Anti Fascists

"Though Mao hated her, Jiang remained powerful. On his death in 1976, his successor Deng ended her ascendancy and arrested Madame Mao in a palace coup. In 1981 Jiang was found guilty of 'counter-revolutionary' crimes. Her death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment but she committed suicide in 1991. A hated figure, she was described by one biographer as a 'vicious woman who helped dispose of many people'; the 'white-boned demon' who, in her own words (when on trial), was 'Chairman Mao’s dog. Whomever he asked me to bite, I bit.'"

"For many years, Chairman Mao has repeatedly instructed us. We should unite with the absolute majority, with the more than 95 percent of the people of the whole country. After the editor's note of the September 5 issue, our comrades should think about this question. After distinguishing right from wrong, we should consolidate more than 95 percent of the working class. The working class also fights! Do not think that you do not fight! You have fought enough, and have worked out the great alliance and revolutionary three-in-one combination before you moved into the schools. Otherwise, you would still have to fight. Consolidate over 95 percent of the poor and lower-middle peasants; consolidate over 95 percent of armed forces—the P.L.A."

"Because of the nature of my work and because I was suffering from a grave ailment, my doctors advised me to take part in cultural activities to improve the balance of my sense of hearing and sense of sight. Thus, I came into contact with some literature and art."

"More significant than developments in the Middle East, the death of Mao Zedong in September 1976 was not followed by any abandonment of China’s American alignment. As so often during the Cold War, rivalries within Communist parties played a major role in international developments. The attempt by the radical ‘Gang of Four’, including Mao’s widow, to gain power was thwarted by Hua Guofeng, the Premier, who became Chairman of the Central Committee. He, in turn, became less powerful as his rival, Deng Xiaoping, rose. Deng had been dismissed as Vice-Premier of the State Council earlier in 1976 as a result of the influence of the Gang of Four. Deng was reinstated in July 1977 and, while supporting control by the Communist Party, outmanoeuvred the more ideological Hua by emphasising pragmatism. Deng’s leadership was confirmed in December 1978 at the Third Plenum of the 11th CCP Congress. He remained in power until 1997."

"I am an ordinary Communist, a little pupil of Chairman Mao, and a little pupil of the broad masses. I have to learn from my dear comrades."

"There is a question of popularization versus elevation. Some one just said that we should organize small detachments and send them down to produce fragments and minor items for the viewing of workers, peasants and soldiers. This of course can be done. But, the central task now is still to combat self-interest and repudiate revisionism, and to organize the revolutionary troops."

"Comrades, to do some good for the people is the duty of a Communist. If one has done something wrong, one must sincerely correct one's mistakes. If something has been achieved, the achievement should be attributed to our great leader Chairman Mao, the Party Central, the Central Cultural Revolution Group, the broad masses of the revolutionary people, and the Red Guard little generals."

"To carry on the great revolutionary alliance, all organizations should conduct more self-criticisms, and conduct more investigations and studies and self-criticisms in one's own organization. This would facilitate the alliance. Otherwise, the enemy can easily exploit our weaknesses."

"We should be steady, accurate and harsh — towards our enemy; towards ourselves we should not wage civil war all the time, nor should we wage civil war all the time against our friends. If we engage in civil war, we are apt to be exploited by the enemy; sometimes the enemy manipulates behind the scenes so that wage civil war, then he takes the opportunity to sneak away. You should recognize this trick."

"I am only a small screw. The working class has stepped onto the stage of struggle-criticism-transformation of the superstructure. In fact, the working class had already stepped onto the political stage in 1964 on the literary line. This was an epoch-making achievement in the international Communist movement as well as a tremendous contribution of our great leader Chairman Mao to Marxist-Leninism."

"Sex is engaging in the first rounds. What sustains interest in the long run is political power."

"I was Chairman Mao's dog. Whomever he told me to bite, I bit."

"I am just an ordinary Communist who has worked for Chairman Mao as a secretary for many years. My work principally has concerned international problems. I am a sort of roving sentry in the field of culture and education. What I have been doing is to subscribe to some magazines and newspapers, to leaf through them, and to pick out materials which I think noteworthy, including positive and negative materials. I finally submit them to Chairman Mao for reference. Generally speaking, my work has been carried out in this way for many years."

"I feel very sorry that for a very long time I have not had hearings of opinions of comrades. I can well understand it if comrades should have some opinion against us; for comrades know about our conditions."

"Comrades, we have nothing to be ashamed of in regards to the past Cultural Revolution. Some people have mentioned that they didn't want to get involved. But according to Chairman Mao, to many units this so-called noninvolvement is an illusion, they have gotten involved already. The problem is not whether they are involved or not, it is which side they are on, whether they support the revolutionary faction or they support the conservative faction or even the right wing. In fact, some get involved from the left side, others from the right wing."

"Moreover, I wish to remind our comrades of the importance of the cultural and educational front. As far as this problem is concerned, our past knowledge was insufficient. We placed all the questionable and not especially capable cadres in positions of the cultural and educational front, which does not include the millions of intelligentsia we have absorbed. Consequently, there was a proliferation of bourgeois and feudal materials. We weren't quite aware of the situation then, nor were we aware of its awesome effects."

"The establishment of troops in the cultural circles has this problem: the class element is relatively complicated. But, while a person cannot decide his own origin, his performance and attitude still count."

"For the past 17 years, there have been some good or comparatively good literary works which reflect the life of workers, peasants, and soldiers. Most literary works however, can be classified either as famous works, foreign works, or classics, which present a distorted image of the workers, peasants, and soldiers. In regards to education, almost all were of that kind. In addition to that, they added some views of Soviet revisionists. Thus we nurtured some youthful but old-fashioned artists in our literary and art circles."

"Finally, I want to briefly talk about the education of our children. We should not treat our children as our private property; we must treat them as the wealth of the people, the descendants of the people. If one treasures one's own children as the treasures of heaven, he inevitably ignores children of other people, the children of the working class, and views them as if they were nothing. This is very wrong. People with such an attitude are only a minority; the majority of the people are not like that."

"This benevolent action, combined with certain privileges granted to Mohammedans, was supposed by many Hindus to have encouraged the Nawab and his co-religionists in taking a still more favourable view of the Partition itself.... “Priestly Mullahs went through the country preaching the revival of Islam and proclaiming to the villagers that the British Government was on the Mohammedan side, that the Law Courts had been specially suspended for three months and no penalty would be exacted for violence done to the Hindus, or for the loot of Hindu shops or the abduction of Hindu widows. A Red Pamphlet was everywhere circulated maintaining the same wild doctrine… In Comilla, Jamalpur and a few other places, rather serious riots occurred. A few lives were lost, temples desecrated, images broken, shops plundered, and many widows carried off. Some of the towns were deserted, the Hindu population took refuge in any pukka houses, women spent nights hidden in tanks, the crime known as ‘group-rape’ increased and throughout the country districts, there reigned a general terror, which still prevailed at the time of my visit.”... Some two years after his departure from India Lord Curzon wrote to the Times that it was " a wicked falsehood " to say that by the Partition he intended to carve out a Mohammedan State, to drive a wedge between Mohammedan and Hindu, or to arouse racial feuds. Certainly no one would willingly accuse another of such desperate wickedness, but a statesman of better judgment might have foreseen that, not a racial, but a religious feud would probably be the result of the measure."

"The British war correspondent H.W. Nevinson who visited India during this period gives the following account in his 1908 book, The New Spirit in India: I have almost invariably found English officers…on the side of the Mohammedan, where there is any rivalry of…religion… in Eastern Bengal this national inclination is now encouraged by the Government’s open resolve to retain the Mohammedan support of the Partition by any means…It was against the Hindus only that all the petty persecution of officialdom was directed. It was they who were excluded from Government posts ;it was Hindu schools from which Government patronage was withdrawn. When Mohammedans rioted, the punitive police ransacked Hindu houses… mullahs went through the country preaching the revival of Islam and proclaiming to the villagers that the British Government was on the Mohammedan side, that the Law Courts had been specially suspended for three months, and no penalty would be exacted for violence done to Hindus, or for the loot of Hindu shops, or the abduction of Hindu widows A Red Pamphlet was everywhere circulated, maintaining the same wild doctrines… In Comilla, Jamalpur and a few other places, rather serious riots occurred…lives were lost, temples were desecrated, images broken, shops plundered, and many Hindu widows carried off. Some of the towns were deserted, the Hindu population took refuge in “pukka” houses (i e., house with brick in stone walls), women spent nights hidden in tanks, the crime known as “group-rape” increased, and throughout the country districts there reigned a general terror, which still prevailed at the time of my visit."

".. Lives were lost, temples desecrated, images broken, shops plundered and many Hindu widows carried off... women spent nights hidden in tanks and the crime known as ‘group rape’ increased."

"I should always like to follow in the path of Goethe when he said: "If you must tell me your opinions, tell me what you believe in. I have plenty of doubts of my own"."

"That, in the midst of our daily struggle from birth to death, mankind should ever have conceived such things as laughter or beauty or goodness appears to me a far more marvellous thing than the finest supernatural miracle ever invented by all the mythologies."

"Our party’s experiences and our revolutionary realities have demonstrated that whenever we firmly maintain a spirit of independence and self-reliance we are able to be creative in our development of policies and directions, and we achieve success."

"Currently, the American imperialists are still planning to intensify and expand the war in order to recover from their current situation, which is one of defeat and stalemate. However, they also are eager for us to sit down with them at the negotiating table so that they can force us to make concessions. As for our side, we believe we cannot sit down at the table until we have caused the puppet army to disintegrate and until we have crushed the American imperialist will to commit aggression. This is very secret, and we have not yet advised any of the fraternal communist] parties of our position on this matter."

"Today, with boundless joy, throughout the country our 45 million people are jubilantly celebrating the great victory we have won in the central offensive and uprising this Spring of 1975, in completely defeating the war of aggression and the neo-colonialist rule of US imperialism, liberating the whole of the southern half of our country so dear to our hearts, and gloriously ending the longest, most difficult and greatest patriotic war ever waged in the history of our peoples' struggle against foreign aggression."

"Our party has concluded that the world revolution is now in an offensive position, and our party advocates an intensification of the revolution’s attacks against imperialism, which is led by the American imperialists, in order to maintain world peace and to push back, one step at a time, and overthrow individual components of world imperialism so that we can achieve victory for the world proletarian revolution."

"We hail our glorious fatherland from now on definitively rid of the slavery of foreign domination and the scourge of partition. We hail the beautiful land of Vietnam from Lạng Sơn to the Cape of Cà Mau, from now on completely in­dependent and free, and independent and free forever."

"We hail the new era in our nation's 4,000 year history - an era of brilliant prospects for the development of a peaceful, independent, reunified, democratic, prosperous and strong Vietnam, an era in which the labour in people have become the complete masters of their destiny and will pool their physical and mental efforts to build a plentiful and happy life for themselves and for thousands of generations to come."

"The reality has proven that in the struggle between the new and the old, progressive and the backward, and appropriate law, vitality often appears at the grassroots in the most difficult and complicated places."

"The question is not to beg to the foreign capitalists but to manage and work out policies which are more beneficial to the domestic economy. I hope that in the future, Vietnam will look for every measure to make our international relations equal."

"We want to forget the past, forget that under several American Presidents we were engaged in a brutal war we did not start. We would like to see the U.S. embargo lifted and the two sides sit down and talk over the problems that are left from the war -- problems like both sides cooperating to find the remains of Americans missing in action. We want the Amerasians, all of them, to go to America, if the father wants his child. If the Vietnamese mother wants to go, she will be allowed to go. There is no interest, none, for either country to maintain a gap between us. Step by step, we should move to restore diplomatic relations. Let us put the war behind us and work for a peaceful future."

"We faced difficulties created by the ravages of 40 years of war. Afterward, we made costly mistakes in our effort to rebuild the country. Now we know the mistakes and their price. We were too hasty, too simplistic, too subjective. We tried to build socialism without going through the necessary period of capitalist development. Today we are correcting those mistakes with a profound and thorough renovation. A policy has already begun that wipes out a centralized bureaucracy based on state subsidies that caused our people suffering."

"We want to broaden economic cooperation with all countries, socialist or capitalist, on the basis of mutual benefits and without political conditions. International trade is important to our future, especially with our neighbors and with Japan. Many private companies have already established economic ties with Viet Nam. We want to see those expand. I believe we are moving in the direction of the economic integration of Southeast Asia."

"Indeed, if we compare the United States with us, the American empire is hundreds, even thousands of times stronger than us in terms of economy, quantity and quality of weapons and military equipment, when the war just started. But America is absolutely weaker than us in politics, culture, and at the same time inferior to us in science and military art."

"Unlike the leaders of Iraq or Argentina, Vietnamese leaders Ho Chi Minh and Le Duan made decisions cautiously and shrewdly, using force only after lengthy internal debate. Their approach paid off: the United States withdrew in 1973, and Vietnam was reunified in 1975. It was a stunning defeat for the democratic side, and Le Duan’s reward for the victory was a long career as ruler of a united Vietnam."

"We won against the US because our party had a correct and creative revolutionary line, and method. The revolutionary line is to raise the two banners of national independence and socialism. That is the source of all the strength of our revolution. That is also the truth, the power of the times. The revolutionary method is to apply an offensive strategy and know how to win step by step. With that line and method, our party and people have magnified the combined forces of our whole country and combined the forces of the Vietnamese revolution with the revolutionary forces of the new era, creating a powerful force. Synthesize the power of America and its minions on the battlefield to defeat them."

"It is not objectively necessary to establish a political mechanism of pluralism and multiparty government. Socialism is the only right decision."

"In the field of socialist revolution, party building work must be associated with the renovation and economic construction, cultural renovation and development. The strengthening of ideological and political work, organization and inspection work must be really associated with the productive labor movement, with striving for the implementation of economic and social plans."

"The comprehensive cooperation relationship and the help of the Soviet Union, other countries in the socialist community, as well as the two brothers Laos and Cambodia, create favorable conditions for us to strive to overcome difficulties in the future. But here, the decisive factor is still the strong efforts of our people."

"During the autumn, preparations for [Richard Nixon's] visit to Beijing moved rapidly, assisted by a dramatic tilt in China’s internal politics. On September 13 a plane carrying Lin Biao, his family and entourage crashed in Mongolia. The story remains murky but officially it was claimed that the army leader was fleeing after a failed coup. His son certainly seems to have concocted an inept assassination plot. The death of Mao’s handpicked heir amid accusations of betrayal was a damaging blow to his image of infallibility. This sparked a crisis of faith among millions of Chinese about the “continuous revolution” to which they had been subjected so brutally for two decades. A foreign policy triumph was now even more important for Mao. Lin was supposedly an opponent of détente with the United States. Certainly his death and disgrace strengthened Zhou Enlai, even though strong opposition remained to Nixon’s visit from Mao’s estranged wife, Jiang Qing, and from radicals in Shanghai. Zhou pushed ahead with arrangements and in October Kissinger paid a second visit to China—this time in public—to agree the agenda and draft the all-important communiqué."

"Lin Biao and the "Gang of Four" completely deviated from the fundamental principles of Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought. Lin Biao also separated Mao Zedong Thought from Marxism-Leninism. This is a serious distortion of Mao Zedong Thought, which is extremely detrimental to our Party and socialist cause, and is extremely detrimental to the international communist movement."

"Lin Biao and the "Gang of Four" wantonly undermined the revolutionary united front and seriously interfered with the realization of the four grand goals of modernization."

"With the brilliant leadership of Chairman Mao and having mastered Mao Tse-tung’s thought which is the keenest weapon, we will be invincible and all-conquering and will achieve complete victory in the great proletarian cultural revolution!"

"The most fundamental task in our Party’s political and ideological work is at all times to hold high the great red banner of Mao Tse-tung’s thought, to arm the minds of the people throughout the country with it and to persist in using it to command every field of activity. '"

"This revolution is a great revolution, an entirely new and creative revolution, carried out after the seizure of political power by the proletariat. It is to overthrow through struggle the small handful of persons within the Party who have been in authority and have taken the capitalist road； to sweep away all ghosts and monsters in our society, and to break the old ideas, culture, customs and habits of the exploiting classes and foster the new ideas, culture, customs and habits of the proletariat, with a view to further consolidating the dictatorship of the proletariat and developing the socialist system."

"Comrade Mao Tse-tung’s great merit lies in the fact that he has succeeded in integrating the universal truth of Marxism-Leninism with the concrete practice of the Chinese revolution and has enriched and developed Marxism-Leninism by his masterly generalization and summation the experience gained during the Chinese people’s protracted revolutionary struggle."

"Our attitude towards imperialist wars of, aggression has always been clear-cut. First, we are against them, and secondly, we are not afraid of them. We will destroy whoever attacks us. As for revolutionary wars waged by the oppressed nations and peoples, so far from opposing them, we invariably give them firm support and active aid. It has been so in the past, it remains so in present and, when we grow in strength as time goes on, we will give them still more support and aid in the future. It is sheer daydreaming for anyone to think that, since our revolution has been victorious, our national construction is forging ahead, our national wealth is increasing and our living conditions are improving, wo too will lose our revolutionary fighting will, abandon the cause of world revolution and discard Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism."

"In the last analysis, whether one dares to wage a tit-for-tat struggle against armed aggression and suppression by the imperialists and their lackeys, whether one dares to fight a people’s war against them, means whether ono dares to embark on revolution. This is the most effective touchstone for distinguishing genuine from fake revolutionaries and Marxist-Leninists."