Stalin personally cabled Mao several times asking him to keep the Japanese occupied, when the Germans were at the gates of Moscow in late 1941 and just before the battle of Stalingrad, in July 1942—in vain. Mao’s refusal to help infuriated Moscow, and he further riled his patrons by advising them to retreat to the Urals and fight a guerrilla war. Some Russians claim that Mao’s behavior was also motivated by lack of confidence in the Soviet Union, and even (according to General Chuikov) by the desire to exploit Hitler’s attack to supplant Russia. Word got around that Mao said: “Stalin cannot beat Hitler” and “24-year-old socialism cannot compete with eight-year-old fascism.”
Years later, Molotov was asked: “We knew [what Mao was doing to us] and we still helped Mao?” To which Molotov mumbled: “Right. Yes, yes. I know that is hard for you to understand. But you must not look at things in such a stark way.” “We looked like fools, but, in my opinion, we were not fools.”
Indeed, even though they were at odds, Stalin and Mao understood each other perfectly. Their relationship was based on brutal self-interest and mutual use, and they shared the same long-term goals. However much Mao’s actions displeased the Kremlin, Stalin never for one moment ceased doing business with him.
WITH NO FIGHTING against either the Japanese or the Nationalists, and with Russia in trouble and in no position to intervene, Mao seized the opportunity to go to work on his Party and mold it into an unquestioning machine in preparation for the forthcoming all-out civil war against Chiang Kai-shek.
By late 1941, Party membership had grown to some 700,000. Over 90 percent of these were people who had joined up since the start of the war against Japan, and many were young enthusiasts who had come to the Communist bases from Nationalist areas. These young volunteers were vital to Mao because they were relatively well educated, and he needed competent administrators to staff his future regime. Most of the Long Marchers and rural recruits from within the Communist bases were illiterate peasants. It was the young volunteers who were Mao’s target.
These volunteers had almost all joined up in the late 1930s as the mood among the younger middle class swung significantly to the left. This was a time when Red Russia was China’s main — and virtually only — ally and supplier of arms against Japan. Goodwill towards Russia rubbed off on the CCP. Many thought the Chinese Communists were truly dedicated to fighting Japan.
There was also widespread disenchantment with the Nationalists, who were seen as incapable of eradicating China’s widespread poverty and injustice. The CCP’s atrocities before the Long March were either unknown or forgotten, or dismissed as Nationalist propaganda. Some also believed the Party when it proclaimed that it had changed, and abandoned its old policies. And for awhile the Communists’ behavior seemed to confirm that this change was real. Many foreigners, and even some missionaries, accepted Red claims. The mole Shao Li-tzu, the Nationalists’ media overlord during the crucial period 1937–38, did much to erase the Party’s bloody past and project a benign image of the Reds. So too did Edgar Snow’s
A large number of the young volunteers congregated in Yenan, Mao’s capital. By the time Mao started his drive to condition them, some 40,000 had come there. Most were people in their late teens and early twenties who had joined the Party in the Nationalist areas, and then been sent on to Yenan.
They were tremendously excited when they first reached what had been portrayed as a revolutionary Mecca. One young volunteer described his feelings when he arrived: “At last we saw the heights of Yenan city. We were so excited we wept. We cheered from our truck … We started to sing the ‘Internationale,’ and Russia’s Motherland March.”
The new arrivals, he wrote, “really envied the stinking and dirty worn-out padded uniforms [of the veterans]. They found everything fresh, exciting and mysterious.”
The newcomers were mostly enrolled in various “schools” and “institutes” to be trained — and indoctrinated. But most very soon became disillusioned. The biggest letdown was that equality, the core of their idealism, was not only completely absent, but manifestly rejected by the regime. Inequality and privilege were ubiquitous. Every organization had three different levels of kitchen. The lowliest got roughly half the amount of meat and cooking oil allotted to middle-rankers, while the elite got much more. The very top leaders received special nutritious foods.
