Dealing with a "Matsadoon"

You might say that China is both close to us and far from us. It's close in that it's our next-door neighbor and shares a long border with our country. At the same time, China is far away in that the Chinese have little in common with our people.

[I remember when] Mao Tse-tung was in Moscow for Stalin's 70th birthday on Dec. 21, 1949. I came up from Kiev and ran into a secretary of the Moscow District party.

"Anything new?" I asked him.

"Yeah," he said, "we've got this Matsadoon in town."

"What the hell is a Matsadoon? You must mean Mao Tse-tung, don't you?"

"You know," he said, "that Chinaman."

During Mao's stay, Stalin would sometimes not lay eyes on him for days at a time, and since Stalin neither saw Mao nor ordered anyone else to entertain him, no one dared go see him. Rumors began reaching our ears that Mao was not at all happy, that he was under lock and key, and that everyone was ignoring him. Mao let it be known that if the situation continued, he would leave. When Stalin heard about Mao's complaints, I think he had another dinner for him. Stalin was anxious to create the impression that we were on the best of terms with Mao and firmly on the side of the Chinese people. Finally, the Chinese delegation returned to Peking.

During that period, much of the Kremlin's information about the Chinese came from Kao Rang, who was then the representative of the Chinese Politburo and the strongman in Manchuria. To win Mao's trust and friendship, Khrushchev says, Stalin gave Mao reports by the Soviet ambassador in Manchuria about his conversations with Kao, saying, "Here, you might be interested in these."

Kao Kang was put under house arrest, and later died. Khrushchev's opinion is that "most probably, Mao had him strangled or poisoned. Mao was capable of such things, just as Stalin was." Why did Stalin betray Kao Kang? Khrushchev's judgment is that the Soviet dictator figured that sooner or later Mao would have learned on his own that Kao Kang had been informing on him and, if that had happened, Mao could have accused Stalin of fomenting opposition to the Chinese government. "Stalin wanted to win Mao's trust and friendship, so he took reports about conversations with Kao Kang and handed them to Mao . . . Stalin decided to sacrifice Kao Kang and thereby earn Mao's trust."

During a 1954 visit to Peking, Khrushchev and his colleagues proposed that Chinese workers be sent to Siberia to help exploit its vast timber resources.

Mao's response to our proposal was typical of him--and indicative of what was to come. He really knew how to put us down. First, you have to imagine what Mao was like in person. He moved as calmly and slowly as a bear, swaying from side to side. He would look at you for a long time, then lower his eyes and begin talking in a relaxed, quiet voice:

"You know, Comrade Khrushchev, for years it's been a widely held view that because China is an underdeveloped and overpopulated country with widespread unemployment, it represents a good source of cheap labor. But you know, we Chinese find this attitude very offensive. Coming from you, it's rather embarrassing."

Obviously, Mao wanted to make us sorry we'd raised the question. At our next meeting I said, "Comrade Mao, we certainly had no intention of creating difficulties for you. We certainly don't insist on our proposition. If you feel it would damage China's national pride, then by all means forget we mentioned it. We'll make do with our workers."

[Later] the Chinese came back with a message to the effect that Mao was now willing to help us by accepting our original proposal.

We were sorry we'd ever suggested the idea, but since we'd been the first to propose the plan, we couldn't very well back down now that the Chinese had agreed. So, reluctantly, we decided to go through with a treaty and let the first batch of about 200,000 Chinese laborers come to work in Siberia. As soon as their time was up, we deliberately avoided initiating negotiations for any further treaties. However, the Chinese began pressing us to import more workers into Siberia, despite what Mao had said about resenting China's being used as a cheap labor pool.

At a later meeting with Mao, I apologized for having overestimated our need to import labor. We made sure that once the contracts for the Chinese in Siberia had expired, they weren't renewed; and the workers went home.

What had the Chinese been up to? I'll tell you: they wanted to occupy Siberia without war. They wanted to penetrate and take over the Siberian economy. They wanted to make sure the Chinese settlers in Siberia outnumbered Russians and people of other nationalities who lived there. In short, they wanted to make Siberia Chinese rather than Russian. It was a clever maneuver, but it didn't work.

Like Stalin, Mao never recognized his comrades as his equals. He treated the people around him like pieces of furniture, useful for the time being but expendable. When, in his opinion, a piece of furniture--or a comrade--became worn out, he would just throw it away and replace it.

As the preachers used to say, no one under the sun is immortal, and the hour will come when Mao Tse-tung will also have to depart from the political arena. A ray of sunshine will break through the clouds and show the Chinese people the way back to the path set for us by Marx and Lenin. Mao is too old to see that ray of sunshine himself, but no one lives forever. In the end, the time will come when China will return to a correct policy toward the U.S.S.R. and the other Socialist countries.

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