ke it easier to dismiss the book as biased and therefore unreliable.
What’s also interesting in the interview is what they have to say about Stalin, which as far as I remember is never quite spelled out in the book. There were a number of times, going right back to the late Twenties, when Mao only survived because of Stalin’s intervention. Why?
“In 1932, when his colleagues tried to oust Mao, in effect, the Russians just said, ‘You cannot get rid of Mao, you have to put up with him.’ They would not let them dump Mao before the Long March.”
To the obvious but intriguing question of why Stalin chose Mao, who did not speak Russian and whose Communist credentials were lacking, Chang responds: “Stalin said it himself to the Yugoslavs that Mao was insubordinate, but a winner. Stalin spotted Mao as the most power-hungry, the most brutal one who would stop at nothing to pursue his power.”
“It is riveting,” continues Halliday, “because it is both gangster world and politics. It is the richest relationship between two dictators you could ever find, a sort of political mafioso world.
They’re also quite clear that China hasn’t even started to question Mao’s legacy. To do so would, of course, question the whole legitimacy of Communist power. For the moment that somewhere no one wants to go.
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