China's “archival thaw” is the main subject of this issue of the Cold War International History Project Bulletin. Over the past decade, scholars working on modern Chinese history have increasingly gained access to archival holdings, especially on the provincial or municipal level. The archives of important political organs such as state ministries, not to mention the Central Archives in Beijing, however, remained inaccessible to independent researchers. Since 2004, the Foreign Ministry of the People's Republic of China has started to partially declassify its records of the 1950s and thus come to complement the previously available materials published by the CCP Central Documents Research Office.
For the present volume, the editors have chosen some 80 documents on the 1954 Geneva Conference from the Foreign Ministry's stacks that mainly highlight Zhou Enlai's skilled diplomacy and flexibility in dealing with the representatives of France and Great Britain. This section is slightly disappointing since there is little that would not have been known previously and most documents deal with “policy-implementation, rather than policy-making”, as Chen Jian and Shen Zhihua correctly point out (p. 8). But still the documents provide a vivid impression about how the PRC entered the international diplomatic stage.
More insights can be gained on the other topics addressed in the Bulletin based on Russian and East European archives. The section on “Mao's Long March to Moscow” (edited by Sergey Radchenko and David Wolff) consists of translations of reprints from the Russian Presidential Archive. Particularly revealing are the transcripts of the Xibaipo talks between Anastas Mikoyan and Mao Zedong in early 1949. Topics include CCP policy and history, the question of national minorities, or the role of Soviet involvement in Xinjiang. Mao proposed the reunification of Inner and Outer Mongolia as part of the Chinese Republic (p. 145) but did not get Soviet approval. The Chinese leadership, however, did not easily back down as the section on “Mongolia and the Cold War” (again insightfully edited by Sergey Radchenko) illustrates. Probably the most astounding strategy in this regard was presented by Liu Shaoqi and Zhou Enlai shortly after Khrushchev's secret speech. In a discussion with Mikoyan they argued that it had been Stalin's objections that had prevented a reunification. Shouldn't this viewpoint be considered as one of “Stalin's mistakes” (p. 348) as well? While sharply opposing de-Stalinization in general terms, the Chinese leadership tried to flexibly employ the situation for its own gains, yet to no avail.
Other fascinating sources may be found in the parts on “Sino-Albanian summits” (edited by Ana Lalaj, Christian Ostermann and Ryan Gage), “Romania and Sino-Soviet Rapproachment” (excellently introduced and edited by Mircea Munteanu) and “Soviet-bloc documents on Vietnam” (edited by Lorenz Lüthi based a highly impressive variety of languages). The transcripts of the Sino-Albanian summits are among the few subjects that shed archival light on Chinese leader's contemporary reflections on the Cultural Revolution. Especially Mao's conversation with a delegation led by Mehmet Shehu on 12 October 1967 that previously had only been available in an unofficial Chinese version, provides insights both regarding the fundamental aims of the movement, as well as events such as the Wuhan incident or the attempt to “arm the Left” (pp. 332–37). The section on Romania does not solve the crucial question of why Ceausescu delayed the Chinese invitation to President Nixon of visiting the PRC but fills many gaps with regard to specific details. The documents on Vietnam reveal how East European and Soviet embassy personnel tried to make sense of the situation in Beijing and Hanoi through close interaction and communication. Unfortunately there are no transcripts of the talks between Mao Zedong and Ho Chi Minh 1965–66 available and one thus still has to rely on unofficial excerpts (for example, in the Chinese Cultural Revolution Database, Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2002).
The last part of the collection is entitled “New evidence on North Korea in 1956” (edited by Nobuo Shimotomai, with introduction by James Person). It details the impact of de-Stalinization on North Korean politics and reveals that the events at the August 1956 Plenum of the Korean Workers' Party presented no simple power struggle between competing factions but should rather be interpreted as the desperate attempt of various individuals critical of Kim Il Sung to allow for discussions on economic policy and to place limits upon the pervasive personality cult. The letters and memoranda by the North Korean ambassador to the Soviet Union, Li Sangjo, against Kim's cult range among the most substantial and moving documents that have been written on this subject in any language (especially Document 21). And his credo that “one cannot distort history” (p. 505) is probably one that has motivated all scholarly contributors in editing this volume.
The collection is a very helpful resource for courses on CCP politics, Cold War studies and international relations, and will hopefully be continued in future issues.
