As the topic suggests, both liberals and monarchists claim that during the final stages of the Liberation War, Stalin sent telegrams preventing Chairman Mao from launching the crossing of the Yangtze River campaign to liberate all of China. I looked into it and found that the Chinese Revisionists were the first to mention this. It is truly absurd—how could Stalin possibly prevent Chairman Mao from liberating China, stopping the revolution, and leaving southern China in Chiang Kai-shek’s hands?
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An article debunking rumors from the Zhi Left Circle
https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/67954799
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This is merely an empirical form of textual research, but it cannot explain the issue from a political perspective. In fact, in the end, it still cannot prevent some people from using this to stir up trouble, picking out various one-sided and trivial “details” to make a fuss.
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It’s like this, by the time I thought of sending this message, it was almost time to clock in for work, so I didn’t go into details.
Comparing this article with the one shared by the poster from the China Revisionist News Network, it feels truly ironic that China Revisionist itself actually published an article by Han Dongji. Many people in the comments of that Zhihu article also say that the movies like “The Founding of a Party” made by China Revisionist and the mainstream public opinion portray the Soviet Union and the Comintern as sabotaging the Chinese revolution and taking the blame, fabricating rumors to slander and defame. This clearly shows the red on the outside but white on the inside stance of China Revisionist.
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How to view the so-called “Stalin issue” is also one of the standards for judging the authenticity of Marxism. Nowadays, there are many people in China who dislike Stalin, and many who like Stalin, but the vast majority of them like or hate him from a nationalist perspective. Those who dislike him say he is a new nationalist tsar, claiming that he wanted to divide China by rivers and govern it separately, wanted to establish a united fleet in China, wanted to seize an ice-free port in China, divide northern China into a sphere of influence, abandon the Communist International, betray other countries’ communist parties, and so on. Some even go so far as to violently claim that Stalin was nothing more than a “tsar with Bolshevik preferences”; as for those who like him, what do they say? They say Stalin reshaped the Russian nation, that Stalin was the “benevolent father” of the nation, and a strong-handed politician who made Russia “rise.” These are all pure slanders!
The reason these people say such things about Stalin, reducing him from a Marxist, a great proletarian revolutionary mentor, to a nationalist monarch (whether a tyrant or a wise ruler, this kind of slander against Stalin is consistent), frankly serves their own purposes of promoting nationalism, waging foreign aggression wars, and inciting hatred against other ethnic groups. Russian “little pinks” are like this, and so are the Chinese ones.
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Stalin made the mistake of great-power chauvinism, but that does not prevent him from being a Marxist.
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What do you mean by great-power chauvinism? Could it be that this comes from historical materials found in the Chinese government or opposition figures like Khrushchev? Stalin made mistakes; philosophically, he ultimately committed the mechanical metaphysical error; he developed socialist political economy but did not restrict bourgeois legal rights, and finally, he erred on several important issues such as how to continue the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat. He misjudged the form of class struggle and failed to recognize that a new bourgeoisie would emerge within the party. These mistakes are real and are his errors. However, throughout his life, Stalin did not commit any great-power chauvinism errors; such claims are pure slander.
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In 1948, the United Nations voted for the establishment of Israel, and the Soviet Union voted in favor. I think this is one. There is also an overview of various countries (1972) about Mongolia, which I also find somewhat interesting.
Pure nonsense, Stalin never said this. Dividing the country along the river to govern was proposed by reactionaries of the Kuomintang.
Regarding @ProletarianHegemony’s statement that the Soviet Union’s vote in the United Nations supporting the founding of Israel can serve as proof that Stalin was guilty of great-power chauvinism, I believe this is not accurate. This kind of argument is essentially the same as empiricism of the bourgeoisie: it ignores what kind of person Stalin was over the long term, and it ignores that as a steadfast Marxist, he would not and could not make the same mistakes as imperialists, such as committing great-power chauvinism, and instead relies on seemingly objective materials to prove a biased point of view.
In reality, the logic of this viewpoint is as follows: “Supporting the founding of Israel is great-power chauvinism — the Soviet Union (Stalin) supported Israel’s founding in the UN — therefore, Stalin (the Soviet Union) engaged in great-power chauvinism.” This seems to have no problem on the surface, but formal logic does not care whether the premises are correct. The question is whether the premise “Supporting the founding of Israel is great-power chauvinism” is true.
In 1948, the attitudes of Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union towards the founding of Israel were as follows. Zionism was initially supported by Britain, which was to maintain its mandate rule over Palestine[1], implementing the conspiracy of partitioning Palestine into Jewish and Arab states. But when the Jews actually sought to establish a state and gain independence from British colonial rule, Britain opposed it. At that time, the US, which aimed to control Middle Eastern oil resources and was involved in the colonial affairs of Britain in the Middle East, supported the Zionist movement for independence, thus bringing the Palestine region into its sphere of influence. Britain and the US fought fiercely over Palestine, with both sides on the brink of conflict.
Due to the resistance movement of the local Palestinian population fighting for independence, Britain was compelled to bring the Palestine issue to the United Nations for resolution. Since the UN was controlled by imperialism, at that time there were only two options: one was the plan supported by the US, which proposed partition and independence from British rule; the other was to maintain the British mandate and oppose the partition. For the Soviet Union and the Palestinian people, compared to maintaining British rule, supporting independence and establishing a state was undoubtedly more beneficial for Palestinian national independence and liberation. Therefore, the Soviet Union supported the vote for Israel’s founding. This shows that the Soviet vote in favor was not an expression of great-power chauvinism, but rather an attempt to leverage the contradictions between British and American imperialism to achieve a result more favorable to Palestinian national liberation and to oppose British colonial rule. If voting in favor is considered great-power chauvinism, then would abstaining like Britain to preserve its influence in other parts of the Middle East be considered national chauvinism? Would voting against and opposing British mandate rule be considered national chauvinism?
All these materials can be found in the following book:
Postwar World History Volume 1948 (Part 1, Fourth Volume).pdf (16.9 MB)
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