tavlstor: переводы

→By the end of the eighteenth century, rapid population growth, the expanded commercial
developments in local areas, and the arrival of imperialist Western powers on the China coast were
straining the imperial system. By then each of the roughly 1,500 counties had an average population of
about 200,000 and was governed by a single small office.

→There are several works in English that provided me with a good start for studying the Deng
Xiaoping era before I plunged into the Chinese sources, but with the exception of Sun and Teiwes
they were written before the chronologies and the reminiscences on the hundredth anniversary of his
birth became available. I found especially useful the works by Richard Baum, Richard Evans, Joseph
Fewsmith, Merle Goldman, Roderick MacFarquhar and Michael Schoenhals, Maurice Meisner, Qian
Qichen, Robert Ross, Ruan Ming, Harrison Salisbury, Frederick Teiwes and Warren Sun, and Yu
Guangyuan.

→She displays obvious affection and respect for her father and presents a highly positive picture, but she also provides
details that reveal much about his personal qualities and attitudes. In fact, considering the constraints
of party policy and her efforts to paint a positive picture, she is remarkably frank, open, and concrete.
In writing these volumes, Deng Rong was assisted by party historians, who have checked the dates,
names, and events. She is continuing to write about some of Deng's activities in the early post-1949
period, but she has not written about the years after 1973, which are still more controversial. She has
kindly granted me several long interviews supplementing what she has written.

→Although Deng Xiaoping did not talk with members of his family about high-level politics, they knew both him and the country's situation well enough to perceive and understand his concerns and perspectives, some of which only they
could see. One volume (My Father, Deng Xiaoping) is about Deng's life before 1949, and the other
(Deng Xiaoping and the Cultural Revolution) describes the time when Deng Rong accompanied her
parents in exile away from Beijing in Jiangxi province from 1969 to 1973.

→The books that offer the most in-depth understanding of Deng's personal thinking are the two by
Deng Rong (Maomao), his youngest daughter, about the period before he came to power. The books
draw on her own recollections, her visits with people who knew Deng, and party archives. After
1989, when Deng's health began to deteriorate after the Tiananmen incident, Deng Rong usually
accompanied her father whenever he went outside of his home.

→Many of Deng's major speeches have been compiled, edited, and published in the official Selected
Works of Deng Xiaoping. The three-volume work provides a useful account of many of his major
policies, although it is critical to interpret them in the context of national and world events at the time.Chronologies about and key speeches and writings by Chen Yun, Ye Jianying, Zhou Enlai, and others
are similarly useful.

→The teams of party historians who worked on these volumes had access to many
party archives and were conscientious in reporting accurately. The chronology does not provide
explanations, does not criticize or praise Deng, does not speculate, does not mention some of the most
sensitive topics, and does not refer to political rivalries. Yet it is very helpful for determining whom
Deng saw and when and, in many cases, what they talked about.

→The single most basic resource for studying the objective record of Deng's activities is Deng
Xiaoping nianpu (A Chronology of Deng Xiaoping). The first publication, a two-volume, 1,383-page
official summary of Deng's almost-daily meetings from 1975 until his death in 1997, was released in
2004; the second, a three-volume, 2,079-page description of his life from 1904 to 1974, was
published in 2009.

→Many of the basic chronologies have now been compiled and released, many
reminiscences have been published, and I have had an opportunity that will not be available to later
historians: I met and spoke with Deng's family members, colleagues, and family members of these
colleagues, who gave me insights and details not necessarily found in the written records. In all, I
spent roughly twelve months in China (over several years), interviewing in Chinese those who had
knowledge about Deng and his era.

→There will be more books about Deng written in the years ahead as additional party archives
become available to the public. But I believe there will never be a better time than now for a scholar
to study Deng.

→I have therefore come to know about Deng as a historian knows his subject, by poring over the
written word. And there are many accounts of various parts of Deng's life. Despite Deng's
admonitions to writers not to lavish praise, the tradition of writing an official or semi-official history
to glorify one hero and downplay the role of others remains alive and well in China. Since other
officials have been glorified by their secretaries or family members, the careful reader can compare
these different accounts. And among party historians, there are some who have, out of a professional
sense of responsibility, written about events as they actually occurred.

→Unable to hear a thing that Deng and his interpreter were saying through the
loudspeaker, we, the gathered throng, continued talking with our fellow China-watcher friends. Those
close to Deng said he was upset about the noisy, inattentive crowd, but most of us watching were
impressed with how he read his speech as if delivering it to a disciplined Chinese audience sitting in
reverential silence.

→Many of us at the reception had known each other for years. We had often met in
Hong Kong—the great gathering spot for China watchers when China was closed to most Westerners
—where we would share the latest news or rumors in our efforts to penetrate the bamboo curtain. It
had been a long time since some of us had last seen each other, however, and we were eager to catch
up. Further, the National Gallery, where the reception was held, was not meant for speeches: the
acoustics were terrible.

→The closest I ever came to Deng was a few feet away at a reception at the National Gallery in
Washington in January 1979. The reception was a grand gathering of American China specialists from
government, academia, the media, and the business world to celebrate the formal establishment of
U.S.-China relations.

→One of my strongest impressions from the trip was the buzz in high circles about the recent return of Deng to Beijing from his exile during the Cultural Revolution and the high expectation that he would play some important role that would bring great changes. What role? What changes? We Westerners speculated, but none of us could have predicted the sea change in China that was to occur over the next two decades, and how much China's future would be advanced by the efforts of this singular leader.

→I regret that I never had the chance to meet and talk with Deng personally. When I first went to
Beijing in May 1973, as part of a delegation sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences, we met
Zhou Enlai and other high officials, but we did not meet Deng.

→Deng criticized autobiographies in which authors lavished praise on themselves. He chose not to
write an autobiography and insisted that any evaluation of him by others “should not be too
exaggerated or too high.” In fact, Deng rarely reminisced in public about past experiences. He was
known for not talking very much (bu ai shuohua) and for being discreet about what he said. Writing
about Deng and his era thus poses more than the usual challenges in studying a national leader.

→Speeches prepared for formal meetings were written by assistants and recorded, but most other talks
or meetings required no notes, for Deng could give a well-organized lecture for an hour or more
drawing only on his memory. In addition, like other high-level party leaders, Deng strictly observed
party discipline. Even when exiled with his wife and some of his children to Jiangxi during the
Cultural Revolution, he never talked with them about high-level party business, even though they were
also party members

→Writing about Deng Xiaoping would not be easy. When carrying on underground activities in Paris
and Shanghai in the 1920s, Deng had learned to rely entirely on his memory—he left no notes behind.
During the Cultural Revolution, critics trying to compile a record of his errors found no paper trail.

→_What would best help Americans understand coming developments in Asia at the start of
the twenty-first century? Without hesitation, Don, who had covered Asia for half a century, said, “You
should write about Deng Xiaoping.” After some weeks of reflection, I decided he was right. The
biggest issue in Asia was China, and the man who most influenced China's modern trajectory is Deng
Xiaoping. Moreover, a rich analysis of Deng's life and career could illuminate the underlying forces
that have shaped recent social and economic developments in China.