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Anna Louise Strong: Three Interviews with Chairman Mao Zedong

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Tracy B. Strong  and
Helene Keyssar
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Extract

Anna Louise Strong was part of the first generation of those westerners who reported extensively and sympathetically on socialist revolutions. Born in Nebraska in 1885, she obtained a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Chicago in 1908, became involved in the labour movement in Seattle where she helped organize the general strike in 1919 and went first to the Soviet Union in 1921 on the advice of Lincoln Steffens. She became during the 1920s and 1930s probably the best-known American journalist reporting on the domestic policies of the Soviet Union. Her reportage was unswervingly sympathetic – what doubts she had were hidden in letters to friends, in strained disavowals, in odd turns of phrase in her many articles and books.

Type
Research Article
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 103 , September 1985 , pp. 489 - 509
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1985

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References

1. The notes for these interviews and their sequential versions as Lu Dingyi vetted them are in the authors' possession.

2. The complete story of her life can be found in our book, Right in Her Soul: The Life of Anna Louise Strong (New York: Random House, 1984).Google Scholar

3. Anna Louise Strong (ALS) to Ming-chao, Tang, [Tang Mingzhao] 27 08 1969 (Beijing. Archives). The letter to Mao is also in the archives.Google Scholar

4. In fact, Chu Yuan (Qu Yuan) was never as neglected as ALS indicates.

5. In the notes Mao mentions The Pearl River near Canton and the Heilong Jiang. ALS remarks that he would be then in Russia. Mao looks at her as if receiving new information and says “Ah, you are quite right.” Mao's “swimming partner” was evidently Wang Renzhong, then Hubei First Party Secretary.

6. In her notes Anna Louise has the following exchange here: Anna Louise: “Like Mikoyan [who had just visited the U.S.]. Mao: “Oh no! Mikoyan talked politics. I would not talk any politics.”

7. The notes have here: Dubois says: “You have not suffered the disadvantages of this period as long as I have.” After Mao's comment about ten more years, Mao says then: “We very much hope that for ten years we will have no diplomatic relations with the United States and no trade. This will be very beneficial to us.”

8. In the notes Dubois is portrayed throughout as perturbed by Mao's apparent levity.

9. Mao was indeed referring to his son Mao Anqing by his first wife Yang Kaihui.

10. Note by ALS: Dubois later joined the Communist Party of the U.S.A. after he went to live in Ghana.

11. In the notes Mao adds: “Possibly our bombarding of Quemoy may have been a volunteer service to the Democrats. Just before the election Dulles tried to get a joint statement with Chiang which would show the Republican policy in a favorable light. But we bombarded Quemoy just then.”

12. At this point the notes have: “Glancing cheerfully around the table he [Mao] commented: ‘Now here we are, three different races, one Caucasian, two Negroes, some Chinese. But if we had a Pacific pact together, we'd have much better unity than they can because they each try to swallow each other’.”

13. These were Rewi Alley, Frank Coe, Israel Epstein, Solomon Adler and Sidney Rittenberg. ALS runs their nationalities together. Alley is a New Zealander; Adler, English and Epstein, a Chinese citizen.

14. [Note by ALS]: This book was first published in India under the title of “Dawn out of China”, 02, 1948Google Scholar, by the People's Publishing House, Bombay, later in France and finally in the United States it was rearranged, expanded and brought up to date for Doubleday & Co., New York, under the title, “The Chinese Conquer China” in 1949.Google Scholar [The history of this book is more complex and political than she lets on. See Right in Her Soul, Chapter 12.]

15. In her drafts of 1964 ALS also notes Mao as mentioning Liu Shaoqi first, before Zhou Enlai, He also mentioned Luo Ronghuan and Lu Dingyi among those few to have been to university. ALS omits their names for obvious reasons when she writes up this material in 1968.

16. [Note by ALS]: The Tsunyi Meeting established the leadership of Mao Tsetung and his line in the Party.

17. The notes have here: “if we ever reach it.”

18. The notes indicate that this speaker is ALS.

19. [Note by ALS]: This was the Congress in 1956 at which Khrushchev made the bitter attack on Stalin which disquieted all the Communist Parties of the world. I was in the United States at the time and well remember the shock felt by the American Party. I wrote my book, “The Stalin Era” to contest Khrushchev. The Chinese Party published at the time two articles: “Historical Experience of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat” and “More on the Historical Experiences of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat” which defended Stalin as a man who, though making many grave errors, was basically a sincere and effective revolutionary leader. This also had been my view. When I reached China in 1958 I learned that the Chinese had translated and published my book. [This is half accurate. See Right in Her Soul, pp 282–284].Google Scholar

20. [Note by ALS]: The Far Eastern Republic was a short-lived creation by Lenin, which enabled local patriots, distant from Moscow, to fight foreign invaders and local capitalists. It was at all times under Moscow's control, modified only by difficulties of distance. When these were removed by victory or persuasion, the Far Eastern Republic almost automatically re-joined the rest of the Soviet Union. Taiwan, of course, is an island under the hostile control of Chiang Kai-shek, backed by the military forces of the U.S.A. The contrast could not be more complete.

21. [Note by ALS]: This was an allusion to the Himalayan slopes claimed by Nehru as being on the Indian side of the notorious MacMahon Line, a line no Chinese government ever recognized and a territory that even Britain never held. See my chapter on the “Indian Border Clash,” [In the third volume of her autobiography that she never finished. See Right in Her Soul, pp 316–318.]Google Scholar

22. According to rough notes of ALS, Mao declares “The problem with the socialist countries is that Khrushchev wants them to stick to a one-sided economy producing to meet the needs of the Soviet Union.” Commenting that this cannot make them happy, he adds in a telling metaphor, “It's hard to be the son of a patriarchal father.” Mao continued: “Khrushchev has said that we have one pair of trousers for every five people in China, and sit around eating out of the same bowl of watery cabbage soup. According to that, we here should be wearing one and a half pairs of trousers between us. Actually, when he said that, his own economic situation was getting worse, and he said it for the Soviet people to show how well off they were. Now they are getting shorter on trousers and their soup is getting more watery. Actually, the livelihood of the people in the Soviet Union now is not much better than that of our own people.”

23. In the notes this is spoken of as “the fight against revisionism” and it is not at all clear that only the Soviets are meant. In the second version Mao's comment about the small role he is playing is deleted as one of Wang Tso-liang's “suggestions.” At about this time the group moves into lunch and the conversation does not have the flow that ALS gives it. At lunch Mao picks up the Khrushchev theme again and begins to rehearse the arguments he will later publish in Khrushchev's Phony Communism.

24. In the notes: The Russian looked surprised and Mao said: “You don't believe me? Get to some river and see yourself. Are the fish still swimming or not?”

25. In the notes: Mao complains that the CCP response to Soviet attacks was not printed in Pravda. Kang Sheng indicates that it was but only in the edition that goes to the embassies and for export. Someone jokes that the export product is always better. Mao responds: “Not necessarily. There were three distinguishing features of the things that Khrushchev exported to us – they were high in price, low in quality, and came in incomplete sets. They would say it was a complete set but we would find some key part missing which had to be supplied from the Soviet Union and which they would not tell us how to make ourselves. Please don't think I'm speaking for the capitalists, but between ourselves the capitalists are more trustworthy in trade dealings, because they have to be.”

26. The hotel was the Jin Jiang. Guests accompanying Anna Louise included all those mentioned supra fn. 13, David and Nancy Milton, and most of the English speaking foreign community in Beijing. Also present were the editor of the Peking Daily, and several members of the Propaganda Department of the Central Committee. David and Nancy Milton have published an account of this dinner in their The Wind Will Not Subside that is in substantial agreement with the account that ALS gives. According to Sidney Rittenberg Anna Louise was told that at first Mao would receive only her and the others would attend the banquet that Zhou Enlai was to give. He indicates that ALS demurred and insisted on all or none. Others present indicate that Mao wanted to give ALS and Frank Coe a private interview before the banquet and accuse Rittenberg of playing on ALS's fears to get her to insist that all of her friends be present all the time. See Right in Her Soul. pp. 331ff.Google Scholar

27. Rittenberg indicates that this exchange was in classical highly allusive and cryptic Chinese. He says that Mao added: “How many of you people smoke? Let the smokers raise their hand with a cigarette. To have a cigarette in hand will be taken as a sign of a smoker.” He then chuckles: “Well, it seems that in this too I am in the minority” and concluded by urging those present to do as he did and smoke.

28. According to some present, the group pressed Mao for his thoughts. He responded, again in classical diction: “I see that you have held a meeting in advance and have passed a resolution on how to handle me. It would have been nice to have had a divergent opinion.” He then looked over at the officials from the Propaganda Department in the corner and continued: “But since you all have such a firm front against me, I have no choice but to tell you what I think.”

29. In fact Anna Louise spent the next month in bed, exhausted, with an inhaler and under medication. She was not well enough to travel until January. It was the beginning of a slow decline that ended with her death in March 1970.