mobilization of the nation. After one of the recent rallies, a Peking resident wrote (in a private letter seen by the author): "The impression one had was of the power and strength of the people militant." Another story points to a vital element in the whole atmosphere of the Cultural Revolution: A proCommunist Peking resident recently received a complaint from a European visitor that it was terrible that the Chinese people should be "all of one mind." He replied that "if she lived in a city threatened by missiles from hundreds of enemy bases, she would be glad that the people were of one mind and wanting to stand together." " This resident, was, of course, defending the Cultural Revolution, but the argument he used significantly reflected the siege mentality prevailing in late 1966.

Several Chinese pronouncements, notably Mao's Army Day message of August 1, 1966, and an editorial in Jen-min Jih-pao of the same day, have placed new emphasis on the idea of "Everyone a soldier." Reminiscent of the vision of the supercession of the division of labor in The German Ideology, this concept requires, among other things, that every Chinese citizen be conversant with military affairs, so that the whole country will be an aspect, as it were, of the PLA. China's three nuclear tests during 1966 have also been firmly woven into the fabric of the Cultural Revolution, and in October the Chinese masses were shown a film on nuclear warfare which essentially carried the message that survival of a nuclear attack was perfectly possible if the right precautions were taken.12 "Sturdy Pines" of the PLA like Lei Feng, who died fighting against "imperialism," are being held up as appropriate heroes to be emulated. Among other more concrete signs of war preparation during 1966, it may be mentioned that China bought at least 40,000 tons of copper in the first eleven months of 1966, as compared with a 20,000-ton yearly average over the previous five years; and at least 20,000 tons of zinc in the first nine months of 1966, compared to 10,000 tons a year previously (cartridges are 70 percent copper, 30 percent zinc.) **

Chinese Statements

43

44

Fourth, the dominant elements in the CCP leadership have explicitly stated that an aim of the Cul

tural Revolution is to prepare the nation for possible war with the United States. "Good preparatory work for smashing the US imperialist war of aggression" requires study of the works of Mao, Chiehfang Chün Pao wrote on June 6, 1966. “The great proletarian cultural revolution now under way in China is the biggest and best method of preparing against war," declared Jen-min Jih-pao on September 17. Foreign Minister Chen Yi has made many similar declarations, notably on September 6 and October 24, 1966. The vast December 18 rally in Peking, summoned to protest the December 13 and 14 bombings in North Vietnam (which apparently resulted in damage to the Chinese Embassy in Hanoi) made the link with Vietnam more explicit than ever before. "The great proletarian cultural revolution," said the declaration adopted at the rally, "is the most fundamental way for the Chinese people to make preparations against war so that they can. . aid the Vietnamese people and oppose US. . . expansion of its war of aggression.'

99 45

It is already well known that at least since 1958 struggles have arisen within the CCP over questions of national defense, often with the implication that the losers were "revisionists." Late in 1966 such differences were referred to in connection with the Vietnam war. "On the question of the attitude [to be taken] towards the Vietnamese people's war against US aggression and for national salvation," Chen Yi said on December 18, "there has all along been a struggle between two lines. One is the line. of resolutely supporting the Vietnamese people in the fight to the end to drive the US aggressors out of Vietnam. The other is the line of . . . betrayal. . . [which would allow the US] to continue its forcible occupation of southern Vietnam and perpetuate the division of Vietnam." " It seems that the "incorrect" line is held not only by Moscow but also by some elements in the CCP, and that these are among the "freaks and monsters" which the Cultural Revolution is designed to sweep away.

.

Resemblance With the Past

46

Fifth, there is a striking resemblance between the ideology of the Cultural Revolution and the ideology set forth in previous periods of external danger and external attack. For example, the 'Sixteen Points" on the Cultural Revolution

41 Eastern Horizon, Dec. 1966, p. 31.

42 China News Summary, Oct. 6, 1966. 43 Ibid., Oct. 13, 1966.

44 The Economist (London), Dec. 3, 1966.

45 Peking Review, Dec. 23, 1966, p. 15.

46 Ibid., p. 14.

47

adopted by the August 1966 Central Committee meeting resemble Mao's "Policies, Measures and Perspectives for Resisting the Japanese Invasion,' of July 1937: "Mobilize the whole people" (1937); "Dare boldly to arouse the masses" (1966). "Give the people freedom to express their patriotism" (1937); “In the great proletarian cultural revolution, the only method is for the masses to liberate themselves" (1966). "There can be no victory in a national war without reliance on the great masses of the people" (1937); "The outcome of this great cultural revolution will be determined by whether the party leadership does or does not dare boldly to arouse the masses. .. Trust the masses, rely on them and respect their initiative" (1966).

In the PLA, too, similar resemblances abound. The orders and slogans issued during the August 1966 PLA anniversary celebrations, for instance, might well have been plucked from the year 1941 or 1942. Earlier patterns of wartime cultural activity have also been held up for emulation. During the August Central Committee meeting, there was an exhibition illustrating the history of the World War II "Anti-Japanese Military and Political University" in Yenan," coupled with an appeal in Jenmin Jih-pao (August 11) for the establishment of new institutions patterned after the Anti-Japanese University. Similar ideological parallels can also be found between the Cultural Revolution of 1966 and the "Resist America, Aid Korea" campaign of the Korean War period and, to a lesser extent, the line taken during the Taiwan Straits crisis of 1958.

Some Further Observations

Many in the West have questioned how the turmoil which the Cultural Revolution promised to create could possibly have been expected to promote the unity which readiness for war requires. Of course, we do not know whether Mao expected as much opposition as has developed. It is difficult even to be sure how widespread the turmoil has been, since many of the reports are unconfirmed and many are couched in abstract ideological language. It does seem that some of the turmoil has been deliberately provoked by the Maoists. For

47 The following six citations are alternately from Mao Tsetung, Selected Works, Vol. II (in English; Peking, 1965), p. 17; and "Decisions of the Central Committee of the CCP concerning the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution", in Peking Review, Aug. 12, 1966, pp. 7-8.

48 Issues and Studies (Taipei), August 1966, p. 9.

49

example, the extension of the Cultural Revolution to industry, heralded by the suspension of the trade union organization on December 27, was apparently a calculated step. It could have been a desperation move, but it is more likely to have been a move based on reasonable confidence that the Cultural Revolution was in control. It is not impossible, in other words, that the turmoil is actually serving a Maoist purpose. Peking believes that these witchhunting campaigns do unite the country. "Destruction comes first, and construction comes in the course of destruction" 50-such is one of the fundamental doctrines of Maoist theology.

The thought of Mao is regarded as a "monster detector" 51 for flushing out those who are unsound. Communist dictatorships have always tended to discipline people for sins of omission as well as of commission, as a method of strengthening social unity. The "thought of Mao" is the present weapon for achieving compulsory enthusiasm. We need not assume that the Peking leadership believes all the verbiage that is spread abroad. They probably do not talk to each other in the language of the Peking Review, any more than Catholic Cardinals talk to each other in the Latin chants of the mass. "There is no 'ism' in the world that transcends utilitarian considerations," Mao has written 52-and Maoism is no exception. It has served a rational function effectively in past struggles, and it is now being extravagantly reinvoked for a new struggle.

As a means of girding China's loins for war, the Cultural Revolution accords with the understanding Mao has of how to fight a class foe who comes from outside. It is noted repeatedly that the Paris Commune fell, and the Hungarian socialist system very nearly fell, through the twin factors of ideological unsoundness and disunity within the revolutionary ranks and armed assault by enemies. "We must never, never forget these historical lessons paid for in blood," warned Chieh-fang Chün Pao (June 6, 1966).

Soviet revolution therefore remains incomplete. "Imperialism" at the gate is putting the Chinese revolution to the test; China will either win by the Maoist method of revolutionizing Chinese man himself, or fail and revert to "capitalism." There is no reason to think that China will rashly provoke battle with the United States, and several to think that she will not. But if the war in Vietnam expands much further, I believe the chances are that China will feel compelled to intervene, as she did in Korea. For the Chinese Communist leaders believe that the threat at the gate, linked as it is in their minds with the dreaded class threat to the revolution, points a dagger at the heart of all that China has struggled for since the Opium Wars.

53

It has been suggested that those in the CCP who do not share the Maoist vision of how to meet the current threat are both on the "left" and the "right" of Mao, with Lo Jui-ch'ing as one of the "leftists" or "hardliners." " These terms may be misleading. Lo Jui-ch'ing's position is perhaps not so much "left adventurist" as it is one of orthodox, prudent military thinking which favors having China prepare for war much as other great states do. The "rightists" or "softliners" apparently have also advocated a "commonsense" approach to defending the country, that is, one placing considerable reliance on the might of the USSR. It may be that both positions are not so much positions to the “left” and “right" of Mao as simply varieties of disbelief in the Maoist vision of putting politics first, analyzing international relations in strictly class terms, and hence regarding the purity of the Chinese revolution as its best defense against all possible enemies, within and without. In other words, they are positions defined in terms of skepticism towards the Maoist vision. It would probably be a mistake to interpret the massive confidence which Mao has in the power and quality of the Chinese revolution and the Chinese masses as in any sense a "soft" or "dovelike" perspective on international relations. Nevertheless, one can appreciate how it could appear to be in the eyes of "unbelievers" within the CCP-a kind of risky romanticism.

Mao's way of combatting "imperialism" is and always has been different from the Soviet way. It is a way that is more integral to Mao's understand

53 The reasons why China has not so far intervened in Vietnam and the future possibilities of her intervention are touched upon in my "China and Vietnam," The New Republic, Oct. 29, 1966.

54 In a penetrating analysis by Franz Schurmann, “What is Happening in China?", The New York Review of Books, Oct. 20, 1966, p. 24.

ing of building socialism within China than has been true in the case of the Soviet leaders, and the difference stems from the historical fact that the problem of “imperialism” was originally, and has continued to be, a more immediate one for the Chinese. Chinese. Hence, perhaps, the eternal childhood of the Chinese revolution. Hence the siege mentality: a fortress is necessarily isolated, and China is both of those things today.

55

Hence, too, the increasing "offense" that the Chinese revolution causes to those abroad whose own "non-Chinese" hopes and emotions are invested in the Chinese experiment-who fondly believe China can be a model for other nations. There were even signs in 1966 that the pro-CCP foreign elements resident in or commuting to China have felt themselves a little bit cut off by the shrill "Chineseness" of the Cultural Revolution. "Making foreign things serve China" is a current cry." It may be that the CCP is less interested in the rest of the world than we often fear and imagine. In the timeless haze of Peking, perhaps the Middle Kingdom is sufficient, and perhaps it matters more that foreigners come to bless than that they return to spark revolution in their own uncomprehending lands. Comrade Hill of Australia, unknown in Melbourne, but a celebrity in the world as seen from Peking and No. 1 guest at the 1966 National Day celebrations, is a kind of figment of the Maoist imagination-designed more to be an ornament than an agent. A whole generation of leftwing intellectuals drank deep at the fountains of Stalinism, only to spit it all out again when they discovered that foreign admirers can never really stand in solidarity with a great revolution that is not their own. The Cultural Revolution is perhaps teaching that same lesson to another generation of left-wing intellectuals, the "vicarious Chinamen"

of our time.

But ultimately the Cultural Revolution can rightly be measured only by what it does, or does not do, for China. The Red Guards harass the people of China, no one else. Mao still quests impatiently for Communist community, built his way. Westerners, even most Western Communists, smile (if they do not curse) at this, for the Occidental quest for a community to replace liberal individualism has generally seemed to threaten more than it promised. But has not the 19th century taught us that China is not to be weighed on a Western scale? Europe and China are yet two worlds.

55 Peking Review, Nov. 4, 1966, p. 33.

ticularly the balance sheet of the ten years of Kadar's leadership, can be understood outside this context. Paradoxical as it may seem, the October tragedy of 1956 became an asset as well as a liability for the present regime. The profound disappointment with the West and the widespread political apathy which engulfed the population after the crushing of the revolt have contributed perhaps even more to the consolidation of the institutional framework of the Communist regime than the actual rooting out of the "counterrevolutionaries."

A high-ranking Communist functionary recently explained to the author in Budapest, "we both, the party and the non-Communist population, have become realists.

This tacit mutual understand

ing of the limits beyond which there can be no maneuverability has provided the leadership with a base from which it attempts to bridge the gap between the non-Communist masses and the regime. The strategy was introduced in 1957-58, and it has been on the whole more successful than one would have expected in the dark days following the Soviet intervention. But it has not solved the dilemma of how to grant a modicum of freedom and economic satisfaction to the population without stimulating popular pressures for real liberalization and an end to the party's monopoly of power. The shifts in Kadar's approach to this basic dilemma have been inextricably bound up with the impact of the second destalinization campaign and the ramifications of the Sino-Soviet conflict on the one hand and with the relative strength of those "leftists" and dogmatists in the party who played a key role in the rebuilding of the Communist power apparatus on the other.

Wooing the Masses

The change in the psychological climate of the country which produced a period of mutual accommodation between the regime and the people actually began in 1959-1960. Despite the disastrous collectivization campaigns between December 1958 and March 1962 the emphasis in the relationship between the party and the population has shifted from coercion to persuasion, from threatening the "suspects" to wooing the "passive." The 22nd CPSU Congress, the evolving "special relationship" between Janos Kadar and a victorious Nikita Khrushchev, and the expulsion of the old Rakosi leadership from the party in August 1962-a symbolic act for many Hungarians-provided a powerful impulse toward satisfying some of the basic

aspirations of the population. A noticeable change in Kadar's political style, greater responsiveness to public opinion and peripheral concessions to "the consumer" unquestionably produced a certain relaxation of tension.

None of these concessions or attempts to improve the party image has impaired the party's power, however, nor do they herald the dawn of a “liberal era." Nevertheless one should not overlook the political influence and psychological significance of changes such as a certain freedom of movement, the striking increase, by Hungarian standards, in consumer durables (e.g., the threefold increase in private automobiles since 1960 to 100,000 in 1965), and the influx of foreign tourists including the return of many Hungarian refugees.' In many instances, the principle that non-Communists can hold important managerial positions has been translated into reality. Trained administrators have to some extent replaced old party cadres in the managerial bureaucracy. Ability and academic performance rather than class origin have by and large become the conditions for university admission. Finally, private initiative has been encouraged in agriculture, commerce and small industries.2 This""soft" line yielded its tangible fruits in October 1964 after the fall of Khrushchev, when Kadar, the very symbol of tyranny and treason in 1956, was generally regarded as the guarantee against a return to repression.

As time has shown, however, the population's willingness to come to terms with the regime did not imply any unconditional popular support, for no real broadening of the political basis of the political system had taken place. A few months after Khrushchev's fall, when the Hungarian party leadership admitted that it had been living on borrowed time and announced an austerity program, the popular mood changed from toleration to one of

99

1 The number of Hungarians travelling to the West rose from 16,000 in 1958 to 165,000 in 1965. During January-September 1966, 2.6 million foreign tourists (half of them transit travellers) and 260,000 cars entered Hungary. Over 70,000 tourists of Hungarian origin, one-third of them "October refugees," visited the country in 1966. Under the terms of the 1963 amnesty, refugees have been pardoned provided they had not committed "serious crimes" prior to their flight. (Nepszabadsag, Jan. 28 and Feb. 3, 1967.)

2 There are about 70,000 private shopkeepers and artisans. Private plots of the collective farmers and the remaining private farmers (three percent) account for 13 percent of the arable land, 60 percent of the orchards, 50 percent of the cattle and pigs and 90 percent of the poultry. According to Vice Premier Lajos Feher (Nepszabadsag April 8, 1966), private plots account for 23.4 percent of total agricultural production. In his speech at the party Congress, Kadar and other leaders explicitly acknowledged the "usefulness and necessity" of small private enterpreneurs in industry and retail trade as well as the importance of the private plots. (Nepszabadsag Nov. 29, Dec. 3, 1966.)