Reading “The Stalin Era” it’s natural to take interest in the author…in 1949 Anna Strong was arrested and deported from USSR…and went to China…there are various descriptions of her as a person…here is a bit she wrote about Mao…which I hope is revealing…and prescient too! Mao smart fella!
A short documentary film…Witness to Revolution: The Story of Anna Louise Strong (1984) – YouTube https://youtu.be/L8vRVCAkh1w
Anna Louise Strong, An Interview with Mao Zedong (1960)
I raised the question about the threat of war between the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. The Chairman said that the talk of war was at present largely a smoke-screen which the reactionaries created to cover up the many immediate contradictions facing U.S. imperialism. American monopoly capital of course dreamed of destroying the U.S.S.R. but this aim was not so immediate. They must first wear down the American people’s opposition to war, and then they must bring other capitalist countries under American control. Any war against the U.S.S.R. had to be done through other countries’ territory, through Britain, France and China. So the American reactionaries used all this talk about fighting the U.S.S.R. to give excuse for attacking the American people’s civil rights and living standards and for bringing the other capitalist lands under American control. He pointed out how, under this pretext, the U.S.A. was setting up military bases in many places and had already taken a very large area under American control.
Chairman Mao laughingly illustrated his point with the tea-cups and little white wine cups on the table, placing a big cup for American imperialism and surrounding it with a circle of little wine cups for the American people, with a long zigzag line filled up with match-boxes and cigarettes to represent other countries all separating American imperialism from the Soviet Union, a big cup at the other side. The cooperation of the people, he said, was strong enough, if properly aroused, to prevent a third world war. But this cooperation against world war must be aroused, otherwise the war would come.
The metaphor of “paper-tiger” was used during this talk and I was especially impressed, not only by the metaphor but by the way in which Chairman Mao, without knowing English, was able to correct the exact translation of his words. When he first said that reactionary rulers are paper-tigers, the word-was translated “scare-crow.” Chairman Mao immediately stopped the talk and asked me to tell him just what a “scarecrow” is. When I replied that it is a figure like a man which peasants put up in a field to scare away crows, he at once expressed dissatisfaction, and said that this was not his meaning. A paper tiger, he said, is not something dead to scare crows. It scares children. It looks like a terrible tiger but actually, being made of pressed paper, it softens when damp and is washed away in a heavy rain.
After this Chairman Mao used the “paper-tiger” in English, laughing at the sound of English words in a sentence, the rest of which was Chinese. Before the February Revolution in Russia, he said, the tsar looked very strong and terrible. But a February rain washed him away. Hitler also was washed away by the storms of history. So were the Japanese imperialists. They were paper-tigers all. The same thing would happen to all imperialists and reactionaries. Their strength lay only in the unconsciousness of the people. The consciousness of the people is the basic question. Not explosives of atom bombs but the man who handles them. He is still to be educated. After a moment, he added: Communist Parties have real power, because they awaken the people’s consciousness.
(My Bolding)
more bio…Anna Louise Strong…https://spartacus-educational.com/Anna_Louise_Strong.htm
