Date: 17 Feb 96 05:19:48 EST
From: "Chris, London" <100423.2040-AT-compuserve.com>
Subject: Blood guilt - China/Soviet Union


Jerry:
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What about all of the poor peasants killed in the collectivization drive?


Chris B:
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This remark was in an exchange in which Jerry claimed that supporters of Mao
had the blood of the millions who died under Stalin's leadership, on 
their hands.

Mao is on record as saying that judged by the experience of the Soviet
Union, collectivization needed to be handled carefully in China. The 
historical record is that it was, with much more speed and with very much 
less loss of life. There is a volume of work by Mao on his visits round the 
countryside in the early fifties on the concrete and psychological condition
of the peasantry with respect to collectivization.

This was one of the 20th century successes for socialism and an 
example of learning lessons, and combining theory with practice.

A less successful example I suggest was about handling contradictions
within the party. IMO there is a lot of evidence, though it needs to 
be collated, that Mao was consistently against solving political 
contradictions with loss of life if possible. Rectification and 
re-education campaigns were preferred to purges, and instead of the Gulag,
being sent to the countryside to work alongside peasants. 
This was part of the "Peoples Democratic Dictatorship".
The ambiguous nature of whether this was really re-education or punishment,
concealed how very oppressive and destructive this was in practice,
with accounts of suicides and tragedies that continue to be narrated.

IMO the problems with the Chinese revolution and Mao's culpability 
for them, built up from about 1956, and there was undoubtedly great loss
of life around the time of the Great Leap Forward through starvation, 
major injustices to honest comrades within the Chinese Party and 
upheaval during the Cultural Revolution.

These event, like the tragedies in the Soviet Union, especially in the 30's
need to be re-examined to learn lessons. 

Jerry seems to assume in effect total endorsement by the Chinese Party of the 
record of Stalin. Possibly Jerry only knows at best the statement on Stalin
published by the CPC at the time of the Polemic in the International 
Communist Movement, when the Chinese regarded the Soviet, and in particular
Krushchev's handling of the history of Stalin as one of many highly 
suspect matters.

In fact in 1956 or 1957 two articles were published in Peking Review called
"On the Historical Experience of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat" and 
"More on the Historical Experience of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat".
These were reasoned responses to Khrushchev's "secret speech" and 
specify quietly and in detail  a number of theoretical and practical
questions on which the Chinese Party had come to differ with Stalin.

Unfortunately I have mislaid my photocopy of these articles. If anyone 
has a copy or ideally could even start typing extracts of them into e-mail
I think they would be extremely valuable for the debate that is raging on the 
l*st about the history of the twentieth century.

If anyone is in a position to reply on these articles I would be grateful
if they could copy their letter to me personally too, in view of the
chaotic nature of mail getting through to the l*st at present.

Chris B
London 


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