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I have been asked by the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee to speak on international relations, particularly the relations between the Communist International[153] and the Chinese Communist Party.[*]

I wish to make six brief points:

1.  It was necessary to establish the Communist International and it was also necessary to dissolve it. From its inception to its dissolution, the Communist International existed for 24 years (1919-43), which can be divided into three eight-rear periods. Comrade Mao Zedong once commented that the Communist International functioned well during the first and third periods, but not very well during the second. By that, he did not mean that everything was good during the first and third periods and nothing was good during the second. There is no question that it was necessary to establish the Communist International, which played an important role in helping to form Communist Parties in various countries and in stimulating their growth. But by the time these Parties grew up and matured, there was no longer any need for the Communist International to exist.

During its initial days, the Communist International succeeded in expounding the theory and principles of Marxism-Leninism and in promoting worldwide development of the communist movement. Although Lenin enjoyed great authority at that time, the International made its decisions on the basis of democratic centralism, and there was a lively atmosphere in which the representatives of various Parties voiced their opinions freely. The International drew a clear line be-

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tween the Communist Parties and the social-democratic parties, and at the same time it criticized the "Left-wing" infantile disorder. In the spirit of internationalism, it mobilized the revolutionary people of different countries to support the Soviet Union and promoted the revolutionary struggles and national revolutionary movements of various peoples.

Nevertheless, the dissolution of the Communist International also came at an appropriate moment. In 1935 it adopted a resolution to the effect that it should not interfere with the internal affairs of the various Parties, and after that it did give them a freer hand. But at the time, there was still reason for its existence, because it was playing an active role in the struggle to fight fascism and establish the united front. In June 1943, with the outbreak of the Soviet-German war, the Communist International was dissolved.

The weaknesses and mistakes of the Communist International, particularly during the second period, can be summarized as follows: it failed to conform its general calls with the realities of different countries, and it gave specific instructions to individual Parties instead of providing them with guidance in principle, thus interfering in their internal affairs and hindering them from acting independently and bringing their own initiative and creativity into play.

This is only a rough evaluation of the International.

2.  A country's revolution and construction depend on the practice of the people of that country. Only by integrating the universal truth of Marxism-Leninism with the concrete practice of the country can one enrich and develop Marxism-Leninism. It is essential to sum up one's experience, both positive and negative, in the course of practice. The Chinese Communist Party has gained rich experience. In spite of the errors it has made by following "Left" or Right lines on different occasions, it has acquired important positive experience.

3.  Each Party must think independently with regard to revolution and construction in its own country. Only independent thinking will prevent it from repeating the negative experience of other countries and enable it to draw on their positive experience. I understand that there are many people who do not think independently and who merely follow others blindly; it is not easy to change this mentality. Of course, independent thinking does not mean arrogance or arbitrariness and it does not mean refusal to accept the Communist International's good ideas. Chen Duxiu[38] was arrogant and arbitrary. So was Comrade Li Lisan,[154] who held that we should try to take Wuhan

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and win victory first in one province or several provinces; that one or more victories of this kind would herald nationwide victory; that we should argue it out with the Communist International after we had taken Wuhan; that the Soviet Union should send troops to help when there was an upsurge in the Chinese revolution; and that with the success of the Chinese revolution, the capitalist class in Britain, the United States, France and other countries would be doomed and world revolution would begin. Comrade Li Lisan would certainly laugh at those ideas if he reviewed them now.

4.  In revolution and construction, a country should act independently and rely on its own efforts. Comrade Mao Zedong once observed that both revolutions in the two big countries, the Russian October Revolution and the Chinese revolution, succeeded when the Communist International was not in existence. Under the present circumstances, if a new international organization should be established, it would be difficult to achieve political and economic equality among its members.

5.  When examining the experience of the Communist International, we should take an all-round view. Stalin was in charge for a long time, and there were many shortcomings and mistakes. But not everything during his period was wrong. Even in the second period of the International during Stalin's late years, he did more to encourage than to discourage revolutionary movements. When we held our ground, he could still accept our views and implicitly acknowledge his mistakes. Once his doubts proved to be misplaced, he was willing to change his mind. For instance, he doubted if we were genuine Marxists and if we wanted to oppose the imperialists, but he changed his views at the time of the Korean war.[26] So Stalin was reasonable. It is true that he erred on the question of the Chinese revolution, but the Chinese comrades should take greater responsibility for the mistakes made in that revolution, because we were the decisive factor. Moreover, we have already realized and corrected our mistakes, and our revolution has already succeeded.

6.  Unity is paramount, and long live internationalism. This is a matter of principle now, just as it was in the past. By unity, we mean unity based on principle. If there are differences, we should try to proceed from the desire for unity and resolve them by means of appropriate criticism and struggle so as to achieve unity on a new basis. At the same time, criticism should be made on the right occasion and in a friendly way, and it should be based on facts and

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reasoning. If this approach doesn't work right away, one must be patient, because it takes time. The Chinese Party has had much experience in this regard. The Party committed "Left" errors three times in a period of eight years during the Second Revolutionary Civil War (1927-37),[155] and it took us ten years, from the Zunyi Meeting in 1935[83] to the Seventh Party Congress in 1945,[15] to correct them. If this is the case with a single Party, it is all the more so with the Communist International. We must hold high the banner of unity. That means unity with millions of Party members and 200 million other people in the Soviet Union, with members of other fraternal Parties and with the more than 90 per cent of the people throughout the world who want to make revolution.

Now I should like to deal with the relations between the Communist International and our Party in different periods.

1.  The First Period of the Communist International (March 1919-July 1927).

In this period the Communist International was helpful to the Chinese revolution, although it made mistakes on a few questions of principle.

After its inception in March 1919, the International sent missions to different countries to visit prominent public figures and work on them. In China they approached not only Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao[46] but also Jiang Kanghu,[156] Huang Jiemin[157] and Dai Jitao;[158] they called on Wu Peifu[159] in the north and on Sun Yat-sen in the south. With the help of the International, the Chinese Communist Party was founded in a very short time, because the May 4th Movement[37] had already laid the foundation for it. The Chinese Party soon identified itself with the struggle of the masses. By that time the International had begun to devote more time to China issues in its discussions. The question of revolution in the East was discussed at both its Second Congress in 1920 and its Third Congress in 1921. During its Fourth Congress the International held a serious debate on the Chinese revolution, and after that it recruited many Chinese intellectuals to study in Moscow. In 1923 it adopted a resolution on co-operation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, which allowed Party members to join the Kuomintang but stipulated that the Party should maintain its independence. It also discussed the possibility of launching an agrarian revolution in China and sent us instructions on the matter. When the Chinese Communist Party convened its Third Congress in June 1923,[160] there were two dominant

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views, the "Left" and the Right. The Right view, represented by Chen Duxiu, was that the Chinese revolution was a bourgeois-democratic revolution and should therefore be led by the bourgeoisie, with the proletariat only playing a supporting role; and there was no mention at all of the question of leadership to be exercised by the proletariat. The "Left" view, represented by Zhang Guotao,[161] was that only a few Communist Party members, and none from the working class, should join the Kuomintang. In fact, both views denied leadership by the proletariat. Although at its Fourth Congress the Party adopted resolutions criticizing these views, the problem still remained. As we see it now, the criticism was not directed at the real issue. The mass movement was already in full swing at the time, but wrong decisions were made on major issues because the opportunism represented by Chen Duxiu still held sway. During the Second Congress of the Kuomintang, its right-wingers, such as the Western Hills Clique,[162] became much more aggressive than before. But prior to that there had been a rapid increase in the strength of the left-wing forces in the Kuomintang, after its defeat of the Merchants' Corps[163] in Guangdong and its Eastern Expeditions against Chen Jiongming.[148] The policy of the period, which could have been successful, should have been to support the left wing while excluding the right wing. But Chen Duxiu insisted on the right-wingers returning to the Kuomintang and being elected at its Second Congress. As a result, the right-wingers became more arrogant. We also made concessions on military matters. Our Party was caught off guard when Chiang Kai-shek attacked us by launching the Zhongshan Warship Incident[146] and destroyed part of our power base in the military. We were by no means weak and should have fought back, but we failed to do so. As a result, we only had the Independent Regiment[164] in the National Revolutionary Army, which expanded into two divisions when it reached Wuhan. At the time of the Northern Expedition, we should have tried to gain the support of the masses and the military. But while the Northern Expedition was going on, our Party organ, The Guide, which was based in Shanghai and expressed Chen Duxiu's views, opposed the expedition, arguing that as it was a time of wars between the warlords, our people in Guangdong should not have started the Expedition, but should have defended themselves and engaged in mass struggle. Thus, our Party gave up its leadership in the Expedition. When the agrarian revolution was in full swing and Comrade Mao Zedong's article[165] was published, the Central

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Committee gave them no support. At that time, Chen Duxiu was really afraid of the revolution and the masses. The Executive Committee of the Communist International likewise made an inaccurate analysis of the China question, and its Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Plenums made mistakes in their analysis of the strength of various classes in China. In particular, the Eighth Plenum, held in May 1927, concluded that the bourgeoisie as a whole had turned traitor. Furthermore, the International maintained that after the betrayal by the Wuhan Government,[166] the petty bourgeoisie had also given up the revolution. As for the question of leadership, proletarian leadership was already in embryonic form during the period of Kuomintang-Communist co-operation in 1924, and by the time of the First Congress of the Kuomintang, the Communist Party had already assumed a leading role. As a matter of course, our Party should have taken hold of the army, and it was entirely possible for us to have done so during the time of the revolutionary regime in Guangdong, but the Central Committee gave up the leadership. Then Lenin died, and Stalin, preoccupied with his fierce struggle with the opposition in the Party, was entirely unable to formulate a precise policy because he was not well informed about the Chinese revolution. As the centre of the Chinese revolution was in Guangdong, the centre of the Party -- its headquarters -- should also have been moved there. But the Party was still headquartered in Shanghai, and Chen Duxiu simply refused to go to Guangdong when he was asked to. Thus, the two centres often came into conflict. It was long after Wuhan was taken that the Party's headquarters were finally moved to Wuhan. In view of all this, our Party's leaders should assume greater responsibility for the mistakes in the first period. At that time Comrade Mao Zedong had not yet established his authority; it was impossible for him to do so. Moreover, the leaders of the Party had not yet acquired a deep understanding of Marxism-Leninism, and there was factionalism among them, which was aggravated by Chen Duxiu's patriarchal style of work. All this hindered the political and ideological development of the Party.

2.  The Second Period of the Communist International (July 1927-July 1935).

During this period the line of the Communist International was basically wrong, and its influence on our Party was most serious. In July 1927 the Wuhan Government betrayed the revolution, exposing the bankruptcy of Chen Duxiu's capitulationist line. At this critical

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moment, the Executive Committee of the International sent a letter to our Central Committee. In this 1etter the Executive Committee expressed optimism about the future of the revolution but failed to make a correct analysis of its motive power and of the relations among classes, asserting that the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie had all betrayed the revolution. It proposed seven tasks for the revolution: 1) to withdraw from the Wuhan Government; 2) to issue a declaration 3) to stay in the Kuomintang and organize a left wing within it; 4) to organize workers' struggles; 5) to arm the workers and the peasants; 6) to prepare for the possibility of going underground; and 7) to oppose opportunism. These tasks did not include organizing, armed forces, setting up local governments or deepening the agrarian revolution, which were precisely the things we should have been concentrating on.

The question of opposing Chen's opportunism, must be related to the question of organization. The International sent Borodin[167] to our Party, and at a meeting of the Political Bureau he directly interfered with our internal affairs by setting up a provisional-standing committee. This decision was approved in haste. A declaration issued by the Central Committee on July 13 only mentioned withdrawing from the Wuhan Government. At that time our Party still had some armed forces, such as those commanded by Ye Ting,[168] so we decided to start the Nanchang Uprising.[169] The aim of the uprising was to march south to Shantou, occupy the port there and then proceed to Guangzhou. It was a correct move, but the leadership did not understand the uprising correctly. They conceived of it as a purely military action, based on the view that the cities were of primary importance, without any notion of integrating with the local peasants to establish base areas in the countryside. The International sent a few representatives to China, and under the direction of B. Lominadze,[170] a meeting of the Party was held in Hankou on August 7.[171] At this meeting the Party took a clear-cut stand against opportunism, but it failed to make a correct summary, give correct instructions or set forth definite tasks in connection with such important questions as how to integrate our struggle with the agrarian revolution, how to push forward the mass movement and how to organize armed forces, governments and base areas. When Zhang Tailei[172] came to Shantou to brief us on the meeting, he only criticized opportunism and didn't tell us how to do our work. As I still held the view that cities were of primary importance and had not drawn any lessons from the Shang-

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hai-Uprisings and the Nanchang Uprising, I did not see the need to go up into the mountains and engage in rural struggles.

The failure of the Chinese revolution made the opposition faction attack Stalin more fiercely. In 1927 Stalin wrote a series of articles[173] in an attempt to refute their views, but his theoretical analysis of the Chinese revolution and his appraisal of the situation were in large part incorrect. He maintained that the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie had left the revolutionary camp one after the other, that the revolution would soon reach high tide and that it was rapidly turning into a socialist revolution. Influenced by the theoretical analyses and estimate of the situation made by Stalin and by the Communist International, the enlarged meeting of the Provisional Political Bureau of the Central Committee held in November 1927 adopted a putschist line, calling for insurrection everywhere and insisting that the revolution was already at high tide. Organizationally, many people in the Party were given disciplinary punishment, one of the outstanding cases being the expulsion of Tan Pingshan.[174] Comrade Mao Zedong and people like myself were all disciplined. At the November Meeting the Central Committee decided to stage the Guangzhou Uprising,[175] but without setting forth any definite aims. A German and a man from the Soviet Union helped to direct the insurrection. After the failure of the uprising and the death of Comrade Zhang Tailei, the Central Committee sent Comrade Li Lisan to Hong Kong to direct the work in Guangdong Province. This was the zenith of putschism. Guangdong suffered from it most, and the number of cadres killed there was the largest. Because the Party failed to draw the lesson of the uprisings in Shanghai, Nanchang and Guangzhou, the political line still called for insurrection everywhere, which resulted in a great loss of revolutionary strength, especially in the White areas. Another mistake that was made, organizationally, was to replace the Party leaders with people from the working class, which caused more confusion in the leading body and aggravated factionalism. The root cause of this too lay in the instructions of the Communist International.

Now a few words about the Sixth National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party.[176] The Sixth Congress was convened in accordance with a resolution adopted by the Ninth Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International. A delegation from the Chinese Communist Party, including Xiang Zhongfa[177] and others had taken part in that Plenum. With regard to the Sixth Con-

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gress, there was first of all a problem concerning the delegates who attended it. Because of the emphasis on working-class origin, there were 41 workers among the 75 delegates. Fourteen of the 16 delegates who later turned traitor were workers. The persons who directed the work of the Sixth Congress on behalf of the Communist International included Bukharin,[178] a French comrade and Togliatti,[179] but the practical work was under the charge of Mif.[180] When members of the Central Committee were elected, too much emphasis was placed on working-class origin. Many of the 20-odd members elected were workers, while some comrades who really had high prestige in the Party were left out. After the Congress, Qu Qiubai[181] and Zhang Guotao stayed in Moscow to serve as executive members of the Communist International. In its resolutions the Sixth Congress made a correct analysis of the nature of the Chinese revolution (a bourgeois-democratic revolution) and its tasks (to oppose imperialism and feudalism), but an incorrect analysis of class relations and so on; alleging that the entire bourgeoisie and the whole upper stratum of the petty bourgeoisie had betrayed the revolution. On the land question, the resolutions stated only that the land of the landlord class should be confiscated and handed over to a peasants conference for redistribution, and the military question was given no special mention. After the Sixth Congress, the faction in Sun Yat-sen University headed by Wang Ming[182] mustered its forces to oppose the Chinese delegation to the Communist International. Sun Yat-sen University, which was founded in Moscow in 1925 with Mif as its Vice-President, had enrolled some of our Party cadres from the period of the Great Revolution and also some young people, including ones like Wang Ming and some left-wingers from the Kuomintang. Factional strife was rife at the University, and it continued after the Sixth Congress. In opposing the Chinese delegation, the Wang Ming faction was in fact opposing the Central Committee of the Chinese Party, asserting that it was no longer competent and its members must be changed. Under the influence of the purge carried out by the C.P.S.U.(Bolsheviks), things had gone from bad to worse in 1929 and 1930; people were expelled from the Party on the merest suspicion and some were even banished.

After the Sixth Congress, the Communist International sent a Polish comrade and a German comrade to China. In 1929 four letters came from the International. In the first letter it enjoined us to oppose the Right tendency, in the second to oppose alliance with the

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rich peasants, in the third to make the Red trade unions public and in the fourth to oppose the Reorganization Clique (Wang Jingwei and Chen Gongbo)[183] and the third force. All these letters had an influence on Li Lisan's line. The fourth letter claimed that the situation was growing ripe for direct revolution and called for political strikes to prepare for it.

I went to the Communist International in March 1930. In July I saw Stalin, who was closely following the military struggles in China. A resolution about the China question was adopted by the Political Secretariat of the Executive Committee of the Communist International, with the six resolutions of the Far Eastern Bureau attached to it as an appendix.[184] Stalin said that there were too many resolutions for China to implement, that it would be better for us to consider them as mere drafts. In China, on June 11, the Li Lisan line was adopted. According to this line, the Party should win victory first in one or more provinces, and such a victory would mark the beginning of the revolution in the whole of China. At the same time, plans were made to stage insurrections throughout the country and to seize Wuhan, Nanchang, Changsha and other big cities. Later, Changsha was taken, and two enlarged meetings of the Political Bureau were held in succession on August 1 and 3. Li Lisan said that he would argue it out with the Communist International after seizing Wuhan. Although the Li Lisan line was followed for only three or four months, it brought great losses to Party organizations in many places. The Central Committee therefore convened its Third Plenary Session in September. There were still "Left" influences because the seven resolutions of the Communist International were relayed to the Session. Xiang Zhongfa and I made reports, Qu Qiubai delivered a concluding speech, and Li Lisan gave a talk. Li Lisan was sharply criticized at the Session, but the wording in the final resolution was not so sharp. The Third Plenary Session also made some mistakes. For example, He Mengxiong[185] was criticized and so was Chen Shaoyu (Wang Ming). Some of the criticisms were correct but others were not. At the Session a number of people were added to the Central Committee, but He Mengxiong was not among them. In fact, however, many of He's opinions were correct. The practice of sending inspectors to local areas like imperial envoys also started with the Third Plenary Session. At that time, the Communist International complained that the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party was not paying enough attention to the Soviet areas. Accord-

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ingly, the Central Committee sent quite a few people to those areas, adversely affecting the work there.

In October 1930 a letter came from the International saying that the Central Committee was wrong and was following a "line of conciliation". Wang Ming and others began to make trouble. Furthermore, the coming of Mif threw the Party into crisis. Wang Ming wrote a pamphlet[186] asking the Central Committee to hold an emergency meeting and change its leadership. Hence the Fourth Plenary Session. The Session rejected the draft resolutions we had prepared and Mif himself drafted new ones. The Third Plenary Session had followed the resolution on China adopted by the Political Secretariat of the Executive Committee of the International. The Fourth Plenary Session did likewise and, backed by the letter from the International, took an ultra-"Left" approach opposing Li Lisan's "Left" line and adopted a resolution condemning it. After the Fourth Plenary Session, Wang Ming's pamphlet became increasingly influential. Taking an even more "Left" stand, he opposed Li Lisan's so-called Right tendency and the "line of conciliation" of the Third Plenary Session and formulated an even more "Left" line. This, together with the betrayal of some leading members of the Central Committee, caused great losses to our Party.

In August 1931 Mif returned to the Soviet Union. In August the Communist International adopted a resolution that criticized the Third Plenary Session of the Central Committee, asserting that the Chinese Party was much strengthened after the Fourth Plenary Session when, in fact, it was in greater disarray. The Fourth Plenary Session retained me in the Political Bureau but expelled Qu Qiubai. Later, Wang Ming went to the International, Zhang Guotao and Chen Changhao[187] to the Hubei-Henan-Anhui Soviet Area and I to the Central Soviet Area. At that time, only a few people were left in the central organ, most of the members having been sent to different places to seize power. A provisional central leadership of the Party was formed in Shanghai with the approval of the International. It adopted a resolution on the September 18th Incident of 1931, and in January 1932 it adopted another which called for winning victory first in one or more provinces and seizing major cities. Some comrades who held correct views, like Mao Zedong and Liu Shaoqi, were accused of being guilty of "Right deviation". After the Ningdu Meeting,[188] Comrade Mao Zedong was removed from the leadership of the army. In 1933 there was another struggle against the Luo Ming

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line[189] and against Deng Xiaoping, Mao Zetan, Xie Weijun and Gu Bai[190] -- all the comrades who held correct views were attacked. Jiangxi Province suffered the most, because in early 1933 the provisional central leadership was moved there to carry out the line of the Communist International. As a result, the Party lost almost 100 per cent of its strength in the White areas and 90 per cent in the Soviet areas. On military matters, Li Teh,[191] though just an advisor, acted like an overlord and had the final say. He agreed with the military line of Bo Gu,[192] and his line prevailed until the Zunyi Meeting. The implementation of that line ended in the withdrawal from Jiangxi Province and the forced Long March. Looking back, we must admit that there was no alternative. It was at the Zunyi Meeting that Comrade Mao Zedong corrected the erroneous line on military matters and saved the Chinese revolution. But for the Zunyi Meeting, the success of the Chinese revolution would have been delayed indefinitely. After the Meeting, although the Party suffered losses during the Long March and was shaken by Zhang Guotao's attempt to split it by setting up a separate "central committee", it weathered storms and difficulties under the leadership of Comrade Mao Zedong and surmounted the crisis it was in.

So in its second period the Communist International made serious mistakes in directing of the Chinese Party. During this period the Chinese Party too made many mistakes that brought great losses to the revolution. Surely we Chinese should bear the responsibility for our mistakes, but the Communist International also had much to do with them.

3.  The Third Period of the Communist International (1935-43).

In this period the Chinese Party maintained fewer contacts with the Communist International. The International held its Seventh Congress in July-August 1935. Stalin was more concerned with domestic problems, and Dimitrov was in charge of the International.[193] A resolution was passed to the effect that the Executive Committee should shift the focus of its work to formulating the basic political and tactical lines for the international workers' movement and that in general it should not interfere in the internal affairs of the Parties in various countries. At that time the International developed the Anti-Fascist United Front, which coincided with the formation of the anti-Japanese National United Front in China. When Zhang Xueliang and Yang Hucheng arrested Chiang Kai-shek in the Xi'an Incident,[194] the International openly declared that Zhang was a run-

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ning dog of the Japanese imperialists and that the arrest of Chiang Kai-shek suited the needs of Japan. This judgement was completely wrong. Our own approach to the Xi'an Incident was, on the whole, correct.

Although Comrade Mao Zedong was in charge of the Chinese Party during this period, the Communist International still had its influence. The main problem was the reappearance of the Wang Ming line.[195] Wang Ming came back from the International at the end of 1937 and said that he had talked with Stalin. Claiming to speak for the International, he proposed that "everything should go through the united front" and declared that the Kuomintang, like the Communist Party, had rallied excellent young people around it. After his return Wang Ming was placed in charge of the Changjiang Bureau. He deceived a number of people and pushed through his line a second time. Though this line was implemented for only a short time, it had an influence on the north, on the New Fourth Army and on Shanghai. It cannot be denied that the reappearance of the Wang Ming line had something to do with the Communist International. Stalin trusted Wang Ming, and Dimitrov was on friendly terms with him. Later, when I went to Moscow to talk about Wang Ming's errors, Dimitrov was surprised by what I had to say. After the Zunyi Meeting a new situation appeared in our Party under the leadership of Mao Zedong. At the Sixth Plenary Session of the Sixth Central Committee Wang Ming was criticized, and as many cadres began to know him better, he gradually became isolated. Even Chiang Kai-shek rejected him, refusing to make him a minister. Comrade Mao Zedong said that things would have been worse if Wang Ming had been given a ministerial post.

In 1939 Hitler's Germany launched the Second World War. The mutual non-aggression pact signed by the Soviet Union and Germany placed the Parties in the capitalist countries in a difficult position and caused much ideological confusion. On September 1 Comrade Mao Zedong gave his "Interview with a New China Daily Correspondent on the New International Situation",[196] a transcript of which I brought to the Communist International to be distributed to the other fraternal Parties. The International thought very highly of it, saying that the leaders of the Chinese Party were right and giving them great support.

During this period the Communist International still interfered to some extent in the internal affairs of our Party, even on organizational matters. But it interfered less than in the first period and

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much less than in the second period. After the war broke out it interfered very little. Also, by that time our Party had become mature and maintained little contact with the International. In 1943 the Communist International was dissolved.

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^[15] The Party's Seventh National Congress was held in Yan'an from April 23 to June 11, 1945. Mao Zedong made a political report ("On Coalition Government"), Zhu De made a military report ("The Battle Front in the Liberated Areas"), Liu Shaoqi made a report on the revision of the Party Constitution and Zhou Enlai made an important speech on the united front (see Selected Works of Zhou Enlai, Vol. I, pp. 213-44). The Congress summed up the historical experience of China's democratic revolution during the preceding two decades, established a correct programme and correct tactics, refuted the mistaken ideas of certain Party members and unified the thinking of the whole Party on the basis ot Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought. This Congress, which brought about unprecedented unity within the Party, laid the foundation for the nationwide victory of the new democratic revolution.    [p. 309]

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^[26] Immediately after the outbreak of a civil war in Korea on June 25, 1950, the U.S. imperialists invaded Korea. At the same time they dispatched troops to invade China's territory of Taiwan. On September 15, under the banner of United Nations Forces, U S troops made a landing at Inchon on the west coast of Korea. Then they crossed the 38th Parallel en masse and pushed north, bombing snd strafing the frontier cities and villages of northeast China and thus presenting a serious threat to China's security. To support the Korean people in their war of resistance against U.S. aggression and for national salvation and to defend New China, the Chinese people, in response to Chairman Mao Zedong's call, organized the Chinese People's Volunteers with Peng Dehuai as commander and political commissar. The Volunteers marched to the Korean battlefield and fought shoulder to shoulder with the Korean People's Army against the U.S. aggressors. On November 4, China's democratic parties issued a joint declaration expressing support for the Volunteers' just action. The people gave all-out support to the war effort in Korea by increasing production and practising economy, signing up for the Volunteers and donating arms. The U.S. imperialists suffered one defeat after another at the hands of the Chinese and Korean people's armies and finally had to sign the Korean Armistice Agreements on July 27, 1953. Thus, the war ended in victory for the Korean and Chinese peoples.    [p. 308]

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^[37] The May 4th Movement of 1919 was a patriotic movement against imperialism and feudalism. The First World War had just come to an end, and the victors�Britain, the United States, France, Japan, Italy and other countries�convened a peace conference in Paris, at which it was decided to transfer to Japan the special rights in Shandong Province previously held by Germany. China, having declared war on Germany, was one of the victors, but the northern warlord government was prepared to accept this decision. On May 4 students in Beijing

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held demonstrations to protest the imperialists' unjust decision and the warlord government's compromise. The student movement evoked an immediate response throughout the country. By June 3 it had developed into a patriotic anti-imperialist and anti-feudal mass movement embracing the working class, the urban petty bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie. The May 4th Movement was also a movement for a new culture, as against the feudal culture. Starting with the inauguration of the magazine Youth, this new cultural movement promoted democracy and science. It advocated a new morality and a new literature. The advanced persons in the new cultural movement, who embraced Marxism, helped transform it into a Marxist ideological movement. They were devoted to integrating Marxism with the Chinese workers' movement, thus laying the ideological and organizational foundation for the establishment of the Chinese Communist Party.    [p. 309]

^[38] Chen Duxiu (1879-1942), a native of Huaining, Anhui Province, was one of the main leaders of the May 4th new cultural movement. In September 1915 he began editing the magazine Youth. In 1918, together with Li Dazhao, he founded the Weekly Review and advocated the new culture. After the May 4th Movement, he accepted and propagated Marxism. He was one of the main founders of the Chinese Communist Party and served as its principal leader for the first six years. In the later period of the First Revolutionary Civil War, he committed the serious error of Right capitulationism. Afterwards, he lost faith in the future of the revolution and accepted Trotskyite views. He formed a faction inside the Party, engaged in anti-Party activities and was consequently expelled in November 1929. Then he was actively involved in a Trotskyite organization. In October 1932 he was arrested and imprisoned by the Kuomintang, and in August 1937 he was released. In 1942 he died of illness in Jiangjin, Sichuan Province.    [p. 307]

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^[46] Li Dazhao (1889-1927), a native of Leting, Hebei Province, served as the editor of the magazine New Youth and, together with Chen Duxiu, founded the Weekly Review. He was one of the first to disseminate Marxism in China. In 1918 he joined others in preparing the establishment of the Young China Society.

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In 1920 he organized a communist group in Beijing and was one of the chief founders of the Chinese Communist Party.    [p. 309]

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^[83] The Zunyi Meeting was an enlarged meeting of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party held at Zunyi, Guizhou Province in January 1935 during the Long March. The meeting focused on rectifying the "Left" errors in military affairs, put an end to the domination of the "Left" adventurist line in the central leadership, established the leadership of Mao Zedong in the Red Army and in the Party's central leading body and saved the Red Army and the Party from destruction at a critical juncture.    [p. 309]

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^[146] The March 20th Incident, also known as the Zhongshan Warship Incident, was a plot by Chiang Kai-shek designed to squeeze out the Communists during the First Revolutionary Civil War. On March 18, 1926, Chiang Kai-shek sent a trusted follower to transmit an order in the name of the Office of the Whampoa Academy in the provincial capital of Guangdong to Li Zhilong, acting director of the Navy Bureau and a member of the Communist Party, instructing him to move the Zhongshan Warship to Huangpu pending further orders. When the warship arrived at Huangpu, Chiang's trusted followers spread the rumour that it was going to blow up the Whampoa Military Academy and that the Communist Party would then throw out Chiang Kai-shek. Under the pretext that the Communist Party was plotting an insurrection, on March 20 Chiang Kai-shek had Li Zhilong arrested, the warship detained and troops sent to encircle the office of the Guangzhou-Hong Kong Strike Committee. Later, the Communist Party members were forced to withdraw from the First Army of the National Revolutionary Army and the Whampoa Military Academy. Because Chen Duxiu, Zhang Guotao and other principal

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leaders of the Central Committee of the Party, compromised and made concessions, not daring to counter-attack, Chiang Kai-shek's plot was successful.    [p. 310]

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^[148] When the Government of the Uphold-the-Provisional-Constitution Army was established in 1917, Chen Jiongming (1878-1933); a native of Haifeng, Guangdong Province, was Commander-in-Chief of the Guangdong Army sent to aid troops in Fujian. In 1920 he became Governor of Guangdong Province and Commander-in-Chief of the Guangdong Army. In 1922 he launched a military coup against Sun Yat-sen. In February and March 1925, in order to consolidate the revolutionary base areas in Guangdong, the Kuomintang and the Communist Party jointly organized a revolutionary army with the Whampoa Academy cadets as the backbone force and launched an Eastern Expedition against Chen Jiongming, defeating his main force stationed in Dongjiang. Between October and November the same year, the revolutionary army launched another expedition and finally wiped out Chen's troops.    [p. 310]

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^[153] The Communist International, also known as the Third International and the Comintern, was founded in Moscow in March 1919 under the leadership of Lenin. The Chinese Communist Party joined the International in 1922. In May 1943 the Presidium of the Executive Committee of the International adopted a resolution proposing the dissolution of the organization, and in June it was formally dissolved.    [p. 306]

^[154] Li Lisan (1899-1967), a native of Liling, Hunan Province, joined the Communist Party in 1921 and was one of the chief leaders of the Chinese workers' movement. From June to September 1930, when he was a leading member of the Central Committee, he made "Left" adventurist errors. Later, he accepted the Party's criticism, came to see his mistakes and corrected them. He was re-elected to the Central Committee at the Party's subsequent Seventh and Eighth National Congresses.    [p. 307]

^[155] A reference to the "Left" putschist mistakes made by Qu Qiubai and others from November 1927 to April 1928 and the "Left" adventurist mistake made by Li Lisan and others from June to September 1930 and by Wang Ming and others from January 1931 to January 1935, when the Zunyi Meeting (see Note 83 above) was held.    [p. 309]

^[156] After the Revolution of 1911, Jiang Kanghu (1883-1954), a native of Yiyang, Jiangxi Province, travelled to Japan and Europe in his early years. After the 1911 Revolution, he advocated socialism and organized the Chinese Socialist Party in Shanghai. The party was dissolved by the Yuan Shikai government in 1913. In June 1921, Jiang attended the Third Congress of the Communist International as a non-voting delegate, in the capacity of a former member of the Socialist Party. In order to enter the service of the northern warlords, in 1924 he reorganized the Chinese Socialist Party and the following year reorganized it again into the New Chinese Social-Democratic Party. In 1927 he had to dissolve the party, as the Northern Expedition was winning one victory after another. During the anti-Japanese war, he worked with the puppet government and degenerated into a traitor.    [p. 309]

^[157] Huang Jiemin (1883-1956), a native of Qingjiang, Jiangxi Province, joined the Tong Meng Hui (Chinese Revolutionary League) as a young man. In 1919 he became director-general of the Chinese Association of Industry in Shanghai and participated in the patriotic anti-imperialist movement. After the Kuomintang reactionaries betrayed the revolution in 1927, he resigned from his official post as alternate member of the Supervisory Committee of the Kuomintang's Jiangxi Provincial Headquarters and other posts in resentment of Chiang Kai-shek's dictatorial rule and a few years later worked as a lawyer and teacher. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, he served as a member of the Central Solidarity Committee of the Revolutionary Committee of the Kuomintang and deputy director of the Supervisory Department of the Jiangxi Provincial People's Government.    [p. 309]

^[158] As a young man, Dai Jitao (1891-1949), born in Guang'an, Sichuan Province joined the Tong Meng Hui (Chinese Revolutionary League). During the May 4th

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Movement of 1919, he was chief editor of the Weekly Review in Shanghai and wrote some articles on socialism and labour. In 1924 he became a member of the Kuomintang's Central Executive Committee. During the first period of Kuomintang-Communist co-operation, he distorted the revolutionary content of Dr. Sun Yat-sen's doctrines and spread opposition to the Communist Party and the workers' and peasants' movement, thus preparing ideologically the ground for the counter-revolutionary coup d'etat later launched by Chiang Kai-shek. After the Kuomintang reactionaries betrayed the revolution in 1927, he remained a follower of Chiang Kai-shek and served successively as a member of the Kuomintang government council and president of its Examination Yuan.    [p. 309]

^[159] Wu Peifu (1874-1919), a native of Penglai, Shandong Province, was one of the chieftains of the Zhili (Hebei) clique of northern warlords. In 1918 he opposed the policy of "unification by force" advocated by Duan Qirui, the head of the Anhui clique, and favoured peace through negotiations between the southern and northern warlords. During the May 4th Movement of 1919, he gave the impression of being a "patriotic officer" through sending a telegram nationwide opposing the signing of the Paris Peace Treaty. In 1920 he joined forces with the Fengtian clique to overthrow Duan Qirui's government and then established ties with the Soviet government. After driving the Fengtian clique north of the Great Wall, he supported Cao Kun, who controlled the northern warlord government in Beijing. In 1923 he cruelly suppressed the movement of the railway workers along the Beijing-Hankou Railway. In 1926 Wu's troops were routed by the Northern Expeditionary Army in Hubei Province.    [p. 309]

^[160] The Third National Party Congress was held in Guangzhou from June to 20, 1923. The main topic on the agenda was the establishment of a revolutionary united front with the Kuomintang led by Dr. Sun Yat-sen. The Congress made correct evaluation of Dr. Sun's democratic stand in opposition to imperialism and feudal warlords; explored the possibility of transforming the Kuomintang into a revolutionary alliance of workers, peasants, petty bourgeoisie and national bourgeoisie; criticized the "Left" view held by people who had misgivings about co-operation with the Kuomintang and the Right view held by people who advocated that "everything should be placed under the Kuomintang's leadership"; and decided that members of the Communist Party could join the Kuomintang in a private capacity but that they should maintain their political and organizational independence as Communist Party members. The Congress laid the necessary ground work for co-operation with the Kuomintang in launching revolutionary civil war.    [p. 309]

^[161] Zhang Guotao (1897-1979), a native of Pingxiang, Jiangxi Province, attended the First National Congress of the Communist Party in 1921 and was elected successively to the Central Committee, to its Political Bureau and to the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau. In 1931 he served as secretary of the Hubei Henan-Anhui Sub-Bureau of the Central Committee and Vice-Chairman of the Provisional Central Government of the Soviet Republic of China. In June 1931 after the First and the Fourth Front Armies of the Red Army joined forces in Maogong, Sichuan Province, he became General Political Commissar of the Red Army. He opposed the Central Committee's decision that the Red Army should continue its march north, tried to split the Party and the Red Army by setting up a separate "party central committee". In June 1936 he was forced to dissolve the "second party central committee". He then marched northward with the Second and Fourth Front Armies of the Red Army, reaching northern Shaanxi in December.

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In April 1938 he betrayed the revolution and became a Kuomintang secret agent. Zhang was subsequently expelled from the Party, and in 1979 he died in Canada.    [p. 310]

^[162] After the death of Sun Yat-sen in 1925, the right-wingers in the Kuomintang became openly counter-revolutionary. On November 23, some dozen of them, including Zou Lu, Xie Chi and Lin Sen, called a meeting at Biyun Temple in the Western Hills near Beijing. At this meeting they came out against Dr. Sun's Three Great Policies of alliance with Russia, co-operation with the Communist Party and assistance to the peasants and workers and adopted resolutions opposing the Communist Party, the Soviet Union and co-operation between the Kuomintang and the Communists. Then they set up a central Kuomintang headquarters in Shanghai and local headquarters in Beijing and other cities and worked against the Communists and the people. The persons who attended the Biyun Temple meeting became known as the Western Hills Clique.    [p. 310]

^[163] The Merchants' Corps was a counter-revolutionary armed group controlled by the influential comprador Chen Lianbo in Guangzhou. In 1924 the British imperialists assisted the Corps with large amounts of money and munitions in an attempt to subvert the Guangdong Revolutionary Government. In August of that year the government confiscated the munitions smuggled in by Chen Lianbo to organize armed rebellion. Chen then persuaded the Merchants' Corps to petition Sun Yat-sen and incited shopkeepers throughout the province to go on strike. On October 10, when the people of Guangzhou paraded in celebration of the anniversary of the 1911 Revolution, they were fired on by the Merchants' Corps. The 16 organizations represented in the parade formed the Revolutionary Alliance of Workers, Peasants, Soldiers and Students and issued a declaration demanding that the Corps be dissolved and the assailants severely punished. Influenced and supported by the Communist Party, the masses of workers and peasants, and the Kuomintang left-wingers, Sun Yat-sen took resolute measures. He assembled the Whampoa cadets, the armed forces of workers and peasants and other troops, who routed the Merchants' Corps on October 15.    [p. 310]

^[164] The Independent Regiment of the Fourth Army of the National Revolutionary Army was founded in the winter of 1925 in Zhaoqing, Guangdong Province, with Ye Ting, a Communist, as its commander. With members of the Communist Party and Communist Youth League as its backbone, the regiment fought heroically and performed outstanding service in the battle of the Northern Expedition.    [p. 310]

^[165] A reference to Mao Zedong's Report on An Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan. In February 1927 Mao Zedong sent this report to The Guide, the organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, but Chen Duxiu and other Right deviationist leaders of the Party refused to publish it. Early in March the article was carried for the first time in The Soldier, the organ of the Hunan Provincial Party Committee. On March 12 The Guide published a part of the article, but the proposal to carry it in full made by Qu Qiubai, who was then in charge of the Central Committee's propaganda work, was rejected by Chen Duxiu and others. In April of the same year, Qu Qiubai sent the article to the Changjiang Publishing House run by the Party in Wuhan to be published as a pamphlet entitled Peasant Revolution in Hunan, with foreword by Qu.    [p. 310]

^[166] A reference to the counter-revolutionary coup launched by Wang Jingwei (1883-1944) in Wuhan on July 11, 1927. After Chiang Kai-shek staged a counter-revolutionary coup in Shanghai on April 12, 1927, the Wuhan National Government

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headed by Wang Jingwei became increasingly reactionary. On June 10 Wang Jingwei and Feng Yuxiang convened a meeting in Zhengzhou at which they plotted to oppose the Communist Party. On the 19th, Feng and Chiang Kai-shek held a secret meeting in Xuzhou, where they laid plans for Chiang to collaborate with Wang in common opposition to the Communist Party. Under the influence of the Right capitulationist line represented by Chen Duxiu, the Communist Party paid no attention to the intrigues of the Kuomintang and made no preparations for a sudden change in the situation. On July 15 Wang Jingwei openly split with the Communist Party. He banned the trade unions, peasant associations and other revolutionary organizations and massacred large numbers of Communists and other revolutionaries. Thus the First Revolutionary Civil War ended in failure.    [p. 311]

^[167] Mikhail Markovich Borodin (1884-1951) was the Soviet Government emissary to the Guangzhou Revolutionary Government and political advisor to the Kuomintang during the first period of Kuomintang-Communist co-operation. He came to Guangzhou in October 1923 and returned to the Soviet Union after the Wuhan Government betrayed the revolution in July 1927.    [p. 312]

^[168] Ye Ting (1896-1946), a native of Huiyang County, Guangdong Province, joined the Communist Party in 1925 and became the commander of the Independent Regiment of the Fourth Army of the National Revolutionary Army that same year. The armed forces referred to here were the 24th Division of the Eleventh Army, which had been formed, with the bulk of the Independent Regiment as its main body, on the eve of the Nanchang Uprising, and the 25th Division of the Fourth Army, which had also been formed with the rest of the Independent Regiment as its backbone. Ye was then commander of the 24th Division.    [p. 312]

^[169] On August 1, 1927, the Communist Party launched an armed uprising in Nanchang, Jiangxi Province, to combat the counter-revolutionary forces led by Chiang Kai-shek and Wang Jingwei. Under the command of Zhou Enlai, who was secretary of the Front Committee of the Communist Party, and He Long, Ye Ting, Zhu De and Liu Bocheng, the insurrectionists seized Nanchang after fierce fighting. This uprising was the opening salvo in the Chinese people's armed opposition to the Kuomintang reactionaries and ushered in a new era in which the Communist Party exercised independent leadership of revolutionary armed struggle. After withdrawing from Nanchang, the insurrectionary army headed south for Guangdong. In early October, it came under attack from all sides by superior enemy forces in the Chaozhou-Shantou region and was defeated. Later, part of the remaining troops went to the Haifeng-Lufeng area and continued the struggle. Another part, commanded by Zhu De and Chen Yi, moved to southern Hunan and launched the Southern Hunan Uprising. These troops arrived in the Jinggang Mountains in April 1928 and joined forces with the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army under Mao Zedong.    [p. 312]

^[170] B. Lominadze (1898-1934), Russian, came to China as a representative of the Communist International in late July 1927, when the Wuhan Government had already betrayed the revolution.    [p. 312]

^[171] At an emergency meeting on August 7, 1927, the Central Committee summed up the lessons to be drawn from the First Revolutionary Civil War (1924-27), put an end to the dominance of Chen Duxiu's Right capitulationalist line in the Central Committee, laid down the general principles for agrarian revolution and armed resistance to Kuomintang's reactionary rule, and resolved that the main task of the Party at that time was to arouse the peasants to launch autumn harvest uprisings. However, in combating Right errors, the meeting paved the way for "Left" errors.

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It failed to recognize the need to organize appropriate counter-offensives or necessary tactical retreats in the light of different conditions in different places. Organizationally, it touched off excessive, sectarian struggles inside the Party. For an assessment of this meeting, see Zhou Enlai's "On the Sixth Congress of the Party", Selected Works of Zhou Enlai, Eng. ed, Foreign Languages Press, Beijing, 1981, Vol 1, pp 193-210.    [p. 312]

^[172] Zhang Tailei (1898-1927), a native of Changzhou, Jiangsu Province, joined a communist group in Bejing in 1920. In 1925, at the Fourth National Party Congress, he was elected an alternate member of the Central Committee. At the same time he served as interpreter for the Soviet advisor Borodin and as a member of the Standing Committee of the Guangdong Regional Party Committee and head of its Propaganda Department. He was elected a member of the Central Committee at the Party's Fifth National Congress, held in May 1927. He attended the Party's August 7th Meeting of the same year and was elected an alternate member of the Political Bureau of the Provisional Central Committee. He later served as secretary of the Guangdong Provincial Party Committee and laid down his life while leading the Guangzhou Uprising in December.    [p. 312]

^[173] The "articles" referred to are Stalin's "Notes on Contemporary Themes" carried in Pravda on July 28, 1927; his address at the Joint Plenum of the Central Committee and Control Commission of the CPSU(B), held from July 29 to August 9; and his speech at the Joint Meeting of the Presidium of the Executive Committee of the Communist International and its Control Commission on September 27 [Transcriber's Note: See Stalin's "The Political Complexion of the Russian Opposition". -- DJR]. See J. V. Stalin, Works, Eng. ed, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow 1954, Vol. 9, pp. 128-69 and Vol. 10, pp. 1-96 and pp. 158-72.    [p. 313]

^[174] In 1920 Tan Pingshan (1886-1956), a native of Gaoming, Guangdong Province, organized a communist group in Guangdong, and at the Third, Fourth and Fifth National Congresses of the Communist Party he was elected to the Central Committee. During the period of the First Revolutionary Civil War (1924-27), he was successively a member of the Standing Committee of the Central Executive Committee of the Kuomintang, head of the Organization Department and of the Peasant Department of the Central Executive Committee and a member of the Wuhan National Government Council. During the Nanchang Uprising in 1927, he served as a member of the Presidium of the Revolutionary Committee. In November the same year he was expelled from the Communist Party by the "Left" leaders at an enlarged meeting of the Political Bureau of the Provisional Central Committee and later took part in organizing the Provisional Action Committee of the Chinese Kuomintang (that is, the Third Party). During the anti-Japanese war, Tan opposed the traitorous dictatorial policy of Chiang Kai-shek. In 1948 he helped to establish the Revolutionary Committee of the Kuomintang. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, he served as a member of the Central People's Government Council.    [p. 313]

^[175] A reference to an armed insurrection launched by the Communist Party to combat the Kuomintang counter-revolutionary force after the failure of the Great Revolution in 1927. On December 11, led by Zhang Tailei, secretary of the Guangdong Provincial Party Committee, and Ye Ting, Yun Daiying, Ye Jianying, Yang Yin, Zhou Wenyong, Nie Rongzhen and others, the Officers' Training Corps of the Fourth Army of the National Revolutionary Army, supported by the workers of Guangzhou and the peasants in the suburbs, seized most of the city after fierce fighting and set up the Guangzhou Soviet Government. On the 12th, the Kuomintang

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reactionary troops, backed by imperialist gunboats, attacked Guangzhou. Zhang Tailei laid down his life during the fighting, and on the 13th the insurrectionists were compelled to withdraw from the city. They then joined the revolutionary armed forces in Dongjiang and Hunan and continued their armed struggle.    [p. 313]

^[176] The Sixth National Congress of the Communist Party was held in Moscow from June 18 to July 11, 1928. Qu Qiubai made a political report on "the Chinese Revolution and the Communist Party", Zhou Enlai delivered a report on organizational and military problems and Liu Bocheng delivered a supplementary report on military problems. The Congress adopted resolutions on political, military and organizational questions and elected the Sixth Central Committee. It affirmed that Chinese society was semi-colonial and semi-feudal and that the Chinese revolution in process was a bourgeois-democratic revolution. It pointed out that the prevailing political situation was a lull between two revolutionary high tides, that the revolution was developing in an uneven way and that the Party's general task at the time was not to carry out offensives or organize uprisings, but to win over the masses. While criticizing Right opportunism, the Congress pointed particularly to putschism, military adventurism and commandism as the most dangerous tendencies inside the Party, which resulted from being divorced from the masses. The main thrust of the Congress was correct, but there were also shortcomings and mistakes. It failed to make a correct evaluation either of the dual character of the intermediate classes or of the internal contradictions among the reactionaries and to put forward appropriate policies on these questions. It also lacked a proper understanding of the need for an orderly tactical retreat by the Party after the failure of the Great Revolution in 1927, of the importance of rural base areas and of the protracted nature of the democratic revolution.    [p. 313]

^[177] Xiang Zhongfa (1879-1931), a native of Hanchuan, Hubei Province, served as a representative of the Chinese Communist Party to the Communist International after the failure of the Great Revolution in July 1927. He was elected General Secretary of the Communist Party at its Sixth National Congress in 1928. On June 22, 1931, he was arrested and turned traitor. He was shot by the Kuomintang on June 24.    [p. 313]

^[178] Nikolai Bukharin (1888-1938) joined the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party in 1906. After the October Revolution of 1917 he served as member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the CPSU(B.) and of the Executive Committee of the Communist International. In November 1929 a plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU(B.) dismissed him from the Political Bureau. He was expelled from the Party in 1937 and executed the following year.    [p. 314]

^[179] Palmiro Togliatti (1893-1964) was elected a member of the Presidium of the Executive Committee of the Communist International in 1928. He once served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of Italy.    [p. 314]

^[180] Pavel Mif (1901-38), Russian, was appointed deputy head of the Far Eastern Bureau of the Communist International and president of the Dr. Sun Yat-sen University in Moscow in 1928. He arrived in Shanghai in 1938 as representative of the Communist International. Owing to his support, Wang Ming assumed the supreme leadership of the Chinese Communist Party at the Fourth Plenary Session of its Sixth Central Committee.    [p. 314]

^[181] Qu Qiubai (1899-1935), a native of Changzhou, Jiangsu Province, joined the Communist Party in 1922 and was one of its chief leaders in the early period. At the crucial moment after the failure of the Great Revolution in 1927, he presided

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over the emergency meeting of the Central Committee on August 7. At this meeting he was elected a member of the Political Bureau of the Provisional Central Committee and charged with handling its routine business. Between November 1927 and April 1928 he made the "Left" error of putschism. In September 1930 he chaired the Third Plenary Session of the Sixth Central Committee, which corrected Li Lisan's "Left" adventurist mistakes. At the Fourth Plenary Session of the Sixth Central Committee held in January 1931, he was attacked by Wang Ming and other exponents of "Left" dogmatism and sectarianism and was pushed out of the central leading body. From then on he worked in the revolutionary cultural movement in Shanghai in co-operation with Lu Xun. In 1934 he arrived in the Central Revolutionary Base Area in Jiangxi Province and was made Commissioner of People's Education in the Provisional Central Government of the Soviet Republic of China. In February 1935 he was arrested by the Kuomintang when moving from Jiangxi to Fujian and on June 18 he was executed in Changting, Fujian Province.    [p. 314]

^[182] Wang Ming (1904-74), also known as Chen Shaoyu, a native of Jinzhai, Anhui Province, joined the Communist Party in 1925. He later served as member of the Central Committee, of the Political Bureau and of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau and as secretary of the Central Committee's Changjiang Bureau. He was the principal exponent of the "Left" adventurist mistakes that prevailed in the Communist Party between the Fourth Plenary Session of the Sixth Central Committee in January 1931 and the Zunyi Meeting in January 1935. During the early period of the anti-Japanese war (1937-45) he made Right capitulationist errors. Stubbornly refusing to accept criticism and help from the Party, he degenerated into a traitor to the Chinese revolution in the 196Os.    [p. 314]

^[183] A reference to a faction inside the Kuomintang during the late 1920s and early 1930s. After the Wuhan Government turned against the Communist Party in July 1927, Wang Jingwei's faction of the Kuomintang in Wuhan collaborated with Chiang Kai-shek's faction in Nanjing. At the end of 1928, dissatisfied with Chiang's monopoly of the power in his own hands, Wang, Chen Gongbo, Gu Mengyu and others set up the Society of Comrades for the Reorganization of the Kuomintang (also known as the Reorganization Clique) in Shanghai.    [p. 315]

^[184] The six resolutions adopted in 1930 by the Far Eastern Bureau of the Communist International were entitled as follows: Current Organizational Tasks for the Communist Party of China, Tasks of the Communist Party of China in the Workers' Movement (Draft), On China's Peasant Question, On the Question of the Chinese Soviet, On the Land and Peasant Problems in China's Soviet Areas (Draft), and On the Economic Policies of the Chinese Soviet Regime (Draft).    [p. 315]

^[185] He Mengxiong (1898-1931), a native of Lingxian, Hunan Province, was one of the early organizers of the workers' movement in north China and founder of the Beijing-Suiyuan Railway Trade Union. After the failure of the Great Revolution in 1927, he served as a member of the Jiangsu Provincial Party Committee and secretary of its Peasant Movement Committee and resisted the "Left" errors of Li Lisan and Wang Ming. He was arrested in Shanghai and executed in Longhua by the Kuomintang reactionaries in 1931.    [p. 315]

^[186] A reference to Two Lines, a pamphlet written by Wang Ming in 1930 after the Third Plenary Session of the Sixth Central Committee of the Party, in which he preached "Left" dogmatism. It was first published in Shanghai in February 1931 and was reprinted in Moscow the following year under the title The Struggle for the Further Bolshevization of the Communist Party of China.    [p. 316]

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^[187] Chen Changhao (1906-67), a native of Hanyang, Hubei Province, was at this time a member of the Hubei-Henan-Anhui Sub-Bureau of the Central Committee.    [p. 316]

^[188] In October 1932 the Soviet Area Bureau of the Central Committee convened a meeting in Ningdu, Jiangxi Province. The meeting wrongly rejected the proposals made by Mao Zedong and others for expanding the struggle to northeastern Jiangxi, where the enemy was weak and the Party and the people were comparatively strong, and demanded instead that the Red Army seize key cities and be victorious first in Jiangxi Province. After this meeting Mao Zedong was reassigned to government work and was later dismissed from his post as General Political Commissar of the First Front Army of the Red Army.    [p. 316]

^[189] Luo Ming (1901-   ), a native of Dapu, Guangdong Province, was at this time acting secretary of the Fujian Provincial Party Committee. He maintained that conditions in Shanghang, Yongding and other outlying areas in western Fujian were more difficult than elsewhere and that the Party's policies there should be different from those in the consolidated base areas. The Party leaders, who were following an erroneous "Left" line, dismissed his views as pessimistic, saying they constituted an opportunistic, liquidationist line envisaging flight and retreat and launched a struggle against it.    [p. 317]

^[190] Deng Xiaoping (1904-   ), a native of Guang'an, Sichuan Province, was at this time secretary of the Party's Huichang-Xunwu-Anyuan Key County Committee. Mao Zetan (1905-35), a native of Xiangtan, Hunan Province, was secretary general of the Soviet Area Bureau of the Central Committee. Xie Weijun (1907-35), a native of Leiyang, Hunan Province, was a member of the Jiangxi Provincial Soviet Government Council, director of the Political Department of the Jiangxi Provincial Military Command and secretary of the Party's Le'an Key County Committee. Gu Bai (1906-35), a native of Xunwu, Jiangxi Province, was secretary-general of the Party's General Front Committee and a member of the Jiangxi Provincial Soviet Government Council. Although these men were carrying out a correct line of defence against strong odds, they were condemned by exponents of the "Left" erroneous Iine in the Party as "creators of the Luo Ming line in Jiangxi Province".    [p. 317]

^[191] Li Teh (or Hua Pu) was the Chinese name of the German Otto Braun (1900-74). He was sent to China by the Communist International in 1932. After arriving at the Central Revolutionary Base Area in October 1933, he became the military advisor to the Chinese Communist Party, wielding the actual power of command over the Red Army. During the fifth campaign against Kuomintang's "encirclement and suppression", he and the advocates of the erroneous "Left" line in the Party devised a series of wrong strategies and tactics which caused great losses to the Red Army. He was removed from command before the Zunyi Meeting in 1935 and left China in 1939.    [p. 317]

^[192] From September 1931 to January 1935, Bo Gu (1907-46), also known as Qin Bangxian, a native of Wuxi, Jiangsu Province, was a principal leader of the Provisional Central Committee of the Party and a member of its Political Bureau. During the fifth campaign against Kuomintang's "encirclement and suppression", which started in September 1933, he held supreme command over the Red Army and made a series of military errors that resulted in great losses to the Red Army. He was removed from his position after the Zunyi Meeting. During the early days of the anti-Japanese war, he worked at the Changjiang and Southern bureaus of the Central Committee. After 1941, he founded and directed both Liberation Daily and

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the New China News Agency in Yan'an. In 1945 he was re-elected to the Central Committee at the Party's Seventh National Congress. He died in a plane crash in April the following year.    [p. 317]

^[193] Georgi Dimittov (1882-1949), Bulgarian, was a member of the Central Council of the Red International of Labour Unions in 1921, and from 1935 to 1943 served as Secretary-General of the Executive Committee of the Communist International. After returning to Bulgaria in November 1945, he worked as Secretary-General of the Bulgarian Communist Party and Chairman of the Council of Ministers.    [p. 317]

^[194] The Xi'an Incident is also known as the December 12th Incident. At the critical juncture when the Japanese imperialists were stepping up their aggression to colonize China, the Kuomintang Northeastern Army, headed by General Zhang Xueliang, and its 17th Route Army, headed by General Yang Hucheng, having been influenced and given impetus by the Chinese Communist Party's policy of the anti-Japanese national united front and the people's anti-Japanese movement, demanded that Chiang Kai-shek stop the civil war and unite against Japan. He not only refused to comply but hurried to Xi'an to make active preparations for "suppressing the Communists". Zhang Xueliang and Yang Hucheng took joint action and arrested Chiang Kai-shek on December 12, 1936 in Lintong. This became known as the famous Xi'an Incident. After the incident, the pro-Japanese faction in the Kuomintang, headed by He Yingqin, prepared to exploit this opportunity to launch a large-scale civil war and to oust Chiang Kai-shek in order to take his place. The Chinese Communist Party adhered to the principle of settling the incident peacefully. Due largely to the arduous efforts of Zhou Enlai, Bo Gu (Qin Bangxian) and Ye Jianying, all representatives of the Chinese Communist Party, a peaceful settlement was indeed reached, thus facilitating the formation of the Anti-Japanese National United Front.    [p. 317]

^[195] A reference to the Right capitulationist error made by Wang Ming and others during the initial period of the anti-Japanese war. In December 1937, not long after his return from the Soviet Union, Wang Ming made a report at a meeting of the Political Bureau entitled "How to Persist in the Nationwide War of Resistance and Strive for Victory" in which he put forward Right capitulationist proposals. Later, when serving as secretary of the Changjiang Bureau of the Central Committee, he again expressed certain wrong views and wrote statements, drafted resolutions and articles that contained errors of principle. Having more faith in the Kuomintang than in the Communist Party, he made concessions to the Kuomintang's anti-popular policies and dared not to develop people's armed forces and expand the anti-Japanese bases in the Japanese-occupied areas. He advocated that "everything should go through the united front" and that "everything should be subordinate to the united front", surrendering the leadership of the resistance to the Kuomintang. As the correct line represented by Mao Zedong had already prevailed in the Party, Wang Ming's wrong policies were implemented only in a few places. At the enlarged Sixth Plenary Session of the Party's Sixth Central Committee, held from September to November 1938, the principle that the Party should independently lead the armed resistance to Japan was firmly established.    [p. 318]

^[196] See Selected Works of Mao Zedong, Eng. ed., FLP, Beijing, 1975, Vol. II, pp. 263-68.    [p. 318]