18 DOG EAT DOG, COMMUNIST-STYLE

The sign of a new disfavor came in the form of a letter from Shanghai dated August 30, 1931, subjecting Mao to criticism no less sharp than during the era of Li Lisan. The Bureau of the Central Committee, which Mao headed, was accused of committing extremely serious rightist as well as left opportunist errors that demonstrated the “absence” among its leaders of “a clear class line.” It's difficult to say who among the top leaders drafted this letter, but the document clearly reflected the views of a new generation of leaders, Mif's people, who were beginning to dominate the party. The main accusation was that Mao had supposedly pursued a “kulak line” in agrarian reform. What the letter writers were referring to was that Mao had implemented the equal division of land according to the principle “Drawing on the plentiful to make up for the scarce, and drawing on the fat to make up for the lean.” The new leaders insisted that the kulaks should be given only the worst land, and all of the best land should be given to the poor.

Mao's “guerrilla” tactics also garnered him significant reproaches from the Provisional Politburo, even though these tactics had enabled the Red Army to repulse three Guomindang punitive expeditions. Mao's successes had undermined the authority of the newly risen leaders. They insisted on the “expansion” of the soviet areas by the prompt seizure of, most importantly, “comparatively large cities.”¹ By this time, as far back as mid-October 1930, Mao had resolved to reject any further plans to capture overly large centers.²

Obviously, the Moscow-returned students were even more leftist than Mao and Li Lisan. That they were doing their utmost to brand others with the charge of Li Lisanism simply meant that Chen Shaoyu/Wang Ming, Wang Jiaxiang, and the others were seizing the moment to consolidate their own power. They commenced their secret struggle against Li Lisan and the other “elders” soon after they had returned to China, and were especially active starting in the summer of 1930. By prior agreement, they began to inundate their former rector Mif with letters written in Russian or English using coded language. It was not the Politburo's adventurism that they disliked. Criticizing Li for leftism was not then in style. Knowing very well what was most despised in Moscow, they consistently accused Li of “right” deviation even when he advocated mad schemes for world revolution. “The right lung is still painful due to a lack of daring and knowledge on the part of the doctors as well as the lack of good medicine,” Wang Jiaxiang informed Pavel Mif just three days prior to the CCP Politburo's adoption of an ultraleft resolution on June 11, “On the New Revolutionary Tide.” “Can you send some sort of medication?” “Part of the hosts are indeed suffering from pain in the right shoulder,” added Chen Shaoyu/Wang Ming in his own name. Their joint letter said:

The host's ugliness derives from the fact that the right side of his brain is diseased. This disease requires first-class treatment that is very difficult to receive in poverty-stricken China. We hope that very soon a good doctor and good medicine will be found to cure the host and improve the position of the co[mpany].³

Amusing language, and readily understandable without a translation.

Chen Shaoyu/Wang Ming and the others continued to pursue a provocationist policy even after the “good doctor” (Pavel Mif) carried out the needed “operation.” Obviously they believed that the January plenum had not succeeded in excising the entire “diseased portion of the brain.” This was the occasion for the August letter.

Soon after its receipt, in mid-October Xiang Ying, Ren Bishi, and Wang Jiaxiang were inserted into the lineup in the Central Soviet Area. In early November, on the eve of the congress of soviets, these representatives of the Provisional Politburo convened a party conference in Ruijin. Then a hailstorm of accusations was loosed upon Mao; he was charged with “narrow empiricism,” “extreme right opportunism,” “kulak deviation,” and “guerrillaism.” Mao tried to justify himself, referring to local conditions, but it was all in vain. The majority of conference participants, with the exception of several district secretaries, endorsed the Central Committee letter. Mao was removed from his post as acting secretary of the Central Committee Bureau for the Soviet areas and Xiang Ying was again appointed to replace him.⁴

All of this happened just several days prior to the First Congress of Soviets, at which Mao was slated to be “chosen” as chairman of the Central Executive Committee of the Chinese Soviet Republic (CSR) and of the Council of People's Commissars. A telegram regarding the need to “choose” him, which had been approved by Moscow, was received in Yeping at the very end of October,⁵ two to three days prior to the party conference. Why, then, was it necessary to attack someone who, after all, had been prepared to serve as the head of the CSR?

The only explanation is that the leadership in Shanghai and its agents in southern Jiangxi wanted to show the communists that the secretaries of the Central Committee and of the Central Committee Bureau, not the newly chosen Chairman Mao, would control everything as before. The Chairman was just a soldier of the party, and far from the best one at that. Thus, the posts of chairman of the CEC and of the Council of People's Commissars turned into purely nominal positions. In the Chinese Soviet Republic, as in the USSR, the party controlled the government.

Immediately after the congress, on November 25, Mao was also removed from his post as chairman of the Central Revolutionary Military Council, although he remained the chief of its General Political Administration as well as one of its fifteen members. Zhu De became the head of the CRMC. Wang Jiaxiang and Peng Dehuai became Zhu's deputies. At this same time the troops of the First Front Army were reorganized into two army groups (the Third and the Fifth) and five corps, which were directly subordinate to the Central Revolutionary Military Council. The headquarters of the First Front Army was abolished, and with it the posts of general political commissar and secretary of the General Front Committee that Mao had held.⁶ This heavy blow sharply curtailed Mao Zedong's influence both in the party and the army.

Mao began to sense a worsening atmosphere around him. Almost none of his close friends remained, apart from his younger brothers and their wives, who, fortunately, were in the Central Soviet Area, but neither Zemin nor Zetan were members of the Central Committee. In early May 1928, Xiang Jingyu, proud, passionate, and insubordinate, was shot in Hankou. Her former husband Cai Hesen, Mao's closest friend, was executed in Canton in early August 1931. His death was particularly cruel. The butchers first subjected him to inhuman tortures, and then crucified him on the wall of his cell. Then, finally, they pierced him through the chest several times with a sharp bayonet. They desisted only when the lifeless body sagged on the iron nails. Two years earlier, in August 1929, Peng Pai had died in Shanghai.

After Zhou Enlai's arrival in Ruijin in late December 1931, the situation grew worse. Replacing Xiang Ying as secretary of the Bureau of the Central Committee, Zhou continued the anti-Maoist line. At the first session of the Bureau of the CC, on January 7, he declared that the Bureau had committed errors in the struggle against counterrevolutionary elements and “should admit its responsibility in the spirit of self-criticism.”⁷ Mao made no objection, although Zhou's criticism cut him to the quick.

Two days later, Bo Gu and his friend Luo Fu, who was in charge of propaganda for the Provisional Politburo, issued a directive, “On Winning Initial Revolutionary Successes in One or More Provinces.” That this title was almost exactly the same as the infamous resolution of Li Lisan likely did not bother them. They demanded that the Red Army again attack Nanchang, Ji'an, and other major cities in Jiangxi, and reminded all of the doubters, “As before, right opportunism remains the main danger …… We must direct fire against the rightists.”⁸

This enabled Zhou to strike another blow against Mao. Knowing that their fiery Hunanese would be averse to entering into a fruitless discussion, the new secretary of the Bureau suggested to the members of the Bureau of the CC a plan to attack the second largest city of Jiangxi, namely, Ganzhou, which was located between the Central Soviet Area and the Jinggang Mountains, where individual troops of the CCP were still operating. The seizure of this fortified strongpoint would create an opportunity to expand the “Red Zone” significantly, but neither Zhou nor the majority of the leaders of the Bureau seemed to realize how difficult this campaign would be for the Red Army. Mao, naturally, did not agree, and was again subjected to criticism.⁹ His enemies could take satisfaction from the fact that their “always wrong” opponent had “lost face.”

Mao then decided to “do battle” on questions of international politics. China's international position had drastically worsened due to Japanese expansionism. On September 18, 1931, Japan's Kwantung Army, stationed in Manchuria (Northeast China), provoked the Mukden Incident. Citing an explosion on the South Manchurian Railroad that the Japanese had themselves detonated, the Kwantung Army occupied Mukden, the largest city in Manchuria, and also Changchun, the capital of Jilin province. By late autumn all of Manchuria, with a population of thirty million, was under Japanese control. Chiang Kai-shek, immersed in military action against the soviet area, offered no resistance, but a wide anti-Japanese movement developed throughout the country. The patriotic upsurge was so great that Mao concluded in January 1932 that the CCP should “play” with these events. He calculated that the wave of popular anti-Japanese sentiments could be redirected against Chiang Kai-shek, who had not defended Manchuria. The unexpected uprising in mid-December in the city of Ningdu, in Jiangxi province, of the Guomindang's Twenty-Sixth Army (which Chiang Kai-shek had thrown into battle against the communists) inspired this thought in Mao. The seventeen thousand soldiers of this army rebelled because they were unhappy with Chiang's policy of “appeasement” vis-à-vis Japan. Ningdu, located only about ten miles north of Ruijin, instantly became “red.”¹⁰

In mid-January 1932, at a regular session of the Bureau of the Central Committee, Mao said, “The broad scale incursion of Japanese imperialism into China has brought about an anti-Japanese upsurge. This will inevitably lead to changes in inter-class relations in the country.” Understandably, one should take advantage of this development, but precisely how, that was the question that he wanted to discuss. What a row that provoked! The representatives of the Provisional Politburo flared with indignation. They considered it virtually criminal to make use of the Japanese invasion to advance the interests of the Communist Party, especially since, from the perspective of the Comintern, the purpose of the Manchurian events was to prepare a launching pad for the Japanese military to attack the USSR. One of those present attacked Mao for “right opportunism.” A deathly silence ensued. Mao was so outraged that his words stuck in his throat.

He did not want to work with the members of the Bureau anymore and after the session he requested “sick” leave. It was an old trick he had employed during his conflict with Zhu De and the Front Committee of the Fourth Corps in June–November 1929. With his wife and bodyguard he left for the mountains, turning his government duties over to Xiang Ying. Then he was struck another blow. Wang Jiaxiang removed him from his last military post, that of chief of the General Political Administration of the Central Revolutionary Military Council (at that time renamed the General Political Administration of the Chinese Worker-Peasant Red Army).

Mao now sank into melancholy. High on the summit of Donghua Mountain, he sat in pitch darkness in a deserted temple for days at a time, playing on a short flute. He had become fond of this ancient eight-holed folk instrument, made from the stem of a bamboo, back in the Jinggang period. It was damp and cold in the temple, however, and He Zizhen insisted that he move to a neighboring cave. Here he continued his musical diversion. Music-making and a rustic life, however, failed to calm his nerves. Neither did poetry help.¹¹ Pondering what had occurred, Mao came to realize that the new struggle for power would be the most brutal yet.

The latest “leftist deviation” of the CCP leadership was again directly linked to Moscow, as the Chinese communists continued to receive their instructions, both strategic and tactical, from Moscow, where everyone was simply raving about the “rightist danger.” After routing Bukharin and his supporters, Stalin purged additional so-called rightists in December 1930. This was followed by the trial of the “Industrial Party,” a supposed “rightist” organization of engineers, technicians, and economists who were accused of anti-Sovietism and sabotage. It is not surprising that many in the Comintern believed the “rightist danger” was real, especially since Stalin asserted that class struggle would become sharper and capitalist aggressiveness greater in view of the accelerating construction of socialism in the USSR and the deepening of the world crisis. Based on these premises, the Eleventh Plenum of the ECCI in March–April 1931 emphasized that “[t]he revolutionary upsurge is growing,” expressing, inter alia, “the development and strengthening of soviets and of the Red Army in a significant part of the territory of China …… and the strengthening of the revolutionary movement in the colonies.”¹²

On July 31, the ECCI Presidium addressed a special resolution to the CCP Central Committee pointing out, “At the present stage of the movement when the country is facing a revolutionary crisis and soviet power has triumphed in a number of regions, the outcome of the struggle depends above all directly upon the communist party itself …… [T]he Chinese communist party must totally unmask the views of right opportunism along a broad front, and carry out a struggle to the end in both theory and practice.”¹³

It was this document that demanded that kulaks and poor peasants not be accorded equal rights to the land, but no criticism was specifically addressed to Mao. The sharpening of the conflict against Mao was the exclusive enterprise of the new CCP leaders. Nothing in the resolution spoke about new attacks upon cities. The plan to seize “one or two urban centers” that was implemented early in 1932 in southern Jiangxi in the bloody battle for Ganzhou was likewise the work of the Shanghai leadership, although they were in line with the viewpoint of the Comintern. Two and a half months after the Provisional Politburo had issued its August directive, Mif himself wrote Stalin advancing the idea of conquering major cities in China.¹⁴ Stalin supported him.

In these circumstances, it was impossible to speak of “guerrilla tactics” in the opinion of the leadership of the Central Committee Bureau. Along with other members of the Bureau, Zhou Enlai conscientiously began to carry out the directive of the Central Committee that the Comintern had essentially approved. Mao opposed this, though not because he was generally against taking cities. Rich commercial centers always attracted his attention. He wanted to emulate his beloved heroes in the novel Water Margin, that is, to swoop down on a small, poorly defended city, pillage it, and then retreat to a safe haven. He did not consider it rational to hunker down in large strategic points. It was this view that irritated the leadership, which, as before, believed the Chinese revolution could be victorious only by relying on urban centers. Nevertheless, what a fearless person was Mao, again swimming against the tide. Might he have sensed a kind of force behind him?

This time, too, he was lucky. The effort to capture Ganzhou utterly failed. Many army commanders now understood that Mao had been right in objecting to this offensive. “With 14,000 men, our Third Army Group could certainly not have overcome such a superior force holding strong fortifications,” Peng Dehuai recalled later. “It was a grave error to attack a fortified city before finding out the real situation of the enemy troops holding it.” The most unfortunate aspect was that the siege of Ganzhou, which lasted for two months (January–March 1932), coincided with a Japanese attack against Shanghai, which was defended by the Guomindang's Nineteenth Army.¹⁵ It appeared that the communists and the Japanese were working in tandem.

The leaders of the Bureau had to swallow their pride. In early March, Xiang Ying, braving a torrential downpour, showed up at Mao's lair and, in the name of the Central Revolutionary Military Council and Zhou Enlai personally, asked him to “return to action” promptly. Mao was barely able to contain his joy. Soaked from the rain and humiliated by his unenviable assignment, Xiang Ying looked pitiful. Gathering their things, Mao and He Zizhen descended the mountain for Ruijin that very night. Mao put his bamboo flute in the pocket of his military-style service jacket. Who knew how often he would be fated to play it? His return from disgrace still meant nothing. The struggle for power continued.

For now, however, he had to proceed immediately for the front, to the district of Ganxian some sixty miles west of Ruijin, and the only thing he managed to do was to give to the members of the Bureau and the government the text of a declaration regarding Japan's incursion into China, which he had outlined back in late January, right after Japan's bombardment of Shanghai. The document was pointed: the Soviet government of China officially declares war upon Japan. Of course, this action was purely formal in nature. The communist armies were operating far from Manchuria and Shanghai. Its political significance, however, was enormous. With the help of propaganda and demagogy and by boldly exploiting the anti-Japanese mood of the people, the CCP was able to transform itself in the eyes of many Chinese patriots into a truly nationalist force, which helped it in its struggle against the Guomindang. After lengthy disputes, the declaration was finally adopted by Mao's “colleagues” on April 15. Six days later it appeared in the pages of Hongse Zhonghua (Red China), the official organ of the CEC and of the Council of People's Commissars of the Chinese Soviet Republic.¹⁶

By then Mao was already far from Ruijin. He spent the remainder of March in southern Jiangxi trying to fix the critical situation, then transferred to Fujian, to Lin Biao's forces. Until the end of June he took part in military operations in the south and southwest of this province. Accompanying the troops, he carried out a difficult raid to the south along mountain roads, more than 150 miles from Ruijin, against the rich but weakly defended commercial city of Zhangzhou, where he was able to enjoy the romance of banditry. After pillaging Zhangzhou and several neighboring towns and villages, Mao turned back to the south of Jiangxi. Along the road, his soldiers, as usual, killed dizhu (landlords), funong (rich peasants), and ordinary local peasants, or bendi (the primordial enemies of the Hakka); burned down their homes; and seized their property. They left a wasteland in their wake. One of Mao's contemporaries, who passed through this region a little over a year later, recalled that “[e]verywhere rice fields were clogged with mud, yam-fields overgrown with weeds, sugar going to seed, and houses burnt to the ground, with hardly anyone in sight.”¹⁷

The manifest success of the operation strengthened Mao's authority in the army. The “heroic” campaign to Fujian, which provided so many pleasant moments to the soldiers and commanders, followed hard upon the unsuccessful siege of Ganzhou, which had been the responsibility of the new leaders.¹⁸ Yet he still had to hold bitter discussions on tactics with the members of the Bureau. His opponents were not opposed to pillaging and murder; they simply believed it necessary to posit global goals without irritating the enemy in minor battles, and to conduct major operations to seize entire provinces. The discussions turned sharp. An inkling of these events can be derived from a telegram that Zhou Enlai and others sent to the CCP Central Committee on May 3, 1932. They said in part:

We have disagreements regarding the direction of expanding the [Central] Soviet area and the actions of the Red Army. At a session of the Bureau of the CC CCP of the Soviet areas at the end of last year, Mao Zedong proposed establishing a soviet area in the tri-mountain area along the borders of Fujian, Guangdong, Jiangxi, and Hunan. Communard [Wang Jiaxiang] came out against this plan and asserted that in the current political situation this was a deviation from the seizure of large cities …… When Moskvin [Zhou Enlai] arrived, Mao Zedong? …… expressed his opposition to attacks on urban centers …… This political line is hundred percent opportunism; it underestimates the current situation and completely contradicts the directives of the CI [Comintern] and the CC [CCP] …… We have resolved to struggle against Mao Zedong's mistakes and criticize them in the party organ.¹⁹

Nine days later, with Mao absent from Ruijin, a session of the Bureau was held at which criticism was again directed against his “defective line.” The resolution adopted said, “It is necessary to uproot all of the right opportunist errors that occurred in the past work of the Bureau,” meaning, during the period of Mao Zedong's leadership. This was immediately transmitted to Shanghai, and the members of the Provisional Politburo then informed the ECCI about the new disagreements with Mao, certain their protector Mif would finally put an end to this conflict with Mao.²⁰

But the response from the center was discouraging. Persons much more powerful than Mif intervened regarding the question of Mao. We can only speculate about why they did this. On May 15, 1932, Otto Kuusinen, Dmitry Manuilsky, Josef Piatnitsky, and Wilhelm Pieck, reliable Stalinists who were members of the highest organ of the ECCI, namely, the Political Commission of the Political Secretariat, examined the conflict in Ruijin. Mao was put under Moscow's protection.²¹

The Provisional Politburo and the Bureau of the Central Committee were forced to retreat, although they didn't want to admit defeat. “All of the issues have been correctly resolved,” wrote Zhou Enlai to the CCP Central Committee after receipt of a telegram of June 9, 1932, from the Political Commission that effectively supported Mao. “Our discussion proceeded in a comradely atmosphere and was limited to the members of the Bureau. This did not interfere with Mao Zedong's leading work.”²²

The only thing that could please Bo Gu and his confederates in Jiangxi was that Moscow was defending Mao only from public criticism. It was still not in agreement with his guerrilla tactics. That is why Zhou soon sent another telegram to the Central Committee seeking the leadership's agreement to send Mao away from Ruijin. On June 10 he wrote: “Mao Zedong is physically very weak; he remains at work in the high mountains and suffers from insomnia and a poor appetite. However, when he is with the army he is full of energy and is skilled in conducting military operations. The Bureau of [the CCP Central Committee of the soviet areas] has decided to send him to the front to plan military operations. He likewise wishes to set out for the front.”²³

What a strange telegram. Mao had not yet managed to arrive in the “high mountains” of Ruijin from southern Jiangxi, yet, in Zhou Enlai's words, he was already feeling indisposed and had stopped eating and sleeping. Probably the members of the Bureau were not very happy about the return of the chairman of the CEC and of the Council of People's Commissars. Mao himself did not wish to return to Ruijin. In mid-June he was already in southern Jiangxi with his troops. There he received the news about the reestablishment of the First Front Army by order of the Provisional Politburo. Zhu De was reconfirmed as commander in chief of the army, with Wang Jiaxiang as chief of the General Political Administration. They and Mao were leading the First Front Army against the Guangdong militarists who were attacking the soviet area.²⁴

Now Mao had to demonstrate his exceptional diplomatic abilities. Finding himself in the same leadership group as Wang Jiaxiang, one of his main opponents, Mao resorted to the favorite tactic of all politicians, namely, “divide and rule.” Mao had paid great attention to Wang, this stoop-shouldered young man in round eyeglasses who was thirteen years his junior, ever since Wang and Ren Bishi had shown up at his home in the village of Qingtang in April 1931. Like all of Chen Shaoyu's crew, Wang Jiaxiang spoke Russian fluently, but unlike the others he was devoid of excessive ambition. A dogmatist who believed fervently in Russian experience, somewhere deep inside he remained an ordinary Chinese peasant. One could find a common language with him even though he could be rude and intolerable on occasion.

Mao already had begun to “court” him in late April, but failed to achieve any substantial results.²⁵ Now he renewed his blandishments with Zhu De's help. Finally, they succeeded in “winning over” the “stubborn youth.” Just then, Zhou Enlai showed up at their headquarters in the latter half of July. At this point Mao went for broke, utilizing every opportunity to “win over” Zhou himself with the help of Zhu De and Wang Jiaxiang. Results were soon forthcoming. Accustomed to playing second fiddle, Zhou Enlai, under constant pressure, could not resist. Mao Zedong overwhelmed him. With Mao, Zhu, and Wang, Zhou now signed a telegram to the Bureau of the Central Committee requesting that it cancel its plan for a new attack upon Ganzhou. That same day, all four addressed the Bureau proposing restoration of the post of general political commissar for the First Front Army, specially for Mao Zedong. They even considered it possible to demand the elimination of the post of chairman of the government (Mao could not combine both positions).²⁶

Mao had apparently forgotten all of the insults, but his “winning over” of Wang and Zhou were only steps on the road to the conquest of power. The end justifies the means and for now he needed these two former adversaries. With their help he hoped to break through the ring of alienation that the new party leaders had drawn close around him. But the members of the Bureau who remained in Ruijin, Ren Bishi foremost among them, were under pressure from Bo Gu and Luo Fu and had no desire to ease relations. Accepting the de facto designation of Mao as political commissar, at the same time they continued to condemn his guerrilla tactics and insist upon the seizure of large urban centers.

The conflict intensified. The military views of Ren Bishi, who was blindly executing the directives of the Provisional Politburo, were too much at odds with those of Mao. Then the Bureau of the Central Committee once again raised the question of the “opportunism” of the chairman of the CEC and of the CSR. The criticism directed against Mao reached its apogee. All the Ruijin-based members of the Bureau came out against Mao Zedong. In addition to Ren Bishi there were Xiang Ying; Deng Fa, who headed the secret service of the Central Soviet Area; and Gu Zuolin, the Bureau secretary of the Communist Youth League. They all sharply criticized Mao for proposing to avoid large battles, to go off into the mountains, and to decentralize the army. In other words, he persisted in favoring “defensive tactics rather than any sort of offensive at present.”²⁷ Exasperated with his behavior, in September 1932, Ren Bishi and the others concluded that “Mao Zedong does not understand Marxism.”²⁸ Having decided to remove him and subject him to public criticism, they promptly informed the Central Committee:

Comrade Mao Zedong is vacillating with regard to expansion of [the Central] Soviet Area, seizure of major cities, and the struggle to achieve initial victory [of the revolution] in one or several provinces. His opportunist line …… continues and he often tries to push it, ignoring the party leadership, and promoting cadres on the basis of personal connections rather than from [the needs] of public utility. Although Comrade Moskvin [Zhou Enlai] is there [at the front], it is difficult in reality for him to put into practice the views of the Bureau [of the CCP Central Committee] and to radically change their actions …… For the sake of achieving unity of views among the military leadership, we firmly and openly criticize the errors of Comrade Mao [Zedong] and desire that he be recalled to the rear to work in the [central] soviet government.²⁹

Without awaiting approval from the Central Committee or the representatives of the ECCI, at the end of September Ren, Xiang, Deng, and Gu went to the front (in Ningdu county) “to convene a plenum of the Bureau.” In early October they held their field session in the village of Xiaoyuan, at which they subjected Mao to withering criticism for his “guerrilla mentality” and “right opportunism.” They also lit into the “appeasers”—Zhou Enlai, Zhu De, and Wang Jiaxiang—for “not sufficiently believing in the victory of the revolution and underestimating the power of the Red Army.” The upshot was that Mao had to abandon the front line, again “on account of illness.” Ren Bishi and his confederates happily granted him leave “to recuperate.” This time he was taken to a hospital high up in the mountains, more than ninety miles south of Ningdu.

Meanwhile, the leaders of the Provisional Politburo were also meeting in Shanghai. The telegram from Ruijin delighted them since they were very eager to bring Mao down. The meeting in Ningdu apparently provided an opportunity. “We must wage an active struggle inside the party against his [Mao Zedong's] views,” enthused Bo Gu. “It would be good to send Zedong to the rear where he can engage in work in the soviets,” seconded Luo Fu.³⁰ The other leaders agreed, but they were worried about how Stalin and the ECCI would react. They dreaded evoking another furious response from Moscow. The solution turned out to be simple. The leaders prepared two variant responses. The first, in Chinese, was sent to the Bureau of the Central Committee. (It was received in Ningdu only after Mao had already departed from there.) The second, in English, was sent to the ECCI, along with a translation of the telegram from the Bureau. (Both of these latter documents arrived in Moscow on October 16.) The version sent to the Comintern emphasized that there should be no “open discussion” directed against Mao, but the version sent to Jiangxi indicated precisely the opposite: “Begin a discussion of Zedong's views.”³¹

After receiving the Politburo's response, in Mao's absence Ren Bishi and his confederates removed Mao from his position as general political commissar, thereby depriving him of any influence in the army, and bestowed his duties upon Zhou Enlai. Two weeks later Shanghai confirmed their decision.³²

Hearing this, Mao lost his self-control. He had been left without real work. Mao did not consider his honorary service in the government as amounting to anything.³³ He Zizhen recalled that he cried, “Dogmatism ruins and destroys people! They have no idea about practical work; they have never had contact with a single worker or peasant, yet they give orders right and left and are preoccupied with purely administrative matters! How can one possibly be victorious in this mode in the battle against the Guomindang? Do they understand why the peasants rose up in revolution?”³⁴

The only thing he took pleasure in at this time was the birth of a new son. In early November 1932, Zizhen gave birth to a son whom Mao named Anhong (“Red Army Man Who Reaches the Shore of Socialism”). Cradling him in her arms, the happy mother rejoiced. She was vexed, however, because the doctors would not let her nurse the infant, since she was suffering from malaria. But Mao was not depressed. At his instructions his bodyguards found a nursemaid for the infant, who took him into her care. This simple peasant woman called all her babes-in-arms by the same name, “xiao maomao” (little fur ball or the hairy little one). When Mao Zedong first heard this he was ecstatic. “Just look,” he said to Zizhen. “People call me ‘Lao Mao' [Old or Honored Mao], and my son is called Xiao Maomao [Little Double Mao]. That means he is much more Mao than I am.ⁿ³⁷ And in the future he'll become even stronger!” Humor alone saved him in this difficult situation. And his old bamboo flute. But the sad melodies that Mao played fed his wife's melancholy.

Once again Moscow came to Mao's rescue. More precisely, rescue came in the form of Moscow's new representatives in China, before whom the likes of Bo Gu and Luo Fu had to snap to attention. In the autumn of 1932 the new ECCI representative arrived in Shanghai along with his wife. He was a German named Arthur Ernst Ewert. Of course, no one in China knew him as Ewert. He entered the country with an American passport under the name of Harry Berger, and in CCP circles he began to use the underground aliases of “Jim” and “Arthur.” This forty-two-year-old veteran of the German Communist Party was on very good standing in the Comintern. In 1928, at the Sixth World Congress of the Comintern, he was chosen as a candidate member of its Executive Committee and from 1929 on he was a deputy director of the Eastern Secretariat. Like many Germans, he was punctilious and pedantic. But he was a great drinker. At this critical juncture, Ewert played an important role in Mao's life by providing support in his battle against intraparty enemies despite the fact that he too considered Mao's military tactics “dangerous,” “passive,” and “deviationist.” “Mao Zedong's general approach is mistaken (too much stress on the effectiveness of defense, on concealment in the mountains, etc.),” he reported to the Comintern.

But after learning of the telegram from the Bureau of the Central Committee, he informed Josef Piatnitsky, the secretary of the ECCI, on October 8, 1932, that the “leadership of the party in Jiangxi” had decided to remove Mao and subject him to public criticism, without any prior preparation. “Not to mention that such an approach to the situation at present would demonstrate our weakness to the foe,” he pointed out, “one should not resort to such decisions without …… serious preparation (to say nothing of your approval). Mao Zedong remains a popular leader …… [W]e have come out against that part of the resolutions, demanded that disagreements within the leading organs be eliminated, and come out against the removal of Mao Zedong at this time.”³⁵ Naturally, Ewert also informed the leadership of the CCP Central Committee of his position.

The result was that Bo Gu and Luo Fu had to retreat, but they would still not let Mao return to military affairs. The leaders of the party apparently could not stand him, but they were unable to avoid dealing with him. In early 1933 they even had to meet with Mao in person, and after that their paths were so interwoven that it became unthinkable to avoid personal contacts. At the end of January 1933, Bo Gu, Luo Fu, and one other member of the Provisional Politburo, the twenty-eight-year-old Shanghai printer Chen Yun (real name Liao Chenyun), were forced to relocate to the Central Soviet Area.³⁶ Their move, in the words of Wang Ming, was necessitated by a monstrous white terror that “made the existence of the party's leading centers in Shanghai virtually impossible.”³⁷ This led to the liquidation of the Central Committee Bureau for the Soviet areas and the placement of the entire party leadership in the areas in the hands of Bo Gu. In formal terms the Central Committee Bureau and the Provisional Politburo were united into a new party organ dubbed the Central Bureau of the CCP.³⁸ Real power remained with Bo Gu, who, in accordance with directives from the ECCI, charted the party's basic political line.

Evidently fearing that the move would reignite intraparty conflict, in a telegram to the Central Committee routed via Ewert the Political Secretariat of the ECCI paid special attention to “the question of Mao Zedong”: “With respect to Mao Zedong it is necessary to employ maximum patience and comradely influence, providing him full opportunity to engage in responsible work under the leadership of the CC or the CC Bureau of the party.”³⁹ Forwarding this directive to Ruijin, Ewert appended his own commentary: “We ask that you work closely together with Mao Zedong, but that you keep an eye on him so that our military work gets done and is not destroyed by large-scale discussions and vacillation.”⁴⁰

Starting in January 1933, however, opportunities for the ECCI and its Far Eastern Bureau to influence the CCP's intraparty life diminished. After the departure of the Provisional Politburo from Shanghai, their links shrank. Radiograms that Ewert sent to Ruijin could not substitute for direct contact between Comintern emissaries and Bo Gu and other party leaders. By early October 1934, after a new, and this time decisive, failure of the Shanghai organization, communist activity in the city practically disappeared. Soon afterward the ECCI closed its Far Eastern Bureau.⁴¹

In Ruijin the intraparty struggle continually heated up. Bo Gu was so negative toward Mao that initially he tried to avoid any contact with him. In January 1933, passing through the town where Mao was still hospitalized, Bo Gu flatly refused to visit the “sick man.” In response to his comrades' plea, “You should drop by and look in on him,” Bo Gu snapped, “And just what is there about Mao Zedong that makes it worth my while?”⁴² Of course, his ill will served no purpose. The cunning Mao would never indulge in such behavior, because he was simply more cautious.

There was good reason to “look in” on Mao. He was no newcomer to battling the Guomindang, which is why some party officials periodically sought his advice. Among them was Luo Ming, the acting party secretary of Fujian. After one of his visits this fiery partisan of guerrilla warfare succeeded in getting a public endorsement of Mao's tactics from his party committee, which naturally caused a big scandal. In February 1933, the enraged Bo Gu launched a broad intraparty campaign against the so-called Luo Ming line. In the heat of the moment, Mao's younger brother Zetan fell from power. Along with several other active supporters of Mao Zedong, he was criticized no less than Luo Ming, and in May 1933 was dismissed from military work. This was also the fate of most of Mao's other relatives in the Central Soviet Area.

In the spring of 1933, Zizhen, who had been acting secretary of the Council of People's Commissars, lost her job and was sent for “reeducation” at the Central Committee's party school. Her sister He Yi, Zetan's wife, was also sent there, though she was six or seven months pregnant. (He Zizhen, too, was pregnant again; she gave birth to the infant, a boy, in late autumn of 1933, but he lived for only a short time.) They badgered He Yi so much to “unmask” her husband as an “opportunist” that soon after giving birth she fell seriously ill. They thought she was dissembling and Bo Gu himself raised the question of expelling her from the party. Only because Dong Biwu, an old party member who doubled as secretary of the Control Commission and deputy rector of the party school, afforded her protection did the matter fade away. He Yi escaped with a reprimand. Soon, however, Zizhen's elder brother Meixue was removed from his post as acting divisional commander and was also sent to engage in study—at the Red Army Academy. The repression even extended to Mao's father-in-law and mother-in-law, Zizhen's aged parents who were living in the village of Donggu, in the north of the Central Soviet Area. They were both fired from the local party committee where they worked.⁴³

Meanwhile, serious charges of “opportunism of the Luo Ming type” were leveled against the former head of the technical secretariat of the Central Committee Deng Xiaoping, who had been working in various positions in the Central Soviet Area since August 1931. It was then that Mao took notice of this man who had shown his character and not bowed his head before Mao's enemies.⁴⁴

Mao's life turned into a living hell. Returning to Yeping in mid-February during the high tide of the campaign against Luo Ming, Mao felt totally isolated. Only He Yi often called upon him and her sister in their house. She cried and complained about her life. Mao was sympathetic but could do nothing. “They are purging you because of me. They have dragged all of you into my affair,” he said bitterly.⁴⁵ He was practically barred from all work and was not invited to most sessions of the Politburo. Many feared any contact with him. Mao did not leave his house for days on end, preferring to spend time with his family. Many years later he recalled, “I was immersed in a cesspool like some sort of wooden Bodhisattva, and then dragged out after turning into a stinking doll. At this time not only a single person, but not even a single devil dared to cross the threshold of my house. All that was left for me was to eat, sleep, and shit. At least they didn't cut off my head.”⁴⁶

By a happy accident at least they did not touch Mao Zemin and his wife, Qian Xijun. Taciturn by nature, yet businesslike and confident, Zemin had been working in the government. From March 1932 he served as director of the State People's Bank. He did not intervene in any intraparty squabbles. Qian Xijun worked as deputy secretary for the party committee of the government apparatus. Of course, in his heart Zemin deeply sympathized with his brothers, but he was unable to help them.

Zhu De, Zhou Enlai, and Wang Jiaxiang were far from Yeping, away at the front. Starting in late February 1933, fierce battles against Chiang Kai-shek's troops were taking place. In a month of fighting the Red Army repulsed a new Guomindang punitive campaign—the fourth—led by Minister of War He Yingqin. This time the Nanjing government threw half a million soldiers against the communists, and the situation was critical. Zhu, Zhou, and Wang had only one chance to defeat the enemy, namely, to adopt the old Maoist tactic of “luring the enemy in deep.” “The enemy advances, we retreat; the enemy camps, we harass; the enemy tires, we attack; the enemy retreats, we pursue.” This “magic” formula brought salvation. At the end of March the Fourth Expedition was defeated, but Zhou and Zhu remained with the troops. Wang Jiaxiang moved to Ruijin in early May, but Mao could not speak with him man to man. At the end of April Wang had been seriously wounded in the stomach by shrapnel and the wound had not healed. He had to spend all his time in the hospital and suffered terribly as shrapnel migrated through his body, causing him intense pain. The only thing that helped was opium.

In the autumn of 1933 the German communist Otto Braun ^m1, a member of the Far Eastern Bureau, arrived in the Central Soviet Area. He was very much like Ewert and even loved to drink as much as the ECCI representative. He looked like Bo Gu, tall and thin as a lath with big, round eyeglasses, but his hair was light and his eyes were blue. He had the air of a sergeant major in the old German army, did not tolerate dissent, and was very self-assured and rude. He considered himself the main authority in questions of Red Army strategy and tactics even though he had come to Ruijin merely as a military adviser to the CCP Central Committee.

The arrival of Braun, who was, among other things, a secret agent of the IV (intelligence) Section of the Soviet General Staff, did not augur well for Mao since it was in the area of military tactics that the basic contradictions between the guerrilla leader and the Central Committee and the Comintern lay. Braun had already been apprised of Mao's “opportunistic” views when he arrived in Shanghai in the fall of 1932. Bo Gu, with whom Braun became very friendly, had inculcated in the German hostile feelings toward Mao. Thus Braun became an opponent of Mao as well as of the “spineless appeasers” such as Zhu De and Zhou Enlai, who rarely appeared in Ruijin.⁴⁷ Although Braun was not the official representative of the Comintern (such as Ewert was until midsummer 1934), with the support of Bo Gu he “usurped the command of the Red Army.”⁴⁸ That is how he himself, a number of years later, while repenting his “sins” before the Comintern leaders, characterized his own activity. Not knowing Chinese or “the conditions characterizing the Red Army's struggle in China,” he maintained ties exclusively with Bo Gu and other graduates of Soviet educational institutions with whom he could speak Russian. Prior to coming to China, Braun had studied in Moscow for four years in the M. V. Frunze Military Academy. Imperious and strict, he began to dispense suggestions on every issue, political as well as military. “Other opinions were suppressed and the initiatives of front-line commanders often disregarded,” Braun himself admitted, adding “I was extraordinarily stubborn and rigid …… and fought for my views without an ounce of self-criticism.”⁴⁹

It was only owing to the quiet but palpable support of their leader by army commanders and local party secretaries that Bo Gu and Braun did not succeed in crushing Mao. As always, Moscow's position was of greatest significance despite the weakening of its ties with the CCP Central Committee. There influential forces were not interested in overthrowing Mao, though the situation in the ECCI was complicated by the fact that not all its chiefs viewed Mao as the most important leader of the Chinese Communist Party. The Far Eastern Section of the Eastern Secretariat and its director, Pavel Mif, persistently advanced Chinese graduates of Moscow higher educational institutions to key posts in the CCP. It was with Mif's help that Wang Ming became the head of the CCP delegation to the Comintern in 1931 and Bo Gu the leader of the party. Yet, other Comintern officials, members of the Soviet Central Committee, and the Far Eastern Bureau of the ECCI realized that “Mif's fledglings” lacked practical experience. Some officials relied on such old Comintern cadres as Zhou Enlai, Xiang Ying, and Zhang Guotao. There were several factions in the ECCI apparatus. Behind the scenes these groups fought each other tooth and nail. Nor was there unity among those who oversaw the CCP. For example, conflicts between Mif and the deputy director of the Eastern Secretariat, Ludwig Mad'iar, were frequent.⁵⁰ Therefore, various factions in the ECCI supported “their own people” in the CCP. Stalin, it will be recalled, initially did not favor any of the factions in the ECCI or in the CCP leadership. Mao was elevated merely as a counterweight to Zhou Enlai, Xiang Ying, Zhang Guotao, Wang Ming, Bo Gu, and Luo Fu, essentially strengthening his position in the early 1930s.

Not until the mid-1930s did Stalin decisively favor Mao Zedong. In mid-January 1934, on Moscow's insistence, Mao was transferred from candidate to full member of the Politburo at the regular plenum of the CCP Central Committee.⁵¹ This plenum took place in Ruijin, but Mao refused to participate, relying, as always, on “illness.” (Bo Gu sarcastically observed to Otto Braun that Mao had a periodic attack of “diplomatic illness.”) The Central Bureau of the CCP, as always trying to undermine Mao's authority, decided that the report “On the Soviet Movement and Its Tasks” was to be delivered to the plenum not by Mao Zedong as chairman of the CEC and of the Council of People's Commissars, the normal procedure, but by Luo Fu, the second-ranking person in the party, whom the Bo Gu faction had nominated to replace Mao as the new chairman of the Council of People's Commissars.⁵² This is why Mao pleaded “illness.” The plenum chose a new Politburo Standing Committee, consisting of seven men: Bo Gu (designated the general secretary), Luo Fu, Zhou Enlai, Chen Yun, Zhang Guotao, Wang Ming, and Xiang Ying.

At the end of January the formal Second Congress of Soviets was convened. Six hundred ninety-three delegates and eighty-three alternates approved all of the resolutions of the party and reelected Mao to the by now meaningless post of chairman of the CEC.⁵³ Right after the congress, at the first session of the CEC, Luo Fu replaced Mao as head of the Council of People's Commissars of the Chinese Soviet Republic (or the People's Committee of the Central Government, as it was now called).⁵⁴ Surprisingly, Mao's replacement took place without the knowledge of Moscow, a unique phenomenon.⁵⁵ Not knowing this, Mao felt bad about it.

At the conclusion of the CEC meetings, he again “took ill” and stopped working. Bo Gu, Otto Braun, and their supporters merely rejoiced. In early spring 1934, they informed Arthur Ewert of Mao's “illness.” He in turn informed the secretary of the ECCI, Piatnitsky, and Wang Ming: “Mao Zedong has been ill for a long time and requests that he be sent to Moscow. Do you think it possible to send him as a delegate to the [VII] Congress [of the Comintern planned to take place in Moscow in July–August 1935]? In the view of your representative [Ewert] and the Shanghai Bureau [of the CCP Central Committee], it will be difficult to guarantee the safety of his journey. Furthermore, we need to consider the political consequences.”⁵⁶

Naturally, the ECCI understood that the idea of sending Mao Zedong to Moscow originated with Bo Gu, who wanted a pretext for getting rid of his obstinate and powerful opponent. In early April, the Political Commission of the Political Secretariat of the ECCI adopted the following resolution:

His [Mao's] trip to the USSR is considered inexpedient. Every effort must be made to treat him in Soviet China. Only should it prove to be absolutely impossible to treat him in Soviet China can he come to the Soviet Union …… [We] are opposed to Mao Zedong's trip, because we don't want to subject him to the risk that a journey entails. It is absolutely necessary to arrange for his treatment in the Soviet area no matter how large the expense. Only if it is completely impossible to treat him locally and the danger of a fatal outcome from his illness presents itself could we agree to his coming to Moscow.⁵⁷

Bo Gu tried to object. At his order the question of Mao was raised again in June 1934 by Gao Zili, the minister of agriculture of the Chinese Soviet Republic, who came to Moscow that month. He conveyed Bo Gu's words to Wang Ming: Mao “makes mistakes on the big issues; he only succeeds in minor matters.”⁵⁸

This was precisely the time, however, that Moscow began to propagate a heroic image of Mao. In 1934 the journal Kommunisticheskii Internatsional (Communist International) in Russian and Za rubezhom (Abroad) published Mao Zedong's report to the Second All-China Congress of Soviets on the work of the CEC and the Council of People's Commissars. Mao's report was simultaneously published as a separate pamphlet in Russian and Chinese in an edition of five thousand copies. Soon the first collection of Mao Zedong's selected speeches and articles was published in the USSR in these same two languages, likewise in an edition of five thousand copies.⁵⁹ Finally, in November 1934, the journal Za rubezhom published the first sketch of Mao by Georgii Borisovich Ehrenburg in its section “Portraits of Contemporaries.” Prior to this, only one article acquainting readers with Mao Zedong had been published in the Soviet Union, in February 1930, by the Pravda correspondent in China, Alexei Ivanov, under the nom de plume of Ivin, but in it Mao was presented always in tandem with Zhu De.⁶⁰

Understanding which way the wind was blowing, Wang Ming and Kang Sheng, the leaders of the CCP delegation to the ECCI, in September 1934 advised the CCP Central Committee “to follow the example of Zhu De and Mao Zedong and work directly in the guerrilla detachments.”⁶¹

But Bo Gu and Otto Braun continued to object. Mao still had no voting rights in either military or party affairs. The conflict flourished. Moreover, the military-strategic position of the Central Soviet Area worsened catastrophically. In October 1934 the First Front Army, recently renamed the Central Red Army, suffered a serious defeat at the hands of Chiang Kai-shek's forces.

The communists of the Central Soviet Area had been trying for a year to contain the Guomindang onslaught. This fifth campaign had begun in late September 1933, two to three weeks prior to Otto Braun's arrival. Chiang Kai-shek personally led a million troops into battle against the “Red bandits.” His German advisers devised a plan to extinguish the Chinese Soviet Republic by erecting along its borders several thousand blockhouses, powerful stone forts separated from each other at a distance of one to two miles. Deciding to eliminate the CCP once and for all, Chiang was now cautious. His soldiers moved slowly deep into the “red zone,” at a rate of barely a mile per day, consolidating their gains at each new line and tightening the ring. One of Chiang's generals characterized the tactics thus: “Drain the pond to catch the fish.” Chiang employed not only military means but political as well. He laid special emphasis on the latter, calculating 30 percent military and 70 percent political. In all the newly reconquered territories, the traditional village system of mutual responsibility (baojia) was revived, and local peasant self-defense detachments were reestablished. Large rewards were offered for the capture of leaders of the Communist Party. For example, a quarter of a million yuan was offered for Mao's head. Moreover, in 1934, at Chiang Kai-shek's personal initiative, a program of national revival was introduced with the aim of resurrecting the lost Confucian norms of decorum and morality.⁶²

These measures produced results. The Red Army was bled white, losing one battle after another. The situation was exacerbated by the senseless tactic of positional warfare that Otto Braun, supported by Bo Gu, imposed on the Red Army under the slogan of “Do not yield an inch of ground!” He was unable to grasp that Chinese conditions differed substantially from those in Russia. In the Frunze Academy, Braun had been taught how to plan offensive operations, and this experience inculcated in him faith in the magical powers of lightning attacks. Repeatedly, he threw Red Army troops against well-fortified enemy positions, into a hail of machine-gun fire, achieving nothing. Deprived of his voice, Mao was powerless to do anything. Having graduated from no academy other than the rigorous school of guerrilla warfare, Mao understood that Otto Braun was wrong. Later he would assert: “[S]o long as we lack superior troop strength or reserves of ammunition and have only one Red army in each soviet area to do all the fighting, positional warfare is basically useless to us. For us, positional warfare is generally inapplicable in attack as well as in defense.”⁶³ Bo Gu and Braun paid him no heed.

Finally, by the early summer of 1934 the situation had become hopeless. Arthur Ewert wrote: “As a result of constant battles and insufficient war booty our military supplies have significantly dwindled. Our losses have been enormous. Desertion is growing.” In May the Secretariat of the Central Committee resolved to begin preparations for the evacuation of the Red Army's main forces from the Central Soviet Area. An urgent telegram was sent to Moscow: “What remains is to defend the CSR to the last possible moment while simultaneously preparing to redeploy our main forces in a different direction.”⁶⁴ Another telegram followed with a request for material aid to the tune of one million Mexican dollars for the purchase of medicines and uniforms.⁶⁵ A trio consisting of Bo Gu, Luo Fu, and Zhou Enlai was established for operational leadership,⁶⁶ but actually, according to Otto Braun's memoirs, all the basic problems were resolved “in personal conversations” among Bo, Zhou, and Braun himself.⁶⁷

On June 8 the Political Commission of the Political Secretariat of the ECCI approved a plan by Bo Gu and other leaders of the CCP and emphasized to Ewert that the departure of the main forces from the Central Soviet Area should be considered “temporary,” and “in the interest of preserving a vital force from under attack.” Instead of a million “Mex,” the “Chinese comrades” were sent only 200,000 rubles, which equaled about 150,000 Mexican dollars.⁶⁸

Mao knew nothing of this. The troika kept the evacuation plan secret from him. Even Zhou Enlai, despite the apparently good relations between him and Mao, breathed not a word. Zhou always held his finger to the wind, and in those days the wind was not blowing in Mao's direction. Not until early October, shortly before the withdrawal from Ruijin, did the troika consider it necessary to inform Mao. Mao was then some sixty miles west of the capital, in the village of Yudu, with the troops of the First Corps. From late September he had been suffering from malaria, and was still not in good shape. Illness really had ground him down, and he looked emaciated and worn out.

The ruling troika also informed him of the decision, again taken without his participation, to allow thirty women, the wives of the top party leaders, to follow the army. (Apart from them only twenty other women, most of them nurses and other service personnel, were allowed to take part in the march.)⁶⁹ Happily, Zizhen was included among the thirty. She was enrolled in a sanitary brigade in the Chief Medical Administration. But Mao and Zizhen had to part from their two-year-old son, Anhong, “the hairy little one.” The troika was firm on this point: no children on the march.

Mao quickly informed his wife of all this by special messenger; she was living with their son at the time in the ancient mountain monastery of Yunshan, some twelve miles southwest of Ruijin. She had moved there in July 1934 along with officials from the CEC and the Council of People's Commissars to escape the raids by enemy aircraft. Mao advised Zizhen to hand over the infant to their wet nurse, who was like a family member, but that woman lived far off in the countryside and Zizhen had no time to bring the child to her. Zizhen consulted her sister, He Yi, who along with her husband, Mao's younger brother Zetan, and her parents did not intend to depart on the march. She and Zetan, like many other party and military officials, were staying at the old base under the command of Xiang Ying and Chen Yi. Zetan was slated to command an independent division.

Zizhen asked her sister to assume responsibility for making arrangements for Anhong. He Yi gladly agreed. “Go away and don't worry about anything,” she reassured Zizhen. “I will take care of our parents and my nephew.” It was decided that He Yi would deliver the young boy to the wet nurse as soon as possible. Neither Zizhen nor Mao ever saw their son again. Several days later the main force of the Red Army commenced its famous Long March from the Central Soviet Area to the west. On October 25, the army broke through the first ring of encirclement and moved into southern Hunan. By then He Yi had already transported Anhong to the wet nurse in the countryside. He Yi herself was living with her parents for a time in the home of some Red Army man. She was pregnant again and so decided not to risk leaving with her husband for the mountains. Soon afterward, Zetan, fearing for his nephew's safety, decided to arrange something more reliable. Upon his secret directive, the boy was entrusted to the family of one of his guards who lived in Ruijin, to be brought up there. But several months later, in April 1935, Mao Zetan was ambushed and killed. He took to his grave the secret of where young Anhong was living.

After the victory of the revolution, in the autumn of 1949, Zizhen along with He Yi and their older brother, Meixue, unsuccessfully tried to locate the boy. He Yi made a special effort since she felt guilty toward her sister. By some sort of mysterious coincidence, during her search, in the very place where Zetan had died, her jeep overturned on a mountain road and He Yi died without regaining consciousness.⁷⁰

¹ Hsiao, Power Relations within the Chinese Communist Movement, 1930–1934, vol. 2, 382–89.

² See Pang, Mao Zedong nianpu, 1893–1949 (Chronological Biography of Mao Zedong, 1893–1949), vol. 1, 319, 320.

³ Titarenko, VKP(b), Komintern i Kitai: Dokumenty (The CPSU, the Comintern and China: Documents), vol. 3, 893, 938, 939, 940.

⁴ See Hsiao, Power Relations within the Chinese Communist Movement, 1930–1934, vol. 2, 391–407; Jin, Mao Zedong zhuan (1893–1949) (Biography of Mao Zedong [1893–1949]), 280–81.

⁵ See Pang, Mao Zedong nianpu, 1893–1949 (Chronological Biography of Mao Zedong, 1893–1949), vol. 1, 358.

⁶ See ibid., 360; Wang, Zhongguo gongchandang zuzhi shi ziliao huibian (Collection of Documents on the History of the CCP Organizations), 164; Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun zuzhi yange he geji lingdao chengyuan minglu (Organizational Evolution and Personnel of the Leading Organs at All Levels of the PLA), 48–52.

⁷ See Zhou Enlai nianpu (1898–1949) (Chronological Biography of Zhou Enlai [1898–1949]), 220; Wang Song [Liu Yalou], Li Ting [Lin Biao], and Zhou Den [Mao Zemin], Doklad general'nomu sekretariu IKKI G. Dimitrovu, 8 ianvaria 1940 g. (Report to the General Secretary of the ECCI G. Dimitrov, January 8, 1940), RGASPI, collection 495, inventory 225, file 477, sheet 48.

⁸ Saich, The Rise to Power of the Chinese Communist Party, 558–66.

⁹ Ibid.; Pang, Mao Zedong nianpu, 1893–1949 (Chronological Biography of Mao Zedong, 1893–1949), vol. 1, 364; Jin, Mao Zedong zhuan (1893–1949) (Biography of Mao Zedong [1893–1949]), 289–90; Wang [Liu], Li [Lin] i Zhou [Mao], Doklad general'nomu sekretariu IKKI G. Dimitrovu, 8 ianvaria 1940 g. (Report to the General Secretary of the ECCI G. Dimitrov, January 8, 1940), 48.

1⁰ See Li Ruilin, “Vosstanie v Ningdu” (Uprising in Ningdu), in Vsiudu krasnye znamena (Red Banners Everywhere), 52–58.

¹¹ See Wen and Zhang, Mao Zedong yu He Zizhen (Mao Zedong and He Zizhen), 75–79; Pang, Mao Zedong nianpu, 1893–1949 (Chronological Biography of Mao Zedong, 1893–1949), vol. 1, 365; Jin, Mao Zedong zhuan (1893–1949) (Biography of Mao Zedong [1893–1949]), 290–91.

¹² Titarenko, Kommunisticheskii internatsional i kitaiskaia revoliutsiia: Dokumenty (The Communist International and the Chinese Revolution), 628–29.

¹³ Ibid., 240, 242. See also Titarenko, VKP(b), Komintern i Kitai: Dokumenty (The CPSU, the Comintern and China: Documents), vol. 4, 96.

¹⁴ See also Titarenko, VKP(b), Komintern i Kitai: Dokumenty (The CPSU, the Comintern and China: Documents), vol. 4, 100–102.

¹⁵ See Donald A. Jordan, China's Trial by Fire: The Shanghai War of 1932 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001).

¹⁶ See Mif, Sovety v Kitae (Soviets in China), 454–56; Stuart R. Schram, ed., Mao's Road to Power: Revolutionary Writings, 1912–1949, vol. 4: (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1997), 209–14.

¹⁷ Otto Braun, A Comintern Agent in China 1932–1939, trans. Jeanne Moore (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1982), 30.

¹⁸ See Nie, Inside the Red Star, 114–28.

¹⁹ Titarenko, VKP(b), Komintern i Kitai: Dokumenty (The CPSU, the Comintern and China: Documents), vol. 4, 146–47. This telegram is rather confusing. One senses that the members of the Bureau themselves did not fully comprehend what the Provisional Politburo wanted from them, but they wanted very much to show their loyalty. “It goes without saying,” they wrote, “that we must struggle against Li Lisan's adventurist line of attacking large cities. The current situation is in our favor, however. We must fight against right opportunistic excessive fear before attacks on the most important cities.”

²⁰ Pang, Mao Zedong nianpu, 1893–1949 (Chronological Biography of Mao Zedong, 1893–1949), vol. 1, 375.

²¹ Titarenko, VKP(b), Komintern i Kitai: Dokumenty (The CPSU, the Comintern and China: Documents), vol. 4, 153.

²² Ibid., 158.

²³ Ibid., 159.

²⁴ See Pang, Mao Zedong nianpu, 1893–1949 (Chronological Biography of Mao Zedong, 1893–1949), vol. 1, 377; Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun zuzhi yange he geji lingdao chengyuan minglu (Organizational Evolution and Personnel of the Leading Organs at All Levels of the PLA), 58–61.

²⁵ See Pang, Mao Zedong nianpu, 1893–1949 (Chronological Biography of Mao Zedong, 1893–1949), vol. 1, 342.

²⁶ See ibid., vol. 1, 379–80; Schram, Mao's Road to Power, vol. 4, 242–44.

²⁷ See Wang [Liu], Li [Lin], and Zhou [Mao], Doklad General'nomu sekretariu IKKI G. Dimitrovu, 8 ianvaria 1940 g. (Report to ECCI General Secretary G. Dimitrov, January 8, 1940), 49; Titarenko, VKP(b), Komintern i Kitai: Dokumenty (The CPSU, the Comintern and China: Documents), vol. 4, 146–48, 152–53, 158–59, 193; Lichnoe delo Mao Tszeduna (Personal File of Mao Zedong), RGASPI, collection 495, inventory 225, file 71, vol. 3, sheets 176–79.

²⁸ Wang [Liu], Li [Lin], and Zhou [Mao], Doklad General'nomu sekretariu IKKI G. Dimitrovu, 8 ianvaria 1940 g. (Report to ECCI General Secretary G. Dimitrov, January 8, 1940), 49.

²⁹ Titarenko, VKP(b), Komintern i Kitai: Dokumenty (The CPSU, the Comintern and China: Documents), vol. 4, 187–88.

³⁰ Quoted from Jin, Mao Zedong zhuan (1893–1949) (Biography of Mao Zedong [1893–1949]), 309.

³¹ Titarenko, VKP(b), Komintern i Kitai: Dokumenty (The CPSU, the Comintern and China: Documents), vol. 4, 191, 192.

³² See Jin, Mao Zedong zhuan (1893–1949) (Biography of Mao Zedong [1893–1949]), 309.

³³ Ibid., 334.

³⁴ Quoted from Wen and Zhang, Mao Zedong yu He Zizhen (Mao Zedong and He Zizhen), 92; Jin, Mao Zedong zhuan (1893–1949) (Biography of Mao Zedong [1893–1949]), 310.

³⁵ See Titarenko, VKP(b), Komintern i Kitai: Dokumenty (The CPSU, the Comintern and China: Documents), vol. 4, 194, 223, 225.

³⁶ See Wang, Zhongguo gongchandang zuzhi shi ziliao huibian (Collection of Documents on the History of the CCP Organizations), 188.

³⁷ Titarenko, VKP(b), Komintern i Kitai: Dokumenty (The CPSU, the Comintern and China: Documents), vol. 4, 199.

³⁸ See Pang, Mao Zedong nianpu, 1893–1949 (Chronological Biography of Mao Zedong, 1893–1949), vol. 1, 393; “Zapis' besedy tt. Chzhou Enlaia, Chzhen Lina [Ren Bishi] i [G. I.] Mordvinova, 16 noiabria 1939 goda” (Notes on a Conversation Among Comrades Zhou Enlai, Zheng Ling [Ren Bishi], and [G. I.] Mordvinov, November 16, 1939), 34.

³⁹ Titarenko, VKP(b), Komintern i Kitai: Dokumenty (The CPSU, the Comintern and China: Documents), vol. 4, 295.

⁴⁰ Ibid., 295, 298, 309, 323.

⁴¹ See “Dokladnaia zapiska o provalakh i provokatsiiakh v tsentral'nykh organizatsiiakh KP Kitaia v Shanhae za poslednie tri goda i o dele ‘Osobogo otdela' ” (Reportorial Notes on the Failures and Provocations in the Central Organs of the CP of China in Shanghai for the Past Three Years and of the Matter of the ‘Special Section'), RGASPI, collection 495, inventory 74, file 299, sheets 1–60; Litten, “The Noulens Affair,” 492–512.

⁴² Jin, Mao Zedong zhuan (1893–1949) (Biography of Mao Zedong [1893–1949]), 311.

⁴³ See Wen and Zhang, Mao Zedong yu He Zizhen (Mao Zedong and He Zizhen), 91.

⁴⁴ See Deng Maomao, Deng Xiaoping: My Father (New York: Basic Books, 1995), 210–17.

⁴⁵ Quoted from Wen and Zhang, Mao Zedong yu He Zizhen (Mao Zedong and He Zizhen), 99; Jin, Mao Zedong zhuan (1893–1949) (Biography of Mao Zedong [1893–1949]), 333.

⁴⁶ Quoted from Jin, Mao Zedong zhuan (1893–1949) (Biography of Mao Zedong, 1893–1949), 334.

⁴⁷ See Braun, A Comintern Agent in China 1932–1939, 1–79.

⁴⁸ Titarenko, VKP(b), Komintern i Kitai: Dokumenty (The CPSU, the Comintern and China: Documents), vol. 4, 1145.

⁴⁹ Ibid., 1146. See also Bo Gu, “Moia Predvaritel'naia ispoved'” (My Preliminary Testimony), RGASPI, collection 495, inventory 225, file 2847, sheets 1–111.

⁵⁰ See Titarenko, VKP(b), Komintern i Kitai: Dokumenty (The CPSU, the Comintern and China: Documents), vol. 3, 1306–27; vol. 4, 103–4.

⁵¹ See ibid., vol. 4, 243, 427.

⁵² Braun, A Comintern Agent in China 1932–1939, 49.

⁵³ See the unpublished proofs of the book Pavel Mif, ed., Soviety v Kitae: Materialy i dokumenty, Sbornik vtoroi (Soviets in China: Materials and Documents, Second Collection) (Moscow: Partizdat TsK VKP(b), 1935), 183–258. This book was never published, due to a radical change in the policy of Stalin's Comintern in 1935. One of the surviving copies of the proofs is in Alexander V. Pantsov's private library.

⁵⁴ See Wang, Zhongguo gongchandang zuzhi shi ziliao huibian (Collection of Documents on the History of the CCP Organizations), 198.

⁵⁵ See Titarenko, VKP(b), Komintern i Kitai: Dokumenty (The CPSU, the Comintern and China: Documents), vol. 3, 49.

⁵⁶ Ibid., vol. 4, 585.

⁵⁷ Ibid., 586.

⁵⁸ Quoted from Jin, Mao Zedong zhuan (1893–1949) (Biography of Mao Zedong [1893–1949]), 339.

⁵⁹ See Kommunisticheskii Internatsional (Communist International), no. 20 (1934): 21–29; no. 23 (1934): 32–51; Za rubezhom (Abroad), no. 27 (59) (1934): 1, 4–9; Mao Zedong, Tol'ko soviety mogut spasti Kitai: Doklad na II-m s”ezde Sovetov Kitaia (Only Soviets Can Save China: Report at the Second Congress of Chinese Soviets) (Moscow and Leningrad: Izdatel'stvo inostrannykh rabochikh v SSSR, 1934); Mao Zedong, Ekonomicheskoe stroitel'stvo i itogi proverki razdela zemli v Kitaiskoi Sovietskoi Respublike (Izbrannye rechi i stat'i) (Economic Construction and the Results of the Verification of Land Redistribution in the Chinese Soviet Republic [Selected Speeches and Articles]) (Moscow and Leningrad: Izdatel'stvo inostrannykh rabochikh v SSSR, 1934).

⁶⁰ See Pravda (Truth), February 11, 1930.

⁶¹ Titarenko, VKP(b), Komintern i Kitai: Dokumenty (The CPSU, the Comintern and China: Documents), vol. 4, 693.

⁶² See Nie, Inside the Red Star, 158–59; Braun, A Comintern Agent in China 1932–1939, 40–43, 75–76; Violet Cressy-Marcks, Journey into China (New York: Dutton, 1942), 166.

⁶³ Stuart R. Schram, Mao's Road to Power: Revolutionary Writings, 1912–1949, vol. 5 (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1999), 528–29.

⁶⁴ Titarenko, VKP(b), Komintern i Kitai: Dokumenty (The CPSU, the Comintern and China: Documents), vol. 4, 602.

⁶⁵ Ibid., 614.

⁶⁶ See Pang, Mao Zedong nianpu, 1893–1949 (Chronological Biography of Mao Zedong, 1893–1949), vol. 1, 428.

⁶⁷ Braun, A Comintern Agent in China 1932–1939, 76.

⁶⁸ See Titarenko, VKP(b), Komintern i Kitai: Dokumenty (The CPSU, the Comintern and China: Documents), vol. 4, 613.

⁶⁹ See Helen Foster Snow (Nym Wales), The Chinese Communists: Sketches and Autobiographies of the Old Guard (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1972), 245, 246.

⁷⁰ See Wen and Zhang, Mao Zedong yu He Zizhen (Mao Zedong and He Zizhen), 95–97; Ma, Hongse diyi jiazu (The First Red Family), 323–24.

ⁿ³⁷ The humor is built upon wordplay. The expression xiao maomao actually has a dual meaning. It can be translated either as “hairy little one” or as “little fur ball.” Thus many in China affectionately call their newborn babies after the soft, downy hair on their heads, but it can also mean “Little Double Mao” if Mao is the character for the surname Mao rather than the character mao that means “hair.”

^m1 Otto Braun 李德（1900年9月—1974年8月），原名奥托·布劳恩，出生于德国慕尼黑。1933年，中共临时中央从上海迁往中央苏区，李德以中共中央军事顾问的身份来到瑞金。