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April 11, 1967

Summary of Zhou Enlai's Talk with Pham Van Dong and Vo Nguyen Giap

4 11 日上午 11 时,在钧鱼合宾馆 18 号楼同范文同总理举行第七次会谈时说:中国有句俗话,行程百里半九十,就是说,已经走了 90 里路,最后剩下 10 里,更困难。爬山也是这样,比如爬喜马拉雅山,最后一段路是最难爬的。我们相信,你们一定会取得最后的胜利,我们要动员全世界人民来支持你们取得胜利。而苏联一定要你们半途而废,这类事斯大林时期就搞过。1945 年日本投降之后,美国支持蒋介石。那时,苏联打得损失很大,签订了雅尔塔协定。苏、美战后划分了势力范围。雅尔塔协定是有错误的,作为策略是可以的,但作为政策就不对了。特别是两颗原子弹爆炸之后,震动了苏联,他们急于和蒋介石签订协定,等于承认美国在中国享有最大的势力范围,换取苏联在东北和新疆的特殊利益,并维持蒙古人民共和国。当时,斯大林打了个电报给毛泽东同志,说中共应该同国民党合作,不能发动内故,如果发动内战,中华民族就会毁灭。这显然是已经被原子弹吓倒了。我们说斯大林不愧为一位马克思列宁主义者,这是因为,他能认识自己的错误。上海解放后,刘少奇到莫斯科,斯大林含蓄地作了自我批评。他说,1945 8 月他打给毛泽东同志的电报是否妨碍了中国解放战争的进行?刘少奇回答说没有。的确没有。在一次宴会上,斯大林举杯祝酒时说,他老了,他很担心死了之后这些同志(指在座的伏罗希洛夫、莫洛托夫、赫鲁晓夫等人)会怕帝国主义。现在证明斯大林的这种预见已经实现。

 

...China has a popular saying: the 90-mile mark is the half point of a 100-mile journey. It means that a traveler has walked 90 miles and has 10 miles to finish. The remaining 10 miles are the most difficult for the traveler. The same thing is true in climbing mountains. Take the climbing of the Himalayas for instance, the last stretch of the climbing is the most difficult. We believe that you will surely win the final victory. We will mobilize the people of the whole world to support you to achieve victory. The Soviet Union, however, surely wants you to stop halfway. It has done such a thing during the Stalin period. After the surrender of Japan in 1945, the United States supported Chiang Kai-shek. At that time, the Soviet Union had suffered a great deal in the war. It concluded the Yalta agreement, dividing spheres of influence with the United States. The Yalta agreement is wrong. As a tactic, the agreement is all right; but as a policy, it is incorrect. The explosion of the two atomic bombs in particular shocked the Soviet Union. The Soviets were eager to sign an agreement with Chiang Kai-shek, recognizing the fact that the United States enjoyed the greatest sphere of influence in China. The Soviet Union in return wanted to maintain Russian special interests in the Northeast and Xinjiang and keep the People's Republic of Mongolia. At the time, Stalin fired off a cable to Comrade Mao Zedong stating that the Chinese Communist Party should cooperate with Guomindang instead of starting a civil war and that if the Chinese Communist Party launched a civil war, the Chinese nation would be destroyed. Clearly the Soviet Union had been intimidated by the atomic bomb. We say that Stalin was still worthy of being a Marxist-Leninist because he was capable of recognizing his own errors. After the liberation of Shanghai, Liu Shaoqi went to Moscow, where Stalin implicitly made a self-criticism. He asked whether the telegram he sent to Comrade Mao Zedong in August 1945 had undermined the progress of China's liberation war. Liu Shaoqi replied that it had not. Certainly it did not. Once during a banquet, Stalin offered a toast, claiming that he was old and very afraid that after his death those comrades (referring to Voroshilov, Molotov, Khrushchev, and others who were present) would be scared by imperialism. Now we can see that Stalin's predictions have proved true.

 

 

 

Zhou Enlai warns the Vietnamese delegation not to bend to Soviet demands.

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The Diplomatic History Research Office of the People's Republic of China Foreign Ministry, ed., Zhou Enlai waijiao huodong dashiji, 1949-1975 (Chronology of Zhou Enlai's Diplomatic Activities, 1949-1975) (Beijing: Shijie zhishi chubanshe, 1993), p. 510-511. Translated by Qiang Zhai.

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2011-11-20

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112658