Mao: The Unknown Story

On 2 March, using a specially trained and equipped elite unit, the Chinese laid an ambush that left 32 Russians dead and between 50 and 10 °Chinese wounded or killed. The Russians brought up heavy artillery and tanks, and on the night of 14–15 March a much bigger encounter ensued, in which the Russians fired missiles 20 kilometers into China. About 60 Russians and at least 80 °Chinese were killed. One CIA photo expert said that the Chinese side of the Ussuri was “so pockmarked by Soviet artillery that it looked like a ‘moonscape.’ ” The Russians were obviously serious.

The fierceness of the retaliation took Mao aback, and he became worried that the Russians might invade, which he described to his inner circle as a possibility. He urgently ordered his army to stop fighting, and to do nothing even when the Russians continued shelling.

A week later, the old hot line from Moscow unexpectedly came alive. It was the Soviet premier Aleksei Kosygin asking to speak to either Mao or Chou En-lai. By this time, China and Russia had had virtually no diplomatic contacts for some three years. The operator refused to put the call through, saying on the fourth attempt that they could not take a call for Chairman Mao from “that scoundrel revisionist Kosygin.” Next day, the Chinese detected Russian troop movements near the disputed island. Mao at once told the Foreign Ministry to inform Moscow that it was “ready to hold diplomatic negotiations”—meaning he did not want a war. Mao was especially scared that the Russians might target a surprise air strike on the 9th Congress, which was due to open in Peking in ten days’ time, and at which he himself had no choice but to make an appearance.

So the congress met in conditions of secrecy extraordinary even by the regime’s ultra-secretive standards. The event was not announced until it was already over, and the 2,000 delegates and staff were imprisoned in their hotels with the curtains closed, and banned from opening windows facing the streets. Instead of being driven direct from their hotel to the venue, the Great Hall of the People, delegates were bused by circuitous routes round Peking before being delivered to the Hall surreptitiously, at intervals. On the day of the opening, 1 April, when Mao was scheduled to attend, the Hall was made to look as if nothing was happening there at all. Thick curtains concealed the fact that the lights were on (the session did not open until 5:00 PM) and that the building was full of people.

Mao had grounds for alarm. A few months later, on 13 August 1969, the Russians attacked thousands of miles to the west, on the Kazakhstan — Xinjiang border, where they had overwhelming logistical advantages. Scores of Russian tanks and armored vehicles drove deep inside China, surrounding and destroying Chinese troops.

Mao had no effective defense against Soviet tanks, if they chose to target Peking. He had always banked on the size of China and its population as insurance against anyone wanting to invade. But ever since Malinovsky had sounded his close colleagues out about getting rid of him in late 1964, the idea of a quick Soviet thrust at his capital in coordination with his opponents had preyed on Mao’s mind. He had issued an order: “Pile up some mountains if there aren’t any,” and spent a fortune in money and labor building “mountains” to block Russian tanks. Each of these was designed to be 20–40 meters high, 250–400 meters wide, and 120–220 meters deep. Earth and rocks were moved from far away, and elaborate defense works were constructed inside, before the project was abandoned some years later. All who saw these “mountains” (among them former US defense secretary and ex-CIA chief James Schlesinger) concluded that they were completely useless.

Mao was also worried about a nuclear strike against his atomic installations. In fact, Moscow did envisage such an operation, and went as far as sounding out Washington. Mao got so nervous that he broke his rule about shunning all contact with the Kremlin, and agreed to Kosygin stopping over in Peking in September 1969 on his way back from the funeral of Ho Chi Minh in Hanoi. The Soviet premier was confined to the airport, where Chou En-lai met him in the lounge. The first point Chou raised was a Russian strike, but he failed to extract a commitment from Kosygin that Russia would not attack China. A week later, when Chou wrote asking Kosygin to confirm that both sides had agreed that neither would launch a nuclear attack on the other, Moscow declined to confirm Chou’s “understanding.”

In the meantime, an article was published in a London newspaper by a KGB-linked Russian journalist called Victor Louis (who had recently acted as Moscow’s first known emissary to Taiwan). Louis said the Kremlin was discussing bombing Mao’s nuclear test site, and planning to set up an “alternative leadership” for the CCP.