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 belonged to 1967, where is the minutes “Top secret” of a conversation in Beijing on February 3 of that year, during a reception given by the Chairman of the Communist Party of the People’s Republic of China, Mao Zedong, with Prime Minister Chu En Lai, in honor of the Albanian delegation led by the Secretary of the Central Committee of the ALP , Hysni Kapo and the Minister of National Defense and Deputy Prime Minister Beqir Balluku, which were also attended by the Director of the Political Directorate of the Army in the Ministry of Defense, Hito Çako, as well as the Albanian Ambassador to Beijing, Behar Shtylla and diplomat Vasil Nathanaili. The full conversation between the two main leaders of the People’s Republic of China with the high Albanian delegation, where Mao Zedong after making a general summary of the real situation in which China was at that time and the Communist Party he headed, he told Hysni Kapos and Beqir Balluku, that: the propaganda made by the top Chinese leadership and the newspaper ‘Zhenminzhibao’ that described him as: “Great Teacher”, “Great Leader”, “Great Strategist” and “Great Steering Wheel”, are raised the cult of the individual, which he did not like, as he wanted to be called simply a “teacher”, as he had actually been, but could do nothing to stop it!
Minutes of the conversation held in Beijing on February 3, 1967, during the reception given by Mao Zedong to the Albanian delegation, led by Hysni Kapo and Beqir Balluku
Summary of the conversation between President Mao Zedong and comrades Hysni Kapo and Beqir Balluku. (According to an unverified transcript).
Meeting time: February 3, 1967, starting from 5:20 pm to 7:00 pm
Meeting place: Room no. 118, Assembly Hall
Participants: Behar Shtylla, Hito Çako, and Vasil Nathanaili
Translator: Fan Tzen Xuo
Before the conversation, Comrade Mao Ce Dun greeted Comrades Hysni Kapo, Beqir Balluku, Behar Shtylla, Hito Çako and other members of the Albanian military delegation, led by Comrades Hysni Kapo and Hito Çako.
Comrade Mao Zedong warmly greeted his Albanian comrades and shook hands strongly. Albanian comrades greeted Comrade Mao Zedong with thunderous applause. While photographs were being taken, Comrade Mao told his comrades that they should be caught smiling, that they should appear full of life in pictures, not dead – that the proletariat should appear full of living pictures.
After the photos were taken, Comrade Mao Zedong shouted: Down with imperialism! Down with revisionism! Down with the reactionaries of all countries! Let’s join! Let us unite all the revolutionary people of the world!
Followed by the last number
Chairman Mao: It seems that we are more optimistic now than the last time I talked to comrade Mehmet Shehu last year.
Comrade Hysni: Then we did not know certain things, compared to what we know now. We have now learned that you were right: the enemy sleeps beside us. This is now proven. They have been unmasked; this is a great victory. This is of great importance not only for China, but also for our country, and for all progressive humanity. The enemies of the Chinese people and the Communist Party of China have been unmasked and the line represented by Comrade Mao Zedong has triumphed.
Chairman Mao: We achieved a certain kind of victory, but it is not yet a great victory. You can say that after a year. But we still cannot define it. It is possible that we can, and I am always prepared for such an outcome, in case we will be able to. Even then, there will be people who will rise up and fight. There are people in China who claim to be “pacifists”. This is not absolutely true – we always want to fight, and I’m one of those people. (Laughter).
Comrade Hysni: How can it be done without fighting? How else can we achieve our goal?
Chairman Mao: That is correct.
Comrade Beqir: Along this road, we have achieved our victory.
Chairman Mao: That is why following a revisionist line in China is not as easy as in the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union was born at the foundation of Tsarist imperialism, while China was a semi-colonial and oppressed state, enslaved by the imperialists for more than 100 years. People were very unhappy. Only the bourgeoisie were happy, as were the feudal lords and bourgeois intellectuals. We made the revolution in our country with a steady war. After taking control of the big cities, people were sent to some of the centers, administrative institutions, factories and enterprises.
Was not Peng Zhen one of these people? Was not Cao Diqiu sent to Shanghai? Chen Pixian was also sent. And these people, who were sent there, were later elected. The so-called elections actually consisted of everyone voting for the lists presented to the voters! That’s why I do not believe in elections. China, for example, has more than 2,400 districts. If each district elects one representative, then there would be 2,400 representatives. If each district elects four representatives, then there would be 10,000 representatives, who would fill the amount of the Assembly Hall.
A large circle has over one million inhabitants. A secondary has several hundred thousand. A small one has several tens of thousands to several hundred thousand people. How can they recognize these four individuals? For example, I am a representative elected by the city of Beijing, but most people in Beijing
have never seen me. They have seen my picture, or read my name in the newspaper. Beijing city has four million inhabitants, not including the suburbs.
Comrade Chu En Lai: In Beijing there are people who say that the Red Guards have seen President Mao, at a time when they themselves have never seen him.
Chairman Mao: People in other provinces have seen me, but these people have not seen me, and yet they have chosen me. This happened because I am well known. They have heard my name for a while now, but have never seen me. People like me, as the Chairman of the Council of State, are well known. But there are many other people whose names ordinary people do not yet know they choose them. I think this is worse than the Democracy of the Red Guards, who have seen their leaders and talked to them.
Comrade Hysni: That is right.
Chairman Mao: Among the Red Guards, too, we can observe some differentiation. Last summer, the left wing was just a small minority. They stood by our side, but were crushed. They were targeted as “right-wing”, “counter-revolutionary”, and so on. By winter, the situation had changed. The minority became the majority. Have you been to Tsinghua University?
Comrade Hysni: Yes, we have been there.
Chairman Mao: The Chingkangshan organization was a minority in the past and was under attack. At Peking University, Nie Yuanzi was also in the minority and was under attack. But now they are in the majority. In the past they were oppressed, but as soon as winter came, the revolutionary minority became the majority. Last December and this January, a differentiation emerged between them.
Some of these people who were revolutionary in the summer turned into counter-revolutionaries in the winter. Of course, we are working to convince people like this, like Nie Yuanzi and Kuai Dafu. But we still have to wait to see if these people are trustworthy or not. Either way, worthy people can emerge in this wave of events.
We are now seeing the spread of some anarchist thoughts. This is reflected in the slogan “Let us be suspicious of everything and overthrow everything”! As a result, they ended up badly themselves. So you are skeptical of everything but what about yourself? You overturn everything, but what about yourself? So the bourgeoisie must be overthrown, but what about the proletariat? Their theory does not stand. But judging by the current of events as a whole, after the war, the wrong people can not continue to stay.
Look through the streets of Beijing and you will see banners calling for my overthrow, calling for the overthrow of Comrade Lin Biao. Others are calling for the overthrow of Chu En Lait, Kang Sheng, Chen Boda, Comrade Jiang Qing, etc. And there are many slogans calling for the overthrow of Li Fuchun, Tan Zhenlin, Li Xiannian, Chen Yi, Ye Jianying, Nie Rongzhen and Xiao Hua.
For example, Yang Chengwu has been charged with the position of Chief of General Staff; The General Staff has many departments under it. Among other things, the chief and deputy chief of the War Department, writes a dazibao and they want to overthrow it. While a member of the command of the Beijing Military Region, quickly demanded the overthrow and liquidation of Xiao Hua, but two days later this person overthrew himself. And this is the second largest military region in China! Everyone was overthrown there: the commander, the commissar, as well as the deputy commissar were overthrown. But the truth always remains true. The sky will not fall. The vast majority of people, workers, peasants, intelligence, cadres, party members and youth are good; we will seriously believe this truth.
Comrade Beqir: They are a living force.
Chairman Mao: Although there are some people who have made mistakes and have shortcomings. We should not defend some of the shortcomings of Ye Jianying, Yang Chengwu, Xiao Hua and Wang Shuseng. But, basically, they are good people.
Comrade Beqir: One can make mistakes at work, but these can be corrected.
Chairman Mao: They can be corrected! I also made some mistakes. Is it perhaps the case that only others make mistakes, and I do not? I made some mistakes. I made some military and political mistakes. We do not have time to go into more detail on the type of mistakes I have made, but if you will stay a few days longer, I can share them with you. I do not hide my mistakes. Some people claim to have made no mistake, but I do not believe this and do not like it. I do not believe what these people say; maybe I do not know myself yet? I am sufficiently able to know myself.
Even if the sky and the earth of China were to be darkened, do not be afraid, but maintain some faith, for not everything can be darkened. Emperor Qin Shi Huang, reigned for 16 years and was overthrown. The first to rebel were two people named Chen Sheng and Wu Guang. They were both slaves at the time. Now, the Red Guards writing a dazibao in China, these people who were attacked last summer as counter-revolutionaries, are precisely Chen Shengs and Wu Gangs. We were all Spartans. We did not have any social position. We were low-level, neglected and repressed people, but we organized the Communist Party. Why do you call it the Labor Party? In the beginning it was called the Communist Party ?!
Comrade Hysni: Yes, that is correct. After the war, our party changed its name to the Labor Party. At the time, we took into account the fact that our party membership consisted mainly of individuals from a rural background. Therefore, we consulted with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and Comrade Stalin, and decided to do so. Given the fact that the majority consisted of peasants and we never had a developed proletariat, let’s call it that. During the recent Fifth Congress, there were some people who proposed to call it the Communist Party again. Comrade Enver Hoxha said that we can analyze this during the next party congress.
Chairman Mao: In the past, the Soviet party was called the Social Democratic Party and later, after the victory, Lenin changed the name of the party.
From the time of Marx, for more than 100 years, the First International collapsed, and then the Second International was born. The Second International also broke up and then the Third International was born. This too was ruined and there are no more Internationals, but we have communist parties in different countries.
Now many of these parties have embraced revisionism. But there are some parties that are called “dogmatic”. We are all “dogmatic”. However, there are still some Marxist parties. In Italy, France, and several other European countries, several Marxist-Leninist groups and parties have emerged. There are also rallies like these in Latin America and Asia. They also exist in Oceania, like rallies in New Zealand and Australia.
Comrade Hysni: We are not few in number.
Chairman Mao: We are not.
Comrade Hysni: And we are growing in number all the time.
Chairman Mao: Yes! Especially after Engels’s death, the whole of the Second International disbanded. Neither Marx nor Engels was able to predict this. But the Bolsheviks came and they achieved victory in the Soviet Union. What are we going to do now?
Comrade Chu En Lai: Enough now.
Chairman Mao: Maybe you are busy?
Comrade Chu En Lai: They should attend a banquet.
Chairman Mao: Well, then, we will meet again.
Comrade Hysni: Thank you. Comrade Mao Zedong, I will convey your wish to the Central Committee and Comrade Enver Hoxha. Comrade Kang Sheng told me yesterday that our friends should come to China more often in the future. We will give other friends the opportunity to come here as well. This time, we can say that we have learned an excellent lesson here in China. This is a privilege given to us by our party.
Once again, we thank the Communist Party of China, its Central Committee, and Comrade Mao Zedong personally, for facilitating everything for us. Once again we would like to communicate the wishes of our party and our people, our leadership and Comrade Enver, for a decisive victory in this great war.
We hope that this Great Cultural Revolution, led by the Communist Party of China and you, achieves a great victory. As I said at the beginning, this is in the interest of your country, but also in the interest of our country and the progressive people of the world, in the interest of the international communist movement. This is the wish of our people, of our party.
Chairman Mao: Thank you. Who is the ambassador?
Ambassador: I am.
Chairman Mao: You have to travel everywhere. Not only in Beijing, but also in other countries, such as Shanghai, Harbin, Tianjin, etc.
Ambassador: Thank you very much.
Chairman Mao: Will you come to Shanghai?
Comrade Hysni: When we came to Shanghai, we talked to friends there and met the workers. We were there just at the time the Shanghai rebel workers took control.
Chairman Mao: During the first ten days of last November, Shanghai rebel workers numbered just over 1,000 people. After a little over two months, they count more than a million. Where are you going now?
Comrade Chu En Lai: They will return south. Comrade Balluku will visit the ‘Victory’ oil fields in Shandong and then the navy in Shanghai.
Chairman Mao: (addressing Comrade Beqir Balluku) In Shanghai, you can ask to speak with Comrades Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan and others. /Memorie.al
