Voie: Syo Nowe February 17, 1967
MAO LABELS THE SOVIET GOVERNMENT "FASCIST"
By Joseph Hansen
The besieging of the Soviet embassy in Peking and the counterdemonstrations at the Chinese embassy in Moscow, along with the sharp exchange of protests between the two governments, have pushed Sino-Soviet relations to the breaking point. These incidents are all the more appalling since they occur at a time when maximum unity of the Communist countries and all the anti-imperialist forces is demanded to repel the aggres-— sion of the U.S. military machine in Southeast Asia.
Who is to blame for these disruptive deeds and how to explain their outbreak? To find the answer it is necessary to go back to the first incident which occurred on January 25. It was reported at length by Hsinhua News Agency. in a Moscow dispatch.
According to Hsinhua, "69 Chinese students returning from Europe were savagely beaten up by Soviet police and troops as they were laying wreaths at the Lenin mausoleum." Hsinhua characterized this as a "premeditated fascist atrocity."
"In accordance with the teachings of Chairman Mao Tse-tung, the great leader of the Chinese people," continued Hsinhua, "the Chinese students cherish profound revolutionary feelings towards Lenin, the great leader and teacher of proletarian revolution, Stalin, the great Marxist-Leninist, and the great Soviet people. They decided to lay wreaths at the tombs of Lenin and Stalin before they left Moscow. On one of the wreaths was written 'To V.I.lenin, great leader and teacher of proletarian revolution,' and on the other 'To J.V.Stalin, great Marxist-Leninist. '"
The students informed the Soviet authorities of their intentions and drove to the Red Square.
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"They were led into. the Red Square by a major of the Soviet armed forces and several police. Behind the backs of the Chinese students, several hundred troops, police guards and plainclothesmen had gathered. The students walked towards the Lenin mausoleum in perfect order and after laying the wreaths at its entrance took off their hats to observe a moment's silence. Then one of the students who was preparing to lead the rest in reading quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung was forcibly carried away by two Soviet policemen. The students refused to be cowed by the show of force and read in unison a quotation of Chairman Mao, the great leader of the Chinese people: 'The socialist system will eventually replace the capitalist: system; this is an objective law independent of man's will. However much the reactionaries try to hold back the wheel of history, sooner or later revolution will take place and will inevitably triumph.'
"They continued to read another passage which says: 'Stalin is the true friend of the cause of liberation of the Chinese people. No attempt to sow dissension, no lies and calumnies, can affect the Chinese people's whole-hearted love and respect for Stalin and our genuine friendship for the Soviet Union.'
"As they were reading the quotations, a Soviet major had started to thwart then, pushing and pulling the Chinese women students. Unruffled the students carried on. Then, when they began to sing the 'Internationale,' the Soviet major beckoned to the large number of armed police and plainclothesmen who had already taken up positions behind the Chinese students. At the given signal, they rushed forward, and having broken up the assembly of Chinese students, the Chinese embassy staff and the Hsinhua correspondent accompanying them, surrounded them individually. They then started to jostle and beat up the Chinese with their fists or weapons concealed in their palms. Blood gushed from the wounds inflicted on the heads and faces of many students as well as the Chinese embassy staff and Hsinhua correspondent.
"However, the students who were locked hand in hand continued singing the ‘Internationale' until they finished it. Some students were pushed to the ground and trampled by Soviet troops, police and plainclothesmen who tore their clothes, broke their spectacles and robbed them of their garments and other belongings. Many women students were struck down on the ground. Initial estimates show that more than thirty persons were injured, of whom about ten sustained injuries from which blood was gushing out and an-~ other four were in a serious state. Four persons passed out as a result of the severe beating. Huang Chien-tung, a student, who was kicked and injured in his ribs, found difficulty in breathing and his life is in danger."
The students were not the only target of the Soviet forces. "The Chinese embassy staff and the Hsinhua correspondent who accompanied the students were all badly beaten up. Some sustained facial injuries, while others sustained leg injuries which caused blood to flow."
According to Hsinhua, ordinary citizens in Moscow favored the students. "After the bloody incident began, many Soviet people rushed to the Red Square. Some shouted, ‘Don't beat, you must not beat them up!' Some warmly waved to the Chinese students as an expression of sympathy and support. Tears rolled down the cheeks of some of the older people."
The graphic account continues: "At this juncture, the unarmed Chinese students, locked hand in hand, shouted: ‘Long live the great Lenin!', 'Long live Leninism!', 'Long live Stalin!', ‘Long live the great leader Chairman Mao!', 'Down with modern revision-~ ism!' They recited aloud the quotation from Chairman Mao Tse-tung, 'Be resolute, fear no sacrifice and surmount every difficulty to win victory.' A Soviet police guard tried to trample underfoot a copy of the 'Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung' which was seized from the hands of the students. One of them rushed to pick it up from the ground at the risk of his life. He thought at the moment: 'I must defend the precious book of Chairman Mao at the risk of my life. I must not allow it to be soiled by the Soviet troops and police.'
"The Chinese students were beaten up by the Soviet troops and police for no less than half an hour under the command of a lieutenant-colonel and a major at the Red Square in Moscow. As a result, they failed even to have a glance at the remains of Lenin. What is more detestable is that the Soviet plainclothesmen went so far as to stamp on and destroy the wreath placed before Lenin. The wreath for Stalin was lost before it was laid at his tomb.
The Soviet account of the incident was briefer. According to this source, the Chinese students blocked the entrance to the mausoleum. The Russians waiting in a long queue to enter grew impatient. The police asked the students to proceed into the mauso- Leu; . The students paid no attention. Finally the police intervened to get them to move along.
Why the Kremlin did not permit the Chinese students, embassy staff members and Hsinhua correspondent to carry out whatever ritual they wished was not explained. Perhaps the Russians in the long queue would have displayed patience in the matter out of concern for diplomatic relations between the two countries and interest in avoiding any incident that might put a further strain on them. Perhaps the fault was with the cops. It appears to be a part of the police mentality in all countries to want the pavements kept clear of obstructions, particularly if it involves political dissidents.
Wherever the blame lay in Moscow, in Peking the incident was soon escalated into a major incident. The entire press kept up a drumfire day after day. Mass meetings were held. Demonstrations were organized at the Soviet embassy. A concerted campaign involving every city and town in China, all organizations and every prominent individual began rolling. Abroad every Chinese embassy and all Hsinhua correspondents joined in the chorus. Declarations from all these sources have filled the pages of the Chinese press ever since and constitute a good part of the material sent abroad by the Hsinhua News Agency. A series of new incidents of similar nature followed in rapid succession. These included an attack by the French police on Chinese students in Paris, an attack by members of the Soviet embassy on Chinese students in Baghdad, a similar incident in Belgrade. In Moscow a new incident flared when Soviet police allegedly raided a display case in the court of the Chinese embassy where photographs were displayed of the first incident. (It seems that by good fortune Chinese photographers happened to accompany the Chinese students when they appeared in Red Square with wreaths to honor the memory of Lenin and Stalin.)
The tone of the campaign being waged in the Chinese press has to be read to be appreciated. Here are some examples:
An editorial in the January 27 People's Daily was entitled, "Hit back hard at the violent provocations of the filthy Soviet revisionist swine!" The editorial termed the attack on the Chinese students a "fascist outrage." The following sentence shows the line: "How closely your atrocious, bloody suppression of the Chinese students resembles the atrocities committed by the Czar, by Hitler and by the Ku Klux Klan! This clearly shows that what you are practising in the Soviet Union is in fact the most reactionary and the most savage fascist dictatorship."
An article in the January 31 People's Daily said, "You Soviet revisionist pack of hyenas, prick up your ears and listen..." The article ended with, "Any clown who thinks he can stop the mighty torrent of China's great proletarian cultural revolution will be knocked flat by the surging waves. The wheels of history will flatten every last monster."
The term "fascist rule" in the Soviet Union is sometimes varied with "fascistlike" but the emphasis is on "fascist." One of the students involved in the incident in Moscow was quoted as saying at a rally staged at the railway station upon the arrival in Peking of the victims: "The bloody incident on Red Square has given us a profound lesson in class struggle. We saw with our own eyes the fascist brutalities of the modern revisionists and saw with our own eyes to what extent a socialist country had degenerated with the restoration of capitalism!"
li Peng-wang, a representative of the students who returned from Iraq, was reported by Hsinhua February 3 as having said the previous day, "The Soviet revisionist rogues were today's fascists."
The February 5 People's Daily ran a front-page account of the alleged raid on the display case in the courtyard of the Chinese embassy in Moscow. The feature was a statement by the embassy saying "that it was a shocking bloody incident plotted brazenly and in a planned way in the Chinese embassy compound by the Soviet government. It was an act of fascist barbarity unprecedented in the history of international relations." The term "Soviet fascist atrocity" was used by the embassy. On February 6, Hsinhua used the same adjectives in two headlines: "Japanese friends protest against Soviet fascist outrage," and "Chinese people indignant at new Soviet fascist outrage."
In Warsaw the Chinese embassy and other Chinese organizations in Poland sent a letter February 4 (reported in the February 6 Hsinhua) to the Chinese embassy and Hsinhua office in Moscow which stated: "Brezhnev, Kosygin and their ilk are so frantic, brutal and shameless that they are even worse than the Hitlerite gangsters in the past. All this shows that Mao Tse-tung's thought is matchlessly powerful and that the Soviet revisionist renegades are putting up a deathbed struggle as their days are numbered!"
To find a parallel for these epithets it is necessary to go back to the time when Hitler was moving toward power. In those days Stalin called the Social Democrats in Germany "social fascists," characterizing them and the Nazis as "twins." This was the justification which Stalin offered for refusing to seek a united front with the Social Democrats against the threat of German fascism, a policy that led to the disaster of
Hitler's triumph.
._ In the din of Peking's campaign around the "fascist outrage" committed by the "Soviet revisionist filthy swine" who extended their “blood-stained tentacles into the Chinese embassy," little could be found offering a rational explanation for this latest intensification of the Sino-Soviet conflict. It requires little analysis, however, to lay bare the main factors involved. :
_ If it be granted that the Kremlin was at fault in the original incident January 25 in Moscow and the subsequent raid on the display case in the courtyard of the Chinese embassy there, the incident in Iraq remains puzzling. How did it happen that Chinese students in Baghdad came to be attacked by “thugs"’ employed by the Soviet embassy there? According to Hsinhua, the Iraq incident occurred January 28. The report in the February 1 Hsinhua said merely that ten Chinese students studying in Iraq returned to Kwangchow January 31 "filled with immense indignation for the Soviet revisionists. These students had been brutally beaten up in Iraq by the embassy staff members of the Soviet revisionists leading clique." No details were given.
On February 2 Hsinhua reported that a "leading member of the All-China Students' Federation issued a statement" in Peking February 1 "strongly condemning the Soviet revisionists' fascist brutalities against the Chinese students studying in Iraq on January 28th when they went to the Soviet embassy to lodge their protest against the Soviet revisionists' persecution of Chinese students in Moscow." Again no details.
On February 1, Chang Wei-ping, the first secretary of the Chinese embassy in Baghdad gave a press conference in which he stated that the Chinese students went to the Soviet embassy to lodge a protest and that they were attacked "by over thirty Soviet revisionist hooligans led by A.S.Novkov, counsellor of the Soviet embassy."
The Hsinhua correspondent testified that he accompanied the students. and that his camera was grabbed away by the Soviet officials, the film exposed and-the camera smashed. The broken camera together with a smashed flashbulb were submitted as evidence along with hospital examination papers for five of the students and the correspondent. Hsinhua's man indignantly denied the Soviet account that a provocation was involved.
In Paris, the relationship of the Soviet embassy to the attack on the Chinese students, committed by the French police, remained at least indirect. The incident occurred on January 27 as a group of Chinese students who had been studying at Rennes passed through Paris on their way home to China.
They decided to lodge a protest at the Soviet embassy over the incident in Moscow. The group of 49 marched in orderly fashion, according to the January 31 Hsinhua, until they came within 200 meters of the Soviet embassy. There they were halted by the French police, who "unjustifiably demanded that they come again the next day."
After a parley of about ten minutes, more police arrived. "In all, about 200 of them launched a surprise raid on the Chinese students on the sidewalk from all three sides and arrested them by force. They brutally dragged the men students to the police van by their necks or ears and the women students by their hair or plaits.
"The students defended themselves heroically against great odds. After some 20 minutes of bitter struggle, they were all arrested. ;
"In the course of the struggle, all 49 of them, including 19 girls, were beaten up by the police. Some of them were wounded in the head and bled and others suffered internal injuries.
"In defiance of the Chinese students' noble feelings for Chairman Mao Tse-tung, the most respected and beloved leader of the Chinese people, the French policemen tore up his portraits and trampled underfoot copies of 'Quotations from Chairman Mao Tsetung,' both of which the Chinese students had carried with them."
The Belgrade incident occurred on January 20, that is, before the Moscow incident. It was not reported by Hsinhua, however, until January 29. In a dispatch bearing a Peking dateline, Hsinhua declared that while the Chinese embassy was giving a film reception, “a group of Yugoslav ruffians appeared before the embassy and completely smashed its news display case with tools they carried for the purpose. They then fled away in a hurry.
It appears that in the display case were "photos of Chairman Mao, the greatest, greatest leader of the Chinese people and the reddest, reddest red sun in their hearts..."
In all the varied circumstances of these different incidents, there is one common element ~- Chinese students who have abruptly terminated their studies abroad and who are returning to China. Another common element is the decision of all of them to engage in a militant demonstration involving Soviet officials.
The first question that arises is why are all of these Chinese students returning home simultaneously?
In the flood of words in the Chinese press about the incidents, not a single line has been reported by Hsinhua as to why they have terminated their studies and returned home. Two reasons can be deduced nonetheless. (1) Tens of millions of students in China are no longer attending classes, their schools having been closed down pending revision of the system of study so as to bring it into greater conformity with "Mao's thought." It is anomalous for Chinese students to remain abroad studying in school systems that are even farther from "Mao's thought." (2) The Chinese students studying abroad were nearly all selected by educators who were the first target of the "cultural revolution." Every single Chinese student abroad is thus a target of suspicion. Where do they line up in the factional struggle now convulsing the regime? Let them come home. and show where they stand; this is more important than their studies!
In the light of these considerations, it becomes clear why the Chinese students would prefer to get off the planes and trains with proof at hand of their devotion to "Mao's thought." The cleanest bill of health is obviously a set of bandages and a bloodstained copy of the "Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung" which can be waved at a rally. (This has actually been reported by Hsinhua. )
The same goes for all the personnel of the embassies, many of whom have likewise been recalled to China, and the correspondents of the Hsinhua News Agency. This explains the composition of the delegations sent to lay wreaths or to present protests, as well as the arrangement to have a photographer along.
No attempt at a Marxist justification for labeling the Soviet government as "fascist" has yet appeared in the Maoist foreign publications. The factional aim is clear enough, however.
First of all it is aimed at bolstering Mao's contention that a united front with the Soviet Union in supporting the Vietnamese people and opposing the U.S. escalation of the war is excluded. You can't have a united front with fascists!
Secondly, anyone who advocates such a united front at once becomes suspect. Why does he want a united front with fascists? Is he perhaps a fascist himself?
Thirdly, any ties with Soviet officials would at once become ties with fascists, and this could be applied retroactively in the example set by Stalin in handling oppositionists in the Soviet Union.
The logic of this pattern is, naturally, to break off all diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union. The break itself would become evidence of the correctness of the label, for obviously Mao would not break diplomatic relations unless the Soviet government was actually fascist. (The February 6 Hsinhua reports Vanguard, the organ of the Australian Communist party, as saying: "On all questions of world revolution, Mao Tsetung has been proved to be correcs. ")
In face of Johnson's escalation of the war in Vietnam, the incidents involving Chinese students in Moscow and other cities are thus seen to be of the most serious nature. The use to which Mao is turning them seriously injures the defense of the People's Republic of China, the entire camp of workers states, and the cause of the world socialist revolution as a whole.
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