Red Star over China (23 page)

“There was only one other Hunanese
^*
at that historic meeting [the First National Congress of the Party] in Shanghai. Others present were Chang Kuo-t'ao, now vice-chairman of the Red Army military council; Pao Hui-sheng; and Chou Fu-hai.
²
Altogether there were twelve of us. In Shanghai [those elected to] the Central Committee of the Party included Ch'en Tu-hsiu, Chang Kuo-t'ao, Ch'en Kung-po, Shih Tseng-tung (now a Nanking official), Sun Yuan-lu, Li Han-chun (killed
^†
in Wuhan in 1927), Li Ta,+ and Li Sun (later executed). The following October the first provincial branch of the Party was organized in Hunan and I became a member of it. Organizations were also established in other provinces and cities. Members in Hupeh included Tung Pl-wu
^‡
(now chairman of the Communist Party School in Pao An), Hsu Pai-hao, and Shih Yang (executed in 1923). In the Shensi Party were Kao Chung-yu (Kao Kang‡) and some famous student leaders. In [the Party branch of] Peking were Li Ta-chao (executed, with nineteen other Peking Communists, in 1927), Teng Chung-hsia (executed by Chiang Kai-shek in 1934), Lo Chung-lun, Liu Jen-ching (now a Trotskyite), and others. In Canton were Lin Po-chu (Lin Tsu-han), now Commissioner of Finance in the Soviet Government, and P'eng P'ai
^‡
(executed in 1929). Wang Chun-mei and Teng En-ming were among the founders of the Shantung branch.

“Meanwhile, in France, a Chinese Communist Party
^§
had been organized by many of the worker-students there, and its founding was almost simultaneous with the beginning of the organization in China. Among the founders of the Party [CYL] there were Chou En-lai, Li Li-san, and Hsiang Ching-wu, the wife of Ts'ai Ho-sen. Lo Man (Li Wei-han)
and Ts'ai Ho-sen were also founders of the French branch. A Chinese Party was organized in Germany, but this was somewhat later; among its members were Kao Yu-han, Chu Teh (now commander-in-chief of the Red Army), and Chang Sheng-fu (now a professor at Tsinghua University). In Moscow the founders of the branch were Ch'u Ch'iu-pai
^*
and others, and in Japan there was Chou Fu-hai.

“In May, 1922, the Hunan Party, of which I was then secretary,
^†
had already organized more than twenty trade unions among miners, railway workers, municipal employees, printers, and workers in the government mint. A vigorous labor movement began that winter. The work of the Communist Party was then concentrated mainly on students and workers, and very little was done among the peasants. Most of the big mines were organized, and virtually all the students. There were numerous struggles on both the students' and workers' fronts. In the winter of 1922, Chao Heng-t'i, civil governor of Hunan, ordered the execution of two Hunanese workers, Huang Ai and Pang Yuan-ch'ing, and as a result a widespread agitation began against him. Huang Ai, one of the two workers killed, was a leader of the right-wing labor movement, which had its base in the industrial-school students and was opposed to us, but we supported them in this case, and in many other struggles. Anarchists were also influential in the trade unions, which were then organized into an All-Hunan Labor Syndicate. But we compromised and through negotiation prevented many hasty and useless actions by them.

“I was sent to Shanghai to help organize the movement against Chao Heng-t'i. The Second Congress of the Party was convened in Shanghai that winter [1922], and I intended to attend. However, I forgot the name of the place where it was to be held, could not find any comrades, and missed it. I returned to Hunan and vigorously pushed the work among the labor unions. That spring there were many strikes for better wages and better treatment and recognition of the labor unions. Most of these were successful. On May 1, a general strike was called in Hunan, and this marked the achievement of unprecedented strength in the labor movement of China.

“The Third Congress of the Communist Party was held in Canton in [May] 1923 and the historic decision was reached to enter the Kuomintang, cooperate with it, and create a united front against the northern
militarists.
³
I went to Shanghai and worked in the Central Committee of the Party. Next spring [1924] I went to Canton and attended the First National Congress of the Kuomintang. In March, I returned to Shanghai and combined my work in the executive bureau [Central Committee] of the Communist Party with membership in the executive bureau [Central Executive Committee] of the Kuomintang of Shanghai. The other members of this bureau then were Wang Ching-wei
^*
(later premier at Nanking) and Hu Han-min, with whom I worked in coordinating the measures of the Communist Party and the Kuomintang. That summer the Whampoa Military Academy was set up. Galin became its adviser, other Soviet advisers arrived from Russia, and the Kuomintang-Communist Party entente began to assume the proportions of a nationwide revolutionary movement. The following winter I returned to Hunan for a rest
⁴
—I had become ill in Shanghai—but while in Hunan I organized the nucleus of the great peasant movement of that province.

“Formerly I had not fully realized the degree of class struggle among the peasantry, but after the May 30th Incident [1925],
^†
and during the great wave of political activity which followed it, the Hunanese peasantry became very militant. I left my home, where I had been resting, and began a rural organizational campaign. In a few months we had formed more than twenty peasant unions, and had aroused the wrath of the landlords, who demanded my arrest. Chao Heng-t'i sent troops after me, and I fled to Canton. I reached there just at the time the Whampoa students had defeated Yang Hsi-ming, the Yunnan militarist, and Lu Tsung-wai, the Kwangsi militarist, and an air of great optimism pervaded the city and the Kuomintang. Chiang Kai-shek had been made commander of the First Army and Wang Ching-wei chairman of the government, following the death of Sun Yat-sen in Peking.

“I became editor of the
Political Weekly,
a publication of the propaganda department of the Kuomintang [headed by Wang Ching-wei]. It later played a very active role in attacking and discrediting the right wing of the Kuomintang, led by T'ai Chi-t'ao. I was also put in charge of training organizers for the peasant movement [the Peasant Movement Training Institute‡], and established a course for this purpose
which was attended by representatives from twenty-one different provinces, and included students from Inner Mongolia. Not long after my arrival in Canton I became chief of the agit-prop department of the Kuomintang, and candidate for the Central Committee. Lin Tsu-han was then chief of the peasant department of the Kuomintang, and T'an P'ing-shan, another Communist, was chief of the workers' department.

“I was writing more and more, and assuming special responsibilities in peasant work in the Communist Party. On the basis of my study and of my work in organizing the Hunan peasants, I wrote two pamphlets, one called
Analysis of Classes in Chinese Society
and the other called
The Class Basis of Chao Heng-t'i, and the Tasks Before Us.
⁵
Ch'en Tu-hsiu opposed the opinions expressed in the first one, which advocated a radical land policy and vigorous organization of the peasantry, under the Communist Party, and he refused it publication in the Communist central organs. It was later published in
Chung-kuo Nung-min [The Chinese Peasant],
of Canton, and in the magazine
Chung-kuo Ch'ing-nien [Chinese Youth].
The second thesis was published as a pamphlet in Hunan. I began to disagree with Ch'en's Right-opportunist policy about this time, and we gradually drew further apart, although the struggle between us did not come to a climax until 1927.

“I continued to work in the Kuomintang in Canton until about the time Chiang Kai-shek attempted his first
coup d'état
there in March, 1926. After the reconciliation of left- and right-wing Kuomintang and the reaffirmation of Kuomintang-Communist solidarity, I went to Shanghai, in the spring of 1926. The Second Congress of the Kuomintang was held in May of that year, under the leadership of Chiang Kai-shek.
^*
In Shanghai I directed the Peasant Department of the Communist Party, and from there was sent to Hunan, as inspector of the peasant movement [for both the Kuomintang and the Communist Party].
^†
Meanwhile, under the united front of the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, the historic Northern Expedition began in the autumn of 1926.

“In Hunan I inspected peasant organization and political conditions in five
hsien
—Changsha, Li Ling, Hsiang T'an, Hung Shan and Hsiang Hsiang—and made my report
[Report on an Investigation into the Peasant
Movement in Hunan
⁶
]
to the Central Committee, urging the adoption of a new line in the peasant movement. Early next spring, when I reached Wuhan, an interprovincial meeting of peasants was held, and I attended it and discussed the proposals of my thesis, which carried recommendations for a widespread redistribution of land. At this meeting were P'eng P'ai, Fang Chih-min,
^*
and two Russian Communists, Jolk [York?] and Volen, among others. A resolution was passed adopting my proposal for submission to the Fifth Congress of the Communist Party. The Central Committee, however, rejected it.

“When the Fifth Congress of the Party was convened in Wuhan in May, 1927, the Party was still under the domination of Ch'en Tu-hsiu. Although Chiang Kai-shek had already led the counterrevolution and begun his attacks on the Communist Party in Shanghai and Nanking, Ch'en was still for moderation and concessions to the Wuhan Kuomintang. Overriding all opposition, he followed a Right-opportunist petty-bourgeois policy. I was very dissatisfied with the Party policy then, especially toward the peasant movement. I think today that if the peasant movement had been more thoroughly organized and armed for a class struggle against the landlords, the soviets would have had an earlier and far more powerful development throughout the whole country.

“But Ch'en Tu-hsiu violently disagreed.
^†
He did not understand the role of the peasantry in the revolution and greatly underestimated its possibilities at this time. Consequently the Fifth Congress, held on the eve of the crisis of the Great Revolution, failed to pass an adequate land program. My opinions, which called for rapid intensification of the agrarian struggle, were not even discussed, for the Central Committee, also dominated by Ch'en Tu-hsiu, refused to bring them up for consideration. The Congress dismissed the land problem by defining a landlord as ‘a peasant who owns over 500
mou
of land'
^‡
—a wholly inadequate and unpractical basis on which to develop the class struggle, and quite without consideration of the special character of land economy in China. Following the Congress, however, an All-China Peasants' Union was organized and I became first president of it.

“By the spring of 1927 the peasant movement in Hupeh, Kiangsi, and Fukien, and especially in Hunan, had developed a startling militancy, despite the lukewarm attitude of the Communist Party to it, and the definite alarm of the Kuomintang. High officials and army commanders began to
demand its suppression, describing the Peasants' Union as a ‘agabond union,' and its actions and demands as excessive. Ch'en Tu-hsiu had withdrawn me from Hunan, holding me responsible for certain happenings there, and violently opposing my ideas.
^*

“In April, the counterrevolutionary movement had begun in Nanking and Shanghai, and a general massacre of organized workers had taken place under Chiang Kai-shek. The same measures were carried out in Canton. On May 21, the Hsu K'o-hsiang Uprising occurred in Hunan. Scores of peasants and workers were killed by the reactionaries. Shortly afterwards the Left Kuomintang at Wuhan annulled its agreement with the Communists and ‘expelled' them from the Kuomintang and from a government which quickly ceased to exist.

“Many Communist leaders were now ordered by the Party to leave the country, go to Russia or Shanghai or places of safety. I was ordered to go to Szechuan. I persuaded Ch'en Tu-hsiu to send me to Hunan instead, as secretary of the Provincial Committee, but after ten days he ordered me to return at once, accusing me of organizing an uprising against T'ang Sheng-chih, then in command at Wuhan. The affairs of the Party were now in a chaotic state. Nearly everyone was opposed to Ch'en Tu-hsiu's leadership and his opportunist line. The collapse of the entente at Wuhan soon afterwards brought about his downfall”.

A conversation I had with Mao Tse-tung concerning the much-disputed events of the spring of 1927 seemed to me of sufficient interest to mention here. It was not part of his autobiography, as he told it to me, but it was important to note as a personal reflection on what was a turning-point experience in the life of every Chinese Communist.

I asked Mao whom he considered most responsible for the failure of the Communist Party in 1927, the defeat of the Wuhan coalition government, and the whole triumph of the Nanking dictatorship. Mao placed the greatest blame on Ch'en Tu-hsiu, whose “wavering opportunism deprived the Party of decisive leadership and a direct line of its own at a moment when further compromise clearly meant catastrophe.”

After Ch'en, the man he held responsible for the defeat was Mikhail Markovich Borodin, chief Russian political adviser, who was answerable directly to the Soviet Politburo. Mao explained that Borodin had completely reversed his position, favoring a radical land redistribution in 1926, but strongly opposing it in 1927, without any logical support for his vacillations. “Borodin stood just a little to the right of Ch'en Tu-hsiu,” Mao said, “and was ready to do everything to please the bourgeoisie, even to the disarming of the workers, which he finally ordered.” M. N. Roy, the Indian delegate to the Comintern, “stood a little to the left of both Ch'en and Borodin, but he only stood.” He “could talk,” according to Mao, “and he talked too much, without offering any method of realization.” Mao thought that, objectively, Roy had been a fool, Borodin a blunderer, and Ch'en an unconscious traitor.