{"id":5494,"date":"2014-02-19T13:42:58","date_gmt":"2014-02-19T19:42:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lavozlit.com\/?p=5494"},"modified":"2014-02-19T13:42:58","modified_gmt":"2014-02-19T19:42:58","slug":"trotsky-in-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/workersvoiceus.org\/es\/2014\/02\/19\/trotsky-in-china\/","title":{"rendered":"Trotsky in China"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"
\n<\/em>
\nCHINA<\/em>
\nWritten by Yu Shiaodong, News China magazine <\/em>
\nTuesday, 18 February 2014 02:41<\/em>
\n
\nThis article was published in the January 2014 issue of the\u00a0<\/em>News China\u00a0<\/em>magazine.<\/em>
\nTrotsky\u2019s Views<\/em>\u00a0was openly published in China in 1980, two years after the country embarked on its ongoing experiment with Reform and Opening-up, and 40 years after Leon Trotsky, who remains one of the world\u2019s most contentious political thinkers, was assassinated.<\/p>\n

Its predecessor was\u00a0Excerpts of Trotsky\u2019s Reactionary Views<\/em>, compiled by the Central Compilation and Translation Bureau and printed by the People\u2019s Press, as one of the \u201cGray Cover\u201d books issued to a limited number of Party cadres in 1964.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Gray Cover books were classified into three categories. Category C included books by such European socialist thinkers as Alexandre Millerand of France and Otto Bauer of Austria who attempted revisions to perceived orthodox Marxism. These were generally available to Party functionaries, though banned from public sale. Category B covered more controversial works by figures such as Eduard Bernstein and Karl Kautsky, both revisionist leaders of the Second International, and were restricted to higher-level cadres.<\/p>\n

Category A covered books published for the exclusive consumption of ranking officials above the ministerial level, and\u00a0Excerpts of Trotsky\u2019s Reactionary Views\u00a0<\/em>fell under this category. The name Leon Trotsky, as it had within the Soviet Union, became synonymous with revisionism in the official ideology of the Communist Party of China (CPC), which, modified by the unique political theories of Mao Zedong, based its core ideology on a Stalinist interpretation of Marxism-Leninism. During Party purges of the 1930s and 40s, branded \u201cTrotskyites\u201d within the Party ranks were purged in their hundreds.<\/p>\n

In the early 1960s, the Chinese and Soviet Communist parties began to lock horns over what constituted orthodox Marxism. Nikita Khrushchev\u2019s denunciation of Stalin in his Secret Speech in February 1956 was perceived by Mao as both a personal slight and an attack on the legitimacy of China\u2019s own revolution, leading the CPC to effectively sever meaningful ties with the Soviet Union in 1960, though both nations carefully maintained the diplomatic fa\u00e7ade of appearing to be close allies.<\/p>\n

Both sides of the debate drew on the Marxist-Leninist canon to defame \u201crevisionists\u201d and \u201creactionaries\u201d such as Bernstein, Kautsky and Trotsky. While the Sino-Soviet split lasted until 1989, Deng Xiaoping would later admit to the visiting Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev that \u201cboth sides did a lot of empty talking.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Gray Cover books were part of the anti-Soviet ideological campaign within the CPC, ostensibly printed to allow Chinese officials to \u201cacquaint themselves with the roots of revisionism.\u201d The fact that Trotsky\u2019s works were also lambasted as revisionism within the Soviet Union was largely ignored by CPC ideologues \u2013 in their view, his nationality was proof enough of his stranglehold on Soviet thinking.<\/p>\n

Inside Man<\/strong><\/p>\n

Editor Zheng Yifan, a researcher at the Central Compilation and Translation Bureau, oversaw the publication of the manuscript which would become\u00a0Excerpts of Trotsky\u2019s Reactionary Views<\/em>\u00a0around the start of the Sino-Soviet split. At the time, only 500 copies were printed, and only 50 went into circulation. The rest sat in storage until their re-issue in 1980 under the title of\u00a0Trotsky\u2019s Views<\/em>.<\/p>\n

In 1955, when relations between China and the Soviet Union were at their most intimate, Zheng Yifan was sent by the Chinese government to the University of Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) to research the history of the Soviet Union. Graduating in 1959, he returned to China and entered the Central Compilation and Translation Bureau as an editor and translator.<\/p>\n

During his four-year stay in Russia, Zheng witnessed first-hand the transformation that ensued after the death of Stalin. Khrushchev\u2019s Secret Speech led to a widespread backlash against the former leader and the cult of personality surrounding him, and one of Zheng\u2019s Russian teachers even openly attacked Stalin in class. Courses on Marxism-Leninism were revised or canceled because they were based on\u00a0The Concise Course on the History of the Soviet Communist Party<\/em>\u00a0– a book which was compiled under the direct supervision of Stalin and misrepresented historical facts in order to further exaggerate the late leader\u2019s contributions both to Marxist-Leninist ideology and the founding of the Soviet Union.<\/p>\n

Counterattack<\/strong><\/p>\n

In Moscow, Soviet leaders claimed Mao was modeling himself on Stalin. Some alleged that Mao\u2019s principles had more in common with Trotsky\u2019s than those of Marx or Lenin. As works by Trotsky had been largely purged both from China and the Soviet Union following his exile from Russia in 1929, few sources existed to contradict such claims. Those few works that survived were kept under lock and key.<\/p>\n

In July 1963, at the height of the Sino-Soviet split, then vice-premier Deng Xiaoping told subordinates: \u201cKhrushchev has labeled us Trotskyites. We must come up with a counterattack. Preparations should get underway immediately. The Central Compilation and Translation Bureau may compile a book on Trotsky\u2019s remarks for our writers to refer to.\u201d<\/p>\n

Suddenly, materials that had been anathema to China\u2019s propagandists prior to 1963 became hot property, and Zheng\u2019s entire office devoted their working days to tracking down vestiges of Trotsky\u2019s output, with the sole purpose of using the content to discredit Khrushchev and the Soviet Union. Scraps were acquired from libraries, anthologies and cadres\u2019 private collections across China.<\/p>\n

Others were located overseas \u2013 while Trotsky\u2019s works were banned from publication in the US and UK, some were tracked down in mainland Europe, with a number of complete books acquired in second-hand bookstores in Switzerland. Old editions of\u00a0Pravda<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0The Bolsheviks<\/em>\u00a0magazine were scoured for articles, editorials and commentaries by the man who was, at one time, a leading light in socialist theory.<\/p>\n

Next, researchers turned their attention to the seizures of contraband literature during the anti-Trotskyite purge of 1952, when all Chinese-language editions of Trotsky\u2019s works were confiscated by the Ministry of Public Security. While many would have been destroyed, researchers reasoned that a few might have survived, perhaps in Shanghai, which had been the unofficial headquarters of China\u2019s short-lived Trotskyite movement. Eventually, a moderate cache of Trotsky\u2019s works in various languages was scraped together in the city.<\/p>\n

Haul<\/strong><\/p>\n

This flurry of activity soon drew attention from China\u2019s few surviving die-hard Trotskyites. One of these was Liu Renjing, participant in the Chinese Communist Party\u2019s first Congress in 1921 and one of the early organizers of the country\u2019s indigenous Trotskyite factions. He had even met Trotsky in person while the latter was living in exile in Turkey, and was presented with a set of his writings as a gift. The two began a correspondence, and Trotsky would mail Liu new editions of his works, before he was assassinated in 1940 by a Soviet agent working for Stalin\u2019s secret police.<\/p>\n

In 1963, Liu was working for the People\u2019s Press as an off-the-payroll translator, where he would produce Chinese translations of foreign works on Bernstein, Kautsky and Trotsky. Many of these translations would ultimately end up in Gray Cover anthologies.<\/p>\n

Learning that the authorities were looking for Trotsky\u2019s books, Liu was overjoyed, believing that the Party was on the verge of rehabilitating Trotsky and Chinese Trotskyites. He approached Zhang Huiqing, an editor at the People\u2019s Press, telling him that he had retained copies of Trotsky\u2019s books. The People\u2019s Press thus got hold of seven Russian editions ofTrotsky\u2019s Selected Works<\/em>, the most complete set of works discovered since their search began. \u201cLiu might be one of the few Chinese – probably the only Chinese – who ever saw Trotsky in person,\u201d Zhang, now 89 years old, told\u00a0NewsChina<\/em>.<\/p>\n

These collections ultimately allowed Trotsky\u2019s selected works to be printed in Chinese, many for the first time, as part of the Gray Cover series, including\u00a0The Revolution Betrayed, The Real Situation in Russia, The Third International after Lenin, The Stalin School of Falsification<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0The Theory of Permanent Revolution.<\/em><\/p>\n

Zheng Yifan and his colleagues classified Trotsky\u2019s views and ideas into 15 categories dealing with, among other topics, industrialization, agricultural collectivization, war and peacetime governance. Eventually, these extracts were combined to form the main text of\u00a0Excerpts of Trotsky\u2019s Reactionary Views<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Publication of Gray Cover books was interrupted by the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), which overwhelmingly prioritized the publication of works by Mao Zedong while scaling back that of works by other political theorists. At first, all the editorial staff were limited to the translation of approved Marxist classics until finally they were sent to the countryside to do manual labor along with the majority of China\u2019s cultural workforce.<\/p>\n

The Gray Cover project was not resumed until 1972, and Zheng Yifan returned to the Central Compilation and Translation Bureau in 1973. His first task was the publication of Khrushchev\u2019s memoirs and translation of books written by Western journalists and historians concerning the Khrushchev era. He was then to oversee the continued publication of the \u201ccollections of chief revisionists\u2019 and opportunists\u2019 views,\u201d including Bernstein, Kautsky and Bukharin. Work also began on the publication of\u00a0Trotsky\u2019s Views<\/em>.<\/p>\n

In the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution, Zheng Yifan gradually came to the conclusion that the historical judgments made upon Trotsky were far from fair. \u201cThe claim that he was the mortal enemy of Leninism was unfounded,\u201d Zheng said. In both China and the Soviet Union, the declining importance of dogmatic Stalinist and Maoist ideology led to a reassessment and even subtle rehabilitation of former pariahs. Descriptions of Trotsky calling him \u201cspy\u201d and \u201cbandit\u201d ceased to appear in official literature.<\/p>\n

In the late 1990s, Zheng Yifan compiled and edited\u00a0The Trotsky Reader,<\/em>\u00a0though he would wait almost a decade until it was finally published in 2008. In his preface, Zheng writes that \u201cTrotsky was doubtless a revolutionary\u2026 None of the labels Stalin slapped on him such as \u2018German fascist spy\u2019 and \u2018running dog of the imperialists\u2019 had any solid foundation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Over six decades after his assassination, it seems Leon Trotsky, one of the most important contributors to Marxist-Leninist theory, is one of the last to finally come in from the cold.
\nSource: http:\/\/www.newschinamag.com\/magazine\/trotsky-in-china<\/a>
\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution, Zheng Yifan gradually came to the conclusion that the historical judgments made upon Trotsky were far from fair. \u201cThe claim that he was the mortal enemy of Leninism was unfounded,\u201d Zheng said. In both China and the Soviet Union, the declining importance of dogmatic Stalinist and Maoist ideology led to a reassessment and even subtle rehabilitation of former pariahs. Descriptions of Trotsky calling him \u201cspy\u201d and \u201cbandit\u201d ceased to appear in official literature.
\nIn the late 1990s, Zheng Yifan compiled and edited The Trotsky Reader, though he would wait almost a decade until it was finally published in 2008. In his preface, Zheng writes that \u201cTrotsky was doubtless a revolutionary\u2026 None of the labels Stalin slapped on him such as \u2018German fascist spy\u2019 and \u2018running dog of the imperialists\u2019 had any solid foundation.\u201d
\nOver six decades after his assassination, it seems Leon Trotsky, one of the most important contributors to Marxist-Leninist theory, is one of the last to finally come in from the cold.
\nSource: http:\/\/www.newschinamag.com\/magazine\/trotsky-in-china<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13882120,"featured_media":5496,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[27806],"tags":[27900,28037,28958,27933],"class_list":["post-5494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-internacionalinternational","tag-china","tag-communist-party","tag-reactionary-views","tag-russia"],"translation":{"provider":"WPGlobus","version":"3.0.5","language":"es","enabled_languages":["en","es"],"languages":{"en":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":true},"es":{"title":false,"content":false,"excerpt":false}}},"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t