materialism, since it is well known that society develops through a struggle of contradictions, the fight of the old with the new, the newborn with the obsolete. In our consciousness, said Mao Zedong, there are still too many vestiges of the past. It lags behind the constantly developing material world, behind everyday life.
|
In our countries, continued Mao Zedong, much has come from the former, capitalist society. Take, for example, the issue of the application of corporal punishments to the accused. For China too, this is not a new issue. Even in 1930 in the Red Army during interrogations, beatings were broadly applied. I, said Mao Zedong, at that time personally was a witness to how they beat up the accused. Already at that time a corresponding decision was made regarding a ban on corporal punishment. However, this decision was violated, and in Yanan, it is true, we tried not to allow unlawful executions. With the creation of the PRC we undertook a further straggle with this ugly manifestation.
|
It is entirely evident, continued Mao Zedong, that according to the logic of things during a beating the one who is being beaten begins to give false testimony, while the one who is conducting the interrogation accepts that testimony as truth. This and other vestiges which have come to us from the bourgeois past will still for a long time be preserved in the consciousness of people. A striving for pomposity, for ostentatiousness, for broad anniversary celebrations, this is also a vestige of the psychology of bourgeois man, since such customs and such psychology objectively could not arise among the poorest peasantry and the working class. The presence of these and other circumstances, said Mao Zedong, creates the conditions for the arising of those or other mistakes with which the Communist parties will have to deal.
|
I [Iudin] observed that the main reason for Stalin's mistakes was the cult of personality, bordering on deification.
|
Mao Zedong, having agreed with me, noted that Stalin's mistakes accumulated gradually, from small ones growing to huge ones. To crown all this, he did not acknowledge his own mistakes, although it is well known that it is characteristic of a person to make mistakes. Mao Zedong told how, reviewing Lenin's manuscripts, he had become convinced of the fact that even Lenin crossed out and rewrote some phrases or other in his own works. In conclusion to his characterization of Stalin, Mao Zedong once again stressed that Stalin had made mistakes not in everything, but on some certain issues.
|
Overall, he stressed that the materials from the congress made a strong impression on him. The spirit of criticism and self-criticism and the atmosphere which was created after the congress will help us, he said, to express our thoughts more freely on a range of issues. It is good that the CPSU [Communist Party of the Soviet Union] has posed all these issues. For us, said Mao Zedong, it would be difficult to take the initiative on this matter.
|
Mao Zedong declared that he proposes to continue in the future the exchange of opinions on these issues during Comrade Mikoyan's visit, and also at a convenient time with Comrades Khrushchev and Bulganin.
|
Then Mao Zedong got distracted from this topic and getting greatly carded away
|
|
