13 THE COLLAPSE OF THE UNITED FRONT
By the fall of 1926, the western column of the NRA had arrived at the Yangzi River valley after routing Wu Peifu's forces in Hunan and Hubei. On September 6 Hanyang was taken, on September 7, Hankou, and on October 10, Republic Day, Wuchang. These three cities, collectively known as Wuhan, were now in the hands of the National Revolutionary Army. Wuhan was one of the largest centers in China, with a population of roughly one and a half million people. Its geographical position on the central China plain, at the intersection of the most important transport arteries in the country, the Yangzi flowing from west to east and the north-south Beijing–Hankou and Wuchang–Changsha railroads, accounted for its strategic importance. In the late nineteenth century Wuhan was opened to foreigners, who established their concessions in Hankou. The city quickly developed into the most important commercial port in central China. Industrial enterprises appeared in Hankou as well as in neighboring Hanyang. The center of public and cultural life in the tricities, however, remained Wuchang, the capital of Hubei province.
The capture of Wuhan constituted a great victory on the part of the Guomindang army. In early November the Political Council of the Guomindang CEC adopted a resolution to move the seat of the National government from Canton to Wuhan, and a month later some of the ministers, mostly the leftists, along with Borodin moved to their new location. On January 1, 1927, Wuhan was officially proclaimed the capital of Guomindang China.1 The nationwide victory of the Guomindang over the reactionary militarists was imminent.
In early November, Mao Zedong also left Canton, but the path he took led him to Shanghai, not Wuhan. The CCP Central Executive Committee had again assigned him to work in the central party apparatus, this time to head the newly created Committee on the Peasant Movement and to work in tandem with Peng Pai, the best-known organizer of peasants in Guangdong, who had already joined the party. In all, six people, each with a proven talent for rural work, would be working under Mao.2 Mao shared their background, even though his actual experience of working with peasants was considerably less than that of, for example, Peng Pai. He was distinguished by his ability at theoretical generalization from the facts, his talent for expressing his thoughts crisply and clearly and artfully putting them into a conceptual form, and his enormous talent as a publicist. His views on peasant problems accorded with those of many CCP leaders who were themselves quite leftist. In September 1926, for example, Qu Qiubai, a member of the Central Bureau of the CCP, advised the Propaganda Department of the CEC to base their work on Mao's thesis concerning the peasants' struggle against “the greatest enemy of the revolution,” “the feudal-patriarchal class of the landlords.” Qu Qiubai as well as Voitinsky may have been instrumental in arranging Mao's appointment as secretary of the Committee on the Peasant Movement.3
From June 1926, Voitinsky was stationed in Shanghai as chairman of the newly organized Far Eastern Bureau of the ECCI. When the Northern Expedition was launched, acting on his own authority and at his own risk, Voitinsky induced the CCP Central Executive Committee to conduct a consistently radical policy on the peasant question.4
It is not known whether the general secretary, Chen Duxiu, opposed Mao's appointment. Probably not. The “Old Man” continued to enjoy enormous respect among the party leadership, and it is doubtful that Mao could have received the position without his approval. Chen, who himself held leftist views, was maneuvering as always. Even as he listened to the leftist Voitinsky he assured Stalin that extremism, which threatened the united front, would no longer be countenanced. Soon after the start of the Northern Expedition, Chen convened another plenum of the Central Executive Committee in Shanghai, which, in Zhang Guotao's words, adopted a “flabby” resolution on the peasant movement.5 It now merely called on the peasants to struggle for rent and interest reduction, easing of the tax burden, and a prohibition on speculation. The resolution said, “Peasants! Rise up as one to struggle against corrupt officials, tuhao and lieshen, against excessive taxes and endless extortions levied by the militarist governments!”6 That was all.
Qu Qiubai, Zhang Guotao, Tan Pingshan, and many other communists were dissatisfied. Even Chen Duxiu's own son, Chen Yannian, who headed the Guangdong provincial party organization, was opposed to the general secretary at this time. These leaders demanded that “in conjunction with the successful development of the Northern Expedition,” the “slogan of the agrarian revolution ‘divide the land among the peasants'?” should be raised, “in order to mobilize the peasants to carry out the campaign.”7 But the general secretary, responsible for the flawless execution of Stalin's policy in China, was powerless to do anything himself. Perhaps he agreed to Mao's appointment, secretly hoping that with the help of this well-known “expert” on the peasantry he could “push” a “leftist” course, bypassing the Comintern.
It is doubtful that Mao had any sense of these maneuvers. The Sixth Session of the Peasant Movement Training Institute had completed its studies two months before he was invited to Shanghai, so he could take up his new assignment with a light spirit. His family left Canton at the same time. Kaihui was five months pregnant and by mutual agreement it was decided that she, her mother, and the children would return to Changsha.8 They were separated again, but Kaihui did not complain. She understood that the revolution needed Mao.
After Mao caught up on intraparty intrigues, he didn't tarry long in Shanghai. The situation in the CEC apparatus was very tense, and the party leadership was split by squabbles. Moreover, the balance of forces between radicals and moderates in the CCP leadership had recently shifted. While Mao was en route to Shanghai, Voitinsky received a shocking directive from Moscow. Fearing for the outcome of the Northern Expedition, Stalin ordered the CCP to switch to a tactic of further retreat, this time making concessions even to the Guomindang “rightists.” Stalin figured that the evolving military situation in China created a balance of forces in the GMD that was increasingly unfavorable to the CCP, which is why the party had been unable to purge the Guomindang of “anticommunists.” On October 26, the Politburo of the Soviet Communist Party adopted a directive prohibiting the development of a struggle in China against the bourgeoisie and the feudal intelligentsia, that is, against those whom the Comintern had heretofore viewed as “rightists.” Neither Stalin nor his supporters abandoned their hopes for the communization of Chiang Kai-shek's party. It was only a question of changing tactics, or so they said. In fact, the directive of October 26 signified a new policy toward China, which is precisely how the Far Eastern Bureau interpreted it.9
Immediately after receipt of the directive, on November 5–6, on the eve of Mao's arrival, the Far Eastern Bureau and the CCP Central Executive Committee considered the evolving situation. Chen Duxiu could note bitterly that in his game with the Comintern he had been correct. Had he followed the advice of Voitinsky and Qu Qiubai, he would immediately have been scapegoated. Now, on Voitinsky's initiative, it was decided to “push the Guomindang left onto the path of revolution …… in such a way that it would not panic prematurely or run away.” Put simply, it was impossible under any circumstances to radicalize the peasant movement. A resolution was promptly sent to Moscow assuring headquarters that they would only demand the confiscation of land from the largest landlords, the militarists, and the?lieshen?as well as public lands for subsequent transfer to the peasants. But Stalin balked even at such a moderate resolution and insisted on substituting the meaningless wish for the political confiscation of land belonging to counterrevolutionaries.10
This is what Mao encountered in Shanghai. He had no intention of renouncing his views, but neither did he want to make waves. At this point in his rise to power it would have been foolhardy to do so. He soon called a routine meeting of his department, at which he proposed to devise a concrete “Plan to Develop the Peasant Movement at the Present Stage,” based on the ideas he had expressed in late March 1926. The plan committed the CCP “to adopt the principle of concentrating its efforts on developing the peasant movement.” In other words, it demanded that priority be given to organizing peasants not only in Guangdong, but also in districts where the Guomindang army was operating, specifically the provinces of Hunan, Hubei, Jiangxi, and Henan. Moreover, “significant efforts” should also be applied to organizing peasants in a number of other places, including Sichuan, as well as Jiangsu and Zhejiang, where the NRA would be fighting very soon.11 This was meant to ensure that the chance to assume the leadership of the revolutionary masses was not lost.
On November 15, 1926, the Central Bureau of the CCP adopted the plan, and by the end of November Mao was on board a ship traveling from Shanghai to Wuhan to represent the Committee on the Peasant Movement in Hankou. Before leaving he submitted to Guide Weekly, the central party journal, an article about the peasant movement in Jiangsu and Zhejiang in which he now spoke only of a struggle against the tuhao and the lieshen, not against the entire class of landlords.12 He was passionate about taking action, but Comintern instructions restrained him. The revolution was blazing up all around, the Guomindang army was taking city after city, victory seemed near, and his fertile imagination probably conjured up crowds of peasants rising up, revolutionary courts for the “bloodsucking” landlords, the collapse of the power of the imperialists, the usurers, and the landowners.
In Hankou, however, his mood improved. The atmosphere here was even more leftist than in Canton. “Except for the quiet foreign concessions, the old city that was Hankow [Hankou] had donned the new clothes of revolution,” an eyewitness recalled. “The [Guomindang] flag with the blue sky and the white sun was fluttering everywhere. …… Revolutionary organizations of all descriptions mushroomed, emerging from underground, one after another. …… Even the big bosses of industry and trade would shout, ‘Long live the world revolution!' ”13
Soon Borodin, too, arrived in Wuhan. He seemed irritable. Stalin's October directive had mixed up all his cards. In early October, he had devised a plan to curb the absolute power of Chiang Kai-shek, by now the standard-bearer of the Guomindang “right.” Borodin, unable to forget the events of March 20, had long since turned against Chiang. In the second half of October, Borodin had arranged a joint session of the Guomindang CEC along with representatives of provincial and special municipal party committees attended mostly by “leftists.” Mao was a participant. The meeting adopted a new program for the Guomindang that included most of the moderate CCP demands on the peasant question, including rent and interest reduction. In addition, an appeal was made to Wang Jingwei, then living in France, to return from his “leave.” The blow against Chiang Kai-shek was precisely aimed, and Borodin now wanted to build upon his success. As soon as Borodin arrived in Wuhan, disregarding Moscow's directive he met with Tang Shengzhi, the commander of the western column of the NRA, and informed Tang that he no longer trusted Chiang Kai-shek but only him. “Whoever can faithfully carry out the proposals of Dr. Sun Yat-sen will become the greatest figure in China,” he said to the flattered general. Tang replied, “I am ready to follow all your directives.”14 Borodin now became obsessed with his struggle against Chiang Kai-shek and no longer heeded Stalin's October directive.
Meanwhile, Borodin encountered major problems in Wuhan. As the units of the militarists—Tang Shengzhi first among many—joined the Guomindang army, its officer corps, never a bastion of liberalism, became increasingly conservative. General Tang himself was by no means a “leftist.” He only played at revolution, hoping with the help of the CCP and the Guomindang “left” to oust Chiang Kai-shek and become commander in chief. Thus the change in the composition of the NRA actually facilitated the rapid increase of “rightist” influence in the Guomindang. Borodin was powerless against them. As Zhang Guotao brilliantly stated, the situation in the city could best be described as “the beautiful dusk.”15 The flurry of leftist phrases bore no relation to the actual balance of forces.
In November 1926, Chiang Kai-shek took Nanchang and, inspired by success, confronted Borodin directly. In response, on Borodin's initiative a so-called Provisional Joint Assembly of Party and Government Organizations was convened in Wuhan on December 13 and assumed all power in the Guomindang-controlled areas. In addition to the Guomindang “leftists,” three communists joined this body. There were posters everywhere proclaiming, “Increase the Authority of the Party!” “Demand Wang-Chiang Cooperation!” and “Welcome Wang Jingwei's Return to China!” No one seemed bothered by the fact that Wang had still not returned to China. Slogans such as “We support Commander in Chief Chiang!” that had earlier adorned the city were replaced with the call “We support the leadership of the central government!”16 A rupture between “leftist” Wuhan and “rightist” Nanchang had become inevitable.
The evolving situation was discussed at a meeting of members of the Central Bureau of the CCP along with Voitinsky and Borodin on the evening of December 13. Most of the top party leaders, including Mao, were present. It was a stormy meeting. Chen Duxiu delivered the political report, which, in the spirit of the October directive, pointed out the “extremely serious” danger of a split in the united front. He asserted that “now most of the GMD's political and military strength is in the hands of the right,” which, although it “desperately wants to calm down the workers' and peasants' movement …… has not openly obstructed the anti-imperialist movement.” Chen proposed doing everything to “save the rightists now” and convince them “to unite the armed forces with the people.” In this connection, he sharply criticized those who had committed “leftist errors,” and called for toning down class conflict in the cities and countryside and withdrawing the most radical slogans that might irritate the Guomindang. “We should try to explain to shop clerks and workers that they should not raise excessively high demands,” he asserted. “The current struggles over rent- and interest-reduction are more pressing for the peasantry than solving the land problem,” he added.17
Mao was deeply depressed by the content of his teacher's report, which seemed unthinkable from a communist perspective. Did he know that Chen, forced to persuade his comrades to accept what he himself did not believe, felt disgusted? Sooner or later, however, all communists, not just those in China, had to learn the simple art of hypocrisy.
For now, however, Mao was not ready to surrender without a fight. Although Chen did not criticize him personally, Mao flew into a rage. Chen's proposals also provoked objections from representatives from Guangdong and Hunan, who spoke of the need to mobilize the masses. Mao Zedong came to their defense, but their views were rejected by a majority of those present.18 The resolution adopted at the end of the meeting pointed to two dangerous deviations in the united front, namely “the irrepressible leftward movement of the unfolding mass movement, [and] …… the unrestrained rightward movement of the military authorities and their fear of the mass movement.” Therefore, the CCP must exert pressure on the Guomindang government, “compelling it to shift to the left” and at the same time attract the masses, compelling “them to lean slightly to the right.”19
None of this, however, could alter reality. Voitinsky held talks in Nanchang with Chiang Kai-shek that achieved nothing. Returning to Hankou, he told Zhang Guotao that the “situation was hopeless.”20 On December 31, 1926, Tan Yankai, the head of the National government, and other conservative ministers who did not want to relocate from Canton to “leftist” Wuhan joined Chiang Kai-shek in Nanchang. Although the “leftists” proclaimed Wuhan the new capital of Guomindang China, the “right” wing of the Guomindang continued to grow stronger daily. On January 3, 1927, Chiang and his supporters decided to establish an anti-Wuhan center of power, the Provisional Central Political Council. In the beginning of February, Chiang demanded from Moscow Borodin's prompt recall and replacement by someone to Chiang's own liking (Chiang named Karl Radek or Lev Karakhan).21
By this time Mao had already left Wuhan to speak at the First Peasant Congress of Hunan. The situation in the upper echelons of the party depressed him, and so the timing of the trip was opportune. On December 17 he arrived in Changsha, where a grand reception had been arranged for him. Here in his native place they remembered him, respected him, and valued him, especially because communists still dominated the local Guomindang organizations and most of them respected Mao as a highly successful fellow countryman. After all, Mao had been a candidate member of the Central Executive Committee of the Guomindang, which is to say, he had entered the leadership cohort. “You possess rich experience in the peasant movement,” the organizers of the congress, most of whom were CCP members, wrote to him in the telegram of invitation. “We await your return to Hunan impatiently, and we cherish great hopes for the leadership you will provide here for everything.”22
Three days later Mao Zedong delivered a key speech at a joint session of the delegates of the peasants' and workers' congresses of Hunan. More than three hundred people crowded into the small auditorium of the local theater to hear him. Mao was introduced as “leader of the Chinese revolution.” His speech, however, was less revolutionary than the great majority of the extremely leftist delegates would have liked. But what could Mao say in public after Stalin's October directive and the December resolution of the CCP Central Executive Committee Moreover, a representative of the Far Eastern Bureau of the ECCI was on the presidium of the congress. (He was Boris Freier, called Bu Lici [Boris] by the Chinese.) Mao's message was basically as follows: “[T]he time for us to overthrow the landlords has not yet come. …… [N]ow is the time to knock down the imperialists, the warlords, the local bullies [tuhao] and bad gentry [lieshen], to reduce land rents, to reduce interest, and to increase the wages of farm laborers. …… [I]n the period of the national revolution we do not intend to take the land for ourselves.” Naturally, as he had done earlier he emphasized the significance of the peasant struggle. “The national revolution is the joint revolution of all classes, but there is a central problem of the national revolution, which is the peasant problem. Everything depends on the solution to this problem. …… If the peasant problem is solved, the problems of the workers, merchants, students, educators, and others will likewise be solved.”23
Mao's speech pleased the Soviet representative,24 but the Hunanese communists were obviously disappointed. As radicals, they had wanted to hear a call to a “redistribution of the land by the people themselves.”
Yet, neither in Hunan nor in Hubei nor in Jiangxi had the peasants risen up against the landlords on their own. In the wake of the advance of the columns of the National Revolutionary Army, it was not a spontaneous movement of the peasant toilers that gained strength in the countryside; rather, it was a disturbance of the rural lumpen proletariat, that is, that part of the rural population that the peasants themselves from time immemorial had viewed as the most destructive factor in society. One of the characteristic features of village life in China was the division of society not into gentry and peasantry, as in the West, but into two deeply antagonistic parts: those who had land, including not only the rich but all who could feed themselves, and those without land, the rural lumpen proletariat. Because of the enormous agrarian over-population in China there was not enough land for everyone, so that even a tenant farmer, no matter how poor he may have been, felt happy in comparison with the ragged folk who tramped the rural roads. The gulf between working farmer and the rural lumpen proletariat was enormous, a hundred times greater than that between rich and poor peasants. An important reason for this was that in China there had never existed formal class distinctions like that between “peasant” and “landlord.” Farmers were distinguished from each other solely in terms of the level of the income their property produced and were categorized as either large or small landlords (dizhu) or peasants (nongmin). Of course, this did not mean that there were no contradictions within the class of landowners itself, but all these usually paled in comparison with the danger of the lumpens. The crime and violence of these latter made them a menace to all farmers, which is why even landless tenants usually lined up on the side of the landholders.
The situation was exacerbated by the strong clan divisions in the villages. The peasants lived in communities bound internally by strong traditional bonds. Within the communities everyone was related, closely or distantly, and all bore the same surname. Moreover, they were often all members of the same secret society. Naturally, the position and incomes of various members of the clan differed, and within the community there were both large property owners as well as poor tenants. Such circumstances usually did not create much discord in the course of daily life. The blood relations among the peasants were stronger than was class consciousness. This was the more so since the wealthier clan members of the community did not exploit the tenant members badly and, as a rule, rented them land on favorable terms. Not infrequently, the poorer relatives had the right to rent land belonging to the clan on advantageous terms. They also received protection from armed militia, the so-called mintuan, which were supported by the village leaders.
This protection was particularly important not only in the event of clashes between the peasants and rural bandits, but also in case of fierce interclan conflicts. Such conflicts occurred quite frequently, especially in those regions in southern China where society was traditionally divided between rich and poor clans. The latter were usually composed of lineages that had moved from the north to the south many centuries earlier but had not assimilated either in a cultural or social sense with the local inhabitants. Even in the twentieth century southerners contemptuously called them Hakka, the pronunciation of kejia (guest) in the dialect of the newcomers. The same term was also applied to other settlers, not only those from the north. In China as a whole there were more than thirty million Hakkas, but their clans were scattered throughout a vast territory of southern China, from Sichuan in the west to Fujian in the east. The imperious local clans (the bendi, or “core inhabitants”) did not give the migrants access to fertile lands, so the Hakka were forced to live in hill country that was poorly suited to agriculture. Consequently, from generation to generation they were forced to rent land from the old residents who took advantage of the migrants.
Roughly a quarter of the new arrivals had no work and either turned to banditry or begging. Poverty among the Hakka was so great that in most Hakka families even rice was considered a delicacy. Even worse than their indigence was the daily humiliation to which they were exposed. The indigenous people despised them on many counts—because they spoke in their own dialect, because their women never bound their feet, but most of all because ages ago the Hakka “betrayed” their own small homeland. “By leaving their native lands, they showed disrespect to the memory of their ancestors,” asserted the bendi. Therefore, it is understandable why from time to time the oppressed clans rebelled, and then it was a war to the death, often resulting in the total extermination of the weaker lineage.n14
As a rule, neither the rural lumpen proletariat nor the members of the subordinate clans demanded any land redistribution. What they strived for, in a word, was power. They wanted to dominate, humiliate, and grind into the dirt everyone who was even slightly better off than they. The rural lumpen proletariat were simply not interested in the means of production, and the members of the poorer communities were convinced that the only way to solve their problems was by exterminating the wealthy clans to the last person. Unlike in the West, there was no baronial land in China. All land was either worked by the peasant proprietors themselves or rented out. In this situation, a blanket redistribution of land to everyone on an equal basis threatened sharecroppers and poor peasants by inevitably shrinking the parcels of land from which they fed their families, perhaps even leading to the total loss of their land. The only ones inclined to a total redistribution were the destitute paupers, who, unlike the bandit and rural lumpen proletariat, had not yet lost the habit or taste for productive labor. But many of them, too, bound by patriarchal-clan concepts of life, rarely lifted a hand to work on the land of the landlords. In the best—or, more accurately, the worst—case, they identified with the rural lumpen proletariat, attacking the wealthy to grab their money and provisions.
The danger posed by the rural lumpen proletariat and paupers naturally mitigated the interclan contradictions, but it certainly did not eliminate them. Life in China did not turn into an unending clan war because, in addition to the rural lumpen proletariat, all the peasants had another common enemy, the government. Everyone—both landowners and tenants—suffered from the government's taxes, corrupt officials, and militarist oligarchs. When the tax burden was increased, taxpaying landowners were forced to raise rents. Relying upon armed force, the militarists were literally plundering the rural population. Taxes, not simply the land tax, but dozens of supplementary ones, including an irrigation tax, a tax to deal with natural disasters, and dozens of others were levied, often several years in advance.n13 The peasants were also forced to present gifts to officials, arrange expensive dinners, and fulfill other duties as well. The only immunity was among that stratum of the village elite who because of their family or other ties enjoyed the protection of bureaucrats or army officials.25
Obviously, the problems were immense and difficult to resolve. The objective allies of the communists in the Chinese countryside were the rural lumpen proletariat, as Mao had long understood. Thus in January 1926 he had called for the admission of this group into the peasant unions. But he must have known that the rules of the unions forbade admission to vagrants and people of unknown occupation. The peasants did not want an influx of rural lumpen proletarians into their organizations, so the Guomindang, meeting them halfway, even adopted special resolutions closing the doors of the unions to “bandit elements.” The rural lumpen proletarians themselves were not clamoring to enter the peasant unions since the union members had pledged not to gamble.26 In addition to these outcasts of society, the CCP could unconditionally count upon support from the dependent Hakka clans. It could also count upon the sympathy of a part of the poorest peasants who belonged to wealthy lineages, but this sympathy demanded a particularly skillful sort of propaganda. Thus the question the CCP faced was, Either we fight for hegemony in the revolution, in which case we need to stir up the paupers, the rural lumpen proletariat, and the poor lineages against the rest of the peasantry, or we submit to the Guomindang, which is fighting the militarists but defending both the rights of the peasant proprietors and the privileges of the landlords.
It is understandable, therefore, that prior to Stalin's October directive the local communists, including those in Hunan, wanting to establish a future communist dictatorship, consciously lighted the flames of fratricidal warfare in the countryside. Mao himself contributed to the instigation of mass carnage. He rejected the notion that the paupers and rural lumpen proletariat were creating a problem for the united front that was no less serious than that of the “rightist” NRA officers.
In Hunan during the initial period of the Northern Expedition, the peasants were passive and showed little real support for the troops of the NRA. After the establishment of the new government, however, the mass movement grew exponentially, due in large part to incitement by the communists. (Toward the end of 1926 some 110 communist organizers but only 20 from the Guomindang were working in the Hunan countryside. In addition, there were many members of the Communist Youth League.)27 Moreover, the communists' appeals and slogans electrified the atmosphere, facilitating the upsurge of a spontaneous movement even in places communists were physically unable to reach. All the prohibitions barring the rural lumpen proletariat from joining the peasant unions were discarded. The result was that many of the peasant unions were taken over by bandit secret societies such as the Red Spears and the Elder Brother Society, which groups always inspired terror among respectable rural inhabitants.28 Entire villages, including the members of poor clans, enrolled en masse.
“Class organizations of the peasants” grew like mushrooms after a rain. In July 1926 there were 400,000 members of various peasant organizations in Hunan, and by December that number had grown to more than 1.3 million.29 Taking advantage of the situation, the rabble took to destroying the homes of the rich, and the communists were gleeful. Here was class struggle in the countryside! “[I]n Hunan, the out-of-work peasants are the bravest and most heroic vanguard,” wrote members of a peasant association controlled by the communists. “They fiercely attack the oppressing classes [with methods] such as wearing high hats, parades, fines of money, fines of food and drink, beating, and settling accounts. …… Now the feudal class has risen in great panic.”30 The same sort of “revolutionary” upsurge was observed in other provinces occupied by the NRA. An explosion of banditry occurred on a massive scale. There were terrible clashes between poor and rich clans in which entire villages were slaughtered.
In December 1926, all this had to be stopped just because the policy of the Comintern had changed. Could one really explain to the “warriors of the revolution” who were drunk on blood that their enemies were really their friends? And who should explain this new party policy? Mao Zedong certainly did not want to get involved with this, but he needed arguments to convince the leadership of the party and, if possible, Stalin that the policy of retreat vis-à-vis the rightists was mistaken. He decided to investigate several districts in Hunan to gather data to confirm his radical views. Several years later, with reference to an analogous situation, he would say, “Without investigating you have no right to speak,” unmistakably hinting that other “theorists” would profit by spending less time in their offices.31
He spent from January 4 to February 5, 1927, on his investigation and gathered an enormous amount of material on the development of the mass movement in the five districts in Hunan. Among those with whom he spoke were, in his own words, “experienced peasants” and “comrades in the peasant movement.” The result was a comprehensive Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan, which he began writing in Changsha. Kaihui helped him work up the material; it would be difficult to overestimate her contribution. The children were being looked after by a nurse whom Mao and Kaihui had hired in December.
Mao was living not far from the center of Changsha, in the remarkable old district of Wangluyuan. The small wooden house stood on a hill from which one could view majestic Mount Yuelu rising above the opposite bank of the Xiang River. The scenery could inspire any poet to write noble verses about love and bliss. Mao, however, was not feeling poetic. Anger and fury drove his writing brush as he wrote his manifesto in defense of the agrarian revolution of the unfortunate masses.
“I saw and heard many strange things of which I had hitherto been unaware,” he declared in the beginning of his report. Then he presented his main thesis:
[A]ll criticisms directed against the peasant movement must be speedily set right, and the various erroneous measures adopted by the revolutionary authorities concerning the peasant movement must be speedily changed. …… In a very short time, several hundred million peasants in China's central, southern, and northern provinces will rise like a fierce wind or tempest, a force so swift and violent that no power, however great, will be able to suppress it. They will break through all the trammels that bind them and rush forward along the road to liberation. …… All revolutionary parties and all revolutionary comrades will stand before them to be tested, to be accepted or rejected as they decide. To march at their head and lead them? To stand behind them, gesticulating and criticizing them? Or to stand opposite them and oppose them? Every Chinese is free to choose among the three, but by the force of circumstances you are fated to make the choice quickly.
What “peasants” was Mao talking about? Just whom did he wish to lead?
Those people in the countryside who used to go around in worn-out leather shoes, carry broken umbrellas, wear green gowns, and gamble—in short, all those who were formerly despised and kicked into the gutter by the gentry, who had no social standing, and who were completely deprived of the right to speak, have now dared to lift their heads. Not only have they raised their heads, they have also taken power into their hands. They are now running the township peasant associations (the lowest level of peasant associations), and have turned them into a formidable force. They raise their rough, blackened hands and lay them on the heads of the gentry. They tether the bad gentry with ropes, crown them with tall paper hats, and parade them through the villages. …… Every day the coarse, harsh sounds of their denunciation pierce the ears of these gentry. They are giving orders and running everything. They, who used to rank below everyone else, now rank above everybody else—that is what people mean by “turning things upside down.”
The well-to-do farmers branded such “peasants” as riffraff. After all, the paupers who flooded the peasant associations mistreated even those villagers who were not very rich. Under various pretexts the paupers did not even let them join the peasant associations. Mao himself reported: “They coined the phrase: ‘If he has land, he must be a bully, and all gentry are evil.' In some of the places even those who own 50 mu [8.15 acres] of fields are called local bullies, and those who wear long gowns are called bad gentry.” Not only did the lawless mob impose fines and indemnities on everyone whom they arbitrarily labeled “bully” and “evil gentry,” but they also beat those who used sedan chairs, believing they exploited carriers. (All well-to-do peasants and landlords used sedan-chairs when they had to travel.) The mob also swarmed into the houses of relatively wealthy neighbors, slaughtered their pigs, and consumed their grain. “They may even loll on the ivory-inlaid beds belonging to the young ladies in the households of the local bullies and bad gentry.” The mob did not even shrink from killing the rich. The paupers also took delight in mocking the wealthy and desecrating hallowed sites that had been off-limits to the likes of them. “The women of Baiguo in Hengshan xian [county] gathered in force and swarmed into their ancestral temple,” Mao wrote, “firmly planted their backsides in the seats and joined in the eating and drinking, while the venerable clan bigwigs had willy-nilly to let them do as they pleased. At another place, where poor peasants had been excluded from temple banquets, a group of them flocked in and ate and drank their fill, while the local bullies and bad gentry and other long-gowned gentlemen all took to their heels in fright.”
Mao's conclusion was as follows:
[T]he privileges the feudal landlords have enjoyed for thousands of years are being shattered to pieces. Their dignity and prestige are being completely swept away. With the collapse of the power of the gentry, the peasant associations have now become the sole organs of authority, and “All power to the peasant associations” has become a reality. …… It is fine. …… To give credit where credit is due, if we allot ten points to the accomplishments of the democratic revolution, then the achievements of the city dwellers and the military rate only three points, while the remaining seven points should go to the achievements of the peasants in their rural revolution.
Just seven years after maintaining that violent and bloody revolutions were ineffectual, the enthusiastic young man who had believed in liberalism spilled so much hatred onto paper that reading his venomous outpouring is enough to send chills down one's spine:
[A] revolution is not like inviting people to dinner, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery. …… A revolution is an uprising, an act of violence whereby one class overthrow the power of another. …… It was necessary to overthrow completely the authority of the gentry, to knock them down and even stamp them underfoot. …… To put it bluntly, it is necessary to bring about a brief reign of terror in every rural area. …… To right the wrong it is necessary to exceed the proper limits; the wrong cannot be righted without doing so.32
The report was almost ready, and it was time for Mao to return to Wuhan. Leaving Changsha he hastened toward the unknown. Once again he was going to “swim against the current,” but he didn't want to retreat. He had now identified those whose anger born of desperation would help him on his ascent.
He returned to Wuhan on February 12, and four days later delivered a preliminary report to the Central Executive Committee of the CCP. “All actions of the peasants against the feudal landlord class (dizhu) are correct. Even if there are some excesses, they are still correct.”33 After his presentation, he again returned to finishing the Report. Soon Kaihui arrived with the children and the nurse. They all moved into a spacious house in Wuchang. For a while several of his friends from the party lived there, too.34
Toward the end of February Mao finished his Report and presented it to the party leadership. The unexpected happened. Not only was the radical document accepted and highly praised by a majority of the members of the Central Bureau of the CCP, but it was also warmly greeted in Moscow itself. In March 1927, the first two chapters of the Report (there were three chapters in all) were published in the main party journal, Guide Weekly. The complete text began to be published in the Hunan communist weekly Zhanshi (Warrior). Excerpts from the Report also appeared in the left Guomindang press, and in April a Hankou publisher issued it in a pamphlet edition with a preface by Qu Qiubai. Moreover, in May and June 1927, the first two chapters of the Report were reprinted in Russian and English in Kommunisticheskii Internatsional (Communist International), the political organ of the ECCI. Following this the same chapters were published in Revoliutsionnyi Vostok (Revolutionary East), the organ of the Soviet Asian Studies Association. Finally, in May 1927, Bukharin, who was then Stalin's closest associate and in essence the number-two man in the Kremlin, gave a positive assessment of Mao's Report at the Eighth Plenum of the ECCI.
There was a simple explanation for this reaction. While Mao was traveling in Hunan, Moscow decided to halt the retreat in view of the intensifying power struggle between Tang Shengzhi and Chiang Kai-shek. The CCP was instructed not to fear the possibility of sharpening class conflict in the countryside. Stalin pressured the Seventh Enlarged Plenum of the ECCI (November 22–December 16, 1926) to adopt an aggressive resolution on the situation in China. Although this document did not yet refer to an imminent agrarian revolution, it spoke of the need to place the question in “a prominent place in the program of the national revolutionary movement.” It even emphasized there was no need to fear this might weaken the anti-imperialist united front.35 The new tactics were embodied in a concrete directive to China, sent to Borodin on December 17, 1926.36 Moreover, exactly two months later Stalin attempted to launch an offensive policy inside the Guomindang. The general strike of Shanghai workers on February 19, 1927, under the leadership of the CCP, forced his hand. Within three days the strike had grown into an armed uprising against the militarist Sun Chuanfang. Even though it was suppressed two days later it seemed that the general situation in the country had become sharply radicalized.
In February the Politburo of the Soviet Communist Party facilitated the prompt return to China of Wang Jingwei, leader of the Guomindang “leftists,” in the hope of strengthening the “leftist” faction within the Guomindang. Wang returned to China via Moscow, where Comintern officials were ready to discuss Chinese affairs with him.37 The new tactics led to the following:
Energetically place the peasant, petty bourgeois, and worker base under the left Guomindang …… aim to get rid of the Guomindang rightists, discredit them politically and systematically remove them from leading positions …… aim to take over important positions in the army …… intensify the work of Guomindang and communist cells in the army …… work toward arming the workers and peasants, transform the local peasant committees into de facto organs of power and armed self-defense. …… A policy of voluntary semi-legality is unacceptable; the communist party must not act as a brake on the mass movement. …… Otherwise the revolution will face enormous danger.38
In brief, Mao was lucky. His Report concurred with Moscow's new resolutions. Yet, it was too early to celebrate. The political situation in Wuhan remained unstable, and the radical peasant movement, of course, did not help to normalize it. In the spring of 1927, it burst all bounds and, in the words of Zhang Guotao, one of the few members of the CCP Central Executive Committee who was skeptical of Mao's Report, the peasant movement reached a “stage of madness.” No less extreme were the actions of members of the so-called workers' pickets that were operating in a number of cities. The riffraff that flocked into these organizations even attacked the relatives of influential Guomindang members and communists. In Changsha the son-in-law of Tan Yankai was arrested and fined even though Tan had distanced himself from Chiang Kai-shek in February 1927 and gone over to the “left” in Wuhan. Even the father of General Tang Shengzhi, who was considered the bulwark of the “left” Guomindang, was subjected to persecution.n15 It comes as no surprise, then, that General Tang, who visited Changsha in February 1927, let slip the following irritated remark in an informal conversation with the Japanese consul: “[A]lthough the provincial government is temporarily in the hands of the communists, they and the strife they have brought about will be dealt with and their excesses curbed. As a result their regime will end and a new government will come in.”39
The Third Plenum of the Guomindang CEC, held in Wuhan from March 10 to 17, 1927, added fuel to the fire. Responding to pressure from the “leftists” and the communists, the plenum stripped General Chiang of all his top posts in the party, including the chairmanship of the Standing Committee of the CEC. It also resolved to reshuffle the composition of the National government and offer two posts to communists. Mao Zedong, who, along with the other five candidate members of the CEC, had been accorded voting rights, actively participated in the meetings of the plenum and spoke several times during the debates. He and two Guomindang “leftists” helped draft the resolutions on the peasant question and the plenum's appeal to peasants. He was responsible for their radical tone, especially of the latter document, which directly summoned the peasants to agrarian revolution, that is, to the further development of the peasant movement not only against “warlords, imperialists, local bullies and bad gentry,” but also against the privileges of the entire “feudal landlord class.”40
Chiang Kai-shek, not present at the plenum, was forced to declare his support for its decisions, but he was simply waiting for the moment to strike a decisive blow against the entire “Wuhan gang.” The Wuhan group was likewise waiting for an opportune moment to deal with Chiang Kai-shek. Immediately following the plenum they issued a secret directive to General Cheng Qian, who commanded NRA troops on the right bank of the Yangzi, to arrest Chiang Kai-shek at the first opportunity.41 Thus, following the plenum the polarization within the Guomindang only intensified.
Suddenly a new popular uprising erupted in Shanghai on March 21, and this time it succeeded in toppling the local warlord Sun Chuanfang. On the evening of March 22, NRA troops entered Shanghai, which had already been liberated by workers' militias. The next day Nanjing was taken. This was all so unexpected that for an instant everyone in Wuhan thought that the victory of the Guomindang was imminent. On April 1, Wang Jingwei returned from Europe to liberated Shanghai, where he was warmly greeted by the public. On April 10 he arrived in Wuhan.
Like everyone else, Mao rejoiced at the successes of the GMD army, but he remained focused on the countryside. In early March the Central Peasant Training Institute was established in Wuchang and the Guomindang CEC appointed him one of its leaders. He was constantly busy, preparing lesson plans, hiring instructors, dealing with financial matters, and teaching his favorite courses on “The Peasant Question” and “Educational Work in the Countryside.” He also scheduled the daily life of the more than eight hundred students, three times as many as there had been in Canton.42 On top of that, he continued to work in the CCP's Committee on the Peasant Movement, delivered lectures, and provided reports to the General Political Administration of the NRA and other organizations. In late March, Mao was chosen as among the leaders of the newly created All-China Peasant Association, at a preparatory conference in Hankou to convene a National Congress of Peasant Unions, and headed its Organizational Department. The All-China association brought together peasant unions operating in seventeen provinces throughout the country.43
At this conference, in the presence of Peng Pai, Fang Zhimin, who was one of the organizers of the peasant movement in Jiangxi province, and “two Russian communists, York and Volen,”n16 Mao advocated “a widespread redistribution of land.” Apparently no one objected to such an extreme project. The members approved a resolution endorsing Mao's proposal and notified the Central Executive Committee of the CCP. The conference requested that the Chinese communists examine this question at their forthcoming Fifth Congress.44 On April 2, a meeting of the Standing Committee of the Guomindang CEC included Mao in the membership of the Land Committee of the CEC to help in working out measures to implement “the transfer of land to the peasants.” Everything seemed to be going his way.
Just then Mao's family had a new addition. On April 4, 1927, Kaihui gave birth to their third son. His father first named him Anmin (“People Who Reach the Shore of Socialism”), but then changed the name to Anlong (“Dragon Who Reaches the Shore of Socialism”). By “dragon” he meant the peasant movement, which, like the mighty hero of Chinese folk tales, “shook Heaven and Earth.”
Soon, however, disturbing news began to reach Wuhan. On March 24, Nanjing, which had been occupied by troops of the NRA, was subjected to shelling from British and American ships in response to attacks against the residences of foreigners during which several persons, including the British consul, had been wounded. Chiang Kai-shek, who arrived in Shanghai soon afterward, was obviously preparing for a repetition of the events of March 20, 1926, but this time with a much tougher ending. Voitinsky had already informed Moscow of Chiang's intentions as far back as late February.45 Clashes between units of Chiang Kai-shek's army and armed worker and peasant formations increased in frequency. In a number of places Chiang's forces crushed trade union organizations. Stalin, afraid of provoking Chiang Kai-shek, again retreated. In late March 1927, the Soviet Politburo decided on new concessions to Chiang. Directives were sent to the Central Executive Committee of the CCP “to avoid clashes with the National Army and its leaders in Shanghai at any price.”46 But it was already too late. Stalin's policy was totally bankrupt. On April 12, having secured the support of prominent Shanghai businessmen and the chiefs of the municipal mafia groups, the Qingbang (Green Gang), Chiang Kai-shek unleashed a bloody white terror in Shanghai and other parts of east China. As a result of the joint actions of Chiang's soldiers and the gangsters, more than five thousand people were executed and about as many arrested during just the first two days of the coup, April 12 and April 13.
Ironically, April 12 was the day that Mao spoke at a session of the Land Committee of the Guomindang CEC, calling for the prompt implementation of agrarian revolution. Perturbed by the outbreak of riffraff banditry, Chiang Kai-shek's officers were crushing the communists, but Mao continued to insist upon the radicalization of the movement. He apparently rejected the new Stalinist directive. “The so-called confiscation of land,” he declared, “simply means not paying rent, that's all. At present the peasant movement in Hunan and Hubei has already reached the point where the peasants themselves have stopped paying rent and have seized power. It is first necessary to solve the agrarian problem in reality and then work out the legal framework.”47
News about the events in Shanghai only poured oil on the fire. On April 15 came news of an anticommunist coup in Canton. The local generals had chosen the path of Chiang Kai-shek. Three days later Chiang Kai-shek proclaimed the establishment of a new National government in Nanjing. Mao became more agitated than ever. At meetings of the Land Committee, and with the support of several Guomindang extreme “leftists,” Mao began drafting a resolution aimed at solving the agrarian question. His draft was criticized, however, by Wang Jingwei, Tan Yankai, and General He Jian, who deemed it necessary to avoid “excesses” in the peasant movement, so all the work done by the committee was in vain.48 The Land Committee was forced to note, “The problems are so great and intricate that without [analysis] of materials on the situation in various provinces and without taking into account various points of view it will be impossible to resolve them. …… A fundamental resolution of the agrarian problem is not within the competence of [this] C[E]C meeting.”49 Mao was extremely dissatisfied with this outcome. “The Guomindang leaders cover up their complete unwillingness and inability to satisfy the demands of the peasants with empty, puffed-up phrases,” is how he summed things up.50
To a degree Mao's mood accorded with Stalin's new directives that the Comintern had sent to China shortly after Chiang Kai-shek's coup. Stalin now demanded that the CCP effect the prompt radicalization of the Guomindang “left,” and that the Chinese communists do everything possible to urgently “push” the supporters of Wang Jingwei toward organizing a real social transformation. In implementing this new policy Stalin invested particular hopes in the Comintern's new representative in China, the Indian communist M. N. Roy, a member of the ECCI who had been sent to China in March 1927. The energetic Roy, who arrived in Hankou in early April, quickly began to express a series of radical ideas to Borodin and the leaders of the CCP.51 (The Central Executive Committee of the Communist Party had relocated to Hankou after Chiang Kai-shek's coup.) Naturally, Roy immediately came into conflict with Borodin, who intuitively grasped that any extremist demarche on the part of the communists could precipitate the “leftist” Guomindang generals into the anticommunist camp. Borodin was supported by Chen Duxiu, who also understood that an attempt to implement Stalin's new policy could only result in a bloody denouement. After April 12, Chen “spent whole days thinking and worrying and working diligently; but the ogre of melancholy always held him tight.”52 He knew he faced a reckoning with Stalin for everything that would inevitably come to pass regarding the Communist Party. Perhaps better than anyone else in the CCP, Chen understood that Stalin's policy in China, which he had had to follow all these years, was doomed to failure from the very beginning. “He tried his best to produce a remedial program; but his strength was inadequate, and no miracles dropped from heaven,” recalled Zhang Guotao.53
In these circumstances, the Fifth Congress of the Communist Party began its sessions in Wuchang on April 27, two weeks after the Shanghai coup. It started off as a grand show. Many leaders of the “left” Guomindang and the National government, including Wang Jingwei, Tan Yankai, Xu Qian, and Sun Ke, came to greet the communists. There were lots of speeches. This was the largest congress the CCP had held so far, with eighty delegates and more than twenty guests gathered in a hall festooned with banners and pennants. The delegates represented 57,967 members of the party. (During the Fourth Congress in January 1925, the CCP had only 994 members.) The growth in the ranks was impressive indeed, but the data announced at the congress did not take into account that in the two largest cities, Shanghai and Canton, the party organizations of the CCP had been almost wholly destroyed on the eve of the congress. There was nothing much to celebrate. The situation was catastrophic, and there was nothing the congress could do about it. This is how Mao remembered the sessions:
When the Fifth Conference was convened in Wuhan …… the Party was still under the domination of Chên Tu-hsiu [Chen Duxiu]. Although Chiang Kai-shek had already led the counter-revolution and begun his attacks on the Communist Party in Shanghai and Nanking, Chên was still for moderation and concessions to the Wuhan Kuomintang [Guomindang]. …… I was very dissatisfied with the Party policy then, especially towards the peasant movement. …… But Chên Tu-hsiu violently disagreed. …… Consequently, the Fifth Conference, held on the eve of the crisis of the Great Revolution, failed to pass an adequate land programme. My opinions, which called for rapid intensification of the agrarian struggle, were not even discussed, for the Central Committee, also dominated by Chên Tu-hsiu, refused to bring them up for consideration. The Conference dismissed the land problem by defining a landlord as “a peasant who owned over 500 mou [82 acres] of land”—a wholly inadequate and unpractical basis on which to develop the class struggle.54
Not everyone in the inner circle of party leadership supported Chen Duxiu. As always, Qu Qiubai was on Mao's side. During the Congress Qu had distributed a brochure, “Disputed Issues in the Chinese Revolution,” that was directed against “right opportunism.” He didn't attack Chen by name, but the entire work was pointed against Peng Shuzhi, who was close to Chen, and who as director of the Propaganda Department fiercely defended the policy of concessions. Mao's closest friend Cai Hesen likewise heatedly defended Mao.
With the support of such influential people, the Central Bureau chose Mao as a candidate member of the Central Committee of the CCP. (The congress passed a resolution renaming the highest organ of the party from Central Executive Committee to Central Committee.) Mao occupied the thirty-second position in the party hierarchy and after the congress he no longer headed the Committee on the Peasant Movement.
The “betrayal” by Chiang Kai-shek and the Cantonese generals had a deeply personal as well as public and political meaning for Mao. During the April 12 coup, one of his brothers, Zemin, was in Shanghai, and his other brother, Zetan, in Canton. Mao could not help but worry about them. Zemin had been working in the proletarian district of Zhabei since November 1925, after graduating from the Peasant Movement Training Institute in Canton. He headed the Publication and Literature Distribution Department of the Central Committee of the CCP and served as director of the party printing house and of its bookstore. He was living in Shanghai under the pseudonym Yang Ze with his second wife, a young departmental coworker named Qian Xijun.
As for Zetan, in April 1927 he was working in the peasant union in Guangdong. He was also married a second time. In October 1925, his first spouse, Zhao Xiangui, on assignment from the party, had left Changsha for Moscow to study at the Comintern's newly established educational institution for Chinese revolutionaries, the Sun Yat-sen University of the Toilers of China.55 (One hundred and eighteen young Chinese communists and members of the Guomindang, including Chiang Ching-kuo, Chiang Kai-shek's sixteen-year-old son from his first marriage, also left then for the “Red Mecca.”) Zetan remained in Canton, and he was not one to live alone. In the summer of 1926, sixteen-year-old, round-faced Zhou Wennan, Zetan's close acquaintance from the Socialist Youth League, came with her mother from Changsha to Canton at his request. She had already caught the eye of Mao's younger brother a year before Zetan's wife had gone to Moscow. There in Canton, after four or five months, they got married. (At this time the revolutionary youth paid no heed to such archaic concepts as official divorce, so that once his wife left for Moscow, Zetan felt completely free.) Half a year after their marriage, his new flame joined the Communist Youth League, and soon after, the CCP. In April 1927 she was five months pregnant.
Happily, everything turned out well for Mao's brothers and their wives. They managed to elude the “white” generals who were in power in Shanghai and Canton, and ultimately wound up in Wuchang, where Mao Zedong and Kaihui greeted them warmly. Soon after his arrival, Zemin began working as the managing editor of the left Guomindang newspaper Hankou minguo ribao (Hankou Republic daily), and Zetan, with the rank of captain, was sent to the Political Department of the Fourth Corps of the NRA, which corps had the largest number of communists.56
Meanwhile, the situation continued to deteriorate badly for the CCP. At the end of April it was reported from Beijing that on April 28, Li Dazhao had been executed by order of a military court. He had been arrested on April 6 by Chinese police not far from the Soviet legation in the territory of the Legation Quarter. In addition to Li Dazhao, nineteen leaders of the Northern Bureau of the CCP and of the Guomindang, among them one woman, were tortured and executed.57 Mao was grief-stricken. He had always treated Professor Li as his own teacher. Two and a half weeks later, on May 13, the Fourteenth Independent Division under General Xia Douyin, which had been considered totally loyal, rose up against the Wuhan government. General Xia attacked Wuhan and was repelled only through superhuman efforts. (Incidentally, Mao Zedong took part in the defense of Wuhan; he organized armed self-defense units from auditors of the Central Peasant Training Institute.)58 On May 21 a new uprising occurred, organized by Xu Kexiang, the commander of one of the regiments of the NRA stationed in Changsha, who unleashed a bloody bacchanalia in the capital of Hunan.
Unable to restrain his irritation, Stalin demanded the impossible of the CCP, namely, to direct the “left” Guomindang to unleash an agrarian revolution in all provinces, take measures to organize “eight or ten divisions” of revolutionary peasants and workers “as the Wuhan guard,” and to convince the supporters of Wang Jingwei that if they did not “learn to be revolutionary Jacobins, they would perish for the people and the revolution.”59 Stalin simply failed to understand the real correlation of forces in China, and therefore he insisted,
Without an agrarian revolution victory is impossible. …… We firmly stand for the seizure of land from below. …… We need to draw into the Central Committee of the Guomindang additional new peasant and worker leaders from below. …… We must change the current structure of the Guomindang. We must refresh the upper echelon of the Guomindang and recruit into it new leaders emerging from the agrarian revolution, and we must expand the periphery with millions from the workers and peasant unions. …… We must end our dependence on unreliable generals. …… It is time to act. We must punish the bastards.60
According to Zhang Guotao, when one of Stalin's telegrams was read at a meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee, “everyone present had the reaction of not knowing whether to cry or to laugh. …… How could we talk at this time of eliminating unreliable generals?”61 Chen Duxiu could only shake his head. “Earlier Zinoviev ordered us to help the bourgeoisie, and now Stalin tells us to carry out an agrarian revolution in the next twenty-four hours.”62
In this troubled time Mao Zedong gathered his brothers together to discuss the situation. To avoid upsetting Kaihui, they pretended to play mahjong; in fact, they were deciding what to do next. Realizing that Wang Jingwei would soon follow in the footsteps of Chiang Kai-shek, Mao said, “We cannot wait around until they kill us; we must either depart with the army [just then elements of the Fourth Corps were commencing a campaign against Jiujiang, southeast of Wuchang on the Jiangxi-Hubei border] or we must return to Hunan.” It was decided that the older brothers would ask to be sent on a mission to Hunan while Zetan left with the Fourth Corps. They also resolved that Zetan's pregnant wife, along with Kaihui and Mao's sons, would leave Wuchang for Changsha as soon as possible.63
Soon after this meeting Mao Zedong asked Chen Duxiu to send him to Hunan to try to salvage whatever might still be rescued. Cai Hesen supported Mao's request, suggesting that the Hunan party committee be reorganized with Mao as its secretary. Chen, however, wanted to send Mao to do party work in Sichuan, but Mao refused. On June 24, the Politburo Standing Committee adopted Cai's resolution, and Mao left for Changsha, soon joined by Zemin.
Meanwhile, the united front was unraveling in front of everyone's eyes. In mid-June it became known that Feng Yuxiang, whom the Guomindang “leftists” and the Comintern considered one of the most reliable military commanders, was making active preparations to follow the path of Chiang Kai-shek. A few days later Feng carried out a coup in Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan. In Wuhan itself the situation was growing increasingly complicated. Business was paralyzed, shops were closed, and factories shut down. Wuhan was being threatened from all sides. The dissatisfaction of the population steadily increased, prices spiraled upward, inflation grew, the political scene was chaotic. Most members of the CCP Central Committee had the sensation of “lingering in a leaky house with a rain-storm raging at night.”64
Under these circumstances, ten days after the resolution about party reorganization in Hunan, Chen Duxiu summoned Mao back to Wuhan. In Mao's words, Chen was afraid that Mao's radical actions would trigger an uprising by Tang Shengzhi.65 Chen still hoped to keep things from falling apart; he convened an enlarged meeting of the Central Committee and the Politburo at Borodin's house in Hankou, and discussed the situation with M. N. Roy and Borodin. But all was in vain. Under pressure from Moscow he was forced to step down on July 12; just three days later Wang Jingwei broke with the communists. The defeat of the Chinese Communist Party and with it the Stalinist line on China became a reality.
Mao was shocked. What was he thinking at the time? That everything might be saved if only the party gave the land to the peasants? That the peasants and workers should be armed? That the party should leave the Guomindang? Probably all three of these. Perhaps he remembered how happy he had been when the troops of the NRA had taken Shanghai and Nanjing. Or perhaps how he had rejoiced when his beloved “Little Dawn” (Kaihui) had given birth to their third son? Back then, in March and April, everything had seemed possible, everything had symbolized victory. It was then, in the fullness of spring, replete with joyful hopes about the future, that he had ascended the Yellow Crane Tower, which thrust up into the sky not far from his home. For a long time he had gazed into the distance at the flood tide of the boundless Yangzi River. Like hundreds of poets before him, he could not contain his feelings, which formed themselves into verses:
Nine vast rivers rush through central China,n17
an iron line plunges north to south.n18
Rain, mist, gray, immense gray.
Turtle and Snake Mountainsn19
Block the great Yangtze [Yangzi] River.
Where has the Yellow Crane flown?
Only the place for travelers remains.n20
Lifting the cup of wine to the pouring River,
my heart's tide surges wave-high.66
菩萨蛮·黄鹤楼 毛泽东 茫茫九派流中国， 沉沉一线穿南北。 烟雨莽苍苍， 龟蛇锁大江。 黄鹤知何去？ 剩有游人处。 把酒酹滔滔， 心潮逐浪高！
1 See Pang, Mao Zedong nianpu, 1893–1949 (Chronological Biography of Mao Zedong, 1893–1949), vol. 1, 169–72; Yuriev, Revoliutsiia 1925–1927 gg. v Kitae (The Revolution of 1925–1927 in China), 416; Vishniakova-Akimova, Two Years in Revolutionary China, 261–325; Chang, The Rise of the Chinese Communist Party, vol. 1, 532–72.
2 See Pang, Mao Zedong nianpu, 1893–1949 (Chronological Biography of Mao Zedong, 1893–1949), vol. 1, 172–73; Wang, Zhongguo gongchandang zuzhi shi ziliao huibian (Collection of Documents on the History of the CCP Organizations), 32.
3 Pang, Mao Zedong nianpu, 1893–1949 (Chronological Biography of Mao Zedong, 1893–1949), vol. 1, 169; Short, Mao, 168.
4 See Glunin, Kommunistechkaia partiia Kitaia nakanune i vo vremia natsional'noi revoliutsii 1925–1927 gg. (The Communist Party of China Before and During the 1925–1927 National Revolution), vol. 2, 192.
5 Chang, The Rise of the Chinese Communist Party, vol. 1, 529.
6 Zhongguo gongchandang di san ci zhongyang kuoda zhixing weiyuanhui yijue'an (Resolutions of the Third Enlarged Plenum of the CEC CCP) (n.p., 1926), 66.
7 Chang, The Rise of the Chinese Communist Party, vol. 1, 529.
8 See Mao Zedong shenghuo dang'an (Archives of Mao Zedong's Life), vol. 1, 93.
9 See RGASPI, collection 495, inventory 165, file 71, sheets 27–31.
10 See Glunin, Kommunisticheskaia partiia Kitaia nakanune i vo vremia natsional'noi revoliutsii 1925–1927 gg. (The Communist Party of China Before and During the 1925–1927 National Revolution), vol. 2, 198–201.
11 Schram, Mao's Road to Power, vol. 2, 411–13.
12 Ibid., 414–19.
13 Chang, The Rise of the Chinese Communist Party, vol. 1, 534–35, 542, 547.
14 Quoted from ibid., 557.
15 Ibid., 572.
16 Ibid., 562.
17 Chen Duxiu, “Political Report,” in Saich, The Rise to Power of the Chinese Communist Party, 219–23; Glunin, Kommunisticheskaia partiia Kitaia nakanune i vo vremia natsional'noi revoliutsii 1925–1927 gg. (The Communist Party of China Before and During the 1925–1927 National Revolution), vol. 2, 153–57.
18 See Pang, Mao Zedong nianpu, 1893–1949 (Chronological biography of Mao Zedong, 1893–1949), vol. 1, 174.
19 Quoted from Glunin, Kommunisticheskaia partiia Kitaia nakanune i vo vremia natsional'noi revoliutsii 1925–1927 gg. (The Communist Party of China Before and During the 1925–1927 National Revolution), vol. 2, 160.
20 Quoted from Chang, The Rise of the Chinese Communist Party, vol. 1, 573.
21 See Cherepanov, Zapiski voennogo sovetnika v Kitae (Notes of a Military Adviser in China), 517; Jonathan Fenby, Chiang Kai-shek: China's Generalissimo and the Nation He Lost (New York: Carroll & Graf, 2004), 127.
22 Pang, Mao Zedong nianpu, 1893–1949 (Chronological Biography of Mao Zedong, 1893–1949), vol. 1, 173.
23 Schram, Mao's Road to Power, vol. 2, 421, 422; “Soveshchanie Dal'biuro i Ts[i]k KPK, 18 ianvaria 1927 goda” (Conference of the Far Eastern Bureau and the CEC of the CCP, January 18, 1927), RGASPI, collection 495, inventory 154, file 294, sheet 3; A. V. Bakulin, Zapiski ob wuhan'skom periode kitaiskoi revoliutsii (iz istorii kitaiskoi revoliutsii 1925–1927 gg.) (Notes on the Wuhan Period of the Chinese Revolution [From the History of the Chinese Revolution of 1925–1927]) (Moscow and Leningrad: Giz, 1930), 51.
24 “Soveshchanie Dal'biuro i Ts[i]k KPK, 18 ianvaria 1927” (Conference of the Far Eastern Bureau and the CEC of the CCP, January 18, 1927), 3.
25 See A. A. Pisarev, Guomindang i agrarno-krest'ianskii vopros v Kitae v 20-30-e gody XX v. (The Guomindang and the Agrarian-Peasant Question in China in the 1920s and 1930s) (Moscow: Nauka, 1986), 17–53; L. P. Deliusin and A. S. Kostiaeva, Revoliutsiia 1925–1927 gg. v Kitae: Problemy i otsenki (The Revolution of 1925–1927 in China: Problems and Assessment) (Moscow: Nauka, 1985), 132–38; McDonald, The Urban Origins of Rural Revolution, 217–315; Roy Hofheinz Jr., The Broken Wave: The Chinese Communist Peasant Movement (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977), 3–53; Fernando Galbiati, P'eng P'ai and the Hai-lu-feng Soviet (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1985), 16–20, 41–42; Lucien Bianco, Peasants without the Party: Grass-roots Movements in Twentieth-Century China (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2001), 175–214; Mary S. Erbaugh, “The Secret History of the Hakkas: The Chinese Revolution as a Hakka Enterprise,” China Quarterly, no. 132 (1992): 937–68.
26 See A. S. Kostiaeva, Krest'ianskie soiuzy v Kitae 20-e gody XX veka (Peasant Unions in China in the 1920s) (Moscow: Nauka, 1978), 57; Deliusin and Kostiaeva, Revoliutsiia 1925–1927 gg. v Kitae: Problemy i otsenki (The Revolution of 1925–1927 in China: Problems and Assessment), 134.
27 See Glunin, Kommunisticheskaia partiia Kitaia nakanune i vo vremia natsional'noi revoliutsii 1925–1927 gg. (The Communist Party of China Before and During the 1925–1927 National Revolution), vol. 2, 186; McDonald, The Urban Origins of Rural Revolution, 303.
28 See Kostiaeva, Krest'ianskie soiuzy v Kitae 20-e gody XX veka (Peasant Unions in China in the 1920s), 57; McDonald, The Urban Origins of Rural Revolution, 272–73.
29 See Mao Zedong, Selected Works, vol. 1 (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1969), 24; McDonald, The Urban Origins of Rural Revolution, 271; Li, The Early Revolutionary Activities of Comrade Mao Tse-tung, 295.
30 Quoted from McDonald, The Urban Origins of Rural Revolution, 308.
31 Mao Zedong, Mao Zedong nongcun diaocha wenji (Works of Mao Zedong on Rural Investigation) (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1982), 1.
32 Schram, Mao's Road to Power, vol. 2, 429–64.
33 Ibid., 426.
34 See Wu, Mao Zedong guanghui licheng dituji (Atlas of Mao Zedong's Glorious Historical Path), 35; Pang, Mao Zedong nianpu, 1893–1949 (Chronological Biography of Mao Zedong, 1893–1949), vol. 1, 181.
35 Titarenko, Kommunisticheskii Internatsional i kitaiskaia revoliutsiia (The Communist International and the Chinese Revolution), 94, 96, 97–99.
36 RGASPI, collection 17, inventory 162, file 4, sheet 34. See also Titarenko, VKP(b), Komintern i Kitai: Dokumenty (The CPSU, the Comintern and China: Documents), vol. 2, 571.
37 RGASPI, collection 17, inventory 162, file 4, sheet 64.
38 Ibid., 71–72; see Titarenko, VKP(b), Komintern i Kitai: Dokumenty (The CPSU, the Comintern and China: Documents), vol. 2, 632–33.
39 Quoted from McDonald, The Urban Origins of Rural Revolution, 310.
40 Schram, Mao's Road to Power, vol. 2, 467–75.
41 See Chang, The Rise of the Chinese Communist Party, vol. 1, 581–82.
42 See Wu, Mao Zedong guanghui licheng dituji (Atlas of Mao Zedong's Glorious Historical Path), 35.
43 Ibid.; Pang, Mao Zedong nianpu, 1893–1949 (Chronological Biography of Mao Zedong, 1893–1949), vol. 1, 190; Schram, Mao's Road to Power, vol. 2, 486.
44 Snow, Red Star Over China, 158.
45 See “Zapis' besedy t. Grigoriia s Chan Kai-shi ot 22 fevralia 1927 g.” (Record of Conversation between Comrade Grigorii and Chiang Kai-shek, February 22, 1927), RGASPI, collection 514, inventory 1, file 240, sheets 12–13; see also Titarenko, VKP(b), Komintern i Kitai: Dokumenty (The CPSU, the Comintern and China: Documents), vol. 2, 630–31.
46 RGASPI, collection 17, inventory 162, file 4, sheets 90–93; see also Titarenko, VKP(b), Komintern i Kitai: Dokumenty (The CPSU, the Comintern and China: Documents), vol. 2, 658–59.
47 Quoted from Pang, Mao Zedong nianpu, 1893–1949 (Chronological Biography of Mao Zedong, 1893–1949), vol. 1, 193.
48 Ibid., 193–97.
49 Quoted from Jiang Yongjing, Baoluoting yu Wuhan zhengquan (Borodin and the Wuhan Government) (Taibei: Zhongguo xueshu zhuzuo jiangzhu weiyuanhui, 1963), 278, 280.
50 Quoted from Bakulin, Zapiski ob ukhanskom periode kitaiskoi revoliutsii (Notes on the Wuhan Period of the Chinese Revolution), 201.
51 See Robert C. North and Xenia Eudin, M. N. Roy's Mission to China: The Communist-Kuomintang Split of 1927 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1963), 59.
52 Chang, The Rise of the Chinese Communist Party, vol. 1, 619.
53 Ibid.
54 Snow, Red Star Over China, 158–59.
55 See Lichnoe delo Zhao Xiangui (Personal File of Zhao Xiangui), RGASPI, collection 495, inventory 225, file 2682.
56 See Mao, “Avtobiografiia” (Autobiography), 125; Ma, Hongse diyi jiazu (The First Red Family), 266–68, 315–17; Li, Moi otets Mao Tszedun (My Father Mao Zedong), 109–10, 120; “Mao Zemin,” in Hu Hua, ed., Zhonggongdang shi renwu zhuan (Biographies of Persons in the History of the CCP), vol. 9 (Xi'an: Shaanxi renmin chubanshe, 1983), 50–51; Liu, “Mao Zetan,” 290–91.
57 See Han, Li Dazhao shengping jinian (Biographical Chronicle of Li Dazhao), 203–6.
58 See Chang, The Rise of the Chinese Communist Party, vol. 1, 630–31.
59 RGASPI, collection 17, inventory 162, file 5, sheets 8–9, 30.
60 Ibid., 30. This telegram was first published in 1996 in Titarenko, VKP(b), Komintern i Kitai: Dokumenty (The CPSU, the Comintern and China: Documents), vol. 2, 763–64.
61 Chang, The Rise of the Chinese Communist Party, vol. 1, 637.
62 Quoted from Cai, Istoriia opportunizma v Kommunistecheskoi partii Kitaia (The History of Opportunism in the Communist Party of China), 63.
63 Liu, “Mao Zetan,” 291; Li, Moi otets Mao Tszedun (My Father Mao Zedong), 120–21.
64 Chang, The Rise of the Chinese Communist Party, vol. 1, 640.
65 Snow, Red Star Over China, 160. Chang and Halliday assert that in the summer of 1927 Mao “pondered his alternatives” whether to take the side of the Guomindang or remain in the CCP. Chang and Halliday, Mao, 46–47. But Mao remained 100 percent communist and tried his utmost to radicalize the situation.
66 Mao, Poems of Mao Tse-tung, 35.
n13 Hakka rebellions in China were infrequent. The most famous of them was the Taiping Rebellion (1851–1864) as a result of which more than twenty million people perished.
n14 In Hunan province, for example, there were 23 supplementary taxes while in neighboring Hubei there were 61. In the eastern province of Jiangsu there were no less than 147.
n15 Persistent rumors circulated in Wuhan that in Liling county, Hunan, the peasant union had executed the father of Li Lisan, a rural teacher, as a tuhao and lieshen. Fortunately, this information proved to be wrong.
n16 These were the China specialists Evgenii Sigismundovich Iolk (1900–1937 or 1942), who worked in China under the pseudonyms Johan and Johanson, and Mikhail Volin (real name Semen Natanovich Belen’kii (1896–1938). In 1926–27 they were on Borodin’s staff and were working on agrarian issues in China. In early 1927 they even published a two-volume documentary study in English, edited by Borodin, called The Peasant Question in Guangdong. Moreover, Volin reviewed Mao Zedong’s “Analysis of Classes in Chinese Society” in Canton, the journal of the Soviet advisers.
n17 The reference is to the nine tributaries of the Yangzi.
n18 The reference is to the Beijing–Hankou railroad and the Wuchang–Changsha railroad, which intersect in Wuhan.
n19 Turtle Mountain and Snake Mountain are two hills on opposite sides of the Yangzi. The former is located in Hanyang, the latter in Wuchang. It is on Snake Mountain that the Yellow Crane Tower rises.
n20 The legend goes that long ago in Wuchang a young man named Xin had a wine shop. One day Xin, a well-known and well-liked fellow, gave wine to a wandering Daoist monk. In gratitude on the wall of the shop the monk drew a picture of a crane that turned out to be magical. Every time when someone clapped their hands the crane would perform graceful dances. The young man was ineffably happy for now his shop was always crowded with people who wanted to gaze upon the miraculous crane while downing a cup or two. But after ten years the Daoist monk again showed up in Wuchang. He dropped in to Xin’s shop, drew forth a flute, played upon it, mounted the crane, and flew off to heaven. To commemorate these happenings Xin’s family built the Yellow Crane Tower upon the site of the shop. According to historical data, the tower was built in 223 CE.