This is apropos a Business Recorder op-ed "Looking back at the Cultural Revolution" carried by the newspaper yesterday. The writer, Rashed Rahman, has presented a profound argument with regard to the Cultural Revolution or China under Chairman Mao.
The writer, for example, has stated: "The Party's policy then seemed to be converging with that of the Soviet Union, with its emphasis on investment in heavy industry and a conservative approach to social change. This incrementally alarmed Mao, who had seen the degeneration of the Soviet Union under Khrushchev into a bureaucratic ossification that led almost inevitably to the death of the Soviet revolution. This was described by Mao as revisionism (the revision of the revolutionary Marxist doctrine in the direction of reformism and the early shoots of a restoration of capitalism). Lenin had warned soon after the Russian revolution that the roots of capitalism could not be so easily plucked from the soil of a socialist society emerging from the womb of capitalism."
This point brings to one's mind the visit of Chairman Mao to the then Soviet Union in December 1949, his first-ever visit abroad. Mao had gone to Moscow to meet Soviet leader Josef Stalin and urge him to return to China the land unjustly and illegally annexed by Russia or Soviet Union. He also wanted to discuss with Stalin a defence treaty, loans and Taiwan. Stalin knew that he had no plausible answer to Mao's request in relation to the Chinese lands under the Soviet control. After making a passionate appeal for the return of China's territories, Mao told Stalin that "I read, eat and shit" and I would continue to perform these chores even if Soviet Union refuses to settle the land issue. From Mao's perspective, Khrushchev was no better than Stalin.