by Edgar Snow
One example of their internationalism was the intense interest with which the Reds followed the events of the Spanish Civil War. Bulletins were issued in the press, were pasted up in the meeting rooms of village soviets, were announced to the armies at the front. Special lectures were given by the political department on the cause and significance of the Spanish war, and the “people’s front” in Spain was contrasted with the “united front” in China. Mass meetings of the populace were summoned, demonstrations were held, and public discussions were encouraged. It was quite surprising sometimes to find, even far back in the mountains, Red farmers who knew a few rudimentary facts about such things as the Italian conquest of Abyssinia and the German-Italian “invasion” of Spain, and spoke of these powers as the “Fascist allies” of their enemy, Japan. Despite their geographical isolation, these rustics now knew much more about that aspect of world politics, thanks to radio news and wall newspapers and Communist lecturers and propagandists, than the rural population anywhere else in China.
The strict discipline of Communist method and organization had seemingly produced among Chinese Marxists a type of cooperation and a suppression of individualism which the average “Old China Hand,” or treaty-port merchant, or missionary who “knew Chinese psychology” would have found impossible to believe without witnessing for himself. In their political life the existence of the individual was an atomic pulse in the social whole, the mass, and must bend to its will, either consciously in the role of leadership, or unconsciously as part of the material demiurge. There had been disputes and internecine struggles among the Communists, but none severe enough to deal a fatal injury to either the army or the Party.
Had Nanking been able at any time to split their military and political strength into contradictory and permanently warring factions, as it did with all other Opposition groups—as Chiang Kai-shek did with his own rivals for power within the Kuomintang—the task of Communist suppression might have been rewarded with final success. But its attempts were failures. For example, a few years before, Nanking had hoped to utilize the worldwide Stalin-Trotsky controversy to divide the Chinese Communists, but although so-called Chinese “Trotskyites” did appear, they never developed any important mass influence or following.
The Reds had generally discarded much of the ceremony of traditional Chinese etiquette, and their psychology and character were quite different from our old conceptions of Chinese. They were direct, frank, simple, undevious, and scientific-minded. They were also implacable enemies of the old Chinese familism.*
With their zealous adoration of the Soviet Union there had naturally been a lot of copying and imitating of foreign ideas, institutions, methods, and organizations. The Chinese Red Army was constructed on Russian military lines, and much of its tactical knowledge derived from Russian experience. Social organizations in general followed the pattern laid down by Russian Bolshevism. Many Red songs were put to Russian music and widely sung in the soviet districts. Suwei-ai—Chinese for “soviet”—was only one example of many words transliterated directly from Russian into Chinese.
But in their borrowing there was much adaptation; few Russian ideas or institutions survived without drastic changes to suit the milieu in which they operated. The empirical process of a decade eliminated indiscriminate wholesale importations, and also resulted in the introduction of peculiarly Chinese features. A process of imitation and adaptation of the West had, of course, been going on in the bourgeois world of China, too—for there was very little left even of poetry of the ancient feudal heritage, that “scrap material of a great history” as Spengler calls it, which the Chinese were able to use in building either a modern bourgeois or a Socialist society capable of grappling with the vast new demands of the country. While the Reds leaned heavily on Russia for organizational methods with youth, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek not only used Italian bombing planes to destroy them, but also borrowed from the Y.M.C.A. in building his anti-Communist New Life movement.
And finally, of course, the political ideology, tactical line, and theoretical leadership of the Chinese Communists had been under the close guidance, if not positive direction, of the Communist International. Great benefits undoubtedly accrued to the Chinese Reds from sharing the collective experience of the Russian Revolution, and from the leadership of the Comintern. But it was also true that the Comintern could be held responsible for serious reverses suffered by the Chinese Communists in the anguish of their growth.
4
Chinese Communism and the Comintern1
It is possible to divide the history of Sino-Russian relations from 1923 to 1937 roughly into three periods. The first, from 1923 to 1927, was a period of triple alliance between the Soviet Union and the Nationalist revolutionaries, consisting of strange bedfellows aligned under the banners of the Kuomintang and the Communist parties, and aiming at the overthrow by revolution of the then extant government of China, and the restoration of China’s complete sovereignty. That enterprise ended with the triumph of the right-wing Kuomintang, the founding of the National Government at Nanking, the latter’s compromise with the colonial power, and the severance of Sino-Russian relations.
From 1927 to 1933 there was a period of isolation of Russia from (Nationalist) China, and its complete insulation against Russian influence. This era closed when Moscow resumed diplomatic relations with Nanking late in 1933. The third period began with a lukewarm Nanking-Moscow rapprochement, embarrassed considerably by the continued heavy civil war between Nanking and the Chinese Communists. It was to end dramatically early in 1937, when a partial reconciliation was effected between the Communists and the Kuomintang, with new possibilities opened up for Sino-Russian cooperation.
The three periods of Sino-Russian relationship mentioned above accurately reflected also the changes in the character of the Comintern and its stages of transition. It is impossible here to enter into the complex causes, domestic and international, which brought about those changes, both in the Soviet Union and in the Comintern, but it is pertinent to see how in the main they had affected, and were affected by, the Chinese Revolution.
The 1927 crisis of the Chinese Revolution coincided with a crisis in Russia, and in the Comintern, expressed in the struggle between Trotskyism and Stalinism for theoretical and practical control of Russia. Had Stalin been able to advance his slogan, “socialism in one country” much earlier than 1924, had the issue been fought out and had he been able to dominate the Comintern before then, quite possibly the “intervention” in China might never have begun. Such a speculation in any case was idle now. When Stalin did develop his fight, the line in China had already been cast. The active military, political, financial, and intellectual collaboration given to the Chinese Nationalist Revolution was until 1926 under the direction chiefly of Zinoviev, who was chairman of the Communist International. Then from early 1926 onward Stalin became chiefly responsible for the affairs and policies of the Comintern as well as the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and it was nowhere disputed that he had tightened his grasp on both organizations ever since.
Thus it was Stalin who led the Comintern that gave the Chinese Communists their tactical line and “directives” in 1926 and during the catastrophe of the spring of 1927. During those fateful months, in which disaster gathered above the heads of the Chinese Communists, Stalin’s line was subjected to continuous bombardment from the Opposition, dominated by Trotsky, Zinoviev, and Kamenev. While he was Comintern chairman, Zinoviev had fully supported the line of Communist cooperation with the Kuomintang, but he violently attacked this same line as carried out by Stalin. Particularly after Chiang Kai-shek’s first “treachery”—the abortive attempt at a coup d’état in Canton in 1926—Zinoviev predicted an inevitable counterrevolution in which the national bourgeoisie would compromise with imperialism and “betray the masses.”
At least a year before Chiang Kai-shek’s second and successful coup d’état, Zinoviev began demanding the separation of the Communists from the Kuominta
ng, “the party of the national bourgeoisie,” which he now considered incapable of carrying out the two main tasks of the revolution—anti-imperialism, i.e. the overthrow of foreign domination of China, and “antifeudalism,” or the destruction of the landlord-gentry rule in rural China. Just as early, Trotsky began urging the formation of soviets and an independent Chinese Red Army. The Opposition in general foretold the failure of the “bourgeois-democratic” revolution—all they hoped for in this period—if Stalin’s line was continued.
Stalin defended himself, after the debacle, by ridiculing as non-Marxist the Trotskyist contentions that the tactical line of the Comintern had been the main cause of the failure. “Comrade Kamenev,” declared Stalin, “said that the policy of the Communist International was responsible for the defeat of the Chinese Revolution, and that we ‘bred Cavaignacs in China.’ … How can it be asserted that the tactics of a party can abolish or reverse the relation of class forces? What are we to say of people who forget the relation of class forces in time of revolution, and who try to explain everything by the tactics of a party? Only one thing can be said of such people—that they have abandoned Marxism.”
Trotsky required no help from me in framing appropriate replies to Stalin’s self-exculpations, but as his wit had not prevented the earlier destruction of Communist regimes in Hungary and Bavaria, nor the general defeat of the Comintern’s hopes throughout the East, so it did not save the Chinese Communists from a catastrophe which all but destroyed the Party. Only Stalin won—that is, he drove Trotsky from the temple—and consequently Stalin dominated future activities of the Comintern in China—which for a time were practically nil. Russian organs in China were closed, Russian Communists were killed or driven from the country, the flow of financial, military, and political help from Russia dwindled. The Chinese Communist Party was thrown into great confusion, and for a time its interior leadership lost contact with the Comintern. The rural soviet movement and (Mao’s) Chinese Red Army began spontaneously, and they did not, in fact, get much applause from Russia till after the Sixth Congress, when the Communist International gave its postnatal sanction.2
After 1927 it became impossible for Russia to have any direct physical connection with the Chinese Red areas, which had no seaport and were entirely surrounded by a ring of hostile troops. Whereas in the past there had been scores of Comintern workers in China, there were now two or three, often almost isolated from society as a whole, seldom able to risk a stay of more than a few months. Whereas a large flow of Russian gold and arms had formerly gone to Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists, now a trickle reached the Reds. And whereas the whole Soviet Union had backed the Great Revolution of 1925–27, the Chinese Communist movement was now aided only by a Comintern which could no longer command the vast resources of the “base of the world revolution,” but had to limp along as a kind of poor stepchild which might be officially disinherited whenever it did anything malaprop.
Actual financial help given to the Chinese Reds by Moscow or the Comintern during this decade seemed to have been amazingly small. When Mr. and Mrs. Hilaire Noulens were arrested in Shanghai in 1932 and convicted in Nanking as chief Far Eastern agents of the Comintern, police evidence showed that total outpayments for the whole Orient (not just China) had not at most exceeded the equivalent of about U.S. $15,000 per month. That was a trifle compared with the vast sums poured into China to support Japanese and Nazi-Fascist propaganda. It was rather pitiful also in contrast, for example, with America’s $50,000,000 Wheat Loan to Nanking in 1933—the proceeds of which were of decisive value to Chiang Kai-shek’s civil war against the Reds, according to reports of foreign military observers.
America, England, Germany, and Italy sold Nanking great quantities of airplanes, tanks, guns, and munitions, but of course sold none to the Reds. The American Army released officers to train the Chinese air force, which demolished towns in Red China, and Italian and German instructors actually led some of the most destructive bombing expeditions themselves—as happened on a larger scale in Spain. To Chiang Kai-shek’s aid Germany sent Von Seeckt, and after him Von Falkenhausen, with a staff of Prussian officers who improved Nanking’s technique of annihilation. It seemed that Chiang Kai-shek was propped up for nearly ten years by more important aid than any foreign power gave to the Reds.
Probably the Chinese Reds fought with less material foreign help than any army in modern Chinese history.
5
That Foreign Brain Trust
There had not been a single foreign adviser with China’s Red Army during the first five years of its existence. Not until 1933 did Li Teh appear in the Kiangsi soviet districts as a German representative of the Comintern, to take a high position both politically and militarily. Yet despite the numerical insignificance of this “foreign influence,” several responsible Communists in the Northwest apparently felt that Li Teh’s advice had been to a great extent responsible for two costly mistakes in the Kiangsi Red republic. The first, as Mao Tse-tung pointed out, was the failure of the Red Army to unite with the Nineteenth Route Army, when the latter arose in revolt against Nanking in the autumn of 1933.
The Nineteenth Route Army, commanded by Generals Chen Ming-hsiu, Ts’ai T’ing-k’ai, and Chiang Kuang-nai, had made an impressive defense of Shanghai against the Japanese attack in 1932, and had demonstrated its strong national-revolutionary character. Transferred to Fukien after the Shanghai Truce, it gradually became a center of political opposition to Nanking’s “nonresistance” policy. Following Nanking’s negotiation of the humiliating Tangku Truce with Japan, the Nineteenth Route Army leaders set up an independent government in Fukien province and started a movement for a democratic republic and the destruction of Chiang Kai-shek’s regime.
The Nineteenth Route Army was one of the few Kuomintang military units never defeated by the Reds, and they had great respect for its fighting ability. Composed mostly of Cantonese, it really reflected in its political character a loosely organized left-wing opposition movement. It was the main military support of several factions on the periphery of the Kuomintang, led by the She-hui Min-chu T’ang, the Chinese Social Democrats.
Sent to Fukien to participate in Communist suppression late in 1932, the Nineteenth Route Army leaders instead quickly built up a base of their own from which to oppose Chiang Kai-shek. They entered into a nonaggression agreement with the Reds and proposed an anti-Nanking, anti-Japanese alliance along much the same lines that were later on evolved in the Northwest between the Manchurian, the Northwestern, and the Communist armies. But instead of cooperating with the Nineteenth Route Army the Reds withdrew their main forces from the Fukien border to western Kiangsi. That left Chiang Kai-shek free to descend from Chekiang into neighboring Fukien with little impediment. The Generalissimo struck before the Nineteenth Route Army was prepared militarily or politically, and quickly quashed the insurgents. The Reds consequently lost their strongest potential allies. There is no doubt that elimination of the Nineteenth Route Army very much facilitated the task of destroying the southern soviets, to which Chiang Kai-shek at once turned with a new confidence early in 1934.
The Reds’ second serious mistake was made in the planning of strategy and tactics to meet Chiang’s new offensive—the Fifth Campaign. In previous campaigns the Reds had relied on superiority in maneuvering warfare, and their ability to take the initiative from Chiang Kai-shek in strong swift concentrations and surprise attacks. Positional warfare and regular fighting had always played minor roles in their operations. But in the Fifth Campaign, according to Red commanders to whom I talked, Li Teh insisted upon a strategy of positional warfare, relegating partisan and guerrilla tactics to auxiliary tasks, and somehow won acceptance for his scheme against (so I was told) “unanimous” opposition of the Red military council.1
But whatever errors of judgment Li Teh may have made, there was little question that his long experience with Chinese fighting methods, and on Chinese terrain, made him one of the best qualified Occidental military autho
rities on China. And the personal courage of a man who had endured the severe hardships of the Long March commanded admiration and remained a challenge to armchair revolutionaries all over the world. For Li Teh, an outsize foreigner, the Long March had presented some special hardships. He had stomach complaints, and was badly in need of a dentist, but his first problem was to keep supplied with shoes large enough for his enormous number elevens. There did not seem to be any shoes that big in China. For three years he had lived without any contact with Europeans, most of the time without books to read. When I was in Pao An he was delighted to have got hold of a copy of the huge China Year Book, which he carefully digested from cover to cover, including its innumerable tables of statistics—a feat constituting one of the few things he could boast in common with the Year Book editor, H. G. W. Woodhead, C.B.E. This blue-eyed, fair-haired Aryan had not spoken a word of Chinese when he first immersed himself alone with his Oriental comrades, and he still had to conduct all his serious conversations through interpreters or in German, Russian, or French.
It was almost impossible to believe that under any genius of command the Reds could have emerged victorious against the odds that faced them throughout the year of the Fifth Campaign. It was not the phenomenon of foreign support on the side of the Reds, but its presence in a major degree on the side of the Kuomingtang, that characterized the last struggle of the Kiangsi Soviet Republic. Quite clearly the Chinese Red Army was not “officered by Russian Bolsheviks,” “mercenaries of Moscow rubles,” or “puppet troops of Stalin.” Chinese and foreign newspapers during the anti-Red wars used regularly to report how many “corpses of Russian officers” were found on the battlefield after a Kuomintang atttack on the Reds. No foreign corpses were ever produced, yet so effective was this propaganda that many non-Communist Chinese really thought of the Red Army as some kind of foreign invasion.