Titans of History

Orwell left a huge body of work. His books have never been out of print since his death and collections of his essays continue to be published. Many of the ideas expressed in his novels are still as fresh today as ever. His bitter criticisms of the Soviet Union and the repressive nature of communism were fully vindicated by the collapse of the Soviet Union from the late 1980s. Orwell’s astonishing clarity of vision, combined with an unerring ability to convey challenging ideas in ways that are accessible to all, has ensured that his standing as a great writer of and for the people is uncontested.

DENG XIAOPING

1904–97

It doesn’t matter if a cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice.

Deng Xiaoping

Deng was the paramount leader of China who transformed Mao Zedong’s revolutionary communist state into today’s resurgent superpower, ruled harshly by the communist oligarchy but empowered by a free-market economy. Deng’s new China was soon strong enough to challenge America itself. Gritty, practical and sardonic, Deng was both a brutal Maoist enforcer and a survivor who endured wars, purges and palace coups to emerge as the ruler who has set the path of the world’s most populous country. His nicknames describe him perfectly: the Steel Factory and the Needle Inside the Ball of Cotton.

In many ways, his reputation is underestimated: while Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev oversaw the peaceful end of Soviet communist rule and the dismembering of the Soviet empire, he had wanted to keep the Soviet Union in place and reform it. Instead it fell apart; communism lost power—and Russia endured a decade of instability until prestige and order was restored by the authoritarian sovereignty of Vladimir Putin. Perhaps the most influential political titan of the late 20th century, Deng succeeded in guiding China toward his vision where his fellow communist leaders failed.

Born in Szechuan province in 1904, Deng was converted to Marxism as a young man: leaving home at sixteen, he studied in France and after the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, in Moscow. Returning to China in the late 1920s just as the right-wing Kuomintang (KMT) under Chiang Kai-shek turned on its communist allies in 1927, Deng threw in his lot with the communists—and Mao Zedong personally, a loyalty from which he never wavered. When the KMT embarked on its campaigns to destroy the communists, Deng endured the Long March under Chairman Mao Zedong.

For decades, Mao and his fellow communists lived a life of constant warfare with external enemies, internal purging and feuding—it was a rough school. Deng, who served as commissar and often effectively as commander of many Red Army units, was one of the veteran communist leaders along with his friend and patron Chou Enlai who gradually came to accept the total power that Mao, that master of manipulation, mercilessly and cunningly imposed with secret police terror and constant murderous purges. Mao himself liked and trusted few and tormented even his closest allies, but it seems that he respected Deng’s evident competence and toughness.

After the Second World War and the civil war between the KMT and the communists during which he distinguished himself as a commander/commissar, Deng was one of the leaders of the communists who watched Mao declare the new People’s Republic in 1949. He ran his home province Sichuan for several years, overseeing the killings and beatings of tens of thousands of so-called landlords—usually smallholding farmers. When 10 million in the province died during Mao’s merciless Great Leap Forward, he praised its management.

Mao brought Deng to the capital as a vice-premier, promoting him as the general secretary of the Communist Party in 1957: he sent half a million intellectuals to labor camps.

But as Mao came under attack for his dangerously radical policies in the late 1950s, Deng was allied with President Liu Shaochi, who appeared to challenge Maoist supremacy. Deng was never anything else but a Marxist and an extremely ruthless communist potentate but he was also pragmatic, a manager. It was in 1961 that he famously said in a speech that “I don’t care if a cat is black or white. It is a good mouse if it catches mice.”