Mao: The Unknown Story

But, in fact, Mao was singled out for special treatment—ill-treatment — precisely in relation to these “visitors.” Mao was eager to meet Communist leaders from other countries, and they were equally keen to meet him — the man who had just brought off a triumph that could be called the second October Revolution. But Stalin blocked Mao from getting together with any of them, except for meaningless exchanges with the lackluster Hungarian, Mátyás Rákosi. Mao asked to meet the Italian Communist chief Palmiro Togliatti, “but,” Mao told an Italian Communist delegation (after Stalin died), “Stalin managed, with a thousand stratagems, to deny me that.”

For the actual birthday celebration itself, on 21 December, Mao donned the obligatory mask, and newsreels record him applauding Stalin expansively. Stalin, for his part, appeared solicitous to Mao, whom he seated on his right on the platform, and Pravda reported that Mao was the only foreign speaker for whom the audience stood at the end of his speech. At the show that followed, Mao was greeted with an ovation “the like of which the Bolshoi had undoubtedly never seen,” Rákosi observed, with the audience chanting “Stalin, Mao Tse-tung!” Mao shouted back: “Long live Stalin! Glory belongs to Stalin!”

As soon as that was over, the next day, Mao demanded a meeting with Stalin. “I’m not here just for the birthday,” he exploded to Kovalev. “I’m here to do business!” Colorful language was used: “Am I here just to eat, shit and sleep?”

Of this trio of bodily functions, none was problem-free. On the food front, Mao vented his discontent on the fact that his hosts were delivering frozen fish, which he hated. “I will only eat live fish,” he told his staff. “Throw these back at them!” Shitting was a major problem, as Mao not only suffered from constipation, but could not adapt to the pedestal toilet, preferring to squat. And he did not like the soft Russian mattress, or the pillows: “How can you sleep on this?” he said, poking at the down-filled pillows. “Your head will disappear!” He had them swapped for his own, filled with buckwheat husks, and had the mattress replaced by wooden planks.

Mao saw Stalin two days later, on the 24th, but the Master declined to discuss his requests about building up China’s military power, and would only talk about the issue they had not touched on at their first meeting: Mao’s role vis-à-vis other Communist parties such as those in Vietnam, Japan and India. After probing Mao’s appetite for turf, Stalin went silent again for days, during which time Mao’s own birthday, his fifty-sixth, came along on 26 December, but went unmarked. Mao spent all his time cooped up in the dacha, dealing with domestic matters by cable. He said later that he made “an attempt to phone him [Stalin] in his apartment, but they told me Stalin is not at home, and recommended that I meet with Mikoyan. All this offended me …” Stalin rang Mao a few times, but the calls were brief and neither here nor there. Mao declined invitations to go sightseeing, saying he was not interested, and that he was in Moscow to work. If there was no work to do, then he would rather stay in the dacha and sleep. Mao was frustrated and furious; at times, to his close assistants, he appeared “desolate.”

It seems that Mao now decided to play “the West card” to prod Stalin into action. He let it be known, not least by speaking out loud in his bugged residence, that he was “prepared to do business with … Britain, Japan and America.” And contrary to what he had told Stalin upon his arrival in Moscow (that he was not going to “rush to be recognised” by Britain), talks went ahead with Britain which led to London recognizing Mao’s regime on 6 January 1950. The British press, meanwhile, reported that Mao had been put under house arrest by Stalin, and this “leak” could well have been planted by Mao’s men. It was “possible,” Mao later said, that this shift in policy towards the West helped “in Stalin’s change of position,” noting that real negotiations “began right after this.”

BY NEW YEAR’S DAY 1950, Stalin had made up his mind. On 2 January, Pravda ran an “interview” with Mao, which, Mao said sarcastically years later, Stalin had “drafted for me, acting as my secretary.” The text prepared by Stalin made it clear that Stalin was willing to sign a new treaty; to Mao this meant that Stalin was ready to deal with the key issue of turning China into a major military power. Mao now summoned Chou En-lai from Peking, along with his main industry and trade managers, to do the detailed negotiations, specifying that Chou must travel by train, not by plane, for safety reasons. Chou would have had to come in a Russian plane, and Mao was hinting that he was taking precautions.