116 { China’s Quest
for swift industrialization and transition to communism. The Politburo
assigned the Marxist theoretician Chen Boda to draft the CCP statement on
the “Stalin question,” with instructions to stress Stalin’s contributions. After
extensive Politburo debate and revision, the document was released on April
5, 1956, as a Renmin ribao editorial entitled “On the Historical Experience of
the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.” The statement acknowledged many of the
“errors” enumerated in Khrushchev’s “secret speech,” but found many factors
mitigating those shortcomings:
How could it be conceivable that a socialist state which was the first in
the world to put the dictatorship of the proletariat into practice, which
did not have the benefit of any precedent, should make no mistakes of
one kind or another? .... Communists must adopt an analytical attitude
to errors made in the communist movement. Some people consider that
Stalin was wrong in everything; this is a grave misconception. Stalin
was a great Marxist-Leninist, yet at the same time a Marxist-Leninist
who committed several gross errors. We should view Stalin from an his-
torical standpoint, make a proper and all-round analysis to see where he
was right and where he was wrong, and draw useful lessons therefrom.
The achievements [of the international communist movement] always
exceed the defects, the things which are right always overwhelm those
which are wrong ... and the defects and mistakes are always overcome
in the end.^8
The CCP lobbied within the international communist movement on behalf
of its April statement. Immediately after the statement was issued, Mao met
with the leaders of six Latin American communist parties to explain the CCP
analysis. Stalin’s positive contributions were 70 percent, while his errors were
only 30 percent, Mao told the Latin communists. Later, in October, Mao met
with Soviet leader Anastas Mikoyan to discuss what Mao felt were the une-
qual relations that existed between fraternal parties within the international
communist movement. Implicitly, Mao was asserting the CCP to be at least
the coleader of the movement.
The greatest threat to Mao presented by Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization
was diminution of Mao’s authority within the CCP elite. Khrushchev had
dammed Stalin for violating Leninist norms of collective leadership, substi-
tuting his own will for the collective deliberation and wisdom of the entire
Politburo, and imposing a “cult of personality” that gave him godlike status,
rendering him immune from criticism. To a substantial degree, all these
criticisms applied equally to Mao. During the 1942–1944 Zheng Feng (Party
rectification) campaign, the CCP had been deliberately “Stalinized” under
Mao’s leadership, with Mao functioning as China’s Stalin. But following
and in line with Khrushchev’s Twentieth Congress speech, Mao’s comrades
on the Politburo moved to diminish his cult of personality, for example by