zhichi H uluxiaofu zhuxi de yanzheng shcngming,” [“Com plete support for Chairman Khrushchev’s solemn statem ent”] SZ 1960:10, 5/20/60, p. 4.

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comment.101 Turnabout on Khrushchev. I W hether for ideological, historical, strategic, personal or other reasons, the relationship between the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China began to founder publicly in I960. The April People’s Daily articles asserting Chinese theoretical command o f Lenin’s legacy, the CPSU’s “Open Letter” to the CCP in June, the June Bucharest meeting o f communist parties, the withdrawal of Soviet advisers in July, and the November Moscow meeting o f communist parties were public indications of trouble. As the Sino-Soviet relationship changed for the worse, the image of the Soviet leadership also had to change. As the “embodiment,” to use a Chinese respondent’s term, of the Soviet Union, Khrushchev became the symbol of what had gone wrong with the Soviet Union. Therefore the picture o f Khrushchev had to change drastically. The process of reportraying Khrushchev took several years. Descriptions o f Khrushchev disappeared from the pages of Shijie Zhishi until 1965 when an article accompanied the publication o f the third volume of Khrushchev’s collected works. Khrushchev, it was written, was “not a theorist, but almost every day he wanted to publish an article, to issue an opinion on every event in the world and in the Soviet Union.”102 The publishers answered potential criticisms that they were “wasting so much paper” in publishing Khrushchev’s speeches by saying that Khrushchev is the “greatest revisionist o f our time. ... Khrushchev’s speeches are a part of the encyclopedia of contemporary revisionism. From these speeches, the people can see just what Khrushchev’s revisionism is, and can also follow the development and bankruptcy o f Khrushchev’s

1015 Z 1960:22, 11/20/60 has a cover picture o f Khrushchev greeting Liu at the aiport. S Z 1960:24, 12/20/60 has a cover photo, captioned, “T he closest o f friendships,” showing Liu, D eng Xiaoping and Peng Zhen with Mikoyan, Khrushchev, Kozlov, and Suslov arms on shoulders and smiling. An inside photo page displays scenes from the visit. 102“‘Huluxiaofu yanlun di san ji chubanzhe shuoming," [“Publisher’s preface, ‘Khrushchev’s speeches’ vol. 3”] S Z 1965:5, 3/10/65, p. 7.

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revisionism.”103 The fifth volume o f Khrushchev’s “Collected Speeches” was published in China four months later and included his public speeches at the 20th Party Congress. That Congress had, by 1965, become the retroactively-acknowledged beginning of the end of Chinese respect for the Soviet party. The CPSU had commited five sins at that congress. It had insanely attacked the “great Marxist-Leninist Stalin, in essence it had ‘vilified’ (chouhua) the proletarian party and its leaders, it had vilified the socialist system o f the dictatorship o f the proletariat and it had opposed Marxism-Leninism, the Soviet U nion, the Communist Party and the people.”104 Khrushchev’s theoretical modifications of the inevitability o f war also came under attack. His announcement o f the possibility of a peaceful transition to socialism “in essence is a repudiation o f the October Revolution, it is opposed to the proletarian revolution and other revolutionary military struggles.” Peaceful coexistence is “in essence a collaboration between classes on an international scale, it is capitulationism, a betrayal o f proletarian internationalism, refusing revolution for oneself and for others, refusing to support revolution and refusing to let others support revolution.” Friendly cooperation with the United States is “in essence ‘declaring’ (xuatiyang) that American imperialism has changed its character and advocating that the two superpowers, the Soviet Union and the United States, dominate (zhuzai) the world.” Finally, the socalled “attack against the cult o f personality” was “in essence, attempts to attack MarxistLeninist leaders in various countries, ... to ‘subvert' (dianfu) and control fraternal parties and countries, and to pave the way for the spread o f Khrushchev revisionism.” By the time of the publication of these volumes, the propaganda portrait of Khrushchev had already been turned about completely. He was attacked in the N ine Polemics of

^

“Publisher’s preface, vol. 3...,” p. 7.

104“Huluxiaofu yanlun di w u ji chubanzhe shuoming,” [“Publishers’ preface ‘Khrushchev’s Speeches’ vol. 5”] S Z 1965:9, 5/10/65, p. 5. All the following quotes in this paragraph are from th e same source.

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1963-64 for, among other things, being guilty of “class capitulation,”105 of being the head of the “greatest splitters in the international communist movement,”106 o f “great power chauvinism,”107 and of having “completely reversed enemies and comrades.”108 Khrushchev had become the leading revisionist who “defamed the dictatorship of the proletariat and the socialist system and thus in fact paved the way for the restoration of capitalism in the Soviet U nion.”109 The publication of the N ine Polemics from 1963 through 1964 was an important political event for many respondents. The Party press was used to turn Khrushchev from an international fighter for peace to a traitor to the communist cause and the Nine Polemics were the documents used to effect this change. “At the time all we could read was The People’s Daily and. Gansu Daily which were just about full o f the Nine Polemics. We studied the Nine Polemics just about every day, we didn’t do anything else.”110 “It was ‘just a batde o f words’ (jiu shi da wenzi zhang). Cadres all had to study the Nine Polemics.”111 “My memories o f the Nine Polemics are very deep. One article was two or three newspaper pages long. All the papers printed them .”112 A teacher at the Central Minorities Institute in Beijing said that at the time he “accepted (jieshou) the ideology of the Nine Polemics and believed that the Soviet Union had turned completely revisionist.

105For example, in the sixth polem ic, “Peaceful Coexistnece - two diametrically opposed policies” (12/12/63), The Polemic on the General Line, p. 278. 106In the seventh polemic, “T h e leaders o f the CPSU are the greatest splitters o f our times” (2/4/64),

The Polemic on the General Line, p. 318. 107

The Polemic on the General Line, p. 320.

108

The Polemic on the General Line, p. 322.

109“O n Khrushchev’s phoney com munism and its historical lessons for the world” (7/14/64), The

Polemic on the General Line, p. 439. 110Respondent I-C, #19, an engineer stationed at the time in G ansu province. 11 R espondent 1-C, #24. 11R espondent I-C, #52, a peasant.

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I criticized the Soviet Union and, as an educator, I also propagandized the ideology o f the Nine Polemics.”113 But they were also remembered as a breath of fresh air. The Nine Polemics, one retired teacher said, “were ‘correct and substantial’ {you zhengyouju), ‘principled and succinct’ (you li you jie). Under the conditions of the time, when the Chinese people had to ‘endure humiliation in order to carry out an important mission’ {renru fuzhong), it was necessary to act that way. "When we heard them, we also felt that they ‘let off some steam’ (jieqiI.”114 A former tractor station administrator felt that “the Nine Polemics offered some good criticism, they ‘really let off some steam’ {hen jieqi), they criticized the Soviet’s ‘unprincipled aspects’ {bu heli de difangI.”115 One professor used a phrase associated with punishments meted out to criminals in describing how the Nine Polemics “were most gratifying to the people {dakuai renxin).116 Turnabout. II Following upon the heels of Gorbachev’s revision of the Soviet image of Khrushchev, Chinese readers have been able to see new interpretations o f Khrushchev’s political life. Gorbachev declared that “it took a good deal of courage for the Party and its leadership, headed by N.S. Khrushchev, to criticize the personality cult and its consequences and restore socialist legality.” He called Khrushchev’s policies on the economy “attempts ... to break down the command-bureaucratic methods o f management that had been established in the 1930s and 1940s, to impart greater dynamism to socialism, to emphasize humanistic ideals and values, and to revive the creative spirit o f Leninism in theory and practice.” Khrushchev was motivated by “a desire to change the priorities o f economic

113Respondent I-B, #6. 1^Respondent I-A, #7. 1'^Respondent 1-A, #17. 1'^Respondent II-B, #6.

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development and to put into play incentives related to a personal stake in the results of work.”117 “The ‘renewed recognition’ (zai renshi) o f Khrushchev in the Soviet Union will undoubtedly arouse the interests of Chinese of different generations.”118 A recent Chinese encyclopedia o f Sino-Soviet history acknowledged that when Khrushchev was the leader o f the Soviet Union and the Soviet Comm unist Party, “the Soviet government and the Soviet people gave a lot o f support to the development o f China’s economy and science and technology.”119 But as we shall see in the following section, this turnabout on the image o f Khrushchev did not find resonance with the majority of audience respondents.

Memories of Khrushchev For many respondents, the feet that Khrushchev presided over and contributed to the Soviet break with China was an unforgivable transgression, especially as that period coincided with China’s “Three bitter years” after the Great Leap Foward when natural disasters combined with large-scale hum an error to produce mass suffering. “It was exactly his appearance [as Soviet leader] that led to the deterioration (ehua) of relations with China.”120 Khrushchev “was very bad. His political sanctions (zhicai) towards China were ‘extremely ruthless’ (xiangdang hen). From the time he came to power in 1957 he began to break off relations with China. He ‘secretly conspired’ (yinmou de) to withdraw the bulk of the experts from China. D uring the three years of natural disasters he ‘looted the burning house’ {chen huo dajie) and ‘demanded substantial repayment’ {daliangyao

117M. S. Gorbachev, “Report at the Jo in t Ceremonial Meeting o f the CPSU Central Committee, the USSR Supreme Soviet and the Russian Repulic Supreme Soviet Devoted to the 7 0th Anniversary o f the G reat October Socialist Revolution,” in The Current Digest of theSoviet Press, vol. 39, N o. 44, 12/2/87, p. 8. 118Burlatsky, Khrushchev in My Eyes, translators’ forward, p. 4. 119Xia Lingen, ed. A Dictionary o f Sino-Soviet Relations (Dalian: Dalian Press, 1990), p. 415. 120Respondent II-C, #28, a professor:

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zhai)”121 o f earlier Soviet loans. A newsworker placed on Khrushchev’s shoulders “the prime responsibility for the rupture in Sino-Soviet relations. He repudiated Stalin ‘in everything’ {quan mian de fading). He ‘implemented’ (tuixing) the revisionist road. Even began ‘to engage in’ {gad) regional hegemonism (baquanzhuyi,).”122 a retired soldier remembered that “when we were undergoing natural disasters, he demanded repayment of debts. He included the weapons that Stalin gave us when he was alive and that we used up during the Korean W ar in the debt.”123 Khrushchev was accused of being perfidious and disloyal in two main aspects: one with developmental aid to China and two w ith Stalin. “He broke faith and put the military goods that Stalin gave to help China during the Korean W ar on the bill, really hurt the Chinese people.”124 Noting Khrushchev’s timing, an arts worker said that “in China's most difficult period he withdrew the experts, ‘broke faith’ {bei xin qiyi).”x25 A colleague echoed, “in China’s time of greatest difficulty, he withdrew the experts from China, really made people ‘mad’ {qifaii). H e also ‘repudiated’ (fa ding) Stalin.”126 “He was especially ‘insane’ (fangkuan) with the blockade of China. From the time he came to power, he began to gradually withdraw the experts, until I960, when China was in its difficult period, he broke the contracts, demanded payment from China, began to demand money. If he couldn’t get money, then he grabbed ‘produce’ (shiwu). The conditions were really cruel. This ‘seriously damaged’ (shihai le) previously friendly Sino-Soviet

121Respondent I-A, #8, a cadre. 122Respondent II-B, #7. 123Respondent I-A, #28. 124Respondent I-C, #42, a retired office worker. 123Respondent II-B, #3. 126Rcspondent II-B, #4.

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relations.”127 A cadre administering unit propaganda activities also blamed Khrushchev for the difficulty of those years. “He ‘hurt’ (shanghai Ze)the Chinese people. Created losses [for us]. Luckily at the time the ‘hearts of our peoples were united’ (women minxin yiqt).”l2& W hen combined with the natural disasters of those years, it seemed that the withdrawal of the Soviet advisers was “kicking somebody when he was down.”129 Khrushchev’s revelations about Stalin were perceived mostly as disloyalty and elicited strong feelings. Referring to Khrushchev’s public pronouncements towards Stalin, an editor described Khrushchev as someone who “‘acted respectfully on the one hand, then betrayed on the other’ (yin feng, y&ng bet). Right after he came to power, he completely repudiated Stalin’s achievements, began to ‘repudiate’ (weibei) Stalin’s policies and ‘lines’ (luxian).”li0 A financial journalist called him “ two-faced traitor’ (maizu de liangmian pat). When Stalin was alive, [Khrushchev] called him father, after [he died], called him a ‘butchering dictator’ (sha ren kuang ducat).”131 A worker expressed outrage over the disinterment o f Stalin’s body. “Khrushchev’s attitude to Stalin’s remains was like destroying the family.”132 A professor used family imagery in labelling Khrushchev “twofaced. Before and after Stalin’s death he was two different people. [Stalin] changed from Father to Murderer.”133 An army cadre seemed to agree. “When he appeared, he said he was Stalin’s student, even considered Stalin as his father, later he even publicly opposed

127Respondent II-B, #16, an editor. 123Respondent I-B, #16. 129Literally, “throwing stones down the well” (xiajing luoshi). Respondent II-A, #30, a professor. 1^R espondent II-B, #16. 131Respondent II-B, #13. 132Respondent II-C, #53. 133Respondent I-C, #7.

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Stalin.”134 Since Stalin carried the ideological line from Lenin, Khrushchev became “the chief culprit (huoshou) in betraying Leninism.”135 T h e propaganda (beginning with the “Nine Polemics” of 1963-64) painting Khrushchev as the great Soviet revisionist was also very important in shaping people’s responses. Khrushchev was “the boss of Soviet revisionism, the criminal head who was responsible for ‘the satellite going up into space, but the Red Flag falling to the ground’ (weixingshangtian, hongqi luodi).”136 Two respondents called Khrushchev the “representative type (daibiao renwu)ot revisionism.”137 Placing this propaganda into the context o f the Sino-Soviet split, an editor noted that “making Khrushchev into the ‘em bodim ent’ (huashen) of revisionism at the time ‘accorded with’ {peihe) the situation.”138 An engineer admitted that he was “influenced by the Chinese propaganda and opinions o f the time, [and] thought [Khrushchev] was a Soviet revisionist im perialist.”139 “At the time, it was said that he was the first revisionist to come out of the socialist camp. Was the chief revisionist.”140 An editor commented on the purpose of that propaganda. “As the scapegoat (xiangshen) of revisionism he was very emblematic (ji xiangzhen).”141 Khrushchev was rememberd as someone who “didn’t want a dictatorship of the proletariat, he wanted to engage in ‘peaceful co-existence’ (heping guodu).”142

134Respondent II-A, # 26. 135Rcspondent II-C, #28. 1^ R e sp o n d en t II-A, #41 a former worker. 137Respondnets II-A, #17, a cadre and II-C, #5, an engineer. 138Respondent II-A, #12. 139Respondenc II-C, #34. 140Respondent II-C, #51, a retired worker. l 4 l Respondent II-B, #5. l4 7 Respondent I-B, #13, a journalist.

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Reflecting the bipolar nature of propaganda, one respondent noted that “after the rupture in Sino-Soviet relations, anti-revisionism became the ‘guiding principle’ (zhudao), nothing about the Soviet Union was good anymore.”143 In addition to the negative propaganda descriptions o f Khrushchev’s policies, his reported public manner also seemed to be off-putting to many. A response typical o f those who disapproved of the way that Khrushchev behaved in public noted his lack of “bearing.” “M y impressions of this person are not very deep, I’ve only heard that he is a person of no cultivation, using his shoe to bang on the table, crude (cubao) and discourteous (wuli). I have an ‘image of a little scoundrel’ (xiaochou de xinxiang).”^

One Foreign

Ministry official remembered him as “crude and rash (liumang), boastful (fakua).”145 The famous shoe incident during one of Khrushchev’s speeches to the United Nations General Assembly in October, I960 was mentioned by fourteen respondents. “At the United Nations he took off his shoes, very vulgar. He had no class {ivu fengdu), embarrassing.”146 “He toook off his shoes at a speech at the United Nations, he was a historical buffon (lishi xiaochou).”147 But for one respondent such boldness was somewhat admirable. Khrushchev was “a person who dared to speak and dared to act (gan shuo gan gan de ren); when he was made a report, he took off his shoes and pounded on the table.”148 Those who had positive memories of Khrushchev agreed that his re-evaluation o f Stalin was needed. Khrushchev was praised for his reforms and for attacking the cult o f the individual. “From the aspect o f his repudiation of Stalin alone, even going so far as

l43Respondent II-C, #64, a construction worker. 1^ R espondent I-B, #8, an editor. 143Respondent I-B, #19. l46Respondent I-C, #57. '^ R esp o n d e n t II-A, #26, an army cadre. l48Respondent II-A, #9, cadre.

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bravely correcting Lenin’s teachings on the inevitability of war, he is a distinctly unique and courageous

r e f o r m i s t . ”l49

A retired teacher admitted that she had changed her mind

about Khrushchev. “ Now I think that I feel that Khrushchev was also a reformer, as well as someone who wanted to pull the Soviet Union back from its error of the period of Stalin’s ‘individual blind worship’ {geren mixin) and ‘dictatorial’ (duduan) usurping of authority.”150 A n editor noted that Khrushchev’s “contribution was in opposing and ‘getting rid o f {fandiao le) Stalin’s cult o f the individual.”151 A retired teacher who admitted that “a t the time I really hated him ,” also noted that “recently some materials have shown that at the time in agriculture and other aspects, he raised some reform proposals.”152 T he fact that “he was able to come out to oppose the cult o f the personality is ‘really quite something’ {hen liaobuqt)., ‘not at all easy’ {hen bu jiandan)”^

An editor

who said that Stalin’s “dark form has still not yet dissipated {zhijin ta yinjing busan)” praised Khrushchev because “at least he thoroughly destroyed the cult of personality which Stalin established. He began to institute reform and tried hard to save the Soviet U nion.”154 A technician who accused Stalin of military adventurism gave credit to Khrushchev for “ his ‘destruction o f (dapo) the cult of the personality, [which] ‘set a precedent’ {kai le xian li) for the opening o f socialist countries’ ideologies.”155 Even those w ho had generally negative impressions of Khrushchev admitted that “he

'^R esp o n d e n t I-A, #9, a teacher. '^R esp o n d e n t I-A, #13. 151 Respondent I-B, #17. 152Respondent I-C, #4. 155Respondent I-C, #15, a former science researcher. 154Respondent II-B, #8. 155Respondcnt II-C, #29, currently an engineer.

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also had his correct side. For example, he opposed the cult of the individual.”156 A retired cadre who had an even-handed opinion of both Stalin and Khrushchev noted that Khrushchev’s “all-out criticism of Stalin was not good, but we should ‘affirm’ (kending) his ‘advocacy’ (tuixing) o f reforms.”157 “Khrushchev was the most ‘perfidious’ {beixin-qiyi) person. His accession to power led to the severance o f Sino-Soviet relations. But he did oppose the cult of the personality, he also had his ‘positive’ (jiji) side.”158 A retired engineer seemed somewhat confused by the conflicting images: W hen Khrushchev came to power he was very unfriendly toward us. I really hate him {wo hen si ta). But now it seems that, ‘historically, he did have a positive effect’ (zai lishi shangyoujiji zuoyong).”159 Khrushchev’s total o f three visits to China in the late 1950s did leave some positive impressions. “He was also the highest ranking official from the Soviet Union ever to visit China. He destroyed Stalin’s always taking on the airs o f an elder brother in Sino-Soviet relations, he respected us. I am very grateful to him.”160

Comparative impressions From 1950 to 1954 the pages of Shijie Zhishi, as well as all the major newspapers, gave Stalin more than his fair share of praise. Though the global discussions of Stalin and Stalinism after Khrushchev’s secret speech were not unknown to the Chinese public,161 and despite the recent publications (mentioned above) exposing Stalin’s worst excesses, most

156Respondent I-A, #3, a teacher. 157Respondent I-A, #22. 158Respondent II-B, #15, an editor. 150Respondent I-C, #27. 160Respondent I-A, #9. 161 For example, 100,000 copies o f a two-volume compendium of articles and speeches from around the world was published in July and August o f 1956 by the People’s Publishing H ouse in Beijing, Pipan Sidalin wenti wenji {A collection o f criticisms o f the Stalin problem). [As noted above.]

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o f the survey respondents saw Stalin in a positive light.1*’2 In rough terms, one-hundred eighty-five respondents remembered Stalin positively. Interestingly, the vast majority (148 o f the 185) of these respondents had negative reactions to Khrushchev. O f the remaining respondents who did not remember Stalin favorably, forty-six had negative impressions o f Stalin, thirty-seven gave balanced responses and four had no anwer. O f the forty-six who thought poorly of Stalin, eleven had positive impressions o f Khrushchev. The chart below shows the striking contrast in Chinese impressions of Stalin and Khrushchev. # of responses 200 190 180 170 160 150 140 130 120 110 100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10

Khrushchev negative (199) Stalin positive (185)

Khrushchev Stalin

Stalin negative (46) Stalin balanced (40)

Khrushchev positive (27)

Khrushchev balanced (28)

'no answer (21) >no answer C4~i

Memories of Stalin and Khrushchev

The bi-polar nature o f propaganda reception was striking in this instance. Rarely did

note on coding: Responses to the questions, “W hat kind o f impressions do you have of Stalin/Khrushchev?” were categorized according to several key words. Obviously valorized vocabulary included words like “great leader,” “tyrant,” “buffoon,” “a nobody (xiao renwti)," etc. Memories o f Stalin were rarely unclear. If a respondent called him “cruel," or referred to the purges in any way, that was classified as a negative response. W ith Khrushchev, if the response included the word “reformist” it was classified positive, if “reactionary”, it was classified as negative. Responses that included both negative and positive memories were classified as balanced. After an initial classification o f the responses, I then re­ classified the responses w ithout reference to the first time. I then did a spot check to verify consistency. A small num ber o f responses were changed in the second round o f classification.

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a respondent have the same affect towards both Stalin and Khrushchev. Those who liked Stalin generally did not like Khrushchev, and vice-versa. Given the overwhelmingly negative impressions of Khrushchev remaining in Chinese audiences, it is nevertheless interesting to note that in some areas, Khrushchev was not remembered as all bad. For example, his rapprochement with the United States on its own would not have elicited the negative reactions that the damage done to Sino-Soviet relations did. Khrushchev’s personal bearing, his domestic reforms and the other aspects o f the Chinese portrayal were presented as negatives because o f the larger disputes surrounding Sino-Soviet relations. In his case in particular, propaganda was a real reflection o f the Chinese leadership’s re­ conceptualization o f its position in relation to the Soviet Union.

Some Implications In looking at the images o f three Soviet leaders as portrayed in the Chinese press during the period from 1950 to 1965, this chapter makes an explicit link between national role-conception and domestic propaganda. In the initial years of state formation, the Soviet leader was portrayed as a strong domestic and international presence. Stalin’s strategic plans and tactical brilliance in military victory and economic construction were lauded in China during a time o f military conflict and domestic nation-building. Presiding over the formation and high tide of the alliance relationship between the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic, Stalin benefited from the unquestioning praise of the Chinese propaganda apparatus. In the mid-1950s, the CCP supported Nikita Khrushchev in international affairs until a radicalism in domestic affairs spilled over o nto the world stage. W hen Khrushchev began to move towards collusion with class enemies, the Chinese propaganda proclaimed that the cause of peace, of socialist peace, was being undermined and the rhetorical distance between Khrushchev and the Chinese increased. By separating Khrushchev and the post-19 50s leadership from the Soviet people, Chinese propaganda again reflected a new conception o f the role o f China in both the world and in the

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communist brotherhood. That role was to be a very different one than when Stalin was alive and would show that the socialist camp was not big enough for two big brothers. The images o f Soviet leaders provided a convenient handle for propaganda about the Soviet Union. By presenting different images of leaders, the propaganda informed its audiences o f the state of the relationship between China and the Soviet Union. The prestige o f the Soviet leader was built up to strengthen the prestige of the state that was chosen to be the model for C hina’s development. Tranferring affection from the leader to the state eased the reception o f the Soviet model. As a propaganda device, “transfer carries the authority, sanction, and prestige o f something revered and respected over to something else in order to make the latter more readily acceptable.” ^ Part o f the new Chinese regime’s symbolic capital came from the support o f the leader o f the first socialist state. Approval, in turn, of that leader meant that the persuasive power o f the Soviet model was strengthened. O f course, in this, as in other instances of propaganda and persuasion, the monoploy o f state violence provided a secure foundation for the instruments of propaganda. Nevertheless, as examined in chapter three, the effectiveness o f propaganda was im portant in consolidating and maintaining domestic credibility. Thus, despite the m any misgivings Mao had concerning Stalin, they could not surface, otherwise the prestige o f that symbol was lessened. W hen the symbol was no longer necessary, in fact, when it impeded the development o f a new national identity, it had to be discredited and so the image of Khrushchev was completely reversed. The significance of the black-white memories of Stalin and Khrushchev underlines the propaganda tool o f clarity, which suggests that propaganda is most effective when it is cast in black and white terms. The final chapter will examine this and other tools o f Chinese propaganda and the effectiveness o f propaganda work with the first generation o f the People’s Republic.

*63Alfred M cClung Lee, How to Understand Propaganda (NY: Rinehart & Co., Inc., 1952), p. 68.

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Chapter Five: Appendix: Shijie Zhishi and the Soviet leadership

The charts below show the number o f pages in a particular year reporting on statements by, or activities and biographies of, Soviet leaders in the Foreign Ministry journal Shijie Zhishi. These charts represent relative amounts of coverage and are offered as an indication o f the changing relationship between China and the Soviet Union.

Coverage of Stalin

Coverage of Lenin 20 x

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C O N C L U D IN G REFLECTIONS O N PROPAGANDA

This dissertation’s examination o f Chinese propaganda inevitably prioritized the role o f “words in the construction o f social reality.”1 Such an emphasis does not mean to slight other forms o f assertions of power, but it tries to counter the relatively short shrift given the impact of propaganda on audience perceptions in previous studies o f 1950s China and the Sino-Soviet relationship. Categorizing propaganda as a form of power that hints at conceptions of national identity provides an instructive way of looking at the creation and maintenance of hierarchical relationships w ithin and among states. Propaganda messages are no longer just instruments o f political elites but also a process o f construction influenced by the storyteller’s views of the world. In the case of the Chinese relationship with the Soviet Union, the CCP used its mechanisms of propaganda to sell particular policies at particular times. This project analyzed those mechanisms and their messages and speculated on their effects.

This dissertation has benefited from the previous work done over several generations o f American study o f Chinese Communist propaganda which began during the “communications research” period of propaganda studies. Notable at that time was the whole genre o f “brainwashing” studies based on research on Americans captured in Korea as well as some interviews with refugees. Brainwashing, a phrase taken directly from the Chinese, seemed to be a sinister new aspect o f a feared totalitarian Red menace. But further research with former American P O W 1s concluded that “the much-feared Communist program of ‘brainwashing’ was really more of an intensive indoctrination program in combination with very sophisticated techniques of undermining the social structure o f the prisoner group, thereby eliciting collaboration which in most cases was not

^ o u rd ie u , Language and Symbolic Power, p. 105.

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based on ideological change o f any sort. In other words, the indoctrination was not very effective but the social control exercised by the Chinese Communists was.”2 Coercive persuasion o f the Chinese Communist type could also be found in monasteries, nunneries, prisons, some hospitals, academies and schools. Another group of early studies of the Chinese Communist media came on the heels of Alex Inkeles’ “brilliant and penetrating study o f public opinion in Soviet Russia,”3 which looked at the mass mobilization goals o f Soviet propaganda and agitation activities. Frederick Yu examined the theory and practice o f mass persuasion in China based on the written record of the 1950s. He suggested that the CCP was successful in its persuasion yet unable to count on long-term results.4 Focusing on policy and organization, Franklin Houn drew on totalitarian assumptions to show that “the Communist appeal is all-embracing, addressing itself to the whole person.”5 Also driven by notions of totalitarianism, Barnett described an “all-out ideological assault on the minds of the people of China... [where] everything the people feel, think, and do is of concern to the Party and the government.”6 Yu, as well, remarked that the Chinese Communists were engaged in an “all-out ideological assault on one-fifth of the human race.”7 In a shift towards the acceptance of an autonomous cultural realm not allowed by totalitarian critiques, Godwin Chu and Francis H su asked whether communications in

2Edgar H . Schein with Inge Schneier and Curtis H . Barker, Coercive Persuasion: A Socio-psychological Analysis o f the "Brainwashing” o f American Civilian Prisoners by the Chinese Communists (NY: W.W . N orton, 1961), p. 8. 3Y u , Mass Persuasion in Commmunist China, p. 8, referring to Inkeles, Public Opinion in Soviet

Russia. 4Yu , Mass Persuasion in Commmunist China

5H oun, To Change A Nation, p. 3. 6Barnett, Communist China: The Early Years, p. 71. 7Yu , Mass Persuasion in Commmunist China p. 6.

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China could effect cultural change independently o f political considerations.8 In presenting a view of language that departed from the instrumental vision o f previous writers, Chu and Hsu noted that “communication functions as the basic cord o f human interaction and reflects the substance o f social life.”9 But communications channels were still viewed instrumentally, since their prime purpose was to convey the revolutionary messages from the Party to the masses. Chu and H su speculated that through the directed use o f those channels by the top, some kind of cultural change may have resulted. T he very real cultural and economic changes in China after 1978 allowed greatly improved access to China. New studies of the Chinese media thus benefited from on-site observation and a variety o f sources. Brandy W omack introduced a Chinese survey of the Beijing media audience taken in 1982.10 In his portrayal of the Chinese media, Womack drew on the Leninist notion of the media as a transmission belt between the Party and the masses where the media is the “mouthpiece of the Party” but also provides a way for the “party [to] be flexible in its response to mass demands and adjust its policies according to mass needs.”11 More recent work has been able to move away from the notion of propaganda as merely the voice of the Party and towards the suggestion explored in this dissertation that it also is a consequence and indicator of real understandings o f aspects of the world. Michael Schocnhals situated Chinese political vocabulary in dimensions o f Chinese cultural space to demonstrate how movements from one coordinate to another within that space reflected changing valorization o f particular term s.12 One example was was drawn

8C hu and Hsu, Moving a Mountain. 9C hu and Hsu, Moving a Mountain, p. 3. 10 Womack, “Media and the Chinese Public...”. 11 Womack, “Media and the Chinese Public...”, p. 9, 10. 12Schoenhals, “How to do things with words in Chinese politics.”

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from 1949, when the south-China branch o f the New C hina News Agency and the South China D aily in Guangzhou were told to use the word tongbao (compatriots) and not huaqiao (overseas Chinese) to refer to the Chinese residents of H ong Kong and Macau. The “people referred to were [consequently] ‘drawn’ towards Beijing, and not ‘pushed’ in the direction of London and Lisbon.”13 Similar analysis was used to treat a collection o f recent directives from the CCP Propaganda Department ranging from how to refer to the Dalai Lama to appropriate discussion o f Alvin Toffler’s book, The Third Wave.14 Studies o f specific segments o f the propaganda apparatus have also started to appear. Patricia Stranahan, for example, explored the CCP’s pre-1949 newspaper, Liberation Daily, as the locus o f political struggles between Mao Zedong and the Internationalists within the Party.15 David Holm delved into folk traditions that the CCP drew on to convey its messages.16 These have provided a great deal o f background for this dissertation’s presentation of the mechanisms of propaganda used and refined by the CCP.

“I f a political party wants to achieve its goals, it must have a position, an ideology and propaganda.”17 The Chinese propaganda work o f the 1950s examined here was a conscious effort on the part of the regime to inculcate certain favorable attitudes towards the Soviet Union among national audiences. Neither the favorable attitudes nor the effects of propaganda was taken for granted. The CCP had to overcome centuries of, at best, ambivalent attitudes towards the Russians. It had to discredit the appeal of the non-Soviet West to Chinese intellectuals and replace it with the new lustre of the Soviet Union.

13Schoenhals, “H ow to do things w ith words in Chinese politics,” p. 8. ^ M ic h a e l Schoenhals, ed. “Selections from Propaganda Trends". 15 Stranahan, Molding the Medium. 16H o lm , A rt and Ideology. 17 Respondent I-C, #24, born in 1925.

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Propaganda work was continuously monitored for its effectiveness in disseminating and achieving acceptance of this particular Party line. The Chinese propaganda network owed much of its structure to Soviet antecedents, but as we saw in chapter two, many of its components derived from domestic sources. The Propaganda Department in the 1950s was able to adapt and modernize Chinese traditions from imperial pamphleteering to rural folk dances. Grafted onto these traditions were components of Leninist Partybuilding and organization, including the use of the Party paper, the initial training o f specialized personnel at all levels of the Party, and strong central political control. As will be remembered from chapter two, the mass organizations were crucial channels in the formation o f opinions about the Soviet Union. The propaganda of the Sino-Soviet Friendship Association specifically acted as a “guide to opinion,” in the words of many interviewees, about the Soviet Union. The “propaganda points” regarding the Soviet Union were usually divided into four categories: achievements o f the Soviet Union since 1917, Soviet aid to China’s “revolutionary construction” {geming jianshe), strengthening Sino-Soviet friendship and alliance, and learning from the Soviet Union in studying Marxism-Leninism.18 The varied resources of the propaganda network were used soon after 1949 to effect acceptance o f things Soviet. A report from Guangming Ribao (Enlightenment Daily) noted that one objective of political study at W uhan University in 1950 was to “foster internationalism and friendship for the Soviet Union.” After six months o f study, the report said that the faculty and students “got rid of their anti-Soviet sentiments and became ardent Soviet supporters. They came to like the m otion pictures from the Soviet Union and to dislike those from the United States.”19 M any more intellectuals confessed to harboring anti-Soviet sentiments in the numerous campaigns o f the Korean War years.

18 For one example o f these points, see New China News Agency, “SSFA Announces Salient Propaganda Points for “Sino-Soviet Friendship M onth” 10/28/52, in SCMP, No. 451, p. 11. 19 GMRB 6 /4 /5 0 as quoted in Chen, Thought Reform, p. 15.

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For example, one adminstrator from Nanjing University echoed the deviancy o f Xiao Jun (see chapter three) when he confessed that “because of my pro-America, admire-America, and fear-America attitude and because I accepted ridiculous American opinions, I was hostile to the Soviet Union. Furthermore I did not differentiate clearly between Czarist Russia and the Soviet Union and I thought o f the Soviet Union as ‘Red imperialism’.”20 The overall propaganda message about the Soviet Union was highly consistent during the first ten years o f the People’s Republic. Given the necessity o f reliance on the Soviet Union for development aid, especially during the Korean War period, it is not surprising that the highly touted successes of Soviet industrialization and economic growth were a large part of the m yth o f the Soviet Union. Proclamations of economic success continued throughout the decade as the Fifth FYP led into the Seven Year Plan and Khrushchev’s commitment to overtake the United States in industrial output by 1965. These proclamations were continuously buttressed by Soviet technological achievements throughout the decade, such as the earlier-than-anticipated detonation of the Soviet bomb, the development o f the hydrogen bomb, the launching o f Sputnik, and the huge engineering projects that transformed the land itself. The division o f the world into two great camps in the early 1950s was not only a corollary of ideological proclivities, but also provided a ready explanation for many policy choices, including the extent of China’s reliance on the Soviet Union and the necessity for vigilance at home. The continued existence of the Republic of China and its collaboration w ith the United States provided an easy excuse for warnings about and campaigns against the enemy within. Having chosen to lean to one side, the CCP justified that choice not only by touting the benefits o f a socialist economy but also by showcasing the peaceful initiatives o f a socialist foreign policy. The question o f the portrayal of Soviet foreign policy became problematic after the

20 Li Fang-hsun, “Pi pan wo de zhengzhi sixiang,” [Criticism o f my Political Ideology] in Sixiang Gaizao wenxuan [Selected Documents on T hought Reform], as quoted in Chen, Thought Reform, p. 66.

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crises of 1956 within the socialist camp. In the context of the Sino-Soviet relationship, the aftermath of Khrushchev’s secret speech could be termed a “fraternal crisis”. The fraternal alliance frayed as the “little brother” chafed under the increasingly dubious direction of “elder brother” pretenders. As the party and leader relations within the camp lost their hierarchical authority and constancy, the social fiction o f the “elder brother” lost its “symbolic efficacy”21 and we saw the beginning of the end of the alliance. But, even though the alliance was in trouble, the portrayal of the Soviet Union did not undergo drastic change at that time. T he most telling indication of possible shifts in considerations of Soviet foreign policy was in the maarked decline of national coverage about Soviet foreign activities and an increase in presentations of “Third World” nations. The changing legitimation afforded the Soviet leadership was another indication of the “fraternal crisis” in Sino-Soviet relations. That crisis was precipitated by Khrushchev’s secret speech but its underlying causes could be attributed to Stalin’s treatment o f the CCP and of Mao himself both during and after the Communist victory in 1949. Nevertheless, the propaganda portrayal of Stalin overwhelmingly remained a hagiographic one. He was the brilliant student of Lenin, the victorious strategist in the struggle against fascism. He was the kindly elder brother who made possible China’s industrialization by sending aid and technical expertise. Even after the revelations about Stalin’s domestic terrors were aired after 1956, his image remained positive in both the public propaganda and the public perception. Khrushchev may have precipitated the fraternal crisis but he was not publicly excoriated until after the relationship had openly drifted apart. His international diplomacy was initially portrayed as work in the service o f peace b u t later as ideological betrayal. His early expansion of Soviet aid to China was welcomed b ut his later abrogation of the Soviet treaties with China was the final straw, and it was his demands

21 Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, p. 116. His discussion o f a liturgical crisis within the Catholic Church informs my presentation o f the “fraternal crisis” in Sino-Soviet relations.

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that China return the aid given by the Soviet Union that soured the perceptions of most of the interviewees. By the time that Chinese propaganda began to tear down the image of Khrushchev as the representative of peace, the CCP was already engaged in its foreign policy of what Peter Van Ness called the “Third W orld line” where China was portrayed as the challenger to the “superpower dominated global system.”22 In this new conception o f China’s identity in the world, China’s model o f development was no longer to be found in the Soviet Union, the basis o f China’s national security was no longer in the Soviet Union and China was a new leader and role model itself.

This dissertation has looked at the particular examples of the propaganda myth of the Soviet Union to explore three questions about propaganda in China. The first question, what is the nature of propaganda, provided the foundation for the other two: W hat were the mechanisms by which the Party disseminated its messages about particular policies at particular times? How were those messages received by target audiences? The first question necessarily explored the concept o f propaganda in China against the background of studies of propaganda elsewhere. It defined the production of state propaganda as influenced by conceptions o f the self and the world. The second question summed up the various technical details o f Chinese propaganda work to evaluate its inheritances. The third question depended on locating in the vocabulary of propaganda audiences the myths spun by the propaganda. Those audiences included those who were bound up with the propaganda apparatus, the propagandists; others who worked in activities subsumed by the propaganda apparatus, the literary and cultural workers; and those not connected to the apparatus except by virtue o f being recipients o f the messages. The audience interviews revealed telling clues concerning the effects o f the propaganda o f the 1950s. Given the am ount of symbolic capital accumulated by the C C P in 1949, a

22 Peter Van Ness, “C hina as a Third W orld State: Foreign Policy and Official N ational Identity,” D ittm er and Kim, China’s Quest fo r National Identity, p. 199.

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certain context for the successes o f propaganda was created. Part of that context lies in the role of the word in Chinese history. According to one analyst, “Chinese culture differs from that o f the West in that indoctrination by governmental agency is not commonly held to be objectionable.”23 Other conditions at the time may have contributed to the lasting impact o f the propaganda messages about the Soviet Union. “W hen the attention of an audience can be secured, communications may help to form attitudes toward new subjects. They can also influence attitudes that are weakly held, or, when several attitudes are fairly evenly balanced, they may be able to strengthen one o f them at the expenses o f the others. They can even change attitudes that are strongly held when they are able to report new facts about the environment, or when they can suggest courses o f action that a person believes will satisfy his wants and needs better than his present behavior.”24 The successful formation of attitudes about the Soviet U nion was achieved during a special time in Chinese history. The prestige o f the CCP, its control over the means o f communication, its domination by a strong leader and its recognition of the importance o f attitude change were some of the factors that contributed to the ability of the Chinese state to create certain impressions of the Soviet Union that persisted for several decades. Chinese propaganda of the 1950s created attitudes while fulfilling many other functions. In its social role, Chinese state propaganda “submerged [the individual] in a large and powerful community that [was] pictured as represented solely by the regime.”25 The identification o f the Soviet Union as the leader o f an international community powerfully supported the C C P’s own position at home. As the beneficiary and close ally of the Soviet Union, the CCP increased its domestic political legitimacy in the early stages o f its consolidation. In addition, CCP domestic propaganda was “used to convey

^ H o u n , To Change A Nation, p. 3. 24W . Phillips Davison, International Political Communication (NY: Praeger for the C ouncil on Foreign Relations, 1965), p. 41. ^ J o h n H . Kautsky, The Political Consequences o f Modernization (NY: Wiley & Sons, 1972) p. 174.

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instructions from the political leaders to the population, to provide information required by organizations carrying out governmental plans, to mobilize the masses to perform officially designated tasks, and to indoctrinate the citizenry in the ideology of the ruling group.”26 Domestic control was also facilitated by the use o f propaganda to strengthen “attachment to the basic institutional patterns and cultural traditions o f the society and deliberately and systematically [counteract] the very im portant existing deviant tendencies.”27 By imposing an “authorized way o f seeing the social world,” the CCP was helping to “construct the reality of that world”28 in which the Soviet U nion was identified as the Good. O f course the constant threat o f state violence helps in the acceptance of regime directives, but the construction o f a particular world vision has to depend first on participants in the community willing credence to the storyteller. W ithout an initial acceptance o f authority by the participants, the imposition o f State control is that much more difficult, since the power o f the propagandist is greater “in so far as the person [s] subject to it recognized the person who exercises it as authorized to do so.”29 The three major schools of Western propaganda analysis do not go beyond instrumental views o f propaganda. The classical school o f propaganda analysis, which, it will be remembered from chapter one, saw in the content o f propaganda a handle for critical social analysis, does not leave room for a people and a government bound together by the social link o f language working to convince themselves that a linguistic construct can become a new way o f life. Neither does communications research, in its quantitative analytical mode, see the normative attitudes towards representations of the world that are

^ D av iso n , International Political Communication, p. 96. ^ T a lc o tt Parsons, “Propaganda and Social Control” in Psychiatry, Vol. 5, no. 4, Nov. 1942, p. 569. 28 Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, p. 106. 29 Bourdicu, Language and Symbolic Power, p. 116.

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present in propaganda. And the neo-classical interpretation o f propaganda denies the appeal of a self-conscious attempt by the people and their government to become united in thought and action, as we saw in the Chinese case. The cynicism of Goebbels aside, Nazi propaganda approached the totality of mundane propaganda that Jacques Ellul feared. But it was Soviet and to a greater extent Chinese propaganda work that openly believed in the all-encompassing nature of propaganda at home. Immediate post-revolutionary enthusiasm created optimum conditions for the experiments in propaganda work that this dissertation examined. The prestige of the Soviet Union in 1949-1950 in China was at its peak. The Soviets, it seemed, had not only recently withstood and repelled the onslaught of Hitlerite Germany, but had also won the wars against both Germany and Japan. A new recently completed five-year plan in the Soviet economy successfully gained back all the industrial losses o f the war years. Soviet initiatives in the international arena were seen as encouraging peace for development while championing the cause of oppressed peoples. As the decade wore on, Soviet scientific and technological successes provided proof o f the earlier years’ pronouncements o f the superiority of socialism. The store of symbolic capital of the C.CP itself was also at a peak. It had just routed the Nationalists in a decades old civil war and repudiated the old international image o f China as the weak and corrupt “sick man of Asia.” The alliance with the Soviet Union brought instant respect and stature to new China. Added to these pictures were the images of successes in combatting the American arch-enemy in Korea and consolidating revolutionary gains at home. Imagining the future was an important task for Chinese propaganda in the 1950s. Taking advantage o f its store of symbolic capital, the CCP was able to present a picture about a Soviet present that inspired revolutionary hopes. In so doing, it involved its own members in a mission of persuasion. The first targets of persuasion were the Communist Party members themselves who were then instructed to engage constantly in propaganda work. As many interviewees suggested, and the CCP handbooks showed, propaganda was

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seen as an important way to contribute to national unity and instill a common sense of purpose. Didactic and educative in its function, Chinese propaganda work was governed by a set of principles and techniques which accorded with both the perceived scientific basis of the ruling ideology and traditional attitudes towards the written word found in Chinese history. As one interviewee noted, “propaganda is just a form o f education. It clarifies the situation to the masses while seeking truth from facts, it lets them understand and support the Party’s and the country’s policies and lines (luxian). In the fifties, it consistently recognized and encouraged our aspirations”30 But, by presenting the “ratified” vision o f China’s tomorrow, Chinese propaganda of the 1950s not only educated, informed and encouraged, it also indicated to outside observers a sense of China’s place in the world. Chinese propaganda, as defined in chapter one, involved its different audiences in a new way of thinking. In a more self-conscious and pervasive manner than even in the Soviet U nion, xuanchuan created a believable vision that audiences generally invested in and thus achieved a long-lasting effect on perceptions. Those effects were retained by many members o f the “propaganda-happy” generation of the immediate post-1949 era. As a continuing testament to the impact o f xuanchuan, many interviewees in 1991 held on to the shining visions of the Soviet economy, its foreign policy and o f Stalin (but not Khrushchev) that had been created in a different time.

^R espondent I-C, #5, researcher born in 1923.

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\

Ruan Ming, former cadre in the Propaganda Department and formersvice-chairman, Central Party school, theory research department. Cambridge, MA, 10/6/92, 10/22/92, 1/22/93 j

j

Ruan Ruoying, a secretary in the Propaganda Departm ent from 1S\52 1959. Cambridge, MA, 10/22/92. Wang Ruoshui, a former vice-editor o f the Renmin Ribao. Beijing! 5/19/91; Cambridge, MA, 2/24/93.

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