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mental categories as well. In any case, I had the impression that the
summer of 1981 was a fortunate moment for an historian to come to
China: minds were peculiarly attuned to questions of historic fact,
and foreign thoughts and experiences were hospitably received. The
aftermath of a great storm can be exhilarating to the survivors.
I appeared before many audiences in Peking, Shanghai, and
Xian, including members of the Chinese Academy, Institute direc–
tors, senior professors; at other times I spoke to students, often to
more than a hundred at a time. (The Soviets would never have
unleashed a subversive like myself on such large audiences.) Every–
where I found the same implacable courtesy, and even at my most out–
rageous remarks about the dogma of the state, Marxism-Leninism,
or about historical analogies between fascism and Stalinism,
my hosts would smile and invoke a formula that combined civility
with prudence: at the end of a lecture or seminar, the chairman
would rise to thank me, sum up my main points, express his wish
that I should return and-ifl were to-to discuss with me, for exam–
ple, my statement that Lenin's explanation of the First World War
was inadequate or that Marxism-Leninism had proven incapable of
understanding fascism. Once there was an added remark that dis-
agreements were good, with an explicit reference to the spirit of "let
\1
a hundred flowers bloom." Such was my reception, and such my
deep interest in the fate of that country, that I hope the argument
will
continue, that I will be able to return.
I do not know what was in the minds of my hosts or my audi–
ences; I was the first American Europeanist to appear under these
auspices. But my listeners evinced genuine curiosity. I tried-suc–
cessfully-to draw them into active discussion with me and, con–
trary to many warnings about their likely passivity, I was able to
coax them into questions; I provoked them into disagreeing. By
necessity and with relish, I disturbed their ideological commitment.
Judging from their many questions, often of a narrowly factual
nature, they were engaged; private conversations-including one
during a specially negotiated, rarely sanctioned visit to a colleague's
home-confirmed this impression.
What gave these encounters a heightened, at times a dramatic,
note were the double entendres that seemed to link listeners and lec–
turer. They knew I was talking about European history, about night–
mares of the past, but were not the nightmares of their own recent
past illuminated by earlier events? Did they grasp what struck me so
