Maoism Is Dead

Several worlds ago I had the astonishing good fortune to be one of the first twenty Americans allowed into Russia after Stalin’s death. I have now just returned from a journey to China that began about a month after Mao died. Everything was the same and everything was different.

Both trips were Philosophical Voyages, on which the traveler must be gripped by his encounter with the most alien societies on the planet, and with his own inmost values. Old Russia and Old China were both glorious, insofar as they survived, and both tragic in their ruin. And Communism? What can one say? It was and is simultaneously a wonder, a horror, and a farce—and no part of that paradox can ever be argued away. And the future of Communism? When Stalin died that question was the life and death of the whole world. It may still be the greatest question. But I think I saw the end of the Chinese Revolution.

FR

About the Author

Francis B. Randall

Several worlds ago I had the astonishing good fortune to be one of the first twenty Americans allowed into Russia after Stalin’s death. I have now just returned from a journey to China that began about a month after Mao died. Everything was the same and everything was different.

Both trips were Philosophical Voyages, on which the traveler must be gripped by his encounter with the most alien societies on the planet, and with his own inmost values. Old Russia and Old China were both glorious, insofar as they survived, and both tragic in their ruin. And Communism? What can one say? It was and is simultaneously a wonder, a horror, and a farce—and no part of that paradox can ever be argued away. And the future of Communism? When Stalin died that question was the life and death of the whole world. It may still be the greatest question. But I think I saw the end of the Chinese Revolution.