Mao: The Unknown Story

Meanwhile, Mao kept on bombarding Stalin with requests relating to arms industries. A blockbuster eight-page cable on 17 December 1952 bluntly demanded of Stalin: “Please could the Soviet government satisfy our arms order for war in Korea in 1953, and our orders for arms industries.” Prefaced to this was Mao’s vision for the war: “in the next phase (suppose one year), it will become more intense.” As an added inducement to Stalin to cough up, Mao offered to carry Kim’s bankrupt state, informing Stalin that Peking would subsidize Pyongyang for three years — to the tune of US$60 million p.a., which happened to be exactly the amount Stalin had “lent” to Mao in February 1950; but, per capita, fifty times the amount Stalin had been willing to advance — and from a much poorer country. And, unlike Stalin’s loan, Mao’s to Kim carried no interest. A few weeks later, in January 1953, Mao put in another large request for his navy. Stalin said he would send the armaments requested, and approved Mao’s fleet taking part in naval operations on the high seas for the first time, but he firmly declined to meet Mao’s demands about arms industries.

AT THIS POINT, the armistice talks had long been in recess, while heavy fighting had continued. On 2 February 1953 the new US president, Eisenhower, suggested in his State of the Union address that he might use the atomic bomb on China. This threat was actually music to Mao’s ears, as he now had an excuse to ask Stalin for what he wanted most: nuclear weapons.

Ever since the first Bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima in 1945, Mao had longed to possess one. One of his economic managers, Bo Yi-bo, recalled that all through the early 1950s, “at all meetings and on all occasions, Chairman Mao would talk about the fact that we had no atom bombs. He talked and talked. Chairman Mao was really anxious!” Mao successfully concealed this hankering from the public, affecting instead an image of nonchalant contempt for atomic weapons, and pretending that he preferred to rely on “the people,” a position made famous by his remark in 1946 that the atom bomb was “a paper tiger.”

As soon as Eisenhower made his remarks about possibly using the Bomb, Mao dispatched his top nuclear scientist, Qian San-qiang, to Moscow. Mao’s message boiled down to this: Give me the Bomb, so that you will not be drawn into a nuclear war with America. This confronted Stalin with a serious dilemma, as Russia had a mutual defense pact with China.

Stalin did not want to give Mao the Bomb, but he was worried about Eisenhower. It was under this unremitting pressure — from Mao as much as from the West — that Stalin, it seems, decided to end the Korean War. According to Dmitri Volkogonov, the Russian general who had access to the highest-level secret archives, Stalin made the decision to end the war on 28 February, and told his colleagues he was planning to act the next day. That night Stalin was felled by a stroke, which killed him on 5 March. Mao may well have been a factor in the stroke. At the last dinner Stalin had talked about the Korean War, connecting the failure to keep Yugoslavia’s Tito in the camp with the Communists losing the chance to win in Korea. He also brought up the Comintern in the Far East, and how it had failed in Japan. After dinner, he read some documents, and the last was a report that his attempt to assassinate Tito had failed. Stalin had suspected Mao of being a Japanese spy in the past, and was viewing Mao as a potential Tito. His obsessive mind may have been revolving around Mao, reflecting that getting rid of Mao would be just as daunting a task as trying to finish off Tito. Mao may have helped cause Stalin’s stroke.

Mao went to the Soviet embassy to mark Stalin’s death. An embassy staffer claims that Mao had tears in his eyes and had trouble standing up straight, and that Chou wept. Actually, Stalin’s death was Mao’s moment of liberation.

On 9 March a giant memorial service was held in Tiananmen Square, with an organized crowd of hundreds of thousands. Strict orders were issued to the populace, including the injunction “Don’t laugh!” A huge portrait of Stalin was draped above the central archway, and the ceremony opened with Mao bowing before the portrait and laying a wreath. Many speeches were made, but none by Mao. Nor did he go to the funeral in Moscow, though Mme Mao, who was then in Russia, visited Stalin’s bier. Chou attended the funeral in Red Square, and was the only foreigner to march with the top Russian mourners, walking next to security chief Beria, in bitter cold (among Chou’s gifts was immunity to temperature).