From Soviet Origins to Chuch’e:
Marxism-Leninism in the History of North Korean Ideology,
1945-1989
A dissertation submitted in partial
satisfaction of the requirements for the
degree Doctor of Philosophy in Asian
Languages and Cultures
by Thomas Stock
2018
UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA
Los Angeles
© Copyright
by Thomas Stock
2018
ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION
From Soviet
Origins to Chuch’e:
Marxism-Leninism
in the History of North Korean Ideology, 1945-1989
by
Thomas Stock
Doctor of
Philosophy in Asian Languages and Cultures
University
of California, Los Angeles, 2018
Professor
Namhee Lee, Chair
Where lie the origins of North Korean
ideology? When, why, and to what extent
did
North Korea eventually pursue a path of
ideological independence from Soviet Marxism-
Leninism?
Scholars typically answer these interrelated questions by referencing
Korea’s historical legacies, such as Chosŏn period Confucianism, colonial
subjugation, and Kim Il
Sung’s guerrilla experience. The result is a rather localized
understanding of North Korean ideology and its development, according to which
North Korean ideology was rooted in native soil and, on the basis of this indigenousness,
inevitably developed in contradistinction to Marxism-Leninism. Drawing on Eastern European archival
materials and North Korean theoretical journals, the present study challenges
our conventional views about North Korean ideology. Throughout the Cold War, North Korea was
possessed by a world spirit, a MarxistLeninist world spirit. Marxism-Leninism was North Korean ideology’s
Promethean clay. From adherence to
Soviet ideological leadership in the 1940s and 50s, to declarations of
ideological independence in the 1960s, to the emergence of chuch’e philosophy in the 1970s and 80s, North Korea never severed
its ties with the Marxist-Leninist tradition.
On the contrary, this tradition constituted the basic and most
fundamental raw material from which North Korean ideology was shaped and
developed. The evolution of North Korean
ideology was not predetermined by
Korea’s historical legacies. Rather, a convergence of historically
immediate domestic and international factors led to the emergence of an
independent ideology, an ideology that despite its independence from Soviet
ideological suzerainty remained situated within a global MarxistLeninist
intellectual space. Though many scholars
have argued otherwise, even chuch’e
philosophy, the apex of North Korean ideological particularity during the Cold
War, was hardly an idealism and instead quite reminiscent of a good
old-fashioned Marxist-Leninist materialism.
The dissertation of Thomas Stock is approved.
John Duncan
David Sabean
Christopher
P. Hanscom
Namhee Lee,
Committee Chair
University
of California, Los Angeles
2018
TABLE OF
CONTENTS
ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION.... ii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS..................... vii
VITA............................................ ix
INTRODUCTION
.........................................................................................................................
1 The State of the Literature: Indigenousness and Chuch’e-Centrism.................................. 3
De-Polarizing: The Problem of
Marxism-Leninism......................................................... 11
Historical Immediacy, Rationality, and
Sublation............................................................ 14
The Problem of Ideology..................................................................................................
16
Comparative Perspectives and Source
Material............................................................... 20
Chapter
Overview.............................................................................................................
22
CHAPTER I – THE SOVIET ORIGINS OF NORTH
KOREAN IDEOLOGY
(1945-55)
......................................................................................................................................
24
The Leninist
Legacy.........................................................................................................
25
North Korean Ideology Under
Stalin................................................................................
32
1955: The Academic Debate Surrounding Kim Il
Sung’s December Speech.................. 46
CHAPTER II – THE PROBLEM OF SOVIET
IDEOLOGICAL LEADERSHIP
(1956-61)
......................................................................................................................................
64
The Impact
of the 20th CPSU
Congress...........................................................................
66 When and Why North Korea Finally Rejected Soviet Ideological
Leadership................ 83
Conclusion......................................................................................................................
110 CHAPTER III – CONFLICTING UNIVERSALITIES: FRATERNAL CRITICISMS, NORTH
KOREA’S CONTESTATION OF SOVIET IDEOLOGICAL
LEADERSHIP,
AND INSULATION
(1962-67)..................................................................................................
112
Surveying Fraternal
Criticisms.......................................................................................
113
Charyŏk
kaengsaeng
and the Issue of
Nationalism........................................................ 116
The Personality Cult and Ideological
Insulation............................................................. 129
The Chuch’e
Problem.....................................................................................................
136
Beyond Heterodoxy: A
Conclusion................................................................................
155
CHAPTER IV – CHUCH’E SASANG AND THE MARXIST-LENINIST TRADITION:
BEYOND THE MYTH OF NORTH KOREAN IDEALISM
(1968-89) .................................. 160
Silencing Marx: North Korea’s
Humanism....................................................................
163
Materialism, Consciousness, and North Korean
Ideology.............................................. 172
Marxist-Leninist Leadership Conception and
North Korean Ideology.......................... 187
Conclusion......................................................................................................................
193
FINAL THOUGHTS
.................................................................................................................
196
BIBLIOGRAPHY
.....................................................................................................................
204
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My sincerest gratitude goes to my
advisor, Namhee Lee. Without her
unwavering professional and intellectual support, this dissertation would not
have been possible. From acquiring
research opportunities to navigating the academic landscape, she has always
been there for me. I am also thankful to
John Duncan for his many insights and career support. I especially owe my understanding of Marxism
in colonial Korea to his guidance. David
Sabean, too, played a vital role in the completion of this dissertation. I am particularly appreciative of his
thorough editing assistance. Special
thanks go to Christopher Hanscom for his feedback and support and John McCumber
for having inspired my fascination with Hegel.
Finally, I wish to express my indebtedness to Michael Robinson, my
former advisor at Indiana University, Bloomington. I would never have made it to UCLA without
his support and encouragement. In this
light, I also owe thanks to Heon Joo Jung, who facilitated my research in South
Korea and was always ready to help me.
Without the
generous financial support of UCLA’s Department of Asian Languages and Cultures
and the Center for Korean Studies, I would not have been able to conduct
graduate studies. In terms of research
abroad, I am again thankful to UCLA’s Center for Korean Studies. I additionally received generous research funding
from the Korea Foundation, the Association for Asian Studies, the Academy of
Korean Studies, and the UCLA International Institute. Since this study uses a lot of East German
and North Korean materials that I was only able to collect due to research
stays in Germany and South Korea, I cannot stress enough the impact their
support had on the quality of this dissertation. Thus I am also indebted to the supportive
staff at the Federal Archives in Berlin and at the North Korea Information
Center in Seoul.
I am further obliged to many of my
colleagues, who have supported or inspired me in one way or the other. Matthew Lauer’s company provided me with many
intellectual challenges, Hyoungkun Kim helped me get settled in South Korea,
and Elli S. Kim assisted me wherever she could.
I thank all of them as well as whomever I failed to mention here.
Most importantly, I am thankful to my
family. Especially my mother helped me
get through difficult financial times and personal crises. I hope that she can feel relief and pride in
the completion of this dissertation.
Finally, a warm thank you goes to Soyoung, who brought me light even in
the darkest of times.
INTRODUCTION
Where lie the origins of North Korean
ideology? When, why, and to what extent
did
North Korea eventually pursue a path of
ideological independence from Soviet MarxismLeninism? Scholars typically answer these interrelated
questions by referencing Korea’s historical legacies, such as Chosŏn period
Confucianism, colonial subjugation, and Kim Il Sung’s guerrilla experience. The result is a rather localized understanding
of North Korean ideology and its development, according to which North Korean
ideology was rooted in native soil and, on the basis of this indigenousness,
inevitably developed in contradistinction to Marxism-Leninism. Drawing on Eastern European archival
materials and North Korean theoretical journals, the present study challenges
our conventional views about North Korean ideology. Throughout the Cold War, North Korea was
possessed by a world spirit, a Marxist-
Leninist world spirit. Marxism-Leninism was North Korean ideology’s
Promethean clay. From adherence to
Soviet ideological leadership in the 1940s and 50s, to declarations of
ideological independence in the 1960s, to the emergence of chuch’e (juche)
philosophy in the 1970s and 80s, North Korea never severed its ties with the
Marxist-Leninist tradition. On the
contrary, this tradition constituted the basic and most fundamental raw
material from which North Korean ideology was shaped and developed. The evolution of North Korean ideology was not
predetermined by Korea’s historical legacies.
Rather, a convergence of historically immediate domestic and
international factors led to the emergence of an independent ideology, an
ideology that despite its independence from Soviet ideological suzerainty
remained situated within a global Marxist-Leninist intellectual space.
This is a
history of North Korean ideology during the Cold War, a transnational history
focusing on North Korean ideology’s Marxist-Leninist origins, global
Marxist-Leninist interpretational struggles, and North Korea’s transformation
of existing Marxist-Leninist tenets into new incarnations. With its transnational and Marxist-Leninist
orientation, the present study is pioneering.
We simply do not have a history that systematically examines the
development of North Korean ideology in relation to Marxism-Leninism. Such a history is necessary, however, if one
hopes to understand North Korean ideology in its present form. Over the course of the Cold War, North Korean
ideology changed gradually, building on what came before. There was no rupture. Instead, the development of North Korean
ideology was a process marked by continuity.
New ideological formulations constituted sublations of existing
ideological material, amalgamations that synthesized this material into novel
forms. The result was a gradual
redirection and recasting of preexisting Marxist-Leninist premises. Besides temporal continuity, there was also
spatial continuity. That is, North
Korean ideological positions were familiar and intelligible to communist
parties from around the globe. Even once
North Korea developed views heterodox in the eyes of many fraternal parties,
mutual intelligibility based on a shared Marxist-Leninist tradition did not
disappear.
North Korean
ideology’s development can be better explained by Kim Il Sung’s attempts to
solidify his power than North Korea’s postcolonial desire to free itself from
the shackles of a foreign ideology. In
1961, Kim sought independence from Soviet ideological leadership precisely
because of the threat it posed to his position.
The resultant ideological “heterodoxy,” however, was not as heterodox as
one might think, since North Korea continued to operate within the framework of
the Marxist-Leninist tradition while challenging the ideological leadership of
the Soviet Union. Kim wanted to achieve
ideological insulation, tying universality ever closer to his person so that
alternative ideological interpretations could no longer endanger his rule. But while insulation continued, such as
through the rise of the monolithic ideological system in 1967 and chuch’e philosophy in 1972, so did the
Marxist-Leninist tradition, even as North Korea began to cover up the
Marxist-Leninist origins of certain tenets and claim originality in
philosophical matters. Though many
scholars have argued otherwise, chuch’e
philosophy in the 1970s and 80s was hardly an idealism and instead quite
reminiscent of a good old-fashioned Marxist-Leninist materialism.
The State of the Literature:
Indigenousness and Chuch’e-Centrism
Suffice
it to say, the current state of the literature largely ignores or minimizes the
role of
Marxism-Leninism in the history or makeup of
North Korean ideology. With the
exception of Scalapino and Lee’s magnum opus Communism in Korea, published in 1972 and representative of
traditional Cold War scholarship, we currently lack studies that seriously
evaluate Marxism-
Leninism in relation to North Korean
ideology.[1] Even Scalapino and Lee’s work is limited in
scope, as it mainly analyzes North Korean ideology from the perspective of the
late 1960s. Nevertheless, their analysis
does provide a well-reasoned argument for North Korean ideology’s placement
within the Marxist-Leninist tradition, leading them to the following
conclusion: “But the basic theoretical mold into which Marxism-Leninism had
been cast by the end of the 1920s (as a result of the merging of Marxian theory
with Soviet practice) has not yet been reshaped—at least not by Mao, Kim, or
any of the current generation of Soviet leaders.”[2] Scalapino and Lee’s evaluation contrasts with
post-1970s and especially post-Cold War scholarship. Particularly the arguments of Bruce Cumings
helped usher in a cultural turn in the study of North Korea. In his writings, Cumings emphasized the
primacy of Korean culture over Marxism-Leninism. Korean culture changed Marxism-Leninism more
than the other way around. He further
implied a binary relationship between these two, referring to Korea’s
relationship with Marxism-Leninism in terms of an “alienness of the setting to
this fundamentally Western set of ideas,” which ultimately forced him to
conclude that North Korea “took from Marxism-Leninism what it wanted and
rejected much the rest.”[3] Subsequent scholarship mostly followed this
trend.[4] As explored below, scholars began to look at
the local, that is, indigenous aspects of North Korean ideology while
Marxism-Leninism receded into the background or disappeared altogether.
Charles Armstrong dealt a major blow to
Scalapino and Lee’s conclusions. Whereas
Scalapino and Lee regarded communism in Korea an artificial import delivered by
the Soviet
Union, Armstrong argued that North Korea
“indigenized” Soviet communism starting in 1945.
North Korea appropriated the Soviet system to
suit its local context, where it grew naturally.[5]
Armstrong did not merely limit his
“indigenization” thesis to Soviet institutions, however, but
suggested its applicability to ideology as well:
In the area of ideology, for example,
one of the most distinctively Korean elements of communism in North Korea was
its emphasis on ideas over material conditions.
Koreans shared this Marxist heresy with their counterparts in China and
Vietnam, but this humanistic and voluntaristic emphasis was even more
pronounced in Korea than in the other two East Asian communist revolutions,
which may reflect the fact that Korea had long been more orthodox in its
Confucianism than Vietnam or China.
Korean communists tended to turn Marx on his head, as it were,
valorizing human will over socioeconomic structures in a manner more
reminiscent of traditional Confucianism than classic MarxismLeninism.[6]
Unfortunately Armstrong’s book neglected to
explain what constitutes “classic MarxismLeninism” or offer a timeline for the
emergence of this Marxist and Marxist-Leninist heterodoxy. Nonetheless, the implication seems clear:
North Korean ideology, from the beginning, contained native elements probably
grounded in Korean culture, most importantly Confucianism. The
literature’s references to Confucianism are in fact rather ubiquitous and
sometimes grandiose. Bruce Cumings, for
example, has stated that “North Korea is closer to a NeoConfucian kingdom than
to Stalin’s Russia.”[7] Like Cumings, Young-Soon Chung attempted draw
philosophical comparisons between North Korea’s state ideology of chuch’e sasang and Neo-Confucianism.[8] Chung viewed North Korean statements such as
“the morality of the working class is the highest form of the progressive
morality in the history of humankind” as representative of Neo-Confucian
philosophy, which Chung believed was eventually adopted into North Korean
ideology, to the detriment of Marxism-Leninism.[9] Another scholar, Alzo DavidWest, even
proposed that there occurred an incorporation of Chŏng Yak-yong’s Neo-Confucian
reform thought into North Korea’s state ideology.[10] Thus, when Kim Il Sung began to discuss chuch’e in 1955, in the opinion of
David-West, Kim intended to say that sirhak,
a reformist NeoConfucian school of thought during the Chŏson period, “was more
important than Soviet
Marxism-Leninism.”[11]
Studies that
stress the indigenousness of North Korean ideology also usually happen to
center on chuch’e, as reflected in
David-West’s argument. According to
Cumings, “North Korea had many differences from the Soviet model of socialism
from the beginning, and was among the first of the postwar socialist states to
distance itself from Moscow, beginning in 1955 with
Kim’s enunciation of the chuch’e ideology.”[12] Young-Soon Chung similarly thinks that Kim Il
Sung declared a new ideology of chuch’e
in 1955.[13] Although there is no
textual evidence to confirm that chuch’e constituted
an ideology in 1955, statements about the origination of an ideology of independence
in North Korea’s early years are not uncommon.
Some scholars, such as Gi-Wook Shin and Hongkoo Han, even assert that
“Kim’s ideas on juche” preceded
liberation and were already held by him during the colonial period.[14] This chuch’e-centrism
naturally reinforces the argument for the indigenous origins of North Korean
ideology. By making chuch’e the leitmotif of North Korean ideology’s history, and by
traveling far into Korea’s past in search for its origins, North Korean
ideology, from its very inception, seems thoroughly native and firmly rooted in
Korean soil. As soon as one sees the
term appear in 1955, then, one’s argument for indigenous roots is
confirmed. While I do not wish to simply
dismiss the above scholars’ efforts to better understand North Korean ideology,
I do wish to suggest that paying too much attention to chuch’e in North Korea’s early years is problematic. Given Kim Il Sung’s own writings about his
guerrilla experiences during the colonial period, according to which he formulated
an inchoate chuch’e sasang as early
as 1930 and steered an independent ideological course, one may unintentionally
mirror North Korea’s propaganda and myths and reflect the regime’s own chuch’e-centrism and history-writing.[15] After all, there exists absolutely no
contemporary written record to verify Kim’s development of a chuch’e sasang during the guerrilla
struggle in the 1930s. This was a myth
that North Korea created long after 1955, rewriting its history in order to
reinforce the present ideological orthodoxy and legitimacy of Kim Il Sung.
When studying North Korean ideology, a
focus on indigenousness and chuch’e
does make sense. Perhaps this focus was
influenced by the rise of the Asian values debate in the late1970s and
1980s. Opposing Max Weber, many scholars
argued that Confucianism, in various ways, contributed to the East Asian
economic miracles.[16] In the case of North Korea, Confucianism
supposedly contributed to a leader-centered political system and father-to-son
succession.[17] While Confucianism-based claims have grown
much less popular in studies of East Asian capitalism, especially due to the
1997 Asian Financial Crisis, they remain dominant in the North Korea field. North Korea’s refusal to collapse, as well as
the present state of its ideology, may be partially responsible. After all, as the socialist world imploded at
the end of the Cold War, North Korean socialism remained. On this basis, it appeared reasonable to
conclude that North Korea was quite unlike the failed socialist systems of
Eastern Europe. North
Korea’s own emphasis on ideology—an ideology
which by late 1980s clearly tried to set itself apart from Soviet
Marxism-Leninism—made ideology a tempting target of investigation, as it could
help uncover the source of North Korea’s longevity.
Although searching for native influences
in North Korea’s historical path is a worthwhile endeavor, it is my contention
here that these efforts have been taken too far. The incessant bifurcation between Western
thought, whether Marxism or Marxism-Leninism, and North Korean thought creates
the false impression of mutual exclusivity.
Depictions of North Korean ideology sometimes—however
inadvertently—resemble the old depictions of the mystical and exotic Orient, a
culture and way of thinking unfamiliar to and almost indecipherable by us, as
Bruce Cuming’s portrayal of chuch’e indicates: “The closer one gets
to its [chuch’e’s] meaning, the more
the meaning recedes. It is the opaque
core of Korean national solipsism.”[18] The result is a problematic reading of North
Korean ideological texts, such as Kim’s 1955 speech mentioning chuch’e, a reading that relies a lot on
relatively distant historical conditions.
In a sense, historical conditions become the inescapable determining
force of ideological developments. As
stated by David-West, “Marxism (German), Marxism-Leninism (Russian), and Maoism
(Chinese) were inadequate candidates for postcolonial and post–Korean War
national regeneration.”[19] Only something suitable to Korea’s past could
determine North
Korea’s future path, a view Cumings mirrors
as well: “Autarky fit Korea’s Hermit Kingdom past, and answered the need for closure from the world economy after
decades of opening under Japanese auspices. What was unusable was dispatched as
soon as possible: above all the socialist internationalism including a
transnational division of labor that the Soviets wanted and that Korea successfully
resisted, beginning in the late 1950s”[20] Reliance on such historical conditionality
thus only reinforces the argument for North Korean ideology’s indigenousness,
rationalizes a reading away of Marxism-Leninism, and oversimplifies the
phenomenon of ideological change.
The present study therefore seeks to
reconceptualize our understanding of North Korean ideology and its
history. Abandoning assumptions and
dichotomizations between West and East, orthodoxy and heterodoxy, Soviet Marxism-Leninism
and North Korean ideology, I return to square one and systemically examine the
role of Marxism-Leninism over the course of North Korea’s Cold War
development. I do not draw assumptions
on the basis of pre-liberation conditions but instead investigate the immediate
historical and intellectual environment in which North Korean ideology was
expressed. When tackling North Korean
ideology this way, a completely new picture emerges. To be sure, this study is not an attempt to
return to the old
Cold War paradigm according to which North
Korea was but a copy of the Soviet system.
North Korea’s Marxism-Leninism did eventually display uniqueness. Nevertheless, I do not equate uniqueness with
indigenousness. In fact, when viewed
from within the Marxist-Leninist tradition, one begins to see that North Korean
ideology’s particularity frequently grew out of attempts to subvert Soviet
ideology’s universality. Its uniqueness,
then, does not imply a dichotomization with Western thought. North Korea negotiated its own ideological
positions within an intellectual tradition that knew no national boundaries,
though it certainly flourished within those boundaries. Marxism-Leninism was a global phenomenon and
the development of North Korean ideology occurred within a global intellectual
space. To discuss the uniqueness or
locality of North Korean ideology is to discuss, at the same time, its
globality. The history of
North Korean ideology is part of a global
history. It is not the history of a
spiritually cloistered
“hermit kingdom.”
As the initiated reader may already have
noticed, the present study contains similarities as well as differences with
the writings of Brian Myers. Since Myers
has examined the historical evolution of chuch’e,
and in many ways has done so quite aptly, we both recognize the unimportance of
chuch’e in the 1950s and the
unoriginality of the philosophy that emerged in the 1970s. Additionally, we both approach pre-liberation
conditions with suspicion and instead pay more attention to the immediate
interests of historical actors. Thus,
Myers often notices parallels between North Korea’s ideological positions and
Marxism-Leninism. But because his goal
is different than mine, he does not provide a systematic and historical account
of North Korean ideology’s relationship with Marxism-Leninism. Rather, Myers tries to prove that chuch’e sasang was and is a fake
ideology, mostly intended “to decoy the world’s attention away from the de facto ideology of radical
race-nationalism.” In his view, chuch’e sasang “has never played a
significant role in policy-making or even domestic propaganda.”[21] As a result, Myers is unable to detect North
Korea’s rather serious engagement in Marxist-Leninist interpretational
struggles, in the crux of which chuch’e
sasang was gradually constituted.
Indeed, Myers suggests that North Korea adhered to “Soviet orthodoxy”
even in the 1970s, a view the present study challenges.[22] Although North Korea certainly had not left
the Marxist-Leninist tradition in the 1970s, it began to actively contest
Soviet orthodoxy in December of 1961, a fact the Soviets were well aware
of. Adherence to Marxism-Leninism was
not the same thing as adherence to
Soviet orthodoxy. This study hence forwards a conceptualization
of orthodoxy, heterodoxy, and Marxism-Leninism that can tremendously aid our
understanding of North Korean ideology and its evolution.
De-Polarizing: The Problem of Marxism-Leninism
Marxism-Leninism
represents North Korean ideology’s most important source. It is impossible to understand North Korean
ideology during the Cold War without it.
Yet as shown above, scholars tend to dichotomize the two. When doing so, however, they frequently fail
to define what constitutes Marxism-Leninism and treat the concept
abstractly. The same applies to claims
about Marxism, which is usually boiled down to a materialistic or economic
determinism, in contrast to North Korean ideology’s idealism. We already observed this distinction in the
writings of Charles Armstrong. Han Shik
Park, a major figure in the study of chuch’e
sasang, also views North Korean ideology as an expression of voluntarism,
or as he calls it, “human determinism,” as opposed to Marx’s (and even Mao’s) materialism.[23] Read this way, one would not expect to find
much talk about materialism and laws of development in North Korean ideological
texts from the 1980s. Indeed, given the
many references to Confucianism in the literature, one might instead expect
quotations from the sages. How strange
it is, then, to find a North Korean publication from 2000 in which Kim Jong Il
defends dialectical materialism, insisting that “chuch’e philosophy takes the worldview of dialectical materialism
as its premise.”[24] What are we to make of this? Does this not suggest that we have frequently
mischaracterized or simplified North Korean ideology’s status vis-à-vis
Marxism-Leninism?
Failure to explain the term
“Marxism-Leninism,” of course, only further contributes to the confusion.
Marxism-Leninism
never was a static body of thought.
Talking about it as if it were a uniform, unchanging entity generates
the false impression of orthodoxy, as opposed to North
Korea’s heterodoxy. Before summoning Marxism-Leninism as a comparison,
one must reflect whether one means the Marxism-Leninism under Stalin,
Khrushchev, Brezhnev, or Gorbachev.
Actually, those names do not suffice.
What about Honecker, Ceausescu, Castro, Mao, and so many others? Each of these names, at varying points in
history, professed the epithet “MarxistLeninist.” During the Cold War, Marxism-Leninism was
anything but monolithic. Even when it
comes to Marxism, one cannot pretend as if multiple interpretations do not
exist. What about the early Marx, the structuralist
Marx of Althusser, the writings of Engels, the dialectical materialism of
Joseph Dietzgen, or the humanist interpretation of E.P. Thompson? An orthodoxy-heterodoxy binary only
obfuscates the array of interpretations available to us. Indeed, what constitutes a departure from
Marxism-Leninism is not a simple question, given MarxismLeninism’s internal
diversity. Coined by Stalin, the term
designated the ruling ideology of the Soviet Union and later other socialist
states. Behind the term stood a
doctrinal corpus, a way of speaking and thinking about the world, as well as
years of experience in constructing socialism.
In other words, Marxism-Leninism was merely a term that was preceded by
its content, which I will henceforth denote as “tradition,” an evolving
tradition, to be sure. Within the
tradition, over time, emerged new interpretations, additions based on existing
doctrines, and unique local implementations.
The result was diversity across space and time. Marxism-Leninism under Gorbachev was
substantially different from Marxism-Leninism under Stalin and Khrushchev, even
though they were members of the same tradition.
Other Marxist-Leninist leaders also proposed their own unique
ideological positions. Diversity was the
norm, not the exception.
North Korea’s expression of unique
ideological positions, hence, did not necessarily mean a departure from
Marxism-Leninism.[25]
The mere
discovery of evidence in the writings of Marx that contradict North Korean
tenets does not imply heterodoxy vis-à-vis Soviet Marxism-Leninism, nor does it
imply heterodoxy vis-à-vis alternative readings of Marx. One should avoid sweeping comparisons that
ignore the various possible specificities, for such a practice makes North
Korean ideology seem more particular, more heterodox than it really was. A better approach is to draw specific
historical comparisons between contemporaneously existing ideologies, as is the
case in this study’s comparative examination of North Korean and Soviet (and
East German) ideology. When looking at
North Korean ideology at a specific point in time, what components of Soviet
ideology were regarded as orthodox or heterodox and, vice versa, how did Soviet
ideology agree and disagree with North Korean ideology? Why did these perceptions change? Plus, when ideological shifts occurred, how
did these shifts relate to the preceding state of the ideology? If asking along those lines, one quickly
realizes the unsuitability of an orthodoxy-heterodoxy binary. One begins to see that orthodoxy constituted
a contested, relative, and gradually evolving category. As the present study shall consistently
demonstrate, ideological disagreements between North Korea and fraternal
socialist states represented a dispute within a common intellectual tradition,
not a fundamental departure from Marxism-Leninism.
Historical Immediacy, Rationality, and
Sublation
As already hinted, this study refuses to
rely on pre-liberation historical conditions as an explanation for North Korean
ideology’s development or contents. To
avoid potential biases and prejudiced readings of ideological texts, I instead
examine North Korean ideology in its historical immediacy. A history of North Korean ideology cannot
simply reference things that occurred long ago but must pay close attention to
the historical present in which changes occurred, meaning that it must give due
consideration to the immediacy of historical actors’ ideas. In some cases, pre-liberation experiences may
indeed play an important role, yet this must be determined on a case-by-case
basis and ought not become a master narrative.
Historical conditions, too, may be important moments in the birth of a
certain immediacy, yet historical conditions do not simply translate into the
rationality of the present. And while I
do not investigate pre-liberation conditions in order to understand North
Korean ideology, I do examine the contemporary conditions under which
ideological change occurred. That is, I
investigate the more immediately present conditions, such as domestic and
international political factors, in relation to which North Korean ideology
transformed itself.
When looking at the historical immediacy
of ideological statements made by historical actors, the present study
concurrently investigates rationality at specific points in time.
Rationality (Vernünftigkeit), here, is a concept derived from Hegel and refers
to that which historical actors considered rational (vernünftig). Historical
actors do not simply talk as if they were talking only to themselves, but what
they say is usually grounded in a shared rationality—
i.e., what they say is rational to others who
subscribe to the same rationality. If
historical actors do not draw on this rationality, if they make arguments not
in some way rational to others, their words are powerless. As a result, when Kim Il Sung denounced
factional rivals in the 1950s, he did not do so via quotations from Confucian
lore but instead utilized the same Marxist-Leninist rationality also subscribed
to by his rivals. To realize their
subjective desires, if brute force is not an option, historical actors must act
rationally. Rationality is not based on
individual imagination and arbitrary volition; rationality is social. Individuals, as they are raised into society,
conform to it and make it their own, realizing their ends through it.
Much of this
Hegelian stuff is also in accordance with Bourdieu’s ideas. Thus, we can alternatively think of
rationality in terms of “habitus.” This
study conceptualizes the subject, in this case party elites, as emerging immanently
from within its own world, a subject that “feels at home in the world because
the world is also in him.”[26] The individual is socialized into a
particular world, learns to navigate it, and consequently acquires a series of
dispositions (i.e., habitus) that give him an immediate knowledge of his
environment. Even his deepest subjective
desires are inscribed with the logic of this habitus. As a result, “habitus is the basis of an
implicit collusion among all the agents who are products of similar conditions
and conditionings, and also of a practical experience of each agent finding in
the conduct of all his peers the ratification and legitimation (‘the done
thing’) of his own conduct, which, in return, ratifies and, if need be,
rectifies, the conduct of the others.”[27] In Hegelian terms, the subject finds itself
recognized in and by others precisely because they are all members of the same
community. Within this community, the
subject is socialized and becomes a subject—he or she is not so at birth. As he grows into his world, the individual
learns the rationality of this world, makes it his own, and sees himself
through it. It becomes his world, and
the world recognizes him in return. Rationality is inherently presentist and
temporal. In the case of North Korean
ideology, new formulations built on existing formulations without initiating a
radical volte-face. That is, rationality
changed itself out of itself. This was a
gradual process, a type of sublation (Aufhebung)
in which old concepts helped generate new concepts. One can therefore detect plenty of continuity
in North Korean ideology, from the 1950s all the way through to the 1980s. Of course, rationally, North Korean ideology
in the 1950s was not identical to its 1980s counterpart. Nevertheless, many of the old ideological
content remained, as this was the material out of which the new ideological
formulations were shaped. A nuanced
understanding of North
Korean ideology’s development therefore
requires an inquiry into this process of sublation, how immediately accessible
ideological raw materials were converted into higher, sublated products. Alternatively, one can think of this
sublation in terms of structuring.
Previous formulations and the preexisting rationality in general placed
structural constraints upon the formulation of new doctrines. In a sense, existing doctrines structured new
doctrines.
The Problem of Ideology
This study
proposes no theories of ideology. While
I do use theoretical concepts such as
“sublation” and “rationality,” these are about
ideas in general and do not suggest a theory of ideology. It might seem strange for a study to revolve
around ideology but never discuss ideology in theoretical terms. Yet the very topic of this study demands such
an approach. To provide my own theoretical
understanding of ideology runs the risk of generating a confusion between the
historical and analytic concept of ideology.
The historical concept is simply the concept as it was seen by the
historical actors involved, whereas the analytic concept constitutes a
scholar’s own understanding of what ideology is and how it functions. It is not necessarily wrong to have an
analytic concept of ideology, but it becomes a problem when the thing under
investigation already includes its own conception of ideology.
Rather than
beginning my inquiry with preconceived notions of ideology, I treat ideology as
socialist states themselves employed the term, in an effort to avoid a
confusion of empirical content with analytical language. I make no claims concerning the thinking of
average North Koreans but view ideology merely in terms of the intellectual
discourse of the party, whose members themselves referred to this discourse as
pertaining to ideology. It behooves us
to distinguish North Korea’s official ideology from the deeper ethical, social,
and cultural issues, even if there might exist a close relationship between
them. In socialist states, ideology
itself was reified and mobilized in deliberate, open ways. It had little to do with the covert and unconscious
process of ideology that Marxists frequently reference. In The
German Ideology, Marx does not speak too fondly of ideology. To him ideology was essentially a phantasm
whose real basis lay in man’s life process.[28] He viewed ideology as a negative phenomenon
that buttressed all the myths sustaining bourgeois society. Later, the various Marxist-Leninist regimes
expanded the concept of ideology to constitute a positive force in the struggle
of the proletariat for human liberation.
Ideology was no longer exclusive to the bourgeois order but could also
exist in a socialist state, with the main difference being that in the former
ideology was regressive and its promises illusory, while in the latter ideology
was thoroughly progressive. Thus was
blurred the distinction between ideology and thinking in general. Ideology, like thinking, was seen as
circumscribed by the material relations prevailing in a society. Because these relations were understood to be
more progressive in socialist countries, given the dictatorship of the
proletariat, ideology carried an equally progressive class character. Wrong ideological views within such a country
were consequently often explained as remnants of the old bourgeois order or
bourgeois ideological infiltration from the outside. This allowed socialist states to dictate a
proper ideology, a correct class-conscious thinking. Indeed, these states were, to put it mildly,
obsessed with matters of ideology.
Correct ideological outlook implied the correctness of the socialist
system. If one’s outlook were to diverge
from the party line, this would indicate a questioning of the party’s
authority, the legitimacy of the system, and the necessity of the current
historical course—in short, ideology was inexorably entwined with the socialist
system as such. This is not my own
theory of ideology, but the very rationality openly set up by the ruling forces
in socialist countries.
In socialist
regimes, ideology possessed a specific purpose that was not at all hidden to
the public. Ideology often boiled down
to key phrases, slogans, and quotes, all of which were related to the current
party orthodoxy. Especially party
members were required to internalize these to the best of their ability and
capably recite them when necessary. Many
of the official ideological tenets sounded quite lofty and noble but had little
to do with the reality inside socialist countries. Their intention, rather, was to legitimize
one’s leadership, garner international support, and counter Western
propaganda. Brian Myers does have a
point by calling chuch’e sasang a
“sham ideology.”[29] Like Marxism-Leninism, chuch’e sasang was, in part, a tool to acquire approval from
abroad. Neither in East Germany nor
North Korea, generally speaking, did people truly comprehend the intricacies of
their state ideology. Ideology was
watered down to be easily digested. By
gaining the backing of foreign individuals or groups, such as Angela Davis for
East Germany, the regime could validate the correctness and universality of its
ideology before of its people, thus demonstrating the correctness of its
leadership. This is why many of the
ideological tenets in North Korea and other socialist states were so
superficial and altruistic—they were meant to capture foreign audiences and
reinforce the legitimacy of the leadership at home. Whether North Korean or East German ideology,
both had a very real impact, internationally and domestically. Nevertheless, one must not confuse this type
of ideology with either one’s own representations or the deeper realms of
spirit.
It is not
possible or plausible to infer from the official ideology the full content of
people’s minds. The Cuban ambassador
incident depicted in Chapter 3, in which North Korean citizens hurled racial
slurs toward the Cuban diplomatic corps, represents a wonderful example, since
North Korea officially opposed
racism. And while East Germany also
opposed racism, racist or anti-foreign outbursts did occur, such as in 1988,
when East German students bullied their North Korean counterparts living in the
German Democratic Republic (GDR) because of their status as foreigners,
refusing them entry into the dormitory while shouting slogans like
“Germany, Germany!”[30] As another example, earlier that year, East
German workers expressed xenophobic concerns over the announcement of 2,000
North Koreans who would come to the GDR to receive technical education, stating
that the new arrivals might carry diseases such as AIDS.[31] North Korea was not unique in this
regard. Incidents such as these
therefore do not automatically translate into an accurate comparison between
North Korean ideology and the Marxism-Leninism of East Germany or other
socialist states. One must realize that
one is merely studying official ideology and base all comparisons on this
realization. Only then can one,
unhindered by any worries about the deeper spiritual processes that might hide
behind the façade of state-sponsored ideology, investigate one’s true object of
inquiry, establish accurate comparisons, and uncover its development in its
historical immediacy.
Comparative Perspectives and Source
Material
Throughout
this study, East Germany will serve as a comparative reference point. The
GDR is an excellent counterpoint to use in a
study on North Korean intellectual history.
As North Korea openly clashed with Soviet orthodoxy in the 1960s, East
Germany remained loyal to the Soviet Union and ardently defended Soviet
positions. In the 1940s and 50s, too,
the East German communists loyally followed Soviet ideological leadership. Since it is often argued that North Korea
indigenized the Soviet system, resisted the slavish pursuit of Soviet
orthodoxy, and forwarded a uniquely Korean ideology, one would therefore expect
plenty of diverging ideological lines between North Korea and East
Germany. As the East German comparison
shows, however, divergences, if they existed at all, were rather subtle and less
extreme than is commonly assumed. This
consequently de-particularizes North Korean ideology and reminds us of its
relationship to the Marxist-Leninist tradition.
Additionally, my own familiarity with East German ideology and knowledge
of the German language enables comparative insights usually unavailable in
North Korean Studies. These factors are
especially useful in the examination of North Korean ideology in the 1960s,
since there exist plenty of East German archival documents that detail
ideological conflict with North Korea during this time.
Besides East German archival documents
collected by the author in the Federal Archives in Berlin, I also rely on
translated archival materials drawn from the Cold War International History
Project and the North Korea International Documentation Project at the Woodrow
Wilson International Center for Scholars.
Without these resources, this study would have been unable to discuss
North Korean ideology’s evolution.
Soviet, East German, Hungarian, Polish, Albanian, and Chinese
contemporary records allow for a reconstruction of the complex international
environment, the aims of historical actors, and the various ideological debates
that took place behind closed doors.
Through these materials, which had been inaccessible to scholars for a
long time, it is possible to reevaluate our understanding of North Korean
ideology and its transformation.
North
Korean materials also constitute an important cornerstone of this study. Kŭlloja
(the Worker), the theoretical organ of the
Workers’ Party of Korea, serves as my chief source for detecting the
theoretical contents of ideological change.
Published monthly, this periodical features detailed articles on North
Korea’s various ideological positions, revealing the theoretical
rationalization of North Korean orthodoxy.
One should avoid, as much as possible, reliance on
Kim Il Sung’s collected or selected works, as
these underwent revisions over time and sometimes include forged speeches to
make it seem as if the present ideological orthodoxy already existed in
previous years. Kŭlloja is simply the best possible source when trying to determine
how North Korean elites conceptualized their ideology at given points in
time.
Political dictionaries are also helpful,
given their concretization of ideological concepts, but since they were not
published annually, their utility is limited.
Chapter Overview
Chapter 1 begins with an examination of
Leninism during Korea’s colonial period before moving on to the application of
Marxism-Leninism in the northern regime’s early days. From
1945 to 1955, North Korea consistently adhered
to Soviet orthodoxy. The indigenization
of the Soviet system was itself an orthodox practice. Ideologically, no sort of heterodoxy arose,
not even in the case of Kim Il Sung’s 1955 speeches. To the contrary, Kim tried hard to remain
within the boundaries of Soviet orthodoxy, using Marxism-Leninism as a weapon
to destroy his enemies.
In Chapter 2, I examine North Korea’s
reaction to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet
Union. Although the congress presented
Kim Il Sung with challenges, especially due to Khrushchev’s denunciation of
Stalin’s personality cult, this did not result in a break with Soviet
ideological leadership. Kim consistently
attempted to situate himself within the framework of Soviet orthodoxy. It was only in December 1961 that Kim finally
initiated a departure from Soviet ideological leadership with the proclamation
of charyŏk kaengsaeng (selfreliance).[32] However, the reason for this break was more
pragmatic than principled. A variety of
factors—especially the danger continued loyalty to Soviet orthodoxy posed to
Kim’s grip on power—ultimately converged to commence an era of ideological
independence from the Soviet Union.
North
Korea’s assertion of ideological independence is closely investigated in
Chapter 3.
This assertion at the same time involved a
contestation of the Soviet Union’s ideological leadership role in the world
communist movement. Despite this, one
should not exaggerate
North Korean heterodoxy from 1962 to
1967. East German and other fraternal
criticisms of North Korean ideology constituted a Marxist-Leninist
interpretational struggle within a common intellectual tradition. It was a conflict over Marxist-Leninist
universality. North Korean ideology did
not change radically but instead redirected existing concepts to assert its
ideological autonomy. North Korea’s
universalistic conflict was also closely linked to Kim Il Sung’s maintenance of
power. By tying universality and
ideology closer to his person, Kim attempted to achieve ideological insulation,
which, due to domestic and international factors, culminated in the declaration
of the monolithic ideological system in 1967 and the rise of chuch’e sasang as
Kim’s personal thought.
Chapter 4 takes a look at the
development of chuch’e sasang in the
1970s and 80s. Unlike most of the
previous scholarship, I find nothing wholly original in North Korea’s creation
of a man-centered chuch’e
philosophy. Rather, I read this
ideological change as an effort to further solidify ideological insulation by
silencing Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin, ascribing originally
Marxist-Leninist doctrines to the creative genius of Kim Il Sung. To make this point, I challenge scholars’
depiction of North Korean ideology as an idealism that is contrary to Marxist
or Marxist-Leninist materialism. North
Korea in fact relied on this materialism to rationalize its ideology and
leadership. As an examination of East
German ideology reveals, North Korea’s chuch’e
philosophy was firmly grounded in the Marxist-Leninist tradition.
CHAPTER I
THE SOVIET ORIGINS OF NORTH KOREAN IDEOLOGY (1945-55)
North Korean ideology was the offspring of
Soviet Marxism-Leninism. Although newer
studies have attempted to discover its origins in native soil, the historical
evidence overwhelmingly suggests otherwise.
For the first decade following liberation, North Korean ideology matched
Soviet orthodoxy. Even Kim Il Sung’s
famed “chuch’e speech” in December
1955 features nothing unusual or heterodox.
In these early years, North Korea certainly did develop characteristic
political and economic features, often termed “indigenization,” but this indigenization
of the Soviet model did not imply a unique North Korean ideology, nor an
independent ideological path. Besides,
indigenization constituted a programmatic component of Soviet orthodoxy. Political and economic diversity was
commonplace among the fledgling people’s democracies after World War II. Ideological diversity, however, was much
rarer. In fact, during Stalin’s time,
Eastern European states displayed more ideological initiative than
North Korea, theorizing about alternative
paths to socialism that did not follow the Soviet model. Kim Il Sung adhered to Soviet
Marxism-Leninism, even as de-Stalinization trends began to threaten his
position. He cleverly mobilized Soviet
orthodoxy to consolidate his power and remove rivals from influential
posts. Overlooked by most scholars, his
1955 speeches utilized the language of de-Stalinization. Rather than declaring ideological
independence, Kim firmly planted his feet inside the framework of Soviet
Marxism-Leninism, knowing that Soviet orthodoxy was his most potent weapon
against factional opposition.
This chapter will begin with a brief review of
Leninism in Korea. The Leninist
framework ultimately became North Korean orthodoxy in the form of Stalin’s
MarxismLeninism, and Leninism’s unification of class and national struggle
informs North Korean ideology to this day.
After liberation, Kim Il Sung, the Soviets’ handpicked future leader of
North Korea, loyally adhered to Stalin’s wisdom, securing his power and
legitimacy. The second section therefore
takes a close look at North Korean ideology during Stalin’s time and the
implications for Kim’s grip on power, drawing comparisons with Eastern Europe
along the way. In the final section of
this chapter, I will critically reexamine Kim Il Sung’s 1955 speeches and the
academic debate that surrounds them and evidence Kim’s continued adherence to
Soviet orthodoxy.
As those familiar with the literature may have
already noticed, the thrust of this chapter seeks to dispel many of the
standard notions about early North Korean ideology. In these first ten years, we cannot observe
the emergence of a truly native ideology that was grounded in
Korea’s historical legacy or Kim Il Sung’s
historical experiences. In terms of
official state ideology, the only discernable historical legacy was Leninism,
and North Korea, at this point, did not develop that legacy beyond the
boundaries of Soviet orthodoxy. An
independent appropriation of Leninism did not occur. During this first decade, Soviet orthodoxy
remained the norm. It was on the basis
of Soviet orthodoxy that North Korean ideology later committed itself to an
independent ideological path. As a
result, understanding the Soviet origins of North Korean ideology is a crucial
prerequisite to understanding later ideological developments.
The Leninist Legacy
Soviet Marxism-Leninism was not new to Korea
in August 1945. From its inception
during the colonial period onward, the Korean communist movement shared an
intimate relationship with Soviet ideology.
Marxism entered Korea through a Leninist filter, a filter that
emphasized the interconnection of class and national struggle, which later
became a cornerstone of North Korean ideology and continued to play a crucial
role during North Korea’s move toward ideological autonomy in the 1960s.
As early as 1918, in the wake of the October
Revolution, Koreans helped the Russian communists fight White forces, including
the Japanese, in Siberia and the maritime regions.[33] After the failure of the March 1 Movement in
1919, Leninism rapidly expanded its influence inside and outside of Korea. Inspired by Wilson’s call for national
self-determination, Koreans from all walks of life protested Japanese rule on
March 1, 1919, hoping to elicit international support for Korean
independence. After the Japanese
violently put an end to the uprising, no
Western intervention occurred, and Korea’s
right to national self-determination failed to attain recognition. Seeing the hypocrisy of Western elites and
their utilitarian proclamations of national self-determination, many Korean
activists and intellectuals began to look elsewhere, to the Soviet Union.
It was in the Soviet Union that Lenin
championed what he considered a genuine right to national self-determination,
pointing out the charade of Western powers.
According to Lenin, the oppression of other nations and their sovereignty
was a natural outgrowth of imperialism, making the self-determination of
nations not an absolute right, but a right derived from historical conditions
that dictated the collapse of capitalism.
And the highest stage of capitalism, Lenin said in 1917, was
imperialism. He therefore rejected as
impossible the existence of a tranquil system of nations respecting sovereignty
and equality, insofar as that system remained capitalist, ergo imperialist, in
nature. Because he relied on Marx’s
historical framework, Lenin’s identification of imperialism with capitalism
held significant implications for Russia and the colonies. Imperialism, now identified as capitalism in
its final stage, was part of a universal history that would ultimately result
in communism. Nations oppressed by
imperialism hence were oppressed in a universal way: their oppression
constituted a manifestation of universal history, a history ultimately leading
to imperialism’s downfall. National
liberation and national self-determination were therefore equally universal
and, unlike imperialism, progressive.
National liberation would speed up the inevitable course of history by
dealing damaging blows to imperialism, eventually enabling revolution within
the imperialist countries as well. In
this way, one’s national (i.e., particular) struggle was global (i.e.,
universal) and vice versa. Lenin’s
quoting of the Austrian Marxist Rudolf Hilferding illustrates this point
vividly:
In the newly opened up countries . . . the
capital imported into them intensifies antagonisms and excites against the
intruders the constantly growing resistance of the peoples who are awakening to
national consciousness; this resistance can easily develop into dangerous
measures against foreign capital. The old social relations become completely
revolutionized, the agelong agrarian isolation of 'nations without history' is
destroyed and they are drawn into the capitalist whirlpool. Capitalism itself
gradually provides the subjugated with the means and resources for their
emancipation and they set out to achieve the goal which once seemed highest to
the European nations: the creation of a united national state as a means to
economic and cultural freedom. This movement for national independence
threatens European capital in its most valuable and most promising fields of
exploitation, and European capital can maintain its domination only by
continually increasing its military forces.[34]
Korea was equally drawn into this “capitalist
whirlpool.” No matter how backward one’s
nation might be, even if it had not yet achieved bourgeois revolution, a
struggle for national liberation would propel one to the forefront of
historical progress. Since capitalism
was global, in the form of imperialism, oppressed nations were essentially converted
into a super-proletariat—national and class struggle merged.[35]
One can easily see how appealing the Leninist
framework must have been to many
Koreans.
It not only confirmed the hypocrisy of national self-determination as
advocated by Western powers, but it also provided a facile formula that seemed
like a “scientific” explanation detailing the historical necessity of
liberation. In the face of the
technological and economic prowess of Western powers, to designate Korea,
through its fight for independence, as more progressive than imperialism surely
stroked the national ego. The 1920s thus
saw the rise of the Korean communist movement inside and outside of Korea.[36] While it was a disorganized movement riddled
with factionalism, Korean independence was a common theme. For example, the 1921 Manifesto of the Korean
Communist Party in Shanghai understood Japanese colonization in terms of a
historical process in which national liberation represented the necessary
future path. It was not liberation for
liberation’s sake, but liberation for the sake of history and human liberation
in general, hence the manifesto’s statement: “Our national emancipation
movement is merely a step toward the ultimate purpose of social revolution.”[37] These Koreans also felt united in a greater
cause than simply their own liberation, a cause that concurrently catapulted
them into a vanguard position in the quest for progress, line-in-line with the
Soviets: “Our excitement over the Russian October Revolution is not without
justification, because in carrying out the great task of the world
revolutionary movement we feel that we are on the same footing with them. Thus, we share the same fate with the working
masses of the world.”[38] Colonial period documents authored by
communists therefore often featured, one way or the other, Lenin’s imperialism
thesis: “. . . so long as the world bourgeoisie has a reserve power in the
colonies in general, and in Asia in particular, so long will it be able to
repulse the most desperate attacks of the rebellious proletariat [at home].”[39] In accordance with Lenin’s ideas, the
achievement of revolution in the advanced capitalist countries first required
the liberation of the colonies, once again illustrating the fusion of class and
national struggle. Given the ubiquity of
such phraseology among Korean communists, it is fair to say that Leninism
constituted the intellectual life-blood of the early Korean communist movement.
Korean Marxist intellectuals, too, were
heavily influenced by Lenin and Stalin’s thought. One might consider such intellectuals rather
insignificant, seeing that the communist movement inside Korea met with
repeated failures while intellectuals were unable to forge strong connections
with the masses. This story of failure
is the overriding theme of Suh’s The
Korean Communist Movement, a book suggesting that Kim Il Sung’s eventual
takeover was not indigenously rooted but simply thanks to the support of the
Soviet Union and the mistaken tactics of Korea’s domestic communists.[40] To a North Korean reader, on the other hand,
the failure of the colonial communist movement might suggest the inevitability
and legitimacy of
Kim Il Sung as the only person capable of
uniting Korea’s progressive forces, confirming North Korea’s myths about Kim Il
Sung and his guerrilla struggle.
Evaluations of the colonial Marxist movement can easily lead to
normative conclusions about today’s division and, in the process, a fundamental
point is missed. Namely, despite the
failures, there subsisted a larger Leninist discourse arising in the years
after the March 1 Movement, a discourse not even the Japanese could
eradicate.
A Leninist discourse is particularly poignant
when looking at intellectuals. Indeed,
one cannot truly grasp the writings of colonial era Marxist intellectuals
without considering the influence of Leninism.
Translations of works by Marx, Engels, and Lenin into Korean began in
earnest with the effort of the short-lived Irwŏrhoe (January Association), a
staunchly Leninist faction, in the mid-1920s.
Displaying their Leninist outlook and rationale for translating these
works, one of the group’s members stated: “Whenever we discuss Marxism today,
when capitalism is collapsing and new wars of the imperial era are staged, we
always talk about Leninism. . . . If we are to understand Leninism, we must
understand Marxism, because
Leninism has presented the world situation in
a more developed way in accordance with
Marxism.”[41] To be sure, Korean intellectuals did not
necessarily follow Soviet orthodoxy, and Leninism was not the only influence on
Marxist intellectuals. Equally important
were writings by Japanese authors—who attempted to rationalize
colonization—concerning the stagnation found in Korean history.[42] Thus some Korean Marxists, such as Chŏ n Sŏ
k-tam, rejected Stalin’s five-stage view of history, according to which all
societies pass through primitive communism, slavery, feudalism, capitalism, and
finally communism. Instead, they argued
that Korea pursued a unique developmental path.[43] Such arguments, however, did not prevail in
post-liberation
North Korea, where Soviet orthodoxy reigned
supreme. The historical interpretations
of Paek Namun, perhaps the most prominent Marxist scholar of the colonial
period and an adherent of the Stalinist model, ultimately carried more weight.[44] Paek, too, fought against Japanese
historiography and its emphasis on Korea’s stagnation. He contended that prior to Japanese
colonization, Korea was beginning to enter capitalism, which was subsequently
transplanted by Japan. As a result, like
Lenin, Paek recognized an inseparable link between class struggle and national
struggle, between universal history and Korea’s particularity.[45]
Of course, this is not to undermine the
creativity of Paek Namun and other Korean Marxists, but one should bear in mind
the Leninist discourse that moved behind the scenes and, in the arena of
politics, on the main stage. Korean
communists during the colonial era, for the most part, adhered to the guidance
of the Soviet Union by way of the Communist International (Comintern), even if
communication between them was wanting.
When the Soviets instructed an alliance between communists and
nationalists in the 1920s, in the form of a united front, Korean communists
listened. The very idea of such a united
front, as Scalapino and Lee have shown in their history of Korean communism,
“was one of the most fundamental tenets of Leninism, and was frequently
reiterated via Soviet and Comintern channels from 1920 to 1927.”[46] United front tactics should also be viewed in
light of Lenin’s imperialism thesis, according to which the national and class
struggle were closely interlinked in colonial nations, consequently requiring a
mass-based movement to overthrow the colonizers. So many other notions championed by Korean
communists, such as the entrainment of the peasants in the revolutionary
struggle, all originated with Leninism.[47] None of this should mean that Koreans simply
copied foreign ideas.
Some might read Scalapino and Lee’s work in
the sense that Marxism was artificially imported into Korea, indirectly
challenging newer scholarship stressing the creative transformation of
Soviet ideas to suit Korean realities.[48] Yet no matter how one wishes to interpret the
agency of Korean actors or the legitimacy of the system that emerged in North
Korea, the overwhelming dominance of Leninism remains a fact of the colonial
period and structured avenues for creativity.
It was thus no coincidence that Paek Namun tried hard to depict Japan’s
monopoly capitalism and colonial exploitation, stressing the need for national
liberation, ideas in line with the Comintern.
While it is clear that nationalistic desires for liberation existed even
without the presence of Leninism, Leninism channeled those desires in specific
ways. With the rise of
Stalin, his thoughts and interpretations of
Leninism increasingly gained clout. By
August 15, 1945, Korea’s day of liberation, Stalin’s image had divine status
among communists around the world. Given
the nature of liberation and Kim Il Sung’s rise to power, it is not surprising
that Stalin’s Marxism-Leninism ultimately became the source of North Korean
ideology.
North Korean Ideology Under Stalin
After World War II, Stalin ruled as the
supreme helmsman of the world communist movement, who, through his alleged
creative application and further development of MarxismLeninism, guided the
Soviet Union and the peoples of the world along the necessary path of
history. His person embodied concepts
such as peace and friendship, uniting the world’s progressive forces into a
larger community that ultimately stood under his guidance. This was the ideal vision at the time of
Stalin’s passing, a vision that Max Zimmering, a well-known East
German author, metaphorically recounted in
his travelogue about the DPRK:
There is no longer street than Stalin Avenue.
. . . A single street, even though one has to adjust the clock eight times
while traveling along it, because it runs straight across almost one hundred
and twenty degrees of longitude toward the sun.
Toward the sun! One can take this
literally but also symbolically—it remains the truth. Korea, how close you are to us, though the
globe may try to prove the contrary!
Finally I have convinced myself of this, as I traversed the great Avenue
of Peace, which carries the name of Stalin.[49]
In other words, Stalin’s leadership was not
simply global, but harmonized the global with the local, uniting countries such
as the GDR and North Korea in common struggle.
Whatever challenge faced by an individual people’s republic was directly
relevant to the overall health of the “peace camp,” the term used to describe
the mutual solidarity of the people’s republics and the Soviet Union before it
became the “socialist camp.” And precisely
this logic rationalized the aid rendered by Eastern Bloc countries during the
Korean War (1950-53). The struggle for
Korea’s “national unity and independence,”
according to East German propaganda, was at the same time a struggle for the
resolution of the German question and the maintenance of world peace, a view
that North Korea mirrored.[50] The war in Korea, by defending against what
was considered to be imperialist aggression, had become a question of world
history, affecting all of the world’s progressive forces, suddenly converting
Korea’s local (i.e., particular) struggle into a world-historical struggle of
universal significance. And the person
endowing Korea’s struggle with universality was Stalin, who instructed that
“peace can only be maintained if the peoples of the world take the cause of
peace into their own hands and defend it to the utmost,” a quote frequently
repeated by East Germans and North Koreans alike during the Korean War.[51] In effect, Soviet-aligned states often
referred to North Koreans as “heroes” fighting for the national cause and the
cause of world peace—both were tightly interlinked and mediated by the “genius”
of Stalin, whose guidance converted entire nations into effective historical
actors.
An important source of legitimacy for
communist leaders in the aftermath of WWII rested in their declarations of
loyalty to Stalin and his ideas. At the
Congress during which the
Worker’s Party of North Korea (WPNK), the
precursor to the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK), was founded in August 1946, the
Korean communists made Stalin “honorary chairman,” as if all decisions passed
by the Congress, such as the selection of a central committee, were directly
sanctioned by Stalin.[52] Kim Il Sung, during the Soviet occupation
period (1945-48), was essentially controlled by the Soviets and relied on their
authority to gain and maintain power.[53] His political ascendancy, as we now know,
constituted an installation, and it was Soviet backing that resulted in his
occupation of key posts in government and party. Kim’s ideological positions at this time were
not derived from his guerrilla experience but from his Soviet advisors. As Andrei Lankov has demonstrated from Soviet
archival documents, the Soviets directly supervised and instructed the north
Korean leadership, from the writing of speeches to the creation of a
constitution.[54] Even after the Soviet army left, Soviet
support remained essential for Kim, especially during Stalin’s reign. Like other communist leaders during this
time, he utilized the image of Stalin and Stalin’s approval to fortify his
position. Gomułka, the reformoriented
communist leader of Poland, described this phenomenon aptly:
The cult of personality cannot be confined
solely to the person of Stalin. The cult
of personality is a certain system which prevailed in the Soviet Union and
which was grafted to probably all Communist Parties. . . . The essence of this
system consisted in the fact that an individual, hierarchic ladder of cults was
created. Each such cult comprised a
given area in which it functioned. In
the bloc of socialist states it was Stalin who stood at the top of this hierarchic
ladder of cults. All those who stood on
lower rungs of the ladder bowed their heads before him. Those who bowed their heads were not only the
other leaders of the Soviet Union, but all the leaders of Communist and
Workers’ Parties of the countries of the socialist camp. The latter, that is, the First Secretaries of
the Central Committees of the Parties of the various countries who sat on the
second rung of the ladder of the cult of personality, in turn donned the robes
of infallibility and wisdom. But their
cult radiated only on the territory of the countries where they stood at the
top of the national cult ladder. This
cult could be called only a reflected brilliance, a borrowed light. It shone as the moon does.[55]
Stalin was the ultimate analyst of world
history. He filled the role that Lenin
and Marx had played decades before, enlightening the masses to the universality
of their particular existence and to the steps they must take in order to
realize their historically necessary liberation. Although local communists retained the power
to analyze their particular national situation, in the end, their analyses
needed the blessing of the universality revealed by Stalin. Steering a national course contrary to
Stalin’s universality was impermissible and might result in the ousting of a
local communist—as happened to Gomułka—by other local communists who hoped to
replace the eclipsed moon.
Despite Stalin’s preeminence, the Soviets did
not wish to generate the impression that they were ruling over the newly
emerging people’s democracies or imposing their system, resulting in a united
front policy. In the beginning stages,
communists were not to rule directly but build broad coalitions with democratic
forces, which communists could dominate.
Looking at the case of Soviet-occupied Germany, for example, efforts to
create a broad youth organization based on united front tactics began as early
as 1945 and culminated in the 1946 foundation of the Freie Deutsche Jugend (Free German Youth; FDJ) while other youth
organizations, even communist ones, were prohibited by the Soviet authorities.[56] That same year, social democrats and
communists merged their parties to form the Sozialistische
Einheitspartei
Deutschland (Socialist Unity Party of Germany; SED),
which served as East
Germany’s ruling party up until its
collapse. Similarly, in the northern
half of Korea, because of Soviet pressure, the Democratic Youth League replaced
the Communist Youth League in
January 1946 and the WPNK emerged shortly
thereafter through an amalgamation of the North
Korean Communist Party with the New Democratic
Party.[57]
United front policies killed two birds with
one stone. For one, they generated
legitimacy, since on the surface they seemed democratic and non-communist. Second, they allowed for the control over
other parties and alternative political forces that could in the present or
future challenge the communists. It was
as if covering other parties with an umbrella, only to snap it closed over
their heads. Communists thereby produced
the appearance of speaking in the interests of the entire people, particularly
by initiating progressive reforms that few could oppose. A nation-centered, patriotic way of thinking
and speaking thus prevailed among communists all over globe, not just among
Korean communists. As stated in the
inaugural issue of the SED party newspaper: “The Socialist Unity Party of
Germany is the truly national party of the German people [Volk], because her program serves the present and the future of
Germany. She is an independent party,
which has struck deep roots in the German working people, steers clear of alien
influences, and has set as its highest law the welfare of the own people.”[58] North Korean communists, especially in the
70s and 80s, could hardly have phrased it better. In
promulgating reforms and managing domestic affairs, the Soviets, at first,
urged moderation and granted local communists extensive leeway. Socialist revolution, i.e., the transition
from capitalism to communism, was impermissible before preceding historical
stages were dealt with. While the East
Germans, in correspondence with their national legacy, called for the
completion of the 1848 revolution in the form of an anti-fascist,
bourgeois-democratic revolution, in northern Korea communists proposed an
anti-imperialist, anti-feudal democratic revolution. This is why, as Charles Armstrong points out
as well, a united front policy, as advocated by Kim Il Sung, had defeated a
more radical proletarian approach by early 1946.[59] Although Armstrong seems to suggest that this
policy stemmed from Kim’s own volition and experience, one should note that
this was a Soviet policy. To disobey the
Soviets would have meant an end to Kim’s political career. Besides, to reject a copy of the Soviet
system, to focus on the national conditions, and to eschew proletarian
dictatorship were commonly accepted notions after WWII, encapsulated in the
concept of “people’s democracy” (K. inmin
minjujuŭi;
G. Volksdemokratie),
a notion North Korea, too, employed in its self-depiction.[60]
With
the rise of people’s democracy, the argument for the creative application of
Marxism-Leninism to the local conditions—a crucial concept in the history of
North Korean ideology and only too often misinterpreted as a North Korean
invention—began to flourish and became an essential rationalization of people’s
democracy.[61] From the very start of the process often
called Sovietization, diversity was the international norm, not the exception,
so far that countries such as Bulgaria and Rumania initially retained their
monarchies.62 In charge of
the
SED’s ideological affairs, Anton Ackermann
exclaimed in 1946: “All the intellectual wealth from the Soviet Union and other
countries which is at our disposal must be self-reliantly processed by us, be
treated according to our own judgment, and find application in accordance with
the particular German conditions. Thus
we are a party that is politically independent and intellectually free.”[62] Utilizing the creative application argument,
Ackermann further proposed the thesis of a “German way to socialism” along
democratic, parliamentary lines.[63] Klement Gottwald, head of the Czech
communists, along with other Eastern European communists, made similar
statements around this time.[64]
While the Soviets were the ones who
encouraged such talk, they subsequently became the ones who restricted it. In September 1947, the Communist Information
Bureau (Cominform) was founded to better ensure ideological uniformity, and one
year later Ackermann was forced to retract his thesis.[65] Although the Soviets still recognized the
notion of creative application as valid, they now laid emphasis on the adoption
of Soviet experience, Soviet leadership in the world communist movement, and
proletarian dictatorship.[66] People’s democracy, beyond simply
constituting a coalition of democratic forces, signified “a new form of the dictatorship of the
proletariat” by the end of 1948.[67] This was to formalize and rationalize the
communists’ seizure of the reins of power and begin to move from the
bourgeois-democratic revolution to the socialist revolution. In Soviet thought, the dictatorship of the
proletariat required constant strengthening during the construction of socialism,
meaning the ever-increasing role of the party, its ideological unity, and the
masses’ loyalty to the party—a process historians frequently term
Stalinization. East Germany’s SED hence declared its
commitment to this process with the
September 1948 decision to construct a “party
of the new type” (Partei neuen Typus).[68]
In the case of North Korea, this shift in
Soviet policy had no immediate effect.
North Korea was already closely following Soviet leadership, and Kim Il
Sung, at this point at least, was not talking about a special Korean way to
socialism, making unnecessary any change of course or clarification. Articles featured in the WPK’s theoretical
mouthpiece, Kŭlloja, mostly talked
about the Soviet experience while saying little about the theoretical
implications for
Korea’s long-term developmental course. Besides the fact that North Korea’s
development lagged behind that of Eastern European people’s democracies, the
peninsula remained divided, making socialism an unlikely prospect. Kŭlloja
articles from this time were therefore inundated with the words minjujuŭi (democracy), chayu (freedom), chaju (autonomy), tongnip
(independence), p’yŏnghwa (peace), and t’ongil (unification). It is difficult to find talk about a
socialist future and, by extension, the dictatorship of the proletariat. Such references primarily occurred in
relation to the USSR.
One can assume that Stalin did not wish the
construction of socialism to begin yet in a divided Korea, because he also
consistently objected to such a motion in East Germany until his proposal for
German reunification was declined by the Allies in March 1952.70 Prior to this, East
Germany’s leader, Walter Ulbricht, was
nevertheless eager to Stalinize the party in the face of moderate opposition
from within, especially by social democrats, which is why he pushed for the
party of the new type already in 1948.
Ulbricht’s attempts to Stalinize the party and move closer to the next
historical stage ultimately led to polices that caused a crisis in East
Germany, with
70 Mählert and Stephan,
Blaue Hemden - Rote Fahnen: Die
Geschichte der Freien Deutschen Jugend [Blue Shirts - Red Flags: The History of
the Free German Youth], 59. Included
in socialist construction was collectivization of agriculture. As Szalontai mentions as well, East Germany
only started collectivization of its agriculture in July
1952.
Balázs Szalontai, Kim Il Sung in the Khrushchev Era: Soviet-DPRK Relations and the Roots
of North Korean Despotism, 1953-1964 (Washington, D.C.; Stanford, Calif.:
Woodrow Wilson Center Press ; Stanford University Press, 2005), 28.
streams of people escaping to the West.[69] As a consequence, opposition inside the party
became more vocal and the Soviets, shortly after Stalin’s death in 1953,
commanded the SED to cease the construction of socialism and focus on the
creation of a “united, democratic and peace-loving Germany.”[70]
Hopes for unification and the desire to win
over the South Korean masses also help explain why North Korea hoisted the
banner of unification and democracy instead of socialism before the outbreak of
the war. With the Korean War, the
construction of socialism made even less sense, especially since the WPK
experienced considerable drops in membership.[71] According to Marxism-Leninism, a party first
had to penetrate deep inside the masses, build a mass base, and maintain
constant connection with the masses if it hoped to become a disciplined
Marxist-Leninist party of the new type that
could provide guidance in the path toward socialism. And the Korean War showed that mass support
was wanting, given the absence of a mass insurrection against the South Korean
regime as communist forces marched southward and the anti-communist sentiments
that arose among the population in areas liberated by UN forces.[72] In November 1951, at the 4th
Plenum of the central committee of the WPK, Kim Il Sung hence called for
increased admissions into the party from wide segments of society, especially
peasants.[73] Scalapino and Lee highlight this as well but
miss an essential component of Kim’s argument during the plenum, in which he
denoted the WPK as a “revolutionary, Marxist-Leninist party of the new type [sae
hyŏng ŭi tang].”[74] Although it seems premature for him to make
such a statement, it clearly reveals the Stalinist rationale behind party
membership consolidation: to bind the masses closer to the party (i.e., to
himself), to inculcate party members homogenously with the party’s ideology
(i.e., his interpretations), and to generally increase his power. The transformation of the party into a
Marxist-Leninist party of the new type meant, in the mind of a leading
communist, the cleansing of impure elements and political opponents, since the
party was to be the guiding force of the dictatorship of the proletariat, a
dictatorship required in order to build socialism, oust class enemies, and
prevent a comeback of the bourgeoisie.
Not surprisingly, the following two years were marked by a rise in Kim’s
power and personality cult as he purged rivals and further consolidated his
leadership.[75] Given the disastrous war, naturally,
disloyalty among party comrades and the people threatened Kim. One should remember, North
Korea went into the war as a people’s
democracy still undergoing bourgeois democratization, without the uniformity
and discipline a regime building socialism strived for. While this move was to appeal to the South
Korean masses, it also became a burden in the face of military defeat, which
Kim Il Sung did not expect.
Stalinization surely must have appealed to him in these dark times.
On February 19, 1952, Kim elaborated on the
dictatorship of the proletariat in a crucial speech that reverberated widely.[76] Quoting from Stalin’s “The Foundations of
Leninism,” he specifically chose to extract the part discussing the actions
required for the maintenance and strengthening of the dictatorship of the
proletariat:
to break the resistance of the landlords and
capitalists who have been overthrown and expropriated by the revolution, to
liquidate every attempt on their part to restore the power of capital;
to organise construction in such a way as to
rally all the working people around the proletariat, and to carry on this work
along the lines of preparing for the elimination, the abolition of classes;
to arm the revolution, to organise the army
of the revolution for the struggle against foreign enemies, for the struggle
against imperialism.[77]
On this basis, Kim stressed a close
connection between the masses and the party as well as the need to prevent
reactionary elements, pro-Japanese, pro-Americans, capitalists, and landlords
from taking power.[78] He further argued that had the DPRK not
already made great strides in the establishment of a strong people’s regime
prior to the war, all of Korea would be a colony once more.[79] However, Kim did not yet directly call for
proletarian dictatorship or socialist construction in Korea. Instead, he described the present stage in
terms of democratization, with the caveat that only by protecting what he called
the “people’s regime” can Koreans head down the path of democracy and
socialism.[80] While this was an ambiguous depiction, the
implications were clear: in due time, party rule (i.e., his rule) would be
strengthened, enemies of the people eliminated, and socialism constructed.
Communist leaders knew very well the benefits
of a socialist system. When peasants in
the northern half of Korea received the land formerly owned by the landlord
class, the communists may have won popular support for the time being, but
peasant ownership of the land was never meant as a long-term solution and not
at all appropriate for the socialist stage.
As in the Soviet Union and East Germany, the land was to be eventually
collectivized. To change the masses’
thoughts away from outdated ideology based on property, one had to transform
the economic base.[81] Without regimenting their bodies into
organized production, ideological control would remain insufficient. Thus, in the middle of 1953, North Korea
launched collectivization.[82] This was done quite carefully at first. The mid-1953 crisis in East Germany that
resulted from socialist construction policies, including collectivization, may
have induced caution in the North Korean leadership, especially since the
Soviets, in early June, issued a resolution condemning the SED’s socialist
construction program announced in July 1952.[83]
Ulbricht’s position was threatened as a
consequence, and internal party opposition attempted to steer a different
course. Although Ulbricht weathered the
crisis, purged his rivals, and reinstituted the construction of socialism in
July 1953, there remained numerous people who opposed his path and rather
wanted to focus on reunification and “a special way to German socialism.”[84] But both Ulbricht and Kim Il Sung knew that
the path prescribed by Soviet Marxism-Leninism, not parliamentary democracy or
any variant thereof, would solidify their regimes. The stage of bourgeois democracy had to end,
even if such a transformation would realistically make a peaceful reunification
based on a common democratic understanding near impossible, which is why many
SED members opposed socialist construction at this point and feared an aping of
the Soviet system. And so, in April
1955, Kim Il Sung started to openly discuss the construction of socialism in
the DPRK.[85] To obviate opposition, he made sure to stress
his commitment to unification, arguing that the construction of the foundations
of socialism in the north is necessary to achieve unification.[86] As he knew all too well and openly admitted,
this socialist construction meant a “strengthening of the dictatorship.”[87][88]
While we have already gone beyond the Stalin
period, it is essential to grasp some of the core components of
Marxism-Leninism under Stalin and how local communists employed these to their
advantage. Even with de-Stalinization,
notions such as the necessity of proletarian dictatorship did not
disappear. In fact, as we will soon
observe, ideologically speaking, not much changed, and, when change did occur,
it was rather subtle. Understanding this
period is also important because the loss of Stalin and the subsequent course
taken by Khrushchev opened the door to a
rethinking of ideological leadership.
Under Stalin, there was no question, except among the Yugoslavian
communists, as to whose ideological leadership reigned supreme. Once Stalin decided to limit the extent of
creative application, there was little choice but to follow his
injunctions. After all, local communists’
own rule and cult of personality depended much on
Stalin’s cult. Without the sunshine of Stalin, would the
moon eclipse, be replaced by a new sun emerging from the Soviet Union, or
become its own sun? Not just Stalin’s
death, but especially
Khrushchev’s denunciation of the former
dictator in 1956 once again gave rise to the creative application
argument. How far could local communists
go in designing their own path? And what
were the implications for Soviet ideological leadership in the world communist
movement?
While North Korea missed the first wave of
the creative application debate that raged in post-war Europe, it became fully
immersed in the second.
1955: The Academic Debate Surrounding Kim Il
Sung’s December Speech
The depiction I have provided thus far does
not grant any real originality to North Korean ideology. In these early years, Eastern European states
displayed more ideological creativity than North Korea, as can be seen by the
“special German way to socialism” debate.
Scholars typically fail to mention this fact and instead highlight, like
Charles Armstrong, North Korea’s indigenization of the Soviet system. While this indigenization is certainly true,
it should not be exaggerated or extended to the realm of ideology. As previously stated, indigenization and
diversity were international norms in the fledgling socialist world and
encouraged by the Soviets. Furthermore,
in the North Korean case, unique local applications did not mean a unique North
Korean state ideology contrary to Soviet orthodoxy. But many would argue that from 1955 on, one
can no longer talk about an imitation of Soviet Marxism-Leninism, for it was in
that year that Kim Il Sung began to discuss chuch’e.
Most scholars agree that 1955 was a turning
point in the history of North Korean ideology.
In his speech on December 28, 1955, Kim Il Sung challenged those who
“merely copy and memorize foreign things”, arguing as follows: “We are not
engaged in any other country’s revolution, but solely in the Korean
revolution. This, the Korean revolution,
determines the essence of Juche in
the ideological work of our Party.”90 He further maintained that the DPRK should
not simply imitate Soviet foreign policy.91 Instead of copying Soviet experiences, party
members should apply Marxism-Leninism “in a creative way to suit the specific
conditions and national characteristics of our country.” Failure to do so, he said, amounts to
dogmatism.92 Not
surprisingly, scholars frequently stress the speech’s nationalism, particularly
given Kim’s call to study Korean history:
To make revolution in Korea we must know
Korean history and geography as well as the customs of the Korean people. Only then is it possible to educate our
people in a way that suits them and to inspire in them an ardent love for their
native place and their motherland. It is
of paramount importance to study and widely publicize among the working people
the history of our country and of our people’s struggle.93
Due to Kim’s stress on the Korean revolution
and the creative application of Marxism-Leninism,
Charles Armstrong argues that the speech
“marked in retrospect the beginning of North Korea’s divergence from the
Moscow-dominated international socialist community, a declaration of
independence from Soviet control and influence.”94 Armstrong thereby directly challenges
Kim Il Sung, “On Eliminating Dogmatism and
Formalism and Establishing Juche in Ideological Work: Speech to
Party Propaganda and Agitation Workers,
December 28, 1955,” in Kim Il Sung Works,
vol. 9 (Pyongyang: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1982), 395–96. The Korean version of the speech reads more
like, “We are not
conducting another country’s revolution but
precisely our revolution. It is this,
the Korean revolution, that is the
subject [chuch’e]
of party ideological work.”
Kim Il Sung, “Sasang saŏp esŏ kyojojuŭi wa
hyŏngsikchuŭi rŭl t’oech’ihago chuch’e rŭl hwangniphalte taehayŏ [On
Eliminating Dogmatism and Formalism and Establishing the Subject in Ideological
Work],” in Kim Il-sŏng chŏnjip [The
Complete Works of Kim Il Sung], vol. 18 (Pyongyang: Chosŏn Nodongdang
Ch’ulp’ansa, 1997), 378. Also
compare with Myers’ similar rendering: Brian Myers, “The Watershed That Wasn’t:
Re-Evaluating Kim Il Sung’s ‘Juche Speech’ of 1955,” Acta Koreana 9, no. 1 (2006): 97.
Kim Il Sung, “On Eliminating Dogmatism and
Formalism and Establishing Juche in Ideological Work,” 401–2.
Ibid., 404. 93 Ibid., 396.
94 Charles K.
Armstrong, Tyranny of the Weak: North
Korea and the World, 1950-1992 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2013),
90.
Scalapino and Lee’s perspective, according to
which this was less an attempt to gain independence vis-à-vis the Soviet Union
than it was a move to oust internal opposition inside the party.[89] One author, Alzo David-West, goes even
further than Armstrong, calling the speech
“anti-Soviet,” aimed to promote sirhak, a reformist Neo-Confucian school
of thought, over
Marxism-Leninism.[90]
There is one notable exception to the usual
depictions of Kim’s December Speech.
Brian Myers contends that the speech was not a break with the past. He correctly points out the fact that Kim Il
Sung, from the very beginning, had always emphasized national themes, which
were not contradictory to statements affirming the Soviet model. Nor was there anything new about
Kim’s appeal to study Korea’s history and
cultural legacy.[91] Furthermore, already in April of the same
year, Kim kept talking about the creative application argument.[92] When Kim mentioned chuch’e in his December Speech, he was essentially discussing the
creative application of Marxism-Leninism, specifically in relation to
ideological work. Myers recognizes this
and also recognizes that the main thrust of the speech was against dogmatism
and formalism, not chuch’e.99 Before 1955, chuch’e chiefly meant “subject,” as in the subject of history
(i.e., man). Even colonial era Marxists
like Paek Namun employed the concept in this way.[93] With Kim Il
Sung’s 1955 December Speech, chuch’e became tied up with the creative
application theorem advocated by Soviet Marxism-Leninism.[94] The subject (i.e., chuch’e) of ideological work was the Korean revolution, not the
Soviet revolution, meaning that Koreans should not ape the Soviet application
of Marxism-Leninism, lest they commit dogmatism and formalism.[95] Since these types of argument were made
throughout the bloc, Myers does not find it particularly nationalist or, at
least, not any more nationalist than East German apparatchiki following Soviet
recommendations by waving the banner of German “national consciousness.”[96]
David-West has contested Myers’ reading of the
December Speech. Contrasting Kim’s
statements with Lenin’s aversion toward nationalism, he holds that the speech
was “a watershed” because it signified Kim Il Sung’s resistance to
de-Stalinization and a reassertion of “politically unreformed nationalist
Stalinist program of socialism in one
country.”[97] Indeed, Myers sidelines the problem of
de-Stalinization, weakening his argument, since one could claim that Kim was
attempting to take a path away from the Soviet Union. I disagree with David-West, however. In the following pages, I will provide new
insights to the existing debate surrounding the December Speech based on a more
thorough understanding of de-Stalinization and the language involved.
De-Stalinization trends began to surface
shortly after Stalin’s death, emphasizing the creative application of
Marxism-Leninism. If we recall, the
creative application argument was prominent from 1945 until the autumn of 1947,
when Stalin curbed creative approaches and exalted the Soviet experience above
all. Although the creative application
argument was not renounced, it certainly became more limited in scope, given
the ideological control Stalin wanted to achieve. This started to change after Stalin’s passing
in March 1953. According to Zbigniew
Brzezinski, this necessarily developed out of the Stalinist system itself. During Stalin’s reign, ideology directly
corresponded with the person of Stalin, that is, he was the embodiment of
orthodoxy, and his authority ensured ideological unity throughout the bloc. In this way, ideology and universality
coalesced in Stalin’s figure. After his
death, since ideological unity could no longer be guaranteed by his authority,
ideology itself became the means by which the Soviet Union sought to claim
universality and achieve ideological unity.
And to ensure other ruling parties’ voluntary pursuit of Soviet
ideological leadership, “the ideological framework linking the Communist states
had to be made more elastic to permit greater variation in domestic policies
within the context of over-all unity.”[98] Increased leeway in domestic affairs would
also guarantee regime stability, so Khrushchev thought.[99] In other words, indigenized (i.e., domestic)
communism and de-Stalinization went hand in hand.
In 1955, Kim Il Sung was busily consolidating
his power. Although facing an economic
crisis due to agricultural failure, his speeches given in April nonetheless
dealt with the creation of a party that would be able to lead the construction
of socialism.[100] As previously discussed, these two
interrelated programs—the establishment of a Marxist-Leninist party of the new
type and the building of socialism—were highly desirable to communist leaders
attempting to solidify their reigns. How
strange it is, then, for Stalinization to be in full swing at a time when
deStalinization was striking deep roots in the Soviet Union. Kim Il Sung was keenly aware of Soviet reform
trends. Members of his own party were
learning about Soviet reforms, and, behind closed doors, fraternal diplomats
criticized Kim’s growing cult.[101][102] The Soviets also disapproved of Kim’s
failures in the economic realm and ultimately pushed him to make necessary
adjustments.[103] Balazs Szalontai notes, however, that no
de-Stalinization occurred in the political realm. Quite the opposite, Kim ousted more
opponents.[104] Does this make Kim’s moves in 1955
anti-Soviet?
One should bear in mind the academic nature
of the term “Stalinization” and not exaggerate de-Stalinization measures. In and of itself, Khrushchev and other Soviet
reformists found nothing wrong with the party of the new type. East Germany, for instance, adhered to this
notion up until its collapse. Indeed, Khrushchev’s
reform program was more of a conceptual redirection than revolution. A quick glance at Eastern European party
conferences from the early 1950s, before Stalin’s death, reveals that most of
Khrushchev’s reform concepts were already in circulation. At East Germany’s 3rd Party
Congress in 1950, for example, we find mention of peaceful coexistence (K. p’yŏ nghwajŏ k kongjon; G. friedliche Koexistenz), innerparty
democracy (K. tangnae minjujuŭi; G. innerparteiliche Demokratie), collective leadership
(K. chipch’ejŏk
chido; G. kollektive Führung),
and a general attack against bureaucratism (K. kwallyojuŭ i; G. Bürokratismus)—all
of which later became core reform concepts.[105] Bureaucratism referred to the dictatorial
and aloof administration of the masses.
The term’s meaning did not change with Khrushchev, only its direction. In February 1956, Khrushchev finally
identified bureaucratism with the reign of Stalin, but during Stalin’s lifetime
this identification was not the case.[106] To the contrary, Stalin’s leadership was
anti-bureaucratic, or as Wilhelm Pieck exclaimed: “We all recognize the
Stalinist thesis that leaders do not just teach but should also learn from the
masses.”[107] There was nothing typically Asian, Maoist, or
North Korean about this notion. It was
used in the various people’s democracies prior to and after Stalin’s death.[108] In North Korea, as in China, this
anti-bureaucratic notion was known as the mass line (K. kunjung rosŏn).[109]
Other concepts, too, underwent a redirection
shortly after Stalin’s death. In July
1953, the CC (central committee) of the CPSU (Communist Party of the Soviet
Union) convened at an important plenum to deal with the fallen Beria. Although not directly criticizing Stalin, the
plenum condemned the violation of collective leadership in previous years as
evidenced by the rare occurrence of party congresses and plenums. Relatedly, the plenum stated, “the role of
the individual in history” was not apprehended in proper Marxist-Leninist
terms. Instead, a “personality cult” (K.
kaein sungbae, G. Personenkult) replaced the party’s role
as the “true leading power,” resulting in a reduction of the masses’
creativity. Incorrect education further
hurt the masses. They studied
Marxism-Leninism “dogmatically” through rote memorization of quotes rather than
“grasping the creative character of Marxism-Leninism.”[110] Again, none of this was wholly new, but in
light of internal power shifts and the experience of Stalin’s terror, a
redirection occurred, one which privileged the party over its top leader. This, too, however, is not to be exaggerated. In 1954, power was increasingly centralized
in the person of
Khrushchev.[111] For most of the people’s democracies, as
noted by Brzezinski, “Political concessions, such as the introduction of
collective leadership, were essentially procedural and, unlike the USSR, did
not involve a substantive change in the East European power picture.”[112] Like North Korea, these regimes made economic
concessions without corresponding political changes. And because collective leadership was a
concept sanctimoniously celebrated before and after de-Stalinization, communist
leaders did not necessarily have to jump through hoops in order to justify
their continued rule, seeing the lip service given to the concept in previous
years.[113]
Then why do we find Soviet and other
fraternal criticisms regarding North Korea’s lack of collective leadership in
archival documents from 1955?[114] The mainspring of these criticisms was the
economic crisis facing the DPRK.
Naturally, the Soviets looked to the top policymakers for blame, and
there they found chiefly Kim Il Sung.
They noticed the fact that he failed to introduce the cosmetic political
changes that occurred in other people’s democracies, still holding many key
posts at once. It is fair to say that
the political recalcitrance of the top leader was more severe in North Korea
than Eastern Europe. When too much power
was concentrated in one individual, the Soviets knew, the likelihood of
mistakes grew and, if they occurred, they were amplified. A Stalin-like Kim Il Sung could not receive
honest advice from the people around him, since they were either too afraid to
speak up or simply believed silent obedience served their careers best.121 To the Soviets, who did not wish to see a
repetition of the 1953 Berlin uprising, collective leadership, even in a
limited fashion, seemed like the obvious panacea. Yet no such uprising occurred and Kim,
shortly after visiting Moscow in May and June 1955, did implement economic
measures to relieve the situation, allowing the Soviets to turn a critical
blind eye, at least for the moment.
Besides, Kim Il Sung did not oppose Soviet
ideological orthodoxy. Unnoticed by so
many scholars, rather than outright rejecting de-Stalinization trends, Kim used
the language of de-Stalinization—which was not anything novel to begin with—to
his advantage in consolidating the party and purging his rivals. His speeches in April particularly focused on
the problem of bureaucratism. Not
coincidentally, the Soviets had previously declared the WPK guilty of
bureaucratism:
It needs to be noted that the political and organizational work of the Worker's
Party is at a low level, both inside the Party and among the masses. A bureaucratic
attitude and abuse of authority predominate in the work style of Party and government bodies. The issues of collective leadership, the
121 Gary Goldberg,
trans., “Memo About the Situation in the DPRK,” January 17, 1955, AVPRF F. 0102
Op. 11 P.
65 D. 45, History and Public Policy Program
Digital Archive, http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/115798. Gary Goldberg, trans., “Report from V.
Molotov and M. Suslov,” January 17, 1955, AVPRF F. 0102 Op. 11 P. 65 D. 45, History
and Public Policy Program Digital Archive,
http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/115797.
development of Party democracy, criticism
and self-criticism are being poorly implemented in practical activity.122
(emphasis mine)
In his speech “On Eliminating Bureaucratism,”
held on April 1, Kim demanded a closer connection between party and
masses. He blamed lower-ranking party
functionaries for failure to establish such a connection as a result of their
commandeering attitude. In other words,
they were guilty of bureaucratism.123 While Kim acknowledged a bureaucratic work
style in the party, inhibiting organizational work among the masses, he
deflected blame away from the top leadership, stating that party policy was
correct but improperly grasped and executed by functionaries, who were
insufficiently steeped in Marxist-Leninist theory and negatively affected by
the ideological remnants of feudalism, bourgeois thought, and Japanese rule.124 The Soviets attributed the cause of such
bureaucratism largely to the personality cult and lack of collective
leadership. In their view, the
commandeering started at the top and then moved downward.
Preempting this charge, Kim highlighted the
need to “strengthen collective leadership” and protect against the subjective
authority of any single individual.
“Bureaucrats,” Kim stated, “are subjectivists.”125 Thus, “by strengthening collective leadership”
on all levels, it is possible to
Goldberg, “Memo About the Situation in the
DPRK.”
Kim Il Sung, “Kwallyojuŭi rŭl t’oech’ihalte
taehayŏ [On Eliminating Bureaucratism],” in Kim
Il-sŏng chŏnjip [The Complete Works of Kim Il Sung], vol. 18 (Pyongyang:
Chosŏn Nodongdang Ch’ulp’ansa, 1997), 41–43, 46.
Kim also blamed remnants of capitalist
economy. Ibid., 42–46, 49, 53.
Kim’s strategy, however, was not unique to
North Korea. As Stalin himself stated at
the 15th Party Congress of the CPSU, the struggle against
bureaucratism ends where it threatens to destroy proletarian power: “One must
know the limits. To carry the struggle
against bureaucratism inside the state apparatus so far that the state
apparatus becomes
completely impossible, so far that it is
discredited, so far that one attempts to destroy the state apparatus—means to
go against Leninism.”
Central Committee of the Socialist Unity
Party of Germany, “Die Verbesserung der Arbeit des Staatsapparates zur
Erfüllung der Wirtschafts- und Verwaltungsaufgaben [The Improvement of the Work
of the State Apparatus for the Fulfillment of Economic and Administrative
Tasks],” Neues Deutschland, November
3, 1955, 4.
Subjectivism meant one was clinging to
one-sided, preconceived judgments and not acting in accordance with objective
reality.
“eliminate bureaucratism.” “Together with this,” Kim went on, it is
necessary to enhance “innerparty democracy” as well as “criticism and
self-criticism.”[115] All this was typical reformist language. One cannot stress enough the omnipresence of
anti-bureaucratic arguments among communist leaders during this time. East German party newspapers from 1953-56 are
littered with such discussions, attacking bureaucratism, demanding criticism
and self-criticism, and blaming remnants of bourgeois ideology.[116] Kim was astute to coopt this language while
directing blame away from his person, for this made an attack against him more
difficult and supplied him with legitimate weapons to cleanse opposition. As Szalontai shows, even the
Hungarians positively evaluated the 1955
purges “as steps toward collective leadership.”[117]
Kim’s strategy seemed to be working.
Kim Il Sung employed the same strategy in his
now-famous December speech. In what
later became the renewed concept of peaceful coexistence, the Soviets during
this time were tending toward an easing of tensions with the United States. Pak Yŏ ng-bin, a politburo member of the
WPK, apparently came under the influence of this Soviet policy as Kim Il Sung’s
attack during his speech indicates:
Pak Yong Bin [Pak Yŏ ng-bin], on returning
from the Soviet Union, said that as the Soviet Union was following the line of
easing international tension, we should also drop our slogan against U.S.
imperialism. Such an assertion has
nothing to do with revolutionary initiative.
It would dull our people’s revolutionary vigilance. The U.S. imperialists scorched our land,
slaughtered our innocent people, and are still occupying the southern half of
our country. They are our sworn enemy,
aren’t they? It is utterly ridiculous to
think that our people’s struggle against the U.S. imperialists conflicts with
the efforts of the Soviet people to ease international tension. Our people’s condemnation of and struggle
against the US imperialists’ policy of aggression against Korea are not in
contradiction with, but conducive to the struggle of the peoples of the world
to lessen international tension and defend peace. At the same time, the struggle to ease
tension on the part of the peace-loving people the world over, including the
Soviet people, creates more favourable conditions for the anti-imperialist
struggle of our people.[118]
Scholars typically interpret this as
indicative of Kim’s anti-Soviet tendencies.
The historical evidence, however, suggests otherwise. Peaceful coexistence was officially
reinterpreted at the 20th Congress of the CPSU in February 1956,
where Khrushchev made the concept part and parcel of his analysis of the
current epoch and therefore binding to other parties as well (see next
chapter). At this point, peaceful
coexistence still retained its old meaning.
Before the 20th Congress, peaceful coexistence only referred
to general principles of interstate relations with non-hostile countries, especially postcolonial ones. In the mid-1950s, the Chinese Communists
assigned special importance to the concept and were particularly supportive of
it as can be seen on hand of peaceful coexistence’s enshrinement in the 1954
China-India Agreement and the 1955 Bandung Conference. As a result, Kim’s statement was not
anti-Soviet by any stretch of the imagination.
Events in Hungary confirm this as well.
In April 1955, Rákosi, a Stalinist, ousted the reform-minded Imre Nagy,
an action the Soviets supported. Among
other charges drafted with Soviet help, Nagy was found guilty of
“overestimating the easing of tensions in international affairs.”[119] Besides, copying Soviet policies without any
adjustment was frowned upon as a violation of the creative application
principle. As previously stated, the
creative application argument, which Kim utilized in the course of the speech,
was orthodox. On July 16,
1955, Khrushchev himself said as follows:
“The historical experience of the Soviet Union and of the People’s Democracies
shows that, given unity in the chief fundamental matter of ensuring the victory
of socialism, various ways and means may be used in different countries to
solve the specific problems of socialist construction, depending on the
historical and national features.”[120] Indeed, although the creative application
argument represented a useful tool for reformist communists, it was just as
good a tool for conservatives in rationalizing their non-reformist course—the creative
application argument, in and by itself, contained no heterodoxy.
Dogmatism, the main topic of Kim’s December
speech, was also de-Stalinization language.
Reformers used the term to attack those who refused de-Stalinization.[121] As in the case of other de-Stalinization
concepts, this concept, too, was nothing new, utilized by communists before and
after Stalin’s death. Stalin himself
emphasized the dangers of dogmatism in his 1950 work “Marxism and Problems of
Linguistics,” which communists frequently cited in the early 1950s:
Marxism is the science of the laws governing
the development of nature and society, the science of the revolution of the
oppressed and exploited masses, the science of the victory of socialism in all
countries, the science of building communist society. As a science, Marxism
cannot stand still, it develops and is perfected. In its development, Marxism
cannot but be enriched by new experience, new knowledge—consequently some of
its formulas and conclusions cannot but change in the course of time, cannot but
be replaced by new formulas and conclusions, corresponding to the new
historical tasks. Marxism does not recognize invariable conclusions and
formulas, obligatory for all epochs and periods. Marxism is the enemy of all
dogmatism.[122]
Since dogmatism meant copying formulas or
experiences without regard for the unique circumstances in one’s country,
without adjustment to the changing times, it represented the antithesis of the
creative application of Marxism-Leninism.
It is conceivable that Kim’s rivals considered assaulting his decisions
using those terms. After all, one could
easily have argued that Kim’s determination to construct socialism and
collectivize agriculture stemmed from a dogmatic copying of the Soviet model,
which is perhaps why during the speech he pointed out that the DPRK’s speed of
collectivization matched the particular historical conditions of the country.[123] Plus, given his adulation of all things
Soviet in earlier years, the accusation of dogmatism would not have been too
farfetched.
The nationalist overtones of the speech, too,
did not defy Soviet orthodoxy. Dogmatism
further implied a disregard for one’s own nation, such as ignoring the
progressive elements in one’s national history and heritage. East Germany’s SED, for example, condemned as
“dogmatism” when students of theater ignored
the “national cultural heritage” and simply copied the methods of the Soviet
artist Konstantin Stanislavski.[124] Mirroring such an argument, Kim Il Sung
criticized the lack of attention scholars gave to Korean history and culture.[125] A comparison with East German positions from
around the same time is enlightening. In
March
1954, the GDR Ministry of Culture decreed as
follows: “The main goal of German cultural politics lies in the cultivation of
our national culture’s immortal historical heritage.”[126] East German propaganda appropriated bourgeois
authors like Goethe and Schiller, casting them in the framework of historical
materialism: “The life and work of Schiller is marked by a struggle against the
fragmentation of Germany, by the struggle against feudal oppression and for the
formation of a nation-state based on freedom and democracy.” The SED further claimed to have inherited
the humanistic and progressive traditions of such authors: “The German working
class, led by the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, realizes the best patriotic
and humanistic ideas of the German freedom-poet Friedrich Schiller.”138 This did not imply that the SED’s real
ideology was Schillerism, just as Kim’s exhortation to study Korean works did
not imply some type of Confucianism.
Marxist-Leninist parties, in order to generate a true national history,
needed to frame that history in terms of historical materialism. Since the bourgeois stage immediately
preceded the socialist transitional stage, praises for certain elements in
bourgeois authors’ thinking, especially those that seemed anti-feudal or
primitively socialist, was not
unusual.
Kim’s advocacy of “socialist patriotism” (K. sahoejuŭ ijŏ k aegukchuŭ i; G. sozialistischer
Patriotismus)
in the speech was also not unusual.
According to the speech:
Internationalism and patriotism are
inseparably linked with each other. You
must realize that the love Korean Communists bear for their country does not
conflict with the internationalism of the working class but fully conforms with
[sic] it. Loving Korea is just as good as loving the
Soviet Union and the socialist camp and, likewise, loving the Soviet Union and
the socialist camp is just as good as loving Korea.139
Declaration of the GDR’s Ministry of Culture
Concerning the Defense of the Unity of German Culture],” Neues Deutschland, March 25, 1954, 4.
Central Committee of the Socialist Unity
Party of Germany, “Über die Aufgaben der Partei im Schiller-Jahr [Concerning
the Tasks of the Party During the Schiller-Year],” Neues Deutschland, April 2, 1955.
Kim Il Sung, “On Eliminating Dogmatism and
Formalism and Establishing Juche in Ideological Work,” 404–5.
This statement is easy to misinterpret if
unfamiliar with Marxism-Leninism.
Hongkoo Han suggests the statement’s spirit goes back to Kim’s guerrilla
struggle.[127] Similarly, Dae-Sook Suh reads socialist
patriotism as a mere display of nationalism and seems to think it is a uniquely
North Korean concept.[128] Gi-Wook Shin traces the concept to Mao Zedong
and his thoughts about the national liberation struggle but fails to see the
Soviet origins. He further contends that
socialist patriotism, in the North Korean context, simply meant ethnic
nationalism.[129] While an ethnic nationalism may have been
prevalent in North Korea, for the purposes of intellectual history it is
misleading to characterize a concept as something which it never professed
itself to be. By imposing one’s own interpretation,
one effectively severs the concept from its intellectual space. Socialist patriotism, in fact, was a global
Marxist-Leninist concept.[130] The East Germans, too, advocated the concept
up until the GDR’s collapse:
Today, under the new conditions, the
patriotism of the working class, inseparable from proletarian internationalism,
has become an extraordinarily effective and mighty weapon. . . . The
Internationalism of the working class is, as previously stated, an expression
of the common interests of workers from all countries in their struggle against
a common enemy, capitalism. It is an
expression of their common goal, which consists of the elimination of the
exploitation of man by man, an expression of their common ideology, the
ideology of friendship and brotherly solidarity of peoples.[131]
According to Marxism-Leninism, patriotism
advances internationalism because by building socialism in one’s country, one
moves history forward, thereby advancing the world revolution—patriotism was
implicitly international.[132] It was frequently termed “socialist”
patriotism because of its class nature and to distinguish it from bourgeois
nationalism. Communists supposedly did
not hate entire peoples, as a bourgeois nationalist would, but only the class
enemy. Socialist patriotism was
socialist because it meant love for the nation—or as the East Germans stated,
“love for the homeland [Heimat], love
for the fatherland
[Vaterland]”—and
the socialism built within it.[133] Hence, on this count as well, Kim Il Sung
said nothing novel in 1955.
The significance of Kim’s 1955 December speech
lies not in nationalism. Although the
speech certainly contained what we might consider nationalism, albeit a very
Soviet-oriented nationalism, this is not what gave the speech its power. It was Kim’s adherence to Soviet orthodoxy,
not his departure from it, that infused his words with force. He displayed an astonishing aptitude for
manipulating Marxist-Leninist rhetoric to serve his needs. As in April, Kim shrewdly attacked his
enemies with the concepts they probably hoped to use against him.
Thus he even attacked Pak Ch’ang-ok for
having used too much of the hyperbolic language so typical of Stalinism. Kim specifically targeted frequent use of
terms/prefixes signifying
“all/fully” (ch’ong), “great” (tae,
widaehada), and “most” (ch’oe). Indeed, North Korean authors often referred
to Lenin and Stalin as “great” (widaehan). When Kim declared the immediate termination
of this habit, those in attendance surely must have been aware of the irony.[134] Like other communist leaders, he utilized the
not-so-new language of de-Stalinization to achieve Stalinist goals. Kim knew that de-Stalinization arguments were
his opponents’ strongest weapon. What
better way to win a battle than to turn your enemy’s weapon against him?
In the final analysis, we cannot yet talk
about an independent ideological path at the end of 1955. Although we can certainly detect signs of
political independence, as seen by North
Korea’s refusal to free masses of political
prisoners like most of the Eastern European regimes, this did not translate
into an ideological independence, at least not yet.[135] Kim adhered to Soviet orthodoxy. Even if at times adherence was superficial,
it was adherence nonetheless.
MarxismLeninism could be spun many ways, as Eastern European Stalinists
knew as well. Communist leaders, to stay
in power, needed to be experts in this art.
One did not need theoretical expertise or a high education in order to
use Marxism-Leninism. It was a body of
tenets, slogans, and formulas one could easily acquire without ever reading a
single page of Marx. Independently
reading Marx might in fact prove dangerous, since it could lead to conclusions
heterodox by
Soviet standards. At this point, ideological creativity could
not guarantee one’s position in the party.
It would merely serve as a casus
belli to those who strove for that position.
CHAPTER II
THE PROBLEM OF SOVIET IDEOLOGICAL LEADERSHIP
(1956-61)
An official break from Soviet orthodoxy did
not occur in 1955 nor the following year.
Not even North Korea’s reaction to the 20th
Congress of the CPSU involved such a break.
In fact, it was only in December 1961 that North Korea finally decided
to openly contest Soviet orthodoxy.
While it seems quite late, up until then, North Korea, even if at times
superficially, adhered to Soviet orthodoxy.
Unfortunately, because most previous studies exaggerate the heterodoxy
of earlier ideological developments, especially Kim Il Sung’s speech from
December 1955, they fail to appreciate or recognize the watershed that occurred
in 1961/62. The present chapter overlaps
with the studies of Andrei Lankov and Balazs Szalontai, who relied on many of
the same archival materials used here.[136] Though at times unavoidable, I tried as much
as possible not to needlessly repeat what they have already covered in great
detail and instead focus on the hitherto neglected or misread ideological side
of historical developments. Hence, in
contrast to those studies, this chapter aims to provide a thorough and nuanced
account of North
Korean ideology’s relationship with Soviet
Marxism-Leninism from 1956 to 1961,
reconceptualizing the notion and
periodization of an ideological break.
How do we
determine what does and does not constitute a break? Of course this can quickly descend into a
subjective judgment based on an arbitrary reading of North Korean and Soviet
ideology. It is indeed easy to detect
heterodoxy if one is actively looking for it, potentially leading to an
anachronistic or atemporal analysis of North Korean ideological
statements. For example, it is
anachronistic to consider heterodox Kim Il Sung’s criticism of Pak Yŏ ng-bin’s
call to reduce North Korea’s militancy vis-à-vis the United States as explained
in the previous chapter. Neither Kim Il
Sung nor the Soviets at this point believed North Korea was breaking with or
challenging Soviet orthodoxy. To obviate
mistaken evaluations, it behooves us to examine what historical actors
themselves said, whether or not they even thought of orthodoxy or heterodoxy
and to what degree. Owing to our access
to archival materials from former socialist states, this has become a feasible
endeavor. It is now more possible than
ever to judge North Korean ideology in its historical immediacy. The boundary between orthodoxy and heterodoxy
was actually quite fluid, changing with the historical situation and the
aspirations of individual historical actors.
As this chapter will demonstrate, perceived
adherence and nonadherence to Soviet ideological leadership determined the
judgment about orthodoxy or heterodoxy.
Because in December 1961 Kim Il Sung chose to break free from Soviet
leadership, it becomes possible to talk about heterodoxy, though, as the next
chapter reveals, even this heterodoxy ought not be overestimated.
Why did a
challenge to Soviet ideological leadership occur so late? To be sure, ideological frictions and
incongruencies between North Korea and the USSR surfaced before 1961, but they
do not warrant the designation of a break, since Kim Il Sung did not yet
directly challenge Soviet ideological leadership in the world communist
movement. Instead, despite brewing
ideological disagreements, Kim Il Sung attempted to fit North Korean ideology
within the framework of Soviet ideological leadership. In the end, a convergence of factors led to
the rejection of Soviet suzerainty in ideological matters. Arguably the most important factor was the
threat Kim’s continued loyalty to the Soviets posed to his regime by 1961 as a
consequence of the Sino-Soviet split and its ideological polarization, which
began to curtail North Korea’s policy flexibility while simultaneously raising
the standards that determined orthodoxy vis-à-vis Soviet Marxism-Leninism. As a result, Kim Il Sung resolved to declare
independence from Soviet ideological leadership, following a path of
ideological insulation that combined Marxist-Leninist universality with his
personal ideological leadership.
The Impact of the 20th CPSU
Congress
On February
25, 1956, during the 20th Congress of the CPSU, Khrushchev held his
infamous Secret Speech, otherwise entitled “On the Personality Cult and Its
Consequences.” He denounced the cult of
Stalin and the exaggeration of the individual leader’s role in the making of
history. The party, he argued, ought to
return to the purity of Lenin’s model and adhere to the collective leadership
of the party’s central committee (CC).
This meant a pursuit of party rules, such as the regular convening of
party plenums and congresses and free consultation among central committee
members without fear of reprisals by the first secretary (or chairman, as he
was referred to in some parties). Those
cadres who refused to follow the central committee, including its members,
should be reeducated rather than killed.
For Khrushchev, party unity was still the goal, but a goal that could
only be achieved through the reeducation of dissenters, selfcriticism,
inner-party democracy, and democratic centralism. Terrorizing party members would only
exacerbate the disunity of the party and cause the masses to lose faith in its
leadership. Indeed, Khrushchev thought
the personality cult, due to its promotion of bureaucratism, had led to a rift
with the masses. Stalin imperiously
dictated to those below him, neither knowing the concrete situation nor conducting inspection
tours to verify it. This behavior
trickled downward, causing bureaucratism at all levels of government and party. The outcome was the party’s divorce from the
masses, whose creative powers were stifled by incorrect methods of leadership
and by the fact that all the people’s achievements were ascribed to
Stalin. While the masses constitute “the
creator of history,” Khrushchev stated, it is the party, not a heroic
individual, who plays “the decisive role” in revolution.[137]
Khrushchev’s speech contained tremendous
implications for other communist leaders.
Not only had they previously adulated Stalin but many of them nurtured
their own personality cults. This may
not have seemed like a big issue, since, after all, it was an internal Soviet
problem. However, the Soviets expected
communist leaders to praise and implement in their own work those decisions of
the 20th Congress that dealt with the universality of Marxism-
Leninism and the analysis of the current
epoch. It was a tradition rationalized
by the CPSU’s age, experience, and vanguard position in the world communist
movement. And since the Soviets
considered Leninist party norms fundamental to the eternal truth of
Marxism-Leninism, and since other parties were required to learn from the
Soviet experience, a discussion of the personality cult was mandatory. Besides, Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin
constituted an attempt to fortify his ideological authority. It was now up to other parties to display
their loyalty to the world’s foremost communist. Having habitualized subservience to Soviet
ideological leadership, communist leaders therefore voiced their support for
the 20th Congress and tried to find a way to broach its contents
without threatening their grip on power.
For Kim Il Sung, the CPSU Congress could
not have come at a worse time. He had
only recently attacked prominent Soviet Koreans and was attempting to curb this
group’s ability to denounce him by means of Soviet reform trends.151 Kim was clearly paying close attention to the
proceedings of the congress, which opened on February 14, because on February
18, one week prior to the Secret Speech, he assembled important central
committee members and informed them about the DPRK media’s incorrect coverage
of the role of the individual. He
complained about the overblown portrayals of his figure, commanding that such
errors be corrected.152 Kim’s
move appears to have been a direct reaction to the 20th Congress,
since
Khrushchev’s report a few days earlier had
criticized the personality cult as “alien to the spirit of
Marxism-Leninism,” although not yet directly
linking Stalin to the personality cult.153
Nevertheless, in the North Korean press,
speeches by Soviet statesmen during the congress were censored with regard to
the personality cult.154 As
revealed by Pak Ch’ang-ok, one of the leading Soviet Koreans, in a conversation
with the Soviet ambassador to the DPRK on March 12, although top party members
were busily reviewing the speeches held at the 20th Congress and
actively discussing the personality cult, Kim demanded silence on the issue in
relation to problems within the WPK—only he was to bring up the topic.155
eliminate his rivals. After all, Marxism-Leninism condemned the
existence of factions, as can be seen in the Soviet case of the Mensheviki.
152
Gary Goldberg, trans., “Record of a
Conversation between Soviet Embassy Counsellor S. Filatov and DPRK Vice Premier
Pak Ui-Wan,” February 21, 1956, RGANI Fond 5, Opis 28, Delo 412, History and
Public Policy Program Digital Archive,
http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/120772.
153
Nikita Khrushchev, Report of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet
Union to the 20th Party Congress (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing
House, 1956), 122.
154
Gary Goldberg, trans., “Record of a
Conversation with DPRK Minister of Construction Kim Seung-Hwa by Soviet Embassy
Counsellor in the DPRK S. N. Filatov, 5 March 1956,” March 5, 1956, RGANI Fond
5, Opis 28, Delo 412, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive,
http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/120797.
155
James F. Person, trans., “Memorandum of
Conversation with the DPRK Vice Premier of the Cabinet of Ministers and Member
of the KWP CC Presidium, Pak Chang-Ok,” March 12, 1956, RGANI Fond 5, Opis 28,
Delo 410, Listy 73- 85, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive,
http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/111637.
An official discussion of the
personality cult and its relationship to the WPK ensued at the 3rd
Congress of the WPK in late April. In
his report, Kim Il Sung affirmed the universality and significance of the
CPSU’s recent analyses. Applying the
personality cult issue to the WPK,
Kim said that a personality cult had indeed
existed, but it was the cult of the previously purged
“factionalists,” such as Pak Hŏn-yŏng. Being obsessed with individuals, Kim claimed,
these factionalists attempted to divide the party, proclaiming loyalty to
factional individuals instead of adhering to the collective leadership of the
party.[138] Kim thus shifted the personality cult onto
past factionalists rather than address his own style of rule in the present,
coopting the language of de-Stalinization like he had done the year
before. In what might seem paradoxical,
he used the personality cult issue in order to argue for the necessity of party
unity, that is, to follow the collective leadership of the party, not factional
individuals. He was able to do this
because collective leadership, in reality, meant his leadership adhered to by
the collective of the party. To a
Marxist-Leninist, this did make sense, since the Leninist principle of
democratic centralism dictated unanimity once the majority had collectively
reached a consensus. The collective
ultimately stood above the individual.
Of course, Kim Il Sung and any astute communist leader knew that if an
individual could control the majority of this collective, his person would
essentially be equated with the collective.
In the history of communism, the boundary between collective leadership
and plain dictatorship was rarely a boundary at all.
The Soviets, however, were not too
pleased with Kim’s report. Leonid
Brezhnev, in attendance at the WPK Congress, stated that “the reports and
speeches were not permeated with the spirit of the 20th CPSU
Congress.”[139] This “spirit” was a euphemism for the
ideological authority of the Soviet Union.
Brezhnev pointed out the ubiquity of Kim Il Sung’s personality cult,
from portraits to historical distortions.
The WPK’s denial of ongoing violations of collective leadership, he
contended, “hints of its [the WPK’s] superiority to the CPSU.”[140] For the WPK to say that besides the incident
with the factionalists it had always adhered to collective leadership and
successfully eliminated the personality cult implied a more mature and more
Marxist-Leninist party than the CPSU, since the CPSU was currently dealing with
the elimination of the personality cult and the establishment of collective
leadership. Kim miscalculated.[141] He believed that he could write off the
personality cult as an internal problem of the CPSU. Because conditions within the WPK were
different, it was unnecessary to copy the CPSU, he thought, as long as the WPK
upheld the universal principle of collective leadership and related concepts
pertaining to Soviet orthodoxy. After
all, he effectively employed this strategy in the previous year. As before, Kim did not actually seek to
impugn Soviet ideological leadership.
But his strategy from 1955 could not work the same way as after February
1956, because the CPSU congress forwarded official evaluations concerning the
universality of Marxist-Leninist principles and shortcomings in their
actualization. The CPSU had declared the
personality cult alien to Marxism-Leninism.
Hence, although it depended on one’s point of
view, failure to properly discuss and implement
the CPSU’s evaluations in one’s own party work could be interpreted as defiance of Soviet ideological
leadership.
Within
the upper echelons of the WPK hierarchy, many were equally critical of Kim Il
Sung’s move.
Yi Sang-cho, DPRK ambassador to the USSR, harshly criticized Kim’s
personality cult and conduct during the 3rd Congress in
conversations with Soviet officials, asking them to set Kim straight.[142] He expressed similar opinions to central
committee members and was criticized by followers of Kim for “desiring to
mechanically apply the decisions of the
CPSU Twentieth Congress to the KWP [KWP =
WPK].”[143][144] Those who were on Kim Il Sung’s side utilized
the creative application argument as a rationalization for his course. Again, this argument was orthodox by Soviet
standards, especially since Khrushchev, during the 20th
Congress, affirmed different paths to
socialism, calling for a “creative Marxism.”[145] However, creative application became
heterodox when directed against Soviet ideological leadership or if perceived
as such—creativity did not apply in those cases. WPK members opposing Kim Il Sung therefore
highlighted the supposedly anti-Soviet nature of Kim Il Sung’s course and use
of the creative application argument.
North Korea’s Deputy Prime Minister Ch’oe Ch’ang-ik, for example, told
the Soviet ambassador to the DPRK, Vladimir Ivanov, that the 3rd Congress
“had not been permeated by the spirit of the CPSU Twentieth Congress” and that
the WPK currently minimized all things Soviet, even in the writing of history.[146] Indeed, although no heterodox ideological
tenets were created, North Korea had recently been rewriting its history by
overstating the role of Kim Il Sung and his guerrilla forces during the
colonial period and the liberation of Korea.
For those who opposed Kim, this constituted yet another piece of evidence
they could mobilize to prove anti-Sovietism.
At the time, anti-Sovietism was a powerful indictment. In the minds of Kim’s rivals, if it were to
stick, the Soviets might act against Kim or support someone else.
A
conspiracy led by Yan’an Koreans was underway as Kim Il Sung, in June and July
1956, headed a delegation to the Soviet Union
and Eastern Europe to request material aid.[147] Archival documents suggest that during his
stay in the USSR the Soviets did recommend actions be taken to better address
collective leadership problems inside the WPK.[148][149] Following Kim’s return, a party plenum was
convened at the end of August, which the conspirators hoped to use as a staging
ground for a frontal assault on Kim’s rule.
Yan’an Korean Yun Kong-hŭm, supported by Ch’oe Ch’ang-ik and a few other
malcontents, prepared a harsh speech for the plenum. Yun accused Kim Il Sung of violating
collective leadership and related Leninist party norms. All dissent was silenced, he complained,
while the personality cult shone above all.
As a result, he contended, “genuine unity in the Party ranks” was
absent—factionalism was the order of the day.
Like Kim, Yun advocated party unity, drawing on the same
Marxist-Leninist logic.
He further clarified that the 20th
Congress provided “a deep Marxist-Leninist analysis of the contemporary
international revolutionary movement” and ought to serve as the WPK’s
guide.
Interestingly, he did not deny the need for a
creative application of the 20th Congress’ decisions. His argument was that not even a creative
application had taken place. In other
words, Yun was trying hard to prove Kim Il Sung and his allies’ anti-Sovietism,
claiming that they constituted a small clique “betraying Marxism-Leninism” and
splitting the party.[150]
During Kim
Il Sung’s report to the August plenum, he reviewed the results of the recent
tour and tried to preempt the arguments of his opponents. Like Yun, he acknowledged the international
significance of the 20th Congress and its “deep Marxist-Leninist
analysis” of the world communist movement.
According to Kim, the CPSU “gave a deeply substantiated Marxist-Leninist
explanation of a number of pressing theoretical and political issues of modern
times, in particular the subjective and objective causes and conditions which
gave rise to the cult of personality.”
The 20th Congress’ evaluation of the personality cult, he
continued, “serves as a great lesson and example for the Marxist-Leninist
Parties of all the countries of the world,” including the WPK. He declared that after the 20th
Congress, the WPK also dealt with the personality cult and put forth all effort
to eliminate the problem, editing history textbooks accordingly. Not even this was enough, Kim argued, and the
WPK should continue to learn from the CPSU, eliminate all traces of the
personality cult, and further establish collective leadership. Once again, he distanced his leadership from
the personality cult, providing no real self-criticism. Still, in contrast to the 3rd WPK
Congress, he admitted that the personality cult had not yet disappeared in the
WPK. He openly stated that the WPK
remained “young” and had much to learn, thus avoiding the error of his previous
formulation.[151]
Kim’s report
is illustrative of a person who made considerable effort to substantiate his
loyalty to Soviet ideological leadership without endangering his rule. His arguments were similar to those of Yun,
using the same concepts and logic, but mobilizing them toward different
ends. Kim and his opponents were engaged
in a debate within a shared intellectual tradition, Marxism-Leninism. The fact that Kim used the same language as
Yun evidences the importance of Marxism-Leninism in leadership rationalization
and in the waging of factional struggles.
Both even called for an end to dogmatism and a creative application of
Soviet Marxism-Leninism. Whereas Yun
meant party members should learn more from the Soviet Union and cease the
mechanical copying of Stalin’s leadership style, Kim meant one should learn
from but not ape the current Soviet
leadership’s party work. Both arguments
made Marxist-Leninist sense and neither disagreed with the Marxist-Leninist
nature of the other’s argument. Kim also
thought the WPK should learn from the Soviet Union and Yun, too, believed in a
creative application rather than an aping of Soviet experience. The core of the disagreement rested in the
aim of MarxistLeninist arguments, one trying to solidify the current regime,
the other trying to reform it.
The
factional struggles of 1955 and 1956 were not simply struggles between
nationalists and internationalists. They
were fundamentally Marxist-Leninist struggles.
Scalapino and Lee assert that in 1955 nationalism became an “intra-party
weapon.”[152] Other scholars similarly emphasize Kim Il
Sung’s nationalism in these conflicts.
But this is only true insofar as nationalism and Marxism-Leninism were
not mutually exclusive. It does not
suggest a replacement of Marxism-Leninism with nationalism. Nationalism, yes, but a nationalism mediated
by Marxism-Leninism. Nationalism and
internationalism, nationalism and MarxismLeninism were not polar opposites. To make a nationalist claim without a
mediation by Marxism-Leninism would have constituted a claim devoid of reason
and immediately exposed to attack the person making the claim. Hence, Kim consciously framed his arguments
within the boundaries of Marxism-Leninism, being careful not to step outside of
Soviet orthodoxy. This infused his words
with force, not just vis-à-vis WPK members but also in relation to the
Soviets. The power of Marxist-Leninist
arguments is confirmed by Kim loyalists’ attempts to silence these arguments
during August plenum. Kim Il Sung
interrupted Yun’s speech while Kim’s allies hurled invectives toward him,
labeling Yun’s accusations as lies.
Kim’s allies, in their speeches, reiterated the correctness of the
party’s Marxist-Leninist path.[153] The opposition’s attack failed as the large
majority of central committee members supported Kim Il Sung. Yun and others found themselves expelled from
the party, thenceforth to be known collectively as the “anti-party group.”
The Soviets’ initial reaction to the
purges was rather passive. Fortunately
for Kim, the Soviets focused on the domestic implications of his moves. Ambassador Ivanov evaluated the conflict
during the August plenum as “a domestic process” that was “not stimulated by
any outside factors, Soviet or Chinese.”[154] Facing a reluctant Soviet leadership, the
victims of the purge toiled to elicit a Soviet and Chinese intervention. Yun and his fellow conspirators went so far
as to suggest to the Chinese a removal of Kim Il Sung, calling him a traitor to
the revolution. Even worse, they
suggested criticizing his mistakes during the Korean War, including his
disastrous decision to invade the South.[155] If such a criticism would occur, it would
publicize the fact that it was he, not the South or the Americans, who had
started the war. Yi Sang-cho, too,
actively lobbied the Soviets and Chinese to intervene in the DPRK. Visiting the CPSU CC department dealing with
fraternal parties, Yi tried to make his case but was reminded of the
WPK’s sovereignty and the CPSU’s position of
non-interference.[156] While the Soviets and Chinese were clearly
reluctant to intervene, the lobbying of the purge victims painted a picture of
party disunity and a potential domestic crisis.
One can only imagine, for example, the impact an indictment of Kim Il
Sung as the aggressor during the Korean War would have had. Not only would such a publicization result in
a domestic and inter-Korean legitimacy crisis but also cause damage to the
international reputation of all communist regimes. Party disunity and severe repressive measures
such as executions would similarly hurt the image of the DPRK and the world
communist movement.
In a
conversation between Anastas Mikoyan, one of the USSR’s highest-ranking
statesmen, and Mao Zedong on September 18, both expressed fear of a WPK
collapse. This fear stemmed from Kim’s
repressive methods, complaints by his rivals, and lack of information
concerning the internal situation in the DPRK.
Mikoyan and Mao stressed that they did not intend to topple Kim but make
him realize that the party was on the verge of collapse. Mao thus stated: “We need to tell Kim Il
Sung: your method of knocking [people] down cannot go on, it will only sharpen
the contradictions within the party. Today you may have knocked them down, but
maybe tomorrow they will still overthrow you.”
In Mao’s view, a large portion of WPK CC was unhappy with the situation
and desired an intervention. Mikoyan
drew direct parallels to the recent crisis in Hungary, where the 20th
Congress had a particularly devastating effect for the country’s Stalinist
ruler, Rákosi. Social discontent
increased while the party was internally split, causing the Soviets, led by
Mikoyan, to intervene and recommend that Rákosi—who faced much more opposition
than Kim—resign, lest the party disintegrate completely and lose its last iota
of legitimacy. Mikoyan and Mao knew that
opposition against a leading Stalinist could easily descend into opposition
against communist rule. And thus Mikoyan
believed he had saved communist rule in Hungary by ensuring party unity, something
he could also do for North Korea.[157] Little did he know that the Hungarian
situation was about to escalate.
Thinking their evaluation of the WPK correct, Mikoyan and Mao drew up
plans for an intervention.
It
appears the decision to intervene did not stem from a suspected anti-Sovietism
of Kim
Il Sung.
Although the Soviets certainly recognized Kim’s ideological errors, they
did not read the purge as anti-Soviet or as challenging the ideological
leadership of the Soviet Union.
Instead, they worried about the WPK’s unity
and the DPRK’s stability. To be sure,
Kim Il Sung expressed concern that the Soviets would erroneously assume his
actions were anti-Soviet, that is, nationalist.[158] Yet according to archival materials, the
Soviets did not seem overly concerned about a potential anti-Soviet
nationalism, though they were fully aware of certain nationalistic
tendencies. Moreover, incidentally, Kim
also worried about party unity. As
expressed by
Ivanov, seeing the unrest in Poland and the
Polish leadership’s wide dissemination of the personality cult issue, Kim
thought the personality cult “ought to be eliminated gradually, without
involving the entire Party in this matter.”
According to Ivanov, Moscow advised Kim that party unity would be
strengthened if Kim admitted his own mistakes, because his opponents would then
reconcile themselves satisfied. He
therefore lamented Kim’s failure to heed Moscow’s recommendations.175 Although Kim and Moscow had divergent ideas
about how to achieve party unity, their aim was the same.
North Korea was not the only people’s
democracy attempting to suppress the debate surrounding the personality
cult. East Germany’s Ulbricht made
similar attempts. When the issue of his
own cult arose, Ulbricht shifted attention away from his person. An April 29 SED party newspaper article
entitled “The Leninist Unity of Our Party,” while admitting the need to combat
the personality cult, assessed the issue as “no longer a question of remarkable
importance,” since the SED had dealt with the problem in the past. The fight against the personality cult, the
article reads, should “not debase the love, respect, and adoration [Verehrung] that the leaders of the
workers [Arbeiterführer] enjoy with
us.” Eliminating the personality cult
did not mean that “one no longer needs to listen to the leaders [Führer].” Although the article was still more
conciliatory and open than Kim Il Sung in admitting mistakes, many formulations
sounded almost identical to their North Korean counterparts. The
5446, Opis 98, Delo 721, Listy 153-164,
History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive,
https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/120170.
175 Ibid.
article even stated that in regard to the
personality cult debate “incorrect are those party members who . . . conclude
that we should in the same way, i.e., in a cookie-cutter mechanical sense,
conduct a copying of the measures taken by fraternal parties onto our
conditions.”[159] These were the kind of methods used to divert
attention away from Ulbricht’s personality cult.[160][161] Like Kim Il Sung, he faced internal party
opposition over the same issue and, like Kim Il Sung, he attempted to consolidate
his power in the name of party unity.[162]
On September 19, Peng Dehuai and Mikoyan
kicked off the Sino-Soviet intervention in a meeting with Kim Il Sung. They assured him of their friendly
intentions, stressing the need for party unity, and advised to undo the August
purge at a special plenum. Kim was
hesitant and only reluctantly agreed.
The next day Kim convened an assembly of the Presidium, where he
announced that the purge be reevaluated at a new plenum.[163] In conversations with the Soviets leading up
to the plenum, Kim assumed a submissive posture, admitting, for example, the
WPK’s dearth of experience and resultant
imitation of the CPSU’s Stalin cult.[164] Adopting the measures recommended by Peng and
Mikoyan, a resolution was issued at a WPK plenum on September 23. According to the resolution, Yun Kong-hŭm,
Ch’oe Ch’ang-ik, and others, while guilty, had received too severe a
punishment. A cementing of the
“ideological unity in the
Party,” the resolution suggested, required
clemency, reeducation, open debate, and elimination of bureaucratic methods.[165]
Yet plenum
discussions, attended by Peng and Mikoyan, in no way suggested a volteface,
despite the rehabilitation of purge victims.
Almost all in attendance supported Kim Il Sung, merely calling for a few
corrections. Like the resolution, plenum
speeches condemned the factionalism of the previously purged party members
while simultaneously calling for leniency and reeducation in the name of party
unity. Some of the speakers even
condemned Yun and others’ self-serving use of the personality cult issue and
the resultant damage inflicted upon the party.
One of them exclaimed: “The factionalists in our Party are against Kim
Il Sung being at the head of the Party, they want to tear him away from the
people so that the people do not love the leaders.” Pak Hun-il was the only exception, for he
strongly criticized the recent work of the party and Kim’s close allies. His criticisms, however, were overwhelmingly
rejected by other attendees.[166] Whether through intimidation or sincere
consensus, the WPK CC seemed unified around Kim Il Sung.
Since the
Soviets primarily cared about a stable North Korea and a unified party, and
since Kim Il Sung adhered to Soviet ideological leadership, they did not force
him to conduct a thorough criticism of his personality cult, perhaps sharing
Kim Il Sung’s fear that such an action could precipitate a regime crisis. Not surprisingly, Yi Sang-cho, still in Moscow,
composed a letter lambasting the plenum’s failure to sufficiently address Kim’s
personality cult and the various historical distortions surrounding it. He noted that Kim’s power had not been
diluted by the plenum while his allies continued to retain their
positions. Yi was clearly frustrated,
not just by the actions of the WPK leadership but also by the laxness of the
Soviets and Chinese. In an effort to
convince the two giants to further pressure Kim Il Sung, he claimed that Kim
had only a
“small number of supporters.”183 But as the plenum had clearly shown, Kim
enjoyed considerable support. By
December, the Soviets analyzed positively the situation in the DPRK, in no
small part due to the contrasting turmoil that had raged in Hungary from October
to
November.
They took note of the fact that unlike in other communist-led states the
North Korean intelligentsia and general population were rather passive and not
as critical of party policies.184
Despite South Korean attempts to subvert North Korea by encouraging the
people to follow in the footsteps of the Hungarian revolutionaries, North
Koreans remained mostly loyal to the regime.185 Kim undoubtedly felt vindicated by the events
in Hungary. In April 1957, Kim Il
Sung told the new Soviet ambassador Alexander
Puzanov that the WPK was fortunate to have
183
Gary Goldberg, trans., “Letter from Ri
Sang-Jo to the Central Committee of the Korean Workers Party,” October 5, 1956,
RGANI, Fond 5, Opis 28, Delo 410, Listy 233-295, History and Public Policy
Program Digital Archive,
http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/114152.
184
Maya Latynski, trans., “Notes from a
Conversation between the 1st Secretary of the PRL Embassy in the DPRK and
Comrade Samsonov, 1st Secretary of the Embassy of the USSR on 20.XII.1956,”
December 24, 1956, Polish Foreign Ministry Archive, History and Public Policy
Program Digital Archive,
http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/110547. Gary Goldberg, trans., “Communist Party of
the Soviet Union Central Committee Report on the Situation in the Korean
Workers’ Party and the Democratic People’s
Republic of Korea,” December 28, 1956, RGANI,
Fond 5, Opis 28, Delo 486, Listi 1-17, History and Public Policy Program
Digital Archive, https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/114165.
Nevertheless, as Lankov points out,
intellectual dissatisfaction resulting from de-Stalinization was a concern for
the regime, which is one reason why Kim Il Sung did not favor a wide discussion
of the personality cult. Armstrong
further notes that discontent did exist among students and even the general
population. See: Lankov, Crisis in North Korea, 146. And: Armstrong, Tyranny of the Weak, 100–101.
185
Goldberg, “Communist Party of the Soviet
Union Central Committee Report on the Situation in the Korean Workers’ Party
and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.”
exposed the “anti-party group” prior to the
“counterrevolution” in Hungary, since otherwise the
“factionalists” might have used the Hungarian
case as a rallying banner to subvert the regime. He further expressed that he had indeed been
correct to deal with the issue of the personality cult in a careful, measured
manner.[167] Kim thus supported the USSR’s military
intervention in Hungary, and the Soviets, for their part, came to see the
denunciation of the “anti-party group” as a positive phenomenon and appreciated
the WPK’s unity around Kim.[168]
As 1956 drew to a close, Kim Il Sung had
successfully dealt with the brunt of the 20th
CPSU Congress. Yet this accomplishment did not involve an
ideological reversal.
Ideologically, North Korea remained in Soviet
territory. Because in 1956 Kim chose to
stay in line with Soviet ideological leadership, he had no choice but to rely
on Soviet orthodoxy when waging factional battles. Both Kim and his opposition utilized
arguments grounded in the Soviet version of Marxism-Leninism. The creative application argument,
reinvigorated and supported by Khrushchev, constituted an important pillar of
these debates. However, Kim Il Sung
walked a fine line whenever he mobilized the creative application
argument. While the argument was
orthodox, the aim toward which it was mobilized could be interpreted as
heterodox, depending on the specific situation, particularly if it challenged
the ideological authority of the Soviet
Union.
Something might be orthodox one day but heterodox the next. Hence the Soviets, after
Hungary, suddenly became rather accepting of
Kim’s creative approach to dealing with the personality cult in the DPRK.[169] They even commended the WPK’s elimination of
“dogmatism in ideological work and the practice of mechanically borrowing
everything Soviet to [sic]
Korean practice,” the precise argument Kim Il
Sung had made in December 1955.[170]
Nevertheless, resulting from his experiences
in 1956 and subsequent events, especially the SinoSoviet conflict, Kim
gradually realized Soviet ideological leadership would only continue to
threaten his rule.
When and Why North Korea Finally Rejected
Soviet Ideological Leadership
North Korea’s rejection of Soviet
ideological leadership was not predestined.
Only through a convergence of factors did Kim Il Sung proclaim charyŏk kaengsaeng (self-reliance) in
December 1961 and thereby usher in a new period in the history of North Korean
ideology. Although North Korea forwarded
its own unique domestic ideological positions already in the years leading up
to this watershed, Kim deliberately attempted to remain within the framework of
Soviet orthodoxy, which, due to reasons detailed here, became increasingly
difficult to do. While Khrushchev promoted the creative application of
Marxism-Leninism among the people’s democracies, he also circumscribed the
limits of this creativity. By the end of
1956, according to Brzezinski, “ideological and institutional diversity thus
came to characterize the once monolithic Soviet bloc.”[171] Nevertheless, no creativity was permitted in
regard to whatever altered the universality of Marxism-Leninism as interpreted
by the CPSU. One could creatively apply
that universality but not contest or change it.
When a CPSU congress occurred, it issued statements concerning the
universality of Marxist-Leninist tenets in relation to the world
situation. Thus, the 20th
Congress forwarded a new analysis of the current epoch, and only the CPSU, as
the most experienced communist party and foremost ideological leader, was
supposed to analyze the current epoch on a global scale. Because this analysis was of a universal
nature, discussing the current stage of world history and the historically
mandated tasks of communist parties from around the globe, Khrushchev was not
inclined to tolerate any deviation.
According to the new analysis forwarded at the 20th Congress,
peaceful coexistence meant peaceful economic competition with the capitalist
world. Although peaceful coexistence,
before the 20th Congress, only referred to general principles of
interstate relations with non-hostile countries, especially postcolonial ones,
it now became a concept integral to the characterization of the current epoch,
thus mandatory for each party to follow.[172] Imperialism was no longer seen as the
dominant force in the world, as socialism had become a powerful global
system. Peaceful economic competition
would in the end prove socialism’s superiority and only further solidify the
necessary course of history. In order to
accomplish this inevitability, peace would have to be maintained and a nuclear
war avoided at all costs. While
imperialism would fight for its life through the initiation of desperate
aggressive acts, if socialist states worked to prevent war, imperialism would
die and the necessary course of history unfold itself. Emphasis was thus placed on economic
development, cooperation, and coordination (through an international division
of labor) between socialist states, as epitomized by Comecon (Council for
Mutual Economic Assistance).[173] Any true proletarian internationalist
concerned about the well-being of the world revolution was to follow this
line. Hence, because it contested the
Soviet leadership role in the world communist movement, Khrushchev considered
heterodox any denial of peaceful coexistence’s necessity—creativity did not
apply. Although Khrushchev allowed for a
creative application of the universal Marxist-Leninist principle of peaceful
coexistence to suit a country’s domestic circumstances, it was within his
purview to determine whether or not a particular domestic line contravened the
universality of Marxism-Leninism.
The North Korean leadership, including
Kim Il Sung, was not intrinsically inimical to peaceful coexistence and the
entailing promotion of an economic division of labor among socialist
states. In 1956, the main ideological
conflict instead revolved around the personality cult. Kim accepted the Soviet analysis of the
current epoch, peaceful coexistence, and, following his tour of Eastern Europe,
an international division of labor.[174] Having completed the ThreeYear Plan
(1953-1955/56), North Korea commenced the first Five-Year Plan in 1957. While the Third Congress of the WPK did
suggest a tendency toward economic independence, the new plan ultimately
focused on a more targeted economic development strategy in accordance with the
advice of the Soviets and the economic capabilities of other socialist states.194
One should
also not exaggerate the heterodoxy of autarky.
Indeed, autarky was already present in the thought of Lenin and
Stalin. Economic independence,
self-reliance, and selfsufficiency were therefore not necessarily heterodox.195 As early as 1920, Lenin drew attention to
imperialist powers’ economic exploitation of seemingly sovereign states,
suggesting that political independence is meaningless without economic
self-determination, a principle that Kim Il Sung frequently mirrored in the
1960s.196 Under Stalin, the
USSR experienced a phase of autarky in the 1930s and his notion of “socialism
in one country” implied the existence of a national economy as an autonomous
unit in need of protection. Economic
independence was also important for the people’s democracies. For example, during Stalin’s time, East
Germans frequently talked about self-reliance and constructing the economy “by
one’s own strength.”197
In the context of the propaganda war against
West Germany, it was important to demonstrate the
GDR’s economic independence and the benefits
such independence brought to the well-being of the masses by being free from
the crises of interdependent capitalist economies.198 The North
Koreans, too, had been talking about relying
on “one’s own strength” (charyŏk) for
a long time,
the Embassy of the USSR on 11.III.1957,”
November 3, 1957, Polish Foreign Ministry Archive, History and Public Policy
Program Digital Archive,
http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/111390.
195 I am loath
to draw hard-and-fast distinctions between terms such as autarky, economic
independence, and selfreliance. Since
North Korea had not yet developed a specific ideological platform of economic
self-reliance, I am discussing the notion of economic independence in a broad
way.
196 Lenin,
“Preliminary Draft Theses on the National and the Colonial Questions,” 150.
197 The German
expression for “by one’s own strength” was “aus
eigener Kraft,” which is how the East Germans also translated North Korea’s
charyŏk kaengsaeng. See: Socialist Unity Party of Germany, “Stenographic
Record of the Third Party Congress of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany,
July 20-24, 1950,” 5, 8, 88.
198 Central
Committee of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, “Der falsche Weg [The Wrong
Path],” Neues
Deutschland, July 9,
1949, 4.
Central Committee of the Socialist Unity
Party of Germany, “Nur aus eigener Kraft [Only by Our Own Strength],”
Neues
Deutschland,
September 6, 1949, 2.
Central Committee of the Socialist Unity
Party of Germany, “Nationale Selbständigkeit bedeutet Hebung des
Lebensstandards [National Self-Reliance Means a Raising of the Standard of
Living],” Neues Deutschland, October
7, 1949, 5.
even during the Korean War, stressing the
incorrectness of dependence on foreign aid.[175] In
Marxist-Leninist propaganda, it was
considered essential to emphasize mastership of one’s own national revolution,
in the hopes of raising the creative zeal of the masses. Hence, despite Khrushchev’s call for an
international division of labor, the notion that a socialist nation should be
the master of its economy and develop trade relations on the basis of its own
national interest remained valid in principle.
After all, one of Khrushchev’s criticisms of Stalin was his chauvinist
approach to foreign relations.[176] Khrushchev strongly reaffirmed the people’s
democracies’ economic independence in an official Soviet government declaration
on October 30, 1956: “The Soviet government is prepared to discuss together
with the governments of other socialist states measures ensuring further
development and strengthening of economic ties among the socialist countries in
order to remove any possibility of violation of the principles of national
sovereignty, mutual benefit and equality in economic relations.” The declaration additionally offered to
socialist states the removal of Soviet advisers as a further step toward the
solidification of self-determination in economic affairs.[177] Indeed, as expressed by Khrushchev during the
20th Congress of the CPSU, in Leninist thought the establishment of
an “independent national economy” is of particular importance for postcolonial
states that had achieved political independence, given the close
interconnection between national and class struggle.[178] North Korea, though a socialist state, also
represented a postcolonial nation, making economic independence even more of a
necessity.
When the
Soviets expressed concern over North Korea’s autarkic approach after the 3rd
WPK Congress, they worried more about the implications of wrong economic
policies than a defiance of Soviet ideological authority. If the DPRK produced too wide an array of
goods, instead of importing and exporting strategically, its economic growth
would be hampered, particularly due to the primitive state of the North Korean
economy. Plus, besides fearing damage to
the international reputation of communism if economic failure occurred in North
Korea, the Soviets, who had poured tremendous
resources into the DPRK’s economy, did not wish to see their previous aid go to
waste. In principle, the Soviets did not
oppose self-reliance, but thought that in the North Korean case self-reliance
ought to be de-emphasized.
There are
several reasons for North Korea’s acceptance of peaceful coexistence and an
international division of labor at this time.
First, the North Korean leadership did not yet have real cause to regard
the new Soviet analysis as a threat and may not even have fully understood its
future implications. As long as North
Korea retained wiggle room in the creative application of peaceful coexistence
to its own national conditions, as long as the Soviets did not interfere too
much in the making of its own foreign and economic policy, there was no
conflict. Only time could tell if such a
conflict would arise. Second, peaceful
coexistence and the notion of peaceful economic competition between socialism
and capitalism were nothing new. For
instance, a 1950 article in the WPK’s theoretical organ stated that “the
imperialists fear peaceful economic competition with socialism” and therefore
commit aggressive military actions.[179] Furthermore, during Stalin’s time, the
communist world was referred to as the “peace camp.” Communists never viewed war and peace as
absolutes. While of course advocating
peace and describing imperialism as inherently warlike, the Soviets never ruled
out military force against their class enemies.
Since Khrushchev was merely redirecting old concepts, the North Koreans,
in the beginning, probably thought of the new line as just another propaganda
strategy vis-à-vis the West. They most
likely never imagined the possibility of a Soviet Union cowering before
imperialist aggression. Third, China at
this point was ideologically in tune with the Soviet Union and recognized the
validity of the 20th Congress’ analysis.[180] The Sino-Soviet intervention in North Korea
was a perfect illustration of this.
There was no reason for North Korea to question the validity of
something so universally accepted by communists, especially since following
Soviet ideological leadership had been standard
practice for years.
At the end
of 1956 and in the course of 1957, it was Polish leadership that caused anxiety
in the upper ranks of the CPSU. The
Polish October of 1956 and the rise of Władysław
Gomułka led to a Polish party insistent on
its sovereignty and a special Polish path to socialism, pushing the boundaries
of permissible creative application. In
November 1957, the Soviets thus convened a conference of the world’s communist
and workers’ parties in Moscow (henceforth
“1957 Moscow Conference”) to deal with the
issue of ideological diversity and reaffirm the CPSU’s ideological
leadership. Due to unanimous support
among other parties for an acknowledgment of the USSR’s leading role,
especially by Mao Zedong, Gomułka, in attendance, was pushed into accepting the
formulation of “the invincible camp of Socialist countries headed by the Soviet
Union,” despite his resistance.[181] Nevertheless, the declaration issued by the
conference, which thenceforth became a common ideological platform for communist
parties, including the WPK, carved in stone the creative application of
MarxismLeninism:
Marxism-Leninism calls for a creative
application of the general principles of the Socialist revolution and Socialist
construction depending on the concrete conditions of each country, and rejects
mechanical imitation of the policies and tactics of the Communist parties of
other countries.
Lenin repeatedly called attention to
the necessity of correctly applying the basic principles of communism, in
keeping with the specific features of the nation, of the national state
concerned. Disregard of national peculiarities by the proletarian party
inevitably leads to its divorce from reality, from the masses, and is bound to
prejudice the cause of socialism and, conversely, exaggeration of the role of
these peculiarities or departure, under the pretext of national peculiarities,
from the universal Marxist-Leninist truth on the Socialist revolution and
Socialist construction is just as harmful to the Socialist cause.[182]
The latter reservation was aimed at those who
considered using the creative application argument to challenge Soviet
ideological leadership by proclaiming their own universal truths. It also served to delineate the boundaries of
diversity. Indeed, the conference
declared revisionism (i.e., too much liberalization) the chief ideological
threat of the times, specifically naming dogmatism (i.e., too much Stalinism)
as less a danger. Setting ideological
boundaries against revisionism, the declaration insisted on the universal
validity and necessity of proletarian dictatorship, democratic centralism,
proletarian internationalism, a principled stand against external
imperialist pressure, and internal
ideological vigilance against bourgeois influence during the construction of
socialism.[183] Kim Il Sung must have been pleased by these
developments and the restrictions placed upon Polish-style socialism. Soviet ideological leadership served him well
if it affirmed the universality of principles that buttressed his rule. In his speech to the conference,
Mikhail Suslov, the Soviet’s top ideologue,
included as a universal principle the old Stalinist axiom according to which
the class struggle escalates in the period of transition from capitalism to
socialism, necessitating a vigilant ideological struggle.208 Leading communists such as Kim Il Sung found
this principle rather useful, since it provided a rationalization for
repression and ideological control.
Another positive aspect for Kim was the conference’s strong affirmation
of sovereignty and creative application.
Suslov spared no praise for China’s contribution to the storehouse of
Marxism-Leninism in its unique approach to the construction of socialism.[184] In this light, Suslov’s speech and the
declaration also avowed socialist states’ “complete equality, respect for
territorial integrity, state independence and sovereignty and non-interference
in one another's affairs,” including in the establishment of economic
relations.[185] According to Suslov, the USSR “fights against
all forms of great power chauvinism in our relations to other socialist
countries. It cannot be said that Soviet
experiences are somehow being forced upon other countries.”[186] All this was good news for Kim Il Sung. For the moment, a beneficial ideological
unity centered on the Soviet Union seemed possible.
Because Khrushchev encouraged creative
application and tended toward ideological harmony with China, North Korea was
able to move rather freely in the formulation of its own policies without
sparking Soviet ire. During the 1957
Moscow Conference, the Soviets informed the North Korean delegation that it
appreciated Kim Il Sung’s previous actions to combat factionalism inside the
WPK.[187] In March 1958, Kim Il Sung therefore felt
confident to solidify his previous purges.
The decisions of the Moscow Conference played no small part in this
ousting of remaining factional rivals.
Since the conference had accentuated the menace of revisionism, they
were now designated as “revisionists” who “denied the leading role of the
party.” Furthermore, in accordance with
the conference’s declaration concerning the universality of proletarian
dictatorship, Kim claimed the anti-party group opposed this dictatorship.[188] In short, Kim painted them as traitors to
Marxism-Leninism who defied the ideological leadership of the Soviet
Union. While dealing with internal party
affairs, Kim also displayed more initiative in the economic sphere. In the summer of 1958, he launched the
so-called Ch’ŏllima
Movement, an input-driven production campaign
inspired by—though Pyongyang denied this—
China’s Great Leap Forward. Like China, Kim hoped to leap forward and
fulfill the Five-Year Plan ahead of schedule by regimenting people into various
unpaid work initiatives.[189] As the Sino-Soviet rift escalated, Moscow
eventually declared as heterodox such a leap-like mode of economic
development. Yet in 1958 and 59, this
was not the case. According to Balazs
Szalontai, the people’s democracies of
Europe, too, supported China’s Great Leap Forward and experimented with similar
methods in those years.[190] Indeed, the East German press struck
laudatory notes in articles about the Great Leap.[191] At the same time, East German policy
advocated the mobilization and competition of work brigades in order to effect
a “leap-like” (sprunghaft) production
that would “throw over board the old methods of linear and conventional
development.”[192] For the moment, China represented a paragon
of Marxism-
Leninism’s creative application, a situation
which, to Pyongyang’s detriment, was about to change.
Notwithstanding
the mutually amicable stances of Moscow and Beijing during the 21st
CPSU Congress in January and February 1959,
tensions began to mount. As it happened,
the 21st Congress featured no condemnation of the personality cult
and focused on revisionism instead of dogmatism.[193] Mao, who was rediscovering his love for
Stalin, approved of this, but, due to internal CCP struggles, Mao’s personal
ambitions and convictions, as well as foreign policy conflicts with the
Soviets, an ideological clash grew increasingly imminent in the course of 1959.[194] An open confrontation finally crystallized on
April 16, 1960 with China’s release of a polemical article entitled “Long Live
Leninism!” In it the Chinese indirectly
challenged, foregoing an explicit association of the Soviet Union with the
ideological errors of revisionists,
Khrushchev’s analysis of the current epoch
and hence Soviet ideological leadership.
They rejected the Soviet position that peaceful coexistence constitutes
a form of class struggle and the defining mark of the current epoch, contending
that peaceful coexistence between socialism and capitalism is no guarantee for
a victorious revolution in countries still attempting to overthrow the
bourgeois yoke. Instead, the specific
class contradictions endemic to a specific nation determine the course of that
revolution and the strategy, whether violent or peaceful, which the local
proletariat must adopt.[195] As stated by the article, “The struggle for
peace and the struggle for socialism are two different kinds of struggle,”
struggles that Khrushchev’s concept of peaceful coexistence attempted to
connect. To assume that peaceful
coexistence between socialism and capitalism would automatically result in
successful local revolutions seeking to establish a socialist system, the
article maintained, was fallacious, especially in regard to the national
liberation movements of oppressed nations.[196] By itself, peaceful coexistence could not
move history forward and cause capitalism’s collapse.
It is not
quite correct to say, as some scholars do, that Mao rejected peaceful
coexistence.[197] Since the concept originated with Lenin, the
polemic accepted peaceful coexistence, but only as a tactical stance in the
international arena, not as fundamental to the definition of the epoch or
applicable in relation to one’s local bourgeoisie and the imperialist
subjugators of one’s nation. The present
epoch, the article argued, had not changed since the time of Lenin—despite the
dominance of socialism over capitalism—and was still, plain and simply, “the
epoch of imperialism and proletarian revolution,” i.e., the epoch of “struggle
between socialism and capitalism.” Socialism
had almost won, the epoch was nearing its end, just not quite yet. Accordingly, because it neither represented
the epoch nor a form of class struggle, peaceful coexistence was not a binding
position for all countries, even socialist ones. Local communists would have to act in
correspondence with the local conditions or, as Mao liked to say,
“contradictions.”[198] The polemic therefore symbolized more than a
quarrel over policy—it was a matter of fundamental Marxist-Leninist tenets and
an assault on the USSR’s ideological authority.
Events
subsequently spiraled out of control.
During the 3rd Party Congress of the
Romanian Workers’ Party (RWP) in June,
Khrushchev launched a counterattack during meetings
of party representatives, rallying around his
banner fraternal parties to help criticize the Chinese representatives. Todor Zhivkov, First Secretary of the
Bulgarian Communist Party, derided the
Chinese characterization of the current
epoch, calling it a form of “dogmatism” that is unwilling to consider the
changed global circumstances. He further
condemned the Great Leap Forward as a violation of “socialist planned economy”
while East Germany’s Walter Ulbricht changed his previously positive opinion of
China’s economic methods to a negative one.[199] Finally, a hottempered Khrushchev spoke. He chastised the Chinese refusal to accept
the objective necessity of peaceful coexistence in the present era, comparing
the CCP to a pregnant girl unwilling to grow up and be a mother despite the
inevitability of childbirth: “It [the child] is going to come, whether she
wants it or not.”[200] The meetings ended with the adoption of a
communique, according to which an international conference similar to 1957
would be convened in November. As was
the case with regard to the Polish leadership in 1957, through this conference
and its adoption of a common platform, Khrushchev hoped to reassert his
ideological leadership. He knew that
almost every party would adopt his views at such a conference, given the USSR’s
clout, while the Chinese positions would be pushed into the background.
To the
dismay of many attendees from non-socialist countries, the conference publicized
and concretized the Sino-Soviet ideological differences. As the representatives drew up a draft for a
joint statement, the Chinese side insisted on several revisions. Perhaps the most important revision desired
by the CCP concerned the tension between Soviet ideological leadership and
national sovereignty. The draft
attempted to curtail China’s contestation of Khrushchev’s ideological authority
by applying the principle of democratic centralism to the world communist
movement. If adopted, the CCP would have
to adhere to the majority in the communist camp, lest it be denounced as
factionalist. Since the Soviets enjoyed
majority support, this would effectively imply Chinese submission. The CCP delegation therefore opposed any
inclusion of a discussion about an international factionalism. They also objected to any formulation that
suggested the universal applicability of the decisions of the 20th
and 21st Congress of the CPSU, arguing that each party must choose
for itself what and what not to adopt.
To force a universal applicability is to reject the principle of
equality enshrined in the 1957 Moscow Declaration, they averred.[201] The Bulgarian delegation responded with a
denunciation of China’s “Sinification of Marxism” as a misuse of the creative application
theorem in order to foster an anti-Soviet nationalism. Whereas the Chinese believed that the Soviets
committed the crime of nationalism, in the form of national (i.e., big power)
chauvinism, by forcing fraternal parties to follow its decisions and thereby
contravene proletarian internationalism, the Soviets and their allies held that
using the creative application argument to reject Soviet universality
constitutes a case of nationalism and a violation of proletarian
internationalism. In the words of the
Bulgarian delegate: “Our great teacher Georgi Dimitrov repeatedly stressed that
one’s attitude toward the CPSU, toward the Soviet Union, is the most important
separating line between true internationalism and all shades of nationalism.”[202] The Soviet Union’s version of proletarian
internationalism represented a Soviet-centered internationalism, one which
implied compliance with Soviet judgments concerning Marxism-Leninism’s
universality. In the end, the joint
statement issued by the conference included most of the Soviet positions, but
due to the lobbying of the North Korean, Vietnamese, Albanian, and a few other
representatives, the portion about an international factionalism was
deleted. And while the Chinese,
Albanians, and North Koreans also opposed the statement’s mentioning of the
personality cult, this was ultimately added to the final version, as was the
historical significance of the 20th and 21st CPSU
Congresses, the Soviet
“vanguard” role in the international
communist movement, and the Soviet interpretation of peaceful coexistence.228 It was a temporary victory for the
Soviets. The Chinese—under pressure—and
80 other parties signed the statement.
However, although the tension between Soviet ideological leadership and
national sovereignty, between Soviet universality and creative application, had
been implicit in the international communist movement for a long time, the
Chinese and their opponents had now given it a voice and placed the issue at
the forefront of global ideological debates—Pandora’s box stood open.
Amidst the
chaos, Kim Il Sung initially assumed a centrist yet pro-Soviet position. During the Romanian Congress in June, the
North Korean delegation entreated the two rivals to settle their differences,
reminding both that their quarrel weakens North Korea’s position vis-àvis South
Korea: “We love the Soviet Union, we love the Chinese Communist Party, we love
and respect them as fraternal parties.
Both parties, like others as well, help us and are our older
brothers. The present disagreements put
us in a somewhat difficult situation. We
have an armistice, but live in a very tense situation.”229 North Korea assumed a similar stance at the
subsequent conference held in Moscow, where Kim Il spoke strongly in favor of
the CPSU’s vanguard role in the world communist movement while concurrently
hailing the CCP.230 While
228 Central
Committee of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, Department of International
Relations, “Report to the Conference of Representatives from Communist and
Workers’ Parties’ About the Draft Statement Prepared by the Editorial
Committee,” 1960, 49–51, SAPMO-BArch DY 30/11762.
Malgorzata Gnoinska, trans., “Record of
Conversation between Polish Delegation (Gomułka et Al.) and Chinese Communist
Politburo Member Liu Shaoqi, Moscow,” November 29, 1960, Sygnatura XI A15, AAN,
KC PZPR, Warsaw, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive,
http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/117783.
Communist and Workers’ Parties, “Statement of
81 Communist and Workers’ Parties,” 1960,
https://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/sino-soviet-split/other/1960statement.htm.
229 Central
Committee of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, Department of International
Relations,
“Memorandum Concerning the Contents of the
Meetings between the Representatives of the Communist and
Workers’ Parties, Who Came Together for an
Exchange of Opinions on the Occasion of the Third Party Congress of the
Rumanian Workers’ Party in Bucharest,” 125.
230 Central
Committee of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, Department of International
Relations, “Speech by
Kim Il, WPK, at the 4th Plenum of the Moscow
Conference,” November 14, 1960, SAPMO-BArch DY 30/11762.
Pyongyang eschewed taking sides, statements
by the North Korean delegations at both meetings, as well as North Korean
publications, reveal a growing concern about a potential curtailment of
creative applications.[203] The sudden vilification of China’s creative
application, such as the
Great Leap Forward, suggested that
Khrushchev’s tolerance for alternative socialist paths would in the future be
much more circumscribed. Thus, next to
reducing the ideological prestige of the world communist movement, the
Sino-Soviet conflict ultimately limited the permissible range of creative
application and placed North Korea into increasing conflict with Soviet
ideological leadership.
1960 was
also a tumultuous year for South Korea, as social unrest led to Syngman Rhee’s
resignation in April and the subsequent introduction of a parliamentary
system. Responding to this situation,
Pyongyang initially found Soviet orthodoxy useful. Looking at the economic state of affairs in
the South, the North Korean leadership began to draft a Seven-Year Plan that
would focus on raising the DPRK’s standard of living, which resonated with the
Soviet policy of peaceful economic competition.
As stated by Kim Il Sung, the goal was to rapidly improve
North Korean lives in order to “influence the
people of South Korea,” who were now more impressionable due to the country’s
economic and political turmoil.[204] It seemed as if Khrushchev’s prediction of
socialism outproducing and thereby peacefully undoing capitalism might become a
reality on the Korean peninsula.
Peaceful coexistence therefore appeared quite viable a policy for Korea. As Kim uncharacteristically put it, “you don’t
scare the Americans with rifles.”[205] During his trip to the USSR in June, Kim
expressed his fervent support for
Khrushchev’s peaceful coexistence. This was in no large part due to the fact
that shortly prior to his meeting with Khrushchev, who was attempting to
recruit Kim into his camp, the Soviets informed him of derisive comments Mao
had uttered about Kim in November 1956.[206][207] Upon his return home, according an internal
source, Kim, in front of high-ranking DPRK officials, lambasted the CCP’s
factionalism and affirmed Khrushchev’s “principled Leninist positions on the
issue of peaceful coexistence with countries with different socioeconomic
systems.” But, as the same source
informs us, there remained plenty of pro-Chinese elements inside the WPK, which
may help explain why North Korea did not openly denounce the CCP.[208][209] Resistance to a literal, strict
implementation of peaceful coexistence in Korea was considerable, and party
education covered the theoretical aspects of peaceful coexistence only marginally.[210]
Nevertheless, at this point North Korean
policy did reflect an attempt to adhere to Khrushchev’s peaceful coexistence
and implement it locally, as North Korea’s official evaluation of the 1960
Moscow Statement illustrates as well. In
this evaluation, the WPK lauded peaceful coexistence as a universally
applicable line for all socialist states to follow. At the same time, the document highlighted
Khrushchev’s arms reduction proposals toward the United States, which included
an abolition of military bases in foreign territory, as an expression of
peaceful coexistence.[211] Since according to the WPK’s stance the
American military must withdraw from Korea as a precondition for peaceful
unification, its reunification policy now appeared to constitute a manifestation
of peaceful coexistence. Furthermore,
after Kim’s June meeting with Khrushchev and the latter’s suggestion to
advocate the establishment of a confederation between North and South
irrespective of social systems, North Korea adhered to the fraternal advice and
implemented yet another form of peaceful coexistence.[212]
Despite
North Korean attempts to stay within the sphere of Soviet orthodoxy and
ideological leadership, tensions started to accumulate. In the course of 1960, Khrushchev repeatedly
rescheduled a promised visit to the DPRK, until it became obvious that he would
not come.[213] At a time when Kim Il Sung needed the Soviet
Union’s prestige to better influence the volatile situation in the South,
Khrushchev disappointed and seemed to care more about issues directly relevant
to the USSR. Furthermore, fraternal
ambassadors inside North Korea began to analyze North Korean policies more
critically and, in light of the Sino-Soviet split, weighed them against Soviet
orthodoxy. The East Germans, for example,
who had previously supported a leaplike development, now railed against
Pyongyang’s “violations of the economic law of planned and proportional
development” in their own internal evaluation.[214] Such criticism suggested a growing
intolerance toward creative application and the entailing domestic ideological
experimentation. A Czechoslovakian
internal analysis from April 1961 further corroborates this trend by attacking
North Korea’s “nationalistic” policies, Kim Il Sung’s personality cult, and the
WPK’s supposedly misdirected use of the creative application argument.[215] In many ways this foreshadowed the barrage of
criticisms found in archival documents after 1961 (see next chapter). Unlike the East Germans and Czechoslovakians,
the Soviets, for the moment, were willing to give North Korea the benefit of
the doubt, but events were rapidly heading toward a clash of interests.[216]
Held in
October 1961, shortly after the 4th Congress of the WPK, the 22nd
CPSU Congress, in retrospect, put the Soviets and North Koreans on a collision
course. Khrushchev attempted to use the
congress as a means to more firmly assert Soviet ideological authority. Reaffirming the USSR’s “full-scale
construction of communism” announced at the 21st
Congress, he decisively placed the Soviet
Union above the people’s democracies, which were still finishing the
construction of socialism. This implied
that the USSR would continue to act as a model for the people’s democracies to
follow, consequently restricting independent approaches to socialist
construction.[217] But Khrushchev’s most forceful expression of
ideological supremacy came through the personality cult issue. Whereas the 21st Congress eschewed
a renewed discussion of the personality cult, it became the pivot of the 22nd
Congress. Khrushchev did not mince
words. He insisted that the 20th
Congress’ revelations concerning the personality cult possessed universal
significance and continued to do so. To
make his point, he mentioned other parties’ compliance with the 20th
Congress during their own congresses and quoted from the
1960 Moscow Statement: “The historic
decisions of the 20th Congress of the C.P.S.U. . . . have initiated
a new stage in the world Communist movement, and have promoted its development
on the basis of Marxism-Leninism.”[218] Deviation from the 20th Congress’
declarations about the personality cult, if Khrushchev judged it to be so,
meant a violation of Marxist-Leninist universality. Soviet ideological leadership, the
personality cult issue, and Marxist-Leninist universality thus merged into
one. On these grounds, Khrushchev, in
his report, harshly attacked the Albanian communists, who supported the CCP and
defiantly opposed the Soviets during the 1960 Moscow Conference. Because of their refusal to accept the
universality of the 20th
Congress, he accused them of the personality
cult.[219] Khrushchev’s concluding speech doubled down
on his attack by enumerating the crimes of the Albanian leadership, which included
the execution of a pregnant woman.[220] Such a public attack at a Soviet congress was
usually reserved for the Yugoslavs and signaled a de-facto excommunication from
the Soviet-centered world communist movement.
One can only imagine the thoughts that the 22nd Congress
aroused in Kim Il Sung, who had committed similar crimes. It was an eerie omen—Khrushchev might one day
decide to accuse Kim of fostering a personality cult and, under this guise,
assert ideological supremacy over North Korea while restricting the permissible
extent of creative applications.
In South
Korea, Park Chung Hee’s military coup on May 16, 1961 represented another
crucial factor that led to North Korea’s eventual rejection of Soviet
ideological leadership. Recognizing
Park’s militant anti-communist attitude, two days later the North Korean
leadership assembled and resolved to temporarily scrap the Seven-Year Plan and
instead focus economic efforts on national defense.[221] Many a North Korean elite did not wish to
bestow recognition upon the new regime in the South, and some may have genuinely
felt a military threat, making
Khrushchev’s peaceful coexistence an
increasingly unappealing doctrine, more than it already was. In June, however, Kim Il Sung managed to
obtain Soviet military guarantees and that same month Khrushchev issued an ultimatum
to the United States concerning the status of Berlin.
Kim felt reassured by Khrushchev’s tough
stance against imperialism as he revealed in a conversation with an Albanian
delegation.[222] The WPK’s 4th Congress in
September 1961 therefore did not see an abandonment of the Seven-Year Plan or
some major turnabout in economic policy.
During the proceedings, Frol Kozlov, head of the Soviet delegation,
repeated
Khrushchev’s promise “to defend any socialist
country.”[223] As for Kim Il Sung’s report to the congress,
it did faintly hint at a continuation of a peaceful coexistence policy toward
South Korea by stating that economic successes in the North would lead to an
overthrow of the system in the South.[224] The report also argued that ideological
differences between both states ought not hamper unification.[225] As before, Kim praised the CPSU’s version of
peaceful coexistence and analysis of the present epoch. He upheld the official Soviet position,
according to which the present epoch is marked by socialism’s growing strength
and the national liberation struggle, with the former being the decisive factor
in the forward movement of history.[226] Apparently optimistic, despite Kim’s failure
to strongly apply peaceful coexistence to Korea and despite his promotion of
the Ch’ŏllima Movement, the Soviets and East Germans gave a laudatory
evaluation of the 4th Congress.
Based on the congress’ affirmation of Khrushchev’s peaceful coexistence,
his analysis of the epoch, the CPSU’s leading role in the world communist
movement, and the necessity of an international division of labor, they felt
North Korea was now squarely in the Soviet camp.[227] Indeed, there were signs that North Korea was
assuming a conciliatory stance toward the Park regime, which began making overtures
to Pyongyang in
September.
By the beginning of the next month, however, North Korea’s hostility
toward the Park regime became obvious.[228] Adherence to Khrushchev’s interpretation of
the epoch and his
version of peaceful coexistence now became a
burden.[229]
Under these
circumstances, an astute apparatchik such as Kim Il Sung must have realized the
looming threat. Continued loyalty to
Soviet ideological leadership limited his domestic and inter-Korean policy
flexibility and may also have caused conflict with pro-Chinese elements inside
the party. He could no longer safely
play the middle-of-the-road game; he could no longer have it both ways. If he were to attempt adherence to Soviet
ideological leadership while pushing creative application further than before,
at a time when Khrushchev’s statements clearly indicated restrictions on the
creative application of Marxism-Leninism, he opened himself up to a Soviet
attack and potential meddling in the DPRK’s domestic affairs. The Soviets might even demand a condemnation
of the personality cult inside the WPK or criticize Kim personally, supplying
opportunity for rivals to take his place.
He had no desire to relive his 1956 experience. And what if the Soviet analysis of the
current epoch was to shift again? It is
doubtful that Kim was blind to the pragmatic interests served by concepts such
as peaceful coexistence and an international division of labor. In China’s view, Khrushchev’s peaceful
coexistence was about the Soviet Union curtailing local revolutions, especially
anti-colonial national liberation struggles, in favor of their own national
interest, consequently harming the world revolution. Peaceful coexistence was a threat to national
sovereignty if interpreted as the defining feature of the epoch and combined
with a Soviet-centered internationalism because it demanded adherence to
whatever the Soviets arbitrarily deemed necessary toward its achievement. For North Korea it meant that the Soviets, if
it suited their interests, might prefer good relations with the US over
supporting the DPRK’s policy in regard to the South. To the pessimist, it might even suggest a
potential revoking of military protection and abandonment in the face of
imperialist aggression. After all,
during the 22nd CPSU Congress, Khrushchev withdrew his ultimatum
concerning Berlin and the signing of a separate peace treaty with East Germany,
resulting in the disapproval of many North Korean elites.[230] Douglas Selvage argues that a major reason
for Khrushchev’s retreat was his trepidation about the possibility of a Western
embargo against the Soviet bloc in reaction to a Soviet peace treaty with the
GDR. Due to the considerable volume of
trade between socialist states and Western powers, such an embargo would have
wrought havoc within the Soviet bloc economies.
Assuming that North
Korea was aware of these economic relations
with the West and perhaps even Khrushchev’s fear of such an embargo, one can
easily see why some might question his priorities.[231]
In the face
of so much uncertainty, Kim Il Sung moved toward ideological insulation and a
rejection of Soviet ideological leadership.
As long as he depended on the universalistic authority of another party,
there existed the danger of disunity and factionalism. For example, the 22nd Congress did
have an impact on North Korean university students, as revealed by their
negative attitude toward Albanian exchange students after reading about
congress proceedings.[232] According to Szalontai’s estimation, the 22nd
Congress also caused discord among intellectuals and the wider population.[233] Perhaps even a few higher-ranking party
members had secret concerns, although we cannot know for sure. If the situation was right, some, whether
inside the party or intelligentsia, might wish to follow the Soviet path more
closely and criticize Kim’s leadership.
To prevent this, North Korea began a process of ideological insulation,
that is, the coalescence of universality and ideological leadership in the
person of Kim Il Sung. A leading
communist had to take good care to control universality, for his legitimacy
depended on it. He was a prophet gazing
into the future, leading his people to the promised land. If anyone were to doubt or reinterpret his
local yet universal path, his very leadership would be called into
question. Adherence to Soviet ideological
leadership guaranteed the universality of local communists’ path only as long
as the Soviets did not deem that particular path a violation of
Marxist-Leninist universality. In such a
case, Soviet ideological leadership became a curse. Moreover, the Chinese contestation of the
CPSU’s interpretation of
Marxism-Leninism made the ideology’s
universality seem less universal and perhaps debatable. Such a lack of certitude was a threat to
communist regime stability, since a questioning of ideological truths implied a
questioning of communist leadership, which is why all sides in the Sino-Soviet
conflict insisted on their correctness, claimed loyalty to Marxism-Leninism,
and heavily propagandized inside their countries. There was but one pure and true MarxismLeninism. Whoever did not follow the same universal
path was either a dogmatist or revisionist.
It is not surprising, then, to find Hwang
Chang-yŏp, the presumed architect of chuch’e
sasang, hint in his memoirs that the impetus for the creation of chuch’e sasang—the epitome of
ideological insulation, as we shall see later—was the Sino-Soviet conflict.[234] Party unity, which was a euphemism for
obedience to the party leader and his ideas, was the antidote to Soviet
ideological challenges to one’s leadership, Kim Il Sung told an Albanian
delegation in
September 1961.[235] Party unity was a form of ideological
insulation Kim had pursued for years, as did other communist leaders. But in light of the Sino-Soviet rift,
ideological insulation would be better served through independence from Soviet
ideological leadership and hence a stronger unity of universality and the
personal leadership of Kim Il Sung.
And so, in
December 1961, the WPK CC, at the behest of Kim Il Sung, decided on a new
ideological doctrine, charyŏk kaengsaeng
(self-reliance), effectively breaking with Soviet ideological leadership, as
explored in the next chapter.[236] By the end of the year, North Korea was ready
to actively reject what it considered Soviet revisionism.[237] In the course of the following year, North
Korea outright dismissed peaceful coexistence as a policy applicable to
Korea
and solidified the concept of charyŏk
kaengsaeng through theoretical expositions that ran counter to the Soviet
interpretation of the current epoch.[238] It was the dawn of a new period in the
history of North Korean ideology.
Conclusion
Over the
next few years, North Korea continuously stepped up its ideological
insulation.
This process involved not only a contestation
of the Soviet Union’s ideological leadership role but also a furtherance of
Kim’s cult. Yet it would be a mistake to
think that a break occurred in December 1961 because of a principled disagreement over so-called “de-Stalinization” and the
personality cult. By raising Kim’s
ideological power, the cult became a vehicle for insulation and buttressed
North Korea’s rejection of Soviet authority, which is why the Soviets and their
allies began to strongly criticize it in 1962.
Conversely, the personality cult became the front under which they
attempted to reassert Soviet ideological supremacy. Besides, several Eastern European leaders did
not sincerely eliminate the personality cult.
As pointed out by Brzezinski, when the ideological clash between the
Chinese and Soviets first materialized, “The most stalwart support for the
Soviet position came from those East European leaders who had broken the least
with Stalinism: Gheorghiu-Dej, Zhivkov, Ulbricht, and Novotny.”[239] Indeed, the Soviets never denied the
importance of an individual leader in the making of history, as this was core
to the Leninist rationalization of communist leadership (see Chapter 4). Because communist rhetoric frequently failed
to reflect reality, one could criticize North Korea for something one was
objectively guilty of as well, as long as one officially avowed Soviet
ideological positions. Heterodoxy was a
matter of perception.
Korean
nationalism, too, does not provide a full explanation for North Korea’s break
with Soviet orthodoxy. While sovereignty
was an issue, Kim did not let nationalistic desires drive his attitude toward
the Soviets and he did not hesitate to kowtow to the Soviets if it served his
aims. Ultimately, in 1961, a variety of
factors converged to make continued adherence to Soviet ideological leadership
untenable. Kim Il Sung’s actions,
therefore, represented expedient responses to a situation that threatened his
grip on power and had little to do with a sincere and principled aim to
decolonize the Korean psyche.
Nationalism or some type of “reservoir of nationalist sentiments” was
not a sufficient condition—but perhaps a necessary one—for an independent
ideological path.[240] The content of subsequent ideological
developments, too, was not simply nationalist.
Since North Korea began its path of ideological independence in relation
to a quarrel with the Soviet version of Marxism-Leninism, it was
Marxism-Leninism that provided the building blocks for North Korea’s own
ideological interpretations, including the
infamous chuch’e.
CHAPTER III
CONFLICTING
UNIVERSALITIES: FRATERNAL CRITICISMS, NORTH KOREA’S CONTESTATION OF SOVIET
IDEOLOGICAL LEADERSHIP, AND INSULATION (1962-67)
Though a watershed, North Korea’s
decision in December 1961 to pursue a new ideological course did not inaugurate
a fundamental break with Soviet Marxism-Leninism. As the present chapter shall illustrate, from
1962 to 1967, North Korea remained squarely within the Marxist-Leninist
tradition. Archival documents, in
addition to North Korean party publications, contradict the usual depictions of
North Korean ideology. They reveal that
formulations such as charyŏk kaengsaeng
(self-reliance) were neither wholly novel nor exclusive to Korea. North Korean ideology developed gradually and
was penetrated by threads that connected it with its own past and a global
intellectual environment. New
ideological formulations constituted sublations of existing ideological
material, amalgamations that synthesized this material into new forms. Yet these new formulations in no way existed
in isolation from the world around them.
Indeed, one cannot truly understand such ideological developments
without reference to the international factors that helped induce them. North Korean formulations existed in
discourse with Soviet formulations—both shared a common Marxist-Leninist bond.
Scholars
familiar with the archives of the Soviet Union and Eastern European states may
at first find this evaluation of North Korean ideology suspicious. After all, fraternal socialist states loyal
to the Soviet Union severely criticized North Korea’s ideological path in the
1960s, questioning its adherence to Marxism-Leninism. As demonstrated in this chapter, these
fraternal criticisms, however, must be read as part of an interpretative
struggle over Marxist-Leninist universality.
Each side in this struggle, North Korea and pro-Soviet forces, attempted
to prove their adherence to universal truth.
The East Germans, famous for their fervent loyalty to the
USSR, showed themselves particularly
dismissive of North Korean ideology.
Because the East
Germans followed the USSR’s ideological
leadership, they considered heterodox any contestation of Soviet universality,
and North Korea’s new ideological path was precisely that, a rejection of
Soviet ideological leadership and the universality prescribed by it.
Given much
of the previous scholarship’s chuch’e-centric
focus on North Korea’s departure from Marxism-Leninism, this chapter provides a
novel conception of North Korean ideology in the 1960s. While the foregoing chapters tried to show
that chuch’e had not become some kind
of leitmotif or announcement of independence from Soviet ideology, the present
chapter goes yet further, arguing that even in 1965 chuch’e occupied a relatively humble rank in North Korean
orthodoxy. The ascendancy of chuch’e was linked with North Korean
attempts at ideological insulation.
Prior to 1967, however, the chuch’e
argument was but one of several ways in which North Korea promoted insulation
and a rejection of Soviet universality.
Due to international and domestic factors, Kim Il Sung and his allies
began to pursue an even more insulative path in 1966 and 67, culminating in the
creation of the monolithic ideological system.
Fusing ideology and universality closer with
Kim’s person, 1967 saw the coalescence of chuch’e
sasang and the personal thought of Kim Il Sung, a process inseparable from
the universalistic struggles depicted in this chapter.
Surveying Fraternal Criticisms
Early a
March evening in Pyongyang—the year was 1965—the Cuban ambassador and his
entourage, on a cruise through the city, found themselves attacked by an
incensed mob of North Koreans, young and old.
Fortunately for the delegation, a physical altercation did not occur. Instead, they only suffered a bombardment of
variegated invectives, including racial slurs, until the authorities arrived to
violently beat the crowd into submission.[241] Behind the scenes, the East Germans analyzed
the incident as follows: “The incident is a clear expression of the negative influence
of the WPK’s leadership on the masses, who, under the conditions of the
personality cult and the misguided politics of the DPRK, are educated into
schematism, dependence, and nationalism.”[242] Regardless of the motivations that led the
North Korean mob to act as it did, the East German evaluation seems to point to
a considerable ideological disagreement between the countries. But was this just an isolated evaluation in
reaction to an extreme incident?
As one scours the archives of former
Eastern European states, especially those aligned with the Soviet Union, one
discovers that criticisms such as these are scattered throughout archival
documents from the 1960s. In a 1963
examination of North Korean ideological developments in the previous year, an
East German analyst, noticing the further growth of Kim Il
Sung’s personality cult and North Korean
nationalism, explained:
In their stance regarding the events
surrounding Cuba, the Korean comrades did not base themselves on the principle
of peaceful coexistence and viewed the politics of the Soviet Union as a
retreat in the face of American imperialism.
At the same time, under the motto of ‘self-reliance,’ strong
nationalistic tendencies were promoted during this period in the DPRK.[243]
Another such examination in the same year,
besides mentioning nationalism and the personality cult, additionally blamed
“dogmatism” and “factionalism” for recent trends in North Korea.[244] During the 1960s, at party organization
meetings of the GDR embassy in the DPRK, critical comments appeared with
particular frequency: “The political stance of the Korean comrades still has
strong nationalistic tendencies, i.e., they still have too little understanding
of the world communist movement, focus too much on their own problems, and do
not approach everything from a Marxist-Leninist point of view.”271 Because embassy workers were charged with
facilitating beneficial trade agreements with North Korea, they also
disapproved of North
Korea’s now-famous slogan, “self-reliance” (charyŏk kaengsaeng): “As a socialist
country, the DPRK is politico-ideologically aligned with the current politics
of the CCP leadership. She is not a
member of Comecon and develops her economy under the motto, ‘self-reliance,’
which contains strong nationalistic tendencies.”[245] Official delegations visiting the DPRK, of
course, were just as critical:
The cult of personality surrounding
Kim Il Sung is extremely developed. . . . The entire social life of the DPRK is
marked by a pronounced militaristic-bureaucratic character, which the
delegation encountered everywhere. These
forms of education and methods of leadership carry with them an underestimation
of the creativity [Schöpferkraft] of
the assiduous Korean people and an insufficient appreciation of its
achievements.[246]
In short, criticisms of North Korean
ideology, especially in terms of nationalism, the personality cult,
bureaucratism, non-adherence to peaceful coexistence, self-reliance, dogmatism,
and creativity saturate the pages of archival documents from the 1960s.
Clearly, the fraternal criticisms found
in the archives point to a difference between North Korean and East German
ideology in the 1960s. Yet how far does
this difference go? At first, given my
knowledge of the literature on the subject, I simply assumed that these
criticisms represented North Korean ideology’s natural heading toward an
entirely new and native Korean ideology, perhaps derived from one or more of
Korea’s historical legacies. Yet as I
continued to read over archival documents, it gradually became clear to me that
criticisms occurred not because North Korean ideology was departing from
Marxism-Leninism as such but precisely because North Korea was formulating an
interpretation of Marxism-Leninism that contravened Soviet leadership in the
matter. East German attacks had a very
specific Marxist-Leninist meaning, as did North Korea’s heterodoxy.
Charyŏk
kaengsaeng
and the Issue of Nationalism
As explored
in the previous chapter, economic independence was integral to the
MarxistLeninist tradition. Whether
talking about economic independence, self-reliance, self-sufficiency,
self-determination, or even autarky, all were acceptable to a certain degree,
depending on the circumstances.
Nevertheless, such talk could just as well be deemed heterodox, again
depending on the specific situation.
Under the banner of charyŏk
kaengsaeng, self-reliance became a source of conflict. Charyŏk
kaengsaeng infused old terms such as charipsŏng
(self-reliance, self-sufficiency, independence) and charipchŏ k minjok kyŏ ngje
(self-reliant/selfsufficient/independent national economy) with fresh meaning
and catapulted them to the forefront of an ideological rhetoric contravening
Soviet orthodoxy. In its Marxist-Leninist theoretical
exposition, North Korea’s charyŏk
kaengsaeng—like the same-named Chinese slogan of zìlìgēngshēng from which it was inspired—provided a view of the
current epoch that was at variance with Soviet interpretations and ideological
leadership.
In March
1962, the WPK’s theoretical organ featured its first official elaboration of charyŏk kaengsaeng. Right from the beginning, the article sought
to clarify the relationship between one’s local revolution and the world
revolution. While both were
interconnected and supported the other, according to the article, local
communists were primarily responsible for their own national revolution,
relying on their own strength to build socialism within their own country and
thereby advance the world revolution. In
correspondence with the international communist anthem known as the
“Internationale,” which the article quoted, the oppressed must free themselves
by their own hands. To further drive
home the Marxist-Leninist nature of its argument, the article also quoted from
Lenin’s 1917 piece “The Tasks of the Proletariat in Our
Revolution” the following phrase: “There is
one, and only one, kind of real internationalism, and that is—working
whole-heartedly for the development of the revolutionary movement and the
revolutionary struggle in one’s own country,
and supporting (by propaganda, sympathy, and material aid) this struggle, this, and only
this, line, in every country
without exception.”[247]
Charyŏk
kaengsaeng
therefore meant a complete commitment to one’s national revolution, a belief
that wholehearted devotion to all spheres of socialist construction within
one’s nation constituted the most sacred revolutionary act. According to the article, the “spirit” (chŏngsin) of charyŏk kaengsaeng is the spirit of “the working class wanting to
liberate itself while strengthening its internationalist solidarity.”[248] As revealed by such phrasing, charyŏk kaengsaeng was not merely a
domestic doctrine but also a universalistic claim. North Korea considered it a “spirit of
internationalism,” essentially equating charyŏk
kaengsaeng with proletarian internationalism.[249]
North
Korea’s understanding of proletarian internationalism thus came to differ from
the Soviet version. Soviet
internationalism was a Soviet-centered internationalism, hinging on fidelity to
the CPSU and its analysis of the epoch.
This Soviet-centered internationalism was therefore closely bound up
with the Soviet Union’s ideological authority.
If we recall from the previous chapter, the Chinese attempted to thwart
Soviet ideological supremacy through the same nation-based internationalism as
the North Koreans now began to do. In
their interpretation of the present epoch, Beijing argued that communists in a
particular nation must hew out their own path in correspondence with their
unique local conditions. Whereas
Khrushchev interpreted peaceful coexistence as the defining mark of the epoch,
a form of class struggle that would guarantee the victory of socialism on a
worldwide scale, the CCP thought that only one’s local struggle, whether in
terms of constructing socialism or leading a fight for national liberation
against colonial oppressors, could promote the collapse of capitalism
throughout the world, not an absolute adherence to peaceful coexistence. With charyŏk
kaengsaeng, Pyongyang implicitly rejected the universality of Khrushchev’s
peaceful coexistence by prioritizing the national struggle, which Eastern
European diplomats quickly started to realize.[250] Instead of an economic division of labor, the
North Koreans claimed, the best way to strengthen world socialism in the
current epoch and carry out one’s internationalist duty to aid the class struggle
was the establishment of an economically independent and powerful socialist
state.[251] In the course of 1962 and 63, North Korea
fortified its new conception of proletarian internationalism, denying the
leading role of the CPSU in the world communist movement. All parties were equal, North Korea declared,
and the congress of one party, including its analysis of the epoch, could not
serve as a binding program for all other parties.2[252][253]9 The national or “subjective factor” (chuch’ejŏk yoin), as North Korea called
it, was the decisive factor in the waging of revolution, not the international
factor, despite their interdependence.[254] Mirroring Chinese positions, North Korea
therefore highlighted the significance of the national liberation
struggle. Like the CCP, the WPK held
that the present epoch was still the one described by Lenin, a period of
struggle between imperialism and socialism, making national liberation
struggles, not peaceful coexistence with the imperialists, a crucial means to
win the class struggle and move history forward by causing damage to
imperialist might.[255] Although both the Soviets and North Koreans
combined national and class struggle, they did so in differing ways. Clearly attempting to appeal to South Koreans
and counter the Park regime’s propaganda, North Korea framed its own situation
as both a struggle for socialism and national liberation. South Korea, by contrast, was viewed as a
colony in dire economic straits. Whereas
the DPRK, by building a self-reliant national economy, followed the Leninist
principle according to which economic independence represented the prerequisite
for political independence, the Park regime, Pyongyang held, only talked about
such independence but, in actuality, was colonially dependent on the United
States.[256]
Given North Korea’s assault on Soviet
internationalism and ideological leadership, the
USSR painted the WPK’s ideological path as
nationalistic. Nationalism (K. minjokchuŭi), however, had a specific
Marxist-Leninist meaning and should not be confused with our own conceptions of
nationalism. After all, one could easily
say that other socialist states such as East Germany or the Soviet Union were
nationalistic as well. Indeed,
nationalism in North Korea was nothing overly unique. All Marxist-Leninist projects were carried
out within the boundaries of nation-states and naturally had strong nationalist
overtones. During this time,
Marxist-Leninists, including the North Koreans, denounced nationalism as
fundamentally antithetical to internationalism and did not use the term in
self-depictions. They defined their own
people’s loyalty toward the nation as “socialist patriotism,” which was regarded
as qualitatively different from nationalism.
Whereas nationalism undermined the international communist movement by
chauvinistically trampling upon other nations’ sovereignty, by turning the
working class against itself, or by taking a developmental route harmful to
historical progress, socialist patriotism did just the opposite. An East German textbook thus reads: “Only the
realization of the fundamental goals of the working class, [i.e.,] the
overthrow of the exploiters who stifle the progress of the nation, as well as
the establishment of socialism, can give each nation true freedom,
independence, and national greatness. As
a result, the most internationalist class, namely the working class, is at the
same time the most patriotic class.”[257] Progressing along the socialist path within
one’s nation was simultaneously patriotic and internationalist, making
socialist nations a crucial vehicle of historical progress. To both the North Koreans and the Soviets,
proletarian internationalism consequently did not mean a negation of the
nation, national interest, or economic sovereignty. Quite the opposite, a deconstruction of the
nation was viewed as a bourgeois ploy to better exploit the masses. Those who argued that “the principle of
sovereignty had become a hurdle to the development of the productive forces”
were accordingly labeled
“ideologues of cosmopolitanism.”[258]
Fraternal
criticisms about North Korean nationalism must be read within the context of a
Marxist-Leninist understanding of
nationalism. They neither signify nor
corroborate North
Korea’s abandonment of Marxism-Leninism. To the contrary, they illustrate its
investment in the Marxist-Leninist tradition.
While both the Soviets and the North Koreans upheld proletarian
internationalism, the former regarded a violation of the CPSU’s version of
Marxist-Leninist universality an affront to internationalism and hence
nationalistic. To the Soviets,
proletarian internationalism demanded the pursuit of the Marxist-Leninist
course laid out by the CPSU, which included an acceptance of its analysis of
the present epoch. Failure to follow
Soviet leadership, in other words, constituted nationalism and was said to harm
the world revolution as a result of narrow-minded national considerations. The Soviets thus condemned China’s defiance
during the Sino-Soviet Split, as well as the Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia,
as nationalistic.[259] Conversely, China, North Korea, and Albania
termed Soviet meddling in the internal affairs of other countries and parties,
especially Soviet attempts to force its ideological platform onto other
parties, as “great power chauvinism” (K. taegukchuŭi),
another form of nationalism, because it was solely based on the national
interest of the Soviets and not the international communist movement as a
whole.[260] Steeped in Marxism-Leninism, North Korean
officials naturally rejected any fraternal accusations of nationalism.[261] In rationalizing selfreliance in front of
Eastern European diplomats, the North Koreans consistently called selfreliance
“the best contribution of each individual country to the strengthening of the
socialist camp,” stressing the point that it “has nothing in common with the
nationalistic movements in some other socialist countries.”[262] Put differently, self-reliance was
internationalism because it advanced the international goal of the working
class by eliminating exploitation, protecting national sovereignty, and
constructing a socialist country. While
the Soviets also believed that internationalism ought to advance those aspects,
they simply thought self-reliance as upheld by Pyongyang was not the correct
and universal approach to accomplish this goal.
The difference between North Korean and Soviet proletarian
internationalism was hence quite subtle.
The
heterodoxy of charyŏk kaengsaeng, and
by implication North Korea’s internationalism, only makes sense when viewed
from the Soviet perspective. Otherwise charyŏk kaengsaeng was a perfectly
orthodox, Marxist-Leninist argument. The Soviets did not disagree with the
notion of a successful local revolution promoting the world revolution. Khrushchev himself said that the CPSU
“regards communist construction in the U.S.S.R. as the fulfillment of its
internationalist duty to the working people of all countries” during the 22nd
Congress.[263] East Germany, too, believed that
strengthening its socialist economy was an essential task in the struggle
against imperialism.[264] Soviet disagreement ultimately stemmed from
North Korea’s contestation of Soviet ideological leadership. Yet not even North Korea’s questioning of the
Soviet role as head of the communist movement was entirely unorthodox.
Khrushchev himself opened the floodgates with
his denunciation of Stalin’s chauvinistic approach to international
relations. Indeed, when the Chinese
criticized the CPSU’s position as head of the communist movement, an angry
Khrushchev retorted, “‘With the Soviet Union at the head’ smells like
personality cult.”[265] Lest he seem hypocritical or as promoting
dogmatism,
Khrushchev had little choice but to reject
the phrasing “at the head” when openly confronted, which is why immediately
after this comment he affirmed the independence of each communist party,
approaching the North Korean understanding of proletarian internationalism.[266] Of course, in subsequent years, those loyal
to the Soviet Union, especially East Germany, continued to utilize phraseology
exalting the Soviet leadership role, phraseology that was necessary to justify
why the Soviet analysis of the current epoch ought to serve as a universal
guide for parties outside the USSR as well.
Although December 1961 was a watershed in
terms of North Korea’s contestation of
Soviet ideological leadership, this
ideological break was not of a fundamental nature. North Korea was merely redirecting
preexisting concepts through new formulations.
These and subsequent ideological developments therefore display plenty
of continuity. What occurred was a type
of sublation, in which preceding ideological material was amalgamated and
incorporated into new ideological formulations.
To visualize this process, it is useful to employ Hegel’s notion of
sublation (Aufhebung). Hegel argued that Reason (Vernunft) develops itself out of
itself. Currently rational (vernünftig) concepts are literally
picked up (aufgehoben) by the mind to
form new concepts. Though the contents
of new formulations are mostly the same, their rationality is not. Reason is only accountable to itself in the
present. That is, an older formulation
may appear contrary to the rationality of the present formulation, despite its
genealogy. In the North Korean case,
when viewed from a post-1961 perspective, ideological positions from the 1950s
would appear familiar and easily recognizable but nevertheless heterodox. While the old content remains present, its
rationality has shifted. As a result,
because new formulations carried within themselves the old, an outside observer
might erroneously believe that North Korea held the same heterodox views already
in previous years. When investigating
the continuity in North Korean ideology, it is thus important to take full
account of the rationality of a particular formulation at a given point in time
instead of letting one’s own imaginations run wild. One must examine formulations in their historical
present, including fraternal criticisms of North Korean ideology.
Misreadings
of North Korean ideology are in fact facilitated by North Korea’s own false
claims and historical revisionism.
Almost immediately after deciding on an independent ideological path,
North Korea tied charyŏk kaengsaeng
to the Anti-Japanese Armed Struggle led by Kim Il Sung during the colonial
period.[267] Supposedly Kim Il Sung and his guerilla band
had always upheld the spirit of charyŏk
kaengsaeng, that is, they always combined the national with the
international mission while, above all, fighting for the Korean revolution, a
view that was identical to North Korea’s interpretation of proletarian
internationalism. Liberation was seen as
achieved through the sole strength of the Korean guerrillas, their national
victory representing a victory for the international communist movement.[268] In truth, this constituted an obvious
distortion. It was not so much the case
that Kim’s guerrilla experience determined the ideological course of North
Korea as the immediate historical environment determined the interpretation of
the guerrilla experience. North Korea
revised its understanding of the guerrilla struggle in order to add
justification to the present course. Not
surprisingly, the East Germans criticized this historical revisionism precisely
because it was so closely related to present conflicts, as demonstrated by
North Korea’s silencing of the Soviet role in the liberation of
Korea.
While the Soviets liked to exaggerate their historical achievements,
such as their role in defeating Japanese militarism, in order to buttress their
own version of proletarian internationalism, North Korea did the same, which is
why the East Germans viewed this new history as nationalistic—it was contrary
to the Soviet understanding of proletarian internationalism and its implicit
assumption of Soviet leadership in the world communist movement.[269] The East Germans were not critical of the
fact that North Korea was writing a history with its nation at the center,
actually welcoming this development, but that this history and its
exaggerations would promote a course away from the Soviet Union.[270] Socialist states generally promoted a
nation-centered history writing and a recognition of the progressive elements
in one’s national heritage, which is why the East Germans additionally welcomed
North Korea’s positive evaluation of certain facets of the “bourgeois
nationalist movement” of the colonial period and the sirhak school during the Chosŏn dynasty, instead of simply
rejecting the entirety of the historical inheritance.[271] Whereas a wholesale rejection of the nation’s
inheritance was considered dogmatism, ignoring the role of the Soviet Union in
the writing of a national history was nationalism.
North
Korea’s creation of a revolutionary tradition around Kim Il Sung and his
partisans additionally illustrates the ideological insulation the regime hoped
to achieve. Certainly, this
revolutionary tradition and history-writing was already beginning to emerge in
the 1950s, but its true takeoff only occurred after 1961. Communist rulers found revolutionary
traditions an essential tool for encouraging unity around their
leadership. These traditions polished
the leadership’s image by combining national history, ideology, and the
legitimacy of the current regime. East
Germany, for example, established its revolutionary tradition largely around
the socalled anti-fascist resistance struggle, given the background of top SED
politicians such as Ulbricht and later Honecker, who both had anti-fascist
credentials dating back to WWII. A
revolutionary tradition was developed via a selection of historical facts,
distortions surrounding those facts, and the establishment of a cult-like image
around the historical actors involved.
The SED and the East German state were thus made to appear as the
legitimate heir to all of
Germany’s progressive heritage.[272] This ultimately helped to legitimize the
correctness of the current path and demonstrate its deep native roots. And since the GDR was mostly loyal to
Soviet ideological leadership, it also
declared as a tradition “the battle-tempered bond between the SED and CPSU.”[273] Kim Il Sung, too, realized the utility of a
revolutionary tradition. In
May 1956, he openly wrote that Korea’s lack
of a communist party existing continuously from before to after liberation, as
well as the pursuant lack of a revolutionary tradition, resulted in a breeding
ground for factionalism.[274] To achieve unity around his person and avoid
factionalism, a strong revolutionary tradition proved indispensable. With the challenge to Soviet ideological
leadership, this unity became yet more pressing, particularly if attempting to
tie Marxist-Leninist universality closer to Kim’s figure. It would be much harder to question the
present course if it was indeed so firmly planted in Korean soil and Korean
history. North Korea claimed that Kim
Il Sung had picked up Lenin’s universal
banner in the colonial period and creatively applied it to the Korean revolution.[275] If the current ideological path was steeled
under the leadership of Kim Il Sung during the colonial period, and if this
path had led to the liberation of Korea, what party member was to doubt Kim’s
ideological authority in the present?
Of course
this revolutionary tradition served not only the inculcation of party members
but also the masses at large. Charyŏk kaengsaeng was less an economic
approach than it was a method of inculcation.
As Minister of Foreign Affairs Pak Sŏng-ch’ŏl explained while addressing
the concerns of the East Germans, charyŏk
kaengsaeng “is primarily a question of the education of the masses. One cannot take it literally.”[276] This is indeed why North Korea talked about charyŏk kaengsaeng in terms of a
“spirit” that the masses must possess in order to carry the revolution forward.[277] To hold this spirit meant to obey one’s own
national leadership, since it was the national leadership, especially its top
leader, which analyzed the conditions prevailing inside the country and
determined how to carry out one’s local revolution. As long as Kim Il Sung controlled the unity
of the party, charyŏk kaengsaeng
provided an ideological justification to follow his leadership over any outside
leadership. Making the slogan part of a
revolutionary tradition centered on Kim Il Sung only further raised his
authority. Pak’s statement thus brings
us to our next issue, the personality cult.
The Personality Cult and Ideological
Insulation
East German criticisms of North Korea through
the interrelated terms of “dogmatism,”
“creativity,” and “bureaucratism” were
directly linked to the personality cult issue.
Though not new, these terms represented core components of the
de-Stalinization program and helped legitimize the new Soviet path. Dogmatism meant failure to adjust ideology to
the realities within one’s country, adhering instead to rigid ideas and models,
often copied from other parties without adjustment, consequently resulting in
an impediment on the masses’ creativity.[278] A Marxist-Leninist believed in the objective necessity
of the historical trajectory. But he or
she also knew that history does not make itself. In order to make history in the most
effective and progressive way, subjectivity needed to match objectivity, that
is, the minds of the working masses had to correspond with objective reality
and the historical trajectory derived therefrom. In such a case, their subjective power to
create the new from the old, i.e., their creativity, increased dramatically. They could then realize historical necessity,
moving history forward in accordance with their own freedom-seeking
aspirations. Dogmatism, however,
constituted a mismatch between subjective and objective, a situation in which
ideology did not reflect, in a universal way, the particular circumstances of the
masses due to a dogmatic adherence to outdated positions by the communist
leadership. The solution to dogmatism
was the creative application of Marxism-Leninism, which in turn was to promote
the masses’ creativity, since ideology would then correspond with objective
reality and thus better enable them to make history.[279] Bureaucratism also hampered creativity,
because by imperiously dictating to the masses without knowing their situation,
and by the masses unilaterally depending on the leadership, there will develop
a rift between the leadership and the masses, preventing the latter from
realizing the historical mission of constructing socialism and communism due to
a general lack of faith in the revolution and fallacious revolutionary policy. The East Germans frequently argued that the
North Koreans were harming their own revolution, and by extension the world
revolution, through mistaken ideological positions that did not correspond with
the realities of the time and incorrect methods of leadership, crippling the
creative powers of the masses. To follow
outdated Stalinist ways was both dogmatic and bureaucratic. Thus, attacks against North Korea in terms of
dogmatism, creativity, and bureaucratism corresponded with the charge of the
personality cult. In other words, the
concept of personality cult encompassed dogmatism and bureaucratism, because it
was said to promote both.
After 1961, criticisms of North Korea’s
personality cult ultimately stemmed from the
WPK’s contestation of Soviet ideological
leadership. As mentioned in the previous
chapter, some of the most Stalinist rulers were at the same time fervent
defenders of the USSR. Hence, fraternal
parties’ denunciation of Kim Il Sung’s personality cult was more of a
self-interested concern over the cult’s ramifications for the validity of
Soviet universality than it was a principled stand to implement collective
leadership everywhere. The personality
cult raised a communist leader’s ideological authority and helped insulate him
from ideological viewpoints contrary to his own, binding universality closer to
his person. If this universality
contravened
Soviet universality, then the personality
cult made it more difficult for the Soviets to challenge the ideological
viewpoints they disagreed with, influence party members, and effect a political
change that would result in increased loyalty to the Soviet Union. In short, after the break with China, what
the Soviets viewed as personality cult in fraternal states was simply a strong
party unity around a single leader, whose ideological course was contrary to
the Soviet path or in danger of becoming oppositional. Soviet desire to tear down Kim’s personality
cult therefore constituted an effort to reinstall Soviet ideological authority
over North Korea. This is precisely why
North Korea in this period condemned the Soviet Union’s “meddling in the
internal affairs of fraternal parties” under the pretense of “the so-called
movement ‘against the personality cult.’”[280]
The North
Koreans did not admit to the personality cult accusation. As previously shown, bureaucratism and
dogmatism constituted standard Marxist-Leninist concepts, even during the reign
of Stalin. In the face of de-Stalinization,
Kim used these concepts and turned them against his factional enemies. Since North Korea did not reject
Marxism-Leninism after 1961, now too, he continued to rely on them. Well aware of the charges that pro-Soviet
forces throughout the world—and perhaps even inside his own party—would levy
against his rule if he abandoned Soviet ideological leadership, Kim Il Sung and
his supporters carefully crafted the new ideological arguments to both appeal
to a well-established logic and counter potential detractors abroad.
While the
East Germans thought that the WPK, through its bureaucratic leadership,
educated the masses into a mindset of dependence that extinguished their
creative zeal, the North
Koreans argued just the opposite. When Pak Sŏng-ch’ŏl described charyŏk kaengsaeng as a method of
education, this not only meant an attempt to unify the masses around Kim Il
Sung but also a heightening of their creativity. Contrary to the East German interpretation,
the masses were to be taught to become independent, self-reliant actors in
charge of their destinies.307
Their revolution was the Korean revolution, and they should carry it out
by their own strength. Hence, North
Korea, while discussing communist education and creativity, frequently
emphasized the spirit of charyŏk
kaengsaeng, according to which the Korean masses were the masters of their
national revolution. Only this
independent mindset would allow them to overcome all challenges that might
arise in socialist construction and successfully execute party policy.308 As seen by
North Korea’s quoting from the “Internationale,”
as well as a fabricated statement Kim Il Sung supposedly made in the 1930s,
“the working class’ liberation cannot be accomplished but by the working class
itself.”309 The masses were
the “genuine creators” of history while the party and its leader represented
the guide. To avoid bureaucratism in
this relationship, North Korea (and
China) practiced the so-called “mass line,”
which mandated a close bond between leadership and
307 According to
an East German textbook: “The overblown encomiums about a leader, the
exaggerations about his achievements, intentionally or unintentionally, have a
damaging influence on the masses and obstruct their correct education. The personality cult evokes the false
assumption in the masses that the tasks facing them could be solved by someone
else. . . . Such views weaken in each worker the consciousness of
responsibility for the course and success of the socialist movement; they
weaken the precious feeling of being master of your own destiny.” This quote is particularly interesting in
light of Kim Il Sung’s 1972 statements about man as discussed in Chapter
4. It is almost as if the growth of the
cult corresponded with a growth of the man-is-master discourse, perhaps in
order to internally rationalize the leader-centered system, or perhaps in order
to create an effective foreign propaganda weapon, or both. Günther and Arbatow, Grundlagen des Marxismus-Leninismus: Lehrbuch, 216.
308 Kim Il Sung,
“Kim Il-sŏng susang ŭi sinnyŏnsa [Premier Kim Il Sung’s New Year’s Address],” Kŭlloja, no. 194
(January 1962): 7.
Chosŏnnodongdang chungangwiwŏnhoe, “Modŭn him
ŭl tahayŏ yŏsŏt kae koji rŭl chŏmnyŏnghaja [Let Us Make
Every Effort to Capture the Six Heights],” Kŭlloja, no. 194 (January 1962):
11.
Chosŏnnodongdang chungangwiwŏnhoe, “Charyŏk
kaengsaeng kwa charipchŏk minjok kyŏngje ŭi kŏnsŏl [Charyŏk kaengsaeng and the
Construction of a Self-Reliant National Economy],” 3.
309 Ri, “Hangil
mujang t’ujaeng sigi e palhwidoen charyŏk kaengsaeng ŭi hyŏngmyŏng chŏngshin
[The
Revolutionary Spirit of charyŏk kaengsaeng
Displayed During the Time of the Anti-Japanese Armed Struggle],” 13. In its
critique of the personality cult, the East German textbook quote above also
quoted the same line from the
“Internationale,” right after talking about
man being the master of his destiny.
Günther and Arbatow, Grundlagen des Marxismus-Leninismus: Lehrbuch, 216.
masses as a means to ascertain their actual
situation and thus better lead them.[281] In this way, the masses and the leadership
formed one coeval whole, the latter supplying the correct path, the former
carrying it out, thereby realizing their historical mission while concurrently
displaying the highest form of creativity.
The Ch’ŏllima Movement was seen as an example of such a correct
path. As a result, it was thought to
promote the masses’ creative powers and consequently prove the masses’ unity
with their leadership.[282] The masses were in charge of their revolution
precisely because they were one with their leadership and its correct
ideological outlook.
It is
important to note that the East Germans did not argue for the masses to make
history independent of communist leadership.
They, like other Marxist-Leninists, believed the unity of correct
leadership and the masses constituted a necessary prerequisite for the
creativity of the masses in the making of history. In other words, as stated by the East
Germans, “the working class can only fulfill its historical role under the leadership
of the Marxist-Leninist party.”[283] At the same time, the East Germans thought,
“The Party can only lead and teach the masses if she herself learns from the
masses.”[284] The communist leadership needed to recognize
and represent the historically necessary interests of the masses. If this was done, the will of the masses and
the will of the party became essentially identical, making the masses masters
of the revolution through an enlightened communist leadership—masses and party
formed a united body that catapulted history toward its conclusion.[285]
Once again,
East German criticisms were induced by North Korea’s rejection of Soviet
ideological leadership. In the final
analysis, this was a disagreement over proper ideological course. Each side still upheld the basic
Marxist-Leninist premises concerning the creativity of the masses and the role
of communist leadership. These same
premises, however, could be mobilized toward different ends. The mass line provides a great example. In 1956, the Chinese, still in harmony with
Soviet ideology, promoted the mass line as a cure for the types of bureaucratic
and dogmatic errors associated with the personality cult.[286] As another case in point, that same year,
opposition to East Germany’s Ulbricht, inspired by trends following the 20th
Congress, composed a manifesto that called for an adherence to “the mass line,”
criticizing bureaucratic errors of the past.[287] Kim Il Sung’s guidance tours, too, began as a
preemptive response to de-Stalinization, which is why they first emerged in
1953 and truly took off in
1956.[288] Guidance tours were considered emblematic of
an anti-bureaucratic leadership. In 1962
Khrushchev even praised Kim Il Sung for conducting these tours.[289] It is no coincidence that the Ch’ŏ ngsan-ni
Method—a method of production that, among other things, required party
functionaries to connect with the masses—was said to have been formulated
during one of Kim’s tours, since this method was seen as a manifestation of the
mass line and therefore thoroughly anti-bureaucratic.[290] The mass line could promote many paths. Whether or not bureaucratic and dogmatic
errors occurred was an entirely subjective judgment.
Of course,
no communist leader wanted to admit to a detachment from the masses. The firmer his control over the party, the
less his rivals could argue that such a detachment existed. He regulated the use of the mass line, which
bequeathed even the most tyrannical rule with a halo. In other words, the stronger the personality
cult, the less a communist leader could be accused of a personality
cult—communist irony.[291]
In the same
way, it was within the purview of a strong communist leader whether
Marxism-Leninism was creatively applied in correspondence with the actual
situation. If he was ideologically
insulated, with ideological authority securely vested in him, hardly anyone
could successfully challenge his creative application. While the creative application argument
rationalized his independent course, ideological insulation tied this creative
application directly to his person and his universalistic gaze, making his
interpretations increasingly incontestable.
This is essentially the story of chuch’e.
The Chuch’e
Problem
As we saw, in 1955, Kim Il Sung began to
associate the notion of chuch’e with
the creative application argument, contending that the Korean revolution
represented the subject (chuch’e) of
ideological work. To obviate dogmatism,
Kim argued, Korean communists must not imitate the ideological work of the
CPSU, whose immediate tasks were different due to different national
conditions, and instead approach ideological work from the perspective of the
Korean revolution and the demands placed upon it. Failure to do so would result in an
incongruence between subjective and objective, that is, dogmatism.
After 1955, chuch’e was seldom mentioned again until October 1959, according to
an internal North Korean source.[292] This is indeed confirmed by my own reading of
North Korean articles. One has to scour
copious volumes before finding a single instance of the word. Even in 1960 and 61, the term was rare and by
no means the main thrust of North Korean ideology.[293]
Whenever it appeared, it was in close
connection with the creative application argument. On
November 6, 1960, for example, a high-ranking
DPRK official’s speech, held in the presence of fraternal diplomats, called for
the establishment of chuch’e in the
sense that the WPK should proceed from the viewpoint of the Korean
revolution. According to the speaker,
“Only thus will we be able to make our contribution to the cause of world
revolution and be able to be devoted to the duty of proletarian
internationalism.”[294] Yet speeches and articles usually did not
have as their main topic the establishment of chuch’e, suggesting that it was merely a North Korean way of expressing
the creative application argument. A
major WPK article about the 4th Congress, published in October 1961,
mentioned the establishment of chuch’e
only once, again in relation to the creative application of Marxism-Leninism.[295] While the chuch’e
argument was used on and off when talking about creative application, it
certainly was not always present in the form of the word “chuch’e,” nor did it have to be.
As mentioned before, it was common MarxistLeninist logic to think from
the standpoint of one’s own revolution and to apply MarxismLeninism creatively
in accordance with the particularity of one’s revolution. The fact that chuch’e was rarely used when the creative application argument or
condemnations of dogmatism arose suggests its subordination to other
ideological tenets. It further suggests
that party members did not consider it the centerpiece of North Korean
ideology.
Because
these uses of chuch’e occurred prior
to North Korea’s proclamation of charyŏk
kaengsaeng, fraternal diplomats did not necessarily find chuch’e heterodox. While fraternal diplomats criticized
formulations involving chuch’e, they
also recognized their Marxist-Leninist seed.
A Czechoslovakian report from April 1961 analyzed chuch’e as follows: “According to Kim Il Sung, ‘juche’ means ‘to do
everything in such a way that it is in harmony with [the] concrete conditions
in our country, and to creatively apply [the] common principles of
Marx[ism]-Leninism and experiences of other
countries to our situation.’” The report
added that chuch’e was “a basically
correct principle,” but was frequently “applied altogether the wrong way.”[296] Although chuch’e
was Marxist-Leninist in nature, they complained that it was used to discard the
experiences of other socialist countries in socialist construction. In the context of the Sino-Soviet conflict
and the new restrictions placed on creative applications, some diplomats
clearly began to detect signs of a veering away from Soviet ideological
leadership. At this point, however,
since North Korea had not yet openly broken with the CPSU, the Soviet
ambassador
Puzanov, in regard to chuch’e, thought “that basically, [the] Korean comrades are all
right, and that their wrong steps follow from their lack of experience and
theoretical knowledge.”[297] After
1961, chuch’e became associated with charyŏk kaengsaeng. Starting in 1962, when discussing communist
education, Pyongyang stressed the cultivation of charyŏk kaengsaeng, the elimination of dogmatism, and the
establishment of chuch’e—all were
intimately related.[298] Because charyŏk kaengsaeng, like chuch’e,
contained within itself the creative application argument, it was not uncommon
for North Korea to discuss the establishment of chuch’e in relation to charyŏk
kaengsaeng. North Korea also argued
that the construction of a self-reliant national economy, integral to charyŏk kaengsaeng, constituted an
example of the establishment of chuch’e.[299] On the other hand, even in 1964, some
articles on the creative application of Marxism-Leninism and charyŏk kaengsaeng, although they
essentially talked about the chuch’e
argument, featured no mention of chuch’e.[300] Thus, the dividing lines between charyŏk kaengsaeng and chuch’e were often rather blurred. Both were said to be “organically connected,”
equally grounded in the idea that the primary factor is one’s own revolution.[301] Still, in 1964, charyŏk kaengsaeng seemed more important a slogan than chuch’e.
A 1964 political dictionary even lists the
observance of “chuch’e [the subject]
in ideology, charip [independence] in
the economy, chawi
[self-preservation] in national defense,” and
“chaju
[autonomy] in foreign relations,” principles that would later become closely
associated with chuch’e sasang, as
principles of charyŏk kaengsaeng.[302] Chuch’e
was merely one out of several ideological slogans employed by the regime. It certainly did not constitute an ideology
of its own.
In April 1965, on a visit to Indonesia,
Kim Il Sung held a speech listing the abovementioned principles. With the exception of Brian Myers, most
scholars, in my view, misread this speech and incorrectly assess the status of chuch’e in 1965 and the preceding years.[303] Charles Armstrong equates chuch’e, as it was expressed starting in
1955, with “selfreliance,” which he believes was adopted as “official policy in
the mid-1960s.”[304] According to
Jae-Jung Suh the speech “formalized Juche in
terms of a set of concrete programs,” by which he means the aforementioned set
of principles.[305] Similarly, Jae-Cheon Lim states Kim’s speech
“internationally declared that his chuch’e idea incorporated the four
concepts of chuch’e, chaju, charip and chawi.”[306] Dae-Sook Suh even suggests that this speech
was some type of watershed, claiming that Kim provided “full disclosure of his
monolithic ideological system” and announced “political independence from China
and the Soviet Union.”[307] The list goes on. In fact, however, this speech was far from a
watershed. Nothing in the speech was new
to North Korean sloganeering. Plus,
there is to be found not a single mention of a monolithic ideological system, a
doctrine, as we shall see, that was only formulated in 1967.
What,
then, did the speech really say? The original speech contained a section
entitled
“On the Problem of Establishing chuch’e and Carrying Out the Mass
Line.” In this section, as before, the
establishment of chuch’e was defined
as acting in accordance with the prevailing conditions in the country on the
basis of one’s own strength. It was also
once again set against dogmatism and linked to the spirit of charyŏk kaengsaeng. When the 1965 speech finally arrived at the principles
of chuch’e, charip, chaju, and chawi, none of which were new, no
suggestion was made that these principles somehow fell under an ideology of chuch’e.
Kim did mention the “idea/thought of chuch’e”
(chuch’e ŭi sasang) but merely said
that it is a principle derived from the “communist movement.”[308] One should understand that “chuch’e ŭi sasang” was not an expression
invented with this speech. Nor did it
refer to an ideology. Sasang could indeed mean ideology, but
North Korea also utilized the term to signify “idea” or “thought,” as in
“socialist patriotism thought” (sahoejuŭijŏk
aegukchuŭi sasang).[309] The previously mentioned political dictionary
from 1964 also used “chuch’e ŭi sasang”
in its entry on “chuch’e.” On another occasion, the dictionary used “chuch’e sasang,” suggesting that there
existed no meaningful difference between both expressions. Its status as just one slogan among many is
confirmed by the fact that unlike later dictionaries there was no separate
entry for “chuch’e sasang.”[310] In the 1968 version of the speech in Kim’s Collected Works, however, the editors
considered it necessary to replace chuch’e
ŭi sasang with chuch’e
sasang, because by that time chuch’e
had become something that it was not yet in 1965, Kim Il Sung’s personal sasang.[311]
Nevertheless, the speech did have an
impact. Articles in the WPK’s mouthpiece
began to speak about chuch’e much
more than before. One article in October
was specifically about chuch’e and
also quoted from Kim’s April speech. The
author identified the thought of chuch’e
with “the thought [sasang] of chaju, charip.”[312] Despite this, the article implied no more
than an organic relationship between chuch’e
and chaju/charip. There was no
indication that chuch’e sasang was a
specific brainchild of Kim Il Sung that stood above other types of sasang, though his role in the slogan’s
propagation was certainly recognized.
What we do see in 1965 and 1966 is a
relative escalation of the discourse about North Korea’s Marxist-Leninist
interpretative independence vis-à-vis the Soviet Union and China. The increase in rhetoric about chuch’e is one example. Another is the appearance of the term “chido riron” (guiding theory) in 1966.[313] Its most prominent usage occurred at a party
conference on October 5 via a speech by Kim Il Sung that at the time
reverberated internationally, a speech that again barely mentioned chuch’e.
In the speech, Kim argued that only the communists of the respective
country can formulate their party’s guiding theory, never the communists of
another country, an argument, if we recall, similar to the rationalization of charyŏk kaengsaeng and therefore nothing
wholly new, based as it was on the creative application argument.[314] North Korea’s chido riron was not actually a concrete body of thought. Discussions of the term in
1966 feature no listing of specific
tenets. Chido riron was a statement.
At the time, Kim’s relationship with the Chinese had grown tense. The Chinese Cultural Revolution, which Kim
disapproved of, was in its beginning stages.
Chinese meddling in the politics of other parties and disagreements over
policy with the WPK were on the rise.344 And at North Korean universities, students
and faculty expressed anti-Beijing sentiments, especially in regard to China’s
lack of support for the Vietnam conflict.[315] Naturally, China was not pleased by North
Korea’s disloyalty to the Chinese cause and recent rapprochement with the USSR,
now under the leadership of Brezhnev.
Responding to charges of centrism levied against him by a pro-Chinese
Albania in May, Kim rejected in his speech
the slanderous accusations of those who claimed “we sit between two chairs,”
insisting that “we also have our own chair.”[316] He further attacked the
Chinese, albeit indirectly, by denouncing
what was called “left-opportunism” (chwagyŏng
kihoejuŭi), an international communist concept according to which dogmatic
adherence to singular Marxist-Leninist precepts, irrespective of the actual
conditions, results in “hyperrevolutionary slogans.”[317] Kim knew that China’s Cultural Revolution was
becoming an ideological problem, especially if it were to find appeal in the
ranks of the WPK. As reported by the
Albanians, in 1966 several WPK members of Chinese descent were removed from the
party ranks.[318] Publication of Chinese materials was also
reduced to a bare minimum.349
The situation grew yet more tense in the course of 1967, as China’s Red
Guards condemned Kim Il Sung’s rule and legitimacy, essentially calling on
Koreans to overthrow the regime.[319] The archives further suggest a danger that
China would “revive the Yan’an faction,” several of whose members fled to China
following the 1956 purges.[320] Considering all of this, emphasis on
ideological independence must have seemed like a logical next step. Archival documents further reveal that Kim
may also have held higher ambitions, seeking to replace China as Asia’s
ideological leader through a program of independence and creative application
of Marxism-
Leninism.[321] Surely, for Kim to become Asia’s foremost
Marxist-Leninist theoretician would have served domestic propaganda as well,
increasing his political and universalistic power at home. International events therefore bore
considerable responsibility for North Korea’s ideological trajectory.
Factional conflict within the WPK also
contributed to an ideological change of course.
High-ranking members of the so-called Kapsan
faction, especially Pak Kŭm-ch’ŏl, contested Kim Il Sung’s policies and
personality cult in 1966 and 67. Various
pieces of archival evidence hint at their dissatisfaction over North Korea’s
unceasing emphasis on military development, the erasure of other members of the
guerrilla movement such as themselves from North Korean history, and the
grooming of Kim Il Sung’s younger brother as successor instead of Pak Kŭmch’ŏl.[322] Some evidence even suggests they held pro-Chinese
views.[323] In any event, unlike 1956, it is difficult to
determine the precise dispute that occurred behind the scenes, as archival
records are scant and often speculative.
As for the language involved, we cannot know with absolute certainty
what in North Korea’s ideological repertoire they drew on. For instance, based on the available
evidence, it is impossible to tell whether Kim’s rivals actually employed the
personality cult concept to criticize him.
But we do know the ideological concepts used by the victors of this
factional struggle. After the WPK’s 1966
October conference, Kim and his supporters pursued a militant line, using
slogans such as “the arming of the whole people” and “the fortification of the
whole country,” slogans that Pak apparently opposed.[324] At the same time, they called for a stronger
ideological unity around Kim Il Sung, for the people to become one with Kim in
“ideology and will” and display “limitless loyalty to the leader [suryŏng],” just like the Anti-Japanese
guerrilla fighters had supposedly done.[325] This culminated in the ouster of
Kim’s opponents in May 1967 and an
ideological shift toward increased militancy, extreme leader veneration, and
the suppression of foreign influences.
In the same month, Kim also gave an
impactful speech on the dictatorship of the proletariat. On the surface, such a topic may seem benign,
but Kim had in mind specific targets, namely, those who advocated Soviet or
Chinese theoretical positions in order to question the
WPK’s current path.
Some context
is needed before proceeding. According
to the basic Marxist-Leninist worldview, capitalism is followed by
communism. Since full communism is not
achieved instantaneously after the proletariat’s seizure of power, however,
there ensues a period of proletarian dictatorship, i.e., the proletariat’s
control of state power in order to prevent a return of the bourgeoisie and to
prepare the attainment of communism.
This preparatory period is otherwise known as socialism, the transition
period between capitalism and communism.
Controversy arose after the CPSU’s 22nd
Congress, during which Khrushchev declared the
USSR’s
“full-scale construction of communism” and the concomitant emergence of the
so-called “state of the whole people,” which was to replace the dictatorship of
the proletariat: “It stands to reason that when socialism had triumphed completely and finally in our country
and we entered upon the period of
full-scale communist construction, the conditions which necessitated the
dictatorship of the proletariat disappeared, its domestic purposes were fulfilled.” In other words, the Soviets now maintained
that the period leading up to the attainment of full communism, after the
complete victory of socialism, no longer constituted the socialist transitional
stage, making proletarian dictatorship obsolete. Full-scale communist construction, according
to the new mantra, necessitated a higher form of democracy that entrained all
of the people. This state of the whole
people was no longer the state of a specific class but one in which class
contradictions had disappeared.[326] The Chinese vehemently opposed Khrushchev’s
state of the whole people. They argued
that both Marx and Lenin asserted the need for proletarian dictatorship until full communism was reached.[327] To the Chinese, naturally, Khrushchev’s
formulation, by ignoring the class nature of the state, reeked of bourgeois
revisionism. After all, during the
Cultural Revolution, class contradictions became an ideological focus and
rationalizing vehicle for the terror that occurred.
Attempting
to establish a uniquely North Korean position in regard to the above SinoSoviet
ideological conflict, Kim Il Sung warned of right and left errors in the
grasping of the transition to communism.
Although he did not say it, by “right” he meant pro-Soviet, whereas
“left” meant pro-Chinese. While
advocates of the “right-opportunist” view believed that proletarian
dictatorship ended with socialism, “left-opportunists” saw proletarian
dictatorship as a transition from capitalism to full communism. Kim chastised those Korean communists who
fell into either camp, stating that neither view was correct. Instead, one had to examine the issue of
proletarian dictatorship from the perspective of one’s own revolution. The DPRK was presently in the phase of
socialist construction and still needed to achieve “the complete victory of
socialism,” he asserted. Since the DPRK
was not simply transitioning from capitalism to full communism, it was wrong to
talk about proletarian dictatorship in relation to such a transition. One should discuss proletarian dictatorship
with regard to the DPRK, where a complete victory of socialism would not be
reached until the “productive forces” were at a sufficiently high level.
During this time, proletarian dictatorship
needed to be maintained, and even after socialism’s complete victory, in the
transition to full communism, Kim believed, proletarian dictatorship would be
necessary as well.[328]
If the
reader is at this point confused as to how Kim’s vision differed from the
leftopportunists, then rightly so.
Suffice it to say, the distinction was weak and exaggerated. He quite naturally rejected the Soviet view,
worried what such an emphasis on a democracy of the people and an eventual
disappearance of proletarian dictatorship could do to his rule, but taking a
unique position vis-à-vis the Chinese interpretation required some intellectual
gymnastics.
While Kim’s understanding of proletarian
dictatorship was basically identical to China’s, the thrust of his argument
aimed at doctrinaire intellectual and intra-party squabbles over whether the
Soviet or Chinese doctrine was correct.
It was in this light that he mentioned chuch’e in the speech, entreating party members to study the issue
of proletarian dictatorship creatively, on the basis of the Korean revolution.[329]
Much clearer
in the speech was Kim’s stance on the issue of class struggle. By insisting that in socialist society class
struggle signified a building of unity between people, he implicitly countered
the way in which China executed its cultural revolution, where class struggle
led to open clashes between people. The
goal was to homogenize—or as Kim called it, “workingclassize” (rodonggyegŭphwahada)—the people,
materially and ideologically, not turn them against each other. This, he thought, represented an appropriate
measure to prepare the eventual transition into a communist society, as it generated
the necessary disappearance of class differences.361 Such a material transformation, i.e., the
erasure of material class differences, especially between workers and peasants,
city and countryside, was a traditionally Marxist-
Leninist notion, one which Khrushchev’s
“state of the whole people” also drew on for theoretical inspiration.[330] The erasure of class differences in the
ideological sphere, too, belonged to
Marxism-Leninism and was summed up with the
concept of “cultural revolution,” a term North Korea employed as well. The cultural revolution was not an originally
Chinese concept. Mao’s inspiration for
his version of the cultural revolution came from the traditional
Marxist-Leninist understanding. As
summed up in East German orthodoxy, “In 1928, the 6th Congress of
the Communist International—on the basis of the Great Socialist October
Revolution—adopted into its program the inseparable connection between the
dictatorship of the proletariat and the cultural revolution as a law of the
transition period from capitalism to socialism.” Its goal was to eliminate all remnants of the
old ideology, promote the “conscious social creative power” of the masses, and
turn them into a new socialist person.363 With the concept of “working-classizing” Kim
Il Sung hoped to contribute his own original version of the cultural revolution
doctrine. Hence, he did not fully accept
the Soviet viewpoint either and held that continuous vigilance against
counterrevolutionary elements, by means of a firm proletarian dictatorship,
remained mandatory, despite the increasing homogenization of the people. In practice, Kim’s cultural revolution bore
resemblance to the Chinese Cultural Revolution, since the speech was followed
by an obsessive extermination of foreign things, including books, in order to
better establish an ideological system around the person of Kim Il Sung—all in
the name of class struggle.364
Kim thus obtained the benefits of a radical cultural revolution without
the chaos.
Kim’s
speech, often termed the “May 25 Instruction,” thus marked the start of a new
ideological direction. The speech
clearly attempted to raise Kim’s theoretical powers by discussing intricate
Marxist-Leninist issues while asserting superiority vis-à-vis Soviet and
Chinese theories. He thereby tied ideology closer to his person
and further insulated North Korean ideology, making difficult the utilization
of Soviet or Chinese arguments to challenge his rule. When he called on people to look at
theoretical issues from a subjective (chuch’ejŏk)
363 Böhme et
al., Kleines politisches Wörterbuch
[Small Political Dictionary], 895–99.
364 Jae-Cheon
Lim provides an interesting statement from a high-ranking North Korean defector
confirming the xenophobia that swept North Korea after May 25, 1967. Lim, Kim
Jong Il’s Leadership of North Korea, 41. One can even observe this in the
editing of speeches, such as his April 1965 speech in Indonesia. Whereas in the
original version, in regard to the establishment of chuch’e, the word Kim used to signify “establish” was SinoKorean (hwangniphada), the revised 1968 version
replaced it with a native Korean word (seuda). A similar change was made to the word noryŏ k (effort), which was replaced
with the word him in the 1968
version.
Kim Il Sung, “Chosŏn minjujuŭi inmin
konghwagug esŏ ŭi sahoejuŭi kŏnsŏl kwa namjosŏn [South Korea and
Socialist Construction in the Democratic
People’s Republic of Korea],” 18.
Kim Il Sung, “Chosŏn minjujuŭi inmin konghwagug esŏ ŭi sahoejuŭi kŏnsŏl
kwa namjosŏnhyŏngmyŏng e taehayŏ
[On Socialist Construction in the Democratic
People’s Republic of Korea and the South Korean Revolution],” 220.
perspective, what he really meant was to
follow his perspective. It was his
creative application of Marxism-Leninism, nobody else’s.
This
ideological insulation culminated in the development of the “monolithic
ideological system” (yuil sasang ch’egye)
over the course of 1967. Unnoticed by
most scholars, this was not an entirely new concept. As early as 1959, the so-called “party
ideological system” (tangjŏk sasang
ch’egye) constituted part of North Korean orthodoxy, referring to party
members’ loyal adherence to the ideological viewpoints and leadership of the CC
led by Kim Il Sung.[331] Its fundamental opposite was an individualism
or factionalism in which one considered one’s “individual viewpoint more
precious than the party’s viewpoint.”[332] To avoid this error, one had to thoroughly
“study the party’s history, the party’s politics, and the writings of Kim Il
Sung,” a practice that was common in fraternal parties as well.367 By April 1967, North Korean formulations
began to show signs of the concept’s redirection and sublation. Attacking factionalism, in light of the
recent factional dispute, one article stressed the “party ideological
system.” At another point in the
article, however, the author called it the “monolithic party ideological
system” (yuilchŏgin tangjŏk sasang
ch’egye), emphasizing, more than in previous formulations, the need to
“think and act” in accordance with Kim Il Sung’s ideas.[333] Another article in the same month employed
the term “monolithic ideological system” (yuilchŏgin
sasang ch’egye), claiming that this system was already established by Kim’s
guerrillas.[334] As before, such historical revisionism served
to solidify, through propaganda and the study of revolutionary traditions, the
current ideological path. Yet even this
author used the concept inconsistently, once terming it the “revolutionary
ideological system” (hyŏngmyŏngjŏk sasang
ch’egye).[335] In an unusual move, the month of May went
without an issue of the WPK’s theoretical journal,
Kŭlloja, indicating
ideological quarrels within the party.
It also hints at the impact of Kim’s May
25 speech.
With the June issue, discussion of Kim’s guerrilla legacy continued in
full force, as did mentions of an ideological system. The concept was still not used consistently,
however, and was sometimes referred to as the “Marxist-Leninist ideological
system” (Maksŭ-reninjuŭijŏk sasang
ch’egye).[336] Nevertheless, the glorification of Kim’s role
in ideological matters and loyalty to his person was a constant theme. The monolithic ideological system became the
equivalent of Kim’s thought, to be established within party members and the masses at large.[337]
North Korea even tried to pass off Kim’s
ideas about the transition period and proletarian dictatorship as a “new and
excellent contribution to the development of Marxist-Leninist theory,” something
that North Korea continued to do in subsequent years.[338] Kim was no longer merely applying
Marxism-Leninism creatively, but he was “creatively developing Marxism-
Leninism.”[339]
These ideological developments reached a
climax on December 16, 1967 with Kim Il
Sung’s speech “Let Us Even More Thoroughly
Embody the Revolutionary Spirit of chaju,
charip, and chawi in All Spheres of State Activity.” The speech featured a ten-point program that
set in stone North Korea’s new orthodoxy.
Arguably the most important part of the speech pertained to the
monolithic ideological system and chuch’e
sasang. To foster the working
classizing of the people, Kim declared the necessity of the monolithic
ideological system (now yuil sasang
ch’egye) and its establishment throughout society. He further preached the
“embodiment” of chuch’e sasang “in all spheres.”
Framing chaju, charip, and chawi as embodiments of chuch’e
sasang, Kim subsumed (or sublated) these previously independent principles
under chuch’e sasang. The realization of chaju, charip, and chawi was now equated with the
realization of chuch’e sasang and
vice versa.[340] In fact, according to the official
explanation of the speech that followed the next month, Kim’s whole platform
was a manifestation of chuch’e sasang.[341] Even charyŏk
kaengsaeng, as well as the entire corpus of the WPK’s politics and lines [rosŏn], was now considered a means to
realize chuch’e sasang.[342]
All this constituted a qualitatively new
development, as was the notion of “Marxist-Leninist guiding idea” (Maksŭ-reninjuŭijŏk chido sasang), a
title now attached to chuch’e sasang.[343] Kim portrayed chuch’e sasang as North Korea’s own way of practicing
Marxism-Leninism, a trend that only escalated in subsequent years. Whereas North Korea’s 1964 political
dictionary completely neglects any mention of chuch’e or Kim Il Sung in its entry on Marxism-Leninism, in the
1970 edition the same entry spares no praise for chuch’e sasang, Kim’s creation of this idea, and his development of
Marxism-Leninism “to its highest stage.”379 In North Korea, Kim Il
Sung had become the world’s most preeminent
Marxist-Leninist theoretician, and chuch’e
sasang was one of his Marxist-Leninist theoretical creations, part of his
so-called “revolutionary thought.” Chuch’e sasang, defined in terms of the
creative application argument and the components outlined above, did not
exhaust Kim’s revolutionary thought but nonetheless often definitionally
coincided with this revolutionary thought.380
In 1967 and
the following year, North Korea’s ideological insulation soared. Ideology and its universal truth further
merged with Kim Il Sung’s person, whose “revolutionary thought” constituted the
thought of the party and society.
According to the new orthodoxy, the “party’s monolithic ideology [yuil sasang] . . . is Comrade Kim Il
Sung’s great revolutionary thought [sasang].”[344] Similarly, the notion of “our party’s chuch’e sasang”—which represented the
standard expression before 1967—was frequently used interchangeably with
“Comrade Kim Il Sung’s chuch’e sasang.”[345] The ideology of the party and the theoretical
gaze of Kim Il Sung thus coalesced more blatantly than was the case in foregoing
years. As we saw, even before this shift
occurred, chuch’e and the related
creative application argument served insulation by making Kim less dependent on
the ideological interpretations of the Soviet Union. But because Marxism-Leninism remained an externally
existing set of universal truths, to be discerned and creatively applied by
him, contestations of his interpretations were still possible, especially in
the context of the polarizing ideological contest between the USSR and China. As long as party unity was solidly tied
around his leadership, the universalization of Korea’s particular situation and
the concomitant legitimization of his rule were secure. The factional conflict of 1966/67, however,
once again raised the specter of a disunity threatening Kim’s universalizing
gaze. Further fusing ideology with his
person while elevating his Marxist-Leninist theoretical powers became a
desirable solution not just for Kim but also for those who wished to eliminate
internal party rivals and move up the ranks.
In a situation in which the country’s ideology symbolized the direct
equivalent of Kim Il Sung’s thought, and in which this ideology was the most
advanced and therefore most universalistic
ideology in the world, what internal or external opposition could seriously
damage Kim’s legitimacy or challenge his rule?
Beyond Heterodoxy: A Conclusion
It is important to keep in mind that the
various ideological developments and conflicts discussed in this chapter
occurred within the boundaries of the Marxist-Leninist tradition. Within this tradition, heterodoxy was a
relative phenomenon, contingent on the perspective of one’s own orthodoxy. Fundamentally, the sort of ideological
battles that raged between the Soviets and Chinese, as well as the fraternal
criticisms directed at North Korea, constituted conflicts of diverging
universalities. Heterodoxy arose when a
particular leadership perceived a contestation of its universality. In other words, heterodoxy was reviled
precisely because it struck so close to home.
This conflict therefore bears similarity to the religious conflict
Europe experienced centuries ago.
Catholics and Protestants may share many doctrines and beliefs,
cooperate in joint projects, but nonetheless disagree on theological
grounds. Both form part of a common
intellectual tradition, allowing for mutually intelligible disagreement often
grounded in shared principles that are variously interpreted or mobilized
toward different ends, perhaps giving rise to entirely new principles. From these commonalities one develops both a
sensitivity to and a loathing for divergences.
Yet a shared
intellectual tradition can also foster consensus, even if only accidental. Because ideological differences between the
GDR and DPRK were often rather subtle and part of a shared intellectual
tradition, heterodoxy could also arise among East German citizens. In the 1960s, East German ambassadorial staff
received instructions from the upper party echelons to study the classics in
relation to the mistaken positions of the CCP carefully, with the intention of
thereby reinforcing the infallibility of Soviet Marxism-Leninism in the minds
of East Germans.[346] Plus, those employed at the embassy in North
Korea engaged in substantial discussion and criticism of the WPK’s supposed
ideological errors. Their ideological
training was of particular significance, given their direct confrontation with
heterodoxy, which was not the case for the average East German. Given North Korea’s frequent references to
Marx, Engels, and Lenin in their self-rationalizations, the East Germans’ theoretical
purity was indispensable. After all, the
North Koreans were happy to mention the founding fathers of Marxism-Leninism in
front of the East Germans who attacked their positions, going as far as
imploring them, on one occasion, to conduct a more thorough study of the
classics.[347] Naturally the party leadership wanted the
embassy staff to internalize and reflect official party positions in their
everyday work. At times, however, during
party organization meetings, staff issued comments not to the liking of the
party leadership, such as in relation to charyŏk
kaengsaeng, actually finding part of the doctrine positive.[348] On another occasion, an employee was
criticized for agreeing with North Korea’s view that the national liberation
movement in Asia, Africa, and Latin America constituted the driving force of
the world revolution, because this view contradicted the Soviet doctrine of
socialism’s peaceful economic competition with capitalism as a form of class
struggle and the main drive of history.[349] The employee’s mistaken position was attributed
to
“certain ideological weaknesses” and he was
charged to carry out a study of the classics, since, after all, North Korea’s
ideological errors were also said to be a mere consequence of a deviation from
and knowledge of the writings of the founders.[350] Such undesired agreement was aggravated by
the fact that the SED, during Stalin’s time, held the same or similar positions
as North Korea in the 1960s, a phenomenon made yet more likely by the general
continuity before and after de-Stalinization. Thus, besides disagreement, archival documents
additionally feature, from time to time and depending on the intent or
knowledge of the actor, consensus.
Consensus is
especially visible when looking beyond the USSR-DPRK dynamic. A number of parties from around the world
held similar or identical positions to those of the WPK, largely because these
positions reflected global trends. D.N.
Aidit, Chairman of the Communist Party of Indonesia, for instance, shortly after
having visited the DPRK in 1963, praised the
WPK’s policies and also advanced the notion
of the “Banteng Spirit,” which he
defined as “the spirit of trust in one’s own strength . . . and the concrete
praxis of the Indonesian revolution,” an idea which was fairly close to North
Korea’s own views.[351] An indigenous Indonesian term based on a
native animal, “Banteng Spirit”
easily reminds us of North Korea’s use of chuch’e
or the spirit of charyŏk kaengsaeng,
which contained a similar meaning. In
the context of the SinoSoviet Split, many communist parties were grappling with
the issue of independence. The
Eurocommunist
movement of the 1970s and 1980s is perhaps the highest expression of this shift
toward independence. North Korea was not
unique in this regard, nor was this an exclusively postcolonial phenomenon. For example, Paul de Groot, head of the
Communist Party of the
Netherlands (CPN), praised Kim Il Sung’s
October 1966 speech, in which he called for the autonomy of each party,
rejected the notion of a leading party, argued that each party ought to have
its own guiding theory, and criticized Soviet meddling in the internal affairs
of other parties, consequently triggering a concerned East German analysis: “de
Groot again defends the ‘autonomy’ of every communist party. He demands that every party must devise and put
into practice its own ‘guiding theory.’”[352] Similar to Kim Il Sung, de Groot was also
responding to a domestic situation in which the charge of being a puppet of the
Soviets would not have granted electoral success.[353] Naturally, as a result of de Groot’s
challenge to the Soviet leadership role, the East Germans criticized the CPN as
nationalistic. De Groot countered this
by means of the classics, arguing that according to Lenin, “the national
element” may play a positive or negative role in revolution depending on the
conditions. In the Netherlands, he
contended, in light of the entrenchment of imperialism in Europe, these
conditions dictated the revolutionary significance of “the national element.”[354] North Korea also believed in this
significance, particularly in relation to the Leninist notion of the national
liberation struggle, given imperialism’s foothold in Asia and South Korea. A strong, independent, and free nation meant
a weakening of imperialism and hence constituted an asset to historical
progress.
As revealed
by such global interconnections, the DPRK’s ideological shift during the 1960s
actually testifies to the global relevance of North Korean ideological
developments.
Insulation did not mean isolation. Nevertheless, after 1967, North Korean
ideology and Soviet Marxism-Leninism were rapidly heading in opposite
directions. By the 1980s, there existed
marked differences between the two, which might lead some to say that one can
no longer talk about a common intellectual tradition. This begs the question, did ideological
insulation and the ascendancy of chuch’e
sasang eventually result in a fundamental divide between North Korean
ideology and Marxism-Leninism? Did they
become more different than alike?
CHAPTER IV
CHUCH’E
SASANG AND THE
MARXIST-LENINIST TRADITION:
BEYOND THE MYTH OF NORTH KOREAN IDEALISM
(1968-89)
In April
1983, East Germany hosted a pompous Marxist philosophical conference in honor
of the 100th anniversary of Karl Marx’s death. Representatives from around the world
gathered in the East German capital to celebrate and share their thoughts about
Marx’s life and work. Attending the
event, Kim Chung-rin, Secretary of the WPK CC, conveyed his government’s
reflections in a speech that was printed fully in the SED’s party
newspaper. He described Marx as “the
first leader and great teacher of the international working class” who made
“immortal contributions for the cause of the liberation of mankind” and “for
the first time
in human history originated the teachings of
scientific communism.”[355] Kim continued:
Marx’s greatest contributions to the
history of human thought consist of the fact that he explained the fundamental
principles of the materialist dialectic and, on this basis, proved the
inevitability of the downfall of capitalism as well as the necessity of the
victory of socialism and communism, thus transforming socialism from a utopia
into a science. On the basis of a
processing of all philosophical thinking and all socio-historical conceptions,
from the philosophy of Democritus and Epicurus in ancient times to Hegel and
Feuerbach in the modern era, Marx put an end to idealistic conceptions
concerning the relationship between matter and consciousness, between essence
and phenomenon, and forged the materialistic-dialectical worldview and
socio-historical conception, according to which matter is primary and all
things and phenomena change and develop in correspondence with the laws of
motion of matter. By conceptualizing the
developmental process of society as a natural and historical process of the
development of matter, he uncovered the laws of motion of capitalist economy
and on this basis thoroughly explicated the laws of the emergence, development,
and downfall of the capitalist mode of production. . . .
Marx further founded the theory about
the party of the working class and its tactics: if the working class and the
working masses want to emerge victoriously from their struggle against the
heavily armed capitalist class, they must have a revolutionary avantgarde, the
party, and be led by it. Marx’s theory
about the dictatorship of the proletariat . . . became a mighty weapon that
enabled the working class to fulfill its historical mission.[356]
Besides the paeans to Marx and Marxism, Kim’s
speech also featured positive appraisals of
Marxism-Leninism, calling on the world’s
communists to rally around “the banner of MarxismLeninism,” at a time when
North Korea was openly proclaiming its own banner, a banner Kim placed right
beside Marxism-Leninism, “the banner of the immortal chuch’e ideology
[Dschutsche-Ideologie].”[357]
The
above reflections stand largely in contradistinction to scholarly depictions of
North
Korean ideology in the 1980s and
thereafter. Charles Armstrong talks
about North Korea’s
“humanistic idealism,” contrasting North
Korean ideology with Marxism and MarxismLeninism.[358] Similarly, Bruce Cumings describes North
Korean ideology as “an idealist metaphysic that bears close resemblance to
Korean neo-Confucian doctrines” and likens it to “Hegel’s philosophical
idealism.”[359] Both scholars see North Korean ideology as a
type of voluntarism in which human will is ontologically primary while material
forces are secondary, an inversion of Marx’s materialism and
base-superstructure dynamic. Han Shik
Park also states that North Korean ideology is “in defiance of the material
determinism of history.” “Spiritual
consciousness,” he contends, “determines the course of history and it alone
underlies all other structures.”[360] According to these major scholars, then,
North Korean ideology, as it developed its own philosophical principles under
the umbrella of chuch’e sasang,
clearly stood in opposition to Marxism.
I disagree with the above scholars’
portrayals of North Korean ideology. In
the following pages, I contest the notion of a North Korean idealism. An insistence on idealism obfuscates
North Korean ideology’s relationship to the
Marxist-Leninist tradition at the end of the Cold War. Another problem is the cursory nature of
contrasts between Marxism and North Korean ideology. Hegel may be named, but his actual
philosophical writings are never dealt with.
Marx’s critique of Hegel is echoed in a rather
superficial way, with the attendant conclusion that this critique would somehow
apply to chuch’e sasang as well. Moreover, how North Korean ideas compared to
the contemporaneously existing ideologies of other communist regimes,
especially the Soviet Union, is a problem that gets sidelined. For the uninitiated reader, this generates an
image of a spiritually cloistered country, whose ideology by the late 1980s had
little to do with Western thought.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
As exemplified by Kim
Chung-rin’s speech, North Korea consciously
positioned itself within the Marxist and MarxistLeninist traditions. Chuch’e
sasang, even as it acquired what North Korea claimed were original
philosophical principles, remained quite closely related to Marxist-Leninist
premises. In fact, these principles were
not as novel as North Korea portrayed them.
They were ultimately derived from preexisting Marxist-Leninist doctrines. By covering up this derivation, North Korea
effectively silenced Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin, replacing them with the
voice of Kim Il
Sung.
Even in the 1980s, Marxist-Leninist materialism remained an important
component of North Korean ideology, assisting in the rationalization of
revolutionary consciousness and leadership.
As it turns out, when taking a closer look at North Korean and East
German conceptions about materialism, consciousness, and leadership, North
Korean ideology was much less exceptional than is typically assumed.
Silencing Marx: North Korea’s Humanism
With the declaration of the monolithic
ideological system and the elevation of chuch’e
sasang in 1967 began a stronger identification of Marxism-Leninism with the
personal thought of Kim Il Sung, fostering ideological insulation. Previously independent Marxist-Leninist
principles were subsumed under Kim’s chuch’e
sasang. Whatever was
Marxist-Leninist in
North Korea was at the same time in correspondence
with Kim’s ideas. This effectively
blurred distinctions between chuch’e
sasang and Marxism-Leninism. It was
difficult to discern what originated with Marxism-Leninism and what originated
with Kim Il Sung. The creative
application argument, for example, now seemed more of a North Korean invention
than a principle derived from Marxism-Leninism.
When looking at the definition of chuch’e
sasang in a political dictionary from 1970, the creative application
argument, chaju, charip, chawi, charyŏk kaengsaeng, and North Korea’s
preexisting definition of proletarian internationalism were all understood as
components of chuch’e sasang while chuch’e sasang itself was termed
“most correct Marxist-Leninist guiding idea,”
an idea North Korea claimed was recognized by
“all of the world’s revolutionary peoples” as
presenting “the only correct path” in the
“international communist movement and the
anti-imperialist struggle.”[361] The same dictionary defined Marxism-Leninism
as a “worldview” conveying “a method for changing the world” on the basis of
“nature and society’s laws of development.”
Although “the great leaders [widaehan
suryŏngdŭl] Marx and Engels,” in addition to Lenin and Stalin, were
recognized for their important contributions to the history of revolutionary
thought, the dictionary regarded Kim Il
Sung’s thought as the “highest stage” in this
genealogy. His “revolutionary thought”
was “our epoch’s great Marxism-Leninism.”
Thus, in incredibly vague terms, the dictionary did acknowledge
Marxism-Leninism’s dialectical materialism, historical materialism, political
economy, and scientific communism, but again stressed Kim’s theoretical
advancement of these doctrines as exemplified by his thoughts about proletarian
dictatorship.399 Rather than
discussing the actual contents of Marxism-Leninism, the dictionary mostly
focused on Kim’s achievements. This
contrasts with the 1964 political dictionary, whose entry on Marxism-Leninism
paid no heed to Kim’s thought.400
In essence, the close identification of Marxism-Leninism with the
thought of Kim Il Sung meant that Marxism-Leninism need not be studied as an
external doctrinal corpus and instead be acquired through the writings of Kim
Il Sung, who had developed Marxism-Leninism to a higher stage.401
Since North Korea did not deny the
validity of Marxism-Leninism, considering it the basis upon which its own
ideology was built, North Korean representatives, when engaging with fraternal
socialist states, found no contradiction in their vocal support for Marxism-Leninism.
Unfortunately, they were not published
annually. Other socialist states, such
as East Germany, also published such dictionaries.
399 Ibid.,
224–25.
400 Pak, Taejung chŏngch’i yongŏ sajŏn [Public
Political Terminology Dictionary], 160–62.
401 While
ideological study frequently centered on Kim’s writings already in earlier
years, this method of insulation reached new heights after 1967.
Kim Il Sung, so it was said, had merely
developed universal Marxist-Leninist principles, not revised them. This is why Kim Chung-rin was able to say the
things he did without contravening his state orthodoxy. This is also why we can find phrasings such
as “mutual support in our common struggle on the basis of Marxism-Leninism” in
agreements between North Korea and East Germany, even in 1985.[362] The same applies to North Korea’s advocacy of
Marxism, which referred to the writings of Marx and Engels, because Marxism
connoted a lower but nonetheless universally valid stage in the history of
revolutionary thought. East Germany and
other communist regimes viewed Marxism like this as well, maintaining that
“Lenin, in correspondence with the new conditions, creatively applied Marxism
and further developed it into Marxism-Leninism.”[363] Hence, although North Korea replaced the
voices of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin with the voice of Kim Il Sung, who
now represented an embodied sublation of these previous thinkers, doctrinally
the relationship between North Korean ideology and Marxism-Leninism remained an
intimate one, more intimate than even North Korean propaganda liked to admit,
as it might cast doubt upon Kim’s theoretic inventiveness. After all, when North Korean ideology took a
radical turn in 1967, this produced no fundamental doctrinal revolution.
And in subsequent years, too, ideological
change was gradual and marked by sublation.
In 1972, North Korean ideology
took another turn. On September 17, the
North Koreans, in the name of Kim Il Sung, presented a Japanese newspaper with
an extended explication of chuch’e sasang. The text began with a definition: “Simply
put, chuch’e sasang is the idea that
the masses of the people are the masters of the revolution and construction and
that they are also the driving force of the revolution and construction. In other words, it is the idea that one is
the master of one’s destiny and that one has the power to determine one’s
destiny.”[364] Several paragraphs later, there followed the
usual discussions about establishing chuch’e
and carrying out one’s own revolution by one’s own strength.[365] But then Kim elaborated on the significance
of autonomy (chajusŏng) for human
beings. According to Kim, if man loses
his autonomy as a human being, then “he is no different from an animal.” Man, Kim wrote, is a “social being” whose
“sociopolitical life is more precious than his physical life.” For this life to lose autonomy is tantamount
to death since then man’s physical life becomes worthless. He further framed the history of class
struggle—referencing the downtrodden masses in feudalism and capitalism—as a
struggle for autonomy. Therefore, Kim
argued, the construction of socialism and communism represents a struggle to
secure autonomy and end all forms of “class and national subjugation,” for man
to act as “master of nature and society” and to lead an “autonomous and
creative life.”[366] Kim went on to declare that chuch’e sasang is centered on man: “man
is the master of all things and decides all things,” transforming the world to
suit his needs.[367] Yet in order to assume this creative role,
man requires a correct “ideological consciousness.” Otherwise, if man “lags behind
ideologically,” Kim asserted, he is but a “mental cripple who is of no use to
our society.” Ideological education,
hence, is of paramount importance, inculcating the youth with “socialist
patriotism” and “communist morality” in order to mold them into “a new type of
human.”[368]
North Korea
subsequently began talking about chuch’e
philosophy (ch’ŏrhak), pretending
that Kim Il Sung’s response to the Japanese newspaper contained something
original. Not long after its
publication, North Korea claimed that through the article Kim “further
perfected and systematized chuch’e sasang,”
developing Marxism-Leninism to an even higher stage. While Marxism revealed the lawful motion of
nature and society, chuch’e
philosophy supposedly advanced Marxism by explaining “man’s nature as a social
being” with autonomy and his “position in transforming nature and society.”[369] Kim Il Sung, North Korea alleged, “for the
first time [in history], scientifically elucidated man’s nature, position, and
role from a
Marxist-Leninist standpoint.”[370]
Adding a
philosophical component to chuch’e sasang
only further consolidated the coalescence of ideology, universality, and the
person of Kim Il Sung. Prior to 1967,
North Korea made no attempts to attribute to Kim Il Sung theoretical
advancements in Marxism-Leninism’s underlying philosophy, historical and
dialectical materialism. These were
interrelated Soviet concepts used to highlight and rationalize the “scientific”
nature of their state ideology and the communist leadership’s quest for man’s
liberation. Whereas historical
materialism (ryŏksajŏk yumullon)
referred to the investigation of human society’s laws (of motion) and the laws
of human society’s historical development, dialectical materialism (pyŏnjŭngbŏpchŏk yumullon) represented
the methodology behind Marx’s thinking and the epistemological as well as
ontological foundations of Marxism. With
the 1972 philosophical additions to chuch’e
began a concerted effort to more definitely display Kim Il Sung’s advancement
of dialectical and historical materialism.
This is reflected in a 1973 political dictionary’s entry on historical
materialism, according to which Kim’s notions about man raised “historical
materialism to a new and higher stage.”[371] Now there seemed little reason to closely
investigate the writings of Marx, Engels, and Lenin in regard to matters of
dialectical and historical materialism since Kim Il Sung had already developed
this philosophy to a whole new level. A
North Korean, then, should learn this philosophy through the voice of Kim Il
Sung instead of its originators, hence aiding North
Korean ideology’s insulation. Nonetheless, the silencing of Marx, Engels,
and Lenin did not mean that the introduction of chuch’e philosophy fundamentally transformed North Korean
ideology’s previous outlook concerning questions of materialism and man’s role
in history. The philosophical worldview
of North Korean ideology experienced only little change. In fact, chuch’e
philosophy covered up its own vacuity and lack of originality by primarily
referencing
Kim Il Sung, much like North Korea had
already done with previous claims about Kim’s theoretical inventiveness.
There was
hardly anything new or original about Kim Il Sung’s statements from September
1972.[372] As he himself admitted right after defining chuch’e sasang in terms of man
determining his own destiny, “We are not at all the first ones to have
discovered this idea. All
Marxist-Leninists think like this. It is
just that I have especially stressed this idea.”[373] More strikingly, in another so-called
interview with a different Japanese newspaper, when Kim was asked if he had
created a new philosophy, he humbly declined such an assessment and reminded
everyone that the necessity of “autonomy” (chajusŏng)
and “creativity” (ch’angjosŏng) was
not his invention but that he “merely emphasized this problem.”[374] Indeed, long before North Korea added a chuch’e philosophy, it was common, in
regard to the notion of chuch’e, to
talk about having “an attitude of being master.” But this phrasing only referred to the
national revolution and the need to “creatively apply Marxism-Leninism.” To have a “subjective stance” (chuch’ejŏk ripchang) simply meant to approach all problems from the
perspective of one’s national revolution.[375] Similarly, the concepts of “autonomy” and
“creativity” contained a rather nation-centered meaning, even though they were
concurrently viewed as universally valid due to their derivation from “Marxism-Leninism’s
general principles.” North Korea
directly connected phrasings such as “the party and people as the revolution’s
masters” with autonomy and creativity.[376] Autonomy primarily meant national and party
autonomy, or, as Kim Il Sung previously put it, “Only by securing autonomy [chajusŏng] can each single party
correctly carry out the revolution in its country, contribute to the world
revolution, and solidify the confraternity of the communist world movement.”[377] Creativity, as the previous chapter showed,
referred to humans’ history-making powers, a concept North Korea mobilized to
signify, in particular, the history-making powers of its own people by
constructing socialism. While placing
these universal Marxist-Leninist principles in a local context, North Korea
admitted their origins.
Instead of muting Lenin, Pyongyang openly
recognized that “Lenin always stressed the importance and power of the
independent, creative activity of the working masses, the masters of the
revolution.”[378] With the advent of chuch’e philosophy, however, these concepts coalesced in the notion
of man-as-master and assumed the role of a universal truth derived from the
thought of Kim Il Sung.
Karl Marx’s
own writings further call into question North Korea’s claims. Take The
Germany Ideology, for example. In
the very beginning, Marx clarified that he is examining human history,
highlighting the privileged role of human beings, who, unlike animals, have
“consciousness” and alter whatever “natural
foundations” they may be faced with.[379] Marx’s goal in this piece was to challenge
the ideological illusions that plagued humans under bourgeois rule. According to Marx, “They, the creators [Schöpfer], have bowed before their
creations [Geschöpfe].”[380] This is a fascinating formulation, because
whenever the East German communists pondered man’s position as master and his
active role in the construction of a new society, they employed terms such as “Schöpfer” (creator), “Schöpfertum” (creativity),
“Schöpferkraft” (creative power), and “Schöpfergeist” (creative spirit). Schöpfer
also contains a religious undertone in German, as God is often referred to
using this term. Surely, this nuance was
not lost on Marx since right before this statement he mentioned humans’ ideas
about God and humans’ capitulation to their own spiritual creations. Rather than depend on alien forces, including
religious ideas, Marx wanted humans to be autonomous: “A being only considers
itself autonomous once it stands on its own feet, and it only stands on its own
feet once it owes its existence to itself.”[381] Communism would finally grant man this
autonomy. To Marx communism meant “the
conscious mastery [Beherrschung] of
those powers, which, produced by the mutually effecting interaction of men,
have until now impressed and ruled [beherrscht]
them as thoroughly alien powers.”[382] He likened the state of communism to the
Hegelian notion of a
“society as subject,” where the harmonious
interconnection of individuals constitutes “a single individual.”[383] In Marx’s view, communism represented the
ultimate human liberation, a complete mastership of nature and society in which
all forms of exploitation have disappeared.
Marx regarded all of human history as a struggle toward this goal, for
man to be at home with himself, one with his own nature (i.e.,
species-being). Communism, in other
words, is “the return of man for himself as a social, that is, truly human, human being.”[384] Indeed, it is difficult to deny the
man-centeredness of Marx’s philosophy.
Thus, in earlier years, even the North
Koreans admitted that “Marx pointed out that
the proletariat’s struggle for communism is truly genuine humanism.”[385][386] The point here is not to systematically
compare North Korean ideology with Marx’s ideas, since one can easily find
disparities on the basis of one’s own interpretation, but to illustrate the
exaggeration displayed by North Korea’s claims about Kim Il Sung’s originality.
When examining East Germany’s
Marxist-Leninist views, this exaggeration is only amplified. While it seems quite evident now that Kim Il
Sung created no fundamentally new philosophy, some might argue Kim’s view of man
contained an idealism contrary to MarxismLeninism, especially as chuch’e philosophy acquired more
elaborations under Kim Jong Il. At first
glance, it is true, North Korean statements about man’s ability to “decide
everything” appear rather voluntaristic and idealistic. North Korea’s obsession with ideology only
further seems to indicate a rejection of materialism. But if that is the case, then why do we find
East German statements about creativity and consciousness that closely resemble
North Korea’s own views? Something is
amiss. After all, the East Germans were
fervent advocates of Marxist-Leninist materialism. Is it possible that North Korea never
abandoned this materialism?
Materialism, Consciousness, and North Korean
Ideology
The
6th Congress of the WPK in October 1980 formalized the heir apparent
status of Kim
Jong Il, Kim Il Sung’s son, by bestowing upon
him high-ranking political offices. In
terms of ideology, the Congress further silenced Marxism-Leninism, not
mentioning the concept at all.[387]
Instead, Kim Il Sung’s report to the Congress
revolved around chuch’e sasang and
the need to permeate the whole society with it.
Kim called this process chuch’e-sasang-ification
(chuch’esasang-hwa), a process Kim
declared necessary for the attainment of the “working class’ revolutionary
cause of realizing autonomy [chajusŏng].” This meant to transform “each member of
society into a communist man of the chuch’e
type,” who thinks and acts in accordance with chuch’e sasang.[388] Only through chuch’e-sasang-ification could socialism and communism be built
and human liberation realized.[389][390] Moreover, the ideological unity of society
was to be matched by the ideological unity of the party. The party ranks, Kim proclaimed, must
strengthen their “ideological and volitional unity on the basis of chuch’e sasang.”[391]
While in previous years such an ideologically unified party was still sometimes
referred to as “party of the new type [sae
hyŏng ŭi tang],” which, as we saw in Chapter 1, was a Marxist-Leninist notion
mobilized to generate a disciplined and ideologically uniform party around the
party head, now ideological unity was signified by the “party of the chuch’e type [chuch’e hyŏng ŭi tang].”[392] Not too long after the Congress, on March 31,
1982, a “philosophical” treatise entitled “On
Chuch’e
sasang”
was published under the name of Kim Jong Il, squaring his political positions
and status as successor with a theoretical aptitude appropriate for a foremost
communist leader.
The treatise added to the formalization of chuch’e sasang, elaborating on preexisting
doctrines.
Speaking in terms of the Cold War period, one
can consider this treatise the pinnacle of North
Korea’s efforts to chuch’efy, as it were, its ideology and silence
Marxism-Leninism. Despite these
attempts, however, plenty of Marxist-Leninist notions remained, especially
Marxism-
Leninism’s materialism.
In the treatise, Kim Jong Il reviewed
and expanded on Kim Il Sung’s thoughts about man, yet nonetheless assigned all
credit for these philosophical discoveries to his father. While repeating Kim Il Sung’s mantra about
man as a “social being” who is “master of his own destiny” and who “decides
everything,” Kim Jong Il recasted the concepts of “autonomy” (chajusŏng) and “creativity” (ch’angjosŏng) as “man’s fundamental
attributes” and included a third attribute, “consciousness.” (ŭisiksŏng).[393] Autonomy was viewed as the most fundamental
of all three attributes. It represented
humans’ desire to be free from all forms of oppression and to assume the role
of master. Creativity meant humans’
ability to “transform the world,” to create the new out of the old. Put differently, creativity was the act of
realizing one’s autonomy.
But in order to change the world in
accordance with one’s desire for autonomy, one required consciousness, the third
attribute. That is, creative activity
and the realization of autonomy was only possible through a consciousness that
could correctly guide humans in their creative, selfrealizing endeavors.
It is easy to mistake this talk of
autonomy, creativity, and consciousness for a fundamental departure from
Marxism-Leninism and its understanding of materialism. One should therefore pay close attention to
the historical conditionality of these attributes. According to Kim Jong Il, “autonomy,
creativity, and consciousness develop socio-historically.”[394] In other words, they assume different forms
under different social and historical conditions. Under socialism, they assume their highest
form yet. As stated by Kim Jong Il, “the
masses of the people are the subject of history.” Their power to “transform nature and
society,” however,
increases as “history develops.”[395] It is not an absolute power without any
conditions:
While the masses of the people are the
subject of history, their position and role is not the same in every period or
society. In the exploitative society of
the past, for a long time unaware of their social and class situation as well
as their strength, the working masses of the people could not unite into a
single political force. . . . Only by seizing state power and the means of
production and by establishing a socialist system can the working masses of the
people liberate themselves from exploitation and oppression and consciously
create history as the true masters of society and their destiny.[396]
Capitalism and class society, hence, stand in
the way of human liberation, the final hurdle to the realization of historical
necessity. “All of human history,” Kim
Jong Il declared, “is a struggle for autonomy.”
To fully attain this autonomy, one must “eliminate the old social
system” and institute socialism.
Although autonomy, like creativity and consciousness, is implicitly
present at the beginning of history, its full potential is only gradually
realized over the course of history’s development, reaching its highest
realization under socialism.[397] Since socialism is not an arbitrary goal, but
one derived from a lawful historical necessity, humans, to achieve liberation
and act as masters of their own destiny, must know this necessity—historical
necessity must become self-conscious.
When transforming nature and society, Kim argued, “man utilizes the
objective laws.”[398] Nevertheless, humans first need to “grasp the
world and its laws of motion and development” before they could creatively
change it.[399] And it is “chuch’e sasang” which
“reveals the laws of historical development
and social revolution.”[400] Following the dictates of North Korea’s state
ideology, then, is equivalent to the conscious fulfillment of historical
necessity leading to one’s freedom. Chuch’e sasang sets the problem and
provides the solution—it is the very embodiment of historical necessity, an
ideology perfectly reflective of the objective laws. The better humans internalize this ideology,
the more conscious they become, the higher their creativity develops, and the
more their autonomy is realized. As
famously stated by Friedrich Engels, “Freedom is the understanding of
necessity,” a phrase Mao Zedong later amended for clarification: “Freedom is
the understanding of necessity and the
transformation of necessity.”[401] Necessity is inescapable, but by
understanding it, by comprehending the objective laws, one can volitionally
transform the world to serve the goal of freedom, something that was not
possible in societies prior to the enlightenment supplied by communist
ideology. Fortunately for humans, this
necessity is in their favor, as it dictates a path inevitably heading toward
their liberation.
Although Kim Jong Il claimed that Kim Il
Sung’s revelations about human nature and humans’ role in history represented
original contributions, it is difficult to ignore the fact that
Marxism-Leninism championed a worldview virtually identical to North
Korea’s. One must look no further than
an East German dictionary entry on dialectical and historical materialism:
Historical materialism, for the first
time in history, scientifically ascertained and illustrated the role of the
masses of the people as creators of history.
It proved that the working class is appointed by history to create a
communist society in which the masses of the people, on the basis of social
ownership of the means of production, comprehensively utilize the laws of
nature, society, and thinking for the welfare of humanity, consciously shape
their own history, and realize their freedom.[402]
Socialism, according to East German
orthodoxy, finally allowed the masses to possess a liberating consciousness in
tune with their actual being and the objective laws.[403] In terms of historical materialism, then, the
chief difference between the East German and North Korean view was a matter of
wording. Whereas the East Germans
believed that Marxism-Leninism is the ideology and scientific system reflective
of objective laws, the North Koreans argued that chuch’e sasang is even more reflective of these laws than
Marxism-Leninism. Like North
Korea, the East Germans also sought to
“overthrow all relations in which man is a wretched, miserable, degraded being,
and construct a new social order in which he can posit and develop himself as
active subject of history.”[404] But this was to be done via Marxism-Leninism,
not via the supposedly higher ideological stage of chuch’e sasang.
The farther we travel back in time, the
more obvious North Korean ideology’s relationship to Marxist-Leninist
historical materialism becomes.
“Objective reality,” Kim Il Sung noted in 1972, “required us to display
autonomy and creativity.”[405] That same year, an article in the WPK’s
theoretical organ elaborated on the phrase “man decides everything” by stating
that “Man becomes the most powerful being in the world because he recognizes
the secrets of the objective world, correctly reflects those [objective]
demands, and thus possesses infinite strength to reshape the world.”[406] The same article actually plagiarized Marx’s
statement that “theory also becomes a material force as soon as it seizes the
masses,” using almost the exact same terms without mentioning Marx’s name:
“When truth is grasped by the masses, then it becomes a great material force.”[407][408] In contrast to 1972, North Korea still
regularly cited Marx and Lenin prior to 1967.
For instance, a North Korean article from 1963, referencing Marx’s The German Ideology, highlighted the
importance of “communist consciousness” and its reflectiveness of material
reality.[409] In those days, it was common to discuss
“universally valid general laws” that could be “consciously used” by the masses
to aid in their liberation.[410]
“Through the consciousness-possessing
subjective efforts of individuals,” as another article stated, “the necessity
of the revolution is realized.”[411] When Kim Jong Il framed consciousness in
terms of a fundamental characteristic of humans, as supposedly discovered by
Kim Il Sung, he merely helped to cover up the Marxist-Leninist roots of North
Korean ideology. Speaking in terms of
materialism, North Korean ideology, as expressed in Kim Jong Il’s treatise,
features only minor alterations of ideological orthodoxy in previous
years. Preexisting doctrines were simply
reconstituted in slightly different forms.449
To fully elucidate the Marxist-Leninist
materialism of North Korean ideology, however, one problem remains: the issue
of revolutionary consciousness. Was
North Korea indeed unique in its emphasis on consciousness? Was this a typically Asian phenomenon derived
from the Confucian tradition? As shown
above, both North Korean ideology and Marxism-Leninism believed that in order
to be revolutionary, that is, capable of transforming the world, consciousness
must accord with objective laws. While
this indicates a materialism, North Korea also held that “the masses’
ideological consciousness of autonomy plays the decisive role in revolutionary
struggle.”[412] In the North Korean view, the masses required
a correct “class consciousness” in order to successfully wage revolution.[413] The higher the historical stage and the more
advanced the revolutionary struggle, the more ideological consciousness
matters:
“After the working class has seized state
power and erected a socialist system, in the process of building socialism and
communism, the role of ideological consciousness rises incomparably.”[414] Although proper material conditions (i.e.,
socialism) are necessary for the full unfolding of revolutionary
consciousness, “the ideological factor,”
North Korea contended, is of “decisive significance,” since “material
conditions do not automatically result in the breakout of a revolution.”[415] North Korea consequently rejected “fatalism”
(sungmyŏngnon), i.e., the notion of
leaving one’s fate to the spontaneous and predetermined development of nature
and society. Surprisingly, although at
first glance such statements seem uniquely North Korean, the privileging of
consciousness, especially under the condition of a highly advanced and
revolutionary society, was not at all alien to the Marxist-Leninist
tradition.
Already during Stalin’s time, Soviet
Marxism-Leninism stressed consciousness and human will, rejecting the type of
economic or material determinism that scholars frequently contrast with North
Korean ideology. Soviet and East German
criticisms of Rosa Luxemburg, one of Germany’s most famous socialist revolutionaries,
provide a good case in point. Fred
Oelßner, a member of the SED’s central committee, authored a 1951
book—subsequently republished two times—detailing Luxemburg’s thought while at
the same time criticizing its divergence from Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy. Although the SED hoped to integrate Luxemburg
into East Germany’s revolutionary legacy, it also needed to denounce and prove
wrong her heterodoxy, particularly given her censure of Lenin. The East Germans identified Luxemburg’s
writings with economic determinism, which they condemned using labels such as
“mechanical materialism” and “historical fatalism.” Oelßner portrayed the dead revolutionary as
someone who only cared for “objective development” while entirely ignoring “the
subjective actions of humans.”[416] She did not see humans as the active force,
Oelßner contended, but instead turned history and its laws of development into
a person determining itself out of itself.
Oelßner thus stated: “But Marxism-Leninism teaches that she [Luxemburg]
does not have to blindly obey these laws; rather, that she—if she has
recognized these laws with help of her science—can accelerate development and
steer it in a particular direction.
Marxism-Leninism arms the proletariat with the weapon that makes it the
conscious creator of social development.”[417]
Material conditions therefore do not
necessarily determine humans’ willful action.
Rather, if these conditions and the laws associated with them are
cognized, then human will becomes the decisive force of transformation.
In his effort to undo the “chuch’e myth,” Brian Myers has also
noted the significance of willful action in Stalinist thought. This anthropocentricism, he explains,
continued into the post-
Stalin period, as the Soviets were in the
middle of developing a “Marxist humanism” at the beginning of the 1970s.[418] Unfortunately, Myers does not elaborate on
the Marxist-Leninist philosophical contents of this trend, a trend that was not
new to the 1970s. I shall attempt to do
so. Examining how such a humanism manifested
itself in East German orthodoxy only further illustrates the many parallels
between North Korean ideology and Soviet Marxism-Leninism. In fact, a close look at this philosophy
hints at the real origins of North Korea’s chuch’e
discourse.
The East Germans
certainly recognized the primacy of consciousness over material conditions in
socialist society. Most are familiar
with Marx’s well-known claim concerning the relationship between will and
productive relations:
In the social production of their lives,
humans enter definite and necessary relations that are independent of their
will, productive relations that correspond with a definite developmental stage
of their material productive forces. . . . It is not the consciousness [Bewußtsein] of men that determines their
being [Sein], but, conversely, it is
their social being [gesellschaftliches
Sein] that determines their consciousness.[419]
Yet there exists much less familiarity with
Marxist-Leninist interpretations of this relationship, such as the following
statement given by East Germany’s first leader, Walter Ulbricht, in 1959:
“Since the Great Socialist October
Revolution, the workers in the liberated countries determine the course of
events. Men no longer enter productive
relations that are independent of their will, but rather conscious ones that
depend on their will.”[420] Put differently, “men become the masters of
their own relations and the laws regulating those relations.”[421] Like the North Koreans, the East German
communists believed in the continuously growing power of ideological
consciousness as class differences are destroyed and a more advanced social
system is established:
Ultimately Marxist-Leninist philosophy
will increasingly pervade all areas of socialist society and social activity
and in this way acts as the spiritual foundation and ideal [ideelle] driving force of socialist
society. . . . In their actions, behavior, and thought, the more the workers
are led by the insights, convictions, and ideals of Marxist-Leninist
philosophy, the better they will understand the big picture of socialism’s
development, and the better they can grasp their own activity as a necessary
component of this development and harmonize their person with the humanist
goals of socialism. Knowledge about this
correspondence and the social significance of one’s own activity has a
stimulating effect on the performance potential of humans. It promotes the development and reliability
of socialist modes of behavior and, in human action, generates important moral
driving
forces. Thus, the Marxist-Leninist worldview
increasingly becomes a driving force that speeds up the development of
socialist society.[422]
Simply put, in socialist society, the willful
action of humans, guided by Marxism-Leninism, reaches historically new levels,
a view identical to North Korea’s, minus the term “MarxismLeninism.” Indeed, the above quote also indicates that chuch’e-sasang-ification, that is, the
state ideology’s pervasion of the entire society and the creation of a new
“communist man of the chuch’e type”
was a concept easily relatable to older Marxist-Leninist ideas. As we already saw in Kim Il Sung’s 1972
response to the Japanese newspaper, North Korea had been talking about making a
new man, a man who is one with the state ideology, for some time. Actually, the notion of a “new communist man”
can be found prior to the 1970s as well, related as it was to the concept of
the “new Soviet man.”[423] And in the case of East Germany, it was the
development of a so-called “socialist person” (sozialistische Persönlichkeit) that became the focus of human
remolding.[424] This new person could only exist through the
possession of a new spirit: “The constant development of socialist
consciousness is also a decisive factor for the development of socialist
persons and socialist society, and it raises the workers to conscious, free
creators of their social life.”[425] Though the contents of this personhood were
somewhat different from North Korea’s version, the underlying Marxist-Leninist
logic was quite the same.[426] Perhaps
the most striking commonality between North Korean and East German conceptions
of revolutionary consciousness is found in East Germany’s privileging of the
“subjective factor” (subjektiver Faktor)
over the “objective factor.” “Subjective
factor” referred to Marxist-Leninist leadership, political forces, ideology,
and “the consciousness and organization of the workers,” in short, it was the
self-conscious and active national revolution.[427] In relation to the objective factor, which
included such aspects as the developmental level of the productive forces and
the international situation, the subjective factor was regarded as “the
decisive moment.”[428] The national revolution, embodied and
consciously carried forward by the masses, occupied a primary, albeit
dialectically interconnected, rank vis-à-vis the world revolution: “We [i.e.,
our people] know ourselves as the subject of history in our times.”[429]
Stalin’s socialism in one country, as one can
see here, did not die with Stalin, and most certainly not in North Korea, where
the subjective factor was also intertwined with the national revolution.
In the previous chapter, I cited a North
Korean article from 1963 according to which the “subjective factor” (chuch’ejŏk yoin) is decisive over the
international factor.[430] The article, moreover, stressed “people’s
consciousness-possessing subjective [chuch’ejŏk]
efforts” in relation to material conditions and the international environment.[431] This subjective factor, the article held,
needed to be further developed through a “spirit of charyŏk kaengsaeng,” by relying on the strength of one’s own people
in pushing forward the revolution.[432] On hand of these similar treatments of the
subjective factor in East Germany and North Korea, despite their diverging
aims, one can see that the birth of the chuch’e
discourse occurred within the framework of a Marxist-Leninist discourse.[433] However, with the emergence of chuch’e philosophy, the notion of the
masses as subjects of their national revolution was deterritorialized,
transformed into the universal slogan of “man decides everything,” and
ultimately re-territorialized by arguing that this universality originated on
Korean soil.[434]
In summary, subjectivity, consciousness,
ideology, and willful action played a crucial role in the Marxist-Leninist
tradition throughout its evolution.
North Korean ideology, being part of this tradition, naturally expressed
many of the same themes. For communist
regimes, the prioritization of the spiritual over the material was not only
important, it was vital to the rationalization of the vanguard party. Economic determinism represented an
intolerable enemy because it suggested an automatic development in which the
party and the consciousness of the masses were a mere consequence of objective
laws. Luxemburg, in opposition to
Lenin’s vanguardism, argued that the party ought to function merely as the
“mouthpiece” (Sprachrohr) of the
masses’ will.[435] Her arguments suggested that if the masses
held ideas contrary to the communists, the communists should reevaluate and
follow the will of the masses as told by the masses. A Marxist-Leninist, to the contrary, privileged
the position of the communist, i.e., the enlightened individual who has seen
the truth of history. Although a
Marxist-Leninist also saw himself as a mouthpiece or representative of the
masses’ will, he or she decided what that will was. Marxist-Leninists emphasized human will
precisely so that they could determine its contents. Their analysis of history prescribed the
masses’ desires, their will, and the path they must tread to reach the
inevitable future. If the masses’
desires contravened the communists’ prescription, then their consciousness was
deemed insufficient or reactionary, requiring ideological education. Ideology—invented by the communist—came
first, but it was rationalized on the basis of supposedly preexisting objective
laws or material conditions that the communists had supposedly cognized. And the Marxist-Leninists relied on this
objectivity to make their schemes appear scientific rather than arbitrary and
subjective. Once the masses held these
objective laws in their minds through the vehicle of the state ideology, then
they were said to be truly conscious and capable of steering history toward its
conclusion. Their will became the most
powerful force of historical development once it chimed in unison with the
state ideology and loyally carried out the dictates of the prescient communist
leadership. North Korean elites
therefore had no incentive to abandon Marxist-Leninist materialism, since this
materialism rationalized the prescription of a specific consciousness. Materialism additionally rationalized their
leadership, which brings us to the next Marxist-Leninist legacy of North Korean
ideology: leadership conception.
Marxist-Leninist Leadership Conception and
North Korean Ideology
Some may find North Korea’s notion of
man as master contradictory to its adulation of the leader. Myers, for example, does, thereby buttressing
his thesis that chuch’e sasang does
not constitute the regime’s true ideology.[436] When it comes to leadership conception,
however, I find Myers’ separation of real and fake ideology somewhat crude
since it obscures the Marxist-
Leninist connection. Indeed, beginning in 1967, North Korean
ideology highlighted the leader’s role in more blatant ways than had been the
case in previous years, a trend that only continued to escalate. Already in 1968, socialist patriotism
acquired an extra layer according to which
“infinite loyalty toward the leader is the
highest expression of socialist patriotism.”[437] By 1970, the leader was known as “the supreme
brain [ch’oego noesu] who leads the
entire proletarian dictatorship system,” in addition to being “the sole center
of the unity of the whole party and the entire people.”[438] An organic view of society grew increasingly
prominent, so much that by the time the Berlin Wall collapsed, the leader,
party, and masses were conceived of as an indivisible, united body.[439] But even before then, the leader was
considered indispensable for the successful execution of the revolution, as Kim
Jong Il’s 1982 treatise pointed out as well.
“The masses must be fused with leadership,” Kim asserted, because “they
can occupy the position of masters of socio-historical development only through
correct leadership.”[440] While it is certainly true that North Korea’s
leadership conception was unique at the end of the Cold War, privileging the
role of the leader in ways unknown to Soviet Marxism-Leninism, this did not
mean that MarxistLeninist leadership rationalization simply disappeared. To the contrary, it remained an integral part
of North Korean ideology, reconciling the apparent contradiction between the
masses’ role as master and the leader’s supreme position by means of
Marxist-Leninist materialism and vanguardism.
Apart from Soviet intellectual trends in
the late 1980s, Marxism-Leninism, throughout the Cold War, championed the
indispensability of communist leadership.
This necessity was not regarded as contradictory to the masses’ role as
free creators of history. Quite
oppositely, they were dialectically connected on the basis of historical
materialism. While historical necessity
demanded the masses’ liberation, the communist leadership recognized this
necessity, enlightened the masses, and led them to action. According to historical materialism, since
the working class is the most revolutionary class, destined to lead humanity to
communism through its overthrow of the bourgeoisie and the establishment of
socialism, the Marxist-Leninist party, the vanguard of the working class,
represents the most revolutionary organization and liberator of mankind. In the East German worldview, “only the
revolutionary party of the working class and hence the working class is
qualified to make the laws of social development the basis of organization and
thus the basis of the totality of society’s movement. That is, she [the party] connects
revolutionary theory, organization, and movement into one unity [Einheit] that enables the forward
movement of the whole society.”479
Man could only be master if he followed the dictates of the party, for
the party possessed historical truth—there was no contradiction. In the
Marxist-Leninist tradition, there always subsisted a latent potential for the
privileging of a single leader over the party, i.e., the identification of the
chairman, first secretary, or general secretary with the will of the
party. This was made possible by the
doctrine of democratic centralism, which dictated the obedience of the minority
once the majority had reached a decision.
The doctrine also stipulated the election of higher ranks by lower
ranks, culminating in the election of the politburo and its supreme leader by
the central committee, or, in the words of East German orthodoxy, “leadership
of the party by an elected center.”480 Once elected, the lower levels were required
to comply with the decisions of the higher levels. Thus, true power rested in the “elected
center.” If the party chief’s power was
secure, then his will was essentially the same as the party’s. And because the party was the historically
necessary guide to liberation, the top leader became a figurative embodiment of
history.481 Although the
Soviets and East Germans condemned exaggerations concerning the role of
historical leaders in the post-
479 Hoppe and
Kosing, “Marxistisch-leninistische Philosophie und Gestaltung der entwickelten sozialistischen
Gesellschaft in der DDR [Marxist-Leninist Philosophy and the Creation of the
Developed Socialist Society in the GDR],” 255–56.
480 Böhme et
al., Kleines politisches Wörterbuch
[Small Political Dictionary], 179.
481 Trotsky
famously prophesized this authoritarianism in his critique of Lenin’s ideas
about the party: “In the internal politics of the Party these methods lead, as
we shall see below, to the Party organisation ‘substituting’ itself
for the Party, the Central Committee
substituting itself for the Party organisation, and finally the dictator
substituting
himself for the Central Committee.”
Leon Trotsky, Our Political Tasks, trans. New Park Publications, 1904,
https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1904/tasks/ch03.htm.
Stalin period, they continued to assert that
there have existed individuals “who, owing to their abilities, recognize with
particular clarity and represent the historically necessary interests of their
class.”[441] “The emergence of outstanding individuals,”
the East Germans maintained, was the fulfillment of “historical law.”[442] One can easily recognize the potential for
authoritarian abuse inherent in such a leadership conception, and indeed, such
abuse was endemic to MarxismLeninism as it was realized in socialist states.
The notion of proletarian dictatorship
only exacerbated this authoritarianism.
As covered in Chapter 1, Marxist-Leninists considered essential the
establishment of an ideologically unified, disciplined party of the new type as
a prerequisite for a successful exercise of proletarian dictatorship. Even the East Germans, much like North Korea,
continuously referred to their state ideology, Marxism-Leninism, as a “unitary
[einheitlich] system.”[443] The homogeneity of this system was
safeguarded by a united party in which individuals strictly adhered to party
hierarchy and dutifully carried out the orders of their “elected”
superiors. Disunity and factionalism
were intolerable as the East Germans believed as well: “The Marxist-Leninist
party is a unity of will [Einheit des
Willens] irreconcilable with the existence of factions.”[444] Proletarian dictatorship was inseparable from
this style of party leadership since the Marxist-Leninist party, as the
“conscious avantgarde of the working class,”
acted as guide in this transitional period.
Through the iron fist of the proletarian (i.e., socialist) state, so it
was thought, all forms of oppression would be eliminated, “counterrevolution”
prevented, “the existence of antagonistic classes” overcome, and class
differences gradually erased, consequently giving rise to a “solidification of
the politico-moral unity [Einheit] of
the people,” the SED held. Not just the
party, but also the masses were to possess a “unitary will [einheitlicher Wille].”[445] Proletarian dictatorship, hence, did not just
mean the liberation of the working class but the liberation of “all the working
masses of the people” through a higher form of democracy incorporating all of
the people, otherwise known as “socialist democracy.”[446] But liberation required a correct historical
consciousness, and since Marx stated that “communist consciousness” can also
form in classes other than the proletariat, the Marxist-Leninists considered
their task clear: implant proletarian consciousness
(i.e., the consciousnesses of the communist
leadership) in the masses as a whole, or, as the North
Koreans began to call it in 1967,
“working-classize” the masses.[447]
As the notion of “working-classizing”
indicates, North Korea relied on historical materialism as well in
rationalizing the progressiveness of the consciousness prescribed by the leadership. The masses were to hold a working-class
consciousness. Kim Jong Il, in his 1982
treatise, recognized “the revolutionary leadership of the working class,”
stating that “the party of the working class is the staff of the revolution,
and the leader of the working class is the revolution’s supreme leader.”[448] This party was to have “only one ideology”
and “one ideological will,” but, unlike in East Germany and the Soviet Union,
this ideology and will was more explicitly identified with the leader.490 The monolithic ideological system was made
monolithic only through his ideology.
Indeed, since this logic was derived from Marxism-
Leninism, one can find expressions such as
“unity of ideological will and action” even in the North Korea of the 1950s.491 Once again, as one travels backward in time,
the Marxist-Leninist connection becomes increasingly obvious. For example, proletarian dictatorship—which
reinforced East Germany’s organic conception of society, a conception one
scholar summed up as “unity of leader-party-class-mass”—served as inspiration
for North Korea’s own organic metaphor as a 1970 dictionary shows: “In the
proletarian dictatorship system, the leader, the party, the class, and the
masses form one indivisible united body.”492 Kim Il Sung, as “the leader of the working
class,” was able to “see the farthest” and “know better than anyone else the
laws of historical development.”493
In this way, any theoretical contradiction between the role of the
leader and the masses was negated since the leader’s position directly
corresponded with the universal requirements of the working class and hence the
masses as a whole—he embodied their will, their desire for liberation. Once they realized that the leader’s will
represented their historical interests, and once they made their will
correspond with the leader’s will, carrying it
490 Chosŏnnodongdang
chungangwiwŏnhoe, “Uri tang ŭn pulmyŏl ŭi chuch’e sasang e ŭihayŏ chidodoenŭn
yŏnggwangsŭrŏun tang [Our Party Is A Glorious Party Led By the Immortal chuch’e
sasang],” Kŭlloja, no. 455 (March
1980): 3.
491 Gwang-hak
Han, “Hangil mujang t’ujaeng ch’ogi kongsanjuŭija taeryŏl ŭi t’ongil tan’gyŏl
ŭl wihan t’ujaeng [The Struggle for Unity in the Ranks of Communists in the
Early Days of the Anti-Japanese Armed Struggle],” Kŭlloja, no. 169 (December 1959): 59.
492 Dieter Koop,
“Wissenschafts- Und Politikverständnis Im Wissenschaftlichen Kommunismus [The
Understanding of Science and Politics in Scientific Communism],” in War Der Wissenschaftliche Kommunismus Eine
Wissenschaft? Vom Wissenschaftlichen Kommunismus Zur Politikwissenschaft [Was
Scientific Communism a
Science?
From Scientific Communism to Political Science], ed.
Michael Greven and Dieter Koop (Opladen: Leske +
Budrich, 1993), 47.
Chŏngch’i
yong sajŏn [Political Dictionary], 631.
493 Chŏngch’i yong sajŏn [Political Dictionary], 195.
out with revolutionary zeal, then they
assumed the rank of master. Loyalty to
the leader was the same thing as adherence to one’s own will, which was the
same thing as adherence to the state ideology and party policy, which was the
same thing as following the laws of history.[449] Hence, the more organic this leadership
conception became, the less the apparent contradiction. In its theoretical expression, it was an
organism held together, in large part, by the rationalizing logic of
Marxist-Leninist materialism, communist leadership, and proletarian
dictatorship.
Conclusion
While immersing oneself in the
theoretical conceptualization of North Korean ideology, one ought not forget
that this is merely theoretical. Theory
does not necessarily translate into reality, though it may provide clues that
facilitate the investigation of reality.
Although East Germany shared many of the same doctrines with North
Korea, the extent to or way in which they were realized was different in each
country. Despite East German notions
about ideological unity, the elimination of bourgeois ideological influences,
the continuously increasing power of proletarian dictatorship, and the
organicity of society, the GDR was much less repressive than
North Korea.
Not surprisingly, many representatives of East Germany’s youth
organization, in attendance at the 13th World Festival of Youth and
Students hosted by Pyongyang in 1989, reportedly “had great difficulties
dealing with the social conditions” in the DPRK.[450] State ideology may help elucidate the
rationalization behind many aspects of life in communist regimes, but it cannot
provide a full explanation for the specificity of that life.
This
chapter had a very specific goal, namely, to challenge the paradigm of a North
Korean idealism and demonstrate North Korean
ideology’s Marxist-Leninist materialism.
Due to this limited scope, I was unable to cover in any detail those
facets of North Korean ideology that cannot be found in Marxism-Leninism,
especially the various myths surrounding the Kim revolutionary family. My depiction here is not to suggest that
North Korean ideology produced nothing unique, but when it comes to
Marxist-Leninist materialism, North Korea simply adopted this materialism and
rebranded it. It is much easier to find
uniqueness in the specific configuration of North Korea’s conception of
leadership. Nevertheless, even in this
case one should judge carefully. North
Korea continued to share a plethora of notions about communist leadership with
other Marxist-Leninist parties, particularly in relation to historical
materialism and vanguardism.
Kim Chung-rin’s statements at the
beginning of this chapter illustrate North Korea’s deliberate efforts to remain
within the Marxist-Leninist tradition.
Admittedly, in domestic propaganda North Korea rarely offered such
praise for Marx, avoiding a direct ascription of specific doctrines to Marx,
lest Kim Il Sung’s unoriginality be discovered.
This begs the question, why did North Korea not simply abandon the
Marxist-Leninist tradition, denounce its tenets, and create an entirely new
ideology? Structural constraints
certainly played a role. That is, many
elites would have found such a move unfathomable. To suddenly overhaul the rationalizing logic
of leadership and the entire system would have done more harm than good. Ideological change instead occurred gradually
and built on what came before. Besides,
the
Marxist-Leninist framework provided a
powerful tool for regime legitimacy, placing North Korea and its leadership at
the forefront of historical progress while promulgating policies that
themselves were said to contain scientific certainty. Another important reason was outsideoriented
propaganda. North Korea was able to
claim membership in the prestigious MarxistLeninist tradition and collaborate
with Marxist-Leninist parties and forces sympathetic to Marxism-Leninism. In domestic propaganda, the regime could then
turn around and portray ideological solidarity with foreign entities—who shared
many of the same beliefs—as a confirmation of its own state ideology. North Korean representatives abroad thus
often declared solidarity with other socialist states on the basis of common
Marxist-Leninist doctrines but in domestic propaganda painted these displays as
affirmations of the universality of chuch’e
sasang. Foreign propaganda, in this
way, strengthened domestic propaganda.
FINAL THOUGHTS
From the dawn of Korea’s division to the
collapse of socialism in Eastern Europe, North Korea never left the
Marxist-Leninist tradition. As North
Korean ideology evolved over the years, a plethora of Marxist-Leninist premises
and doctrines either remained unaltered, received redirection, or were
reconstituted under new headings. When
examined from the perspective of Marxism-Leninism, North Korean ideology, at
any point in the Cold War period, appears much less exceptional than is
commonly assumed. More importantly, such
an examination provides insights into the actual development of the ideology, a
development that was gradual and globally relevant. Two significant turns in North Korean
ideology, in 1961 and 1967, were brought about not without the influence of
global ideological quarrels. At the same
time, neither turn resulted in a rupture, so that even in the 1980s North Korea
adhered to ideological conceptions quite familiar to Marxist-Leninists from
around the world.
With a few reservations, it is indeed
possible to extend this continuity scheme all the way back to Marx. Leszek Kołakowski did precisely that when he
analyzed Lenin’s interpretation and expansion of Marx’s ideas. According to Kołakowski, Lenin’s thought,
although some might consider it a perversion of Marx, is built upon the
fundament of Marx and Engels’ writings.
Presumed perversions utilized the many ambiguities and
self-contradictions in the
Marxist doctrinal corpus. Thus, based on Marx’s version of social
constructivism, i.e., the class nature of ideas and institutions, Lenin
rationalized the destruction of anything that stood in the way of historical
progress.[451] In order to justify the elimination of
certain ways of thinking,
Lenin did not have to deal with opposing
ideas on their own terms, but he simply had to declare their class nature and
resultant role in the historical oppression of the masses. The assumption that Marx’s historical
materialism was right came first. With
this scientific certainty in hand, virtually anything could be deemed
counterrevolutionary and hence evil.
Lenin also built on the vanguardism inherent in Marx’s thinking as
especially evidenced by The Communist
Manifesto, developing this vanguardism into the concept of an ideologically
homogenous party carrying its consciousness into the masses.[452] Stalin, adhering mostly to the Leninist
version of Marxist doctrine, later enlisted these ideas to serve the purpose of
revolutionary terror. Kołakowski,
however, does not view Stalin’s reign as an aberration from Leninism. To the contrary, he considers what is often
called “Stalinism” a natural outflow of Leninism, a system that “has not been
affected in any essential way by the changes of the post-Stalin era.”[453] I have argued much the same. Conceptually, hardly anything changed after
the death of Stalin. If changes did
occur, they constituted conceptual redirections rather than revolutions. No matter how often communists in the
post-Stalin period may have discussed collective leadership and inner-party
democracy, the authoritarian potential so inherent in Leninism, and arguably
Marxist doctrine as well, never disappeared and continued to reassert itself at
different times and in different locales.
This was the case in North Korea, where Marxist and Leninist precepts
that especially lent themselves well to authoritarian abuse remained core
components of the state ideology throughout the Cold War. Of course, doctrinally, North Korean ideology
in the 1980s was by no means identical to Marxism or even Leninism, but both
continued to live on in altered form.
The same applies to other socialist regimes, who also modified
Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy as time passed, nevertheless maintaining its
authoritarian components as a means of self-rationalization.
Only in the 1980s do we begin to see a
questioning of these authoritarian components in the Soviet Union, as Gorbachev
and other reform-minded Soviet officials abandoned the scientific certainty of
Marxism-Leninism and the objectivity of the class struggle.499 Not surprisingly, party rule collapsed right
around the time the party discarded its self-rationalization derived from
historical materialism. Also not
surprising, both North Korea and East Germany refused to follow these Soviet
trends. East German hardliners, such as
Erich Honecker and Kurt Hager, continued to insist on the traditional
class-line. In a 1988 conversation with
Kim Il Sung, Margot
Honecker, Erich Honecker’s wife, therefore
stressed that “the class struggle exists objectively,” finding agreement with
the North Korean leader in opposition to Gorbachev.500
Instead of drawing rigid comparisons
between North Korean ideology and the writings of Marx and Lenin, it is much
more useful to posit North Korean ideology as an incessantly moving point on a
spectrum. In this way, one can
appreciate North Korea’s modifications of preexisting
499
The Soviet contribution to the 1987
International Peace Seminar of Youth in Berlin, during which North Korea and
many other organizations participated as well, is a representative example of
changes in Soviet ideology. According to
the Soviet contribution, common humanistic and democratic values, shared by
people from around the world, whether in capitalist or socialist states, have
priority over any type of socio-economic conflict between the two sides of the
Iron Curtain. On this basis, the Soviets
called for a “transformation of interstate relations” in order to create
various types of cooperation. But
perhaps the most shocking conclusion made by the Soviet representative at the
1987 Peace Seminar was the following: “The Soviet Union does not claim to be
the only one in possession of truth.
Truth is not decreed by a vote.
One cannot exact it with force or by a show of strength. Truth is the result of study and the honest
effort of all.” Consensus and unity was
to be achieved via democratic coordination between communists, social
democrats, and other progressive forces, diminishing the leadership role of the
Soviet Union.
Marxism-Leninism, the USSR’s guiding
ideology, similarly diminished in importance, since, unlike in earlier years,
ideological truth was no longer absolute and uncontestable.
Central Council of the Free German Youth,
Department of International Relations, “Bulletin No. 1 for the 1987
International Peace Seminar of Youth in Berlin,” March 23, 1987, 7, SAPMO-BArch
DY 24/22370. Central
Council of the Free German Youth, Department of International Relations,
“Position of the FDJ on the
Character, Execution, and the Perspective of
the World Festival of Youth and Students,” 1989, 26, SAPMO-BArch
DY 24/14532.
For more on the Soviet shift toward common
human values, see: Valdez, Internationalism
and the Ideology of Soviet Influence in Eastern Europe, 111–25.
500
Central Committee of the Socialist Unity
Party of Germany, Department of International Relations, “Personal Record About
the Conversation With the General Secretary of the Workers’ Party of Korea,
Comrade Kim Il Sung, on 11/3/1988,” November 8, 1988, 88, SAPMO-BArch DY
30/11555.
doctrines and at the same time recognize the
true origins of the country’s state ideology.
The result is a blurring of orthodoxy and heterodoxy, a distinction that
becomes meaningful only if placed in relation to and discourse with a specific
historical counterpart. Doctrinal
disagreement and the creation of new doctrines consequently do not need to imply
an absolute difference between North Korean ideology and other forms of
Marxism-Leninism. Indeed, despite the
particularity of North Korean ideology, especially as familial vocabulary
reminiscent of Confucianism increased in prominence, it is not too farfetched
to denote North Korean ideology as a form of Marxism-Leninism, even as it
silenced this designation. North Korean
ideology was so deeply permeated by the Marxist-Leninist tradition that in
terms of theoretical conceptualization Marxism-Leninism outshone whatever might
be deemed Confucian. And given North
Korea’s membership in the Marxist-Leninist tradition, even the label “Marxist”
is not entirely unreasonable if viewing North Korean ideology on a spectrum.
Perhaps
the most significant legacy North Korean ideology inherited from Marx via
Leninism is found in Marx’s thoughts about
the source of ideas. It was Marx who
famously argued that ideas cannot be truly understood on their own terms. In The
German Ideology, he challenged Hegelian philosophy’s understanding of
ideas. Whereas the “Old Hegelians”
attempted to rationalize the ethical perfection of the current state through
the rationality of the present, Marx pointed out, the “Young Hegelians” disagreed
and believed such a perfection was yet to be reached through a fighting of
ideas with ideas. Marx found both types
of Hegelians to be wrong because they misunderstood the nature of ideas and
historical change.[454] To solve their errors, he suggested the
correspondence of ideas with a certain material reality. “Thought,”
Marx
argued, is the “direct efflux” of man’s “material behavior.” That is, ideas stem from man’s “real life
process,” the material relations in which he lives and acts. In Marx’s view, any understanding of ideas
must begin with an analysis of this life process and not with ideas themselves:
“We set out with real productive men and, on the basis of their real life
process, also illustrate the development of ideological reflexes and echoes of
this life process.”[455] Accordingly, ideas have no independent
existence. Rather, they change with a
change in the material activity of men.
On the basis of their material origins, Marx distinguished between good
and bad ideas. Good ideas are those
corresponding with material reality. Bad
ideas, or what some people term “false consciousness,” do not reflect material
reality and instead cover it up. Marx
summed up these bad ideas with the concept of ideology. While ideology is also grounded in man’s life
process, it is not universally representative of his plight. Rather, ideology serves the ruling class’
maintenance of power. In other words,
bad ideas are regressive, whereas good ideas are progressive, corresponding
with the forward movement of history.
Good ideas aid in the liberation of mankind and are universal by virtue
of their class nature; they represent the interests of the proletariat in its
historically necessary quest to undo the bourgeois state. Spiritual products thus arise from definite,
analyzable material conditions, and these conditions provide the true
rationality of the ideas in question.
Rationality, according to Marx, is derived from materiality, not from
rationality itself. The true meaning of
an idea is not found in the idea itself but in the material process that
created the idea.
As we saw, although Marxist-Leninist
regimes did not believe correct ideas would automatically enter the masses as
material conditions changed, they still grounded the rationality of an idea in
material processes, that is, in the idea’s relationship to the revolution and
historical progress. Like Marx, they
privileged the lower moment, i.e., the particular material conditions
prevailing in a society and the world, over the higher moment, i.e., the
various ideas that spring forth from these conditions. By using Marx’s approach, lower moments
acquire their own rationality, a rationality that is more real than the self-proclaimed
rationality of the idea in question. The
ideas forwarded by the vanguard party are good and rational because they are in
correspondence with the rationality of material reality, a rationality that
dictates the necessity of a particular revolutionary course, whereas bourgeois
ideas simply seek to paralyze revolutionary change and are thus
irrational. In this scheme, ideas are
not judged on their own terms but based on preconceived and arbitrary notions
of their conditionality and social reflectiveness.
Whenever the regime does not like a
particular idea, it merely needs to deem the idea reactionary or
counterrevolutionary to justify its suppression. Communists therefore happily support liberal
freedoms in bourgeois society as a means to promote their cause but are just as
happy to deprive their enemies of the same rights as soon as they begin to hold
any sort of power—all in the name of history.
If the state employs forceful means to suppress communism, then they are
the victims of class oppression; if the proletarian state imprisons thousands
of dissenters, then it is justified.
Morality is accepted only insofar as it
promotes the revolutionary cause.
Besides providing a useful way of
understanding North Korean ideology and its development in relation to
contemporaneously existing Marxist-Leninist ideologies, envisioning North
Korean ideology on a spectrum and in terms of a Marxist-Leninist tradition
enables us to ask and investigate if there exist doctrines or theoretical
conceptualizations that are particularly prone to authoritarian abuse or what
may be termed totalitarianism. I would
argue, much like
Kołakowski, that Marx’s conceptualization of
ideas in history and Lenin’s further development of this conceptualization and
combination with conscious vanguardism lent themselves especially well to the
rationalization of authoritarian regimes and the crimes they perpetrated.
This
spectrum may also cast more recent theoretical systems into a critical light,
most importantly social constructivist schools of thought. Like Marxism, by which it was partially
inspired, social constructivism has no need to engage with ideas on
independently existing moral terms. For
social constructivism, morals themselves can be explained away on the basis of
their socially constructed nature. And
it is the socially constructed nature of an idea, inseparable from relations of
power and oppression, which, in this scheme, represent the true rationality of
the idea under investigation. This was
Michel Foucault’s vision as well, and many a thinker after him enlisted the
same strategy as is particularly evident in the fields of gender theory and
race theory, all of which, much like Marx, deal with oppressed groups
constrained by oppressive social structures and ideological constructs. Although their aims may be full of good
intentions, their theoretical methodology may itself involuntarily promote
authoritarianism, an activist authoritarianism whose potency only soars as it
gains political and social acceptance.
Particularly as theoretical frameworks are converted into political
slogans, they begin to lose their critical edge and run the danger of becoming
dogma. The theory may claim to know the
reality of certain ideas and social norms by having gleaned the truth of
society’s structure, or, as
Herbert Marcuse called it, “the whole which
determines the truth,” but it may just as well transform into an a priori
system, a preestablished truth that manifests itself wherever one wishes it to
appear, wherever one wishes to eliminate the old and replace it with the new.[456] Marcuse’s Marxism draws on this whole—i.e.,
the existence of an oppressive social structure—to warrant the
non-applicability of tolerance to speech that reproduces the whole. Tolerance is intolerable if it promotes the
structures one detests. In such a case
empirical evidence contravening the rationality of the whole may assume the
role of political enemy. Yet worse,
empiricism itself might be found guilty of fostering oppression, rendering all
its conclusions invalid without ever having to investigate them closely. It is precisely the simplicity by which such
a theory-gonedogma operates that makes it so powerful. If combined with vanguardism, which Marcuse
hints at with his advocacy of an “educational dictatorship,” its power only
intensifies.[457] For presentday socialists and social
activists of various progressive convictions, then, all this may suggest that
criticisms of Stalinist or Soviet abuses are insufficient to prevent another
tragedy and that there may inhere serious flaws and authoritarian potential in
Marxist thought and in its descendants.
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[1] Robert A. Scalapino and
Chong-Sik Lee, Communism in Korea
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972). For a wonderfully refreshing analysis of
North Korean ideology’s relationship to Marxism-Leninism see especially pages
845 to 918.
[2] Ibid., 870.
[3] Bruce Cumings,
“Corporatism in North Korea,” The Journal
of Korean Studies 4 (1983 1982): 277.
[4] Developments in North
Korean ideology during the 1980s may be partially responsible for this trend,
given the grooming of Kim Jong Il as Kim Il Sung’s successor and the
philosophization of North Korea’s chuch’e
sasang
[5] Charles K. Armstrong, The North Korean Revolution, 1945-1950
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003), 3–4.
[6] Ibid., 4.
[7] Bruce Cumings, Korea’s Place in the Sun: A Modern History
(New York: W.W. Norton, 1997), 414–17.
[8] Young-Soon Chung, Chuch’e-Ideen und (Neo)Konfuzianismus in
Nordkorea, vol. 85, Uni Press Hochschulschriften (Hamburg: Lit Verlag,
1996), 117–27.
[9] Ibid., 85:146.
[10] Alzo David-West, “Between
Confucianism and Marxism-Leninism: Juche and the Case of Chong Tasan,” Korean Studies Korean Studies 35, no. 1
(2011): 93–121.
[11] Ibid., 96.
[12] Cumings, “Corporatism in
North Korea,” 273.
[13] Young-Soon Chung, “The
Resurrection of Confucianism in North Korea,” The Review of Korean Studies 13, no. 3 (2010): 74.
[14] Gi-Wook Shin, Ethnic Nationalism in Korea: Genealogy,
Politics, and Legacy (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford
University Press, 2006),
86.
Hongkoo
Han, “Wounded Nationalism: The Minsaengdan Incident and Kim Il Sung in Eastern
Manchuria” (University of Washington, 1999), 23–27.
[15] Kim Il Sung, With the Century, vol. 2 (Pyongyang:
Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1994), 40–54.
[16] See for example: Roderick
MacFarquhar, “The Post-Confucian Challenge,” World Press Review, 1980, 48.
And:
Seok Choon Lew, Woo-Young Choi, and Hye-Suk Wang, “Confucian Ethics and the
Spirit of Capitalism in Korea: The Significance of Filial Piety,” Conference Papers - American Sociological
Association, Annual Meeting 2007, 1.
[17] Chung, “The Resurrection
of Confucianism in North Korea,” 80.
[18] Cumings, “Corporatism in
North Korea,” 289.
[19] David-West, “Between
Confucianism and Marxism-Leninism: Juche and the Case of Chong Tasan,” 94.
[20] Cumings, “Corporatism in
North Korea,” 277.
[21] Brian Myers, North Korea’s Juche Myth (Busan: Sthele
Press, 2015), 3.
[22] Ibid., 144.
[23] Han Shik Park, “North
Korea’s Juche: Its Premises, Promises, and Problems,” Korea and World Affairs 6, no. 4 (n.d.): 550–51.
[24] Kim Jong Il, “Chuch’e
ch’ŏrhak ŭn tokch’angjŏgin hyŏngmyŏng ch’ŏrhak ida [Chuch’e Philosophy Is an
Original Revolutionary Philosophy],” in Chuch’e
ch’ŏrhak e taehayŏ [On Chuch’e Philosophy] (Pyongyang: Chosŏn Nodongdang
Ch’ulp’ansa, 2000), 130.
[25] Arif Dirlik made a
similar argument in relation to Mao Zedong Thought. Responding to the prominent view of Mao’s
voluntarism and Marxist heterodoxy, Dirlik argued that although Marx and Mao
clearly have disparate philosophical views in certain areas, if we are merely
consumed with the question of orthodoxy, we will be unable to see Mao’s
“creativity as a Marxist.” He also
criticized the assumed economic determinism of Marx, maintaining that such an
assumption ultimately leads to a view of Mao as heterodox, which in turn
results in scholars’ quest to uncover the Chinese cultural roots of his
thought.
Arif
Dirlik, “The Predicament of Marxist Revolutionary Consciousness: Mao Zedong,
Antonio Gramsci, and the Reformulation of Marxist Revolutionary Theory,” Modern China 9, no. 2 (1983): 186.
[26] Pierre Bourdieu, Pascalian Meditations (Stanford, Calif.:
Stanford University Press, 2000), 141.
[27] Ibid., 145.
[28] Karl Marx and Friedrich
Engels, “Die deutsche Ideologie [The German Ideology],” in Karl Marx - Friedrich Engels: Werke, 3 (Berlin: Dietz Verlag,
1969), 26–27, http://www.mlwerke.de/me/me03/me03_009.htm.
[29] Brian Myers, The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See
Themselves and Why It Matters (Brooklyn, N.Y.: Melville House, 2010), 6.
[30] Ministry for State
Security, “Information Concerning an Incident at the Apprentice Dormitory of
the VEB VTK,” July 5, 1988, 32–33, BStU, MfS, HA II, Nr. 28998.
[31] Ministry for State
Security, “Information: Expression of Opinions Regarding the Training of Foreign
Personnel in the GDR,” April 5, 1988, 31, BStU, MfS, HA II, Nr. 28998.
[32] In translating charyŏk kaengsaeng (lit. “regeneration
through one’s own strength”), I followed the North Korean convention to
translate the term as “self-reliance.”
[33] Mikhail Pak, “The
Anti-Japanese Korean Independence Movement in Russian Territories: The 1920s
and 1930s,” Korea Journal 30, no. 6
(1990): 37–44. Pak’s article, for the
most part, contains serious bias, reflecting Soviet orthodoxy at the time.
[34] Vladimir I. Lenin,
“Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism: A Popular Outline,” in V. I. Lenin: Collected Works, vol. 22
(Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1974), 297.
[35] Some of the most notable
works reflecting Lenin’s views on imperialism and national self-determination
are the following: Lenin, “Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism: A
Popular Outline.” Vladimir
I. Lenin, “The Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination
(Theses),” in V. I.
Lenin: Collected Works, vol. 22 (Moscow: Progress Publishers,
1974), 143–56.
Vladimir
I. Lenin, “Preliminary Draft Theses on the National and the Colonial
Questions,” in V. I. Lenin: Collected
Works, vol. 31 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1974), 144–51.
[36] For a thorough account of
the Korean communist movement during the colonial period see: Dae-Sook Suh, The Korean Communist Movement, 1918-1948
(Princeton (N.J.): Princeton University Press, 1967).
[37] Dae-Sook Suh, Documents of Korean Communism, 1918-1948.
(Princeton (N.J.): Princeton University Press, 1970), 27.
[38] Ibid., 28.
[39] This particular excerpt
stems from a 1920 document. Ibid., 55.
[40] Suh, The Korean Communist Movement, 1918-1948, 113–14, 253–55, 311–14.
[41] Jong-rin Park, “Irwolhoe
and the Introduction of Marxism into Korea in the 1920s,” Korea Journal 49, no. 1 (2009): 53.
[42] Owen Miller, “The Idea of
Stagnation in Korean Historiography: From Fukuda Tokuzo to the New Right,” Korean Histories 2, no. 1 (2010): 5.
[43] Ibid., 6–8.
[44] Ibid., 8.
[45] Henry Em, The Great Enterprise: Sovereignty and
Historiography in Modern Korea (Durham and London: Duke University Press,
2013), 119.
[46] Scalapino and Lee, Communism in Korea, 93.
[47] Ibid., 105–6.
[48] Charles Armstrong’s
history of postliberation North Korea is a prime example of the newer
scholarship.
Armstrong, The North Korean Revolution, 1945-1950.
[49] Max Zimmering, Land der Morgenfrische (Berlin:
Kongress-Verlag, 1956), 7.
[50] Otto Grotewohl (Posthumous),
“Overview of the Activities of the Korea-Hilfsausschuß until the Beginning of
June 1952,” June 9,
1952, 17–25, SAPMO-BArch NY 4090/481.
Otto
Grotewohl (Posthumous), “Speech of Minister Chen Li Üh,” June 13, 1952, 17–25,
SAPMO-BArch NY 4090/481.
[51] Democratic Women’s Union
of Germany, Bundesvorstand, “Welcome Speech to the Women’s Delegation Staying
in Senftenberg,” June 12, 1951, 70–71, SAPMO-BArch DY 31/1379.
[52] Dae-Sook Suh, Kim Il Sung: The North Korean Leader
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 75–78.
[53] Ibid., 78–79. Scalapino and Lee, Communism in Korea, 380.
[54] Andrei Lankov, The Real North Korea: Life and Politics in
the Failed Stalinist Utopia (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2013), 5–8. This evidence directly contradicts
Armstrong’s argument that Kim Il Sung was not “the
handpicked puppet of
Moscow.”
Armstrong, The North Korean Revolution, 1945-1950,
55.
[55] Qtd. in Zbigniew
Brzezinski, The Soviet Bloc, Unity and
Conflict (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967), 65.
[56] Ulrich Mählert and
Gerd-Rüdiger Stephan, Blaue Hemden - Rote
Fahnen: Die Geschichte der Freien Deutschen Jugend [Blue Shirts - Red Flags:
The History of the Free German Youth] (Opladen: Leske + Budrich, 1996),
13–51.
[57] Scalapino and Lee, Communism in Korea, 374–75. Suh, Kim
Il Sung: The North Korean Leader, 74.
[58] Central Committee of the
Socialist Unity Party of Germany, “Manifest and das deutsche Volk [Manifest for
the German People],” Neues Deutschland,
April 23, 1946, 1.
[59] Armstrong, The North Korean Revolution, 1945-1950,
60.
[60] Brzezinski, The Soviet Bloc, Unity and Conflict,
25–27.
[61] Ibid., 29. 62
Ibid., 31.
[62] Frank Schumann, Anton Ackermann: Der deutsche Weg zum
Sozialismus [Anton Ackermann: The German Path to Socialism] (Berlin: Das
Neue Berlin, 2005), 168.
[63] Peter Grieder, The East German Leadership, 1946-73:
Conflict and Crisis (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1999),
9–11.
[64] H. Gordon Skilling,
“People’s Democracy, the Proletarian Dictatorship and the Czechoslovak Path to
Socialism,” The American Slavic and East
European Review 10, no. 2 (April 1951): 100–116.
[65] Grieder, The East German Leadership, 1946-73:
Conflict and Crisis, 16.
[66] Brzezinski, The Soviet Bloc, Unity and Conflict, 71,
76.
[67] Ibid., 74.
[68] Central Committee of the
Socialist Unity Party of Germany, “Aus dem Leben unserer Partei [On the Life of
Our Party],” Neues Deutschland,
September 17, 1948, 2.
[69] Mählert and Stephan, Blaue Hemden - Rote Fahnen: Die Geschichte
der Freien Deutschen Jugend [Blue Shirts - Red Flags: The History of the Free
German Youth], 60.
[70] Ibid., 68.
[71] Scalapino and Lee, Communism in Korea, 408–9.
[72] Ibid., 411.
[73] Ibid., 408–9.
[74] Kim Il Sung, “Tang
tanch’e dŭl ŭi chojik saŏp e issŏsŏ myŏt kaji kyŏljŏmdŭl e taehayŏ [On Some
Defects in the Organizational Work of Party Organizations],” Kŭlloja, no. 72 (November 1951): 6.
[75] Scalapino and Lee, Communism in Korea, 436–52.
[76] Ibid., 423.
[77] Joseph Stalin, “The
Foundations of Leninism,” in J.V. Stalin:
Works, vol. 6 (Moscow: Foreign Languages
Publishing House, 1953),
113.
Kim
Il Sung, “Hyŏn kyedan e issŏsŏ chibang chŏnggwŏn kigwandŭl ŭi immu wa yŏkhal
[The Tasks and Role of Local Government Organs in the Present Stage],” Kŭlloja, no. 75 (February 1952): 4–5.
[78] Kim Il Sung, “Hyŏn kyedan
e issŏsŏ chibang chŏnggwŏn kigwandŭl ŭi immu wa yŏkhal [The Tasks and Role of
Local Government Organs in the Present Stage],” 5.
[79] Ibid., 7.
[80] Ibid., 4, 8, 22.
[81] Chong-Sik Lee, “Land
Reform, Collectivisation and the Peasants in North Korea,” The China Quarterly 14 (1963): 74.
[82] Ibid., 76.
[83]
Benjamin Aldrich-Moodie, trans., “USSR Council of Ministers Order, ‘On Measures
to Improve the Health of the
Political
Situation in the GDR,’” June 2, 1953, AP RF, f. 3, op. 64, d. 802, ll. 153-161,
History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive,
http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/110023.
[84] Grieder, The East German Leadership, 1946-73:
Conflict and Crisis, 77–89.
[85] Kim Il Sung, “Lenin ŭi
haksŏl ŭn uri ŭi chich’im ida [Lenin’s Theory is Our Guide],” Kŭlloja, no. 113 (April 1955): 4–12.
[86] Kim Il Sung, “Modŭn him
ŭl choguk ŭi t’ongil tongnip kwa konghwaguk pukpanbu esŏ ŭi sahoejuŭi kŏnsŏl ŭl
wihayŏ [All Efforts for Our Fatherland’s Unification and Independence and the
Construction of Socialism in the Northern Half of Our Republic],” in Kim Il-sŏng chŏnjip [The Complete Works of
Kim Il Sung], vol. 18 (Pyongyang: Chosŏn Nodongdang Ch’ulp’ansa, 1997),
5–6. This speech is from April 1955.
[87] Ibid., 16. In April 1955, the Soviets criticized Kim Il
Sung’s plan to construct socialism in the DPRK as premature and a poor strategy
vis-à-vis the South. They instead recommended
a united front policy to win over democratic forces in South Korea. According to their estimation, one should not
yet “reveal the ultimate aims of the
KWP,” that is, socialism
and proletarian dictatorship.
Gary Goldberg, trans.,
“Information on the Situation in the DPRK,” April 1955, RGANI, Fond 5, Opis 28,
Delo
[88] , listi 34-59, History
and Public Policy Program Digital Archive,
http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/114590.
[89] Ibid., 92. Nevertheless, Scalapino and Lee do see
nationalism in the speech. Scalapino and
Lee, Communism in Korea, 502–3.
[90] David-West, “Between Confucianism
and Marxism-Leninism: Juche and the Case of Chong Tasan,” 93, 96.
[91] Myers, “The Watershed
That Wasn’t: Re-Evaluating Kim Il Sung’s ‘Juche Speech’ of 1955,” 92.
[92] Ibid., 93. 99
Ibid., 94.
[93] For a good summary of the
history of the term, see: Myers, North
Korea’s Juche Myth, 10–14.
[94] Nevertheless, chuch’e, to this day, possesses the
secondary meaning of “(historical) subject.”
[95] Myers, “The Watershed
That Wasn’t: Re-Evaluating Kim Il Sung’s ‘Juche Speech’ of 1955,” 97.
[96] Ibid., 101–3.
[97] Alzo David-West,
“Marxism, Stalinism, and the Juche Speech of 1955: On the Theoretical
de-Stalinization of North Korea,” The
Review of Korean Studies 10, no. 3 (2007): 148.
[98] Brzezinski, The Soviet Bloc, Unity and Conflict,
155.
[99] Jonathan C. Valdez, Internationalism and the Ideology of Soviet
Influence in Eastern Europe (Cambridge [England]; New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1993), 40.
[100] Chong-Sik Lee, The Korean Workers’ Party: A Short History
(Stanford, California: Hoover Institution Press, 1978), 90.
[101] Gary Goldberg, trans.,
“Report from I. Kurdyukov to V.M. Molotov,” May 11, 1955, AVPRF F. 0102, Op.
11, P.
[102] , Delo 45, History and
Public Policy Program Digital Archive,
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[103] Szalontai, Kim Il Sung in the Khrushchev Era,
73–74.
[104] Ibid., 74.
[105] Socialist Unity Party of
Germany, “Stenographic Record of the Third Party Congress of the Socialist
Unity Party of Germany, July 20-24, 1950,” July 1950, SAPMO-BArch DY 30/IV
1/III/1.
[106] Nikita Khrushchev, “The
Crimes of the Stalin Era: Special Report to the 20th Congress of the Communist
Party of the Soviet Union,” The New
Leader, 1956, 5, 57–58.
[107] Socialist Unity Party of
Germany, “Stenographic Record of the Third Party Congress of the Socialist
Unity Party of Germany, July 20-24, 1950,” 113.
[108] Scalapino and Lee also
made this point. Scalapino and Lee, Communism in Korea, 457–58.
[109] The North Koreans used
the expression “to go into [sok ŭ ro] the masses.” This idea was quite Leninist as well. In one case, Kim Il Sung quoted from Lenin’s
“What Is to Be Done?” a phrase about going
among the masses, which the North Koreans translated more in terms of going into the masses. In any event, the meaning is the same.
Kim Il
Sung, “Tang tanch’e dŭl ŭi chojik saŏp e issŏsŏ myŏt kaji kyŏljŏmdŭl e taehayŏ
[On Some Defects in the Organizational Work of Party Organizations],” 4.
[110] Office of Walter
Ulbricht at the CC of the SED, “Resolution of the Plenum of the CPSU CC
Concerning the Criminal and Anti-Party and Anti-State Activities of Beria,”
July 7, 1953, 1–17, SAPMO-BArch DY 30/3534.
[111] Brzezinski, The Soviet Bloc, Unity and Conflict,
168.
[112] Ibid., 159.
[113] Scholars of North Korea
tend to exaggerate the novelty of de-Stalinization in order to evidence an
emerging ideological split. Lankov, for
example, describes collective leadership as a “post-Stalinist” notion. Andrei Lankov, Crisis in North Korea: The Failure of De-Stalinization, 1956
(Honolulu, Hawai’i: University of Hawai’i Press, 2007), 71.
[114] Szalontai provides a
good overview of these criticisms.
Szalontai, Kim Il Sung in the
Khrushchev Era, 70–75.
[115] Kim Il Sung,
“Kwallyojuŭi rŭl t’oech’ihalte taehayŏ [On Eliminating Bureaucratism],”
54. This was not the only April speech
in which Kim talked about collective leadership and inner-party democracy. See for example: Kim Il
Sung, “Modŭn him ŭl
choguk ŭi t’ongil tongnip kwa konghwaguk pukpanbu esŏ ŭi sahoejuŭi kŏnsŏl ŭl
wihayŏ [All Efforts for Our Fatherland’s Unification and Independence and the
Construction of Socialism in the Northern Half of Our Republic],” 16.
[116] For example see: Central Committee of the Socialist Unity
Party of Germany, “Die Verbesserung der Arbeit des Staatsapparates zur
Erfüllung der Wirtschafts- und Verwaltungsaufgaben [The Improvement of the Work
of the State Apparatus for the Fulfillment of Economic and Administrative
Tasks],” 4.
[117] Szalontai, Kim Il Sung in the Khrushchev Era, 81.
[118] Kim Il Sung, “On
Eliminating Dogmatism and Formalism and Establishing Juche in Ideological
Work,” 401–2.
[119] Qtd. in Brzezinski, The Soviet Bloc, Unity and Conflict,
218.
[120] Qtd. in Ibid., 172.
[121] Leszek Kolakowski and P.
S. Falla, Main Currents of Marxism: Its
Rise, Growth, and Dissolution (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), 1153.
[122] Joseph Stalin, “Marxism
and Problems of Linguistics” (Stalin Reference Archive (marxists.org) 2000,
1950), https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1950/jun/20.htm.
[123] Kim Il Sung, “Sasang
saŏp esŏ kyojojuŭi wa hyŏngsikchuŭi rŭl t’oech’ihago chuch’e rŭl hwangniphalte
taehayŏ [On Eliminating Dogmatism and Formalism and Establishing the Subject in
Ideological Work],” 384–85.
[124] Central Committee of the
Socialist Unity Party of Germany, “Theorie und Praxis gehören zusammen [Theory
and Practice Belong Together],” Neues
Deutschland, July 10, 1954, 4.
[125] Szalontai provides an example
of Hungarian criticism concerning the lack of nativism in Korean art in
1954. This further indicates Kim’s
orthodoxy. Szalontai, Kim Il Sung in the Khrushchev Era, 79.
[126] Central Committee of the
Socialist Unity Party of Germany, “Programmerklärung des Ministeriums für
Kultur der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik zur Verteidigung der Einheit der
deutschen Kultur [Programmatic
[127] Hongkoo Han, “Colonial
Origins of Juche: The Minsaengdan Incident of the 1930s and the Birth of the
North Korea-China Relationship,” in Origins
of North Korea’s Juche: Colonialism, War, and Development, ed. Jae-Jung Suh
(Lanham: Lexington Books, 2013), 56.
[128] Suh, Kim Il Sung: The North Korean Leader,
304, 309–10.
[129] Shin, Ethnic Nationalism in Korea: Genealogy,
Politics, and Legacy, 83–84, 88.
[130] For whatever reason,
Scalapino and Lee appear to recognize this whereas subsequent authors usually
do not. Scalapino and Lee, Communism in Korea, 502.
[131] Friedrich Günther and J.
A. Arbatow, Grundlagen des
Marxismus-Leninismus: Lehrbuch (Berlin: Dietz, 1960), 514–15.
[132] De-Stalinization did not
declare Stalin’s “socialism in one country” heterodox. To the contrary, the concept grew stronger as
a result of Khrushchev’s encouragement of domesticism.
[133] Waltraud Böhme et al., Kleines politisches Wörterbuch [Small
Political Dictionary] (Berlin, 1989), 744.
[134] Kim Il Sung, “Sasang
saŏp esŏ kyojojuŭi wa hyŏngsikchuŭi rŭl t’oech’ihago chuch’e rŭl hwangniphalte
taehayŏ [On Eliminating Dogmatism and Formalism and Establishing the Subject in
Ideological Work],” 390–91.
[135] The comparison
concerning the freeing of political prisoners was pointed out by
Szalontai.
Szalontai, Kim Il Sung in the Khrushchev Era, 80.
[136] See: Lankov, Crisis in North Korea. And: Szalontai, Kim Il Sung in the Khrushchev Era.
[137] Khrushchev, “The Crimes
of the Stalin Era: Special Report to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party
of the Soviet Union.” 151 In the historiography, it is common to
distinguish between the Soviet and Yan’an factions. Soviet Koreans were individuals brought up in
the Soviet Union during the colonial period, and Yan’an Koreans sided with Mao
in the Chinese Civil War and spent time in the Chinese communists’ Yan’an
base. I have to thank James F. Person
for pointing out to me that the supposed members of these factions did not
necessarily think of themselves as belonging to either a Soviet or a Yan’an
faction. It appears that these designations
arose in an effort by Kim Il Sung to better
[138] Gary Goldberg, trans.,
“Record of a Speech Delivered by Kim Il Sung at the Third Congress of the
Korean Workers’ Party,” April 23, 1956, GARF, Fond 5446, Opis 98, Delo 721,
Listy 229-250, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive, https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/120185.
[139] Gary Goldberg, trans.,
“Record of the Third Congress of the Korean Workers’ Party by L.I. Brezhnev,”
April 30, 1956, GARF, Fond 5446, Opis 98, Delo 721, Listy 221-228, History and
Public Policy Program Digital Archive,
https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/120183.
[140] Ibid.
[141] There is some evidence
to suggest that Kim Il Sung did not quite grasp the full gravity of the 20th
Congress. In September, Kim told the
Soviets that when the 3rd Congress was held, the WPK CC did not yet
fully comprehend the implications of the 20th Congress. Of course, this statement needs to be taken
with a grain of salt, since Kim was trying to excuse his mistakes. Gary Goldberg, trans., “Telegram from A. Mikoyan
to the CPSU Central Committee,” September 23, 1956, GARF, Fond 5446, Opis 98c,
Delo 718, Listy 3-6, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive,
https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/120189.
[142]
Gary Goldberg, trans., “Report by N. T. Fedorenko on a Meeting with DPRK
Ambassador to the USSR Ri SangJo,” May 30, 1956, RGANI, Fond 5, Opis 28, Delo
412, Listy 190-196, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive,
http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/111641.
[143] Gary Goldberg, trans.,
“Memorandum of Conversation with Gi Seok-Bok,” May 31, 1956, RGANI, Fond 5,
Opis
[144] , Delo 410, Listy
222-223, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive,
http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/111643.
[145] Khrushchev, Report of the Central Committee of the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union to the 20th Party Congress, 43–44.
[146] Gary Goldberg, trans.,
“Memorandum of Conversation with Choe Chang-Ik,” June 8, 1956, RGANI, Fond 5,
Opis 28, Delo 410, Listy 210-214, History and Public Policy Program Digital
Archive, http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/114132.
[147] For a detailed account
of events leading up to the conspiracy see: Lankov, Crisis in North Korea, 73–92.
[148] Sergey Radchenko,
trans., “Cable from Cde. Mikoyan from Beijing Concerning the 8th CCP Congress
and Conversations with the Chinese Comrades,” September 16, 1956, State Archive
of the Russian Federation, fond
[149] , opis 98c, delo 717,
History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive,
http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/121976.
[150] Gary Goldberg, trans.,
“Draft of a Statement by Yun Gong-Heum at the CC Plenum of the Korean Workers’
Party in August 1956,” August 30, 1956, GARF, Fond 5446, Opis 98, Delo 721,
Listy 191-211, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive,
https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/120175.
[151] Gary Goldberg, trans.,
“Speech by Kim Il Sung at the August Korean Workers’ Party Central Committee
Plenum,” August 30, 1956, GARF, Fond 5446, Opis 98, Delo 721, Listy 69-103,
History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive,
https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/120166.
[152] Scalapino and Lee, Communism in Korea, 499–504.
[153] James F. Person, trans.,
“Memorandum of Conversation with Pak Ui-Wan,” September 6, 1956, RGANI, Fond 5,
Opis 28, Delo 410, Listy 327-332, History and Public Policy Program Digital
Archive, http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/114138.
[154] James F. Person, trans.,
“Memorandum of Conversation with the Ambassador of the Peoples Republic of
China to the DPRK Qiao Xiaoguang,” September 4, 1956, RGANI, Fond 5, Opis 28,
Delo 410, Listy 322-325, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive,
http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/113373.
[155] Gary Goldberg, trans.,
“Letter from Seo Hwi, Yun Gong-Heum, Li Pil-Gyu, and Kim Gwan to the Chinese
Communist Party Central Committee,” September 5, 1956, GARF, Fond 5446, Opis
98, Delo 721, Listy 170-190, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive,
https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/120173.
[156]
Gary Goldberg, trans., “Memorandum of a Conversation with DPRK Ambassador to
the USSR Ri Sang-Jo,” September 10, 1956, RGANI, Delo 5, Opis 28, Delo 410,
Listy 230- 232, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive,
http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/114146.
[157] Sergey Radchenko and
Jeffrey Wang, trans., “Conversation Records between Chairman Mao Zedong and the
Soviet Communist Party Delegation, 18 September 1956,” September 18, 1956,
Chinese Communist Party Central Archives, History and Public Policy Program
Digital Archive, http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/117838.
[158] Gary Goldberg, trans.,
“Telegram from the USSR Ambassador to the DPRK Ivanov Addressed to Mikoyan and
Shepilov, ‘August Plenum
of the Korean Workers’ Party Central Committee’,” September 15, 1956, GARF,
Fond
[159] Central Committee of the
Socialist Unity Party of Germany, “Die leninistische Geschlossenheit unserer
Partei [The Leninist Unity of Our Party],” Neues
Deutschland, April 29, 1956, 3.
[160] Another article from
August 1 even claimed the personality cult “was by no means the main question”
at the 20th Congress.
Central
Committee of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, “Über die Arbeit der SED
nach dem XX. Parteitag der KPdSU und die bisherige Durchführung der Beschlüsse
der 3. Parteikonferenz [On the Work of the SED After the
[161] th CPSU Congress and the
Execution of the Decisions of the 3rd Party Conference Up to This Point],” Neues Deutschland, August 1, 1956, 4.
[162] Grieder, The East German Leadership, 1946-73:
Conflict and Crisis, 115–32.
[163] Gary Goldberg, trans.,
“Telegram from A. Mikoyan to the CPSU Central Committee,” September 21, 1956,
GARF, Fond 5446, Opis 98c, Delo 718, Listy 12-16, History and Public Policy
Program Digital Archive, https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/120194.
[164] Goldberg, “Telegram from
A. Mikoyan to the CPSU Central Committee,” September 23, 1956.
[165] Gary Goldberg, trans.,
“Resolution of the Plenum of the Korean Workers’ Party,” September 23, 1956,
GARF, Fond 5446, Opis 98, Delo 721, Listy 44-45, History and Public Policy
Program Digital Archive,
https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/120163.
[166] Gary Goldberg, trans.,
“Minutes of the KWP CC Plenum Held on 23 September 1956,” September 23, 1956,
GARF, Fond 5446, Opis 98, Delo 721, Listy 31-43, History and Public Policy
Program Digital Archive,
https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/120162.
[167] Gary Goldberg, trans.,
“Journal of Soviet Ambassador to the DPRK A.M. Puzanov for 9 April 1957,” April
9, 1957, AVPRF F. 0102, Op. 13, P. 72, Delo 5, Listy 1-15, History and Public
Policy Program Digital Archive,
http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/115599.
[168]
Gary Goldberg, trans., “Journal of Soviet Ambassador to the DPRK A.M. Puzanov
for 16 February 1958,” February 16, 1958, AVPRF F. 0102, Op. 14, Delo 6, Listy
32-60, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive,
http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/115963.
[169] Maya Latynski, trans.,
“Notes from a Conversation between the 1st Secretary of the PRL Embassy in the
DPRK with the Counselor of the Embassy of the USSR, Comrade. Makarov on
27.VIII.1957,” August 29, 1957, Polish Foreign Ministry Archive, History and
Public Policy Program Digital Archive,
http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/110631.
[170] Goldberg, “Communist Party
of the Soviet Union Central Committee Report on the Situation in the Korean
Workers’ Party and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.”
[171] Brzezinski, The Soviet Bloc, Unity and Conflict,
263.
[172] The concept of peaceful
coexistence had already existed in Lenin’s and in Stalin’s time, the difference
being that it did not possess such an enormous theoretical significance
then.
[173] Khrushchev, Report of the Central Committee of the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union to the 20th Party Congress, 8–42. Central Committee of the Socialist Unity
Party of Germany, “Die wachsende Kraft des sozialistischen Lagers [The Growing
Strength of the Socialist Camp],” Neues
Deutschland, May 5, 1956, 5.
[174] Kim stated as follows
during the August Plenum: “When drafting the five-year economic plan we should
take serious note of the fact that economic ties and cooperation between the
socialist countries are strengthening. We need to develop industrial sectors on
the basis of the international division of labor in the socialist camp in which
the extremely favorable natural and economic conditions of our country can be
used and decline those which are unsustainable and for which there is no great
need. At the same time as this we should draft a plan to strengthen economic ties
with these countries in terms of expanding the sources of the accumulation of
foreign currency and use it more rationally.”
Goldberg, “Speech by Kim Il Sung at the August Korean Workers’ Party
Central Committee Plenum.” 194 Latynski, “Notes from a Conversation
between the 1st Secretary of the PRL Embassy in the DPRK with the
Counselor
of the Embassy of the USSR, Comrade. Makarov on 27.VIII.1957.” Maya Latynski, trans., “Notes from a
Conversation between the 1st Secretary of the PRL Embassy in the DPRK and
Comrade Makarov, Counselor of
[175] Kim Il Sung, “Hyŏn
kyedan e issŏsŏ chibang chŏnggwŏn kigwandŭl ŭi immu wa yŏkhal [The Tasks and
Role of Local Government Organs in the Present Stage],” 17.
[176] Khrushchev, “The Crimes
of the Stalin Era: Special Report to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party
of the Soviet Union,” 48.
[177] Paul E. Zinner, ed.,
“Declaration by Soviet Government on the Principles of Development and Further
Friendship and Cooperation between the Soviet Union and Other Socialist States
(Moscow, October 30, 1956),” in Documents
on American Foreign Relations (1956) (New York: Harper & Brothers,
1957), 252–55,
http://www.cvce.eu/obj/declaration_by_the_soviet_government_moscow_30_october_1956-en-0876cc2c-5d0c-
414f-8a18-966b8350d514.html.
[178] Khrushchev, Report of the Central Committee of the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union to the 20th Party Congress, 26–27.
[179] Il Kim,
“P’ŭroret’ariat’ŭ tokchae shigi e issŏsŏ ŭi muryŏk ŭi kanghwa e taehan
lenin-ssŭttallin ŭi haksŏl [Lenin’s Theory on the Strengthening of Military
Power in the Period of Proletarian Dictatorship],” Kŭlloja, no. 48 (January 1950): 39.
[180] As shown by Lorenz
Lüthi, however, Sino-Soviet tensions were certainly present at this time,
though largely invisible to other parties.
Lorenz
M. Lüthi, The Sino-Soviet Split: Cold War
in the Communist World (Princeton (N.J.): Princeton University Press,
2008), 75–79.
[181] Brzezinski, The Soviet Bloc, Unity and Conflict,
302–3.
[182] Communist and Workers’
Parties, “Declaration of Communist and Workers’ Parties of the Socialist
Countries,” 1957, https://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/sino-soviet-split/other/1957declaration.htm.
[183] Ibid. 208
Central Committee of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, Department of
International Relations, “A Few Questions Concerning the International
Situation and the International Workers’ Movement: Speech of Comrade M. A.
Suslov,” November 1957, 169, SAPMO-BArch DY 30/11752.
[184] Ibid., 128.
[185] Communist and Workers’
Parties, “Declaration of Communist and Workers’ Parties of the Socialist
Countries.”
[186] Central Committee of the
Socialist Unity Party of Germany, Department of International Relations, “A Few
Questions Concerning the International Situation and the International Workers’
Movement: Speech of Comrade M. A. Suslov,” 199.
[187] Goldberg, “Journal of
Soviet Ambassador to the DPRK A.M. Puzanov for 16 February 1958.”
[188] Maya Latynski, trans.,
“A Report from Comrade Sluczanski Based on a Telegram from Comrade Siedlecki
Regarding the Agenda of the March Conference,” March 19, 1958, Polish Foreign
Ministry Archive, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive,
http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/110340.
[189] Szalontai, Kim Il Sung in the Khrushchev Era,
121–22, 128.
[190] Ibid., 129.
[191] Central Committee of the
Socialist Unity Party of Germany, “Neuer großer Sprung 1959 [New Great Leap
1959],” Neues Deutschland, April 19,
1959, 5.
[192] Central Committee of the
Socialist Unity Party of Germany, “Großer Sprung durch sozialistische
Gemeinschaftsarbeit [Great Leap through Socialist Teamwork],” Neues Deutschland, May 29, 1959, 4.
[193] Lüthi, The Sino-Soviet Split: Cold War in the
Communist World, 119.
[194] Ibid., 123–55.
[195] “Long Live Leninism!,” Peking Review, no. 17 (April 26, 1960):
16, 19.
[196] Ibid., 22.
[197] Lorenz Lüthi, in his
extraordinarily detailed historical account of the Sino-Soviet split, suggests
such a rejection.
Lüthi, The Sino-Soviet Split: Cold War in the
Communist World, 163.
[198] “Long Live Leninism!,”
7–8, 10, 14.
[199] Central Committee of the
Socialist Unity Party of Germany, Department of International Relations,
“Memorandum
Concerning the Contents of the Meetings between the Representatives of the
Communist and Workers’ Parties, Who Came Together for an Exchange of Opinions
on the Occasion of the Third Party Congress of the Rumanian Workers’ Party in
Bucharest,” 1960, 103, SAPMO-BArch DY 30/11754.
[200] Ibid., 132.
[201] Central Committee of the
Socialist Unity Party of Germany, Department of International Relations,
“Comments by the Delegation of the Chinese Communist Party on the ‘Draft of a
Statement by the Conference of Representatives from Communist and Workers’
Parties’,” November 16, 1960, 133–34, SAPMO-BArch DY 30/11767.
[202] Central Committee of the
Socialist Unity Party of Germany, Department of International Relations,
“Statement of the Delegation of the Bulgarian Communist Party on the Speeches
of the Chinese Communist Party Representative Comrade Deng Xiaoping and the
Representative of the Albanian Party of Labor Comrade Enver Hoxha at the Conference
of Representatives from Communist and Workers’ Parties in Moscow,” November 18,
1960, 167–71, SAPMO-BArch DY 30/11767.
[203] Chosŏnnodongdang
chungangwiwŏnhoe, “Kongsandang mit rodongdang taep’yodŭl ŭi hoeŭi saŏp kwa
kwallyŏnhan Chosŏn rodongdang chungang wiwŏnhoe chŏnwŏn hoeŭi kyŏlchŏngsŏ
[Written Decision of the Plenum of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party
of Korea Concerning the Work of the Meeting of Representatives from Communist
and Workers’ Parties],” Kŭlloja, no.
182 (January 1961): 13–14.
[204] Gary Goldberg, trans.,
“Journal of Soviet Ambassador in the DPRK A.M. Puzanov for 21 April 1960,”
April 21, 1960, AVPRF fond 0102, opis 16, delo 6, p.147-163, History and Public
Policy Program Digital Archive, http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/116110.
[205] Gary Goldberg, trans.,
“Journal of Soviet Ambassador in the DPRK A.M. Puzanov for 2 May 1960,” May 2,
1960, AVPRF fond 0102, opis 16, delo 6, p.164-183, History and Public Policy
Program Digital Archive, http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/116112.
[206] Gary Goldberg, trans.,
“Journal of Soviet Ambassador in the DPRK A.M. Puzanov for 16 June 1960,” June
16,
[207] , AVPRF fond 0102, opis
16, delo 7, p.1-15, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive,
http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/119419.
[208] Gary Goldberg, trans.,
“Journal of Soviet Ambassador in the DPRK A.M. Puzanov for 25 June 1960,” June
25,
[209] , AVPRF fond 0102, opis
16, delo 7, p.1-15, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive,
http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/119425. Of course, it is also conceivable that Kim Il
Sung exaggerated his indignation toward China and spoke in a double-tongued
manner.
[210] József Litkei, trans.,
“Report, Embassy of Hungary in North Korea to the Hungarian Foreign Ministry,”
July 2, 1960, MOL, XIX-J-1-j Korea, 8. doboz, 5/f, 0029/RT/1960, History and
Public Policy Program Digital Archive,
http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/113407.
[211] Chosŏnnodongdang
chungangwiwŏnhoe, “Kongsandang mit rodongdang taep’yodŭl ŭi hoeŭi saŏp kwa
kwallyŏnhan Chosŏn rodongdang chungang wiwŏnhoe chŏnwŏn hoeŭi kyŏlchŏngsŏ
[Written Decision of the Plenum of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party
of Korea Concerning the Work of the Meeting of Representatives from Communist
and Workers’ Parties],” 12.
[212] Szalontai, Kim Il Sung in the Khrushchev Era, 158.
[213] Gary Goldberg, trans.,
“Journal of Soviet Ambassador in the DPRK A.M. Puzanov for 8 October 1960,”
October 8, 1960, AVPRF fond 0102, opis 16, delo 7, p.130-150, History and
Public Policy Program Digital Archive,
http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/119473.
[214] Bernd Schaefer, trans.,
“An Assessment by the GDR Foreign Ministry of the Report from the GDR Embassy
in Pyongyang Regarding the Economic Situation of the DPRK for the 1st Semester
of 1960,” November 2, 1960, PolA AA, MfAA, A 6982, History and Public Policy
Program Digital Archive,
http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/113711.
[215] Adolf Kotlik, trans.,
“Report on Political Development in the DPRK,” April 18, 1961, State Central
Archive in Prague, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive,
http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/116752.
[216] Ibid.
[217] Nikita Khrushchev, Documents of the 22nd Congress of the CPSU,
vol. 1 (New York: Crosscurrents Press, 1961), 13.
[218] Ibid., 1:150.
[219] Ibid., 1:151–53.
[220] Ibid., 1:217.
[221] Anna Beth Keim, trans.,
“Cable from the Chinese Embassy in North Korea, ‘Contents of the May 18th North
Korean Party Central Standing Committee Meeting,’” May 21, 1961, PRC FMA
106-00581-06, 32-33, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive,
http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/110055.
[222] Enkel Daljani, trans.,
“Report on the Delegation of the Albanian Labor Party’s Meeting with Kim Il
Sung,” September 25, 1961, AQPPSH, MPP Korese, D4, V. 1961, History and Public
Policy Program Digital Archive,
http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/114425.
[223] Enkel Daljani, trans.,
“Report on the Work of the Delegation of the ALP to the 4th Congress of the
Korean Workers’ Party,” September 7, 1961, AQPPSH, MPP Korese, V. 1961, D4,
History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive, http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/114424.
[224] Kim Il Sung, “Chosŏn
rodongdang che 4 ch’a taehoe esŏ han chungang wiwŏnhoe saŏp ch’onghwa pogo
[Report on the Work of the Central Committee Held at the 4th Congress of the
Workers’ Party of Korea],” Kŭlloja,
no. 190 (September 1961): 37.
[225] Ibid., 64.
[226] Ibid., 96–105.
[227] Central Committee of the
Socialist Unity Party of Germany, Department of International Relations,
“Letter from Schneidewind to Schwab,” September 20, 1961, SAPMO-BArch DY 30/IV
2/20/135.
[228] Szalontai, Kim Il Sung in the Khrushchev Era,
178–79.
[229] It is conceivable,
albeit speculative, that those within the WPK leadership who were more in favor
of Chinese views in the Sino-Soviet dispute used the May Coup to steer a course
away from Khrushchev’s interpretation of peaceful coexistence.
[230] Central Committee of the
Socialist Unity Party of Germany, Department of International Relations, “Third
Supplement Concerning the Assessment of the DPRK’s Stance in Regard to the
Question of the German Peace Treaty and the Resolution of the
West-Berlin-Problem on 10/20/61,” July 12, 1962, SAPMO-BArch DY 30/IV 2/20/136.
[231] This may also have
constituted further incentive for the construction of a self-reliant
economy. Moreover, the GDR, during this
time, was in dire straits, economically speaking, and her socialist allies,
generally, were unwilling to overcommit economic assistance, much to
Khrushchev’s disappointment. This, too,
might have served as an indication why self-reliance is advantageous,
especially for a divided nation directly confronted with imperialism at its
border. If anything, the GDR’s economic
situation required increased trade with West Germany, which only further
limited its inter-German policy options.
See: Douglas Selvage, “The End of the Berlin Crisis: New Evidence From
the Polish and East German Archives,” Cold
War International History Project Bulletin, no. 11 (1998): 218– 29.
[232] Vojtech Mastny, trans.,
“Telegram from Pyongyang,” December 1, 1961, Archive of the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs, Prague. Korea, Signature 51, Box 5, History and Public Policy Program
Digital Archive, http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/110339.
[233] Szalontai, Kim Il Sung in the Khrushchev Era, 181.
[234] Chang-yŏp Hwang, Nanŭn yŏksaŭi chillirŭl poatta: Hwang
Chang-yŏp hoegorok [I Saw the Truth of History: The Memoirs of Hwang Chang-yŏp]
(Seoul: Hanul, 1999), 125–39.
[235] Daljani, “Report on the
Delegation of the Albanian Labor Party’s Meeting with Kim Il Sung.”
[236] Balázs Szalontai,
trans., “Report, Embassy of Hungary in North Korea to the Hungarian Foreign
Ministry,” August 1962, MOL, XIX-J-1-j Korea, 11. doboz, 24/b,
002304/1/RT/1962, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive,
http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/112774.
[237] According to a Chinese
source, on December 23, 1961, Kim Jong Il, who was attending university at the
time, informed a Chinese student that the DPRK would soon condemn the Soviets
and their revisionism and that the WPK was presently circulating among party
members a 200-page document on the Soviet-Albanian conflict.
Stephen
Mercado, trans., “Cable from the Chinese Embassy in North Korea, ‘Premier Kim’s
Son on SovietAlbanian Relations,’” December 27, 1961, PRC FMA 106-00579-16, 58-
59, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive,
http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/155255.
[238] Grace Leonard, trans.,
“Information on the Reunification Policy of the Korean Workers’ Party,” May 3,
1962, SAPMO-BArch DY 30/IV 2/20/136, History and Public Policy Program Digital
Archive, http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/112304.
[239] Brzezinski, The Soviet Bloc, Unity and Conflict,
408.
[240] Jae-Jung Suh, ed., Origins of North Korea’s Juche: Colonialism,
War, and Development (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2013), 11.
[241] Grace Leonard, trans.,
“Report on the Incident Involving the Cuban Ambassador and the Delegation of
Physicians from Cuba While in North Korea,” April 2, 1965, SAPMO-BArch DY 30/IV
A2/20/251, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive,
digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/112305.
[242] Central Committee of the
Socialist Unity Party of Germany, Department of International Relations,
“Information Concerning a Serious Incident with the Cuban Ambassador on March
28, 1965 in Pyongyang,” April 21, 1965, 8, SAPMO-BArch DY 30/IV A 2/20/252.
[243] Central Committee of the
Socialist Unity Party of Germany, Department of International Relations, “The
Influence of the Chinese Communist Party on the Politics of the Workers’ Party
of Korea,” April 8, 1963, 109, SAPMO-BArch DY 30/IV A 2/20/250.
[244] Central Committee of the
Socialist Unity Party of Germany, Department of International Relations,
“Abridgment of the Relations Report of the GDR Embassy in the DPRK for the Year
1962,” January 24, 1963, 2, SAPMO-BArch DY 30/IV A 2/20/253. 271
Central Committee of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, Department of
International Relations, “Statements from the Election Report Assembly of the
SED Ground Organization at the GDR Embassy in the DPRK,” January 5, 1967, 38,
SAPMO-BArch DY 30/IV A 2/20/257.
[245] Central Committee of the
Socialist Unity Party of Germany, Department of International Relations,
“Minutes of the Executive Meeting from 9/13/1963,” September 16, 1963, 103,
SAPMO-BArch DY 30/IV A 2/20/258.
[246] Politburo of the Central
Committee of the SED, “Report about the Stay of a State Delegation of the GDR
in the
DPRK
at the Celebrations of the 20th Anniversary of the DPRK’s Founding,” September
16, 1968, 5, SAPMOBArch DY 30/J IV 2/2J/2340.
[247] Vladimir I. Lenin, “The
Tasks of the Proletariat in Our Revolution: Draft Platform for the Proletarian
Party,” in V. I. Lenin: Collected Works,
trans. Isaacs Bernard, vol. 24 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1964), 75.
Chosŏnnodongdang
chungangwiwŏnhoe, “Charyŏk kaengsaeng ŭn kongsanjuŭijadŭl ŭi hyŏngmyŏngjŏk
kip’ung ida [Charyŏk kaengsaeng Is the Revolutionary Ethos of Communists],” Kŭlloja, no. 196 (March 1962): 2–3.
[248] Chosŏnnodongdang
chungangwiwŏnhoe, “Charyŏk kaengsaeng ŭn kongsanjuŭijadŭl ŭi hyŏngmyŏngjŏk
kip’ung ida [Charyŏk kaengsaeng Is the Revolutionary Ethos of Communists],” 2.
[249] Ibid., 3.
[250] Leonard, “Information on
the Reunification Policy of the Korean Workers’ Party.”
[251] Chosŏnnodongdang
chungangwiwŏnhoe, “Charyŏk kaengsaeng kwa charipchŏk minjok kyŏngje ŭi kŏnsŏl
[Charyŏk kaengsaeng and the Construction of a Self-Reliant National Economy],” Kŭlloja, no. 226 (June 1963): 6–
[252] .
[253] Central Committee of the
Socialist Unity Party of Germany, Department of International Relations,
“Compilation of Arguments by the Workers’ Party of Korea on the Basic Questions
of Our Epoch,” April 21, 1964, SAPMOBArch DY 30/IV A 2/20/251.
[254] I realize that to
translate chuch’ejŏk as “subjective”
or “national” is strange, but it is based on a contextual reading of the
article, in which it constitutes the opposite of the kukchejŏk (international) factor.
In this sense, chuch’ejŏk
refers to a kind of national self or national subjectivity. This translation is further confirmed when
examining the Marxist-Leninist origins of this concept, as explored in Chapter
4.
Sŏng-gwŏn Ro, “Hyŏngmyŏng ŭi chuch’ejŏk yoin kwa kukchejŏk yoin [The
Revolution’s Subjective Factor and International Factor],” Kŭlloja, no. 229 (August 1963): 24–28.
[255] Chosŏnnodongdang
chungangwiwŏnhoe, “Paekchŏn paeksŭng ŭi Lenin ŭi kich’i [The Ever-Victorious
Banner of Lenin],” Kŭlloja, no. 222
(April 1963): 2–6.
[256] Chosŏnnodongdang
chungangwiwŏnhoe, “Charipchŏk minjok kyŏngje ŭi kŏnsŏl ŭn choguk ŭi t’ongil kwa
tongnip kwa pŏnyŏng ŭi kil ida [The Construction of a Self-Reliant National
Economy Is the Path to the Fatherland’s Unification, Independence, and
Prosperity],” Kŭlloja, no. 222 (April
1963): 19–23.
[257] Günther and Arbatow, Grundlagen des Marxismus-Leninismus:
Lehrbuch, 531. This was an
authoritative East German textbook on Marxism-Leninism, translated from the
Soviet version.
[258] Ibid., 525.
[259] Central Committee of the
Socialist Unity Party of Germany, Department of International Relations,
“Information about the Splintering Activities of the Chinese Communist Party,”
January 27, 1966, 36–37, SAPMO-BArch DY 30/IV A 2/20/995.
[260] Kim Il Sung, “Hyŏn
chŏngse wa uri tang ŭi kwaŏp [The Present Situation and the Tasks of Our
Party],” Kŭlloja, no. 296 (October
1966): 21.
[261] Ibid., 23.
[262] Politburo of the Central
Committee of the SED, “Report about the Stay of a State Delegation of the GDR
in the DPRK at the Celebrations of the 20th Anniversary of the DPRK’s
Founding,” 4.
[263] Khrushchev, Documents of the 22nd Congress of the CPSU,
1961, 1:185.
[264] The point of contention
was how to go about strengthening one’s economy in the struggle against
imperialism. Whereas East Germany
believed that Comecon was crucial in this endeavor, North Korea did not. Central Committee of the
Socialist Unity Party of Germany, Department of International Relations,
“Report of the Party Executive Committee at the Election Report Assembly of the
Ground Organization of the GDR Embassy in the DPRK,” April 13, 1964, 8,
SAPMO-BArch DY 30/IV A 2/20/256.
[265] Central Committee of the
Socialist Unity Party of Germany, Department of International Relations,
“Memorandum
Concerning the Contents of the Meetings between the Representatives of the
Communist and Workers’ Parties, Who Came Together for an Exchange of Opinions
on the Occasion of the Third Party Congress of the Rumanian Workers’ Party in
Bucharest,” 134.
[266] Ibid.
[267] Chosŏnnodongdang
chungangwiwŏnhoe, “Charyŏk kaengsaeng ŭn kongsanjuŭijadŭl ŭi hyŏngmyŏngjŏk
kip’ung ida [Charyŏk kaengsaeng Is the Revolutionary Ethos of Communists],” 3.
[268] Sang-hun Ri, “Hangil
mujang t’ujaeng sigi e palhwidoen charyŏk kaengsaeng ŭi hyŏngmyŏng chŏngshin
[The Revolutionary Spirit of charyŏk kaengsaeng Displayed During the Time of
the Anti-Japanese Armed Struggle],” Kŭlloja,
no. 226 (June 1963): 11–12.
[269] Central Committee of the
Socialist Unity Party of Germany, Department of International Relations,
“Assessment of the Article ‘A New Achievement in the Research on the
Revolutionary Movement of the Korean People in Modern Times,’” March 12, 1962,
249, SAPMO-BArch DY 30/IV 2/20/137.
Chosŏnnodongdang chungangwiwŏnhoe, “Ssoryŏn Kongsandang kangnyŏng
(Ch’oan) [The Program of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Draft)],” Kŭlloja, August 1961, 9.
[270] Central Committee of the
Socialist Unity Party of Germany, Department of International Relations,
“Assessment of the Article ‘A New Achievement in the Research on the
Revolutionary Movement of the Korean People in Modern Times,’” 247–50.
[271] Ibid.
[272] Böhme et al., Kleines politisches Wörterbuch [Small
Political Dictionary], 844–46.
[273] Ibid., 845.
[274] Kim Il Sung, “Chosŏn
rodongdang che 3 ch’a taehoe esŏ chinsul han chungang wiwŏnhoe saŏp ch’onggyŏl
pogo [Work Review Report of the Central Committee Held at the 3rd Congress of
the Workers’ Party of Korea],” Kŭlloja,
no. 126 (May 1956): 70.
[275] Chosŏnnodongdang
chungangwiwŏnhoe, “Paekchŏn paeksŭng ŭi Lenin ŭi kich’i [The Ever-Victorious
Banner of Lenin],” 5–6.
[276] GDR Embassy in the DPRK,
“Memorandum about the Initial Visit with Minister of Foreign Affairs, Pak
SŏngCh’ŏl, on September 16, 1964,” September 16, 1964, 149, SAPMO-BArch DY
30/IV A 2/20/253.
[277] Chosŏnnodongdang
chungangwiwŏnhoe, “Chosŏn hyŏngmyŏng ŭi apkil ŭl palk’in ch’angjojŏk
Maksŭ-reninjuŭi rojak [The Korean Revolution’s Road Ahead as Revealed by the
Writings of Creative Marxism-Leninism],” Kŭlloja,
no. 249 (June 1964): 18–19.
[278] North Korea had several
ways to express the notion of creativity, such as changjosŏng (creativity), changjojŏk
chŏngshin (creative spirit), and changjoryŏk
(creative power). East Germany also had
various expressions, including Schöpfertum
(creativity), Schöpfergeist (creative
spirit), and Schöpferkraft (creative
power).
[279] The 1957 Moscow
Declaration, for example, makes this point perfectly clear: Communist and
Workers’ Parties, “Declaration of Communist and Workers’ Parties of the
Socialist Countries.”
[280] Central Committee of the
Socialist Unity Party of Germany, Department of International Relations,
“Compilation of Arguments by the Workers’ Party of Korea on the Basic Questions
of Our Epoch,” 106–8.
[281] Chosŏnnodongdang
chungangwiwŏnhoe, “Tangwŏn ŭi hyŏngmyŏngjŏk ŭiji [The Party Member’s
Revolutionary Will],” Kŭlloja, no.
298 (December 1966): 2, 5.
[282] Chosŏnnodongdang
chungangwiwŏnhoe, “Paekchŏn paeksŭng ŭi Lenin ŭi kich’i [The Ever-Victorious
Banner of Lenin],” 7.
[283] Böhme et al., Kleines politisches Wörterbuch [Small
Political Dictionary], 299.
[284] Günther and Arbatow, Grundlagen des Marxismus-Leninismus:
Lehrbuch, 412.
[285] Ibid., 408.
[286] “On the Historical
Experience of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat,” Renmin Ribao, April 5, 1956.
[287] Wolfgang Harich, Keine Schwierigkeiten mit der Wahrheit: Zur
nationalkommunistischen Opposition 1956 in der DDR [No Problems with the Truth:
On the National-Communist 1956 Opposition in the GDR] (Berlin: Dietz
Verlag, 1993), 117.
[288] Sonia Ryang, Reading North Korea: An Ethnological Inquiry
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center: Distributed by Harvard
University Press, 2012), 45.
[289] Szalontai, Kim Il Sung in the Khrushchev Era, 114.
[290] As with many of its
other doctrines, North Korea argued that the Ch’ŏ ngsan-ni Method was actually
first developed during the Anti-Japanese Armed Struggle and then applied to the
new realities after liberation.
Chosŏnnodongdang
chungangwiwŏnhoe, “Ch’ŏngsan-ni kyosi chiphaeng esŏ ŏdŭn sŏnggwa rŭl tŏuk
konggo paljŏnsik’ija [Let Us More Firmly Develop the Achievements Gained in the
Execution of the Ch’ŏngsan-ni Teaching],” Kŭlloja,
no. 183 (February 1961): 2, 4.
[291] Communist leaders relied
on a type of circular reasoning. For the
masses to make history, they required correct communist leadership. The correctness of the leadership, as well as
its close connection with the masses, was confirmed by the masses’ successful
execution of party policy. Since the leadership
usually viewed this execution as successful, its leadership was proven
correct. If execution was unsuccessful,
blame was shifted onto the ideological deficiencies of the masses and lower
party officials, who incorrectly taught the masses. According to this logic, the top leadership
could never be wrong. Compare this with
Scalapino and Lee’s similar analysis of the mass line doctrine: Scalapino and
Lee, Communism in Korea, 859–60.
[292] Gary Goldberg, trans.,
“From the Journal of N. Ye. Torbenkov, Record of a Conversation with DPRK MFA
Counselor
Pak Deok-Hwan,” June 1, 1960, AVPRF fond 0102, opis 16, delo 6, History and
Public Policy Program Digital Archive,
http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/121622.
[293] Bryan Myers made a
similar observation: Myers, North Korea’s
Juche Myth, 67–68.
[294]
Gary Goldberg, trans., “Journal of Soviet Ambassador in the DPRK A.M. Puzanov
for 6 November 1960,” November 6, 1960, AVPRF fond 0102, opis 16, delo 7,
p.151- 171, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive,
http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/119487.
[295] Chosŏnnodongdang
chungangwiwŏnhoe, “Uri tang che 4 ch’a taehoe nŭn Chosŏn esŏ Marksŭ-Leninjuŭi
ŭi widaehan sŭngni rŭl siwihayŏtta [Our 4th Party Congress Displayed the Great
Victory of Marxism-Leninism in Korea],” Kŭlloja,
no. 191 (October 1961): 5.
[296] Kotlik, “Report on
Political Development in the DPRK.”
[297] Ibid.
[298] Chosŏnnodongdang chungangwiwŏnhoe,
“Tangwiwŏnhoedŭl ŭi chŏnt’ujŏk kinŭng ŭl tŏuk chegohagi wihayŏ [For the Further
Raising of the Party Committees’ Militant Functions],” Kŭlloja, no. 196 (March 1962): 12. Hyŏn-chu O,
“Ch’ŏngsonyŏndŭl sok esŏ kongsanjuŭi kyoyang ŭl tŏuk kanghwahaja [Let us
Further Strengthen Communist Education of the Youth],” Kŭlloja, no. 196 (March 1962): 38–39.
[299] Chosŏnnodongdang
chungangwiwŏnhoe, “Kim Il-sŏng tongji rŭl suban ŭro hanŭn chosŏnnodongdang ŭn
uri inmin ŭi modŭn sŭngni ŭi chojikcha imyŏ komuja ida [The Workers’ Party of
Korea, Headed by Kim Il Sung, Is the Organizer of Our People’s Every Victory
and Torchbearer],” Kŭlloja, no. 197
(April 1962): 7.
[300] Chosŏnnodongdang
chungangwiwŏnhoe, “Chosŏn hyŏngmyŏng ŭi apkil ŭl palk’in ch’angjojŏk Maksŭ-reninjuŭi
rojak [The Korean Revolution’s Road Ahead as Revealed by the Writings of
Creative Marxism-Leninism].”
[301] Central Committee of the
Socialist Unity Party of Germany, Department of International Relations, “The
Principle of ‘Self-Reliance’ Is the Basic Principle of the Revolutionary
Activities of Communists,” 1963, 31–32, SAPMO-BArch DY 30/IV A 2/20/250.
[302] Sun-sŏ Pak, Taejung chŏngch’i yongŏ sajŏn [Public
Political Terminology Dictionary] (Pyongyang: Chosŏn Nodongdang
Ch’ulp’ansa, 1964), 286.
[303] Myers, North Korea’s Juche Myth, 91–94.
[304] Armstrong, Tyranny of the Weak, 53.
[305] Suh, Origins of North Korea’s Juche: Colonialism,
War, and Development, 11.
[306] Jae-Cheon Lim, Kim Jong Il’s Leadership of North Korea
(London: Routledge, 2009), 61.
[307] Suh, Kim Il Sung: The North Korean Leader,
308.
[308] Kim Il Sung, “Chosŏn
minjujuŭi inmin konghwagug esŏ ŭi sahoejuŭi kŏnsŏl kwa namjosŏn [South Korea
and Socialist Construction in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea],” Kŭlloja, no. 270 (April 1965): 17–18.
[309] Chosŏnnodongdang
chungangwiwŏnhoe, “Uri hyŏngmyŏng ŭi hyŏn tan’gye wa kŭllojadŭl e taehan kyegŭp
kyoyang [The Present Stage of Our Revolution and the Class Education of
Workers],” Kŭlloja, no. 221 (April
1963): 3.
[310] Pak, Taejung chŏngch’i yongŏ sajŏn [Public
Political Terminology Dictionary], 359–60.
[311] Kim Il Sung, “Chosŏn
minjujuŭi inmin konghwagug esŏ ŭi sahoejuŭi kŏnsŏl kwa namjosŏnhyŏngmyŏng e
taehayŏ [On Socialist Construction in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea
and the South Korean Revolution],” in Kim
Il-sŏng chŏjak sŏnjip [The Collected Works of Kim Il Sung], vol. 4
(Pyongyang: Chosŏn Nodongdang Ch’ulp’ansa, 1968), 219.
[312] Chin-kyun Sin, “Chuch’e
sasang ŭn kongsanjuŭijŏk chaju, charip ŭi sasang ida [Chuch’e Thought is the
Communist Thought of chaju and charip],” Kŭlloja,
no. 281 (October 1965): 9–10.
[313] Yŏng-gi Yun,
“Tangjŏngch’aek ŭn simohi yŏn’guhaja [Let Us Deeply Study Party Policy],” Kŭlloja, no. 293 (July 1966): 18.
Chosŏnnodongdang
chungangwiwŏnhoe, “Chajusŏng ŭl onghohaja [Let Us Safeguard Autonomy],” Kŭlloja, no. 294 (August 1966): 8.
[314] Kim Il Sung, “Hyŏn
chŏngse wa uri tang ŭi kwaŏp [The Present Situation and the Tasks of Our
Party],” 19–21. 344 Bernd
Schaefer, “North Korean ‘Adventurism’ and China’s Long Shadow, 1966-1972”
(CWIHP Working Paper no. 44, 2004), 6–7.
[315] Enkel Daljani, trans.,
“Information on the Korean Workers’ Party,” October 1966, AQPPSH, MPP Korese, D
10, V, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive,
http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/114405.
[316] Balázs Szalontai,
trans., “Report, Embassy of Hungary in the Soviet Union to the Hungarian
Foreign Ministry,” October 20, 1966, MOL, XIX-J-1-j Korea, 1966, 74. doboz, IV-
250, 005007/1966, History and Public Policy
Program
Digital Archive, http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/116646. Kim Il Sung, “Hyŏn
chŏngse wa uri tang ŭi kwaŏp [The Present Situation and the Tasks of Our
Party],” 21–22.
[317] Kim Il Sung, “Hyŏn
chŏngse wa uri tang ŭi kwaŏp [The Present Situation and the Tasks of Our
Party],” 13.
[318] Daljani, “Information on
the Korean Workers’ Party.” 349 Gary Goldberg, trans., “Excerpts
from a 30 December 1966 Memo of the Soviet Embassy to the DPRK (A.
Borunkov)
about Embassy Measures against Chinese Anti-Soviet Propaganda in the DPRK,”
December 30, 1966, AVPRF, f. 0102, op. 22, p. 109, d. 22, pp. 50-56, History
and Public Policy Program Digital Archive,
http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/116692.
[319] Schaefer, “North Korean
‘Adventurism’ and China’s Long Shadow, 1966-1972,” 7–8.
[320]
Eliza Gheorghe, trans., “Telegram from Pyongyang to Bucharest, No.76.171, TOP
SECRET, May 20, 1967,” May 20, 1967, Archive of the Romanian Ministry of
Foreign Affairs, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive,
http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/116709.
[321] Schaefer, “North Korean
‘Adventurism’ and China’s Long Shadow, 1966-1972,” 10–11.
[322] For a more complete
discussion, see: James F. Person, “Solidarity and Self-Reliance: The Antinomies
of North Korean Foreign Policy and Juche Thought, 1953-1967” (The George
Washington University, 2013), 218–24.
[323]
Eliza Gheorghe, trans., “Telegram from Pyongyang to Bucharest, TOP SECRET, No.
76.247, July 28, 1967,” July 28, 1967, Archive of the Romanian Ministry of
Foreign Affairs, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive,
http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/116710.
[324] Hyŏn Ch’oe, “Chŏnch’e
inmin ŭi mujanghwa wa chŏn’guk ŭi yosaehwa [Arming the Whole People and
Fortifying
the Whole Country],” Kŭlloja, no. 298
(December 1966): 7–17.
Ch’oe, the author of the article, was one of Kim Il Sung’s staunchest
supporters in this factional struggle.
Hence, it is interesting to note that the article does not talk about chuch’e sasang at all.
[325] Ibid., 12, 14.
Chosŏnnodongdang
chungangwiwŏnhoe, “Hangilmujangt’ujaeng esŏ iruktoen yŏnggwangsŭrŏun hyŏngmyŏng
chŏnt’ong ŭl tŏuk pinnaeija [Let Us Further Glorify the Glorious Revolutionary
Tradition Established During the Anti-Japanese Armed Struggle],” Kŭlloja, no. 302 (April 1967): 6.
[326] Nikita Khrushchev, Documents of the 22nd Congress of the CPSU,
vol. 2 (New York: Crosscurrents Press, 1961), 104–9.
[327] Mao Zedong, “On
Khrushchev’s Phoney Communism and Its Historical Lessons for the World”
(Foreign
Languages Press, July
14, 1964), https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/works/1964/phnycom.htm.
[328] Kim Il Sung, “Chabonjuŭi
ro but’ŏ sahoejuŭi e roŭi kwadogi wa p’ŭroret’aria dokchae munje e taehayŏ [On
the Problem of the Transition Period From Capitalism to Socialism and the
Dictatorship of the Proletariat],” in Kim
Ilsŏng chŏnjip [The Complete Works of Kim Il Sung], vol. 38 (Pyongyang:
Chosŏn Nodongdang Ch’ulp’ansa, 2001), 445–61.
[329] Ibid., 452–53. 361
Ibid., 458–61.
[330] Central Committee of the
Socialist Unity Party of Germany, “Beseitigung der Klassenunterschiede wird
rascher vor sich gehen [The Elimination of Class Differences Will Occur
Faster],” Neues Deutschland, October
18, 1961, 10.
[331] Chosŏnnodongdang
chungangwiwŏnhoe, “Tangjŏk sasang ch’egye rŭl ch’ŏlchŏhi hwangnip haja [Let Us
Completely Establish the Party Ideological System],” Kŭlloja, no. 168 (November 1959): 31–32.
[332] Ibid., 34. 367
Ibid., 35.
[333] Chosŏnnodongdang
chungangwiwŏnhoe, “Hangilmujangt’ujaeng esŏ iruktoen yŏnggwangsŭrŏun hyŏngmyŏng
chŏnt’ong ŭl tŏuk pinnaeija [Let Us Further Glorify the Glorious Revolutionary
Tradition Established During the Anti-Japanese Armed Struggle],” 8, 10–11.
[334] Hyŏng-ch’uk Chŏn,
“Hangilmujangt’ujaeng shigi e iruktoen hyŏngmyŏngjŏk inmin muryŏk kŏnsŏl ŭi
chŏnt’ong
[The Tradition of the
Revolutionary Building Up of the People’s Armed Strength That Arose in the
Period of the Anti-Japanese Armed Struggle],” Kŭlloja, no. 302 (April 1967): 16.
Note that this article paid no special attention to chuch’e.
[335] Ibid., 18.
[336] Chosŏnnodongdang
chungangwiwŏnhoe, “Poch’ŏnbo jŏnt’u sŭngni 30 chu nyŏn [The 30th Anniversary of
the Victory of the Poch’ŏnbo Battle],” Kŭlloja,
no. 303 (June 1967): 4.
[337] Chosŏnnodongdang
chungangwiwŏnhoe, “10 wŏl ŭi sasang ŭn sŭngnihago itta [The October Thought Is
Winning],” Kŭlloja, no. 309 (November
1967): 10–11.
[338] Chosŏnnodongdang
chungangwiwŏnhoe, “Tang taep’yoja hoe ŭi widaehan sasang ŭn pinnage kuhyŏn
toego itta (The Great Ideas of the Conference of Party Delegates Are
Brilliantly Being Realized),” Kŭlloja,
no. 307 (September 1967): 4.
[339] Chosŏnnodongdang chungangwiwŏnhoe,
“10 wŏl ŭi sasang ŭn sŭngnihago itta [The October Thought Is Winning],” 8.
[340] Kim Il Sung, “Kukka
hwaltong ŭi modŭn punya esŏ chaju, charip, chawi ŭi hyŏngmyŏng jŏngsin ŭl tŏuk
ch’ŏlchŏhi kuhyŏn haja [Let Us Even More Thoroughly Embody the Revolutionary
Spirit of chaju, charip, and chawi in All Spheres of State Activity],” Kŭlloja, no. 310 (December 1967): 2–42.
[341] Chosŏnnodongdang
chungangwiwŏnhoe, “Kim Il-sŏng tongji kkesŏ ch’ŏnmyŏng hashin widaehan 10
taejŏnggang
ŭl nop’i pattŭlgo hyŏngmyŏng kwa kŏnsŏl esŏ saeroun chŏnjin ŭl iruk’aja [Let Us
Highly Venerate the Great 10-Point Platform Proclaimed by Comrade Kim Il Sung
And Achieve New Progress in Revolution and Construction],” Kŭlloja, no. 311 (January 1968): 3.
[342] Ibid., 4.
Sŏn-kuk
Ri, “Charipchŏk minjok kyŏngje kŏnsŏl rosŏn ŭn sahoejuŭi, kongsanjuŭi kŏnsŏl ŭi
happŏpch’ikchŏk yogu e puhaptoe nŭn ch’ŏlchŏhan hyŏngmyŏngjŏk kyŏngje kŏnsŏl
rosŏn [The Line of Constructing a Self-Reliant National Economy, The Line of
Thorough Revolutionary Economic Construction in Correspondence with the Lawful
Demands of Socialist and Communist Construction],” Kŭlloja, no. 311 (January 1968): 36.
[343] Kim Il Sung, “Kukka
hwaltong ŭi modŭn punya esŏ chaju, charip, chawi ŭi hyŏngmyŏng jŏngsin ŭl tŏuk
ch’ŏlchŏhi kuhyŏn haja [Let Us Even More Thoroughly Embody the Revolutionary
Spirit of chaju, charip, and chawi in All Spheres of State Activity].” 379
Pak, Taejung chŏngch’i yongŏ sajŏn
[Public Political Terminology Dictionary], 160–62. Chŏngch’i yong sajŏn [Political Dictionary]
(Pyongyang: Sahoe Kwahak Ch’ulp’ansa, 1970), 224–25. 380 Kim Il
Sung’s revolutionary thought, in similar ways to chuch’e sasang, was thus frequently defined as the thought of
creatively applying Marxism-Leninism in Korea, basing oneself on one’s own
strength, and the principles of chaju,
charip, and chawi. Chosŏnnodongdang
chungangwiwŏnhoe, “Tang ŭi yuil sasang ŭro tŏuk ch’ŏlchŏhi mujanghaja [Let Us
Even More Thoroughly Arm Ourselves with the Party’s Monolithic Ideology],” Kŭlloja, no. 314 (April 1968): 3.
[344] Ibid., 2..
[345] Ibid., 3.
[346] Central Committee of the
Socialist Unity Party of Germany, Department of International Relations,
“Resolution of the Election Report Assembly of the SED Party Organization at
the Embassy in Pyongyang,” April 13, 1964, 28, SAPMO-BArch DY 30/IV A 2/20/256.
[347] Central Committee of the
Socialist Unity Party of Germany, Department of International Relations, “To
the Chairman of the Ideological Committee of the SED County Leadership in
Hainichen,” 1963, SAPMO-BArch DY 30/IV A 2/20/253.
[348] Central Committee of the
Socialist Unity Party of Germany, Department of International Relations,
“Minutes of the Members’ Assembly of the Party Organization from June 14,
1963,” June 15, 1963, 53, SAPMO-BArch DY 30/IV A 2/20/258.
[349] Central Committee of the
Socialist Unity Party of Germany, Department of International Relations,
“Minutes of the Executive Meeting from 1/8/1964,” February 3, 1964, 5–6,
SAPMO-BArch DY 30/IV A 2/20/259.
[350] Ibid., 6.
[351] Central Committee of the
Socialist Unity Party of Germany, Department of International Relations, “The
Global Communist Movement and the Revolution in Southeast Asia (Main Points of
the Speech Held at the Reception for the CPI Delegation on September 29,
1963),” November 11, 1963, 143–44, SAPMO-BArch DY 30/IV A 2/20/669.
[352] Kim Il Sung, “Hyŏn
chŏngse wa uri tang ŭi kwaŏp [The Present Situation and the Tasks of Our
Party],” 19–21. Politburo of the
Central Committee of the SED, “Articles by the Chairman of the Communist Party
of the Netherlands, Paul de Groot, on a Speech by Kim Il Sung in the Central
Organ ‘De Waarheid,’” February 23, 1967, 3, SAPMO-BArch DY 30/J IV 2/2J/1891.
[353] Central Committee of the
Socialist Unity Party of Germany, Department of International Relations,
“Information for the Members and Candidates of the Politburo Concerning the
Conference of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Netherlands
on September 26/27, 1964,” October 26, 1964, 191, SAPMO-BArch DY 30/IV A
2/20/999.
[354] Central Committee of the
Socialist Unity Party of Germany, Department of International Relations,
“Leninism and the Present Times: The Report of Comrade Paul de Groot, Honorary
Member of the Central Committee of the CPN,” February 7, 1970, 29, SAPMO-BArch
DY 30/13622.
[355] Central Committee of the
Socialist Unity Party of Germany, “Wissenschaftliche Konferenz ‘Karl Marx und
unsere Zeit - der Kampf um Frieden und sozialen Fortschritt’ [Scientific
Conference 'Karl Marx and Our Times - the Struggle for Peace and Social
Progress'],” Neues Deutschland, April
15, 1983, 9.
[356] Ibid., 9–10.
[357] Ibid., 10.
[358] Armstrong, The North Korean Revolution, 1945-1950,
6.
[359] Bruce Cumings, “The
Kims’ Three Bodies: Toward Understanding Dynastic Succession in North Korea,”
in North Korea in Transition: Politics,
Economy, and Society, ed. Kyung-Ae Park and Scott Snyder (Lanham, Md.:
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2013), 81.
[360] Han Shik Park, “The
Nature and Evolution of Juche Ideology,” in North
Korea: Ideology, Politics, Economy, ed.
Han S. Park (Englewood
Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1996), 13.
[361] Chŏngch’i yong sajŏn [Political Dictionary], 553–55.
Political dictionaries
were essentially ideological dictionaries that codified the meaning of
ideological concepts.
[362] Central Council of the
Free German Youth, Department of International Relations, “Agreement of
Cooperation Between the Free German Youth and League of Socialist Working Youth
of Korea for the Years 1986 to 1990,” May 27, 1985, SAPMO-BArch DY 24/22341.
[363] Böhme et al., Kleines politisches Wörterbuch [Small
Political Dictionary], 603.
[364] Kim Il Sung, “Uri tang
ŭi chuch’e sasang kwa konghwaguk chŏngbu ŭi taenaeoe chŏngch’aek ŭi myŏt kaji
munje e taehayŏ [On a Few Problems Concerning Our Party’s chuch’e sasang and
the Domestic and Foreign Policy of Our Republic’s Government],” Kŭlloja, no. 366 (October 1972): 2.
[365] Ibid., 4–5.
[366] Ibid., 5.
[367] Ibid., 7.
[368] Ibid., 8.
[369] Chosŏnnodongdang
chungangwiwŏnhoe, “Widaehan chuch’e sasang ŭn makŭl su ŏmnŭn shidaejŏk sajo
[The Great chuch’e sasang, the Unstoppable Trend of Our Times],” Kŭlloja, no. 368 (December 1972): 2–3.
[370] Chosŏnnodongdang
chungangwiwŏnhoe, “Saram i modŭn kŏt ŭi chuin imyŏ modŭn kŏt ŭl
kyŏlchŏnghandanŭn kŏt ŭn chuch’e sasang ŭi kich’o ida [That Man Is Master of
All Things and Decides All Things Is the Basis of chuch’e sasang],” Kŭlloja, no. 368 (December 1972): 20.
[371] Chŏngch’i sajŏn [Political Dictionary] (Pyongyang: Sahoe Kwahak
Ch’ulp’ansa, 1973), 311.
[372] Brian Myers makes the
same point: Myers, North Korea’s Juche
Myth, 119–34.
[373] Kim Il Sung, “Uri tang
ŭi chuch’e sasang kwa konghwaguk chŏngbu ŭi taenaeoe chŏngch’aek ŭi myŏt kaji
munje e taehayŏ [On a Few Problems Concerning Our Party’s chuch’e sasang and
the Domestic and Foreign Policy of Our Republic’s Government],” 2.
[374] Kim Il Sung,
“Kyŏngaehanŭn suryŏng Kim Il-sŏng tongji kkesŏ ilbon chŏngch’i riron chapchi
‘sekkai’ p’yŏnjipkukchang kwa hashin tamhwa [A Conversation the Dear Leader
Comrade Kim Il Sung Had with the Managing Editor of the Japanese Political
Theory Magazine ’Sekai’],” Kŭlloja,
no. 367 (November 1972): 7–8.
[375] Chosŏnnodongdang
chungangwiwŏnhoe, “Sahoejuŭijŏk aegukchuŭi wa ryŏksa kyoyang [Socialist
Patriotism and History Education],” Kŭlloja,
no. 260 (November 1964): 6.
[376] Sin, “Chuch’e sasang ŭn
kongsanjuŭijŏk chaju, charip ŭi sasang ida [Chuch’e Thought is the Communist
Thought of chaju and charip],” 11–13.
[377] Kim Il Sung, “Hyŏn
chŏngse wa uri tang ŭi kwaŏp [The Present Situation and the Tasks of Our
Party],” 19.
[378] Sin, “Chuch’e sasang ŭn
kongsanjuŭijŏk chaju, charip ŭi sasang ida [Chuch’e Thought is the Communist
Thought of chaju and charip],” 13.
[379] Marx and Engels, “Die
deutsche Ideologie,” 20–21.
[380] Ibid., 13.
[381] Karl Marx,
“Ökonomisch-philosophische Manuskripte (1844) [Economic and Philosophical
Manuscripts (1844)],” in Karl Marx -
Friedrich Engels: Werke, 40 (Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1968), 540.
[382] The “herr” in “Beherrschung” is quite similar to the Korean “chuin” (master).
Interestingly, the “chu” of “chuin” is the same “chu” found in “chuch’e.”
[383] Marx and Engels, “Die
deutsche Ideologie,” 37.
[384] Marx, “Ökonomisch-philosophische
Manuskripte (1844) [Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts (1844)],” 536.
[385] Hyŏng-il Kim,
“Kyegŭpsŏng kwa in’gansŏng [Class Nature and Human Nature],” Kŭlloja, no. 227 (July 1963):
[386] .
[387] Imre Májer, trans.,
“Telegram from the Hungarian Embassy in Pyongyang, 'New Party Rules of the
Korean Workers’ Party’,” November 11, 1980, MNL OL XIV-J-1-j Korea
25-006569/1980, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive,
http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/111637.
[388] Kim Il Sung, “Chosŏn rodongdang
che 6 ch’a taehoe esŏ han chungang wiwŏnhoe saŏp ch’onghwa pogo [Report on the
Work of the Central Committee Held at the 6th Congress of the Workers’ Party of
Korea],” Kŭlloja, no. 462 (October
1980): 20.
[389] Sŏng-ch’ŏl Chŏng, “On
sahoe ŭi chuch’esasanghwa nŭn uri hyŏngmyŏng ŭi ch’ongjŏk immu [The
Chuch’esasang-ification of the Whole Society Is Our Revolution’s Overall
Mission],” Kŭlloja, no. 463 (November
1980):
[390] .
[391] Kim Il Sung, “Chosŏn
rodongdang che 6 ch’a taehoe esŏ han chungang wiwŏnhoe saŏp ch’onghwa pogo
[Report on the Work of the Central Committee Held at the 6th Congress of the
Workers’ Party of Korea],” 56.
[392] Chosŏnnodongdang
chungangwiwŏnhoe, “On sahoe ŭi chuch’esasanghwa wiŏp ŭl wansŏnghagi wihan
widaehan kangnyŏng [The Great Program for the Completion of the Cause of
Chuch’e-sasang-ifying the Whole Society],” Kŭlloja,
no. 463 (November 1980): 7–8.
[393] Kim Jong Il, “Chuch’e
sasang e taehayŏ [On Chuch’e sasang] (1982),” in Chuch’e ch’ŏrhak e taehayŏ [On Chuch’e Philosophy] (Pyongyang:
Chosŏn Nodongdang Ch’ulp’ansa, 2000), 23.
[394] Ibid., 24.
[395] Ibid., 28.
[396] Ibid., 30.
[397] Ibid., 32–33.
[398] Ibid., 27.
[399] Ibid., 24–25.
[400] Ibid., 28.
[401] Friedrich Engels, “Herrn
Eugen Dühring’s Umwälzung der Wissenschaft,” in Karl Marx - Friedrich Engels:
Werke, 20 (Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1975), 106.
Mao
Zedong, “Talk on Questions of Philosophy,” August 18, 1964, https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-9/mswv9_27.htm.
[402] Böhme et al., Kleines politisches Wörterbuch [Small
Political Dictionary], 201.
[403] Ibid., 331.
[404] Ingrid Mayer,
“Marxistische Philosophie und sozialistisches Menschenbild [Marxist Philosophy
and the Socialist Idea of Man],” Deutsche
Zeitschrift für Philosophie 17, no. 6 (January 1969): 654.
[405] Kim Il Sung,
“Kyŏngaehanŭn suryŏng Kim Il-sŏng tongji kkesŏ ilbon chŏngch’i riron chapchi
‘sekkai’ p’yŏnjipkukchang kwa hashin tamhwa [A Conversation the Dear Leader
Comrade Kim Il Sung Had with the Managing Editor of the Japanese Political
Theory Magazine ’Sekai’],” 4.
[406] Chosŏnnodongdang
chungangwiwŏnhoe, “Saram i modŭn kŏt ŭi chuin imyŏ modŭn kŏt ŭl
kyŏlchŏnghandanŭn kŏt ŭn chuch’e sasang ŭi kich’o ida [That Man Is Master of
All Things and Decides All Things Is the Basis of chuch’e sasang],” 18.
[407] Karl Marx, “Zur Kritik
der Hegelschen Rechtsphilosophie: Einleitung,” in Karl Marx - Friedrich Engels: Werke,
[408] (Berlin: Dietz Verlag,
1981), 385.
Chosŏnnodongdang
chungangwiwŏnhoe, “Saram i modŭn kŏt ŭi chuin imyŏ modŭn kŏt ŭl
kyŏlchŏnghandanŭn kŏt ŭn chuch’e sasang ŭi kich’o ida [That Man Is Master of
All Things and Decides All Things Is the Basis of chuch’e sasang],” 18.
[409] Hun Lim, “Sahoejuŭi wa
chonggyo [Socialism and Religion],” Kŭlloja,
no. 230 (August 1963): 31–32.
[410] Sin, “Chuch’e sasang ŭn
kongsanjuŭijŏk chaju, charip ŭi sasang ida [Chuch’e Thought is the Communist
Thought of chaju and charip],” 9.
[411] Ro, “Hyŏngmyŏng ŭi
chuch’ejŏk yoin kwa kukchejŏk yoin [The Revolution’s Subjective Factor and
International Factor],” 24–25. 449 Brian Myers has noticed this as
well, pointing out that Kim Jong Il’s 1982 treatise hardly featured anything
new. Myers, North Korea’s Juche Myth,
162.
[412] Kim Jong Il, “Chuch’e
sasang e taehayŏ [On Chuch’e sasang] (1982),” 42.
[413] Ibid., 43.
[414] Ibid., 44.
[415] Ibid., 46.
[416] Fred Oelßner, Rosa Luxemburg: Eine kritische biographische
Skizze [Rosa Luxemburg: A Critical Biographical Sketch] (Berlin: Dietz
Verlag, 1956), 163.
[417] Ibid., 203–4.
[418] Myers, North Korea’s Juche Myth, 125–26.
[419] Karl Marx, “Zur Kritik
der Politischen Ökonomie [On the Critique of Political Economy],” in Karl Marx - Friedrich Engels: Werke, 13
(Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1961), 8–9.
[420] Gerhard Koch,
“Subjektiver Faktor und objektiv-gesetzmäßiger Entwicklungsprozeß der
sozialistischen Gesellschaft [Subjective Factor and the Objective, Lawful
Developmental Process of Socialist Society],” Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 14, no. 9 (January 1966):
1051.
[421] Günther and Arbatow, Grundlagen des Marxismus-Leninismus:
Lehrbuch, 164.
[422] Günther Hoppe and Alfred
Kosing, “Marxistisch-leninistische Philosophie und Gestaltung der entwickelten
sozialistischen Gesellschaft in der DDR [Marxist-Leninist Philosophy and the
Creation of the Developed Socialist Society in the GDR],” Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 19, no. 3 (January 1971): 258.
[423] Chosŏnnodongdang
chungangwiwŏnhoe, “Ch’ŏngsan-ni kyosi chiphaeng esŏ ŏdŭn sŏnggwa rŭl tŏuk
konggo paljŏnsik’ija [Let Us More Firmly Develop the Achievements Gained in the
Execution of the Ch’ŏngsan-ni Teaching],” 5.
[424] Central Committee of the
Socialist Unity Party of Germany, “Wie wächst die sozialistische
Persönlichkeit? [How Does the Socialist Person Grow?],” Neues Deutschland, November 16, 1971, 4.
[425] Böhme et al., Kleines politisches Wörterbuch [Small Political
Dictionary], 331–32.
[426] For example, the East
German version of the new man did not include such facets as unwavering loyalty
to a single leader.
[427] Hans Steussloff, “Zur
Wechselwirkung von objektiven und subjektiven Faktoren bei der weiteren
Gestaltung des Sozialismus [On the Reciprocity of Objective and Subjective
Factors in the Further Construction of Socialism],” Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 30, no. 1 (January 1982):
18–19.
[428] Ekkhard Lassow, “Die
wachsende Rolle des subjektiven Faktors: Eine Gesetzmäßigkeit des historischen
Fortschritts [The Growing Role of the Subjective Factor: A Law of Historical
Progress],” Deutsche Zeitschrift für
Philosophie 22, no. 5 (January 1974): 533.
[429] Steussloff, “Zur
Wechselwirkung von objektiven und subjektiven Faktoren bei der weiteren Gestaltung
des Sozialismus [On the Reciprocity of Objective and Subjective Factors in the
Further Construction of Socialism],” 19, 26.
[430] Ro, “Hyŏngmyŏng ŭi
chuch’ejŏk yoin kwa kukchejŏk yoin [The Revolution’s Subjective Factor and
International Factor].”
[431] Ibid., 24–25.
[432] Ibid., 26.
[433] The notion of subjective
factor was not new to East Germany in the 1970s, though philosophical
discussions of the concept certainly increased.
[434] One can really notice
this sublation in a 1973 definition of charyŏk
kaengsaeng: “The master of each country’s revolution is that country’s
party and people, and the decisive factor in the victory of the revolution,
too, is that country’s subjective strength.
This is a law flowing from the fundamental principle of chuch’e sasang that man is the master of
everything and decides everything.” In
contrast to the pre-1972 understanding, the doctrine of the subjective factor
in one’s national revolution was now said to be derived from the philosophical
insights of chuch’e sasang rather
than Marxism-Leninism.
Chŏngch’i sajŏn [Political Dictionary], 704.
[435] Rosa Luxemburg, “Der
politische Führer der deutschen Arbeiterklasse [The Political Leader of the
German Working Class],” in Gesammelte
Werke, ed. Brigitte Hoeft et al., vol. 2 (Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1972), 280.
[436] Myers, North Korea’s Juche Myth, 133.
[437] Chosŏnnodongdang
chungangwiwŏnhoe, “Sahoejuŭijŏk aegukchuŭi [Socialist Patriotism],” Kŭlloja, no. 318 (August 1968): 5.
[438] Chŏngch’i yong sajŏn [Political Dictionary], 196.
[439] T’ae-jun Pak, “Tongjiae
e kich’ohan hyŏngmyŏngjŏk ŭiri ŭi wŏlli nŭn sahoejuŭisahoe ŭi koyuhan todŏkjŏk
wŏlli [The Principle of Revolutionary Obligation, Which Is Based on Comradely Love,
As the Inherent Moral Principle of Socialist Society],” Kŭlloja, no. 567 (May 1989): 22–29.
[440] Kim Jong Il, “Chuch’e
sasang e taehayŏ [On Chuch’e sasang] (1982),” 31.
[441] Böhme et al., Kleines politisches Wörterbuch [Small
Political Dictionary], 746.
[442] Günther and Arbatow, Grundlagen des Marxismus-Leninismus:
Lehrbuch, 214–15.
[443] Böhme et al., Kleines politisches Wörterbuch [Small
Political Dictionary], 602.
[444] Ibid., 606.
[445] Günther and Arbatow, Grundlagen des Marxismus-Leninismus:
Lehrbuch, 160–61.
[446] Böhme et al., Kleines politisches Wörterbuch [Small
Political Dictionary], 204, 606.
[447] Marx and Engels, “Die
deutsche Ideologie,” 69.
[448] Kim Jong Il, “Chuch’e
sasang e taehayŏ [On Chuch’e sasang] (1982),” 30.
[449] Kim Jong Il, “Chuch’e
sasang e taehayŏ [On Chuch’e sasang] (1982),” 70–74.
[450] Central Council of the
Free German Youth, Office of the First Secretary, “Report About the 13th World
Festival of Youth and Students,” 1989, 15, SAPMO-BArch DY 24/14110.
[451] Kolakowski and Falla, Main Currents of Marxism: Its Rise, Growth,
and Dissolution, 662–63.
[452] Ibid., 667–68.
[453] Ibid., 790.
[454] Marx and Engels, “Die
deutsche Ideologie,” 20.
[455] Ibid., 26–27.
[456] Herbert Marcuse,
“Repressive Tolerance,” in A Critique of
Pure Tolerance (Boston: Beacon Press, 1970), 83.
[457] Ibid., 106.
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