Read Brothers in Arms Online

Authors: Odd Arne Westad

Tags: #Political Science, #International Relations, #General, #test

Brothers in Arms (45 page)

BOOK: Brothers in Arms
6.36Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads
page_123<br/>
Page 123
tion laws. They were supposed to revamp their labor laws in order to eliminate existing confusion in the system of wages, in particular, to liquidate wage leveling (
uravnilovka
) in the most important sectors and professions. Noting that exaggerations in labor norms had risen more quickly in New China than after the Russian Revolution, the Soviet advisers also suggested that the Chinese correct this.
We do not know yet from the evidence available if this process worked as Fedorenko described. If so, then the ease and directness of response would have astounded CPSU personnel, for they worked in a truly overstaffed, bureaucratic institution. According to the files, sometimes it took months for a CPSU CC department to respond to a simple letter.
The files also illuminate a third characteristic of party management: a fixation on security, which hampered simple communication between the countries and the people, and slowed work down. Those in China who were unfortunate enough to request something from the Soviets found out how time-consuming and difficult the process was. For instance, in April 1954 the Chinese Department of Propaganda and Agitation asked its embassy to request a copy of some speeches by three different heads of departments at the CPSU CC.

13
The speeches appeared to be quite ordinary in their content.
14

However, the inquiry generated several letters back and forth between Soviet bureaucracies for months, and in the end the Central Committee rejected the request. It said that the first two were merely intended to instruct local workers, that they contained materials only for internal use, and that there were no applications for the Chinese in them. The Central Committee said that the other speech requested, on literature, did not entirely develop the theme, only particular questions, and moreover, it was not typed. So it was not allowed to be sent either. Instead the Chinese were referred to official CPSU articles that had been published in the journals
Party Life
and
Communist.
The fear of divulging too much hampered the work of Soviet experts who were sent to work in "secret" or "closed" facilities, such as in the development of nuclear power. They experienced many difficulties and uncomfortable situations. A report filed to the Central Committee in 1957 stated that several teachers and educators who were sent in this capacity were never told what they should and should not disclose. Fearing the responsibility of revealing secrets, the report stated, they "doom themselves by remaining passive or saying what the Chinese already long ago knew from newspapers or even the Soviet press.''
15
Finally, the CPSU CC files reveal a myriad of problems that developed due to the party's habit of decentralized supervision. It seems that despite the strict procedures the Central Committee followed in selecting the advisors, checking that they had the correct "standing," and passing them through extensive secu-

 

page_124<br/>
Page 124
rity checks, once they were in China, its guidance of them all but ended, so there was no real direction where it really counted. The written record alludes to this problem, but it is very evident in the discussions with the actual advisors, which is why they become such an important source.
Finally, for the historian interested in the USSR and China, another possible source of information about the 1950s would seem to be the voluminous Soviet accounts that are available. During the Soviet period, China specialists and ex-advisors did write memoirs about their experiences in China, but they are difficult to use and not totally reliable. With the exception of a few, these accounts are cleaned of any detail and focus on celebrating the Soviet contribution to China.

16
Since Mikhail Gorbachev's time, a couple of brief versions of the workings of the Sino-Soviet relationship of the 1950s have appeared. However, they focus more on the relationship between Mao and Stalin than on the actual work of advisors.
17
The same is largely true of the available Chinese sources.
18

Interviews as Sources
The fall of communism not only opened archives but made it possible for researchers to talk to the actual participants in formerly secret events of Soviet history. I decided to interview people who had participated in the advisors' program because of my frustration with the Communist Party archives. Too much detail either is not recorded or simply not available to researchers, and I found it impossible to write a history of the program based on the archives alone.
Influenced by my close reading of the archival materials, I first chose to interview Ivan Vasil'evich Arkhipov,
19
who administered the Soviet Advisors' Program for most of its existence. Stalin himself selected Arkhipov to be the top economic advisor in China,
20
and in March 1950 Arkhipov began his association with the People's Republic.
21
The future head of the Soviet Advisors' Program spent almost a year in Beijing, then returned to Moscow as a deputy director of the Ministry of Ferrous Metallurgy until August 1953. After Stalin's death he was sent to China again, this time to direct the Soviet Union's expanded effort to assist in economic reconstruction.
22
Although talking with Arkhipov was fascinating because of his high status and his knowledge of the party leaders in both China and Russia, he told me no more than I learned by reading the CPSU files. He did not understand the nuts and bolts of the program, nor did he particularly think that the program should be examined as an aspect of the Sino-Soviet relationship. Therefore, I decided to interview those who actually had worked in China as advisors in the 1950s. I advertised in the newspapers
Pravda
and
Moskovskaya Pravda
in February 1993 and located hundreds of willing respondents. After screening all of them, I interviewed thirty. In order to achieve as representative a sample as possible, I

 

page_125<br/>
Page 125
selected them on the basis of their profession and length of time spent working in China.
Like the archival sources, these narratives also are somewhat flawed, if only because each person's experience in China was different and unique. The advanced age of the respondents must be taken into account, as must the normal human tendency to present oneself in the most positive light. The same may be said about their personal papers and memoirs, upon which I also rely to some extent.
As central as these advisors were to China's progress and development, it is odd that the CPSU files reveal so little information about them. After all, this organization was in charge of the program. Perhaps these data are contained in other, personal files that have not yet been declassified, but the lack of such information leaves a rather large gap in our understanding of the program. Who were they, how were they chosen at their respective ministries, what was their preparation for going, why did they go, how did they like the Chinese, and what was the relationship between the citizens of this fraternal friendship? For answers to these questions, I will refer to my extensive interviews of former advisors. The professions of these people vary greatly, and include such diverse specialties as biologist, engineer, diplomat, radio announcer, shipbuilder, academic, party cadre, interpreter, and doctor, to name a few.
The Party Summons
Most of the people who were sent to China to work were men in their thirty's and forty's, and nearly all were Russian by nationality. Some were allowed to take their families along and some were not. This appears to have depended on the status of the advisor. One respondent said that he took his twelve-year-old son and his wife to Harbin with him, but he was not permitted to take his daughter, because only children who were of primary school age were allowed.

23

Female Soviet advisors were a small minority of those sent, although many wives accompanied their husbands. Only a few spouses worked while in China. One advisor's wife worked at the Soviet consulate in Mukden, first as a librarian, then as an administrator. The advisor explained that they found her a job only because she was also a Communist Party member. Most wives were not party members and therefore did not work. He said, "At that time, it was like this: It wasn't important whether or not a person had a head on his shoulders, the important thing was, do you have a Party card?
24
According to almost all accounts, the CPSU was fully in charge of deciding who went to work in China in the 1950s, and the first criterion for any prospective advisor was party membership. It was the main qualification for getting a job abroad at that time. To this day, most of the advisors I interviewed felt that

 

page_126<br/>
Page 126
party membership needed to be the most important qualification. First, they insisted that party members could be trusted always. Second, as one said, "with a party member, you could request more sternly than with a nonparty person." Also, one of them explained, party membership was important in that it gave them double access at their jobs. He meant that they could interact not only with their technical counterparts but also with the Communist Party officials who ran the place as well.

25

Most advisors were summoned by the party organization at work. Often, especially if the person worked in a military-related field, he would be called in for an interview with the CPSU CC. It was a special moment, and most men could recall it in detail even forty years later. One military aviation engineer remembers being summoned there in September 1952. At the meeting, he was told that the CC wanted him to go to China to work in a military arsenal that the Soviets were helping to build in Shenyang. He noted that they did not give him the opportunity to turn the job down.
26
The man who served as the Beijing bureau chief for
Pravda
for nine years during the 1950s said that the process was begun by filling out a number of forms at work. Then the government did a careful background check on each person as well as his family and relatives. Only if the person passed all these checks was he called to the Central Committee for the meeting and assignment.
27
Another remembers being told that the party announced that it was looking for a person with experience and the right "standing." The person had to be a party member, and most important, he could not have any relatives abroad already. This advisor also felt as if he were given no choice but to go to China.
28
The party demanded and the members accepted.
Although many advisors mentioned that they were pressured into taking the job in China by the Communist Party, almost none of them regretted it later. For one thing, the party compensated its people well for their time abroad. Some claimed to have received at least five times their normal salaries. Much of it was saved for them in Moscow for the duration of their two-year stay. One respondent noted that being in China was wonderful, since there were never any goods available in Russia, neither before nor after the war.
29
In China, the advisors found special stores they could shop in with coupons. One adviser said that he made so much money that he could send a substantial amount of it to his daughter back home to live on.
Preparing for China
Despite the enormous attention the Soviet Communist Party paid to selecting the advisors, for the most part, the men were ill-prepared for what awaited them in China. They were not given reading materials about the situation in China,

 

page_127<br/>
Page 127
they knew little about Chinese history, politics, or even the revolution, and none was required to learn even rudimentary Chinese before going.
A few of them prepared by reading on their own. Dmitrii Krivozub, who was an academic, read Mao's articles on the dictatorship of the proletariat before he were. Most, however, were completely unprepared for what they encountered. Aleksandr Chudakov, who worked at a military arsenal in Shenyang, had the typical Soviet reaction to the Chinese people. He remembered thinking how dirty everybody was. He said, "They didn't even know what a bathhouse was." He recollects going to a rural area nearby, where each family "had around eight children," all of whom seemed to be naked, dirty, and snotty. His wife, upon seeing this, resolved to bring soap the next time and hand it out to them. She did this, and right in front of their eyes, they took the soap and began to eat it. ''They didn't know what soap was!" he said, shaking his head.
Another, upon arrival in the Manchurian countryside, said about the Chinese villagers: "I first thought that they all looked alike, that they were all very dirty. I guess that I had a very bad first impression. They were poor. They all ate out of the same pot."

30

Even those people who were sent to teach in Chinese educational institutions were poorly prepared. A report to the Central Committee of July 1957 noted this problem and suggested that in the future, the teachers should be told something about China before they arrived, such as what it was like and what sort of working conditions they would encounter. According to the report, the teachers being sent had not even read the summaries of work in China written by recently returned teachers.
31
This ignorance on the part of the Soviet advisers inevitably caused friction between the peoples of the two nations. It did not emerge publicly, though, until the early stages of the split, with the Soviet decision to cut back on the number of advisers in China. On September 6, 1958, the Soviets called a meeting with Deng Xiaoping, who at the time was general secretary of the CCP, to give him a letter from the CPSU about decreasing the number of Soviet specialists in China. During the course of the meeting, Deng mentioned that there had been problems due to the advisers' ignorance about internal conditions in China and the peculiarities of the CCP's politics. He said that if the remaining advisers (after some were pulled out) could be better informed, this would help them to avoid mistakes and more correctly carry out their work."
32
Who is in Charge Here?
If the Communist Party chose to send only its best, and screened them carefully, why and how could there be problems? Just as in its control over Soviet society, the Communist Party was best at administering decrees from above, but

 

BOOK: Brothers in Arms
6.36Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Through The Storm by Margot Bish
The Sharp Hook of Love by Sherry Jones
Extinct by Ike Hamill
Ms. Hempel Chronicles by Sarah Shun-lien Bynum
Chaos by Sarah Fine
Blik-0 1946 by 植松伸夫
The Great Altruist by Z. D. Robinson
Surrender to Me by James, Monica