澳门六合彩

CWIHP e-Dossier No. 41 - Introduction by Austin Jersild 

The politics of culture increasingly occupies a central position in the international history of the Cold War.  New scholarship on Sino-Soviet relations includes attention to education, filmmaking, propaganda, urban planning, literature, journalism, the role of the advisers, and other topics.[1]  The regular attention in 1950s China to the problem of Russian 鈥済reat power chauvinism (daguo zhuyi),鈥� from not just the Chinese but also the Central and East Europeans, suggest that cultural tension and conflict was central to the weaknesses of the socialist bloc generally and the Sino-Soviet relationship in particular.[2]

Soviet visitors to China were aware of the problem and its potential consequences.  We might 鈥渋nstruct our comrades,鈥� reported Soviet writer Boris Polevoi, 鈥渢hat they do not have the duty to accept the good fortune that has come to them, and that they should live modestly and not compel the Chinese to make luxurious expenditures, and be content with their salary, which, it must be said, is very high鈥� [].  In an enthusiastic letter to a colleague about the accomplishments of the new China, geography professor Aleksei V. Stozhenko similarly warned that 鈥済luttonous eating, sleeping in luxury rooms, and traveling in the international car at the expense of the PRC is not helping things鈥� []  The Soviet advisers in China enjoyed living conditions and pay levels far above those of their Chinese colleagues, and the disparity quickly became politically sensitive in a country that preserved a keen memory of the privilege and hierarchy associated with European colonialism.

Aside from the document about a group of Chinese scientists in the Soviet Union [], the subsequent materials come from Friendship Society exchanges, which were a component of the diverse cultural exchange activities of the All-Union Society for Cultural Ties Abroad (Vsesoiuznoe obshchestvo kul鈥檛urnoi sviazi s zagranitsei [VOKS]).[3]  The Society for Chinese-Soviet Friendship (Obshchestvo kitaisko-sovetskoi druzhby [OKSD]) sponsored photograph exhibits about life in the Soviet Union and film festivals, created a radio station which featured daily programs in Chinese on Soviet music, theater, literature, and the arts, supported Russian-language study programs, mailed books and other materials to diverse Chinese groups and institutions, presented musical scores to Chinese composers, conductors, and musicians, and offered financial support for the Chinese Theater Society.[4]  The earlier Friendship Societies dated to the 1930s in Nanjing and Shanghai, while generally the Northeast (Manchuria) was most significant after 1945 in providing a trial run for practices eventually extended to the entire mainland.[5]  Important Friendship Societies were established in L眉shun, Dalian, and Harbin from 1945, and forty-five societies existed by 1946.[6]  Society activists were keenly aware that many Chinese held positive conceptions about the wealth and power of the West, coupled with negative impressions about Soviet communism.  As Qian Junrui, the General Secretary of the Central Administration of the OKSD, put it, many Chinese were influenced by 鈥渁nti-Soviet ideology and mistaken conceptions about the Soviet Union.鈥�[7]  Society branches took it upon themselves to counter these common perceptions.  The party organizer who accompanied the delegation to the Soviet Union, Zhang Jiafu, also worried about the influence of 鈥渂ourgeois ideology鈥� among scientists who had 鈥渟tudied in America and France.鈥�

The many Friendship Society cultural and delegation exchanges offer a fascinating window into the deterioration of the Sino-Soviet relationship.  Over time the Chinese directed attention to the need for equality in cultural exchange, and the need to encourage a greater Soviet knowledge about Chinese culture and Soviet interest in the unique and specifically Chinese conditions important to the construction of socialism.  As Polevoi points out, the Chinese suggested the Russians establish a corresponding society in the Soviet Union to promote knowledge about China and its many accomplishments among its own population.  This corresponding network was created in 1957.  The Chinese also pushed the Russians to provide them with more practical and concrete programs that might lead to specific and identifiable results.  By 1959 the society branches throughout both countries were subject to the intense cultural politics of the Great Leap Forward.  The Russians sent the Bol鈥檚hoi Ballet to perform in celebration of the 10th anniversary of the revolution in October 1959, and the East Germans and the Czechoslovaks contributed orchestras from Dresden and Prague.[8]  The Chinese used these exchanges as an opportunity to pose radical questions about privilege and European high culture which socialist bloc musicians, officials, and experts often missed and misunderstood.  The Russians carefully watched the Chinese treatment of their Friendship Society groups, so as to attempt to ascertain new winds in Chinese politics that were likely to shape the future political situation.  A documentary film about the trip of Khrushchev to America, noted the Soviet embassy in the 8 April 1960 report, was rarely shown by the Chinese branches [].

A number of important economic exchanges and forms of collaboration continued even after the withdrawal of the socialist bloc advisers in July 1960, and the Friendship Society exchanges limped on as well.  By late 1962, the exchanges were testy.  In the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Li Xigeng informed his Soviet colleagues in a 鈥渧ery agitated state鈥� that 鈥済enuine communists must conduct themselves like Fidel Castro鈥� []. Subsequent Chinese trips to the Soviet Union were frightening to the Russians, as they were clearly opportunities for the Chinese to connect with the Soviet citizenry and conduct propaganda against Khrushchev and the reformist leadership in the Soviet Union.  In Moscow, Leningrad, Riga, Kyiv, and other cities the visiting Chinese pushed for more free time without the accompaniment of their Soviet hosts, so their Russian-language speakers could hit the streets in search of political sympathy.  鈥淚n Georgia,鈥� reported T. Skvortsov-Tokarin, 鈥渢he members of the group were extremely active in their efforts to engage in discussion with Soviet people, stop them on the street, shake their hands, talk to them, and attempt to separate from those that accompanied them鈥� [].  Both the United States Information Agency and the Chinese Friendship Societies, albeit with dramatically different political goals, shared a common interest in turning the citizens of the Soviet world against their state, communist party, and ruling elite.  A decade later the US and China would translate these sentiments into a new strategic relationship that would turn out to have extraordinary long-term economic consequences.

Austin Jersild is Associate Professor of History at Old Dominion University. His current research explores the treatment and perception of China within the socialist bloc of the 1950s.

Documents

Obtained and translated by Austin Jersild

Document 1

Russian State Archive of Contemporary History (RGANI) f. 5, op. 28, r. 5200, d. 506, l. 94-97.

Document 2

RGANI f. 5, op. 28, r. 5200, d. 506, l. 88-93.

Document 3

RGANI f. 5, op. 28, 1953, r. 5096, d. 104, l. 84-88.

Document 4

State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF), f. 9576, op. 18, 1959, d. 26, l. 17-23.

Document 5

GARF f. 9576, op. 18, 1959, d. 26, l. 340-46.

Document 6

GARF f. 9576, op. 18, 1960, d. 26, l. 331-38.

Document 7

GARF f. 9576, op. 18, 1963, d. 217, l. 30-36.

Document 8

GARF f. 9576, op. 18, 1963, d. 217, l. 273-81.

[1] Douglas A. Stiffler, 鈥淐reating 鈥楴ew China鈥檚 First New-Style Regular University,鈥� 1949-50,鈥� and Christian Hess, 鈥淏ig Brother Is Watching:  Local Sino-Soviet Relations and the Building of New Dalian, 1945-55,鈥� in Jeremy Brown and Paul G. Pickowicz, eds., Dilemmas of Victory:  The Early Years of the People鈥檚 Republic of China (Cambridge, Massachusetts:  Harvard University, 2007), 288-308, 160-83; Douglas A. Stiffler, 鈥溾�橳hree Blows of the Shoulder Pole鈥�: Soviet Experts at Chinese People鈥檚 University, 1950-1957,鈥� and Izabella Goikhman, 鈥淪oviet-Chinese Academic Interactions in the 1950s:  Questioning the 鈥業mpact-Response鈥� Approach,鈥� in Thomas Bernstein and Hua-yu Li, eds.,  China Learns from the Soviet Union, 1949-Present (Boston:  Lexington, 2010), 303-325, 275-302; Tina Mai Chen, 鈥淚nternationalism and Culture Experience:  Soviet Films and Popular Chinese Understandings of the Future in the 1950s,鈥� Cultural Critique 58 (Fall 2004), 82-114; Tina Mai Chen, 鈥淪ocialist Geographies, Internationalist Temporalities and Travelling Film Technologies:  Sino-Soviet Film Exchange in the 1950s and 1960s,鈥� in Olivia Khoo and Sean Metzger, eds., Futures of Chinese Cinema:  Technologies and Temporalities in Chinese Screen Cultures (Chicago:  Intellect, 2009), 73-93; Julian Chang, 鈥淭he Mechanics of State Propaganda:  The People鈥檚 Republic of China and the Soviet Union in the 1950s,鈥� in Timothy Creek and Tony Saich, eds., New Perspectives on State Socialism (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1997), 76-124; Nicolai Volland, 鈥淭ranslating the Socialist State:  Cultural Exchange, National Identity, and the Socialist World in the Early PRC,鈥� Twentieth-Century China 33, no. 2 (April 2007), 51-72; Nicolai Volland, 鈥淚nventing a Proletarian Fiction for China:  The Stalin Prize, Cultural Diplomacy, and the Creation of a Pan-Socialist Identity,鈥� in Tuong Vu and Wasana Wongsurawat, eds., Dynamics of the Cold War in Asia:  Ideology, Identity, and Culture (New York:  Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 93-111.  On the advisers, see Shen Zhihua, Sulian zhuanjia zai zhongguo (1948-1960) (Beijing:  Zhongguo guoji guangbo chubanshe, 2003); T.G. Zazerskaia, Sovetskie spetsialisty i formirovanie voenno-promyshlennogo kompleksa Kitaia (1949-1960 gody) (St. Petersburg: NIIKH, 2000).  On the overall exchange, see Zhihua Shen and Danhui Li, After Leaning to One Side: China and Its Allies in the Cold War (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center; Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University, 2011); William C. Kirby, 鈥淐hina鈥檚 Internationalization in the Early People鈥檚 Republic:  Dreams of a Socialist World Economy,鈥� China Quarterly 188 (December 2006), 870-90; Odd Arne Westad, 鈥淪truggles for Modernity: The Golden Years of the Sino-Soviet Alliance,鈥� in Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, ed., The Cold War in East Asia 1945-1991 (Washington, D.C. and Stanford, Calif.: Woodrow Wilson Center and Stanford University, 2011), 35-62.

[2] 4 January 1957, 鈥淕uanyu 鈥榋ai lun wuchan jieji zhuanzheng de lishi jingyan鈥� fanying huibao,鈥� Zhonghua renmin gongheguo waijiaobu danganguan (Archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the PRC) 109-01154-01, 7-8.

[3] On VOKS generally, see Michael-David Fox, Showcasing the Great Experiment: Cultural Diplomacy and Western Visitors to the Soviet Union, 1921-1941 (Oxford & New York: Oxford University, 2012). 

[4] 31 January 1944, T. Skvortsov to S.A. Novikov and N.M. Lifanov, Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv rossiiskoi federatsii (State Archive of the Russian Federation, GARF) f. 5283, op. 18, d. 33, l. 49-52; 9 March 1943, V. Valin, ibid., d. 35, l. 1-8.

[5] On the Northeast as a 鈥渓aboratory for the setting up of a socialist state,鈥� see Odd Arne Westad, Decisive Encounters:  The Chinese Civil War, 1946-1950 (Stanford, Calif.:  Stanford University, 2003), 128.

[6] 1 September 1949, 鈥淎notatsiia,鈥� GARF f. 5283, op. 18, d. 91, l. 90.

[7] 1950, Qian Junrui, ibid., d. 106, l. 75.

[8] 17 December 1959, 鈥淶谩jezdu 膷esk茅 filharmonie do 膷铆nsk茅 lidov茅 republiky,鈥� Jarom铆r 艩t臎tina, 033.351/59, Archiv Ministerstva zahrani膷n铆ch v臎c铆 膶esk茅 republiky (Archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic) TO鈥擳 1955-59, 膶LR, krabice 8, obal 1.