From the editorial office. The famous philosophical saying of the ancient Greek thinker Heraclitus of Ephesus (Gloomy), which became a catch phrase: "Everything flows, everything changes...", modern historians have clarified, adding "... and everything is faster". They called this pattern the " acceleration of history." At the same time, it has long been noted (even before Lenin's thesis about the uneven development of capitalism) that human society develops unevenly both in time (sometimes accelerating, then slowing down, and sometimes finding itself in stagnation or even moving backwards), and in space (forever one human group, including states, is breaking out ahead, and the other is moving forward). the other is almost hopelessly trailing behind).

Of course, now only the lazy one does not mention the literally eye-catching acceleration of information transmission and processing. Few people remember that not even 20 years (one generation of earthlings)have passed since the Internet broke free from the academic tower, built at the time at the initiative of the Pentagon in order to preserve communication in the event of a nuclear missile disaster.

But the acceleration of history isn't just about technological breakthroughs. If we look at the socio-economic development of individual countries, it is unlikely that anyone will deny that in recent decades the most striking example of the acceleration of history has been China (if we do not count the "accelerated" collapse of the Soviet Union). For an entire generation of humanity, the rise of China has become something of a permanent, almost timeless phenomenon. But, like every social phenomenon, it had its origins both in the historical depths and at the current stage. And, of course, sooner or later it will come to an end (in the sense of reaching a level at which a further serious change of forces on the world stage in favor of China will become unlikely for economic and geopolitical reasons).

In this context, the period when the formation of the "Chinese economic miracle" began is of great interest. There are reliable historical documents on this topic, including the decisions of the third plenum of the 11th convocation of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, and many fundamental works. But the direct live impressions of eyewitnesses, moreover, captured by the eye of a specialist, are not so much, especially in Russian. Despite the importance of the rough language of numbers and documents, scientific knowledge is often extracted using the "mind of feeling". This also applies to understanding the great changes that have taken place in the daily life and psychology of Chinese people over the past three decades.

Our journal's attention was drawn to the diaries of Dr. Yu.V.Chudodeyev, PhD in History at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, based on which the article is written below. Perhaps some of the author's assessments concerning certain aspects of the life and habits of the Chinese at the beginning of perestroika may not seem entirely fair. But you can't get the words out of the song. Because the diary itself becomes a witness to the era.

E. M. RUSAKOV, Candidate of Historical Sciences, columnist of the magazine "Asia and Africa Today" on the problems of East and South Asia

CHINA STARTS REFORMS

Diary entries from 1985 to 1986

(Shanghai. Fudan University)

Yu. V. CHUDODEEV

Candidate of Historical Sciences

Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences

Keywords: China, economic reforms, Fudan University, Sino-Soviet relations

I have been to China many times, including at the height of the Cultural Revolution in 1966, as an escort for one of our last tourist groups in that period. The atmosphere was, to put it mildly, not the best. Young "red guards" (Red guards) marched everywhere, shouting wildly "Down with the Soviet revisionists!", calling for "hitting the headquarters", cracking down on "those who follow the capitalist path", etc. And how was it not to face them, if their army has grown to 25 million?!

The process of normalization of relations between the USSR and the PRC, which began in the late 1970s, also affected the scientific and educational sphere, in particular, there was an opportunity for mutual scientific and student-intern exchange. So, in 1985-1986, as a member of one of these Soviet groups, I got an internship at one of the leading universities in the country - Fudan University in Shanghai. For almost 10 months of my stay in China, I kept a diary, recording my impressions. For me, it was a time of previously unknown true "discovery of China", direct communication with various representatives of Chinese society.

China is a country of exceptional beauty of nature and interesting historical monuments. At the same time, the China I discovered that year was a poor, backward country, just beginning to recover from Maoist experiments, and a country where physical labor continued to play a huge role in its economy. Of course, the hard work of the people could not fail to inspire admiration: it was enough to see the terraced rice fields in Sichuan province, hollowed out in the mountains by the titanic efforts of many generations of peasants. There were few cars on the streets and roads, and all the heavy loads were carried on huge carts drawn by men and women. I was struck by the extremely poor life of the main mass of the people, poorly and monotonously dressed people, and miserable, for the most part, homes.

But in December 1978, reforms began in China related to the initiatives and name of the new Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping. Based on the transition to a family contract, the Chinese village and then the Chinese city began to revive, especially in the coastal regions of the country.

To some extent, I managed to capture the initial period of this complex process in my diary entries.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

On August 29, 1985, at about 11 a.m., we landed in Beijing. I found myself in a different world, very different from the one I last saw 20 years ago. You can feel it immediately and see it with the naked eye. The airport seems to be the same, but the plane is served to the modern "trunk". We pass customs inspection, medical and border control without any complications. The Chinese, apparently, want to show themselves hospitable hosts, demonstrate their condescension, their non-focus on trifles (luggage inspection, etc.), and make a favorable impression on the guests.

For a few days, we ended up in a dormitory at the Beijing Steel and Alloy Institute in Haidian district. This is the northern part of the Chinese capital, 15-20 km from the center. Although we drove only along the edge of the northern part of Beijing, we could see how the city is changing before our eyes, how it is being thoroughly updated: residential areas with multi-storey buildings, modern streets, transport interchanges, etc. are being built. There are a lot of cyclists on the streets, but there are also modern foreign-made cars: "Toyota", "Mercedes", "BMW", "Volkswagen"... The Chinese show mutual courtesy. They don't seem annoyed that someone didn't give way in time.

People have become more relaxed, less anxious. There is a sense of businesslike purposefulness in the crowd, you do not feel the former nervousness, electrification, and sometimes even doom. Everyone is in a hurry somewhere, scurrying back and forth, but at the same time calmly and busily. The pragmatic rhythm of their life today is evident in everything. Full of retail outlets. The bazaar offers everything that your heart desires. Vegetables, fruits, and other foods are plentiful. There is clearly no hunger. People are better dressed.

No sooner had we looked around in Beijing than my group was asked to pack their bags for Shanghai. We spent two hours in the waiting room at the train station surrounded by Chinese people, but we were not the main object of their attention, which I had previously observed in China: foreigners are foreigners.

The guides are well-trained and disciplined, they clearly know their business. They provide passengers with tea and detailed information, recommend attractions when approaching a city, and when inviting them to a restaurant, inform them about the menu, prices,and healthy food...

FUDAN UNIVERSITY

So here I am at Fudan University. Its entire rather large territory, along with academic buildings, administrative premises, dormitories for teachers and students, is surrounded by a solid brick fence.

The International Students ' Hostel is a five-story building at number 19. There are beds with mattresses in the room, a mosquito net on the windows (we were given mosquito nets). Additionally, everyone received two deep and one flat metal plates, chopsticks and a spoon. The number of questionnaires that need to be filled out is gradually growing. At first, we are settled one at a time, but they say that in this case we will have to pay 90 yuan per month, which is a considerable amount, as described below. When foreigners stay together, there is no charge.

Fudan University, along with Beijing and Tsinghua University, belongs to the top three elite higher education institutions in China. In addition to the usual funding, they receive substantial government subsidies. About 10 thousand students study at the university. students, they are taught by 2 thousand teachers (i.e., each of them has 5 students), together with the service staff - about 5 thousand people. Admission to these three top-tier universities is made all over China. It is not easy to enter them: you need to pass 6 exams (in others - less), in particular, in Chinese literature, history, geography, mathematics, socio-political disciplines and a foreign language. In total, 200 thousand applicants were recruited nationwide. Only 5% of them passed competitive exams.

A group of 10 people, in co-

When I got there, I was assigned to the history department.

The campus is bustling with all the students, including even residents of Shanghai, settled here. 8 - 10 Chinese people live in one room.

At the end of October, at my request, a Chinese student was moved into the room. So I made a new friend. His name is Wen Zhiguang, a 3rd-year history student. A very modest guy, from an intelligent family. His father is a teacher at the Faculty of Biology of the Pedagogical Institute, engaged in genetics, his mother teaches English and German at the Institute of Foreign Languages. Zhiguang is 20 years old. The guy is well-read, purposeful. Specializes in general history.

My new Chinese friend wrote me his family character and name characters. His parents gave him a very beautiful name: "Zhiguang "means"Aspiring to fame" in Russian. I didn't fail to say that he should live up to his parents ' expectations.

Zhiguang, as the son of relatively well-off parents, does not receive a scholarship. It turns out that it relies only on children of poor parents, mostly from the countryside. The scholarship is scanty: from 8 yuan in the first year to 28 yuan in the last year. Zhiguang, despite a certain affluence of his family, leads an ordinary life as a Chinese student. He refuses the thick mattress that was offered to him as living with a foreign intern (the mattress was immediately picked up by Jean Roque, a student from the Congo), washes his feet before going to bed, or rather, just keeps them in water, goes to bed relatively early and gets up early, eats in a Chinese canteen, lives on 40 yuan a month, very modestly dressed, unobtrusive. His favorite expressions are: "It doesn't matter, it'll do, everything's fine."

Wen Zhiguang spoke a little bit about his grandfather, Wang Lizhang. He is now about 80 years old. My grandfather graduated from a university in the United States, and visited Europe-France, Italy, and Germany. He continues to be a professor at Fudan University, where he began working in 1937. He is a major expert on the global financial system. In 1966, he was subjected to reprisals by the Red Guards, was kicked out of his job, and his house was taken away. Now the house was returned to my grandfather and restored to his professorship, but all his works were destroyed, and nothing was preserved in the house.

I visited a bookstore at the university. The literature presented in it reflects quantitative and qualitative changes in publishing and in the development of historical science. On the shelves are: "Capital" by Karl Marx, the first volumes of the complete works of V. I. Lenin, "Memoirs of V. I. Lenin", "Annals" by Tacitus," Memoirs and Reflections " by Marshal G. Zhukov, translation of Soviet monographs on utopians and humanists of the Renaissance. And along with this: "History of Spain", " History of the First World War "(translated from Russian)," World History "(Chinese historians)," History of the American Revolution " (translated from English).

Every evening at the side gate of the university begins its own life: the camp kitchen drives up, immediately cook, fry something in soy sauce. Eatery right on the street. A primitive stove, with an old woman cooking something by candlelight in the evening. Workers come up to her, buy, immediately eat, squatting down.

There is a market near the university hostel. There is a brisk trade going on. What is not here: young bamboo shoots, potatoes, sweet potatoes, "black" eggs, live chickens, fish, crabs, sea snails, beans, peanuts, fruits (apples, pears, bananas, watermelons, melons, sugar cane). Everything is weighed on a rocker balance. Here the seller grabs a live chicken chosen by the buyer, ties its legs with straw and pulls it up on the scales, then they haggle for a long time. There is also a small repair of shoes and tailoring, repair of bicycles, etc. Everyone earns as much as they can.

The trade and entrepreneurial initiative is developing in full swing. At the same time, some party leaders call for fighting the influence of bourgeois ideology.

The reaction to the" cultural revolution " of ordinary people, when they learn, in particular, that one of my visits to China in 1966 coincided with the 8th meeting of Mao Zedong with the Red Guards, is more ironic and sarcastic (yes, they say, there was such a misunderstanding in our history), rather than gloomy, painful... This is interesting. But Mao's ideas still sit somewhere inside them all.

THE MANY FACES OF SHANGHAI

First trip to the city. Huangpu River Embankment, the former international settlement area, now called Sun Yat-sen Street. There are towering multi-storey buildings - hotels "Shanghai", "Mir", Chinese state Bank, Shanghai City Committee of the CPC. Motley walking crowd, cyclists, cars, horns of steamers, cars, calls of cyclists. The Chinese are dressed quite well and modernly.

Shanghai is diverse and diverse.

The city looks like a showcase of China's openness to the outside world. Advertising for various international companies. Shanghai is the twin city of New York, and Shanghai celebrates New York Day on January 1.

Shanghai's streets are relatively narrow, and even one of the central ones-the 5-kilometer Nanking Street-is no wider than our Neglinka Street. Traffic is in one row, the second row is fenced off for cyclists by a special fence, but people on foot are piling up on it. Showing wonders of management, cyclists scurry around, in the city at the same time there are

There are more than four million people on bicycles on the move.

Cars are screaming their horns - without this, it would be impossible for them to move. Drivers slow down extremely rarely. Traffic controllers on duty at intersections are usually elderly people, most likely retired people, with red armbands. This is a symbol of their power over the moving crowd, cars, and cyclists. And they are unconditionally obeyed.

Nanking and Sichuan streets are full of shops. The shops are crowded, but there are no queues for any shortage. Everything is now available. Pay the money and take it. Vegetables and fruits are everywhere. True, there is already a small queue for pears for 5 - 6 fen (kopecks) cheaper.

In general, people are in a great mood, life is full of life. People have money, and some, apparently, a lot of it. They take expensive televisions (there are also color ones - both Japanese and Chinese), refrigerators. There are also private cars. A lot of foreign cars, mostly Japanese, including minibuses.

Lots of eateries. The problem with food in the city, apparently, is almost solved.

When buying any product, the Chinese will not deceive you, will not cheat you. You'll get up to a penny in change. The restaurants offer impeccable service. Air conditioners. Excellent canned beer, which we learned to produce using German technology in Qingdao. When you leave the restaurant, a crowd of Chinese people is standing near the entrance and watching the "white people" come out. When you buy something, haggle (and the Chinese love to haggle), people can also gather, loudly condemning the saleswoman for trying not to give you a few fen.

A step away from Nanking, and, as it turns out, here is a different life, a different Shanghai. This is the belly of the city. Shanghai of narrow alleys, terrible crowding, where all life flows half outside. A solid row of two-story houses adjacent to each other. From the street there is a direct entrance to the room - it is either a dining room,or a bedroom, more often-both. Underwear hangs from the top. And then, right on the street, the life of the family and neighbors goes on: eating, sleeping, relaxing, washing clothes, gossiping, playing dominoes, nursing babies. Here is a Chinese man handling a newly purchased chicken: he cuts off its head and carefully pumps out its blood to the drop. An old woman, resting in a chair in front of the house, keeps a sharp eye on what is happening around. Guys sulking at cards, Chinese chess players... Even in high - rise buildings, residents are almost all on the street. And people are passing by, buses and cars are going by... How great is the power of corporatism and collectivism in China!

I am followed by curious glances, smiles, and jokes exchanged. Apparently, they are used to foreigners here. Signs of modernity -here and there in the room there is a TV, some have transistor radios in their hands.

Finally, I get to the market and the Garden of Joy area. The market is a mass of various shops and eateries. People don't just watch - they buy, even cameras; they go to eat in dumplings, where they also cook dumplings. Private trade is flourishing. Each private owner has a copy of the license granting the right to conduct business on his chest.

Young people feel relaxed. Guys with long hairstyles (unthinkable even a decade ago), leggy beauties in short skirts. In a secluded corner of the Garden of Joy, a guy holds a girl on his lap. The Chinese are no longer afraid of contact with foreigners. Fashionistas have fun with them in bars and restaurants.

Like any multimillion-dollar city, Shanghai is not particularly clean, but it is monitored. Special photo windows with visual propaganda call not to urinate and not to litter on the street, not to hang laundry, although all the alleys are filled with it.

There is a fight against crime. Entire walls are filled with photo screens exposing individual criminals, taking them to court and interrogating them. The exact identity of the perpetrators, years of birth, where they come from, occupation, career, etc. are indicated. One was engaged in fraud, deceiving customers, forging receipts (a whole gang worked), indicating how much was looted. Another robbed foreigners in hotels, entering them using forged documents. The third carried out metal from the enterprise, which was lowered to the side. Theft came out on top.

There were also pictures of women convicted of prostitution. In 1984-1985, about 8 thousand "moths" were caught in Shanghai, which were sent to the suburbs to grow vegetables. But they still meet.

One spring day, Shanghai was decorated with red flags, posters and slogans appeared on the walls. So the operation to ensure public safety in the city began. And the essence of it was to force thieves, robbers and other criminal small fry to turn themselves in to the authorities, return the stolen items in exchange for the authorities ' refusal to bring those who repented to justice. The authorities were quick to report about 7 thousand thieves who seemed to have turned themselves in. Miracles, that's all!

PROSE OF LIFE

In conversations with Chinese friends, a picture of their daily life and everyday life gradually emerges.

Fudan University graduate student gets 60 yuan: this is the average monthly salary of an ordinary Chinese person. And the teacher -only 5-10 yuan more. However, there is a prospect of earning more than 70 yuan.

At the sight of my waihui currency notes from the Chinese

my eyes light up. Waihui is something like Soviet checks in the "Birch". Many Chinese people are simply fascinated by them. Quite often, they offer an exchange for waihui of the Chinese domestic currency - "people's money" - ren-minbi, i.e. yuan. Even during my first visit to the bazaar near the university, the egg seller, not shy about the Chinese who surrounded us, also persuaded me to perform such an operation...

I go to eateries and order Chinese dishes. However, it turned out that in some eateries, visitors are required to have special coupons. In Sichu-anlu, I saw a special stall where, apparently, people bought rice on cards. People came up, presented their identity cards, looked for their names in a special file cabinet, took out their form, wrote something down, cut something off (obviously, coupons).

In one of the eateries, I asked a guy sitting next to me about food stamps. He took out his ID card (there are pictures of him, his wife and child), searched for a long time, finally took out several coupons and showed me. It turns out that cheap food is regulated. Everything else is quite expensive. But people have money now. I watched as a young man, surrounded by a crowd of onlookers, bought a Chinese-made tape recorder for 525 yuan.

Existing coupons for rice, sesame oil, salt, and other goods are designed to support a stable food situation by guaranteeing every Chinese a certain minimum at low prices, thus creating certain limits for inflating prices*. In public catering, you can eat on coupons - you will pay little, but without them-it is more expensive.

Bicycles, the most common form of transport, cost 160-170 yuan in stores, but they are sold only on coupons from businesses. A foreigner will be sold only for foreign currency money in a specialized Druzhba store a little more expensive. There are three factories in the city that produce bicycles. Shanghai is a city of cyclists. Riding a bicycle while maneuvering through a huge crowd is extremely difficult for a person who is not used to such maneuvering.

Japanese goods can be seen in the stores: color televisions, calculators, cameras, photographic films, video recorders, videotapes, even watches and lighters, etc.

By the end of my stay in China, the anti-illegal currency exchange campaign was working. Waihui doesn't make the same impression anymore. Now on the streets, no one offers to exchange waihui for renminbi at the rate of the "black market", and if they offer, then some single merchant, who at the same time looks around three times furtively and lowers his voice to a half-whisper, starting to explain himself with inconspicuous gestures. In stores for foreigners, they began to calmly accept "national" yuan, which was not the case before.

Teacher Gu Wending, who showed me a picture of his daughter, I ask: "What if you want a second child?" Then each of the spouses will have to lose 30% of their salary and, together with the second child, free medical care and other benefits. Men are allowed to marry from the age of 22, women - from 20. However, usually men get married at 26-28 years, women get married at 22-24. In one of the suburbs of Greater Shanghai - Nanxiang-I saw a stand calling for late marriages and limiting ourselves to one child. By the way, you can get free condoms at the pharmacy - limiting childbearing in practice!

WITHOUT ENTHUSIASM AND WITHOUT HOSTILITY

I learned a curious detail from the stories of Soviet interns - "techies" from Beijing, Nanjing and Shanghai. Chinese people are much more likely to treat those foreigners who do not know Chinese well or do not know it at all than "experts". I thought that this was psychologically justified from the point of view of their national character and perception of foreigners. In "dunno", the Chinese feels helpless, insecure, and in need of help, and they are ready to provide it, showing their condescension and mentoring. They often treat those who speak the language with suspicion and ill-concealed ill-will. In their view, such a foreigner feels much more confident and can afford to be dismissive and arrogant in relations with the Chinese. Still, a certain ingrained inferiority complex manifests itself in one way or another, although it is gradually overcome. It seems that this is one of the moments of the Chinese mass consciousness**.

* Due to the difficulties of the PRC's economic development, especially after the Maoist experiments such as the "great leap forward" and the creation of" people's communes " in the countryside, the Chinese leadership for a long time up to the end of the 90s was forced to resort to rationing the distribution of food (primarily rice) and important industrial goods (in particular,agricultural products). cotton fabrics, bicycles). This process was accompanied by rather strict state control over pricing. The new economic policy after 1978, which stimulated economic growth, made certain adjustments. The state has kept low prices for goods distributed on cards (thus ensuring a tolerable existence of the poor), while at the same time allowing their sale through market mechanisms, but at higher prices. This policy has helped maintain social stability in Chinese society.

** I came across this phenomenon when, 20 years after a long business trip to Japan, in 1992, at the annual international ski journalists ' competition that was held in the United States in the Rocky Mountains in Colorado, I had to mobilize the remnants of my memories of spoken Japanese, because my Japanese interlocutor knew French perfectly, but, unlike other Japanese colleagues, she did not speak English. The news of my knowledge of Japanese was received very coolly by the latter, and they still preferred to communicate in English.

The desire of Chinese people to spy on what a foreigner is doing, what he is watching, what he is reading, what he is writing is amazing. It is enough to stop to make some kind of record, several Chinese people will definitely come up to you and start looking at what you are writing, while not understanding anything in Russian. One day I decided to have dinner at an inn that had tables right on the sidewalk, under the trees. Passers-by walked by, cars moved. They brought me a brazier in which I prepared my own meat dish. Passersby stopped and watched. Some, having seen enough, left, new "viewers" came up. You feel like you're in a menagerie at times like this, but eventually you get used to everything. When you react to this tactlessness, from your point of view, the Chinese often do not understand what caused your irritation. A conversation with the seller, finding out some question from a passerby-instantly a crowd gathers.

The attitude towards us, the Soviets, is quite normal, there is no bias, but there is no special selection from among foreigners. The fact that they see a Soviet man (xulian ren) in front of them causes surprise, a certain animation, but certainly not delight, which, I do not exclude, some of us expected to see. When the Chinese find out that we are Russians , they will freeze for a moment, not knowing what to talk about with you. In some places they exclaimed: "Ah! Soviet, big brother...", but, apparently, with an ironic tinge.

Still, curiosity takes over. This is primarily due to the fact that our compatriots are rare guests. For the last 20 to 25 years, the Chinese simply haven't seen Soviet people (at least, most of the Chinese we've had contact with). Knowledge about our country is very poor. It wasn't often that a casual acquaintance could name any Russian cities other than Moscow and Leningrad. The special nature of relations between our countries is affected. As a rule, the mood and attitude of ordinary people towards us is friendly, although initially it is wary.

They are surprised that in the USSR there are no private shops or even private service providers. The Chinese are interested in many things, but usually related to the standard of living (salary, working hours, the system of holidays, the ratio of the ruble to the yuan, etc.). Everyone with whom I had to talk expressed satisfaction with the improvement of Soviet-Chinese relations. However, the most friendly attitude towards us is felt by the older generation. Many of them still remember a few words in Russian.

Young people, as a rule, are set up in a slightly different way. For her, the USSR is a big country, interesting in its own way, but rooted in the old dogmatic principles, and therefore unattractive. (Although some Soviet products, such as refrigerators, that have appeared on the Chinese market are in demand.) But the West - the United States, Europe plus Japan-is quite different, as discussed below.

According to N. E. Borevskaya, an employee of the Institute of the Far East of the USSR Academy of Sciences, who visited us in Fudan, the Chinese do everything only in exchange for your services ("bash for bash"). You can feel this kind of attitude: you (i.e., the USSR) have a large territory, we (i.e., China) have a small one, and you live well. And it's ubiquitous. When asked why you do not develop the territories of the Chinese West - Gansu Province, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, they are silent. Rich countries (USA, USSR, etc.) should, in their opinion, help the poor, including China. There is a clear desire to pump money from foreigners. If you're a foreigner, you're rich. If you want to travel, explore China, or buy Chinese goods , you can fork out.

In my conversations, the question that Russia allegedly once seized Chinese lands (in Mao Zedong's interpretation)was often not raised directly in the forehead. On the other hand, there was a clear belief that our territory was much larger in comparison with the population, and they did not have enough, and hence many of the difficulties in China. It seems that recently this stereotype of the approach to us has been formed in the mass consciousness on a significant scale.

Students of the Russian Language Faculty of the Institute of Foreign Languages suddenly start talking about the" debt " of the USSR to China, that the Soviet Far East is a former Chinese land. It turns out that the textbooks they use contain the same historical "wisdom".

Learning Russian at the Institute of Foreign Languages is no longer in the foreground here. My favorites are English and Japanese. A huge building of the Japanese language Faculty has been built. The Institute has a large number of visiting teachers-foreigners under contracts (from the UK, USA, Japan).

My Chinese friend Shen Wenzhong (here he has a Russian name - Alexey) spoke about the years of the "cultural revolution", about how difficult life was at that time. In particular, for his knowledge of the Russian language, he was declared almost a spy and exiled to the countryside. During the" cultural revolution", Russian emigrants were dispersed, many went to Canada, Australia, and Argentina. Referring to Sino-Soviet relations, Shen said :" Our quarrels are quarrels in the same family." But from what he said, I understood that there is still a widespread wariness about us in China at the moment. This is not

English: to this day, many Japanese people almost instinctively start behaving "in a Western way" with foreigners, and "relax" in their own environment. I turned out to be "neither fish nor meat": my Japanese was not so good as to become "my own", but it was also awkward to ignore the remnants of my knowledge (editor's note by E. Rusakov).

fear, but rather the conviction that one must be on the lookout for the USSR, that the Soviet Union could harm China. In short, they don't trust us, and they fear us.

My" cellmate " Zhiguang told me about a lecture that was held at the Faculty of International Politics for Fudan students. The lecture was devoted to the activities of J. V. Stalin during the Great Patriotic War. Zhiguang said that the official view prevails in evaluating Stalin: Stalin is good in every way ("Stalin is Lenin today"). But there is also a semi-official or unofficial position that Stalin made mistakes, and these mistakes relate primarily to his assessment of the Chinese revolution. The lecturer criticized Stalin for trying to use the Chinese revolution in the interests of the USSR, turning China against Japan, which threatened the Soviet Union. Zhiguang himself believes that Stalin's activities, like Mao Zedong's, had both pros and cons.

A monograph by a Chinese historian on the activities of Leon Trotsky has been published in the People's Republic of China, which pays tribute to him as a military leader during the Civil War. A volume of the works of Nikolai Bukharin, who is highly regarded in modern China, was also published. Zhiguang believes that the development of the USSR could have gone differently if Bukharin had won the battle against Stalin.

WESTWARD THRUST

Judging by Shanghai, China has made a great turn to the West. The desire of young people for the West, their desire to imitate the West is huge!

The first thing a Chinese person asks is, " Are you Americans?" Here they arouse a more frank interest. American students behave freely, without flirting with the Chinese, but also not arrogantly. It is characteristic that our students are also attracted to Western students and interns (as the embassy warned about) and are not very friendly with the Chinese.

Young people want to study abroad (in the United States or Japan), try to imitate Western manners, Western dances, Western clothing, and have Western techniques in everyday life. He wants to get rid of a certain inferiority complex as soon as possible. They also perceive us as reaching out to the West.

It is hardly necessary to exaggerate the degree of Western influence on China. China, first of all , is an avalanche of Chinese people; no subservience to foreigners; you are served politely, punctually, they will hand over change to the penny and without a shadow of subservience to get a"tea". But this impact on China, especially on young people, should not be underestimated. People tend to see in the "white man", first of all, an American, or at least a West German. Many people want to talk to you in English. They imitate Western manners; they watch you carefully, with curiosity (a Westerner!), and with the intention of adopting something. In general, when they find out that they are facing a Soviet person, it is rather a disappointment. They hoped that this was an American, but it turned out to be only Xulian Ren! Yes, we have lost a lot of credibility in China.

Students from the German Democratic Republic complained that the Chinese people who shared a room with them were completely "disbanded": they do not clean the room, smoke, litter, behave cheekily and defiantly. In their opinion, if some of them are "dismissed", they immediately sit on their necks and begin to look proudly at others from their "cultural and historical heights", showing something like a dismissive and indifferent attitude. However, the one they respect the most is the Americans.

Professor of the History Department Jin, who once graduated from Leningrad University, told how Americans work in Fudan. Once a year, they organize language proficiency tests (both Chinese and English), offer special tests, and select a group of the most capable and promising, from their point of view, students to study in the United States at the expense of American universities. There are plenty of people who want to get to the States. In 1984, the procedure for obtaining permits to travel abroad was significantly simplified.

In the evening, a documentary about the stay of the famous American boxer Muhammad Ali in China was played on television. He was here with his wife in May 1985, visiting Beijing, where he met Deng Xiaoping, as well as Xi'an, Shanghai. The film showed his demonstration fight with a Chinese boxer, where Ali defiantly fell, allegedly knocked out.

The other day, Alvin Ailey's American Art Nouveau Ballet company gave two performances in Shanghai. In Beijing, judging by the press, it made a splash. China Daily wrote excitedly about it, emphasizing that for a 5-yuan ticket, some were willing to pay 30 yuan -almost half the salary of an ordinary Chinese.

And they don't like the Japanese. Somewhere in the depths of the Chinese soul is hidden a feeling of dislike for the Japanese. Yes, everyone recognizes the need to develop economic ties with Japan, in words they are ready to shout about friendship for centuries in propaganda, but in their hearts they do not like the Japanese. On the street, they are not lavished with smiles, they are not greeted, they try not to notice them. And even those, apparently, do not feel confident and comfortable in China.

The guy from Nanjing told me straight out that the Chinese people hate the Japanese. And this he said, despite the propaganda hype about Japanese-Chinese friendship!

(The ending follows)

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