by Philip Short
121. Wilbur and How, pp. 93 and 97–9.
122. Zhang Guotao, 1, p. 332.
123. Wilbur and How, p. 100. The communists, holding 10 of the 41 CEC positions, were disproportionately well represented, given that the Guomindang had more than 100,000 members where the CCP had only about 500. However, Sun saw it as part of the bargain to obtain aid from Russia, which in 1923 had provided him with two million gold roubles (Glunin, V. I., ‘Politika Kominterna v Kitae’, in Ulyanovsky, R. A. (ed.), Komintern I Vostok: Kritika Kritiki – Protiv Falsifikatsii Leninskoi Strategii i Taktiki v Natsionalnovo-osvoboditelnovo Dvizhenii, Glavnaya Redaktsiya Vostochnoi Literaturi, Moscow, 1978, p. 243). Only the full communist CEC members had voting rights, and several of them were his former associates: Tan Pingshan was an old Tongmenghui man, and Lin Boqu, initially an alternate but subsequently promoted a full member, had belonged to Sun's Revolutionary Party, the predecessor of the Guomindang.
124. Nianpu, 1, pp. 118 and 123.
125. Luo Zhanglong, ‘Zhongguo gongchandang disanci quangguo daibiao dagui he diyici guogong hezuo’, pt 2, in Dangshi ziliao, no. 17, 1983, p. 14.
126. Nianpu, 1, pp. 122–3. This body had five full members, led by Wang Jingwei and Hu Hanmin, and five alternates including Mao and Qu Qiubai. See also Cadart and Cheng, p. 374; and Peng Shuzhi, in Evans, Les, and Block, Russell (eds), Leon Trotsky on China, Monad Press, New York, 1976, p. 44.
127. Voitinsky returned to China in April 1924 and attended the CCP plenum in Shanghai a month later (Glunin, V. I., ‘The Comintern and the Rise of the Communist Movement in China’, in Ulyanovsky, R. A., The Comintern and the East: The Struggle for the Leninist Strategy in National Liberation Movements, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1981, p. 267).
128. Wilbur and How, p. 105; Pantsov, Bolsheviks, pp. 65–6.
129. Schram, 2, pp. 215–17 (July 21 1924).
130. Cadart and Cheng, p. 373.
131. Ibid., pp. 374 and 381.
132. Nianpu, 1, p. 130.
133. See Schram, 2, p. 214 (May 26 1924), where Mao speaks of his ‘mental ailment growing worse’. The Nianpu (1, p. 134) quotes a passage from the (apparently unpublished) diary of He Erkang on July 12 1925: ‘After the [GMD branch] meeting ended at 1.15 a.m., Mao wanted to return home to rest. But he said he was suffering from neurasthenia … and he knew he wouldn't be able to sleep. The moon was already high. So we walked two or three li, then we were tired and stopped, and went to [the nearby village of] Tangjiawan to rest.’ He suffered a relapse in September (Ibid., p. 137). See also Li Zhisui's description of Mao's symptoms in Private Life, pp. 109–10.
134. The best evidence for this is Mao's exclusion from the leadership at the Fourth Congress the following January. Zhang Guotao and Qu Qiubai, who were also away when the Congress was held, were both elected to the CC and the Central Bureau in absentia.
135. Van de Ven, pp. 143–4. For Mao's organising role, see Nianpu, 1, pp. 128–9.
136. Nianpu, 1, p. 130. Yang Kaihui had joined him in Shanghai at the beginning of June (Ibid., p. 127).
137. Li Zhisui, p. 110.
138. Nianpu, 1, pp. 131–2.
139. Lenin, V. I., Collected Works, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1966, 31, pp. 241.
140. Saich, Rise to Power, pp. 40–3.
141. Ibid., p. 59.
142. Ibid., p. 77.
143. Galbiati, Fernando, Peng Pai and the Hailufeng Soviet, Stanford University Press, 1985, pp. 44–151.
144. Zhou Enlai wrote, in a memorial article for Peng, that he had engaged in peasant work ‘before entering the Party’, which he joined ‘in 1924’ (Yi Yuan [pseud: Zhou Enlai], Peng Pai tongzhi zhuanlue’, in Beifang hongqi, no. 29, August 1930).
145. Zhang Guotao, 1, p. 309. On July 15 1923, Sneevliet referred to Guangdong merely as one of four provinces (with Hunan, Shandong and Zhejiang) ‘where there are comrades who have contact with the peasant population’ (Saich, Origins, 2, p. 656): clearly he had no inkling of what Peng Pai had achieved.
146. Cited in Perry, Anyuan, pp. 48–9. Although it is unsigned, and neither Pang Xianzhi, in the authoritative Nianpu, nor Stuart Schram, in Mao's Road to Power, cites the text as being by Mao, local historians maintain that he was indeed the author (see Liu Shanwen's essay in Mao Zedong zai Pingxiang, Pingxiang, 1993, pp. 135–50). Mao had visited the area in November 1920 and there are stylistic similarities with some of his subsequent writings.
147. Zhang Guotao, 1, pp. 308–9. Zhang's recollection (which is reproduced without comment in the Nianpu, 1, p. 114) reads too pat. But, given their mutual antagonism, it is hard to see why he should give Mao credit for raising the peasant issue at the Congress unless it were true.
148. Saich, Origins, 1, p. 184; Zhonggong zhongyang wenjuan xuanji [hereafter ZZWX], 1, Beijing, 1992, p. 151.
149. Kara-Murza, G. S. and Mif, Pavel, Strategiia i taktika Kominterna v Natsionalno-kolonialnoi Revolyutsii na primere Kitaia, Moscow, 1934, pp. 114–16, 344.
150. Galbiati, p. 115.
151. Nianpu, 1, pp. 131–2. The first peasant association in Shaoshan was formed in February 1925 (Hunan lishi ziliao, no. 3, Changsha, 1958, pp. 1–10). On Mao Fuxuan, see Li Rui, p. 283.
152. Perry, p. 114.
153. The following account of the May 30th Incident is taken from Wilbur, C. Martin, ‘The Nationalist revolution: from Canton to Nanking, 1923–28’, in the Cambridge History of China [hereafter CHOC], vol. 12, Cambridge, pp. 547–9. See also McDonald, pp. 206–8; Chesneaux, pp. 262–80.
154. McDonald, pp. 209–10.
155. Nianpu, l, pp. 132–5. The drought was clearly the crucial trigger for peasant involvement (see Chesneaux, p. 278, and McDonald, pp. 210 and 231).
156. Jin Chongji, Mao Zedong zhuan, p. 123; Snow, p. 186; Nianpu, 1, p. 132.
157. Nianpu, 1, p. 135.
158. Schram, 2, pp. 225–6. It was evidently written between Mao's arrival in Changsha on August 29 or 30 and his departure for Canton ten days later.
159. See Wilbur, CHOC, 12, pp. 547–53 and 556–7.
160. Nianpu, 1, p. 136.
161. Ibid., pp. 33–5 and 132.
162. Schram, 2, p. 237 (Nov. 21 1925).
163. The Peasant Department was set up at the First GMD Congress in January 1924. The Training Institute followed in July 1924 with Peng Pai as its first principal.
164. Nianpu, 1, pp. pp. 136–7.
165. Ibid., p. 137 and Snow, p. 186.
166. Wilbur, CHOC, 12, pp. 556–9.
167. Schram, 2, pp. 263–7 (Dec. 4 1925). This statement, drafted by Mao on November 27, was approved by the GMD CEC, and issued to ‘all comrades throughout the country and overseas’ as the party's response to the Western Hills Group meeting.
168. Ibid., 2, pp. 237 (Nov 21 1925), 290–2 (Dec 13), 295 (Dec 20) and 321–7 (Jan 10 1926).
169. Ibid., 2, pp. 249–62 (Dec. 1 1925).
170. The following is drawn from Wilbur, CHOC, 12, pp. 553–7.
171. Schram, 2, pp. 342–4 (Jan. 16 1926).
172. The ‘Resolution on the Peasant Movement’ declared that the national revolution was, ‘to put it bluntly, a peasant revolution’ (ibid., pp. 358–60, Jan. 19 1926).
173. Chiang himself, like Tan Yankai, welcomed the peasant movement as a component of the national revolution, but no more than that (see Wilbur and How, p. 797). Borodin acknowledged in February 1926 that there would be tremendous difficulty in persuading the Guomindang to support an agrarian revolution (i.e., a social revolution in the countryside), and that to do so it might be necessary to split the party and drive out the conservatives (ibid., p. 216).
174. Ibid., pp. 248–9 and 250–2. Pantsov, Bolsheviks, pp. 85–92.
175. Vishnyakova-Akimova, Vera V., Dva Goda v Vosstavshem Kitae, Moscow, Izdatelstvo Nauka, 1965, p. 190.
176. This account is drawn from ibid., pp. 237–8; Wilbur and How, pp. 252–7 and 703–5; Zhang Guotao, 1, p. 495; Isaacs, Harold, The Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution, Stanford University Press, 1961
, pp. 91–4.
177. Nianpu, 1, p. 159. Zhou said later that the coup caught them ‘totally unprepared’ (Zhou Enlai, Selected Works, Foreign Languages Press, Beijing, 1981, p. 179). Zhou was then one of the three leaders of the Canton CCP committee, with Tan Pingshan and the Party Secretary, Chen Yannian (Zhang Guotao, 1, p. 454).
178. This was also the line advanced later by the Party Centre in Shanghai (Saich, Rise to Power, pp. 232–3).
179. Zhang Guotao, 1, p. 498.
180. On December 15 1925, Mao had been named one of seven members of the Council of the GMD Political Study Group, which began work the following February, training party cadres; on February 5 1926, he was appointed to the GMD Peasant Movement Committee; and on March 16, he was named principal of the Peasant Movement Training Institute (Nianpu, 1, pp. 146 and 156–9).
181. In May 1924, a CCP CC resolution stated: ‘The CP's responsibility is to make the GMD unceasingly propagandise the principles of opposing imperialists and warlords … To achieve this objective, we must in practice be able to join the GMD Propaganda Department’ (‘Resolution concerning the problem of CP work in the GMD’, in Saich, Rise to Power, p. 120).
182. Neither the Nianpu (1, pp. 130–8) nor Mao's official biographer, Jin Chongji, Mao Zedong zhuan, pp. 91–106 mentions any contact. Nor technically would there have been any reason for it, since he had held no leadership post since December 1924.
183. Schram, 2, pp. 340–1 (Jan. 16 1926).
184. Snow, pp. 186–7. The editor of Xiangdao was Chen Duxiu's protégé, Peng Shuzhi. He was notorious for his dry scholasticism, and it may well have been Peng that Mao had in mind when he wrote in January: ‘Academic thought … is worthless dross.’
185. Zhang Guotao, 1, pp. 484–93.
186. Ibid., p. 510. See also Evans and Block, pp. 53–4, and Nianpu, 1, p. 164, neither of which refers to Mao playing any part in the discussions.
187. See Wilbur and How, pp. 267–73 and 717–19, Zhang Guotao, pp. 507–19. Pantsov, Bolsheviks, p. 93. The GMD CEC plenum also proposed the establishment of a Joint Conference, comprising five leaders of the GMD, three from the CCP and a representative of the Comintern (Borodin), to resolve future interparty disputes. Tan Pingshan, Qu Qiubai and Zhang Guotao were named from the communist side, but no meeting was ever held (Zhang Guotao, 1, p. 521).
188. Evans and Block, pp. 53–5. Pantsov, pp. 92–3. See also Zhang Guotao, 1, pp. 517–19.
189. Zhang Guotao, 1, p. 519; Evans and Block, p. 601. Trotsky's position is discussed in Pantsov, Bolsheviks, pp. 101–7.
190. Nianpu, 1, pp. 159 and 163–5. He also relinquished his membership of the Political Study Group Council; and of the Propaganda Committee under the GMD Propaganda Department, to which he had been appointed on April 27 (ibid., pp. 162 and 165). The Nianpu makes no reference to his leaving the GMD Peasant Movement Committee and, in March 1927, when that body was re-established in Wuhan, Mao became a Standing Committee member (ibid., p. 183).
191. A senior Soviet adviser noted: ‘Those Guomindang members who reputedly belong to the centre or even to the right … [in some cases] meditate deeply on the solution of the agrarian problem. As an instance, General Chiang Kai-shek may be quoted’ (Wilbur and How, p. 797).
192. Nianpu, 1, pp. 147–8, 157 and 161.
193. Wilbur and How, pp. 216–17; Schram, 2, p. 370 (March 30 1926).
194. Wilbur and How, p. 312.
195. McDonald, pp. 232–6; Wilbur and How, pp. 311–14.
196. Nianpu, 1, p. 166. Apart from the GMD CEC plenum which preceded it, this was the only ‘political’ event Mao attended for four-and-a-half months, from May 31 to October 15.
197. Nianpu, 1, pp. 165–9. Angus McDonald gives a carefully balanced account of peasant support for the Northern Expedition in Hunan and concludes that, while fragmented, it gave the military campaign significant political legitimacy (pp. 264–79).
198. Schram, 2, pp. 387–92 (Sept. 1 1926).
199. Ibid., pp. 256–8 (Dec. 1 1925).
200. Ibid., p. 304 (January 1926).
201. According to Wilbur and How (p. 216), Borodin wrote that ‘the chief bulwark of imperialism in China … was the medieval landowning system, and not the warlords’. Mao's phrase had appeared in Zhongguo nongmin, another GMD Peasant Committee journal, two or three weeks earlier.
202. The following is drawn from ibid., pp. 318–29, 344–5 and 771–6; Wilbur, CHOC, 12, pp. 581–9.
203. ZZWX, 2, pp. 373–6, Saich, Rise to Power, pp. 210–13. Borodin and other Russian advisers shared the Canton group's views (Wilbur and How, pp. 796–7).
204. Saich, Rise to Power, pp. 213–28.
205. See Mao's subsequent criticisms of the GMD-Left's military weakness (ibid., p. 225). All those who worked in Canton, from Borodin down, concluded that the GMD-Left was unreliable: there is no reason to think Mao was an exception. A few weeks later, moreover, he voted with his feet, returning to CCP headquarters in Shanghai instead of accompanying the GMD–Left to Wuhan.
206. Schram, 2, pp. 397–401.
207. Saich, Rise to Power, pp. 213–19.
208. Qu shared Mao's interest in peasant issues, and in August had lectured at the Peasant Movement Institute (Li, Bernadette [Li Yuning], A Biography of Chu Chiu-p'ai, Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, New York, 1967, pp. 178–9); he had been sufficiently impressed by Mao's article to make enquiries about it from the GMD Propaganda Department (Nianpu, 1, p. 169). In the spring of 1927, Qu again supported Mao against Chen on peasant policy (Li Yuning, p. 194).
209. Nianpu, 1, p. 173; Schram, 2, pp. 411–13.
210. Wilbur and How, pp. 359–62 and 375; Zhang Guotao, 1, pp. 556–62.
211. Wilbur and How, pp. 362–3, 373–5 and 393–4; CHOC, 12, pp. 599–603.
212. Saich, Rise to Power, pp. 219–28.
213. Glunin, in ‘Politika Kominterna v Kitae’ (p. 243), based on unpublished Comintern archives, says the CCP had 1,500 members in May 1925; 7,500 in January 1926; and 11,000 in May 1926. According to Samuil Naumov's ‘Brief History of the CCP’, written in November 1926, CCP membership had by then reached ‘approximately 30,000’ (Wilbur and How, p. 444). By the Fifth Congress in April 1927, the Party claimed nearly 58,000 members. See also Wilbur and How, pp. 810–13 (unit commanders).
214. Saich, Rise to Power, p. 225. Although Mao prudently attributed his observation to ‘comrades in Guangdong’, it clearly represented his own view (see also Nianpu, 1, p. 174).
215. Wilbur and How, pp. 806–9.
216. Schram, 2, pp. 420–2 (Dec. 20 1926).
217. Ibid., p. 430 (February 1927).
218. Ibid., p. 425 (Feb. 16 1927).
219. Ibid., p. 429.
220. Ibid., p. 430. See also McDonald, pp. 270–9.
221. This and subsequent citations are from Schram, 2, pp. 431–55. There were recent precedents in Hunan for the kind of peasant behaviour Mao was describing, albeit on a far smaller scale. After the 1910 rice riots, Governor Chen Chunming reported: ‘In Xiangtan, Hengshan, Liling and Ningxiang there have been incidents of poor people occupying rich households and eating the grain, and destroying the rice-mills’ (quoted in Esherick, Reform and Revolution in China, p. 139).
222. Nianpu, 1, p. 165.
223. Mao submitted his report on or about February 18. The Hunan Party journal, Zhanshi, began serialising the full text on March 5. Xiangdao started publishing extracts a week later, on March 12 (Nianpu, 1, p. 184). The pamphlet version of the full text, with a preface by Qu Qiubai, appeared in April. Qu and Peng Shuzhi were by this stage openly at war with each other (Li Yuning, p. 183–7 and 194–8); Chen Duxiu's overriding concern was to appease the GMD-Left so as to keep the united front together. See also Schram, 2, p. 426 (anarchy); and Zhang Guotao, 1, pp. 596–613 (blind Red terror). The rumoured execution of Li Lisan's father was widely believed (including by me in the first edition of this book). According to Alexander Pantsov, who interviewed Li's daughter, Inna, and his widow, Li Sha, the rumo
urs were false (Pantsov and Levine, p. 176 n).
224. In October 1926, Moscow sent a telegram to the CCP leaders, urging them to restrain the peasant movement at least until Shanghai fell to the Northern Expedition, for fear of antagonising the GMD commanders. On November 30, 1926, Stalin attributed this ‘mistaken view’ to ‘certain people’ in the GMD and the CCP. In August 1927, he conceded that it was in fact Moscow's error (Eudin and North, Soviet Russia and the East, pp. 293 and 353).
225. The theses of the Comintern's Seventh Plenum were adopted in Moscow on December 16 1926 and published in its weekly newspaper, Inprecorr (International Press Correspondence), on February 3 1927 (Eudin, Xenia, J., and North, Robert C., Soviet Russia and the East 1920–27: A Documentary Survey, Stanford University Press, 1957, pp. 356–64). It is not clear exactly when a copy reached Shanghai. Cai Hesen says it was ‘approximately January’ (‘Istoria Opportunizma v Kommunisticheskoi Partii Kitaia’, in Problemy Kitaia, Moscow, 1929, no. 1, p. 16), but it may in fact not have been until mid-February, when M. N. Roy and Tan Pingshan, who both attended the plenum, arrived in Canton from Moscow (Zhang Guotao, 1, p. 712, n. 17). Pantsov (Bolsheviks, pp. 127–8) does not mention the 7th Plenum in this context and quotes instead a Soviet Politburo meeting on March 3 1927, which urged the Chinese communists to oust the Guomindang rightists, ‘to discredit them politically and systematically strip them of their leading posts [and to] look toward the arming of workers and peasants’ but stopped short of endorsing a peasant revolution in the countryside.
226. According to Cai Hesen, the theses triggered (yet another) angry debate between himself and Qu Qiubai, on the one hand, and Chen Duxiu, Peng Shuzhi and the Shanghai CCP Committee Secretary, Luo Yinong, on the other (Problemy Kitaia, 1, pp. 16–18).
227. Snow, p. 188.
228. New York Herald Tribune, Feb. 21 1927. The North China Herald found a silver lining: ‘Revolting though the executions have been,’ it noted, ‘they have at least had a quieting effect. Agitators … have [become] conspicuous by their absence’. See also Isaacs, pp. 132–3.
