A Window into Mao’s China, 1959-1970

Sino-Soviet squabbles in the early 1960s. The Cultural Revolution under Mao Zedong. The future of communism from Brazil to Indonesia. Border clashes between China and the Soviet Union in 1969.

These are some of the topics that come up in the 20 Albanian documents that I recently curated and translated into English for the Wilson Center’s Digital Archive. They stem from the former archives of the Party of Labor of Albania and include transcripts of meetings at the highest party levels.

During the early 1960s rift between Moscow and Beijing, Tirana’s regime sided with the Chinese. An upshot of this ideological realignment was that it gave visitors from the small Balkan state access into Chinese affairs during a time of great turmoil. By the second half of the decade, few other foreigners had similar access. As a result, declassified Albanian-language documents provide fascinating insights into the Chinese establishment.

Rather than comprehensive, the selection of the documents is intended to be representative of key moments and themes throughout a critical decade for China, the decolonizing world, and splits within revolutionary movements abroad.

A Broken World

Sino-Albanian talking points range from political tensions in the Balkans and the trauma of the Greek Civil War to the historical origins of revolution in China, the political scene in Japan and the Korean peninsula, decolonization, Egypt, the fate of Indonesian communists in the mid-1960s, Polish Marxist-Leninists, Brazil immediately prior and after the establishment of the military dictatorship, fractures within the left in Latin America, and more.

The range of these topics reflects the globalization of communism and the Cold War, a flourishing field of study over the last two decades.

As competing communist factions emerged around the world in the 1960s, Albanian officials suggested to the Chinese coordinating assistance to some of the revolutionary forces abroad. This is a neglected story of efforts that reached across fronts in Europe—as China-based historian of Sino-Albanian relations Ylber Marku has recently captured them—but also throughout Latin America and Asia.[1] Indeed, the Albanians pressed the Chinese on account of the needs of Indonesian militant forces, in addition to Polish, Spanish, and Portuguese groups.

During the second half of the 1960s, however, authorities in Beijing became consumed with their own domestic struggles.

A Bewildering Revolution

Key documents in this collection stem from the era of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), a watershed moment in the history of the People’s Republic of China. Under the banner of preventing China from diverting from socialism, Mao Zedong called on masses to join an all-out battle against what were deemed enemies, “capitalist roaders,” and remnants of the past.

The opening shot of this offensive is commonly dated on 16 May 1966, when the Chinese Central Committee issued a circular detailing Mao’s thinking and the need to purge bourgeois elements from party and government ranks. Behind the scenes, however, powerful figures plotted and schemed. Included here is a late April record prepared by the top Chinese party leadership as the attack on Peng Zhen unfolded, with in-text corrections reportedly made by Mao Zedong.

Shortly thereafter, a meeting between Mao and Albanian officials took place on May 5th—Marx’s birthday. Veering from autobiography to wide-ranging criticisms on social issues, the document captures the Chinese party boss at a dramatic moment. “We just brought down Luo Ruiqing,” he tells the guests, “We are now criticizing Peng Zhen,” referring to the high-status targets of the ongoing struggle.

Months of violence ensued. The chaos, purges, and tortures enacted during this time are casually mentioned in conversations with the guests. The upheaval touched the lives of tens of millions of people, as groups of people were demonized as counterrevolutionaries and rotten bourgeois remnants. Answering Mao’s revolutionary call, youths formed into groups of Red Guards targeting so-called enemies and other rival organizations, until these groups were themselves brought under control and compelled into “reeducation.”[2]

The back-and-forth with the Albanians in 1966-1967 was meant to explain these unfolding events, indirectly also giving historians a backseat view. Visiting delegations were sent on tours and asked to ritually criticize their Chinese counterparts. Alongside Mao and premier Zhou Enlai, there were meetings with Kang Sheng, who explained the unfolding campaign within the army ranks.

A now extensive body of literature, including first-hand accounts, has illuminated the Cultural Revolution and its far-reaching effects on Chinese society. To this day Chinese party leaders draw their authority from past historical contributions, as Joseph Torigian has argued. For them, “the most powerful weapon has been compromising material about someone else’s history.” The history documented in some of these sources remains, in this sense, not far from the present in China.

Much of this growing literature has explained the origins of the revolution and the prevailing interests of the top-level actors involved, as well as the various factions that emerged on the ground. Bottom-up accounts of the Cultural Revolution have been revelatory.[3] It has been difficult, however, to obtain high-level Chinese sources from this era.[4] This is where indirect angles can be useful.

The Albanians returned home from China armed with slogans and books. The documents included here capture—for the first time—some of the earliest formal mentions of the big character posters (dazibao) to the Balkan comrades, the formal transfer of some of these revolutionary materials, and the introduction of Mao’s collected quotations at the highest political level.

Then, in 1967, Chinese officials handed a trove of documents to their counterparts, including Mao’s “Bombard the Headquarters” poster from August 1966 and others. In late 1967, and again in 1968, Mao discussed the state of the revolution with visiting delegations.

By 1969, however, the honeymoon had passed. After the funeral of Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh in September 1969, Soviet premier Alexei Kosygin made a stop at the airport in Beijing. Sino-Soviet border conflicts, already mentioned in a 1964 conversation, had seriously escalated. During this confusing period of contradictory signals, as the historian Lorenz Lüthi has captured it, China’s openness to dealing with the Soviets unnerved the Albanians. It has not been easy to get first-hand documents into Chinese thinking at this moment. In this sense, the Albanian records are exceptionally valuable.  

Still, no matter how wounded the functionaries in Tirana felt, the economic and military benefits of an alliance with China could not be easily sacrificed. Ideological purity in international communism had its material benefits. Beijing promised to deliver more aid, and Tirana kept pressing for China to get a seat at the United Nations, which was finally realized in 1971.[5]

Some time ago, I wrote about how Sino-Albanian exchanges provide insights that can go both ways—they have something to say about Chinese approaches to aid and geopolitics, but they also elucidate how small states are sometimes able to maneuver in the international system.[6] They present opportunities to revise the temporality and geography of the revolutionary 1960s.

But there are other ways to read sources like these, along and against the grain of official authority. Seen from the perspective of social and cultural history, for example, they can illustrate how official narratives selectively use or distort key moments, how an incomplete picture of events can feed into conspiratorial thinking further down the line.

They also point to how lives are turned upside down.    

People Rise and Fall

There are individuals who show up in the documents time and again—first as interlocutors, then as victims of purges. Indirectly, the documents appear as transcripts of the trajectories of political lives. The already-mentioned Chief of Joint Staff Luo Ruiqing is a case in point, appearing first as a participant and then as a declared enemy.   

Or take the case of Liri Belishova. Born in 1926, she was a young Albanian militant and fighter who quickly shot up the party ranks—one of the very few women active at the highest levels. In June 1960, in her early thirties, she was in Beijing on a high-level visit. Sino-Soviet tensions had heated up by then. It was a dangerous time to be caught between the two quarreling powers. Faced with Soviet pressures to bring the Chinese in line, Albanian party boss Enver Hoxha had sensed a danger and an opportunity. He kept a safe distance from the heat of the events.

When the Chinese brought up their divergences with Moscow to Belishova, she tried to navigate a complex and confusing situation, informing the Soviets of the talks. Hoxha later used this to scapegoat her as a pro-Soviet element. A gaggle of powerful men in Tirana happily joined in the scapegoating, as Albanian historian Ana Lalaj told the story years ago.[7] Belishova was expelled from the party, permanently banished, and her husband was jailed. (Her first husband, Nako Spiru, had killed himself—at least this was the official version given at the time—during the Soviet-Yugoslav drama of the late 1940s). Her daughter Drita grew up in banishment, fell ill from cancer, and died in her early twenties.

Chillingly, Belishova’s name shows up again in later conversations with Mao Zedong in 1966.

“Is she still alive?” the Chairman asked, advising the Albanians not to kill her. “No, we do not execute people now,” prime minister Mehmet Shehu responded. The gruesome irony is that Shehu himself ended up mysteriously dead in 1981, later declared by his comrade-in-arms to have been a spy all along.  

In a twist of fate, Belishova outlived the regime that promoted her as a young activist and then punished her.

I had the opportunity to meet her years ago, when I was researching From Stalin to Mao. She told me that she had become infatuated with communism at an early age after reading Gorky. I remember that I kept asking her about the 1950s, about books, Moscow, and China – the single-minded questions of a graduate student. Instead, she kept asking me about what life was like in the United States.

I was struck by her intense curiosity. She was one of a few people working at the party archives at the time, going through boxes of documents. Others tended to steer clear of the archive, preferring to write fictionalized memoirs of the communist period—fabricated memoirs are a specialty in Albania—delivering pastiches designed to obscure the past. Albanians of a certain age may remember Belishova for speaking frankly about the decades of repression, for being a rare example of someone who took responsibility. She died in 2018.[8]  

The key to getting such stories into the English-speaking sphere is translation, made possible by the History and Public Policy Program and the Cold War International History Project at the Woodrow Wilson Center. As Arne Westad acknowledged in his global survey of the Cold War, so much of what has happened in this flourishing field in recent years owes a great deal to the efforts of these programs.[9] Dissemination of sources among authors is the cornerstone of collaboration in this line of work, which has a lot to tell us still about the paradoxes of internationalism, about transnational contacts, geopolitics, and China’s painful prelude to its repositioning in the world - the biggest story of our time.

Connected Documents

From the Meeting of the Delegation of the Party of Labor of Albania with Comrade Mao Zedong on 13 May 1959
Arkivi Qendror Shtetëror (Central State Archives, Tirana, Albania), Fondi 14/AP, Marrëdhëniet me Partinë Komuniste të Kinës, V. 1959, Dos. 5, Fl. 1-6. Contributed and translated by Elidor Mëhilli.

Mao and Kapo discuss Albania's history and its present day struggle with Yugoslavia. Mao reviews the CCP's own history as well as developments in Tibet.

Memorandum of Conversation with Comrade Mao Zedong in Hangzhou (7 June 1960)
Arkivi Qendror Shtetëror (Central State Archives, Tirana, Albania), Fondi 14/AP, Marrëdhëniet me Partinë Komuniste të Kinës, V. 1960, Dos. 3, Fl. 1-9. Contributed and translated by Elidor Mëhilli.

Mao Zedong converses with Lira Belishova, Haxhi Lleshi, and Vasil Nathanaili. Mao shares his views on the United States, Japan, and Chiang Kai-shek’s Taiwan. Mao also asks about Albania, its relations with neighboring countries such as Yugoslavia, Italy, and Turkey, and its foreign policy more generally.

Ambassador Reis Malile, ‘Information on the Meeting of the Government-level Economic Delegation led by Comrade Abdyl Kellezi with Comrade Mao Zedong’, 14 January 1962
Arkivi Qendror Shtetëror (Central State Archives, Tirana, Albania), Fondi 14/AP, Marrëdhëniet me Partinë Komuniste të Kinës, V. 1962, Dos. 31, Fl. 2-5. Contributed and translated by Elidor Mëhilli.

Mao Zedong, Liu Shaoqi, and Abdyl Kellezi discuss revisionism, relations with the Soviet Union, and the Communist Party of the USA.

Notes from the Conversation of Comrade Hysni Kapo with the Chinese Ambassador Luo Shigao on 6 July 1963 [Excerpt]
Arkivi Qendror Shtetëror (Central State Archives, Tirana, Albania), Fondi 14/AP, Marrëdhëniet me Partinë Komuniste të Kinës, V. 1963, Dos. 4, Fl. 28-48. Contributed and translated by Elidor Mëhilli.

Hysni Kapo and Luo Shigao discuss the state of the international communist movement, reviewing developments country by country.

Notes from the Meeting of the Chinese Ambassador Luo Shigao with Comrade Ramiz Alia on 20 July 1963
Arkivi Qendror Shtetëror (Central State Archives, Tirana, Albania), Fondi 14/AP, Marrëdhëniet me Partinë Komuniste të Kinës, V. 1963, Dos. 4, Fl. 49-50. Contributed and translated by Elidor Mëhilli.

A brief summary of a meeting between Luo Shigao and Ramiz Alia. Luo voices China's support for the Albanian proposal to assist socialists and other revolutionaries in Eastern Europe and in capitalist countries, but says the CCP requires more time before to determine the best path forward.

Conversation of Comrade Mao Zedong with Delegation of the People’s Army of Albania Haded by Comrade Beqir Balluku (2 October 1963)
Arkivi Qendror Shtetëror (Central State Archives, Tirana, Albania), Fondi 14/AP, Marrëdhëniet me Partinë Komuniste të Kinës, V. 1963, Dos. 8, Fl. 1-5. Contributed and translated by Elidor Mëhilli.

Beqir Balluku holds a discussion with Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, Liu Shaoqi, and Luo Ruiqing. The Chinese side reviews their country's revolutionary history and many years of struggle against the Kuomintang.

Conversation between Comrade Beqir Balluku and Comrade Mao Zedong on 9 October 1964
Arkivi Qendror Shtetëror (Central State Archives, Tirana, Albania), Fondi 14/AP, Marrëdhëniet me Partinë Komuniste të Kinës, V. 1964, Dos. 38, Fl. 1-7. Contributed and translated by Elidor Mëhilli.

Mao Zedong and Beqir Balluku ridicule Nikita Khrushchev and discuss the grievances that both Albania and China have towards the Soviet Union.

Notes of Meeting between PLA CC Secretary Hysni Kapo and Chinese Ambassador Xu Jianguo, 16 December 1965
Arkivi Qendror Shtetëror (Central State Archives, Tirana, Albania), Fondi 14/AP, Marrëdhëniet me Partinë Komuniste të Kinës, V. 1965, Dos. 17, Fl. 2-4. Contributed and translated by Elidor Mëhilli.

Hysni Kapo summarizes a meeting with Xu Jianguo where Kapo discussed the establishment of a new Polish political party and Albanian support for comrades in Spain, Portugal, and Indonesia.

Meeting with Comrade Mao Zedong on 5 May 1966
Arkivi Qendror Shtetëror (Central State Archives, Tirana, Albania), Fondi 14/AP, Marrëdhëniet me Partinë Komuniste të Kinës, V. 1966, Dos. 3, Fl. 1-14. Contributed and translated by Elidor Mëhilli.

Mao Zedong, Mehmet Shehu, Hysni Kapo, and others have a conversation, coincidentally, on Marx’s birthday. They discuss Khrushchev’s legacy, the history of the Chinese Communist Party, and the story of Liri Belishova.

Record of CCP Politburo Discussion related to Peng Zhen, with Corrections by Mao Zedong, 13 May 1966
Arkivi Qendror Shtetëror (Central State Archives, Tirana, Albania), Fondi 14/AP, Marrëdhëniet me Partinë Komuniste të Kinës, V. 1966, Dos. 10, Fl. 1-11. Contributed and translated by Elidor Mëhilli.

A copy of a CCP CC Politburo discussion shared with the Albanian Labor Party.

Excerpt from a Conversation between Zhou Enlai and Albanian Party Leaders, 27 June 1966
Arkivi Qendror Shtetëror (Central State Archives, Tirana, Albania), Fondi 14/AP, Marrëdhëniet me Partinë Komuniste të Kinës, V. 1966, Dos. 13, Fl. 001-130. Contributed and translated by Elidor Mëhilli.

Zhou Enlai, Enver Hoxha, and Mehmet Shehu have a detailed conversation about high-level purges in the Chinese Communist Party. Zhou also discusses China's difficult relations with North Korea and the Vietnam War.

Handwritten Note for Comrade Ramiz, with Attached 'People’s Daily' Article, 16 July 1966
Arkivi Qendror Shtetëror (Central State Archives, Tirana, Albania), Fondi 14/AP, Marrëdhëniet me Partinë Komuniste të Kinës, V. 1966, Dos. 16, Fl. 1-3. Contributed and translated by Elidor Mëhilli.

The Chinese Embassy in Albania shares a People's Daily article about the Cultural Revolution with the Albanian Party leadership.

Note, Nesti Nase to Cdes. Enver Hoxha et al [containing Materials about the Cultural Revolution], 15 November 1966
Arkivi Qendror Shtetëror (Central State Archives, Tirana, Albania), Fondi 14/AP, Marrëdhëniet me Partinë Komuniste të Kinës, V. 1966, Dos. 43, Fl. 1. Contributed and translated by Elidor Mëhilli.

Enver Hoxha receives a number of Cultural Revolution-era documents and ephemera, including Mao's book of quotations. 

Conversation between Hysni Kapo and Kang Sheng in Beijing on 24 January 1967, at 10:00 am
Arkivi Qendror Shtetëror (Central State Archives, Tirana, Albania), Fondi 14/AP, Marrëdhëniet me Partinë Komuniste të Kinës, V. 1967, Dos. 2, Fl. 1-11. Contributed and translated by Elidor Mëhilli.

Hysni Kapo and Kang Sheng discuss the Cultural Revolution, the Red Guard movement, and purges inside the Chinese Communist Party.

“What Are Song Shuo, Lu Ping, and Peng Peiyun Really Doing in the Cultural Revolution”
Arkivi Qendror Shtetëror (Central State Archives, Tirana, Albania), Fondi 14/AP, Marrëdhëniet me Partinë Komuniste të Kinës, V. 1967, Dos. 8, Fl. 3. Contributed by Elidor Mëhilli.

A copy of “What Are Song Shuo, Lu Ping, and Peng Peiyun Really Doing in the Cultural Revolution?” with handwritten Albanian-language notation. This poster, placed at Beijing University on 25 May 1966 by a group associated with the academic and activist Nie Yuanzi, was aimed at three administrators. Documents related to the Cultural Revolution were presented to Hysni Kapo during the latter’s visit to China in January-February 1967.

Bombard the Headquarters (My Big-Character Poster)
Arkivi Qendror Shtetëror (Central State Archives, Tirana, Albania), Fondi 14/AP, Marrëdhëniet me Partinë Komuniste të Kinës, V. 1967, Dos. 8, Fl. 2. Contributed by Elidor Mëhilli.

"Bombard the Headquarters – My Big-Character Poster,” by Mao Zedong, 5 August 1966, with handwritten Albanian-language notations. These documents related to the Cultural Revolution were presented to Hysni Kapo during the latter’s visit to China in January-February 1967.

Protocol of the Conversation between Chairman Mao Zedong during the Reception of the Friendship Delegation of the People’s Republic of Albania, Headed by Shefqet Peçi on 18 December 1967
Arkivi Qendror Shtetëror (Central State Archives, Tirana, Albania), Fondi 14/AP, Marrëdhëniet me Partinë Komuniste të Kinës, V. 1967, Dos. 50, Fl. 2-9. Contributed and translated by Elidor Mëhilli.

A discussion between Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, Kang Sheng, Shefqet Peçi, and Vasil Nathanaili. The two sides discuss an earthquake in Albania, the Cultural Revolution in China, and the Albanian delegation's travels throughout the PRC.

Conversation between the Party of Labor of Albania Delegation, Headed by Comrade Beqir Balluku, and Comrade Mao Zedong on 5 October 1968, at 19:00-20.30
Arkivi Qendror Shtetëror (Central State Archives, Tirana, Albania), Fondi 14/AP, Marrëdhëniet me Partinë Komuniste të Kinës, V. 1968, Dos. 6, Fl. 1-11. Contributed and translated by Elidor Mëhilli.

Mao Zedong provides a survey of how the Cultural Revolution is unfolding in localities across China.

Notes Kept during the Verbal Report given to the First Secretary of the CC of the PLA, Comrade Enver Hoxha, on 19 September 1969, by Comrade Rita Marko
Arkivi Qendror Shtetëror (Central State Archives, Tirana, Albania), Fondi 14/AP, Marrëdhëniet me Partinë Komuniste të Kinës, V. 1969, Dos. 9, Fl. 11-43. Contributed by Joseph Torigian and translated by Elidor Mëhilli.

The Albanian Party leadership discusses recent meetings with the Chinese Communist Party, the state of Sino-Soviet relations, and the funeral of Ho Chi Minh.

Conversation between Comrade Mao Zedong and Other Chinese Leaders with Comrade Abdyl Këllëzi and Other Comrades on 28 September 1970
Arkivi Qendror Shtetëror (Central State Archives, Tirana, Albania), Fondi 14/AP, Marrëdhëniet me Partinë Komuniste të Kinës, V. 1970, Dos. 7, Fl. 68-78. Contributed and translated by Elidor Mëhilli.

Mao Zedong and a visiting delegation from Albania discuss the history of the Albanian Party, Albania's relations with Italy, US-China relations, and other developments in Cuba, Brazil, Turkey, and Greece.

[1] Ylber Marku, “Stories from the International Communist Movement: The Chinese Front in Europe and the Limits of the Anti-revisionist Struggle,” Cold War History, 21:2 (2021): 139-157.

[2] “This rebellion would shock China’s officialdom from top to bottom,” Andrew Walder has written in his study of the factions that emerged, “and the chastened survivors would presumably conduct themselves differently in the future.” See his Fractured Rebellion: The Beijing Red Guard Movement (Harvard University Press, 2009), p. 4.

[3] More recently, Yang Jisheng, The World Turned Upside Down: A History of the Chinese Cultural Revolution (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021) makes the case for Mao’s tactical uses of the rebel factions during the Cultural Revolution, as well as the key involvement of other high-level officials. Important overviews include Roderick MacFarquhar and Michael Schoenhals, Mao’s Last Revolution (Harvard University Press, 2006) and Frank Dikötter, The Cultural Revolution: A People’s History, 1962-1976 (Bloomsbury, 2016).

[4] A document reader issued by the History and Public Policy Program and the Cold War International History Project recognized the sources gap for the later 1960s. Enrico Fardella, Christian F. Ostermann, and Charles Kraus, Sino-European Relations During the Cold War and the Rise of a Multipolar World. A Critical Oral History (Woodrow Wilson International Centers for Scholars, 2015).

[5] James Reilly, Orchestration: China’s Economic Statecraft across Asia and Europe (Oxford University Press, 2021).

[6] Elidor Mëhilli, “Mao and the Albanians,” in Alexander C. Cook (ed.), Mao’s Little Red Book: A Global History (Cambridge University Press, 2014), pp. 165-184.

[7] Ana Lalaj, “Ndarja me sovjetikët dhe aleatja e fundit e Shqipërisë komuniste,” Studime historike, no 3-4 (2010): 239-257. See also Ylber Marku, “Communist Relations in Crisis: The End of Soviet-Albanian Relations, and the Sino-Soviet Split, 1960–1961,” The International History Review, 42:4 (2020): 813-832.

[8] Bashkim Shehu, Liri Belishova dhe koha e saj: idealizmi, humnerat e pushtetit, katarsis (Tirana: UET Press, 2020).

[9] Odd Arne Westad, The Cold War: A World History (Basic Books, 2019), acknowledgments.