9 MAO AND THE FIRST RED STATE
9 第一个红色中国
(1931–34 AGE 37–40)
1931～1934 年 37～40 岁
RUIJIN, THE CAPITAL of the new Red state, was situated in southeast Jiangxi, in the middle of a red-earth basin cradled by hills on three sides. It was 300 roadless km from the Nationalist-controlled provincial capital, Nanchang, but only about 40 km from the large Red-held city of Tingzhou over the border in Fujian, which was linked to the outside world by river. Semi-tropical, the area was blessed with rich agricultural products, and endowed with unusual giant trees like camphor and the banyan, whose old tough roots rose overground, while new roots cascaded from the crown.
国中之国的首都瑞金位于江西省南边陲，坐落在三面环山的红土盆地里。这里属亚热带气候，农产品丰富，到处是杉、松、枫、樟、砾，桩树华盖如云。政治环境也很理想：国民党手中的省会南昌远在三百公里以外，无大路可通。红区内有繁华的都市汀州，与外界通航。
The headquarters of the Red government lay outside the town, at the site of a large clan temple 500 years old, with a hall spacious enough to hold hundreds of people for the inevitable meetings. Where the clan altar had stood, a stage was built in the Soviet Russian fashion. On it hung red woodcut portraits of Marx and Lenin, and between them a red flag with a gold star and a hammer and sickle. A red cloth above it was stitched in gold thread with the slogan: “Proletariat of all the world, unite!” Next to it, in silver, was the slogan: “Class Struggle.” Down both sides of the hall, makeshift partitions demarcated fifteen offices as the new state administration. They had names that were direct translations from Russian, and were a mouthful in Chinese, like “People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs.”
红色政府设在瑞金城外一座有五百年历史的祠堂里。祠堂大得足以容纳几百人，正好适合共产党开会。供祖宗牌位的位置如今按苏联式样搭了个台子，上面挂着木刻的马克思和列宁的像。这两位共产党老祖宗之间是一面红旗，旗上照例是金星加镰刀斧头。再往上悬挂着用金线绣在红布上的标语：全世界无产者，联合起来！旁边有一副银线绣的标语：阶级斗争。大厅两侧用木板隔成十五间屋子，作政府办公的地方。部门的名字都是从俄语直译过来的，十分拗口，像什么“内务人民委员部”。
Behind the clan temple, a large square was cleared of trees and farmland to make room for the Communists' staple activity: mass rallies. Later on, various monuments were built on this square. At one end was a timber-and-brick dais for holding Soviet-style military reviews. At the other was a tower to commemorate Red Army dead (called “martyrs”), shaped like a giant bullet, with numerous bullet-like stones sticking out of it. Flanking this were two memorials, one a pavilion, the other a fortress, named after two dead Red commanders. The whole set-up anticipated Tiananmen Square in Communist Peking, though the monuments were much more imaginative and colorful than the leaden architecture later to disfigure Tiananmen.
祠堂后面开出广场，造了些建筑物，像带乡土气息的红场。广场一端是砖木结构的检阅台，作军事检阅之用。另一端是红军烈士纪念塔，形状像一颗矗立的巨大子弹，上面嵌着数不清的石头小子弹。远处树林里有座色彩鲜艳的大礼堂，状似红军八角形军帽。大门上铸着一颗巨大的红五星，正中是由镰刀斧头锁住的凸出的地球。正面有点像欧洲教堂，窗户是百叶窗。礼堂可容两千人，紧贴着它有一个大防空洞，入口就在工席台两侧。
Nearby, deep in a wood, the Communists built a camouflaged auditorium with a capacity of 2,000, whose excellent acoustics were designed to make up for the absence of microphones. It was octagonal, shaped like the Red Army cap of the day. The façade was reminiscent of a European cathedral, only with shuttered windows, through which people could look out, but not in. Above the central gate was an enormous red star with a globe bulging out in the middle, firmly locked in by a hammer and sickle. Next to the auditorium was an air-raid shelter capable of holding over 1,000 people, with two access doors located just behind the stage, so that the leaders could reach it first.
The leaders lived in a mansion which had belonged to the richest person in the village, situated to one side of the clan temple now turned government office. Here Mao chose the best accommodation, a corner suite at the back with a window looking out onto the temple. This window was specially made for him, as the previous owner, out of deference for the temple, would not have any windows overlooking it. Mao also had a brick floor laid over the timber to keep out rats.
领导人的住宅曾属于当地最富有的人家，位于祠堂的斜前方。毛挑了套宽敞的房间，面对祠堂的那面墙上没有窗户，从前的屋主出于对祠堂的尊重，不让在那里造窗。但毛为了采光，新开了一扇窗户。他叫工人在地板上砌上砖，以防耗子的骚扰。
The land abutting the leaders' residence was taken over to house guards and orderlies, as well as high-security installations like the gold store, the switchboard and the radio station. Apart from some villagers kept on to work as servants, the rest were evicted en masse, and the whole area was barricaded off from the outside. None of the Party bosses was able to speak the local dialect, and most made no effort to learn, so they needed interpreters to communicate with the locals, with whom they had little contact anyway. Cadres from the region acted as their links. It was the style and pattern of an occupying army.
整个地方封了起来，常人不能進去，只住着警卫部队、通讯服务人员。金库、电话总机、电台也设在这里。党的领导跟本地人没什么来往，他们基本上都不会说当地话，也不打算学，需要时用本地干部作翻译就行了。
ON 7 NOVEMBER 1931, Ruijin held a grand celebration to mark the founding of the Red state. That evening, tens of thousands of locals were organized to put on a parade, holding bamboo torches and lanterns in the shape of stars or hammers and sickles. The streams of lights simmered against the darkness of the night, producing quite a spectacle. There were drums and firecrackers and skits, one with a “British imperialist” driving before him prisoners in chains labeled “India” and “Ireland.” A generator, roaring in an air-raid shelter by the side of the temple, produced electricity, which shone in the numerous small bulbs arrayed along wires slung from pillar to pillar. They illuminated the endless banners and slogans of different colors that also hung from the wires—as well as giant red, white and black posters on the walls. Mao and the other leaders stood on the presidium, clapping and shouting slogans, as the procession passed below them. This was Mao's first taste of future glories when up to a million people would hail him on Tiananmen.
一九三一年十一月七日，瑞金举行隆重仪式，庆祝国中之国的成立。黄昏后成千上万的人被组织起来参加提灯游行，手执竹竿和篾索做的火把，提着五角星、镰刀斧头形状的灯笼。人们敲锣打鼓放鞭炮，踩着高跷，有扮作“英帝国主义”的，赶着一群戴锁链的“囚犯”， 背上写着“印度”、“爱尔兰”。一串串用于手电筒的小电珠，悬挂在大木柱之间的铁丝上，晃来晃去。到处是彩旗和五颜六色的标语。毛泽东和其他领导人站在主席台上，朝一队队按指定路线游行的人群拍手、呼口号，这是他将来站在天安门城楼上检阅百万大众的预演。
But here there was one vital difference: Mao in Ruijin was not the supreme leader. Although Moscow made him the “president” and the “prime minister,” it did not make him the dictator. Instead it surrounded him with other men whom it could trust to obey its orders. At the top of the army was Zhu De, who was appointed chief of the Military Council. Zhu had been trained in Russia, and the Russians knew him—and knew that he was loyal. Moscow had earlier considered Mao for the post, but had changed its mind. He ended up as only one of the Council's fifteen ordinary members.
毛此时还不是至高无上的君主。莫斯科虽然让他作了“主席”但并不想要他做独裁者，在他周围摆了一大批听话的中共领导。最高军事指挥现在是朱德，职务是中央革命军事委员会主席。朱德在苏联受过训，苏联人熟悉他，信任他的忠诚。莫斯科曾考虑过让毛当军委主席，后来改变了主意，只让毛当十五个委员之一。
Most importantly, Mao had a direct, on-the-spot Chinese boss: Chou En-lai, who was to arrive from Shanghai in December 1931, the month after the regime was established, and take up the post of Party chief. In the Communist system, Party boss was the highest authority, above the head of state. With Chou's arrival, the center of the Party itself shifted to Ruijin, and Shanghai became little more than a liaison office with the Russians. Reliable radio communication was established between Ruijin and Moscow, via Shanghai, where a young man called Po Ku* was in charge. The person controlling communication with Moscow was not Mao but Chou En-lai. It was Chou who built Ruijin into a Stalinist state. Mao was not the main person responsible for the foundation and operation of Red Ruijin.
毛这个“主席”还有个顶头上司：周恩来。周十二月从上海来到瑞金，做苏区中央局书记，换下了毛(毛当时是代理书记)。在共产党制度里，党的书记是头号人物。周走后，上海组成“临时中央”，由年轻的博古(本名秦邦宪)坐镇，主要职责是在莫斯科与各根据地之间上传下达。中共名义上的总书记向忠发，那年六月由于有人告密被国民党逮捕后枪毙。逮捕向的国民党情报机关首脑徐恩曾认为，告密者“是“奉命”来实施“借刀杀人”之计的”。*
* 徐说：“一天，一个外表很精干的青年，到我们的办公室来报告。说他知道向忠发的地址，愿意引导我们去找到他……他引导我们到法租界霞飞路的一家珠宝首饰店楼上”，抓住了向忠发。“向忠发死后的一个月光景，这个青年忽然失踪了。他一走，我们才恍然大悟”。
Chou was a master of organization, and under him the whole society was dragooned into an all-encompassing, interlocking machine. He was instrumental in building a huge bureaucracy, whose job was not only to run the base, but also to coerce the population into executing Party orders. In any one village, the state set up dozens of committees—“recruitment committee,” “land committee,” “confiscation committee,” “registration committee,” “red curfew committee,” to name but a few. People first got enmeshed in an organization from the age of six, when they had to join the Children's Corps. At the age of fifteen, they were automatically enrolled in the Youth Brigade. All adults except the very old and crippled were put into the Red Defense Army. In this way, the entire population was regimented, and a web of control was formed.
在莫斯科的指点下，擅长组织的周恩来把国中之国建成一个斯大林模式的极权社会。每个村子都有几十个名称各异的委员会，如“扩大红军委员会”、“土地委员会”、“没收委员会”、“户口委员会”、“赤色戒严委员会”，不一而足。人们从小就被组织起来，六岁参加儿童团，十五岁参加少先队，青壮年参加赤卫军。
This machine was an eye-opener to Mao. Before Chou arrived, Mao had ruled the Red land in bandit style, with less regimentation of the population as a whole; but it did not take long for him to appreciate the advantages and potential of the new way. When he eventually took power nationwide, he inherited this totalitarian machine and made it even more seamless and intrusive than Ruijin—or Stalin's Russia. And he retained Chou's services till Chou's last breath.
毛泽东观察到这一切，赞许说这是一张无所不包的“网”。从前他管辖的红区还有点土匪习气，对老百姓还没有组织得这么严密。夺取政权后，毛把这一套极权机制完善到天衣无缝、滴水不漏，对社会的严密控制远超过瑞金，甚至超过斯大林的苏联。他用周恩来作总理，直用到周的最后一口气。
Chou had also founded the Chinese KGB, then called the Political Security Bureau, under Moscow's supervision, in 1928. He and his assistants brought the system into Ruijin, and kept the state alive via terror. Whereas Mao had been using terror for personal power, Chou employed it to bolster Communist rule. The henchmen Mao used for his purges had been cynical and corrupt, and out for personal gain. Chou employed Soviet-trained professionals.
周是中共克格勃(此时叫政治保卫局)的创始人。他和毛一样，利用恐怖做工具。不同的是，毛为的是个人权力，周更多的是为共产党的统治。
When Chou first arrived in Ruijin at the end of 1931, he had adjudged Mao's purge methods as not altogether correct. Mao had “relied entirely on confessions and torture,” and “caused terror in the masses.” Chou rehabilitated some victims. One man recalled the process.
周刚到瑞金时，感觉毛打AB团等“肃反”方式大有问题。他说毛“专凭犯人口供，依靠肉刑”，“在群众中造成恐怖”。他实行了相对宽松的政策，宣布“过去肃反完全错误”，AB团“都可自新自首不杀了”。
An official took out a notebook and began to read out names. Those whose names were read out were ordered to go and stand in the inner courtyard under armed guards. There were scores of names … Mine was called, too. I was so frightened I sweated all over. Then we were questioned one by one, and cleared one by one. In no time, all the detainees were released. And all the incriminating confessions were burned on the spot …
这样一来，人们开始大胆反对共产党统治，用周手下政保人员的话说，“发现反动标语”，“反革命企图抬头”，“大造谣言”，“拒绝使用工农银行的纸票”。
But within a matter of months Chou had brought this respite to an end. Even so short a period of rehabilitation and easing up had released a groundswell of dissidence. “Relaxing about purges caused counter-revolutionaries … to raise their heads again,” Chou's security men noted aghast. And as people thought, wishfully, that there would be “no more killings,” “no more arrests,” they started to band together to defy Communist orders. It rapidly became clear that the regime could not survive without constant killings, and killing soon restarted.
周恩来看出不杀人中共统治就有危机，几个月不到就改变政策，又开始“加紧肃反”，“举行群众大会来处决反革命分子”。原红色江西领袖李文林就是在这时被杀的。
THE RED STATE regarded its population as a source of four main assets: money, food, labor and soldiers, first for its war, and ultimately to conquer China.
在这个国中之国，老百姓是金钱、粮食、劳役、士兵的源泉。为了打仗，为了维持政权，中共用各种名目榨取农民。
There was a big money-spinner in the region—the largest deposit in the world of tungsten, an extremely valuable strategic mineral that had previously been mined by a consortium of foreign capital. The Red regime resumed mining at the beginning of 1932. With soldiers and slave laborers as miners, the tungsten was exported across the Reds' southern border to the Cantonese warlords who, though White, were anti-Chiang, and eager to make money. The Red area was in theory under blockade, yet trade with the Cantonese boomed, even when they and the Red Army were sometimes fighting each other. Salt, cotton, medicine and even arms, were openly trucked in, in exchange for tungsten. The operation was run by Mao's brother Tse-min, who was head of the state bank.
其中之一是逼着农民买“革命战争公债”。为此政府“号召”妇女剪头发，把头上的银发簪“献”出来，终身积累的首饰银器也一步步被拿走。买了公债后是“退还公债运动”，把所购的公债无条件退还给政府。有的不怕事的人说：“共产党发行公债，比国民党苛捐杂税还恶。”
In spite of the vast profits it was making from tungsten and other exports, the regime never relaxed its schemes to extract the maximum from the local population. Although peasants now got their own land, and ground rent was abolished, they were in general worse off than before. Prior to this, most people had some possessions beyond those needed for sheer survival; now these extras were taken away, under various ruses. One was to coerce people to buy “revolutionary war bonds.” To pay for these, women were made to cut their hair so that they would hand over their silver hairpins, together with their last bit of jewelry—traditionally their life savings. The fact that people had such jewelry in pre-Communist days was a telling indication that their standard of living had been higher then. After people bought the war bonds, there would be “return bonds campaigns,” to browbeat purchasers to give back the bonds for nothing. The upshot was, as some daring inhabitants bemoaned, that “the Communists' bonds are worse than the Nationalists' taxes.”
The method was the same with food. After paying grain tax, peasants were pressured to lend more grain to the state, in drives with slogans like “Revolutionary masses, lend grain to the Red Army!” But the food “lent” was never returned. It was in fact food on which peasants depended for survival. Mao simply ordered them to cut down on their already meager consumption.
粮食也是一样。虽说农民分了田，不必缴租，但得交公粮，还得“借”粮给政府。一九三三年三月，毛泽东发布训令，要农民“自己节省食用，借出谷米，供给红军”。但“借”出的从来没还过。 成年男子大都被征入红军，或征去做劳工。共产党统治三年下来，乡村里十几岁到五十岁的男人所剩无几。
Most men of working age were drafted into the army or as conscript labor. After three years of Communist rule, there were hardly any men left in the villages aged between their early teens and fifty.
Women became the main labor force. Traditionally, women had done only fairly light work in the fields, as their bound and crippled feet meant that heavy manual labor caused great pain. Now they had to do most of the farm work, as well as other chores for the Red Army, like carrying loads, looking after the wounded, washing and mending clothes, and making shoes, for which they had to pay for the material themselves—no small extra burden. Mao, who had thought since his youth that women were capable of doing as much heavy labor as men, was the strongest advocate of this policy. He decreed: “Rely overwhelmingly on women to do farm work.”
妇女成了主要劳动力。依传统她们只干轻活，但现在大部分农活落在她们肩上，还要为红军做各种杂事，像挑担子、照顾伤员、洗衣补衣、无休止地做军鞋--布料还得自己负担。毛泽东年轻时就认为女子能跟男人干一样重的体力活，现在更是说：“生产绝大部分是依靠女子。”
The welfare of the locals was simply not on the agenda (contrary to the myth Mao fed to his American spokesman Edgar Snow). In some villages, peasants were not allowed any days off at all. Instead they got meetings, the Communists' great control mechanism. “The average person has the equivalent of five whole days of meetings per month,” Mao observed, “and these are very good rest time for them.”
改善老百姓的生活不在计划之内。有的地方，老百姓连休息的日子也没有，代替假日的是开会。毛说：“每人每月平均约有五个整天(许多次会合计起来)的开会生活，即是他们很好的休息时间。”
Standards of health did not improve either. There was a former British missionary hospital in Tingzhou which treated ordinary people. After Mao stayed there and liked it, he had it dismantled and relocated in Ruijin, and reserved it for the Communist elite. Mao himself was very careful about his health, always traveling with his own mug, which he used whenever he was offered a cup of tea. At one point he stayed in a village called Sand Islet, where the only drinking water came from a stagnant pond. To make sure he did not catch anything, he ordered a well to be dug. As a result, the villagers had clean drinking water for the first time. After this, Communist offices began to have wells dug where they were billeted, but there was no effort to provide the locals with clean water.
健康水准没有提高。红区里最好的医院原在汀州，是外国传教士办的，为一般老百姓看病。毛在那里住过，很喜欢它，回瑞金时就把它搬来了，变成为共产党服务的“中央医院”。毛本人很注重健康，旅行时总是自带茶碗。他搬去沙洲坝时，发现喝的水来自池塘的死水。为了有干净的水饮用，毛下令打了口井，村民们也都跟着沾光。后来这口井成了共产党宣传“吃水不忘挖井人”的圣地，要人们记住毛泽东无意中施与的恩德。有了毛的开头，共产党机关兴起了打井热潮，没住共产党干部的村子无此福分。
Education, Mao claimed via Snow, had brought about higher literacy rates in some counties “than had been achieved anywhere else in rural China after centuries.” In fact, education under the Reds was reduced to primary schools, called “Lenin schools,” where children were taught to read and write to a level at which they could take in basic propaganda. Secondary schools were mostly closed down, and commandeered as quarters for the leaders and venues for meetings. Children were used as sentries, and formed into harassment squads, called “humiliation teams,” to hound people into joining the army and to pressure deserters to return. Teenagers were sometimes encouraged to serve as executioners of “class enemies.”
毛通过斯诺向外界宣告，红色政权下的“某些县，共产党人在三、四年内达到的人民识字程度，超过了中国任何其他农村地区多少世纪来所取得的成绩”。事实上，从前的中学大多关了门，成为办公场所。教育仅限于小学，名为“列宁学校”，教学生识字，达到看宣传品的程度。孩子们组织起来站岗放哨，还成立“耻笑队”，去羞辱那些不愿参加红军或当逃兵的人。十几岁的孩子有时也被鼓励向“阶级敌人”挥刀行刑。
ONE OF MAO'S main contributions to the running of the Red state was to start a campaign in February 1933 to squeeze out more from the population. He told grassroots cadres to uncover “hidden landlords and kulaks.” As the Reds had been targeting these “class enemies” for years, it was inconceivable that any such species could have remained undetected.
毛泽东对这个政权的主要贡献之一，是在一九三三年二月搞了一场制造“阶级敌人”的“查田运动”。由于按共产党的理论，只有地主富农才能被剥夺，毛要基层干部“查出”更多的“地主富农”，逼他们交出“罚款”和“捐款”，把他们送進劳役队当苦力。毛的命令是：“地主阶级的土地财产要没收一个干净”，“使之担负无限制的义务劳动”。
Mao was not a fanatic, searching for more enemies out of ideological fervor. His was a practical operation whose goal was to designate targets to be shaken down, and to create enemies who could be “legitimately,” according to Communist doctrine, dispossessed and worked to death—what Mao himself termed “to do limitless forced labour.” The other point was to scare the rest of the population into coughing up whatever the regime demanded.
共产党统治已经几年了，地富早已被挖干净了，为了凑数，干部不得不乱整人。被整的全家“扫地出门”，住在关水牛的牛棚里。“牛棚”作为准监狱的代称就是这样来的。三十年后的文化大革命中，这个词被广泛运用，尽管关人的地方已不再是真正的牛棚，而是教室，厕所、电影院等等。
Mao's order to cadres was to “confiscate every last single thing” from those picked out as victims. Often whole families were turned out of their homes, and had to go and live in buffalo sheds, niu-peng. It was during this era that the miserable dwellings into which outcasts were suddenly pitched came to receive this name. Over thirty years later, in the Cultural Revolution, the term was widely used for detention, even though at that time people were not usually detained in rural outhouses, but in places like toilets, classrooms and cinemas.
Mao's campaign produced many tens of thousands of slave laborers, but it turned up little for the state coffers, as peasants genuinely had nothing left to disgorge. The authorities reported that only two out of twelve counties in Jiangxi were able to produce any “fines” and “donations” at all, and the total amount was a fraction of the target set by Mao.
毛的运动制造了数万苦役工，却挤不出多少钱和粮食。从当时的统计表上可以看出，江西的十二个县中，只有两个县交出了“罚款”和“捐款”，离毛定下的任务目标天差地远。农民早已被榨干了。
The plight of the victims was vividly portrayed by a Red Army officer called Gong Chu, who described passing by a place called Gong Mill near Ruijin, inhabited by people with the same family name as his, which meant they might share ancestors with him.
红军军官龚楚回忆起运动中的一桩见闻。一天他经过瑞金附近的龚坊，“因为天气炎热，到村里去找一间民房休息。这个龚坊，居住的是姓龚的居民，我進入休息的是一栋很大的青砖平房，外面非常整洁。但等走進大厅时，却意外地感到凄凉与萧条，因为屋子里的家具部没有了，只有一张烂方桌和一条长板凳，屋子里有两个中年妇人和一个老年妇人，还有三个小孩子，全穿着破烂衣服，形容憔悴，看见我带着四个携有手枪的特务员進来，非常惊恐，小孩更吓得哭了起来。”
I went into a big black-tiled bungalow … I was struck by a tremendous air of sadness and desolation. There was no furniture at all, only one broken table and a bench. There were two middle-aged women and an old woman, plus three young children, all in rags, and looking famished. When they saw me come in with four bodyguards wearing pistols, they went into a tremendous panic …
Then they heard Gong Chu's name, and they “went down on their knees in front of me, and begged me to save their lives.”
这时他们听到龚楚的姓，知道是同宗。于是一家六口跪在他面前，求他救他们的命。
Between sobs the old woman said: “My old man had read some books [which meant the family had been relatively well off], and so had my two sons. We had over ten mu of land and my two sons tilled it … my old man and two sons were all arrested … and were beaten and hung up, and 250 yuan was demanded from us. We did all we could to make up 120 yuan, and also gave them all the women's jewelery … But … my old man was still left there hanging till he died, and my two sons were killed as well. Now they are forcing us to pay another 500 yuan, otherwise all six of us will be imprisoned. Commander! We hardly have anything to eat, where can we find the 500 yuan? Please, think of our common ancestry and put in a fair word for us.”
老太婆哭着说：“我家的老头子是个读书人，两个儿子也读了点书，因为家里有十多亩田，两个儿子便在家里耕地。上半年老头子和两个儿子都被政府捕去，又打又吊，迫交光洋二百五十元。我们到处张罗了一百二十块钱，并将女人家全部的首饰凑足起来，送去赎他们。但金钱缴了，老头子仍被吊死，两个儿子也被杀了。现在，他们还逼我们缴五百光洋，否则我们六口人都要捉去坐牢。司令员呀，我们饭都没有吃，哪里还有五百光洋呢？求你念在同宗之情，替我们说句公道话，我家老头子在世的时候曾经说过，有位红军军长是我们姓龚的，他很早就想去找你……但村政府不许我们离开一步，今天真是天开了眼，你来到我们家里，司令员呀！你无论如何要救救我们！”说罢，她便不住地磕起头来，她的两个媳妇和小孩，也跟着磕头，流泪。
The woman told Gong Chu her husband had wanted to go and look for him. But the authorities “forbade us from setting one step outside the village. Today Heaven really opened its eyes, that you should have come into our family. Please Commander, save us!” After these words, she banged her head on the ground non-stop. Her two daughters-in-law and the children were all kowtowing and crying.
Gong Chu promised to help, but ultimately did nothing—as he knew that intervening could easily make things worse. Some months before, when he had tried to help a doctor in a similar situation, vengeful grassroots cadres had waited till he left and then “killed the doctor and confiscated his medicine shop. His widow and children became beggars.” It was events like these that drove Gong Chu to reject communism and flee at the first opportunity.*
龚楚答应替他们想办法，但最终什么也没做。他明白帮忙反会害了他们。曾有个医生因为交不起捐款求他，他转告了当地政府，但“十多天后，当我由闽西再回到瑞金时，那位医生已被杀害，药店也被政府没收，他家的寡妇孤儿已流为乞丐了。” 正是这一系列的悲剧，促使龚楚逃离红军。*
* 龚楚的回忆录于一九五四年在香港出版。毛死后的中国国家主席杨尚昆作为瑞金时代的见证人，在小范围内承认这部回忆录的真实性。尽管回忆录不能在大陆出版，龚楚本人在一九九一年九十高龄时回大陆定居。
Mao was also resourceful in making people “volunteer” to join the Red Army. When one cadre had difficulty getting people to enlist, Mao told her to “find counter-revolutionaries within three days.” She did, and those scared of falling foul of the regime joined up. In one district, the man in charge of conscription failed to produce enough conscripts. Mao had this man, Cai Dun-song, brought to him, and had him worked over, most likely tortured, as Cai “confessed” to having formed an “anti-Communist brigade.” A mass rally was held at which Mao announced the confession, and Cai and a number of others were executed on the spot. A cadre who had worked with Cai said that afterwards “in less than half a month, I enrolled more than 150 people.”
毛的“查田运动”也为中共吓唬出不少士兵。张闻天夫人刘英“扩红”扩不到足够的人数，毛就叫她“三天找出反革命”， 人们害怕，只好参军。另一个女干部回忆道，她所在区的军事部长蔡墩松被认为不积极征兵，毛叫她把蔡抓起来，押送到他那里。经过一天的拷问，蔡墩松“在毛泽东同志面前坦白交代了他们组织“反共团”的罪行，供认他是反共团的团长，并把该反革命组织的全部成员名单都交出来了。随后是照例的群众大会，毛“在会上宣布了蔡墩松等人的反革命罪行”，蔡等被当众处死。会后，“不到半个月的时间，就超额完成了扩红任务，按要求扩红一百名，实际完成一百五十多名。”
CHINA'S FIRST RED STATE was run by terror and guarded like a prison. A pass was needed to leave one's village, and sentries were ubiquitous round the clock. One person who did have a chance of getting away was the manager of state monument-building who had access to cash. He took 246.7 yuan—enough to buy a pass and pay contacts. But before he could make his getaway, he was arrested. He then managed to break out of jail, with the collusion of two senior cadres, one of them a man who had seen his brother killed as AB. The manager was caught and brought before a kangaroo court attended by hundreds of people, then executed. Old-timers recalled that not only was anyone “trying to flee to the White area” killed, but sometimes “if a prisoner escaped, the jailer was executed.”
这个国中之国就像监狱，每个村子都二十四小时放哨，离开村子得有路条。有个管钱的管理员曾试图想跑，“挪用”了两百四十六块七毛钱，买了张路条。逃亡没成功，在大会上示众后杀掉。据过来人说，甚至“坐班房的人逃走了，看守班房的人要杀头”。
In this prison-like universe, suicide was common—an early wave of what was later to grow to a flood throughout Mao's reign. The number of suicides was so staggering, even among officials, that the regime had to tackle it publicly, as proclaimed by a slogan: “Suicides are the most shameful elements in the revolutionary ranks.”
自杀屡见不鲜，为后来毛统治的一大特征开了先河。自杀数量在共产党干部中也十分惊人，致使官方在报刊上公开谴责：“自杀是革命队伍中最可耻的分子！”
Even a very high-ranking officer, Yang Yue-bin, a favorite of Mao's, was desperate enough to flee and defect to the Nationalists. He gave away the location of Party leaders' houses. The Nationalists bombed the site, and the leaders had to decamp wholesale.
毛的亲信杨岳彬也受不了，千方百计逃跑了。他投向国民党，把中共要人的住地告诉他们，国民党飞机来轰炸，毛等只得全部搬家。
Ordinary people had more chance to escape if they lived on the edge of the Red region, and some grassroots cadres who hated the regime organized mass escapes. Any cadre under the slightest suspicion of being unreliable would be transferred away from the outlying districts at once. Many waited until the Nationalists attacked and then tried to go over. In the last days of the Red state, when the Nationalists were closing in, whole villages rebelled, and started to attack the Red Army as it retreated, wielding the only weapons they had, knives and spears, as all firearms had been rounded up by the regime.
住在红区边缘的人逃跑的机会要多一些，有的基层干部也组织民众成批地逃，有的地方一晚上逃走几百人。中共于是把稍有疑点的干部调到跑不出去的红区中心地带。大多数人是在国民党進攻后起来反抗。在红色政权最后的日子里，当国民党军队逼近时，成村的人挥舞着大刀长矛袭击退却的红军。对付反抗的百姓，中共的办法是加强恐怖。在最极端的时候，日常往来都可能招致横祸。老人们回忆：有的县“规定各家不能招待客人住宿，如发现谁家接待了客人，不论什么人，都要和客人同罪杀头”。
The state's response was to be merciless and not to take the slightest chance. At its nadir, even everyday social intercourse and hospitality could bring death. “No family was allowed to have visitors to stay overnight,” veterans recalled. “Any family found to have done so was killed together with the visitor.”
The Ruijin base, the seat of the first Red state, consisted of large parts of the provinces of Jiangxi and Fujian. These two provinces suffered the greatest population decrease in the whole of China from the year when the Communist state was founded, 1931, to the year after the Reds left, 1935. The population of Red Jiangxi fell by more than half a million—a drop of 20 percent. The fall in Red Fujian was comparable. Given that escapes were few, this means that altogether some 700,000 people died in the Ruijin base. A large part of these were murdered as “class enemies,” or were worked to death, or committed suicide, or died other premature deaths attributable to the regime.* The figure of 700,000 does not include the many deaths in the large areas the Reds occupied for intermittent periods, or the huge number of deaths in the five Red bases in other parts of China that came under Ruijin.
中央苏区地处江西、福建。在它存在的四年中，人口在全国下降最多。根据中国人口统计，从一九三一到一九三五年，江西根据地内为中共完全控制的十五个县(不包括为中共部分控制的边缘县)，人口减少五十多万，占总人口的百分之二十。闽西根据地的减少幅度也差不多。中央苏区人口共下降七十万。由于住在这些地带的人很难外逃，这七十万基本上应属于死亡人数。*
Years later, locals would point out to travelers mass graves and derelict villages. People who lived under China's first Communist regime rejected it. When the first Russian intelligence officer visited the area immediately after the Communists took it in late 1949 the newly arrived Party chief told him that in all Jiangxi “there was not one member of the CCP.”
* 毛死后的一九八三年，江西有二十三万八千八百四十四人被官方追认为“烈士”， 包括战死的和肃反被杀的。
*The nominal Party No. 1, Hsiang Chung-fa, had been executed by the Nationalists that June, after a tip-off which the Nationalist intelligence chief U. T. Hsu strongly suggested had come from the Communists themselves. At first Hsiang refused to admit he was the CCP No. 1. “And, seeing this rather stupid-looking man,” Hsu wrote, “we felt we could well be mistaken. But a colleague said that … when Hsiang was a sailor, he had been addicted to gambling, and once when he had lost every penny, he vowed to kick the addiction, and chopped off the tip of the little finger of his left hand … The man's left little finger did indeed have a chunk missing …” After Hsiang was identified, he went down on his knees to beg for his life, “and at once gave us four top addresses.” Chou En-lai later remarked that Hsiang's fidelity to communism could not be compared even to the chastity of a prostitute.
*Gong's devastating memoir was published in Hong Kong in 1954. The post-Mao president of China, Yang Shang-kun, himself a witness to the Ruijin time, acknowledged to a small circle that the memoir was true, though it was banned in China. However, Gong was allowed to go back and live in the Mainland in 1991, age ninety.
*In 1983, after Mao was dead, 238,844 people in Jiangxi were counted as “revolutionary martyrs,” i.e., people who had been killed in wars and intra-Party purges.