The first in-person meeting between China’s Mao Zedong and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in 1957 shows us how awesome potential can generate awful policy. It was the 40th anniversary of the October Revolution. Stalin was dead and had been denounced by Khrushchev the previous year. For Communists around the world, it was time to look forward, and so over 60 national parties met in Moscow to discuss the future of communism in the wake of the Second World War. Of all the delegations to come to Russia, only one, the Chinese delegation, was lodged in the Kremlin–in the rooms once belonging to Catherine the Great.
Mao came ready to make a point: demographics made it certain that China would be a world power, soon. So, at dinner one evening when Khrushchev bragged that the Soviet Union would eclipse US agricultural production in 15 years, Mao could not resist: “I can tell you that in 15 years, we may well catch up with or overtake (Britain’s production of steel).” Tragically, this became policy–the Great Leap Forward. The resulting collectivization and abrupt shift from farming to the production of steel was a disaster. Millions died.
