6 THE GREAT UNION OF THE POPULAR MASSES

Back in Changsha, Mao felt himself in his element. Here, unlike in Beijing, he didn't have to prove himself to anyone. He was already widely respected by many educated people and, in the absence of Xiao Yu, he was seen as the leader of the Renovation of the People Study Society.

He easily secured a position teaching history at Xiuye Primary School. As always in China, this came about through connections. An old friend, Zhou Shizhao, recommended Mao to the school where Zhou himself taught. Mao had a light load, just six classroom hours a week and lots of free time. He received a minuscule salary of around four yuan (equal to four silver dollars) a month, but it was enough to keep him fed. He lived at the school, in keeping with the prevailing practice.¹ Principles of pedagogy required that teachers not only give lectures, but also model proper behavior for their students.

The spring of 1919 was a troubled time. In late April, soon after Mao returned to Changsha, the political situation in Hunan and throughout China became extremely tense. In January a conference of the twenty-eight victorious powers in World War I had convened in Paris to draw up a peace treaty with Germany. Chinese public opinion was outraged by the refusal of the representatives of the Entente powers to honor the just demands of the Chinese delegation, namely, that the Chinese port of Qingdao and the surrounding territory on Jiaozhou Bay, which had been seized by the Germans in 1898 and then by the Japanese in November 1914, be returned to China, which had joined the war against Germany as of August 1917. The Japanese, however, wanted to retain the former German colony for themselves. The Chinese representatives at the conference were profoundly disappointed that the delegates from the leading Western powers supported Japan. England, France, and Italy, bound by the secret treaties they had concluded with Japan in February–March 1917, wanted no conflicts with their wartime ally. These agreements accorded Japan recognition of its right to German holdings in China in exchange for its help to the Entente. Moreover, Western leaders were counting on Japan to play a significant role in a new war against Soviet Russia. The American delegation tried to find a compromise, but failed.

The peace conference that the Chinese expected to recognize China as an equal member of the new, postwar international system merely resolved to restore to China some ancient astronomical instruments seized by the Germans during the Boxer Rebellion. The Chinese were understandably insulted. Students were particularly indignant. “Japan will possess Qingdao and Jiaozhou while we Chinese will do what, gaze at the stars?” raged the students. A telegram from Wang Zhengting, a Chinese delegate to the conference, to a Shanghai newspaper in late March 1919 added fuel to the fire. It said:

We insisted …… that the Twenty-One Demands and other Secret agreements be annulled …… [W]orst of all was that among the Chinese were some who made concessions for their own mercenary reasons …… These are henchmen of traitors to our nation. We express the hope that public opinion throughout the country will rise up in struggle against these traitors and create the opportunity to annul the treaties that were thrust upon us.²

Wang Zhengting's call fell upon fertile soil. An anti-Japanese patriotic movement began to develop in China and a search commenced for the traitors whom Wang Zhengting had written about in his telegram. Suspicion fell upon the leading Japanophiles: Cao Rulin, the minister of communications; Zhang Zongxiang, the Chinese minister to Tokyo; and Lu Zongyu, the director of the Chinese Mint.

The situation grew tenser by the day and finally exploded. On Saturday evening, May 3, student activists gathered at Peking University and decided to organize a large demonstration the following day, Sunday, on Tiananmen Square, in front of the entrance to the Forbidden City. One law student gave a fiery speech at the meeting, slashed his finger with a knife, and wrote in his blood on a piece of white cloth, “Return Qingdao to us!” He raised his slogan high above his head and the hall erupted in applause.³

At 10 A.M. on May 4, more than three thousand students from various educational institutions in Beijing gathered on the square. Everywhere white flags could be seen—white is the color of mourning in China—along with maps of Qingdao and incendiary placards. Despite exhortations by a representative of the Ministry of Education, the Peking garrison commander, and the chief of police, the demonstrators moved toward the nearby Legation Quarter. Still believing in “Great America,” they wanted to submit a petition to the U.S. minister in the name of 11,500 students in Beijing. The basis of their faith was President Woodrow Wilson's message to Congress on January 8, 1919, in which he had set forth his Fourteen Points for “universal peace,” condemning secret treaties and calling for a “free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims.” The guards at the Legation Quarter refused to allow the students to enter. They permitted just four representatives to meet with an official of the American embassy.

This refusal roused the crowd to a fever pitch. Then someone suggested settling scores with the traitors. So they set off for the nearby house of Cao Rulin, burst into it, and went on a veritable rampage. Whatever they didn't smash, they dumped into a pond in the courtyard. Cao Rulin managed to escape, but Zhang Zongxiang, who happened to be present, was grabbed and savagely beaten by the students, who dispersed around 5 P.M. after setting fire to Cao's house.⁴ What had begun nobly as a series of patriotic speeches wound up as pure hooliganism. The police arrested thirty-two people, but under the pressure of liberal public opinion they were quickly released.

This was hardly the end. Throughout May and into June, Beijing students were up in arms. They held strikes, demonstrations, and meetings, but they committed no more outrages. News about the events of May 4 spread throughout the country. In Shanghai and many other cities, not only students but also many merchants, gentry, and even workers expressed solidarity with the students in Beijing. Filled with patriotic feelings, the rickshaw pullers unanimously refused service to Japanese. In many places, residents expressed their anti-Japanese feelings through demonstrations and strikes. Shipping came to a halt along the Yangzi River as dockworkers went on strike. Posters saying, “Return Qingdao to us!” “Wipe Away the National Shame!” and “Down with the Three Minister Traitors!” appeared everywhere. In response to a call by the Central Chamber of Commerce in Beijing, a campaign to boycott Japanese goods developed throughout China. Crowds smashed the windows of stores trading in Japanese manufactures, seized Japanese goods, and burned them on the streets. Newspaper editors refused to accept and print Japanese advertisements, the sailing schedules of Japanese ships, or even information about exchange rates for the Japanese yen.⁵ The president of China, Xu Shichang, was forced to compel the resignation of Cao Rulin, Zhang Zongxiang, and Lu Zongyu, but the disturbances did not die down until June 28, when news came that the Chinese delegates had refused to sign the unjust Treaty of Versailles, which the Entente powers had concluded with Germany.

Students in Changsha also attempted to organize an anti-Japanese demonstration in solidarity with the students in Beijing. On May 7, several thousand people came out on the streets of Changsha. They were supported by the merchants.⁶ The demonstration was quickly dispersed, however, by troops under General Zhang Jingyao's command, that same “Zhang the Venomous” who had established a reign of terror in the city one year earlier. It is not known whether Mao Zedong took part in this demonstration. Most likely not; otherwise the Maoist chroniclers would not have missed an opportunity to glorify his participation.

Of course, Mao could hardly fail to take an interest in the student struggle, but spontaneous acts of protest did not appeal to him. He believed in the need to channel spontaneity. More than anything else an organization was necessary, a vanguard firmly welded together by the will of a great leader. Mao had not read Friedrich Paulsen in vain. “A moral action depends on feeling and will, which must precede the moral action.” Mao never betrayed this credo.⁷ In early May 1919 he began seriously considering the creation of an effective organization that could lead the patriotic student movement in Changsha. The Renovation of the People Study Society, which had only about seventy members in May 1919, many of whom were now in France, had proved to be ineffective.⁸ In mid-May Mao discussed the situation with Deng Zhongxia, who had come to Changsha from Beijing and gave Mao a detailed report on the student activities there. Mao, Deng, and Bewhiskered He (He Shuheng) decided to organize a broadly based Hunan student association, following the example of similar organizations in a number of cities and provinces.⁹ The members of these student unions advanced a strikingly expressed political goal: “To employ …… all the power that students can muster” to “restore national sovereignty and punish those who had betrayed the motherland.”¹⁰

On May 25 a conference of more than twenty Changsha school representatives, many of them members of the Renovation of the People Study Society, convened in He Shuheng's apartment. Mao Zedong introduced Deng Zhongxia, who recounted the events of May 4 and expressed the hope that Hunan students would declare a general strike in solidarity with the students of Beijing. Deng's speech made their heads spin and the orator himself, young and intelligent-looking, produced quite an impression. Life now had real meaning. It demanded struggle, self-sacrifice, and glory. Three days later the Hunan Students Association was formally established. Peng Huang, a student at the Hunan School of Commerce who was a close friend of Mao's, was selected as chair of the association.

On June 3 the Hunan Students Association declared a citywide strike in which students from twenty schools in Changsha took part. This unprecedented strike inspired the local newspaper, the Justice, to publish the appeal of the striking students on June 4: “Diplomacy has failed, the country has been broken apart, and unless timely measures are taken to save the state, it will perish.” The appeal also called upon the government not to sign the Versailles Treaty and to annul the Twenty-One Demands.¹¹ The situation was very tense. Conflict with the authorities was avoided only because summer vacation soon began. Many students left for home, but the organization continued to function. Students returning home were organized into propaganda squads that were tasked with using lively and accessible means to spread the idea of a boycott of Japanese goods in the villages. At this time, one-act patriotic skits, rather primitive in nature, and which the students themselves composed, became very popular in China. They produced an enormous impression upon their illiterate peasant and urban audiences.

A number of students signed up for the inspection squads along with representatives of the merchants' guilds that were enforcing the boycott. On July 7, the union and the merchant corporations jointly held another massive demonstration, this time carefully planned, calling for the destruction of Japanese goods. Zhou Shizhao, who took part in it, recalled:

In front, columns of marchers carried banners saying “Meeting to burn Japanese goods,” and “Countrymen, be vigilant! Do not buy Japanese goods under any circumstances.” All of the students carried some sort of Japanese goods on their shoulders, and behind them followed shop assistants from silk goods stores. Members of the Union to Defend Native Goods and the Student Association brought up the rear, carrying the banners of their unions. Parading along the noisy streets, the column stopped in front of the Education Committee. The students unloaded the Japanese goods, soaked them with kerosene, and set them ablaze. Only after the goods were reduced to ashes did the demonstrators disperse to their homes.¹²

Two days later, on the initiative of the leaders of the Students Association, a general meeting of representatives from public organizations was held, and it was decided to establish a united Hunan association embracing all sectors of the population.¹³

From Mao's perspective, all of this was not enough. He had become convinced that propaganda was the most effective means of influencing the masses. Mao, following Lenin, whom he scarcely knew about at the time, could say, “In our opinion, the starting point of all our activities, the first practical step towards creating the organization we desire, the thread that will guide us in unswervingly developing, deepening and expanding that organization, is the establishment of a …… political newspaper.”¹⁴ Neither Mao nor his comrades had the means to start a newspaper; therefore, they decided to establish a Hunan-wide student information journal along the lines of Chen Du Xiu's and Li Dazhao's Weekly Review. Mao Zedong defined its aims in florid and enthusiastic words: “The vast and furious tide of the new thought is already rushing, surging along both banks of the Xiang River.”¹⁵

The first issue of the Xiangjiang pinglun (Xiang River review) was composed in about ten days and appeared on July 14, 1919. The Manifesto on the Founding of the Xiang River Review, which Mao wrote as editor in chief, said, “Unfettered by any of the old views or superstitions, we must seek the truth. In dealing with people, we advocate uniting the popular masses, and toward the oppressors, we believe in continuing the ‘sincere admonishment movement.' ” In the category of “oppressors,” in addition to bureaucrats and militarists he included capitalists. The months he had spent in Beijing had not been in vain. He was still strongly attracted to anarchism, and Li Dazhao's lectures on socialism had likewise left their mark. He was still rather cautious, did not advocate violence, and called only for democracy and liberalism. “We put into practice the ‘cry of revolution'—the cry for bread, the cry for freedom, the cry for equality—the ‘bloodless revolution,' ” he asserted. “Thus, we will not provoke widespread chaos, nor pursue the ineffectual ‘revolution of bombs,' or ‘revolution of blood.' ” Even with respect to the Japanese, Mao still considered most effective the adoption of such means as “boycotting classes, merchants' strikes, workers' strikes, and boycotting Japanese products.”¹⁶

The first issue of the journal published Mao's pointed article on the arrest of his idol Chen Duxiu by the Beijing militarists. Chen had been taken into custody during the student movement on June 11, 1919, for distributing a leaflet he had written called “Declaration of the Citizens of Beijing,” in which he had sharply criticized the domestic and foreign policies of the Chinese president and prime minister over the “Shandong question.” He spent eighty-three days in prison, after which he left Beijing and settled in Shanghai. Shaken by Chen's arrest, Mao accused all of Chinese society:

The danger does not result from military weakness or inadequate finances, nor is it the danger of being split up into many small fragments by domestic chaos. The real danger lies in the total emptiness and rottenness of the mental universe of the entire Chinese people. Of China's 400 million people, about 390 million are superstitious. They superstitiously believe in spirits and ghosts, in fortune-telling, in fate, in despotism. There is absolutely no recognition of the individual, of the self, of truth. This is because scientific thought has not developed. In name, China is a republic, but in reality it is an autocracy that is getting worse and worse as one regime replaces another …… [The] masses of the people haven't the faintest glimmer of democracy in their mentality, and have no idea what democracy actually is. Mr. Chen has always stood for these two things [science and democracy] …… For these two things, Mr. Chen has offended society, and society has repaid him with arrest and imprisonment.¹⁷

As a mark of solidarity with his teacher, Mao reproduced Chen Duxiu's anti-government leaflet in his article.

In this same issue Mao first published a brief note about the Bolsheviks. He didn't offer any judgment; he merely called on the Chinese public to study the Russian experience: “Each of us should examine very carefully what kind of thing this extremist party [the Bolshevik party] really is …… In the twinkling of an eye, the extremist party, to everyone's amazement, has spread throughout the country [Russia], to the point that there is no place to hide from them.”¹⁸

Two thousand copies of this maiden issue were quickly distributed and soon, at the end of July, an additional two thousand copies were sold in just three days. On July 21, there appeared simultaneously a special supplement to the first issue as well as the second issue in a press run of five thousand copies. A week later five thousand copies of the third issue appeared. For Hunan these were enormous numbers. Of the nine daily newspapers in Changsha only the Justice had a circulation of as much as 2,300 to 2,400 copies. The others sold between one hundred and five hundred copies.¹⁹ Mao managed to compose five issues of the journal, but only four of them were distributed. The fourth issue went on sale August 4, also in a print run of five thousand. The fifth issue had already been typeset when it was confiscated at the printer's by Zhang Jingyao's soldiers.²⁰

The journal was Mao Zedong's brainchild. According to Zhou Shizhao, Mao literally spent every spare moment in working on the journal. “Awaking late at night, I would see a light in his room through a crack in the wall,” Zhou recalled. “After writing an article, he then edited it, composed the printer's dummy himself, proofread it, and sometimes even sold copies of the journal on the street.”²¹

The journal also published brief factual summaries, most of which Mao himself wrote, under the titles “Survey of Events in the West,” “Survey of Events in the East,” “International Notes,” “Xiang River Notes,” and “New Literature and Art.” From his writing brush flowed the article that brought him national attention, “The Great Union of the Popular Masses.” Broad in scope and characteristic of his thinking at the time, it took up almost the entirety of three issues of the weekly paper, from the second through the fourth. He attempted to answer a basic question that had tormented a generation of revolutionaries: what could be done when “the decadence of the state, the sufferings of humanity, and the darkness of society have all reached an extreme.”

Mao's solution left no doubt that his vision of revolution was still moderate. Starting from the supposition that the reason for all of China's woes, as well as those of other countries, was that the oppressors of the people, that is, the aristocrats and capitalists of various countries, were united against the popular masses, he proposed to “fight fire with fire.” Only a “great union of the popular masses,” a great unity directed against the violence of the “oppressors,” he wrote, could save the country. In essence, he proposed the establishment of trade unions of all the oppressed strata in society, including peasants, workers, students, women, primary school teachers, policemen, and rickshaw coolies. Mao placed all these people into the class of the “poor and the weak,” who were opposed by the “rich and the strong.” Small professional organizations of the oppressed, he believed, would help to catalyze the “great union” of all unfortunate people. Once united, the popular masses of China would easily crush the aristocrats and the capitalists, whom they outnumbered many times over. The popular masses need only unite, rise up, and cry out in full voice, then “the traitors will get up and tremble and flee for their lives.”²²

The article was steeped in Kropotkin's ideas of “mutual aid,” although Mao also credited the struggle of a “hundred thousand brave Russian warriors [who] suddenly exchange the imperial standard for the red flag.” He called on Chinese soldiers who were serving the militarists to follow this example. The time will come, he wrote, when Chinese soldiers will realize that they are the “sons, brothers, or husbands” of ordinary people. “[T]hey will join hands and turn the other way instead, becoming together valiant fighters resisting the aristocrats and the capitalists.” Just as in Russia and a number of other European countries, a social revolution will occur in China that will be part of the global struggle of the oppressed. Under the influence of Li Dazhao, Mao wrote,

As a result of the World War and the bitterness of their lives, the popular masses in various countries have suddenly undertaken all sorts of action. In Russia, they have overthrown the aristocrats and driven out the rich, and the toilers and peasants have jointly set up a Soviet government. The army of the red flag surges forward in the East and in the West, sweeping away numerous enemies …… We know it! We are awakened! The world is ours, the state is ours, society is ours …… We must act energetically to carry out the great union of the popular masses, which will not brook a moment's delay!²³

These words may well seem naive. But if one recalls that the “great union” of the May Fourth students in Beijing had forced the retirement of the “national traitors” Cao Rulin, Zhang Zongxiang, and Lu Zongyu without any bomb-throwing, it is not hard to understand what inspired Mao. His understanding of social revolution did not involve bloodshed, but rather the concerted and peaceful action of the “great union of the popular masses,” who would deafen the oppressors with their “great and mighty roar.” But perhaps he was closer to the truth than at any other time. “We accept the fact that the oppressors are people, are human beings like ourselves …… [If] we use oppression to overthrow oppression …… the result [will be] that we still have oppression,” he wrote.²⁴ Yet less than nine months later Mao fundamentally betrayed his youthful ideals and unconditionally accepted the radical concepts of Marx and Lenin.

For the time being everything was fairly peaceful. “The great union of the popular masses” seemed quite attainable. The first step was to assemble a small but closely united group of like-minded individuals around the principle of mutual aid. Toward the end of 1919, Mao revived his old idea of establishing an agricultural commune on the left bank of the Xiang River, across from Changsha. The hold of anarchism upon him, particularly the communistic ideas of Kropotkin concerning mutual aid, strengthened his desire “to build a new village at the foot of Mount Yuelu.” He counted upon the help of his friends. He wanted to open a village school to teach social science and educate the “new man.” Of course, nothing came of this, but Mao continued to cherish the dream for several months.

The Xiang River Review, particularly Mao's article, “The Great Union of the Popular Masses,” was enthusiastically greeted by democratically inclined people in several Chinese cities. Even such intellectuals as Hu Shi and Luo Jialun, who nine months earlier would have nothing to do with the librarian's assistant, praised it fulsomely.²⁵ One can imagine Mao Zedong's exultation. The young provincial had stepped into the national political arena. People were reading him; people were talking about him. The confiscation of the fifth issue only increased his popularity. He had become a victim of the crude authorities.

He had not been imprisoned, however, and was able to continue his political activity. In mid-August 1919, Mao and other leaders of the Hunan Students Association decided to try to unite various public groups under an anti-Zhang banner. The governor of Hunan, Zhang Jingyao, was behaving like a real bandit. He and his three brothers, who held high office in his military administration, along with their soldiers went around robbing peasants, looting the public treasury, extorting tribute from merchants, kidnapping and killing people, raping women, trading in opium, and withholding salaries from teachers. They treated Hunan like a conquered province. The people lived in fear, trade dried up, prices skyrocketed. “If ‘Zhang the Venomous' is not uprooted, Hunan will perish,” people were saying.²⁶

At the beginning of September, Mao Zedong was invited by the Sino-American hospital Xiangya to serve as editor in chief of its weekly journal, Xin Hunan (New Hunan). Six issues had already appeared, but it had yet to find its voice. Mao accepted on condition that he would define the journal's direction. The Americans had been impressed by his fight for liberal values, so they agreed. Mao defined his goals in the first issue he edited: “1) to criticize society, 2) to reform thought, 3) to introduce [the new] learning, 4) to discuss problems.” He continued, “Naturally we will not be concerned with ‘success or failure, or whether things go smoothly or not.' Still less will we pay attention to any power (authority) whatsoever. For our credo is: ‘Anything may be sacrificed save principle, which can absolutely not be sacrificed.' ”²⁷ It was hardly surprising that after four weeks this journal, too, was shut down.²⁸

The romantic aura of a fighter against tyranny, his obvious journalistic talent, and his growing national popularity combined to make the handsome twenty-five-year-old Mao Zedong particularly attractive to women. Yang Kaihui was far off and flesh would have its due. In the fall of 1919 Mao began an affair with Yang Changji's favorite female student, Tao Yi. She was three years younger than Mao and distinguished from the many other girls he knew by her sense of purpose and her wit. Passion overwhelmed him, and he was unable to master it. Love “is an irresistible natural force,” he exclaimed in a burst of enthusiasm. “The power of the human need for love is greater than that of any other need. Nothing except some special force can stop it …… [The only thing able] to block this surging tide of the need for love, is none other, I believe, than ‘superstition.' ”²⁹

The affair was stormy but brief; it flamed out as suddenly as it had flared up, in the late summer of 1920. The two lovers separated for ideological reasons. By then Mao had begun to lean toward communism, and Tao Yi could not accept the doctrines of Bolshevism. Soon after they split up, Tao Yi left Changsha for Shanghai, where she founded a women's school. She died in 1930, before her thirty-fifth birthday.³⁰

In the autumn of 1919 there were as yet no portents of this lovers' drama. Both Tao and Mao believed in liberalism, democracy, and free love. It was at this time that Mao wrote a series of articles on problems of love and marriage that were published in the pages of Changsha's leading newspaper, Justice. The occasion was an incident that had shaken the whole town. On November 14, a girl named Zhao Wuzhen, given by her parents to become the concubine of a rich and elderly merchant, committed suicide by slitting her throat with a razor while being carried in a red palanquin to her bridegroom's house. The horror that everyone awaiting her arrival experienced is impossible to describe and for many days no one in town spoke of anything else. Many people condemned the girl for violating the canons of Confucianism, but there were also many who sympathized with her. Naturally, Mao, Tao Yi, and all of their comrades took the side of Zhao Wuzhen. Mao was particularly indignant. “The background to this incident,” he wrote, “is the rottenness of the marriage system, and the darkness of the social system, in which there can be no independent ideas or views, and no freedom of choice in love.”³¹

The problems of love and marriage, no matter how serious, could not deter Mao and his friends from pursuing their main goal of getting rid of the governor and his criminal clique. Throughout the fall Mao worked to turn as many people against Zhang as he could. In the spirit of the “Great Union of the Popular Masses,” Mao thought Beijing might be persuaded to recall Zhang if Hunan demonstrated its unanimous refusal to accept this bloody oligarch. Meanwhile, he continued the active propaganda campaign to boycott Japanese goods via the Hunan Students Association, which operated underground after Zhang had banned it following his confiscation of the Xiang River Review.

In mid-November Mao also called a meeting in an attempt to revive the Renovation of the People Study Society. The internal structure of the society was reorganized by creating two departments: a “consultative department” (in essence, legislative) and an “executive department” consisting of several subdivisions: school, editorial, women's, and overseas education. An Executive Committee was also established. What had been an amorphous society began to acquire the character of a centralized political party. Bewhiskered He was chosen as the chair of the Executive Committee. Mao Zedong, Tao Yi, Zhou Shizhao, and several others became part of the Consultative Department.³² Unfortunately, the projected transformation failed. Shortly after the November meeting, many members were drawn into tumultuous public events and some were forced to leave Changsha.

The organization became paralyzed for almost a year. At the end of November, public opinion was agitated by news of clashes between Japanese soldiers and patriotic Chinese students in coastal Fujian province. Changsha students decided to hold a demonstration of solidarity and planned to put on another grand anti-Japanese show. Just then the local committee to defend native goods discovered a large quantity of contraband Japanese piece goods during its inspection of a warehouse in Changsha. The committee decided to confiscate them and burn the goods in public. On December 2, a crowd of some five thousand students, teachers, workers, and shop assistants moved through the streets of the city to the building of the Education Committee. Zhou Shizhao recalled the occasion:

The weather was clear that day …… The winter sun shone on the faces of the young people, but their hearts were overflowing with rage and indignation …… When the crowd passed by the stores selling foreign goods, loud cries of “We shall destroy contraband goods” and “Down with merchant traitors” thundered forth …… At 1:00 P.M. the column of demonstrators arrived at the doors of the Education Committee. They piled up the Japanese fabric, and the crowd of students and onlookers, now some ten thousand strong, circled around the pile, waiting for it to be torched.

Just at th[is] moment …… the chief of staff of Zhang Jingyao's troops, his younger brother Zhang Jingtang, who was prancing about on a horse and waving a saber, summoned a company of soldiers and a platoon of mounted cavalry into the square. He ordered his soldiers to surround the students in a tight circle. He climbed up on the platform and shouted, “Arson, the burning of goods, is banditry. So the students are bandits. And how does one talk with bandits? They understand only one language. They need to be beaten and destroyed!” Having spoken, he ordered the cavalrymen to drag the students off the stage and beat them. He continued to shout, “Students! Go back where you came from …… ” Several hundred soldiers pointed their bayonets at the students, and forced us to leave the square. We returned to our schools seething with indignation …… But we did not know what to do.³³

Mao Zedong and the other leaders of the patriotic movement reacted instantaneously. On the following day, December 3, an emergency meeting of the Renovation of the People Study Society and activists from the Hunan Students Association was held outside the southern gates of the city. They decided to declare a general strike and demand the immediate recall of Zhang Jingyao. A follow-up meeting on December 4 resolved to send special delegations to Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Hankou, Changde, Hengyang, and Canton to launch a national campaign to remove Zhang.³⁴

The strike began on December 6. Seventy-three of the city's seventy-five schools shut down. Some 1,200 teachers and 13,000 students went on strike. “We will not return to class until ‘Zhang the Venomous' is removed from Hunan,” they declared.³⁵ That same day Mao and several other local activists set off for Beijing. Mao took only an oiled paper umbrella to shield him from the sun and rain, a change of underwear, and a few books.³⁶ The trip took almost two weeks. On December 18, Mao was once again in Beijing.

Apparently not much had changed in the city since his departure. There were no signs of the recent student fervor. Life had reverted to normal. Chen Duxiu, who had been forced to leave for Shanghai, no longer taught at Peking University, but Li Dazhao still headed the library. But tragedy had struck the Yang Changji family. Several months before Mao's arrival, it was discovered that the venerable professor had inoperable stomach cancer. He was placed in an excellent German hospital, but his condition steadily worsened; he was dying.³⁷ Mao rushed to see him soon after he arrived, and tried to cheer up his beloved teacher, but Yang knew his end was near.

Mao again met Yang Kaihui at her father's bedside, but they were both so burdened with grief that they didn't talk at all about themselves. There was really nothing between them. Later, Kaihui would assert that during their time apart, Mao was constantly writing her “love letters,” but who knows whether this is really true.³⁸ No such letters have survived. Moreover, Mao had been under the spell of Tao Yi, who enchanted him not only with her womanliness, but also because he considered her “a very enlightened and purposeful person.”³⁹ We know that he wrote to her and even made plans for the future.⁴⁰

Yang Changji died at dawn on January 17, 1920, leaving his family in pitiful financial circumstances. The talented teacher had not earned much money. His older son was still a student and could not support his mother and sister. Friends and students of the deceased assumed the burden of looking after his family. Naturally, Mao Zedong was among the most active of those who established a fund to support the family of the esteemed professor.⁴¹

Mao did not forget why he had come to Beijing. The Hunan delegation bombarded the administration of the president, the cabinet, the ministers of foreign affairs, finance, agriculture, and trade with requests. They beseeched the government to dismiss and punish Zhang Jingyao promptly “so as to maintain the law and rescue the people from calamity.”⁴² The delegation enumerated basic crimes committed by the Hunan governor and his brothers. “Since coming to Hunan last year, Zhang Jingyao has unleashed his troops of hungry wolves,” Mao Zedong wrote on behalf of the delegation, “raping, burning, looting, and killing, and has given free rein to his government, a fierce tiger that pillages, plunders, cheats, and exacts taxes.”⁴³

But it was all in vain. The corrupt, mafia-like government had no intention of dealing seriously with the question of Zhang Jingyao. The only thing that Mao and his partners achieved was a promise from government officials to send “someone” to conduct a “secret investigation.”⁴⁴ Mao was deeply disappointed. The “Great Union of the Popular Masses” had proved powerless before the provincial oligarch, who was well connected to the cabinet. When Zhang Jingyao cleared out of Hunan in June 1920, his departure was a result of the usual game of musical chairs among warlords. Once again Changsha was occupied by Tan Yankai, who reclaimed his governorship.⁴⁵

Military power alone had meaning in China. The rifle was the midwife of power. But Mao still didn't fully grasp this, although he saw what was going on. Despite his youthful romanticism, he was a rather sober person overall. He was hot-tempered, and in letters to his friends he sometimes accused himself of being “too emotional and …… vehement,” but hysterical exaltation sickened him.⁴⁶ He was not one to cut his finger and write patriotic slogans with his blood. He still sincerely believed in the priorities of science, education, and culture, and in the possibility of disinterested journalism and activity in the public realm. This conviction would pass in a few years, but for now Mao continued to “dwell in the clouds.” It is noteworthy that having learned of the flight of Zhang Jingyao, Mao Zedong demonstrated the height of na veté in writing, “The people of Hunan should take another step forward and work for a ‘movement to abolish the military governorship.' …… The Hunan people's expulsion of Zhang was their own decision, and it is not tied to any of the dark forces. If they are really awakened to the need to abolish the military governorship, they can simply kick it out themselves.”⁴⁷ In reality the people in Changsha sat at home, not daring to show their faces on the street, while Zhang Jingyao's army withdrew from the city. Could they really rise up against whoever occupied the position of military governor?

During this winter Mao met frequently with Li Dazhao and Deng Zhongxia, from whom he learned a lot about Bolshevik Russia, where a full-scale civil war was raging. There the enigmatic extremist party, having united workers and peasants under its red banners, was struggling against the aristocrats and plutocrats whom Mao Zedong hated. At Professor Li's recommendation he resumed reading communist literature. He already knew that under Li Dazhao's influence Chen Duxiu had migrated to the communist position. As early as April 20, 1919, Chen had published a note about the Bolshevik Revolution in the journal Weekly Review, in which he said that this revolution was “the beginning of a new era in the history of mankind.” Mao was pushed toward taking this new doctrine more seriously than before.

Since he knew no language other than Chinese, he could read Marxist works only in translation, but there were few of these in China. The only available writings of Marx were an abbreviated version of The Communist Manifesto published in the Weekly Review and The Critique of the Gotha Programme, openly polemical leftist brochures that called for the violent overthrow of bourgeois rule and the establishment of a dictatorship of the working class. Among Lenin's writings, he had access only to “Political Parties in Russia and the Tasks of the Proletariat,” written by the Bolshevik leader in early April 1917. There was also a translation of the “Manifesto of the Communist International to the Proletariat of the World,” written by Trotsky for the First Congress of the Comintern, the world communist organization created by the Bolsheviks in March 1919.

Mao also carefully read several other works that explicated communist ideas, including Class Struggle by the German Marxist Karl Kautsky and A History of Socialism by the British philosopher and Fabian socialist Thomas Kirkup. “During my second visit to Peking [Beijing],” he later told Edgar Snow,

I had read much about the events in Russia, and had eagerly sought out what little Communist literature was then available in Chinese. Three books especially deeply carved my mind, and built up in me a faith in Marxism …… These books were The Communist Manifesto, translated by Chen Wang-tao [Chen Wangdao], and the first Marxist book ever published in Chinese; Class Struggle, by Kautsky; and a History of Socialism, by Kirkupp [Kirkup]. By the summer of 1920 I had become, in theory and to some extent in action, a Marxist, and from this time on I considered myself a Marxist.⁴⁸

Mao embellished the facts when he related his ideological transformation to Snow. Everything was more complicated, and it goes without saying that the aforementioned works did not effect an instantaneous transformation of his consciousness. Moreover, the translation of The Communist Manifesto by Chen Wangdao did not appear in print until August 1920, so Mao could not have read it by that summer.ⁿ⁵ The writings of Li Dazhao and Chen Duxiu, who were popularizing the October experiment, filled out the picture that was taking shape in Mao's mind.⁴⁹ His conversations with Professor Li, his contacts with Deng Zhongxia, who had already accepted the views of the Bolsheviks, and with other young intellectuals in the capital all served to influence his thinking.

After May 4, 1919, the mood of the students in Beijing changed. Wartime illusions about Anglo-American liberalism that Chinese patriots had shared now evaporated. This led to a crisis of liberal thought in China as a whole and particularly in the capital. The drawing of ideological and political lines within the intelligentsia intensified.⁵⁰ Just then, industrial workers entered upon the stage of Chinese history for the first time. Some hundred thousand workers had taken part in the May Fourth Movement. Their awakening appeared to those Chinese revolutionaries who were already acquainted with Marxism as a clear affirmation of the truth of Marxist theory concerning the “world historical mission of the working class.”⁵¹ But the more critical factors determining the interest of Chinese public opinion in Marxism were the triumphant character of the October Revolution in Russia, the radically anti-imperialist and anticapitalist policy of the Soviet government, and the successes of the Red Army in its struggle against the imperialist interventionists and domestic counterrevolutionaries. “With the Russian Revolution, Marxism demonstrated that it was a force that could rock the world,” Li Dazhao emphasized in 1919.⁵² He was essentially correct.

The achievements of the Russian communists evoked a desire to understand the ideology that guided their actions. Patriotic Chinese intellectuals began to study the Bolshevik experiment, searching for a theory they could use as a lever to move China. Marxism began to be disseminated and accepted in China through the prism of the Bolshevik experiment. Many years later Mao wrote, “It was through the Russians that the Chinese found Marxism …… Follow the path of the Russians—that was their conclusion.”⁵³ Most leading Chinese intellectuals borrowed only Bolshevism from among the broad spectrum of Marxist tendencies. Its adherents were distinguished by their voluntarist outlook regarding the laws of social development, their underestimation of the principles of the natural historical evolution of human society, their tendency to treat the role of the masses and of class struggle in history as absolutes, their total negation of the rights of property and of the individual, their apologia for violence, and likewise their denial of universal human values, including generally accepted concepts of ethics and morality, of religion, and of civil society. They possessed a simplified and superficial understanding of the socioeconomic, political, and ideological structures of capitalist and precapitalist societies, failing to take into account the diversity of social systems. Their views on world development were globalist in nature; the only thesis they were willing to accept was the inevitability of a world socialist revolution.

Some Chinese youth, who keenly felt their country's weakness and humiliation, were particularly attracted by the Bolsheviks' iron will. They viewed Lenin's policy of unfettered proletarian terror as a manifestation of invincible power. And power was precisely what the Middle Kingdom lacked. Bertrand Russell, the liberal British philosopher who visited China in early 1920, was profoundly struck by the degree to which so many young Chinese were “in love with terror.” Russell came to China after first visiting Soviet Russia. The notes on his Russia trip were published by Chen Duxiu in one of the issues of New Youth.⁵⁴ He described the actions of the Russian communists objectively and thoroughly.⁵⁵ As a man on the left, his lectures and writings underlined the “enormous significance of the Bolshevik experiment for world development,” arguing the need for all socialists to support Soviet Russia. At the same time, as a liberal, he was horrified by the actions of the Bolsheviks, which he deemed incompatible with the principles of democracy, and by the terror they had unleashed. Speaking in China, Russell condemned the dictatorship of workers and peasants, although he referred rather positively to the idea of communism. He argued that the rich should be convinced through education to change their ways. Then it would not be necessary “to limit freedom or to have recourse to war and bloody revolution.”⁵⁶ His Chinese students, however, greedily imbibed precisely that for which Russell censured the Bolsheviks.

Mao's sojourn in Beijing in the winter and spring of 1920 did not lead to any fundamental change in his consciousness. To be sure, Marxism and especially Bolshevism impressed him with its apologia for being iron-willed, and made him think more about Russian communism. But Mao had not become any sort of Marxist by the spring of 1920. This is what he wrote to his friend Zhou Shizhao in mid-March 1920: “To be honest, I still do not have a relatively clear concept of all the various ideologies and doctrines.”⁵⁷ His thinking was still a mishmash. He already considered Soviet Russia the “number one civilized country in the world,” but he still dreamed of going off somewhere with his comrades and founding a “Self-Study University.” He drew up detailed assignments for everyone in this utopian commune, and argued that “all proceeds will be held entirely in common. Those who earn more will help those who earn less; the goal is subsistence.”⁵⁸ Under the influence of everything he had read and heard about the Land of Soviets, he wanted to go there, and in February 1920 he even obliquely broached to Tao Yi the possibility of their going there together in a year or two. However, suddenly, at the end of June 1920, he declared that “a tiny blossom of New Culture has appeared in Russia, on the shores of the Arctic Ocean. For several years, fierce winds and heavy rains have been testing it, and we still do not know whether it will develop successfully or not.”⁵⁹

In a letter to his old teacher Li Jinxi in early June he wrote, “Recently I have been concentrating on the study of three subjects only: English, philosophy, and newspapers. For philosophy, I have started from the ‘three great contemporary philosophers,' and will gradually learn about the other schools of thought.” By the “three great contemporary philosophers” he was referring not to Lenin and company, but rather to Bertrand Russell and to those other liberal intellectuals Henri Bergson and John Dewey.⁶⁰ He confessed to experiencing a “hunger and thirst for knowledge,” but his studies were disorderly and his reading without purpose. “I cannot calm my mind down, and I have difficulty in persevering. It is also very hard for me to change. This is truly a most regrettable circumstance!”⁶¹ He sampled everything. Philosophy, linguistics, even Buddhism, attracted him. Despite the lessons from Professor Li, he still had not accepted Bolshevism as the only true worldview.

Mao left Beijing on April 11. As he had done the year before, he set out on a journey. This time he went first to Tianjin, a two-to-three-hour ride east of Beijing, and then to the capital of Shandong province, Jinan, famous for its springs. After this Mao found time to stop at the birthplace of Confucius, the picturesque town of Qufu, and then to climb to the summit of the nearby sacred mountain of Taishan, from where one could admire the beautiful sunrise. After descending the mountain he visited Zoucheng, the birthplace of Mencius, another great ancient philosopher. Then he traveled to Shanghai by way of Nanjing. In Shanghai he had business to attend to. His journey took twenty-five days. That was enough time to rest and gather his strength for the coming political battles.

¹. See Zhou, Wusi yundong zai Hunan (The May Fourth Movement in Hunan), 9.

². L. P. Deliusin, ed., Dvizhenie 4 maia 1919 goda v Kitae: Dokumenty i materialy (The May Fourth Movement of 1919 in China: Documents and Materials) (Moscow: Nauka, 1969), 45.

³. Ibid., 50–51.

⁴. Ibid., 54–55.

⁵. See ibid., 96.

⁶. Ibid., 107; Pang, Mao Zedong nianpu, 1893–1949 (Chronological Biography of Mao Zedong, 1893–1949), vol. 1, 41.

⁷. Schram, Mao's Road to Power, vol. 1, 211.

⁸. Ibid., vol. 2, 24.

⁹. Pang, Mao Zedong nianpu, 1893–1949 (Chronological Biography of Mao Zedong, 1893–1949), vol. 1, 41.

¹⁰. Deliusin, Dvizhenie 4 maia 1919 goda v Kitae: Dokumenty i materialy (The May Fourth Movement of 1919 in China: Documents and Materials), 71, 84.

¹¹. Ibid., 42.

¹². Zhou, Wusi yundong zai Hunan (The May Fourth Movement in Hunan), 13.

¹³. Ibid.; Pang, Mao Zedong nianpu, 1893–1949 (Chronological Biography of Mao Zedong, 1893–1949), vol. 1, 42.

¹⁴. V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, vol. 2 (New York: International, 1943), 19.

¹⁵. Schram, Mao's Road to Power, vol. 1, 320.

¹⁶. Ibid., 318, 319.

¹⁷. Ibid., 329–30.

¹⁸. Ibid., 332.

¹⁹. Ibid., vol. 2, 172.

²⁰. Wusi shiqi qikan jieshao (Survey of May Fourth Era Publications), vol. 1 (Beijing: Shenghuo. Dushu. Xinzhi sanlian shudian, 1979), 144, 547–49.

²¹. Zhou, Wusi yundong zai Hunan (The May Fourth Movement in Hunan), 17.

²². Schram, Mao's Road to Power, vol. 1, 378, 381.

²³. Ibid., 380, 385–86.

²⁴. Ibid., 319.

²⁵. Li, The Early Revolutionary Activities of Comrade Mao Tse-tung, xxix; Short, Mao, 95; Zhou, Wusi yundong zai Hunan (The May Fourth Movement in Hunan), 15–16.

²⁶. Zhou, Wusi yundong zai Hunan (The May Fourth Movement in Hunan), 29.

²⁷. Schram, Mao's Road to Power, vol. 1, 418.

²⁸. See Zhou, Wusi yundong zai Hunan (The May Fourth Movement in Hunan), 21.

²⁹. Schram, Mao's Road to Power, vol. 1, 445.

³⁰. Ibid., 491; Short, Mao, 115.

³¹. Schram, Mao's Road to Power, vol. 1, 422. In this connection, the following assertion by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, the English biographers of Mao Zedong, is astonishing. They write that Mao's works on the woman question composed in 1919 prove only one thing: “Evidently, as a man, Mao did not want to have to look after women. He wanted no responsibility towards them. . . . He felt little tenderness towards them.” Chang and Halliday, Mao, 18. This is precisely the opposite of the truth.

³². See Pang, Mao Zedong nianpu, 1893–1949 (Chronological Biography of Mao Zedong, 1893–1949), vol. 1, 47.

³³. Zhou, Wusi yundong zai Hunan (The May Fourth Movement in Hunan), 29–30.

³⁴. See Pang, Mao Zedong nianpu, 1893–1949 (Chronological Biography of Mao Zedong, 1893–1949), vol. 1, 49.

³⁵. Ibid.; Wu Qinjie, ed., Mao Zedong guanghui licheng dituji (Atlas of Mao Zedong's Glorious Historical Path) (Beijing: Zhongguo ditu chubanshe, 2003), 18.

³⁶. See Lichnoe delo Mao Tszeduna (Personal File of Mao Zedong), RGASPI, collection 495, inventory 225, file 71, vol. 1, sheet 297.

³⁷. See Schram, Mao's Road to Power, vol. 1, 487.

³⁸. See Pang, Mao Zedong nianpu, 1893–1949 (Chronological Biography of Mao Zedong, 1893–1949), vol. 1, 76.

³⁹. Schram, Mao's Road to Power, vol. 1, 492.

⁴⁰. See Ibid., 491–95.

⁴¹. Ibid., 488–89.

⁴². Ibid., 476.

⁴³. Ibid., 473.

⁴⁴. Ibid., 496.

⁴⁵. See Edward A. McCord, The Power of the Gun: The Emergence of Modern Chinese Warlordism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 296–300.

⁴⁶. Schram, Mao's Road to Power, vol. 1, 518–19.

⁴⁷. Ibid., 522.

⁴⁸. Snow, Red Star Over China, 153.

⁴⁹. See Pang, Mao Zedong nianpu, 1893–1949 (Chronological Biography of Mao Zedong, 1893–1949), vol. 1, 57; Alexander Pantsov, The Bolsheviks and the Chinese Revolution, 1919–1927 (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2000), 33–35.

⁵⁰. For more detailed treatment, see Feigon, Chen Duxiu, 138–46.

⁵¹. See Yu. M. Garushiants, Dvizhenie 4 maia v Kitae (The May Fourth Movement in China) (Moscow: Nauka, 1959); Deliusin, Dvizhenie 4 maia 1919 goda v Kitae: Dokumenty i materialy (The May Fourth Movement of 1919 in China: Documents and Materials); Chow Tse-tsung, The May Fourth Movement: Intellectual Revolution in Modern China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960).

⁵². Li, Izbrannye proizvedeniia (Selected Works), 204.

⁵³. Mao Tse-tung, Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung, vol. 4 (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1969), 413.

⁵⁴. See Luosu (Russell), “You E ganxiang” (Impressions of a Journey to Russia), Xin qingnian (New youth) 8, no. 2 (1920): 1–12.

⁵⁵. See L. P. Deliusin, Spor o sotsializme: Iz istorii obshchestvenno-politicheskoi mysli Kitaia v nachale 20-kh godov (The Dispute over Socialism: From the History of Sociopolitical Thought in China in the Early 1920s) (Moscow: Nauka, 1970), 31–34.

⁵⁶. Quoted from Schram, Mao's Road to Power, vol. 2, 8.

⁵⁷. Ibid., vol. 1, 505.

⁵⁸. Ibid., 506.

⁵⁹. Ibid., 534.

⁶⁰. Ibid., 519.

⁶¹. Ibid.

ⁿ⁵ In fairness we should note that Mao might have become acquainted with another translation of The Communist Manifesto, which, according to the memoirs of Luo Zhanglong, was mimeographed by students at Peking University. But whether this is really true is not known for certain.