Deborah Kaple

Oxford University Press, 1994

Drawing on previously unknown primary sources in both Chinese and Russian, Deborah A. Kaple has written a powerful and absorbing account of the model of factory management and organization that the Chinese communists formulated in the 1949-1953 period. She reveals that their "new" management techniques were adapted from Soviet propaganda during the harsh period of Stalin's post-war reconstruction. The idealized Stalinist management system consisted mainly of strict Communist Party control of all aspects of workers' lives, which is the root of such strong Party control over Chinese society today. Dream of a Red Factory is a rare and revealing look at the consolidation rule in China; told through the prism of the development of new "socialist" factories and enterprises. Kaple completely counters the old myth of the "Soviet monolith" in China, and carefully reconstructs how the Chinese communists came to rely on an idealized, propagandistic version of the Soviet model instead.

FROM OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS:

Unprecedented in its comparative reach and its historical acumen, Dream of a Red Factory traces the roots of Chinese communist power to Stalin's last assault on the Soviet people, the period of post-war reconstruction. Kaple demonstrates, through a close reading of the Soviet texts that the Chinese translated, how the Chinese communists copied the techniques of this harsh period of Stalin's personality cult and oppressive communist party tactics. In pursuit of their three stated goals of socialist industrialization, socialization, and control, Chinese communists constructed and justified a factory management system that sought to control every aspect of workers' lives. Kaple reveals the techniques they used, including creating "mass" organizations in the factories, militarizing management rhetoric, submitting the workers to "re-education," and equating plan fulfillment with patriotism.
Dream of a Red Factory, the only recent historical account to use both Russian and Chinese primary sources, is unique in its use of post-1953 Soviet scholarship to illustrate points that have been neglected in earlier analyses of China. Historians and sociologists alike will find this comprehensive examination of Communist power in China invaluable.

REVIEWS OF DREAM OF A RED FACTORY:

---This concise book sheds startling new light on the origins of post-1949 labour relations in China, and indeed on the broader relationship of Maoism to Stalinism. Kaple, a Princeton-educated sociologist trained to conduct research in both Russian and Chinese, scoured written sources from both countries form 1946 to 1953 for evidence about the adaptation of Soviet methods to Chinese conditions. Her findings force us to revise thoroughly our understanding of the relationship between Soviet and Chinese models of factory organization. Kaple shows quite stunningly that what we have so often understood as a distinctive Chinese model in fact is almost a direct translation of "high Stalinist" Soviet ideals of the immediate post-war period that have so far excaped scholarly attention. -- The China Quarterly, by Andrew G. Walder, March 1995

---The book is a charming account, based on Soviet economic treatises, newspapers and journals of the period, which demonstrates how really desperate the Chinese leaders must have been as they slavishly imitated every aspect of the Soviet system. Books translated into Chinese reflect the great interest they had in the Soviet five-year plan which, ironically, was scrapped by Stalin in 1947. This is a fine book for university libraries, undergraduate history courses and those interested in any way in Sino-Soviet relations. But the period of high stalinism needs more serious study, not only in its influence on China, but on other communist countries as well. -- Slavic Review, John Evans

---This book is a truly original history of a complex diffusion process. It is written in a clear and didactic way. It is an indispensable reference for work and courses on Soviet and Chinese relationships, on the Communist management systems in the factory, on transition processes, and on the diffusion of organizational forms. -- Revue francaise de sociologie, Emmanuel Lazega, 1996

---Focusing on the Soviet management model, the industrialization process, the socialization of workers, and control of the masses, Kaple assesses how the CCP put the model into practice in China. She notes that while Stalin provided little aid and there was distrust between Mao and Stalin, the Soviet Union did provide China with many publications that served as guidelines, instructions, and ideological treatises that the Chinese translated and used-something Western scholars have given little attention. The results of following the High Stalinist model were the politicization of Chinese society by the CCP, party control over management, and the establishment of class lines. Dream of a Red Factory is unique for its focus both on the works that the CCP translated and used (some that were little understood and about which no one in China had any experience) and upon Soviet post-WWII recovery plans that so influenced China. -- Asian Affairs, by John F. Copper

---In Dream of a Red Factory, Deborah A. Kaple looks for the roots of post-1949 China's first factory management system. She finds them in a likely though rather frightening place: the propaganda publications of Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union. The reader finishes her book with a deeper understanding of the foundations of the earliest communist Chinese management methods, though one may feel unsatisfied that Kaple's description of the Chinese "dream" ends so abruptly. . In giving a clear, comprehensive portrait of the early days of Chinese factory management, however, Kaple deserves praise. She presents one of the best analyses of Chinese emulation of the Soviet model, and her documentary work using Soviet archival sources is rare among China scholars. If this book is read in conjunction with narratives spanning a broader stretch of Chinese entrepreneurial history, the text shines with a clear description of the first four years of Chinese "red" factories. -- China Review International, by Eric Harwit, Fall 1994

---"Dream of a Red Factory is unique for its focus both on the works that the CCP translated and used (some that were little understood and about which no one in China had any experience) and upon Soviet post-WWII recovery plans that so influenced China. This book is instructive in understanding how and why Mao did what he did to China and even why China had the problems it did in engineering economic growth."--Asian Affairs