Edgar Snow: A Biography
By John Maxwell Hamilton
Louisiana State University Press, 2003
343 pages, $40 (pb)
REVIEW BY PHIL SHANNON
http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/30985
"Revolutions are not caused by revolutionaries or their propaganda", wrote US journalist Edgar Snow. "Revolutions are caused by intolerable conditions under bad, incompetent and corrupt governments". For saying that the Chinese Revolution in 1949 was justified and popular, Snow was vilified as a "communist stooge" during the Cold War and his writings pilloried as "glorifying the evils of Communism".
The Stalinist regime in China has book-ended the distortion of Snow, officially revering him in name but dishonouring his legacy by refusing to let Chinese journalists write like him.
John Hamilton's biography of Snow reconstructs the life of this gentle man and passionate humanitarian. A thirst for adventure and a loathing of the government press release drove the young journalist Snow in 1928 from his Missouri home to the world of anti-colonial rebellion in Asia. In China, Snow found Western exploitation and Chinese poverty, hardship and misery. China's pro-colonial government, the Kuomintang (KMT), profitably shared in the plunder.
Snow condemned the KMT as a "militaristic regime which for callous indifference, tyrannous oppression and ruinous incompetence has not been surpassed anywhere in this era". Japan's invasion of China sealed Snow's total disillusionment with the KMT. Snow saw too many massacres and a KMT better at applying militaristic zeal to "annihilation campaigns" against China's communists than to defeating the occupation. Snow became a politically engaged journalist, translating the works of banned, imprisoned or executed authors, supplying forbidden literature and sheltering hunted dissidents.
The most determined opponents of the KMT were attracted to the Chinese Communist Party. Snow wanted to see why. Slaughtered in the cities, the CCP survived in the country. Snow visited their north-western Shensi province stronghold in 1936, breaching a KMT blockade to get there. These were the CCP leaders' first interviews with a foreign journalist, Snow was chosen because of his perceived fairness and his access to mass-circulation magazines.
Snow's report of his stay, Red Star Over China, and its vibrant portrayal of a people in revolution, has ensured its longevity beyond its value as a unique historical record. Its message that it is right and possible to rebel inspired anti-colonialists in the Philippines, India, Burma and Malaya, and a trio of Russian women guerillas Snow met in Smolensk during World War II. Hundreds of Chinese youth read it and joined Mao's forces.
Most fascinating to Snow were the conversations he had with the soldiers and peasants of "Mao's army", an army of the poor. Life was primitive and hard but it was their future they were fighting for. Factory workers had food and pay and "they knew nobody was making money out of them" compared to Shanghai where children worked 13 hours a day. Unlike the KMT-controlled parts of Shensi province, 65% of income did not go on taxes. They learnt to read. There was no opium, beggars, domestic violence, prostitution, polygamy or foot-binding. There was a spartan egalitarianism of soldier, peasant and party leader.
The pervasive party propaganda was irritating to Snow but criticism of, and within, the party was freely offered and received, and Snow's movements were unrestricted during his four-month stay. If Red Star is strongly positive in its depiction of the communists, it is because there was much to be positive about.
Red Star, as both Snow and his biographer acknowledge, contains errors of fact and judgement but these problems are mitigated by Snow's basic journalistic integrity. He rejected information if he could not verify it, he was cautious of grand claims and sceptical of rosy statistics. He noted the early seeds of authoritarianism in the "rectification" campaigns. Snow did not let CCP leader Mao Zedong vet the content of the book and Snow was a relentless questioner.
In the US, Red Star was positively received, although the praise was driven by a myopic view that CCP was simply an agrarian reformer that might keep the US out of a war against Japan, its main imperialist rival in the Asia-Pacific region. Ironically, it was the US Communist Party which was almost the lone critic — dutifully Stalinist, The US CP pounced on Snow's criticisms of Soviet leader Josef Stalin, whose attempts to dictate the course of the Chinese revolution had been disastrous.
The ending of reluctant war-time alliances with communists allowed US imperialists to turn on Snow. Snow had justified the Chinese Revolution, and although not embracing Marxism, he had adopted much of its language and analysis. The FBI set up a watch on Snow and his name came up repeatedly, accompanied by wild speculation, at Congressional committees. Snow was effectively blacklisted from the corporate publishing world.
Snow looked dismally on a 1950s political climate where "we are forced more and more to become all of a piece, as like peas in our politics, nobody daring to contradict the conventional views expressed in the great conservative or reactionary press, and in this respect becoming more and more like automatons in Russia".
In 1960, Snow returned to China where advances had continued in land reform, women's status, education, literacy and health. The United Nations reported that life expectancy rose from 36 to 57 years between 1949 and 1957. The World Bank acknowledged that the poor were better off than before 1949 and relative to other Third World nations. In Red China Today, Snow did not hold back from criticism but a reticence to speak openly to Snow in the presence of officials or interpreters limited his investigations.
Snow was, in fact, frustrated with party bureaucrats who put up a wall of positive statements that were difficult to penetrate — "I can't recall visiting any mine or factory where 'underfulfillment' of production quotas was predicted". He chafed against China's official party press.
In subsequent visits to China, Snow was increasingly concerned over the "nauseating" cult of Mao, the ruling regime's authoritarianism and the repression of dissidents, although he did not plumb the terrible depths of Mao's Cultural Revolution. Snow also underestimated the grim cost of Mao's Great Leap Forward, which since 1958 had resulted in 30 million dead from famine.
Back in the US, Snow was targeted by conservatives as a "public danger", his talks picketed and heckled. His vocal opposition to the Vietnam War made many enemies and his publishing outlets dried up completely. He was forced into exile in Switzerland where he lived until his death from cancer
Hamilton's biography is a balanced account of Snow's limitations and strengths. Snow occasionally overemphasised the positives to preserve his unique access to China and to counter politically motivated anti-communist propaganda about China. His later reporting could have been more sceptical and pointed. Snow needs to be read critically to make the most of his strengths — his journalistic skill as an acute observer with an eye for telling detail, and his warm sympathy for people in struggle.
Snow was a liberal who believed that reforms were needed to head off revolution. If reforms were not forthcoming, however, then he supported revolution and anti-imperialist rebellion. Edgar Snow's star blazed with a fierce love of people and their struggles.