4 RISE AND DEMISE IN THE NATIONALIST PARTY
4 国民党内的大起大落
(1925–27 AGE 31–33)
1925～1927 年 31～33 岁
FOR EIGHT MONTHS MAO LIVED in the family house in Shaoshan. He and his two brothers had inherited the house and a fair amount of land from their parents, and the property had been looked after by relatives. The two brothers had been working in Changsha for the Party, having been recruited by Mao. Now they both came home with him. In Changsha, only 50 km away, the Hunan Communists were organizing strikes, demonstrations and rallies, but Mao was not involved. He stayed at home, playing cards a lot of the time.
毛泽东在韶山老屋一待就是八个月。在长沙为共产党工作的两个弟弟现在都回来，给毛作帮手。五十公里外的长沙，湖南共产党人组织罢工，游行示威，搞得热火朝天。毛没有参加，很多时间在家打牌。
But he was watching out for a chance to return to politics—at a high level. In March 1925, Sun Yat-sen, the Nationalist leader, died. His successor was a man whom Mao knew, and who was favorably disposed towards him—Wang Ching-wei. Wang had worked with Mao in Shanghai the year before, and the two had got along very well.
他在等机会重返政坛 -- 高层政坛。机会不久来了。一九二五年三月，国民党领袖孙中山去世，由汪精卫接任。毛认识汪精卫，他们在上海时一块儿工作过，关系不错，汪极为赏识毛的才干。
Born in 1883, Wang was ten years Mao’s senior. Charismatic, and an eloquent orator, he also had film-star good looks. He had played an active part in Republican activities against the Manchus, and when the Revolution broke out in October 1911 was in prison under a life sentence for his repeated attempts to assassinate high officials of the Manchu court, including the regent. Released as the dynasty collapsed, he became one of the leaders of the Nationalist Party. He was with Sun Yat-sen in Sun’s last days, and was a witness to his will, which was a strong credential to succeed him. Most important, he had the blessing of Borodin, the top Russian adviser.
汪精卫比毛大十岁，是国民党中有名的美男子。诗人徐志摩在日记里这样描述他：“他真是个美男子，可爱！[胡]适之说他若是女人一定死心塌地的爱他，他是男子……他也爱他！”汪又是民国革命中响当当的人物。武昌起义爆发时，他正在监狱里，由于一再企图刺杀包括摄政王在内的清朝重臣而被判处终身监禁。辛亥革命后他出了狱，成为国民党领导人之一。孙中山临终前，他一直跟着孙，孙在遗嘱上签字时他随侍在侧。这使他具有孙中山继承人的身份。但地位的最后确定还是他跟苏联的亲近，鲍罗廷一锤定音，新的国民党领袖就是他了。
With about 1,000 agents in the Nationalist base, Moscow was now the master of Canton, which had taken on the air of a Soviet city, decked out with red flags and slogans. Cars raced by with Russian faces inside and Chinese bodyguards on the running-boards. Soviet cargo ships dotted the Pearl River. Behind closed doors, commissars sat around red-cloth-covered tables under the gaze of Lenin, interrogating “troublemakers” and conducting trials.
苏联人现在是国民党所在地广东的主人，首府广州颇有点苏联城市的气息，到处是红旗与标语。踏板上立着中国保镳的汽车在大街上奔驰，车窗内露着苏联顾问的面孔。珠江上停着苏联货轮。在不为人眼所见的地方，“委员们”坐在红布罩着的桌子周围，在列宁的画像下，审讯“破坏分子”。这是革命法庭在开庭。
The moment Sun died, Mao dispatched his brother Tse-min to Canton to reconnoiter his chances. Tse-tan, his other brother, followed. By June it was clear that Wang was the new Nationalist chief, and Mao began to spruce up his credentials by establishing grassroots Party branches in his area. Most were for the Nationalists, not the Communists. Having been shunted out of the CCP leadership, Mao was now trying his luck with the Nationalists.
孙中山一死，毛就派他的么弟泽覃去广州打探消息。二弟泽民也随后起程。六月，汪精卫的位子一稳定，毛就准备自己去广州。首先他得拿出一张像样的履历表。他开始在韶山一带组织基层支部，大部分是国民党支部。
At the top of the Nationalists’ program was “anti-imperialism.” The Party had made its main task the defense of China’s interests against foreign powers, so this became the theme of Mao’s activity, even though it was far removed from peasants’ lives. Not surprisingly, the reaction was indifference. One of his co-workers recorded in his diary of 29 July: “Only one comrade turned up, and the others didn’t come. So the meeting didn’t happen.” A few days later: “The meeting failed to take place because few comrades came.” One night, he and Mao had to walk from place to place to get people together, so the meeting started very late, and did not finish until 1:15 AM. Mao said he was going home, “as he was suffering from neurasthenia, and had talked too much today. He said he wouldn’t be able to sleep here … We walked for about 2 or 3 li [1–1.5 km] and just couldn’t walk further. We were absolutely exhausted, and so spent the night at Tang Brook.” Mao did not organisze any peasant action in the style of poor versus rich. This was partly because he thought it was pointless. He had told Borodin and some other Communists before, on 18 January 1924:
国民党的主要纲领是“打倒帝国主义”，毛的工作也就围绕着这个主题。这跟农民的生活没什么关系，没能唤起农民什么兴趣。当时跟毛一起的贺尔康在七月十二日的日记中写道：他和毛走了一村又一村集合人，结果“一点又十五分时，会才完毕。” 毛说“要动身回家去歇；他说，因他的神经衰弱，今日又说话太多了，到此定会睡不着。月亮也出了丈多高，三人就动身走，走了两三里路时，就在半途中就越走越走不动，疲倦极了，后就到汤家湾歇了。”七月二十九日，毛召集农民开成立国民党支部的会，“同志只到一位，其他都未到，该会未能开。”又一天，八月四日，在毛家里，“因同志多未到，会未开成。”
If we carry out struggles against big landlords, we are bound to fail. [In some areas, some Communists] organised the illiterate peasants first, then led them in struggles against relatively rich and big landlords. What was the result? Our organisations were immediately broken, banned, and these peasants not only did not regard us as fighting for their interests, they hated us, saying that if we hadn’t organised them, there would not have been disasters, or misfortune. Therefore, until we are confident that our grassroots branches in the countryside are strong … we cannot adopt the policy of taking drastic steps against relatively rich landowners.
没有资料表明毛组织过反对富人的农民运动。他曾在一九二四年一月十八日对鲍罗廷等说，这类斗争“必然要遭到失败”。有的地方共产党“组织不识字的农民，领导他们同相对富裕的地主進行斗争。结果怎么样呢？我们的组织立刻遭到破坏，被查封。而所有这些农民不仅不认为我们是在为他们的利益而斗争，甚至还仇视我们。他们说：如果不把我们组织起来，就不会发生任何灾难不幸。”
Mao was being pragmatic. A Communist called Wang Hsien-tsung in Mao’s area was organizing poor peasants to improve their lot at the time when Mao was in Shaoshan. He was accused of being a bandit, and was arrested, tortured and beheaded by the local police.
Mao prudently decided to steer clear of any such dangerous and futile activities, but the Hunan authorities still viewed him with suspicion, as he had the reputation of being a major radical. That summer there was a drought and, as had often happened in the past, poor peasants used force to stop the rich shipping grain out for sale in the towns and cities. Mao was suspected of stirring things up. In the provincial capital there had also been large “anti-imperialist” demonstrations, following an incident in Shanghai on 30 May when British police killed ten protesters in the British Settlement. Although Mao played no role in the Changsha demonstrations, and was living quietly at home, miles away, he was still assumed to be an instigator, and this notion crops up in an early appearance in US government records. The US consulate in Changsha forwarded to Washington a report by the president of Yale-in-China about “Bolshevistic disturbances” in Changsha on 15 June, saying that the Hunan governor had “received a list of twenty leaders of agitation, including Mao Tse-tung, known to be the leading Communist propagandist here.” Mao was a name, even to an (unusually well-informed) American.
当时共产党在长沙领导由五卅运动引起的反帝大游行。耶鲁大学办的湘雅医学院院长给美国驻长沙领事馆的报告说，湖南省长“接到一张二十个鼓动领导人的名单，其中有毛泽东，是此地首要的共产主义宣传者。”这是毛的名字第一次出现在美国政府的档案里。虽然毛并没有参与领导这些游行，但因为毛的名气，当局也怀疑他。
So an arrest warrant was issued in late August. Mao, who was leaving for Canton in any case, decided it was time to decamp. He did so in a sedan chair, heading first to Changsha and telling the bearers that if asked who their passenger was, they should say they were carrying a doctor. Some days later a few militiamen turned up in Shaoshan in search of Mao. Finding him absent, they took some money and left, but did not otherwise disturb Mao’s family.
八月，省里发文，要捉毛泽东。韶山家里给他雇了乘轿子抬他去长沙。毛跟轿夫讲好，有人问抬的是谁，就说是医生。毛的弟媳回忆说：“团防局隔了几天才来捉泽东同志，因泽东同志没在家，只开了些钱就了事。”开慧和其他毛的家人都没有受到伤害。
On the eve of his departure from Changsha, Mao took a stroll along the Xiang River, and wrote a poem in which he looked to the future:
毛就要去广州了。离开长沙前夕，他到湘江边散步，心里酝酿着展望未来的诗篇：
Eagles soar up the long vault,
“鹰击长空，
Fish fly down the shallow riverbed,
鱼翔浅底，
Under a sky of frost,
万类霜天竞自由。
ten thousand creatures vie to impose their will.
怅寥廓，
Touched by this vastness,
问苍茫大地，
I ask the boundless earth:
谁主沉浮？”
Who after all will be your master?
毛信心十足，要主宰苍茫大地的沉浮。
Mao’s nose did not fail him. Within two weeks of arriving in Canton, in September 1925, he was given a clutch of key jobs by the Nationalist chief. Mao was to be Wang Ching-wei’s stand-in, running the Propaganda Department, as well as editor of the Nationalists’ new journal, Politics Weekly. And to underline his prominence, he also sat on the five-man committee vetting delegates for the Nationalists’ second congress the following January, at which he delivered one of the major reports. Wang’s role in Mao’s rise is something which has been sedulously obscured by Peking, all the more so because Wang became the head of the Japanese puppet government in the 1940s.
毛泽东很会看人。国民党领袖汪精卫正是他的伯乐。九月毛一到广州，汪就给了他一连串要职。汪推荐他代理自己做国民党的中央宣传部长，宣传部创办了《政治周报》，毛任主编。国民党第二次全国代表大会在即，毛成为代表资格审查委员会五名委员之一。大会第二年初召开时，向大会作宣传报告的是毛。毛在国民党内扶摇直上，汪精卫起了关键作用。后来汪成了日本侵华傀儡政权的头子，名声太差，他的功劳便被悄悄掩去。
Mao’s ability to work at full pitch in Canton was due in no small part to his discovery of sleeping pills at this time. He had previously suffered from acute insomnia, which left him in a state of permanent nervous exhaustion. Now he was liberated. Later he was to rank the inventor alongside Marx.
毛日以继夜地工作。他的旺盛精力多半得益于此时发现的一件宝贝：安眠药。毛长期失眠，经常疲惫不堪，现在总算得救了。后来他把安眠药的发明者跟马克思相提并论。
In November 1925, while working for the Nationalists, Mao voiced an interest in the question of the Chinese peasantry for the first time. On a form he filled out, he said that he was “currently paying special attention” to these many tens of millions. On 1 December he published a long article on peasants in a Nationalist journal, and he wrote another a month later for the opening issue of the Nationalist magazine Chinese Peasants. Mao’s new interest did not stem from any personal inspiration or inclination; it came on the heels of an urgent order from Moscow in October, instructing both the Nationalists and Communists to give the issue priority. The Nationalists heeded this call at once.
一九二五年十一月，毛第一次对农民问题表示兴趣。在一张调查表上他填道：他“现在注重研究中国农民问题”。十二月一日，国民党的一个刊物上登载他的文章讲到农民。一个月后，国民党的《中国农民》创刊，他又写了篇类似的文章。这个新兴趣并非来自毛的灵感，而是莫斯科刚发了紧急指示。十月，莫斯科对中国的革命者们不注意农民提出强烈异议：“占人口九成的农民到哪里去了呢？不知为什么从中国寄给我们的所有文件中完全没有考虑到农民这一运动中的决定性社会力量。” 莫斯科命令国共两党“广泛地占领农村。”国民党先于共产党行动起来。
to pay attention to the peasantry. Back in May 1923 Moscow had already referred to “the issue of peasants” as “the centre of all our policies,” and had ordered the Chinese revolutionaries to “carry out peasant land revolution against the remnants of feudalism.” This meant aiming to divide the Chinese peasants into different classes on the basis of wealth, and to stir up the poor against the better-off. At that time, Mao had been cool towards this approach, and when his reservations were reported to Moscow he had been stripped of one of his posts. Mao’s position, as Dalin wrote to Voitinsky in March 1924, was that: “On the peasant question, the class line must be abandoned, there is nothing to be done among the poor peasants and it is necessary to establish ties with landowners and shenshih [gentry] …”
至今人们还认为是毛泽东在中共首先致力于农民工作。实际上，共产国际早在一九二三年五月就告诉中共：“只有把占中国人口大多数的农民，即小农吸引到运动中来，中国革命才能取得胜利。”“全部政策的中心问题就是农民问题。”它要中共“進行反对封建主义残余的农民土地革命。”毛泽东曾对这一套持保留态度，使一些苏联人对他大为光火。那个讨厌毛的达林在一九二四年三月曾向莫斯科报告说，毛居然有这样的话：“在农民问题上应该放弃阶级路线，在贫苦农民中间不会有什么作为，跟地主和绅士应当建立联系等等。”
But now Mao shifted with the prevailing wind, though he got into trouble with the Russians over ideological phraseology. In his articles, Mao had attempted to apply Communist “class analysis” to the peasantry by categorizing those who owned their small plot of land as “petty bourgeoisie” and farmhands as “proletariat.” A blistering critique appeared in the Soviet advisers’ magazine, Kanton, which reached a high-grade readership in Russia, where the first personal name on its distribution list of about forty was Stalin’s. The critic, Volin, a Russian expert on the peasantry, accused Mao of arguing as though the peasants were living in a capitalist society, when China was only at the feudal stage: “one very important error leaps sharply to the eye: … that Chinese society, according to Mao, is one with a developed capitalist structure.” Mao’s article was said to be “unscientific,” “indiscriminate” and “exceptionally schematic.” Even his basic figures were way out, according to Volin: he gave the population as 400 million, when the 1922 census showed it was actually 463 million.
毛现在随着莫斯科的风向改变了观点。没想到，这却给他带来了新麻烦。毛努力在文章中使用共产党的“阶级分析”， 把自耕农称为“小资产阶级”， 把雇农叫做“无产阶级”。对讲究意识形态的苏联人来说，这些词只可用在“资本主义社会”里，而中国还只是“封建主义社会”。苏联在中国的顾问当时办了个杂志叫《广州》，抄送四十来个苏共负责人，头一个就是斯大林。苏联农民问题专家沃林(M．Volin)在上面发表了一篇措辞尖锐的批判文章，指责毛混淆两种社会性质：“一眼就可以看到一个明显的错误：按毛的说法，中国社会已经过渡到了高一级的资本主义阶段。”毛的文章“不科学”， “含糊不清”，还“简单化得要命”。就连毛的基本数字也差得太远：毛说中国人口是四亿，而一九二二年人口统计是四亿六千三百万。
Luckily for Mao, the Nationalist Party did not require such high standards of theoretical correctness. In February 1926 his patron Wang Ching-wei appointed him a founding member of the Nationalists’ Peasant Movement Committee, as well as the head of the Peasant Movement Training Institute, set up two years before with Russian funds.
幸亏理论字眼对国民党不那么重要。一九二六年二月，汪精卫支持毛做新成立的国民党农民运动委员会委员，兼国民党广州农民运动讲习所所长。讲习所是两年前由苏联人出资办的。只是在这时，三十二岁的毛才真正开始搞农民运动。在他主持下，讲习所培训农村鼓动者，到乡下去组织农民协会，发动穷人反对富人。随着国民党军队占领湖南，七月后湖南农运轰轰烈烈地开展起来了。
It was only now, when he was thirty-two, that Mao—assumed by many to this day to have been the champion of the poor peasants—took any interest in their affairs. Under Mao, the Peasant Institute churned out agitators who went into the villages, roused the poor against the rich, and organized them into “peasant associations.” In Hunan they were particularly successful after July, when the Nationalist army occupied the province. The Nationalists had just begun a march north from Canton (known as “the Northern Expedition”) to overthrow the Peking government. Hunan was the first place on the 2,000-kilometer route.
湖南是国民党北伐第一站。北伐的目标是扫清地方军阀，推翻北京政府。在这条两千多公里的漫长征途上，国民党军队有苏联顾问随行。苏联在长沙开了个领事馆，指挥国民党当局支持农协会，给它们资金。短短几个月，湖南一大半农村都成立了农协会，社会结构被一下子打乱了。
The Nationalist army was accompanied by Russian advisers. The Russians had also just opened a consulate in Changsha, and the KGB station there had the second-largest budget of any of the fourteen stations in China after Shanghai. An American missionary wrote home later that year from Changsha: “We have a Russian Consul [now]. No Russian interests here at all to represent … it is plain … what he is up to … China may pay high for his genial presence …” With close Russian supervision, the new Nationalist authorities in Hunan gave peasant associations their blessing—and funding—and by the end of the year the associations had sprung up in much of the countryside in this province of 30 million people. The social order was turned upside down.
这时，军阀混战时起时伏已進行了十年，自一九一二年民国成立以来，北京政府也改组了四十多次，但军阀们都没有改变固有的社会结构。除非处在两军交战的地方，老百姓生活照旧。现在，由于国民党搞苏俄式革命，社会架构崩溃了。不到年底，湖南乡村已是一片混乱，暴力横行。就是在这样的形势下，毛泽东作为国民党农民运动领导人被邀请回乡“指导一切”
At this time, warlords had been fighting sporadic wars for ten years, and there had been more than forty changes of the central government since the country had become a republic in 1912. But the warlords had always made sure that the social structure was preserved, and life went on as usual for civilians, as long as they were not caught in the crossfire. Now, because the Nationalists were following Russian instructions aimed at bringing about a Soviet-style revolution, social order broke down for the first time.
Violence erupted as poor peasants helped themselves to the food and money of the relatively rich, and took revenge. Thugs and sadists also indulged themselves. By December there was mayhem in the Hunan countryside. In his capacity as a leader of the peasant movement, Mao was invited back to his home province to give guidance.
CHANGSHA, WHEN MAO returned, was a changed city, with victims being paraded around in dunce’s hats (a European invention) as a sign of humiliation. Children scampered around singing “Down with the [imperialist] powers and eliminate the warlords,” the anthem of the Nationalist Revolution, sung to the tune of “Frère Jacques.”
这时的长沙到处是儿童跑来跑去唱着：“打倒列强，打倒列强，除军阀，除军阀。” 这首“国民革命歌”曲子是(Frere Jacques)--法国的儿歌。出现在街头的另一个欧洲发明是纸糊的高帽子，拿来戴在被游街的人头上，作为耻辱的象征。
On 20 December 1926 about 300 people crowded the Changsha slide-show theater to listen to Mao, who shared the stage with a Russian agitator called Boris Freyer. (Like virtually every Russian agent in China at this time, he later disappeared in Stalin’s purges.) Mao was no orator; his speech was two hours long, and flat. But it was moderate. “It is not the time yet to overthrow landlords,” he said. “We must make some concessions to them.” At the present stage, “we should only reduce rents and interest rates, and increase the wages of hired hands.” Quoting Mao as saying “we are not preparing to take the land immediately,” Freyer told the Russians’ control body, the Far Eastern Bureau, that Mao’s speech was basically “fine,” but inclined towards being too moderate.
十二月二十日，三百来人聚集在长沙幻灯场听毛泽东演讲。毛讲了差不多两个小时，说：“我们现在还不是打倒地主的时候，我们要让他一步，在国民革命中是打倒帝国主义军阀土豪劣绅，减少租额，减少利息，增加雇农工资的时候。”跟毛同来的、化名卜礼慈(Boris FreYe)的俄国人，事后向上司报告说：毛的讲话基本“可以”，就是太温和了一点。
Though Mao did not address the issue of violence, his general approach was not militant. Shortly afterwards he went off on an inspection tour of the Hunan countryside. By the end of the tour, which lasted thirty-two days, he had undergone a dramatic change. Mao himself was to say that before this trip he had been taking a moderate line, and “not until I stayed in Hunan for over thirty days did I completely change my attitude.” What really happened was that Mao discovered in himself a love for bloodthirsty thuggery. This gut enjoyment, which verged on sadism, meshed with, but preceded, his affinity for Leninist violence. Mao did not come to violence via theory. The propensity sprang from his character, and was to have a profound impact on his future methods of rule.
毛的温和观点在其后的湖南乡间巡视时发生了巨变。毛后来说：“当我未到长沙之先，对党完全站在地主方面的决议无由反对及到长沙后仍无法答覆此问题，直到在湖南住了三十多天才完全改变了我的态度。这三十多天到底发生了什么？从他巡视后写的《湖南农民运动考察报告》可以看出，毛发现他很喜欢暴力，喜欢大乱，喜欢残忍，他找到了自我。这一发现对他未来的统治产生了莫大影响。
As he wrote in his report about his tour, Mao saw that grassroots peasant association bosses were mostly “ruffians,” activists who were the poorest and roughest, and who had been the most despised. Now they had power in their hands. They “have become lords and masters, and have turned the peasant associations into something quite terrifying in their hands,” he wrote. They chose their victims arbitrarily. “They coined the phrase: ‘Anyone who has land is a tyrant, and all gentry are bad.’ ” They “strike down the landlords to the ground, and stamp on them with their feet … they trample and romp on the ivory beds of the misses and madames. They seize people whenever they feel like it, put a high dunce’s hat on them, and parade them round. All in all, they thoroughly indulge every whim … and really have created terror in the countryside.”
毛看到基层农民协会办事人，大都是所谓的“痞子”：“那些从前在乡下所谓踏烂鞋皮的，挟烂伞子的，打闲的，穿绿长褂子的，赌钱打牌四业不层的，总而言之一切从前为绅士们看不起的人”。他们现在有了权：“他们在乡农民协会(农协之最下级)称王，乡农民协会在他们手里弄成很凶的东西了”。他们任意给人定罪：“造出“有土必豪，无绅不劣”的话，有些地方甚至五十亩田的也叫他土豪，穿长褂子的叫他劣绅”。他们“将地主打翻在地，再踏上一只脚”，“土豪劣绅的小姐少奶奶的牙床上也可以踏上去滚一滚，动不动捉人戴高帽子游乡……总之为所欲为，一切反常，竟在乡村造成一种恐怖现象。”
Mao saw that the thugs loved to toy with victims and break down their dignity, as he described with approval:
A tall paper hat is put on [the victim], and on the hat is written landed tyrant so-and-so or bad gentry so-and-so. Then the person is pulled by a rope [like pulling an animal], followed by a big crowd … This punishment makes [victims] tremble most. After one such treatment, these people are forever broken …
毛看到痞子们很喜欢玩弄手里的牺牲品，比方说戴高帽子游乡，“这种处罚最使土豪劣绅颤栗，戴过一次高帽子的，从此颜面扫地做不起人。”“有一个乡农会很巧妙，捉了一个劣绅来，声言今日要给他戴高帽子，劣绅于是吓乌了脸。吓了他结果又不给他戴，放他回去，等日再戴。那劣绅不知何日要戴这高帽子，每天在家放心不下，坐卧不宁。”
The threat of uncertainty, and anguish, particularly appealed to him:
毛说他“觉到一种从来未有的痛快”。他大声欢呼：“好得很！好得很！”
The peasant association is most clever. They seized a bad gentleman and declared that they were going to [do the above to] him … But then they decided not to do it that day … That bad gentleman did not know when he would be given this treatment, so every day he lived in anguish and never knew a moment’s peace.
Mao was very taken with one weapon, the suo-biao, a sharp, twin-edged knife with a long handle like a lance: “it … makes all landed tyrants and bad gentry tremble at the sight of it. The Hunan revolutionary authorities should … make sure every young and middle-aged male has one. There should be no limit put on [the use of] it.”
毛还格外欣赏一种凶器 -- 梭镖，“使一切土豪劣绅看了打颤的一种新起的“东西”。”他要求湖南当局把梭镖“确实普及于七十五县二千余万农民之中”。
Mao saw and heard much about brutality, and he liked it. In the report he wrote afterwards, in March 1927, he said he felt “a kind of ecstasy never experienced before.” His descriptions of the brutality oozed excitement, and flowed with an adrenalin rush. “It is wonderful! It is wonderful!” he exulted.
Mao was told that people had been beaten to death. When asked what to do—and for the first time the life and death of people hung on one word of his—he said: “One or two beaten to death, no big deal.” Immediately after his visit, a rally was held in the village, at which another man, who was accused of opposing the peasant association, was savagely killed.
巡视中，农协会向毛报告说有人被打死，问毛怎么办。毛说：“打死个把，还不算了。”这之后，更多的人被打死。
Before Mao arrived, there had been attempts by the leaders of the peasant movement in Hunan to bring down the level of violence, and they had detained some of those who had perpetrated atrocities. Now Mao ordered the detainees to be released. A revolution was not like a dinner party, he admonished the locals; it needed violence. “It is necessary to bring about a … reign of terror in every county.” Hunan’s peasant leaders obeyed.
毛巡视以前，湖南农运领导人曾着手约束暴力，扣了些打死人的人。毛命令他们放人，批评他们说：“革命不是请客吃饭，不是做文章，不是绘画绣花……每个农村都必须造成一个短时期的恐怖现象”。湖南农运领导人作了检讨，执行了毛的命令。
Mao did not once address the issue that concerned peasants most, which was land redistribution. There was actually an urgent need for leadership, as some peasant associations had already begun doing their own redistribution, by moving boundary markers and burning land leases. People put forward various specific proposals. Not Mao. All he said at a Nationalist land committee meeting discussing this issue on 12 April was: “Confiscation of land boils down to not paying rent. There is no need for anything else.”
毛的《湖南农民运动考察报告》一句也没有提及与农民切身相关的最重要的问题：分田地。他对此没有表示丝毫兴趣。
What fascinated Mao was violence that smashed the social order. And it was this propensity that caught Moscow’s eye, as it fitted into the Soviet model of a social revolution. Mao was now published for the first time in the Comintern journal, which ran his Hunan report (though without his name on it). He had shown that although he was ideologically shaky, his instincts were those of a Leninist. Some other Communists—especially the Party leader Professor Chen, who flew into a rage when he heard about mob atrocities and insisted that they had to be reined in—were ultimately not Communists of the Soviet type. Now, more than two years after casting him out, the CCP readmitted Mao into the leading circle. In April 1927 he was restored to the Central Committee, though only into the second tier without a vote (called an alternate member).
吸引毛的是野蛮暴力，是打碎既存秩序、社会结构的暴力。这正是苏俄社会革命的模式。毛不是从理论上信仰这种模式，而是从性格上走了進去。莫斯科留意到了他，在共产国际的杂志上第一次发表了他的《报告》。毛泽东虽然在意识形态上模模糊糊，在直觉上却与列宁主义不谋而合。像陈独秀这样的共产党人，虽然理论上信仰共产主义，可一听说暴民打人杀人就火冒三丈，坚持要制止。他们其实不是苏俄式的共产主义者，而毛却是。所以，中共在把毛赶出领导圈子的两年之后，重新接受了他。一九二七年四月，毛再次成为中央委员，尽管只是“候补”。
Mao was based at this time in the city of Wuhan, on the Yangtze, some 300 km northeast of Changsha, where he had moved from Canton with the Nationalist headquarters as the Nationalist army pushed north. Now even more prominent among the Nationalists as an overseer of the peasant movement, he stepped up the training of rural agitators so that they spread his violent line to new areas taken by the army. One text that Mao selected to guide his trainees described peasant association activists discussing ways to deal with their victims. If they were “stubborn,” “we’ll slit their ankle tendons and cut off their ears.” The author greeted the punishments, in particular this gruesome one, with rapture: “I had been listening so absorbedly as if in a drunken stupor or trance. Now I was suddenly woken up by the yelling of ‘Wonderful,’ and I too couldn’t help bursting out ‘Wonderful!’ ” This account was extraordinarily similar to Mao’s own report, both in style and language, and was most likely written by Mao himself.
毛这时随北伐的国民党政府住在长江重镇武汉。他现在俨然是国民党农运总管了，在武汉开始训练农运人员，北伐军打到哪里，就把暴力散布到哪里。在他的训练教材中，有一份讲农协会的人讨论如何对付“土豪劣绅”：“倘有土豪劣绅最强硬的，便割脚筋和耳朵，戴高帽子游行”，或者“必活活地打死”。
AS VIOLENCE ACCELERATED under Mao’s tutelage, the Nationalist army turned against the Soviet model their party was following. A large part of the army was from Hunan, and the officers, who came from relatively prosperous families, found that their parents and relatives were being arrested and abused. But it was not just the better-off who suffered; the rank-and-file were also being hit. Professor Chen reported to the Comintern in June: “even the little money sent home by ordinary soldiers was confiscated,” and the troops were “repelled by the excesses,” seeing that the outcome of their fighting was to bring disaster to their own families.
在毛的推崇下，农民暴力到处蔓延，激起了国民党军队的强烈反对。陈独秀六月向共产国际报告说：“国民革命军有百分之九十出身于湖南。军人对所有农民运动的“过火”抱反感态度。”“军官家庭的土地财产被没收；他们的亲戚被逮捕；商民受到逮捕的刑罚……士兵寄回家的一点钱也会被没收，军人们发现革命一场，反而给自己的家庭带来灾难。
Many in the Nationalist Party had been unhappy about their leaders adopting Moscow’s line right from the start, when Sun Yat-sen embraced the Russians in the early 1920s. Their anger had reached the boiling point after the Nationalists’ second congress in January 1926, when the much smaller CCP (with far fewer than 10,000 members) seemed to have hijacked the Nationalists, who had several hundred thousand members. Under Wang Ching-wei, one-third of the 256 delegates were Communists. Another third were “on the left,” among whom was a large contingent of secret Communists. Not only had Moscow planted its Trojan horse, the CCP itself, inside the Nationalists, it had also infiltrated a large number of moles. Now, over a year later, the mob violence condoned by their party led many prominent Nationalists to call for a break with Moscow’s control, and with the Chinese Communists.
国民党中相当多人早就不满走苏俄的路，他们的愤怒在一九二六年国民党“二大”上达到高潮。二百五十六名代表中竞有三分之一是中共党员，另外三分之一是亲共的，其中有不少秘密共产党员，未来将对共产党夺权起极大作用。许多国民党名人如今起来大声疾呼，反对农村暴力，要求与莫斯科的控制决裂，与莫斯科的手 -- 中共 -- 决裂。
The crisis quickly came to a head. One thousand kilometers to the north, on 6 April 1927 the Peking authorities raided Russian premises and seized a large cache of documents which revealed that Moscow was engaged in extensive subversion aimed at overthrowing the Peking government and replacing it with a client. The documents also showed secret Soviet links with the Chinese Communists. In fact, one important CCP leader, Li Ta-chao, and some sixty other Chinese Communists were arrested in the Russian compound, where they had been living. Li was soon executed by strangulation.
就在这个时候，一千公里外的首都北京出了一件事，使国民党走到决定自己命运的关头。一九二七年四月六日，北京当局突袭了苏联使馆，搜到大批文件，证据确凿地表明苏联正在中国图谋颠覆北京政府。文件暴露了中共与苏联的秘密关系，而中共领导人李大钊跟六十多名党员就住在苏联使馆的房产中。李大钊不久被绞杀。
The raids received wide publicity, as did the documents. The proof of Soviet subversion on a massive scale outraged Chinese public opinion and alarmed Western powers. Unless the Nationalists took decisive action to dissociate themselves from the Russians and the CCP, they risked being seen as part of the conspiracy to turn China into a Soviet satellite. Many Nationalists might leave the party, the general public would be repelled, and the Western powers stiffened in their resolve to give full backing to the Peking regime. It was at this point that the commander-in-chief of the Nationalist army, Chiang Kai-shek, took action. On 12 April he gave orders to “cleanse” the Nationalist Party of Communist influence. He issued a wanted list of 197 Communists, headed by Borodin and including Mao Tse-tung.
从苏联使馆搜出的文件在全国报纸广为转载，苏联颠覆计划规模之大，激怒了公众舆论，也震惊了西方列强。国民党不得不考虑自己的地位。它正全力以赴要推翻北京政府，苏联正给它出钱出力，中共也正在它的行列中并肩作战。人们完全有理由认为国民党是苏联颠覆计划的一部分，推翻北京政府后会把中国变成苏联傀儡。如果国民党不改变自己的形象，它可能失去人心，更重要的，西方列强会不惜一切支持北京政权。
于是，有一个人抓住机会行动了，他就是国民党军队总司令蒋介石。四月十二日，他下令与共产党决裂，开始“清党”。他颁发的通缉名单有一百九十七人，以鲍罗廷为首，毛泽东也名列其中。
CHIANG KAI-SHEK HAD been born into a salt merchant family in the east coast province of Zhejiang in 1887, six years before Mao. Later familiar abroad as “the Generalissimo,” he was a professional military man, and in public presented a stolid, rather remote and humorless appearance. He had trained in Japan, and in 1923, as Nationalist chief of staff, had headed a mission to Soviet Russia. At the time he was regarded by the Russians as on the “left wing of the Nationalists” and “very close to us,” but his three-month visit turned him profoundly anti-Soviet, particularly on the issue of class struggle: he was deeply averse to Moscow’s insistence on dividing Chinese society into classes and making them fight each other.
蒋介石比毛泽东大六岁，一八八七年出生于浙江省一个盐商家庭。他在日本学过军事，是个职业军人，脸上当带着凛然难以亲近的僵硬表情。一九二三年，作为孙中山的大本营参谋长，他率团访问苏联。那时他被俄国人认定“属于国民党左翼”，“同我们很亲近”。但是三个月的访问使他极端反苏，特别反感苏联要把中国社会划分成不同的阶级，搞阶级斗争。
But Chiang did not breathe a word in public about his real views when he returned to China. On the contrary, he gave Borodin the impression that he was “extremely friendly to us, and full of enthusiasm.” He concealed his true colors for one simple reason—the Nationalists were dependent on Soviet military assistance for their goal of conquering China. Chiang, who meanwhile had risen to No. 2 in the Nationalist Party, had, however, been quietly preparing the ground for a split, and had already removed some Communists from key positions in March 1926. This caused the Russians to start plotting ways to get rid of him. According to one of their agents in Canton, their idea was “to play for time and prepare the liquidation of this general [Chiang].” A year later, in early 1927, Borodin had issued a secret order to have Chiang arrested, though the plan did not materialize.
蒋介石对苏联的这些感想一个字也没有公开说出。相反地，他给鲍罗廷的印象是他“对我们非常友好，充满了热情”。有了俄国人的支持，蒋上升为国民党第二号人物，仅次于汪精卫。蒋掩盖他的真实色彩，为的是北伐必不可少的苏联军援。但同时，蒋不动声色地准备决裂，在一九二六年三月把一些共产党人从关键的职位上赶了下去。此事发生后，吃惊的苏联顾问开始考虑干掉蒋介石。索洛维约夫(Solovyov)二十四日给加拉罕(L．M． Karakhan)写信说：“使团决定迁就蒋介石……以便赢得时间和做好准备除掉这位将军。”一年后，鲍罗廷秘密命令逮捕蒋介石。
The moment the Peking government published documents about Russian subversion, Chiang acted. On 12 April, he issued a notice which said, in essence: arrest Communists. He moved first in Shanghai, which had been the HQ of the CCP, and where he himself was. The Communists had armed pickets there. Chiang took steps to disarm them. Towards this end he enlisted gangsters to pick a fight with the pickets, to create an excuse for his army to descend and confiscate the arms. Communist strongholds were assaulted, many trade union leaders arrested, and some shot. Chiang’s troops opened fire with machine-guns on a subsequent protest march. In the space of a few days, there were probably more than 300 deaths on the Communist side. Chiang had broken the Communists as an organized force able to operate in public in Shanghai, though the CCP leadership remained largely intact—and, amazingly, Shanghai continued to be where the Party Center resided and operated, clandestinely, even in the middle of the purge. For the following five or six years, “Shanghai” was synonymous with the CCP leadership (and we use it in this sense).
蒋介石先下手了。北京那边一公布苏联搞颠覆的文件，他就发表布告，逮捕共产党人。行动首先在上海，那里蒋有了新的财源。几天工夫，共产党方面死了三百多人。共产党不能在上海公开露面了。但上海继续是中共中央居住与活动的地方。此后五、六年中，上海是处于地下状况的中共中央的代名词。
After Chiang Kai-shek started killing Communists in Shanghai, Nationalist chief Wang Ching-wei, who was in Wuhan, some 600 km inland, broke with the CCP and submitted to Chiang. From now on, Chiang Kai-shek became the head of the Nationalist Party. He went on to build a regime that lasted twenty-two years on the mainland, until he was driven to Taiwan by Mao in 1949.
蒋介石在上海率先杀共产党人后不久，汪精卫也倒向蒋，七月十五日在武汉宣布“分共”从此，蒋介石成为国民党领袖，蒋政权持续了二十二年，直到一九四九年被毛泽东赶到台湾。
THE LEAD-UP TO Wang’s split, Mao faced a choice. He had been much more appreciated by Wang than by his fellow Communists and most Russians, and he had risen much higher among the Nationalists than in the CCP. Should he now go with Wang? He was later to say of this time: “I felt desolate, and for a while, didn’t know what to do.” It was in this rather torn state of mind that one day he ascended a beautiful pavilion on the bank of the Yangtze in Wuhan. Originally built in AD 223 the Yellow Crane Pavilion was a landmark. Legend had it that here a man had once beckoned to a yellow crane flying along the Yangtze, rode on its back to the Celestial Palace—and never returned. The Yellow Crane thus came to mean something gone forever. Now it seemed an apt metaphor for everything Mao had built up for himself in the Nationalist Party. It was a day darkened with heavy rain. As he stood by the carved balustrade of the pavilion, looking across the vastness of the Yangtze, “locked in,” as he wrote in a poem, between Mount Snake and Mount Tortoise on either side, but extended to the infinite by the deluge from the sky, Mao pondered his alternatives. In a traditional libation, he poured his drink into the torrent below, and finished his poem with the line: “The tide of my heart soars with the mighty waves!”
一九二七年的春夏之交，汪精卫“分共”在即，毛泽东自言他“心情苍凉，一时不知如何是好。”一天他登上了长江边上着名的黄鹤楼，在那里写了首诗。始建于公元二二三年的黄鹤楼是古今诗人喜欢登临题咏的地方。唐崔颢{黄鹤楼)诗说：“昔人已乘黄鹤去，此地空余黄鹤楼。黄鹤一去不复返，白云千载空悠悠。”以后“黄鹤”用来比喻一去不复返的事物。这似乎说中了毛泽东在国民党内所有的建树，即将化为乌有。毛登楼那天正是“烟雨莽苍苍”的时候。“黄鹤知何去？”毛问道，考虑着自己的前途。他这样结束了他的诗：“把酒酹滔滔，心潮逐浪高！”
Mao made a bid to keep Wang on the Communists’ side by disowning the peasant association thugs whom he had previously hailed as wonderful, and casting them as scapegoats. On 13 June, Wang Ching-wei told other Wuhan leaders: “Only after Comrade Mao Tse-tung’s report did we realise that peasant associations are controlled by gangsters. They don’t know anything about the Nationalists or the Communists, they only know the business of killing and arson.” Mao’s attempt to pass the buck was futile. His Nationalist mentor was already planning to break with the Communists, and blame them for all the rural atrocities. As the most vocal promoter of this violence, Mao had to say goodbye to Wang and the Nationalists. He was already on the wanted list. But quite apart from this, to stay with Wang would mean having to become a moderate, and respect social order. Mao was not prepared to do this, not after he had discovered his fondness for brutality in rural Hunan. Nearly a decade before, as a 24-year-old, he had expressed his craving for violent and drastic social change: “the country must be … destroyed and then re-formed … People like me long for its destruction …” The Soviet model suited his impulse.
毛努力想拉住汪，拿他过去欢呼“好得很！”的农协会暴民做替罪羊。汪精卫六月十三日告诉其他武汉领导人：“据毛泽东同志报告，才晓得农民协会有哥老会在内把持，他们既不知道国民党是什么，也不知道共产党是什么，只晓得做杀人放火的勾当。”但毛这一着没用，汪精卫已在策画跟共产党决裂，把一切乡村暴力都归罪于共产党。毛只能同汪精卫分手。
For the first time, Mao had to risk his neck. During the arrest scare two years before, he had had time to summon a sedan chair and make off in leisurely fashion to Changsha. But now escape was not so simple. There was no obvious safe haven and the killing of Communists had started. Professor Chen’s eldest son was arrested and beheaded on 4 July. By the end of the year, after the Communists had launched violent uprisings of their own and taken many lives, tens of thousands of Communists and suspects were slaughtered. Anyone could be arrested, and killed, simply on the charge of being a Communist. Many died proclaiming their faith, some shouting slogans, others singing the “Internationale.” Newspapers hailed executions with pitiless headlines.
生平第一次，毛有了掉脑袋的威胁。两年前的“逮捕”是有惊无险，他还可以雇辆轿子抬他到长沙，然后跑到广州。现在不同了。七月四日，陈独秀的一个儿子被砍了头。在共产党发动了一连串武装暴动，杀了不少人以后，到处就都杀开了共产党。只要有人告发你是共产党，你就可能被抓起来杀头。死者有的从容就义，有的慷慨宣讲信仰，有的呼口号，有的唱《国际歌》。报纸上登载着无情的大标题，为捕杀“拍手称快”。
Mao first had to ensure his personal safety. Then he decided to use the CCP and the Russians for his own ends. This decision, taken in summer 1927, when he was thirty-three, marked Mao’s political coming of age.
但这时的毛，已看准了一个能安全生存的方式。不仅如此，他还设计了未来发展的蓝图：利用中共和苏联来为自己打天下。一九二七年夏天做出的这个决定，意味着三十三岁的毛泽东在政治上步入成年。