The Sino-Soviet Schism } 115
prior consultation with other fraternal parties, especially the CCP, also
manifested the arrogant, chauvinist way the CPSU guided the international
communist movement. The substance of the speech would cause difficulties
for many communist parties, yet Moscow had not taken these parties into
consideration. But there was a positive aspect to Khrushchev’s criticism of
Stalin, Mao told a Politburo meeting convened to discuss the speech. It would
allow the CCP to speak openly and frankly about Stalin’s “errors” toward
China—for example viewing Mao as a “Chinese Tito” before the Korean War,
or demanding special privileges in China’s Northeast and Xinjiang in 1950.
Khrushchev’s “attack” on Stalin would also puncture “superstitions” about
the Soviet Union, allowing China to feel less pressure to follow Soviet advice.^6
De-Stalinization was introduced by Khrushchev in 1956 not only as an
internal policy of the Soviet Union, but also as a new line for the interna-
tional communist movement. “Line” is Leninist parlance for the general
analysis of the situation of the revolutionary movement and derivative stra-
tegic policy prescriptions, all as conducted by the central leadership of the
proletarian vanguard party. De-Stalinization became a question of line for
the international communist movement because Stalin had been, after all,
the leader of the world communist movement, his ideas taken as scientific
truth, and Soviet power had been used to establish Stalinist-style socialism in
a half-dozen countries. Khrushchev felt that the type of socialism associated
with Stalin and his repressive, dictatorial practices had seriously deformed
socialism, making it less attractive than it should be. Socialism would be-
come much more appealing, Khrushchev believed, once the Stalinist defor-
mation was cut away and socialism returned to the putatively less repressive
norms of the Lenin era. This message proved very attractive to communists
around the world. By the end of the 1950s, most communist parties, espe-
cially those in both East and West Europe, followed Moscow’s lead and broke
with Stalinism. Those that refused to break with Stalinism rallied around the
CCP. Mao’s opposition to Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization was thus ipso facto
a critique of Khrushchev’s leadership of the international communist move-
ment. Mao soon positioned himself and the CCP as the leading opponents of
Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization.
The CCP Politburo decided to issue to the international communist move-
ment a statement independently assessing the positive “contributions” and
negative “errors” of Stalin—a topic that became known as the Stalin question.
According to Wu Lengxi, who was the CCP’s record keeper on relations with
Moscow and who left a rich two-volume memoir tracing these interactions,
this CCP statement on the Stalin question was the CCP’s first independent
declaration on major problems of the international communist movement.^7
As such, it was also the first CCP challenge to the CPSU’s authority to define
the line of that movement. While Khrushchev was pushing to de-Stalinize
socialism, Mao believed that continued Stalinist-style dictatorship as essential