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8. The Purges
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143 8 The Purges when anastas mikoyan and Peng Dehuai left Korea, it looked like they had successfully accomplished their task. The purges were stopped and even reversed. Kim Il Song promised he would not move against the August faction and its supporters. All the victims of the recent campaign were formally restored to their positions. Kim Il Song’s conciliatory speech and the complete text of the resolutions of the September Plenum were distributed among party organizations. Sessions of local party committees and cells were held to provide lower-level of¤cials and party members with information about the new policy. The very presence of the Soviet-Chinese delegation was originally concealed not only from the KWP rank and ¤le but probably from middle-level party functionaries as well. This concealment is understandable , given that the delegation’s visit was rather humiliating for North Korean pride. Nevertheless, everybody could see the clear divergence, even contradiction, between the resolutions of the two plenums that had taken place within a short period of two weeks. As the deputy chairman of the KWP Central Committee, Pak Kûm-ch’ôl, noted to Counselor Pelishenko: “A number of party members have been puzzled at the difference between the resolutions on organizational questions [‘organizational questions’ was a common Communist euphemism for personnel appointments and dismissals] at the August and September Plenums and expressed their bewilderment .”1 A similar remark was made in November by Yi Song-un, a secretary of the Pyongyang City Committee of the KWP.2 144 Crisis in North Korea The few months after the September Plenum was indeed a period of relative relaxation. For a brief while it looked as if North Korea was going to follow the example of other “fraternal countries” and embark on a moderate course of de-Stalinization. That autumn, Kim Il Song’s name was mentioned in the of¤cial press less frequently, and tributes to his greatness and wisdom were somewhat muted. There were other signs of ideological and cultural relaxation. In October, Nodong sinmun ran an editorial entitled “For Active and Free Study and Discussions in Culture and Science,” which stated: “There is no greater wisdom than collective wisdom. Opinions of any ‘authority’ or individual ¤nd it dif¤cult to avoid subjectivity and bias. Is it not clear that the opinions of an individual , however great he may be, are narrower than the opinions of the masses?”3 However reasonable, such remarks were an abominable heresy , a severe ideological crime by later Korean standards, because they cast doubt on the in¤nite wisdom of the Great Leader. The general change of mood was re¶ected in literature and the arts, two ¤elds that serve as good indicators of ideological trends in a Leninist state. From spring 1956 onward the general tone of the North Korean literary critique underwent a profound change, echoing and emulating similar changes in the Soviet literary politics. The issue of the day was the struggle against “schematism” (tosikjuûi). “Schematism” in this case was a euphemistic expression for slavish dependency on the ideological prescriptions that transformed works of art into mere illustrations of the current political slogans and propaganda exercises. As in the postStalinist Soviet Union, from whence this catchphrase originated, so in North Korea the “struggle against schematism” for all practical purposes meant that the writers and art managers were encouraged to limit the use of literature and art for propaganda purposes, while of¤cialdom was expected to be more tolerant of politically “unsound” works. This new trend did not herald a real creative freedom for the arts, but it did mean that the ideological pressure was relieved to some extent. Works that would have been described as “reactionary” or “revisionist” in the early 1950s—or, for that matter, after 1959—could be published during those halcyon days. In most cases these works were aesthetically superior to the boring propaganda that North Korean artists had to produce in other periods of the regime’s history.4 [3.141.8.247] Project MUSE (2024-04-18 00:34 GMT) The Purges 145 However, this relaxation was only temporary. Kim Il Song was not going to carry out resolutions or follow policies that had been imposed on him by unceremonious foreign pressure. His compliance was a trick, and he was quite determined to rid himself of these rivals who had dared to challenge him so openly. This began to become clear in the ¤rst few months after the September Plenum...