Nine Commentaries

Drafting and publication

The Nine Commentaries were written to rebut the open letter that the CPSU Central Committee published in Pravda on 14 July 1963. In February 1963 the CCP Central Committee set up the Central Anti-Revisionist Document Drafting Group, with Kang Sheng as group leader and Wu Lengxi as deputy leader, though it was effectively led by Deng Xiaoping. Each commentary was approved by Deng and submitted to Mao Zedong for final review, with the Institute of International Relations taking part in drafting.

The articles ran from 6 September 1963 to 14 July 1964 under the names of the People's Daily and Red Flag editorial departments. The immediate trigger was the Sino-Soviet party talks held in Moscow from 6 to 20 July 1963: when the Soviet side published its open letter during the talks and the nine rounds of negotiation broke down amid sharp disagreement, the Chinese side responded with the commentary series. The CCP's reply of 14 June 1963, 'Suggestions on the General Line of the International Communist Movement,' was part of the same dispute.

The nine commentaries

The titles and publication dates of the first through ninth commentaries are as follows.

• First (6 September 1963): 'The Origin and Development of the Differences between the Leadership of the CPSU and Ourselves'
• Second (13 September 1963): 'On the Question of Stalin'
• Third (26 September 1963): 'Is Yugoslavia a Socialist Country?'
• Fourth (22 October 1963): 'Apologists for Neo-Colonialism'
• Fifth (19 November 1963): 'Two Lines on the Question of War and Peace'
• Sixth (12 December 1963): 'Two Fundamentally Opposed Policies of Peaceful Coexistence'
• Seventh (4 February 1964): 'The Leadership of the CPSU Is the Greatest Splittist of Our Times'
• Eighth (31 March 1964): 'The Proletarian Revolution and Khrushchev's Revisionism'
• Ninth (14 July 1964): 'On Khrushchev's Phoney Communism and Its Historical Lessons for the World'

Conclusion of the polemic and legacy

On 16 October 1964 Khrushchev stepped down and Brezhnev took office as First Secretary of the CPSU. In November China sent a delegation led by Zhou Enlai to the October Revolution celebrations to test whether Soviet policy toward China would change; a tenth commentary had also been finalized by then, but was not published because of Khrushchev's fall. Instead Red Flag and the People's Daily published 'How Khrushchev Stepped Down,' bringing the Sino-Soviet polemic to an end.

In June 1981 the CCP's 'Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party since the Founding of the People's Republic of China' assessed that the Soviet leadership had turned the dispute into a national dispute and applied political, economic and military pressure. In May 1989, after the normalization of Sino-Soviet relations, Deng Xiaoping acknowledged that both sides had talked a lot of empty words while saying the real substantive issue was inequality and the humiliation felt by the Chinese people.