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Soviet Influence in China Reexamined: Past and Present
Organizer: Minglang Zhou, Dickinson College
Chair and Discussant: Thomas P. Bernstein, Columbia University
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, more materials on Sino-Soviet relationship have become available. Meanwhile China has reacted both positively and negatively to the Soviet fall. This situation raises two essential questions: “Is there any new light on the Sino-Soviet relationship in China?” and “How does the legacy left behind by that relationship fare in a globalizing China?”. From multidisciplinary perspectives, this panel’s four presenters attempt to answer these two questions by reexamining this history and investigating its current consequences. Past: Reviewing new Chinese scholarship, STIFFLER shows that the Sino-Soviet Friendship Treaty was in most respects a diplomatic victory for Mao and the CCP’s ambitious modernization plans, contrary to most Western scholars’ views. Substantiated by interviews with veteran CCP members, LI demonstrates the role played by the Soviet experts and the evolutionary stages (devotion, doubts, and disillusionment) experienced by CCP members in instilling Stalinism in the 1950s. Present: Examining the PRC’s legislation, ZHOU illustrates how China replaces the Soviet multinational state-building model with a new one-nation-with-diversity model, responding to the Soviet collapse, and how this new model moderates minority rights in China.
Socialist Brotherhood or Great-Power Chauvinism: Reexamining the 1950 Sino-Soviet Friendship, Alliance, and Mutual Assistance Treaty
Douglas A. Stiffler, Juniata College
Western scholarship on the 1950s Sino-Soviet Treaty has tended to see in the Treaty's negotiation and provisions evidence of the enmity that later brought about the Sino-Soviet Split. It is true that the negotiation process was protracted, that Mao did not get everything he wanted from Stalin, and that there were instances of miscommunication and misunderstanding. Recent Chinese scholarship on the Treaty negotiation process, its provisions, and Mao's pronouncements in the mid-1950s regarding Stalin and the Soviet Union in the 1950s suggest that Western scholars have over-simplified the complex and ever-changing Sino-Soviet relationship. This paper will show that, at the time, the Treaty was in most respects a diplomatic victory for Mao and for the Party's ambitious modernization plans. Mao's negative statements on the Treaty from the mid-1950s onward are not to be taken at face value, yet they have decisively influenced a generation of Western scholars trying to probe the roots of the Sino-Soviet split.
Instilling Stalinism in CCP Party Members in the 1950s
Hua-Yu Li, Oregon State University
China experienced a dramatic Stalinist ideological transformation under Mao. Many instruments were utilized to instill Stalinist ideas in young cadres. In this talk, I analyze the profound impact a single Stalinist text had on the thinking and actions of young party members in the 1950s. The Stalinist text is usually referred to simply as the Short Course, in place of its full title, Short Course of the History of the All-Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik). Between 1938 and 1956, before de-Stalinization in the Soviet Union, the book was viewed in the communist world as the encyclopedia of Marxism. In China, however, the book continued to be important even after 1956, until the 1970s. Drawing upon the rich personal stories of my interviewees, I describe the social, political, and intellectual context in which they studied the book. I pay special attention to the role played by Soviet experts in China in the 1950s in disseminating Stalin’s approaches to party history and to theory that endured in China well into the reform years. I present the evolutionary stages my interviewees passed through: from devotion to the Stalinist ideas expressed in the book, through growing doubts concerning some of the ideas expressed there, to eventual disillusionment with these ideas during or after the Cultural Revolution. Some of my interviewees, however, still speak fondly of some of these Stalinist ideas even today.
Fate of the Soviet Model of Multinational State-Building in China
Minglang Zhou, Dickinson College
The Soviet model of multinational state-building is considered the blueprint for China to handle the national question (Connor 1984; Dreyer 1976, 2006). However, responding to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, China has replaced the Soviet model with its “one-nation-with-diversity’ model (duoyuan yiti). In this paper I will compare the two models and analyze the new model’s impact on China’s minorities. China adopted the Soviet model by constitutionally endorsing three basic doctrines: equality of all nationalities, national autonomy, and equality of all minority/national languages. These doctrines used to be practiced ideally as equality for minorities as PRC citizens and CCP members, a system of territorial autonomy, and freedom of minority language use and development. Since the early 1990s, China has adopted the one-nation-with-diversity model, which assumes an inclusive Chinese nation consisting of various ethnic groups – a two level conceptual structure (instead of the Soviet’s one level) that allows more room for identity reconciliation. The adoption of this model is seen in a series of policy changes, including amendments of exiting legislation and enactments of new legislation. The new model still endorses the three doctrines, but it downgrades minorities’ political equality within the CCP, moderates the political rights of territorial autonomy while increasing its economic rights, and maintains freedom of minority languages’ use whereas restraining their development. It remains to be seen whether this Chinese model is superior to the Soviet one in handling China’s national question in globalization.