Mao: The Unknown Story

Stalin’s death brought instant changes. During an all-night meeting on 21 March, the new Russian leaders, headed by premier Georgi Malenkov, told Chou they had decided to end the war in Korea. Stalin’s successors were keen to lessen tension with the West, and made it clear that if Mao cooperated over stopping the war he would be rewarded with a large number of arms enterprises — ninety-one — which Stalin had been delaying. Unlike Stalin, who saw Mao as his personal rival, the new Soviet leaders took the attitude that a militarily powerful China was good for the Communist camp.

But Mao insisted on keeping the Korean War going. He wanted one more thing: the Bomb. In fact, this was the main goal of Chou’s trip, along with arms industries. Chou tried hard to get the nuclear physicist Qian San-qiang’s group into Russian nuclear research institutes, but their repeated requests for the transfer of nuclear technology were turned down. Qian kept pushing for two months, a period that coincided exactly with Mao’s foot-dragging over ending the war. Then, in May, Moscow put its foot down.

The Communist camp had for some time been waging a huge campaign accusing the US of using germ warfare in Korea and China, and had vaguely claimed large numbers of deaths from germ attacks. Captured US airmen were made to confess to dropping germ bombs, sometimes on camera.

Mao used the issue to whip up hatred for the US inside China. But the accusations were concocted. When Stalin died, the Kremlin immediately decided to drop the charges, which, Beria wrote to Malenkov on 21 April 1953, had caused Russia to “suffer[ed] real political damage in the international arena.”

The accusation of fabricating the charges was now used to put pressure on Mao to end the war. Soviet foreign minister Molotov wrote to his colleagues that the Chinese had given the North Koreans “an intentionally false statement … about the use of bacteriological weapons by the Americans.” The Koreans, he said, were “presented with a fait accompli.” The Russians were laying the groundwork for throwing all the blame onto Mao.

On 2 May the Kremlin told its new ambassador in Peking, V. V. Kuznetsov, to deliver an unprecedentedly harsh message to Mao, which read:

The Soviet government and the Central Committee of the CPSU [Soviet Party] were misled. The dissemination in the press of information about the use by the Americans of bacteriological weapons in Korea was based on false information. The accusations against the Americans were fictitious.

The message “recommended” that Peking drop the accusations, and informed Mao menacingly that the Russians “responsible for participation in the fabrication … will receive severe punishment.” Indeed, the Soviet ambassador to Pyongyang, V. N. Razuvayev, had already been recalled, as Mao certainly knew, and tortured by Beria’s men.

Kuznetsov saw Mao and Chou at midnight on 11–12 May. Afterwards he reported to Moscow that Mao back-pedaled. According to Kuznetsov, Mao said “that the campaign was begun on the basis of reports from the [Chinese] command … It is difficult now to establish the authenticity of these reports … If falsification is discovered, then these reports from below should not be credited.” Kuznetsov was clearly under orders to give a detailed account of Mao’s reactions. He reported that: “some nervousness was noticed on the part of Mao Tse-tung; he … crushed cigarettes … Towards the end of the conversation he laughed and joked, and calmed down. Chou En-lai behaved with studied seriousness and some uneasiness.”

Mao had every reason to feel uneasy. Moscow’s language was uncommonly severe. It showed how determined the Kremlin was to end the war, and signaled a readiness to apply extreme pressure, and to disavow something that Stalin must have approved. Coming fast on the heels of the Kremlin disowning Stalin’s last fake conspiracy, the “Doctors’ Plot” (the first time any action of Stalin’s was publicly repudiated, which came as a bombshell to the Communist world), the new Kremlin was telling Mao it was determined to have its way. Mao was clearly taken aback, as he gave orders to end the war that very night.

Mao could see that getting the Bomb from Russia was out of the question for now, as the new Kremlin was bent on lowering tension with America. So he recalled his nuclear delegation from Moscow, and settled for the arms projects that the new Kremlin leaders had offered. He ordered his negotiators in Korea to accept voluntary repatriation of POWs, which had been on the table for over eighteen months.