Mao: The Unknown Story

Khrushchev was in Albania for a very different reason. Albania provided Russia with a unique submarine base in the heart of the Mediterranean, on Sazan Island. Peng’s own mission, dictated by Mao, was also geared to this base. On his first full day in Albania, 29 May, Peng got up at 5:30 AM and headed straight there. The purpose of Khrushchev’s visit was to try to prevent the Albanians doing a deal with China over the base. Peng saw that he could not count on Khrushchev, or any of the Communist countries, for help.

It seems that Peng then, in desperation, contemplated something akin to a military coup. When he returned to Peking on 13 June, the first thing he did was to try to move some military forces “to transport grain to famine-stricken areas,” he told the army chief of staff, Huang Ke-cheng, who was a close friend and a kindred spirit. Huang clearly understood what Peng wanted the troops for, as he expressed a degree of reluctance that he would not have shown if he had thought the proposal was really about transporting food. Mao seems to have got wind of this conversation, and had Peng grilled intensely about it later. As all troop movements had to have Mao’s authorization, Peng was unable to move any forces. All he could do was try to exert pressure on Mao by sending him annotated reports about the famine, and lobby others to do likewise. Seeing famished peasants from the train, he would say to his companions: “If China’s workers and peasants weren’t so nice, we would have had to invite in the Soviet Red Army [to prop up the Communist regime]!”

Mao had followed Peng’s every step in Europe through spies in the delegation, and knew Peng had got nowhere. Mao was soon to remark complacently that Peng had gone abroad “to sniff around,” but had been unable to do any more than that. As soon as he was convinced that Peng had secured no foreign backing, Mao decided to pounce. Part of his calculation was to use the purge of Peng to kick off a wider terror campaign. Mao badly needed to keep up the great squeeze, as China was falling behind on payments to Russia. The trouble for Mao was that grassroots officials, out of pity, were often holding off taking food that the peasants needed to survive. Mao knew that much of his own machine, as well as the entire nation, was resisting his policies. In February and March 1959 he had said quite a few times: “Several hundred million peasants and production team leaders are united against the Party.” Even his provincial bosses now mostly kept an awkward silence when he pressed them to cough up more food. Mao needed his standby, terror, to steel his machine.

ON 20 JUNE 1959, a week after Peng returned from Europe, Mao left Peking by train. It was ferociously hot, and the electric fan was switched off in case Mao caught cold. A big bowl of ice was placed in his carriage, to little avail. All the men, Mao included, stripped down to their underpants. (Immediately after this, an air-conditioned train was ordered for Mao from East Germany.) To cool himself off, Mao went swimming in the Yangtze and the Xiang River — which doubled up for him as baths. He had not taken a bath or a shower, or washed his hair, since 1949, almost a decade before, when he discovered the pleasure of being rubbed by a servant with a hot towel and having his hair and skull combed by his barber.

Meanwhile, he began to make ready for his showdown. On the 24th, he told his secretary to telephone Peking to call a conference at Lushan, the mountain resort above the Yangtze. Mao dictated a list of the participants, but did not spell out that this was to be a forum to condemn Peng.

Having decided on the highest-level purge since he took power, it seems that Mao felt he needed personal confirmation that he still held godlike status, and was invincible. He was staying at the time near his home village, Shaoshan. On the spur of the moment, he decided to go there to sniff the air.

This was Mao’s first visit home in thirty-two years, even though he had passed by the area frequently. The local authorities had built a villa for him, at his express wish. Pine Hill No. 1, situated in pine woods, had been on standby for years. They had also evicted any “undesirable” families years before, to prevent them from getting near Mao — or bumping into visiting foreigners.

Mao stayed two nights in Shaoshan. Having invited complaints, he got them aplenty. The harvests, the villagers told him, had been inflated. Those who had made objections had been put through denunciation meetings and beaten up. An old man inquired whether it was Mao’s idea that men and women should live segregated lives in barracks conditions (which had come with the communes in many parts of China). Above all, they were hungry, as they were getting only between one-third and one-quarter of what was traditionally considered enough in this area. When Mao gave a meal to several dozen villagers, they wolfed it all down unceremoniously.