New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2013, c2012. xix, 755 pp., [16] pp. of plates. (Maps, illus.) US$20.00, paper. ISBN 978-1-4516-5448-6.
Mao: The Real Story is a well-written comprehensive history of the life and times of Mao Zedong. The book presents an alternative to the one-sided polemic of Mao: The Unknown Story by Jung Zhang and Jan Halliday.
The authors claim a new thesis, namely that “Mao was a faithful follower of Stalin who took pains to reassure the Boss of his loyalty and who dared to deviate from the Soviet model only after Stalin’s death”(4). In fact, a number of scholars have discussed the influence of Stalin on Mao. That having been said, Pantsov and Levine’s exhaustive study of Russian archives fleshes out details of the Mao saga not reported in earlier English-language biographies. The authors present everything from new information about the future Chairman’s father to observations of Mao made by various Soviet officials in the 1930s, 1940s and beyond. They also show how little Mao relied on the actual peasantry, recruiting an army mostly from Hakka fringe elements and what Marx would have called a rural lumpenproletariat.
Stalin had no problem with this and “[s]tarting in the late 1920s, Stalin’s Comintern began to support Mao and even periodically to rise to his defense when other CCP leaders criticized the obstinate Hunanese”(236–237). By 1930, Soviet publications were writing up Mao and Zhu De as important international revolutionary figures “well-known outside of China” (255). Stalin even made it clear that Mao was under his protection and should not be touched. By 1934, the Soviets were publishing Russian editions of Mao’s works and short biographies of him.
As a result of his close connection to Stalin, it was only after the Soviet leader died in 1953 that Mao felt free to become a Maoist. Or, as Mao himself put it, an “adventurist” who would no longer play second fiddle to Soviet leaders. According to the authors’ speculations, Mao’s critical and sometimes rude behaviour towards Khrushchev was a result of Mao’s attempts to show his own greatness and take revenge for what he had endured under Stalin (445–446).
Whether this conjecture about Mao’s inner psyche is true or not, the authors make it clear that when Mao began to abandon Soviet policies and take China further to the left in the late 1950s, he was not the only one pulling China in this direction. In January 1958, Liu Shaoqi and Zhou Enlai, supposedly at least in part to please the boss, came up with the word commune and got the development of the ultimately disastrous giant co-ops of the Great Leap Forward going.
But the authors explain that the problems of the Great Leap were not simply a result of the government’s actions. The disastrous consequences of the Leap were also brought on by one of the worst droughts ever to sweep China. This needs elaboration. In recent years, a number of scholars have questioned the severity of this drought and laid more of the blame for the Great Leap at Mao’s feet, a point the authors don’t mention.
The book also contains interesting new information garnered from Russian sources on the Cultural Revolution. It is, however, a shame the authors didn’t take more of an opportunity to look at how the Cultural Revolution broke up the Stalinist system in China and freed the country for the economic reforms that followed Mao’s death.
The book concludes that although “Mao’s crimes against humanity are no less terrible than the evil deeds of other twentieth century dictators … he did not have plans to exterminate millions of people on purpose.” Moreover, “he followed the principle of ‘cure the illness to save the patient … He neither killed Bo Gu, nor Zhou Enlai, nor Ren Bishi, nor Zhang Guotao, nor even Wang Ming …[H]e forced them to ‘lose face’ but kept them in power” (575).
The authors argue that Mao kept many officials with whom he disagreed in a position where they were able enact the reforms made after Mao died. Pantsov and Levine show that for all his “adventurist” proclivities, Mao was generally careful to balance radicals in his government with reformers.
The authors seem to have taken a similarly balanced approach in regard to the sources they used. People as diverse as Mao’s grandson and Li Lisan’s daughter were among the many they interviewed. The contributions of this wide-ranging group help make the book a valuable resource.
Lee Feigon
Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow, Washington, DC, USA