Dashnor Kaloçi
Second part
Memorie.al publishes an archival document issued by the Central State Archive in Tirana (fund of the former Central Committee of the ALP), which contains the minutes of the meeting held in the city of Wuhan of the People’s Republic of China, where the date On June 29, 1962, the chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, Mao Zedong, received the high delegation of the ALP, headed by the secretaries of the Central Committee, Hysni Kapo and Ramiz Alia, which was also attended by the ambassador of the People’s Republic of Albania in Beijing, Reiz Malile, et al. The full conversation between Mao Zedong and the two main leaders of the Albanian Labor Party, sent especially by Enver Hoxha after the breakdown of official relations with the Soviet Union and Nikita Hrushov, where after welcoming them, President Mao asked Hysni Kapon on the health of Enver Hoxha and Mehmet Shehu, as well as the presentation with the members of the Albanian delegation, he first made a presentation of the situation in which the People’s Republic of China was at that time and their internal problems, then he spoke to President Mao regarding their relations with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, attacking and accusing the head of the Kremlin, Nikita Hrushov, of being a “revisionist and traitor to Marxism-Leninism of the great Stalin”, and strongly condemning his act, which burned the body of Stalin after removing him from the Kremlin Mausoleum, to the accusations of Palmiro Toliati, Nehru of India, Josif Broz Tito, Liri Belishova, etc.
Minutes of the meeting held in the city of Wuhan of the People’s Republic of China, on June 29, 1962, between the ALP delegation led by Hysni Kapo and Ramiz Alia, with the Chairman of the Communist Party of China, Mao Zedong Dun
MEETING OF THE ALBANIAN LABOR PARTY DELEGATION WITH THE LEADER OF THE CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY, COMRADE MAO CE DUN, IN THE CITY OF WUHAN, AT 5.00 ON 29 JUNE 1962
Chairman Mao Zedong received our delegation in Wuhan City. He had come out the front door, where he received the delegation. After the participants took their seats in the conference room, Chairman Mao Zedong asked Comrade Hysni Kapo how the delegation had enjoyed their time during their stay in the People’s Republic of China, Comrade Hysni Kapo, after answering the question by Comrade Mao Ce Dun, said:
COMRADE MAO CE DUN: The people of the Soviet Union are also dissatisfied with the war that Nikita Khrushchev and his group are waging against the Albanian Labor Party and the Communist Party of China. This dissatisfaction is constantly growing. In China, our party, which was founded in 1921, initially found the support of just a few people as well. There were only 12 delegates in his first Congress, who represented only a few dozen party members, a total of 57 people. The statement or decision taken by this congress did not attract the attention of many people, but the facts show that our people gradually understood the party line; they absorbed Marxism little by little.
Our people have had two types of teachers: One type of these teachers is: Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin. The other types are the various imperialists and Jiang Jieshi. If teachers of the second kind had not existed, the revolutionary consciousness of our people would not have been born; they would never have been able to understand Marxism if they had not been oppressed by the imperialists and Jiang Jieshi. Maybe the same thing has happened in your country; at first only a few people should have believed in Marxism, but with the oppression exerted on people by the enemies, they begin to understand the course, to clarify, and gradually to believe in Marxism. At the present time, the second types of teachers are the imperialists and reactionaries of different countries.
In a way, revisionists are for us the second type of teachers. In the fight against revisionists, people could not be clear on many issues. Modern revisionists today are playing the same role that old revisionists did in the past, like Bernstein with Kautsky in Germany and Plekhanov in Russia. The old revisionists also brought the idea of peaceful transition to socialism, without revolution. So the theory of peaceful transfer of power to socialism is not something new, it is an old theory.
The true Marxists of that time had much to do; they were forced to fight against revisionism. Leninism, the Bolshevik Party, the communist parties in different parts of the world, and the Third International were born under these conditions, and then the revolution developed further. From a socialist country that existed before World War II, the Soviet Union, there are now 12 socialist countries. With the exception of Mongolia, 10 other new socialist countries were born during or shortly after World War II. This is the dialectic of history; in the world everything has changed and will continue to change. Here I am talking about materialist dialectics. Nikita Khrushchev will not change all Marxists and will not turn them into revisionists.
COMRADE HYSNI KAPO: What you have said is very correct; those who become revisionists are the undecided, only those who are not true Marxists.
COMRADE MAO CE DUN: Yes. We now live in a time when others curse us. We are cursed and are being cursed by the imperialists and Jieshiists Jiang; later, along with them, we had and still have the Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and the Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito, who insult us; now we have Nikita Khrushchev, who also curses us. We are used to being cursed by our enemies. The cursing actions of the revisionists are malignant, such as their political pressures on us, the severance of relations, etc., but they do not frighten us. These are the types of activities in which they engage.
COMRADE HYSNI KAPO: Neither their punishment nor their pressure will scare us. As you said, with these things they have done and continue to do against us, after all the curses against us and their attacks, they just managed to get our party name heard and followed all over the world.
COMRADE MAO CE DUN: That’s right.
COMRADE HYSNI KAPO: You know that our population is small; for many centuries our people have lived under the yoke of strangers, but they never knelt before them. The only friends they had at that time were rifles and the mountains of Albania, in fact the mountains were at that time the property of the feudal lords and the rich, and the rifles had bullets. However, despite their disa (some unreadable words) kushte conditions, the rifles are very good and, above all, they have their party leading them in the right direction; they have loyal friends who help them. When I say that our people are not alone, but have good friends, I am talking about the Chinese people, the Communist Party of glorious China, the peoples of socialist countries, the Soviet people, and all the peoples of the world.
Our party, Comrade Mao Zedong, despite the furious attacks by Khrushchev and those in the parties of the socialist countries of Europe that follow him, has never considered Nikita Khrushchev identified with the Soviet people and the Soviet communists. Neither the Soviet Union, nor the Soviet people, nor Lenin’s party, are Khrushchev’s property. The party and the Soviet people were educated by Lenin and, as you said, the time will come when the revisionists will end up in the same place as their predecessors. This is what history teaches us.
For what you said that we should not be afraid of meetings, I would like to say that our party, like your party, knew what the situation was when the meeting of the parties was held in Moscow in 1960; we knew we would be in the minority there, and yet, despite that, we went to this meeting (both our parties), talked there and fought together, alongside many other parties.
COMRADE MAO CE DUN: The same thing happened in Bucharest at the Congress of the Romanian Communist Party, in June 1960 as well.
COMRADE HYSNI KAPO: We were there in an even smaller minority.
COMRADE MAO CE DUN: We were openly attacked there and we were not prepared for that.
COMRADE HYSNI KAPO: We consider the words and advice you have given us here, Comrade Mao Ce Dun, to be extremely valuable.
COMRADE MAO CE DUN: I would like to invite you to dinner tonight. Are all Albanian friends here?
COMRADE HYSNI KAPO: Thank you very much. We told you that we had extremely good impressions from the talks with your delegation, but let me bring up just one issue, because of what I would like to talk about, we are somewhat concerned. I am talking about our economic problems that we discussed recently at the last meeting with friends of the Chinese leadership in Beijing. We have expressed our views on this issue to our comrades in Beijing, so I do not want to dwell; I just want to ask you if the issue that was presented to us can be reviewed once again, because if what has been offered to us happens, difficult conditions will be created for us. Of course, we will fight to face and overcome them, but given the situation our country is facing, I think these issues need to be reconsidered once again.
We understand your situation, about which we were informed by friends in Beijing. We saw everything here; you placed your hearts in our hands. We saw a friendly atmosphere with all the friends we talked to. But economic issues concern us a lot. That’s all I wanted to tell you.
You must be convinced that our party, as always, will fight for unity and for the deepening inculcation of an ever-increasing love for the Chinese people and your party. These are two things we will constantly strengthen in the communists and our people. Our friends in Tirana are looking forward to being informed about the exchange of views we had with you and we will listen carefully to everything we will inform them about.
We told Comrade Ten Hsiao Pin, as well as Comrade Liu Shaoqi, on behalf of the Central Committee of our party, that whenever you see fit, we await the arrival of a delegation of the Communist Party of China in Albania and assure you that we will to be brightly received joy from our people and party.
COMRADE MAO CE DUN: Very well, it’s a good thing.
For the economic issue you mentioned, Comrade Hysni Kapo, I am not informed in detail, because I have not yet read all the material. When I get back to Beijing, I will talk to friends about it.
COMRADE HYSNI KAPO: What I told you, Comrade Mao Zedong, we also told our comrades in Beijing; they listened to us very attentively. But we just wanted to tell you.
(After the talks, Comrade Mao Zedong was photographed with the friends of the ALP delegation and then invited them to have dinner with him. The dinner took place in a very warm atmosphere)
(Recorded with shorthand)
During the dinner, the friendly conversation of Comrade Mao Zedong with the friends of our delegation continued.
Comrade Mao Zedong stressed that: we must show vigilance against revisionists, because they are able to prepare surprises. He said that “for us the raising of the issue of the cult of personality of Stalin by Nikita Khrushchev at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the USSR was a surprise. He had read a report on the fight against the ‘cult of personality’. on the basis of which a very short resolution was passed on the issue. All this happened after the daily agenda of the congress had ended, and after the election of the new Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and Nikita Khrushchev as the new secretary only later did he notify the delegations of the sister parties.
The delegation of the Communist Party of China was informed by Khrushchev himself. He tried to convince us of the ‘great damage’ Stalin had done. They call it a ‘provocation’ since in China, a portrait of Stalin hung on the walls. Yes, in our country, in Tiananmen Square, twice a year, on May 1 and October 1, the portrait of Stalin is hung, along with the portraits of Marx, Engels and Lenin. None of those four are alive, but people love them there. “If we do not hang a portrait of Stalin, people will warn us.”
Comrade Hysni Kapo added: “It is the same in Albania. You were right before, Comrade Mao Zedong, when you said that our parties and our people are like a single brain; they have one heart. ”
Comrade Mao Zedong then said: “There are also many bourgeois elements who do not agree with the accusations that Khrushchev makes against Stalin, they do not believe them. They say they are not convinced that, for example, Stalin was a coward during World War II, as Khrushchev propagates. “Furthermore, the removal of his body from the mausoleum and its cremation were not well received by the people.”
Comrade Hysni Kapo and comrade Ramiz Alia, added that this had never been seen in history. “The monuments to the tsars of Russia, from Ivan the Terrible to Peter I and others who have done a thousand and one harms to the people, have not been removed, and the monuments, even the body of Stalin, have been liquidated.”
Comrade Mao Zedong, then said that: during a meeting he had some time ago with comrade Abdyl Kellezi, he had asked him: “is the grass growing in your mountains in Albania after Khrushchev spoke badly about you? Comrade Abdyl Kellezi replied that: he was growing well. I told her that ours in China was also growing well. What is special is that some people, especially in small countries, are very afraid of Khrushchev and his group. Some are afraid of being divided, because in their parties there are also elements that are for the line of Nikita Khrushchev. Comrades of the Communist Party of Indonesia, for example, fear that Khrushchev may release reactionaries against them. Ho Chi Minh fears that if Khrushchev expels Albania today, he may expel Vietnam tomorrow. In a meeting that Ho Chi Minh had with me, I asked him, why are you afraid? In our country, China, the grass is growing well even though Khrushchev is attacking and fighting us. If you do not believe this, take a walk through our mountains and see with your own eyes. “I told him he should not be afraid, because no matter what happens, the grass will grow well in Vietnam.”
Among other things, Comrade Mao Zedong said that the former Korean ambassador to the Soviet Union did not return from Moscow; he had stayed there. “We also have some elements in our country that support the Khrushchev line; right-wing elements… (Some incomprehensible words)… Pen De Huai in the party”.
“We also probably have two or three people in our party as well,” added comrade Hysni Kapo.
“I know,” said Comrade Mao Zedong, “you had Liri Belishova. She has also been here in China.”
Comrade Hysni Kapo, took the floor once again, saying: “We had noticed something and we had followed its activities closely. During her trip (June 1960) to China, she secretly went to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. On her return from China, she, keeping this secret from comrade Haxhi Lleshi, went and met Frol Kozlov. “It seems that she received new instructions, but they were useless because the Bucharest meeting had already taken place.”
Comrade Hysni Kapo also stressed that, “The Soviet leadership tried to keep in the Soviet Union our students who were there for studies before the 22nd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.”
Comrade Ramiz Alia, added that, “Despite the great efforts of Nikita Khrushchev’s men to lure our students using girls and promises, or threatening them with their Security organs, they only managed to
hold three or four people, from “1,500 students we had sent to the Soviet Union. This was the result of all their efforts.”
“This,” said Comrade Mao Zedong, “is a victory of yours.”
Comrade Hysni Kapo, stressed: “In the fight against Khrushchev’s revisionist group, the unity of our people around the party has been strengthened as never before. This is perfectly shown by the glorious results of the elections for the People’s Assembly; only 37 people across Albania voted against. Such unity has never been seen in our country. The mobilization of the working masses is also at a high level. “In fact, many of the nationalists, who were not on our side, were involved in a patriotic feeling and are now in support of our party and our power.”
“Even in China,” added Comrade Mao Zedong, “a good part of the nationalist bourgeoisie supports our party.”
Comrade Mao Zedong said, among other things, that “The delegation of the Communist Party of China, at the 22nd Congress of the Communist Party of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, had seen there the former Prime Minister of the USSR, Nikolai Bulgan, who was a delegate. He had no car; he was walking”
Comrade Hysni Kapo said, “During the days of the meeting in Moscow in 1960, our party delegation had several meetings with the Soviet leadership, who were trying to force our delegation not to speak at the Moscow meeting. Kozlov, Mikoyan, Suslov, Pospelov, etc., came to the headquarters of our delegation then.They said they were ready to give Albania everything, including wheat, machinery, credit, etc., leaving no doubt that in return, they expected that “Our party delegation kept its mouth shut in the meeting. Comrade Enver Hoxha replied to them, that: we do not sell our principles, neither for wheat nor for credit”.
“Then,” continued Comrade Hysni Kapo, “a meeting was held with Nikita Khrushchev on November 12, 1960. He tried to convince us that Stalin had committed great mistakes and crimes. He pulled out a letter and said: ‘Please read what he writes to Bulgan on the issue of Stalin’s mistakes. “Then he added,” I receive thousands of such letters. “Comrade Enver Hoxha replied that: we do not need to read a letter from Bulganin, to get acquainted with Joseph Stalin The conversation escalated into this meeting and Nikita Khrushchev, speaking with Comrade Enver Hoxha, said: ‘I can go better with the British Prime Minister, Harold MacMillan, than I can with you.’ Comrade Enver Hoxha then replied to him, “We have no doubt that you can associate better with MacMillan than with us.”
Here Comrade Mao Zedong stepped in and said, “Maybe he doesn’t go that easy with MacMillan.”
During the conversation, Comrade Mao Zedong, among other things, noted that there is a phenomenon that is often apparent: “In periods of revolution, left deviations are more visible, while in the peaceful period, right deviations are “In China, for example, Gao Gang and Peng Dehuai came out with their opportunistic right-wing views during peacetime. This shows that revisionism is not a phenomenon of chance.”
Comrade Ramiz Alia added, “At the present time, revisionist tendencies are more prevalent in developed countries, such as Italy or elsewhere. So revisionism has its social basis.”
Comrade Mao Zedong noted that “Italian communist leader Palmiro Togliatti and his friends are now preaching the theory of ‘structural reforms’. This is a completely opportunistic theory, because these ‘structural reforms’ do not affect the economic basis of “The capitalist system, without touching at all the most important part of the superstructure. They think they will take the rule of power into their own hands, using a parliamentary course, without revolution.”
Comrade Mao Zedong then asked how many kilometers of coastline Albania had, and after receiving an answer, he said that Albania had great conditions for better connections with the outside world. He said that during the Long March of the Chinese Red Army, the Congress of the Communist Party of China was held on one of the revolutionary bases. The base was surrounded on all sides by Jiang Jieshist armies. Despite this, delegates to the congress were able to break the siege and come to the congress from all the different regions of China.
Comrade Hysni Kapo and comrade Ramiz Alia emphasized that, “the economic blockade that Khrushchev tried to create around the People’s Republic of Albania, failed and will fail. One of Khrushchev’s intentions was not to allow Albania to get closer to its friend, China. For this reason, the Soviet side also eliminated the Moscow-Tirana air route. But Khrushchev, who talks so much about technology, underestimated Albania’s capabilities: we found our way to the People’s Republic of China, either by boat or by air. “No matter how much Khrushchev can prove, he cannot separate the two parties and our people.”
These were the highlights of the conversation that took place between Comrade Mao Zedong and our party delegation over dinner. Toasts were also raised. Comrade Mao Zedong proposed a toast to the Labor Party of Albania, Comrade Enver Hoxha and Comrade Mehmet Shehu, the unbreakable friendship between the two parties and our people, the victory of Marxism-Leninism. Comrade Hysni Kapo also proposed the relevant toast. Memorie.al
