Mao: The Unknown Story

MEANWHILE, MAO WAS getting desperate. That same February, with the backing of Liu Shao-chi, Mayor Peng issued a national “guideline” forbidding the use of political accusations to trample on culture and the custodians of culture. Moreover, he went further, and actually suppressed Mao’s instructions aimed at starting a persecution campaign. The obstruction from the Party was being highly effective.

Nor was this all. As soon as he issued the guideline, Mayor Peng flew to Sichuan, ostensibly to inspect arms industries relocated in this mountainous province. There he did something truly astonishing. He had a secret tête-à-tête with Marshal Peng who had been banished there the previous November when Mao began clearing the decks for the Great Purge. What the two Pengs talked about has never been revealed, but judging from the timing, and the colossal risk Mayor Peng took in visiting a major foe of Mao’s, without permission, in secret, it is highly likely that they discussed the feasibility of using the army to stop Mao.

Although Marshal Peng was under virtual house arrest and was powerless, he still commanded great respect and loyalty in the army, especially among his old subordinates. While he was under house arrest in Peking, a few of them, including one man high up in Mao’s security apparatus, had risked a lot to see him.

News of the clandestine visit by Mayor Peng to the marshal may not have reached Mao’s ears, but he certainly suspected Mayor Peng was up to something in Sichuan, and his suspicions deepened when Marshal Ho Lung, the man to whom Soviet defense minister Malinovsky had said “Get rid of Mao,” soon also went to Sichuan, also in the name of inspecting the arms industries. Mao suspected a conspiracy was being cooked up down there, and soon accused his opponents of hatching a plot, dubbed “the February military coup.” Mao’s state of mind was shown by the dosage of sleeping pills he was now taking, which rose to ten times his normal, to a level that could kill an average man.

And there was more that was gnawing at Mao’s mind. It seems that Mayor Peng was contemplating getting in touch with the Russians, and may have thought of seeking Russian help to avert Mao’s Purge. The Kremlin had invited the CCP to attend the next Soviet Party congress (the 23rd) in April 1966. Mao’s colleagues knew that ever since Malinovsky’s remarks in November 1964, Mao did not want any of them to go to Russia, in case they colluded with the Kremlin against him, and so they had recommended declining the invitation.

But in early March 1966, after his secret meeting with Marshal Peng in Sichuan, Mayor Peng revised this position, with the agreement of President Liu Shao-chi, and suggested to Mao that the Party should consider accepting the invitation. This was an extraordinary shift, and undoubtedly deepened Mao’s suspicions. Mayor Peng was soon accused of trying to “liaise with a foreign country” and “attempt a coup.” Mao’s anxiety can hardly have been assuaged when the new Soviet ambassador, Sergei Lapin, with whom President Liu had earlier had an unusually frank talk, contrived an unscripted encounter with Liu on the tarmac at Peking airport on 24 February 1966 as they were awaiting the arrival of Ghana’s President Kwame Nkrumah (who had been overthrown in a coup that same day). Lapin said he had an invitation for the Chinese to the Soviet congress. “Give me the document,” Liu replied. Lapin said it was at the embassy; but all subsequent efforts to get it to Liu failed.

Mao was already suspicious that there might be a vast conspiracy between his colleagues and Moscow against him. The previous November, in the opening stage of the Purge, one of his first moves had been to fire the man who handled the leadership’s communications with Moscow, the Russian-speaking director of the Central Secretaries’ Office, Yang Shang-kun, and exile him to Canton, in the far south. Later, Yang was grilled intensely in prison about contacts with Moscow, as were the leadership’s Russian-language interpreters.