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Mao Page 100

by Philip Short


  97. Wang Xingjuan, p. 45; Smedley, pp. 137, 223–4 and 272–3.

  98. Pantsov and Levine (p. 226) suggest that Mao may not have been completely callous: in November 1929, he asked Li Lisan to send a message to his brother, Zemin, saying that he missed Kaihui and his three sons and asking how to contact them (Schram, 3, p. 192). However, that seems to have been an attempt to ingratiate himself with Li – who by then had become the new Party leader – by reminding him of their former personal ties, rather than a serious enquiry. Had Mao wished to, he could easily have contacted her through her cousin, Kaiming, or other Hunan comrades. There is no evidence that he did so, either then or later.

  99. The welter of conflicting messages to Jinggangshan at this time reflected the efforts of a new, very young and very inexperienced provincial leadership to assert its authority. The first envoy, Du Xiujing, arrived in Jinggangshan on May 29 and reported back to the Provincial Committee that the base was poorly organised and the leadership was not doing enough to expand the territory under its control. The Committee responded by sending a second envoy, Yuan Desheng, with two letters dated 19 June, calling for a tripling of the size of the Red Army and a policy of aggressive expansion into southern Hunan. A week later Du Xiujing followed him with two further, yet more insistent, directives in the same sense. Whereas the initial directives stressed the need also to retain the Ninggang base, the later ones did not. The following section is drawn from Jinggangshan geming genjudi, 1, pp. 133–44; Schram, 3, pp. 50, 52, 55 and 117; Nianpu, 1, pp. 243 and 247–8; and Pak, pp. 369–77). Averill, in Revolution in the Highlands, pp. 265–82, gives an excellent overview of the period.

  100. Nianpu, 1, pp. 247–8; Jinggangshan geming genjudi, 1, p. 511. Yang Kaiming, who had left Changsha with Du, did not join Mao until some days after the June 30 meeting (Jinggangshan geming genjudi, 1, p. 425). See also Schram, 3, pp. 55–8 (July 4 1928).

  101. Nianpu, 1, pp. 248–51. See also Schram, 3, pp. 86 and 117.

  102. Nianpu, 1, pp. 252–3; Schram, 3, pp. 87–8.

  103. Mao Zedong shici duilian jizfiu, Hunan wenyi chubanshe, 1991, pp. 23–5; see also Schram, 3, p. 61.

  104. Nianpu, 1, pp. 249–50 and 252; Schram, 3, pp. 85–6 and 113; and Jinggangshan geming genjudi, 1, pp. 471–2.

  105. See Schram, 3, p. 178. Zhu had at first been reluctant to join up with Mao's forces (as the CC had been urging since December 1927, but which did not happen until April 1928); and Mao was careful not to exacerbate tensions ahead of the Guidong meeting in August 1928 (Nianpu, 1, p. 252).

  106. Mao afterwards referred to ‘a bizarre view’ held by ‘a minority of comrades’ that it had been ‘wrong to stay in the border area’ (Schram, 3, p. 183).

  107. Jinggangshan geming genjudi, 1, pp. 471–2 and 523; Schram, 3, p. 711 (Oct. 5 1928); Nianpu, 1, pp. 228 and 254.

  108. Nianpu, 1, p. 254.

  109. Ibid., p. 256.

  110. Schram, 3, pp. 80–1 and 113–14 (Nov. 25 1928); Nianpu, 1, pp. 228 and 254; Jinggangshan geming genjudi, 1, pp. 472 and 523.

  111. Ibid., pp. 80–121; see also 70–1 and 75 and Nianpu, 1, p. 256. The text contradicts itself at several points. Thus, on pp. 96–7, Mao refers to acute shortages of food and clothing, but then declares on p. 118 that ‘food and clothing are no longer a problem’; on p. 115, he says there are ‘hardly any cases of mutiny or desertion’ among the enemy troops, but on p. 119 asserts that ‘more and more of them will defect to our side’. It is possible that he wrote the first part before the battles in Ninggang and Yongxin on November 9 and 10, and the remainder later. A shortened and heavily revised version was published in SW1, pp. 73–104, under the title ‘The Struggle in the Chingkang Mountains’.

  112. Schram, 3, pp. 92–7.

  113. Schram, 3, pp. 92–7, 151 and 154–5; Peng Dehuai, Memoirs of a Chinese Marshal, Foreign Languages Press, Beijing, 1984, p. 231; Averill, Revolution in the Highlands, pp. 307–12; Smedley, p. 235.

  114. Schram, 3, pp. 96–7; see also He Changgong, FE/6752/BII/1.

  115. Schram, 3, p. 139 (Feb. 13 1929).

  116. Mao acknowledged the Red Army's dealing in opium in 1928 and 1929 (ibid., 3, pp. 57 and 173–4); see also Peng Dehuai, p. 248. For the communists' trade in opium at Yan'an in the 1940s, see Chen Yung-fa, ‘The Blooming Poppy under the Red Sun’, in Saich and Van de Ven, New Perspectives on the Chinese Revolution, pp. 263–98; also Slack, Edward R., Opium, State and Society: China's Narco-Economy and the Guomindang, 1924–1937, University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, 2001.

  117. Schram, 3, pp. 105 and 119.

  118. Peng Dehuai, pp. 193–229 and 233–4; Nianpu, 1, pp. 259–61. Averill, p. 316. Where the figures given by these accounts differ, I have followed Averill.

  119. Nianpu, 1, pp. 261–2.

  120. Smedley (p. 236) says they ‘overpowered the enemy garrison’ at Dafen, but that does not seem credible since the town was the base for a powerful government militia.

  121. Ibid.; Nianpu, 1, p. 263.

  122. In the mid-1960s, Peng complained: ‘If the Fourth Army [had] manoeuvred well, it could have destroyed or routed the enemy brigade. [But instead] it pushed on to Dayu … [and] lost contact with the Jinggang Mountains completely’ (Peng Dehuai, p. 233).

  123. Ibid., p. 234–7.

  124. Schram, 3, pp. 159 (April 5 1929) and 150.

  125. Wang Xingjuan, pp. 118 and 135–6. He Zizhen remembered that the baby was born in Longyan, in Fujian. Mao's forces stopped there briefly in late May 1929 (Nianpu, 1, p. 276; Schram, 3, p. 166).

  126. Smedley, p. 237.

  127. Nianpu, 1, pp. 265–6 and 270; Schram, 3, p. 150.

  128. Schram, 3, pp. 117, 119–20 (Nov 25 1928), 151 (March 20), 161 (April 5) and 172 (June 1 1929).

  129. Ibid., pp. 117 and 120 (Nov. 25 1928).

  130. Ibid., p. 161 (April 5 1929). For Mao's efforts to obtain newspapers on Jinggangshan, see Averill, pp. 161, 185 n. 14, 200 and 310.

  131. Ibid., p. 151 (March 20 1929).

  132. The elections at the Sixth Congress were decidedly eccentric. This was partly because the meeting was unrepresentative (held in Moscow in the absence of key Party figures, such as Mao, Peng Pai and Li Weihan; and packed with Chinese students from Soviet universities to make up the delegate count), and partly because there was no single Chinese leader capable of uniting the Party behind him. As a result, when the Comintern produced a slate of candidates for Central Committee membership, all were duly elected – but not in the intended order. Of the new Politburo, Xiang Zhongfa was listed 3rd in CC rank order; Su Zhaozheng, 9th; Mao, 12th; Zhou Enlai, 14th; Cai Hesen, 16th; Xiang Ying, 17th; and Zhang Guotao, 23rd. Li Lisan ranked 22nd in the CC and just scraped into the Politburo as a non-voting alternate member; he did not become a full member until November 1928. Russian stage-management evidently left a good deal to be desired (Zhongguo gongchangdang huiyi gaiyao, p. 84).

  133. It may reasonably be assumed, although it cannot be proved, that Mao received a list of the new Central Committee and Politburo members in January at the same time as the (incomplete) set of Sixth Congress documents that reached Jinggangshan. He may first have got a sense of the real shape of the new leadership when a CC envoy, Liu Angong, reached the Fourth Army in May 1929. However, Mao's first (known) written comment on the leadership changes came in late November 1929, when he told Li Lisan: ‘Only with Comrade Chen Yi's arrival [two days earlier] did I learn of your situation’ (ibid., pp. 151–2 and 192; and Nianpu, 1, pp. 274 and 289–90).

  134. Nianpu, 1, pp. 264–5; Saich, pp. 472–4. ZZWX, 5, pp. 29–38.

  135. Schram, 3, p. 100.

  136. Saich, pp. 473–4.

  137. Ibid., pp. 147–52; Nianpu, 1, pp. 264–70; Smedley, pp. 237–9 and 248–51.

  138. The CC messenger arrived in Ruijin on April 3 (Schram, 3, p. 153).

  139. Ibid., pp. 153–61 (April 5 1929), 168 and 172; Peng Dehuai, p. 250.

  140. Schram, 3, pp. 244–5 (Jan. 5 1930).

  141. ZZWX, 5, p. 30.
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  142. Schram, 3, p. 154.

  143. Ibid., p. xli; Jin Chongji, Zhou Enlai zhuan, 1898–1949, Zhongyang wenxian yanjiushi chubanshe, Beijing, 1989, p. 193; Nianpu, 1, pp. 272 and 278–9; Saich, p. 395.

  144. Schram, 3, pp. 243–4 (Jan. 5 1930); Nianpu, 1, p. 272.

  145. Nianpu, 1, pp. 275–8. See also Mao's letters to Lin Biao of June 14 1929 and January 5 1930 (Schram, 3, pp. 177–89 and 234–46); the CC's ‘Directive to the Front Committee of the Fourth Red Army’, Section 8, ‘The Zhu-Mao Problem’, in ZZWX, 5, pp. 488–9; and Schram, 3, pp. 178–9, 184 and 187.

  146. Wang Xingjuan, p. 139.

  147. Nianpu, 1, p. 277; Schram, 3, pp. 171, 181 and 185–7.

  148. Schram, 3, pp. 156, 159 and 171; Nianpu, 1, pp. 264 and 268–9.

  149. Nianpu, 1, p. 274.

  150. Ibid., pp. 276–7; and Schram, 3, pp. 180–5.

  151. Nianpu, 1, pp. 274 and 276–8; Schram, 3, p. xliv; Jin Chongji, Zhu De zhuan, pp. 175–80.

  152. Schram, 3, p. 182 (June 14 1929); Nianpu, 1, pp. 280–1; Zhongguo gongchangdang huiyi gaiyao, pp. 88–90; Xiao Ke, ZhuMao hongjun ceji, Zhonggong zhongyang dangxiao chubanshe, Beijing, 1993, pp. 88–102.

  153. Wang Xingjuan, pp. 135–7.

  154. Ibid., pp. 140–2. He was almost certainly suffering from neurasthenia.

  155. Nianpu, 1, pp. 281–3.

  156. Wang Xingjuan, p. 143.

  157. Ibid.; the Nianpu (1, pp. 283–4) gives a slightly different sequence of events.

  158. Mao wrote in late November that he had been ‘very ill for three months’ (Schram, 3, p. 192). According to the Nianpu, his malaria was cured by the end of October (1, p. 288). Both are consistent with his having contracted the disease around the beginning of August (see also Nianpu 1, pp. 284–5).

  159. It is not clear how the letter setting out Mao's views (which he had sent privately to Lin Biao on June 14) came to reach Shanghai. Presumably Lin or Mao himself arranged for it to be included with the Congress resolutions.

  160. Nianpu, 1, p. 285. Smedley reported that Zhu De remembered Liu with affection (Great Road, p. 266).

  161. Nianpu, 1, pp. 286 and 289; ZZWX, 5, pp. 473–90.

  162. Nianpu, 1, pp. 288–90.

  163. Schram, 3, p. 194.

  164. Nianpu, 1, pp. 291–2; see also Zhongguo gongchangdang huiyi gaiyao, pp. 98–102.

  165. Schram, 3, pp. 195–210 (December 28 1929).

  166. SW2, p. 224 (Nov. 6 1938).

  167. Schram, 3, pp. 207–30.

  168. Ibid., pp. 234–46 (Jan. 5 1930).

  169. See Zhou, SW1, p. 44, and Saich, pp. 388–9.

  170. Saich, pp. 400–7, esp. p. 406; Thornton's analysis (pp. 96–101) is marred, as throughout his otherwise very useful book, by the false assumption that communications between Moscow and Shanghai were virtually instantaneous.

  171. Saich, pp. 400 and 406.

  172. For a contrary (but partisan) view, see Grigoriev, Revolyutsionnoe Dvizheniye, pp. 170–4.

  173. ZZWX, 5, pp. 561–75 (esp. Section 8, pp. 570–1). Much sinological ink has been spilled, in China, the West and Russia, to try to determine the degree of Moscow's responsibility in promoting the policies that became known as ‘the Li Lisan line’. The most plausible explanation is that a summary (though probably not the full text) of the Comintern letter was received in Shanghai early in December, and quickly led to the writing of the CC Circular which proclaimed the coming of the new ‘revolutionary high tide’. Li Lisan was longing to pursue a more aggressive, urban-based strategy, and the ambiguities of the Comintern's stance that winter gave him the opportunity he was looking for.

  174. Nianpu, 1, pp. 297–8; Zhongguo gongchandang huiyi gaiyao, pp. 102–4; and Peng Dehuai, p. 265. That the December 8 circular arrived in January can be inferred from Mao's ‘Letter … to the Soldiers of the Guomindang Army’ which was plainly written after he received it (Schram, 3, pp. 247 and 249).

  175. Schram, 3 pp. 268–9 (Feb. 16 1930).

  176. Nianpu, 1, pp. 299–300; Schram, 3, pp. 263 (Feb 16 1930), pp. 273–9 (March 18) and 280–2 (March 19 1930).

  177. Schram, 3, p. 269.

  178. Ibid., pp. 204 and 206.

  179. Ibid., pp. 192–3 (Nov. 28 1929).

  180. ZZWX, 6, pp. 25–35, esp. Section 3, and 57–60; Nianpu, 1, p. 300.

  181. Jin Chongji, Zhou Enlai zhuan, pp. 210–13; Grigoriev, p. 186.

  182. ZZWX, 6, pp. 15–20; Nianpu, 1, pp. 303–8; Hsiao Tso-liang, Power Relations within the Chinese Communist Movement, 1930–34, University of Washington Press, Seattle, 1961–67, vol. 1, pp. 16–18, and vol. 2, pp. 28–9; Schram, 3, pp. 420–1 (May 1930).

  183. See Grigoriev, pp. 181–7; and Thornton, pp. 123–54. The points which follow are taken from Buersheweike, April 1930; ZZWX, 6, pp. 57–60 and 98–110; Nianpu, 1, pp. 304–6; and Saich, pp. 428–39.

  184. Saich, pp. 428–39 (June 11); Nianpu, 1, pp. 308–9 (June 9); and ZZWX, 6, pp. 137–41.

  185. Smedley, p. 276; Peng Dehuai, pp. 286–99.

  186. Grigoriev, pp. 201–2; Thornton, pp. 165–6.

  187. Jin Chongji, Zhu De zhuan, p. 205; Nianpu, 1, pp. 305 and 310–11. The Politburo had decided on Zhu's promotion in April, but he did not learn of the decision until Tu Zhennong's arrival.

  188. Mao Zedong shici duilian jizhu, pp. 35–7 (translation adapted from Schram, 3, p. 460). The poem was apparently written on the march, between Mao's leaving Tingzhou and the army's arrival near Nanchang. The Chinese editors describe it as ‘obscurely conveying [Mao's] complicated feelings at the time’.

  189. Nianpu, 1, pp. 311–12.

  190. Ibid., pp. 312–13; Schram, 3, pp. 482–4 (Aug. 19 1930).

  191. Saich pp. 439–45. For timing, see Grigoriev, p. 190.

  192. Saich, p. 431.

  193. Grigoriev, p. 202; Saich, pp. 439–45; ZZWX, 6, p. 595.

  194. Peng Dehuai, pp. 294–7.

  195. Mao's letter to the South-West Jiangxi Special Committee on August 19 indicated that he began moving towards Hunan after learning of the capture of Changsha. Even so, he again demanded urgent reinforcements in order to be able to take advantage of the ‘increasingly intense revolutionary situation’ (Schram, 3, pp. 482–4; Peng Dehuai, p. 299).

  196. Nianpu, 1, p. 314; Peng Dehuai, pp. 300–1; ZZWX, 6, pp, 178–80 and 248–9. Mao had been named General Front Committee Secretary of the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Armies (commanded by Zhu De, Peng Dehuai and Huang Gonglue) at Pitou in February 1930. He continued to hold this post through the reorganisations of the summer, but in practice acquired real authority over the three forces only after the Liuyang meeting in August. Similarly, in April, the Politburo had named Zhu as Commander-in-Chief of the three armies, but that appointment, too, took on practical significance only after the First Front Army was formed.

  197. Schram, 3, pp. 488–9 (Aug. 24 1930).

  198. Nianpu, 1, p. 315. See also Schram, 3, pp. 490–502, 508–21 and 524–5.

  199. Schram, 3, pp. 526–8 (Sept. 13 1930) and documentation at Jian Revolutionary Museum.

  200. Nianpu, 1, p. 318; Schram, 3, pp. 552–3 (Oct. 14 1930).

  201. Nianpu, 1, pp. 318 and 326; Schram, 3, pp. 553–4; Shihua, 2, Dec. 9 1930, pp. 3–4 (extracts quoted in Grigoriev, p. 215, and Schram, 3, p. lx).

  202. See Grigoriev, pp. 202–3 and 208.

  203. This message, sent on August 26, marked a key turning-point in Moscow's assessment of Li's policies. The full text has not been published, either in China or Russia, but extracts are given by Grigoriev (pp. 206–7).

  204. Ibid., p. 206; Jin Chongji, Zhou Enlai zhuan, pp. 218–20.

  205. Nianpu, 1, p. 317; Saich, pp. 445–57. See also Thornton, pp. 187–200; Grigoriev (Revolyutsionnoe Dvizheniye), pp. 208–14; and Grigoriev, ‘The Comintern and the Revolutionary Movement in China’, in Ulyanovsky, Comintern and the East, p. 372. During the plenum none of those present – not even the local Comintern representative – regarded Li's errors as a problem of line (see Saich, p.
470, quoting a letter from the Comintern's Shanghai bureau). Qu, writing from prison in 1935, just before his execution, remembered seeing no ‘fundamental difference’ at that time between Li's position and that of the Comintern (Dun Li, Road to Communism, p. 169). The paradoxical result was that Li and his supporters, despite the criticisms aimed against them, emerged from the meeting with a stronger presence in the Politburo (and the Central Committee) than when it began.

  206. Li discussed Manchuria in Politburo meetings on August 1 and 3 (Grigoriev, Revolyutsionnoe Dvizheniye, pp. 203–4 and 216), but his statements may not have reached Stalin's ears until October. That month the Comintern began drafting its ‘November 16 letter’ (so-called because that was the date when it reached Shanghai) which ended ‘the Li Lisan line’ (Mif., Kitaiskiya Revolutsiya, pp. 283–90). Li almost certainly left Shanghai in mid- to late October since, according to Grigoriev (p. 218), he was interrogated by the Comintern in Moscow in the last ten days of November. Pavel Mif probably also set out in late October (Ibid., p. 216), for he arrived in Shanghai shortly after the Comintern letter.

  207. Schram, 3, p. 667 (Nov. 11 1930); see also pp. 574 and 579–82 (Oct. 26). Even after ‘the Li Lisan line’ was publicly repudiated at the end of 1930, Mao continued to use this phrase, though it became increasingly a ritual incantation: thus on April 19 1931, he prefaced an order for the troops to assemble before a battle with the words, ‘The tide of the Chinese revolution rises higher every day’ (Schram, 4, p. 67).

  208. Nianpu, 1, p. 319. See also Schram, 3, pp. 558 and 577.

  209. After abandoning the attack on Changsha, Mao constantly sought to refocus his colleagues’ attention on the provincial, rather than the national, struggle (see Schram, 3, pp. 552–3, Oct. 14; p. 558, Oct. 19; p. 572, Oct. 24; p. 574, Oct. 26, and so on).

 

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