Glimpses of Mao’s Unhistory

The personal history of a Communist autocrat is a matter of supreme political importance. Exercising total power within his realm, the autocrat also lays claim to total perfection. And being uniquely equipped to achieve this aim (“who controls the present, controls the past”), he projects his current image backward to earlier phases of his career—and even to the days of his youth.

For the USSR, Bertram D. Wolfe has traced this process of idolization in a model analysis of Stalin as “a man who has succeeded in inventing himself” (“Operation Rewrite,” Foreign Affairs, October 1952). For Communist China, Richard L. Walker has shown its maturation and climax in an illuminating study, “Chairman Mao and the Cult of Personality” (Encounter, June 1960). Like Stalin, Mao too is inventing himself. The recklessness of his effort becomes fully apparent when we turn from the recent scene depicted by Professor Walker to the over-all political record that supposedly is documented in the official edition of his Selected Works, which has been appearing since 1951 under Mao’s personal editorship. A critical study of the text reveals that Mao has altered his writings and speeches to such an extent that any similarity between the official version and the originals is often purely accidental.

KW

About the Author

Karl A. Wittfogel

The personal history of a Communist autocrat is a matter of supreme political importance. Exercising total power within his realm, the autocrat also lays claim to total perfection. And being uniquely equipped to achieve this aim (“who controls the present, controls the past”), he projects his current image backward to earlier phases of his career—and even to the days of his youth.

For the USSR, Bertram D. Wolfe has traced this process of idolization in a model analysis of Stalin as “a man who has succeeded in inventing himself” (“Operation Rewrite,” Foreign Affairs, October 1952). For Communist China, Richard L. Walker has shown its maturation and climax in an illuminating study, “Chairman Mao and the Cult of Personality” (Encounter, June 1960). Like Stalin, Mao too is inventing himself. The recklessness of his effort becomes fully apparent when we turn from the recent scene depicted by Professor Walker to the over-all political record that supposedly is documented in the official edition of his Selected Works, which has been appearing since 1951 under Mao’s personal editorship. A critical study of the text reveals that Mao has altered his writings and speeches to such an extent that any similarity between the official version and the originals is often purely accidental.