By the time he arrived in Jiangxi, Mao had been singled out for public praise and advancement by the ECCI and Pavel Mif. In its letter of October 1929, the ECCI called on the CCP to “ … strengthen and expand guerrilla warfare, especially …. where Mao Zedong (has) been active. We must fight firmly against the tendency in the party to overlook the revolutionary significance of the peasant struggle (particularly guerrilla warfare), emphasise the importance of military work, … and build up the soviet base areas in the places where the peasant revolutionary struggle is active and well developed.”[31]
Mao had taken care that his opposition to the Li Lisan Line was always within the limits of what was acceptable, but the “Mao machine” is reported to have eliminated a “long list” of local leaders as part of his take-over of the Jiangxi Soviet. Eventually, Mao was able to impose his side-kick and manager of his machine (Tseng Shan) as Chair, and other members of his entourage (including his two brothers Mao Zetan and Mao Zemin) as leaders of the Soviet.[32,33]
It was here that Mao demonstrated definitively that the Jiangxi Soviet was not a Soviet in any meaningful sense. He determined that it was quite acceptable to use physical violence against Soviet members when his personal interests were at stake. Mao introduced the Stalinist concept only recently adopted in the Soviet Union, that loyal Party members who honestly differed in their opinions could be ‘objectively counter-revolutionary’ and be imprisoned or executed.[34]
While Mao was at Changsha (July – August 1930) those previously ousted by Mao, encouraged by his absence, formed an anti-Mao group, rallied support and removed his appointees from office. There are no claims that they did this by violent means. This anti-Mao group showed there were political differences when they proposed a more radical land policy. They raised the slogans: “Oppose the practice of dividing land on the basis of the possession of tools and labour power!” “Oppose the rich peasants!”, “Divide the land equally!”, “Oppose the capture of the government by landlords and rich peasants!”. The basis of the anti-Mao forces was for land allocation on the more egalitarian basis of the number of persons in a family.[35]
It was this that led to the infamous Futian incident. In the words of Mao, “… the fate of the revolution depended on the outcome of this struggle” (i.e. his own prestige and position).[36] On his return from Changsha (with the army) Mao set about removing his opponents. First he claimed they were following the Li Lisan Line which allowed him to appear as supporting the new Wang Ming leadership while in fact strengthening his own position. On 7 December 1930, Mao had some seventy members of the Jiangxi Soviet arrested. The Twentieth Corps of the Red Army was so incensed by this mass arrest that some four hundred men attacked Futian prison and liberated more than twenty of the accused. During this attack a number of Mao’s supporters were killed.[37]
Mao now falsely accused his opponents of being members of a secret nationalist organisation, the Anti-Bolshevik League (ABL) and began purging them using the methods of the Stalinist witch hunt vigorously and extensively.
Active oppositionists were arrested and “the most merciless torture” authorised to obtain confessions and the names of others, who were tortured in their turn, and so on. “The number of killings rose steeply, as each confession produced a new clutch of victims, and each victim a new confession.” The tortured confessed to all kinds of wild schemes not least of which was that they were planning an uprising against the CCP. It is claimed that in the First Front Army more than 2,000 were summarily shot.[38] Next Mao turned his attention to the Jiangxi Communist Party. The details of this witch hunt make horrific reading and are as bad as anything done in Soviet Russia – however, unlike in Russia, the torture was often carried out in public.[39] The revolt was finally quelled to Mao’s satisfaction.
Depending on whose version is accepted, the total number executed in this purge – which was aimed at suppressing the egalitarians and the left in the Party – ranges up to 10,000. In principle Mao was repeating what the 28 Bolsheviks had done in Moscow, but on a larger scale, more ferociously and with fewer constraints.[40] At the Plenum of the CC in January 1931 the execution of the Futian rebels was explained as a move against Li Lisan supporters with explicit parallels being made to the anti-Li Lisan measures being taken in Shanghai.[41]
An investigation by the Central Committee (led by Zhou Enlai) which was completed by mid-1931 did not condemn the witch hunt, the methods used, nor the deaths which resulted. It did contain the mild rebuke that too many ABL suspects had been summarily executed – they should have been ‘interrogated’ first.[42] By such means the local leadership of all three Soviets in Jiangxi was brought under much tighter central control with those in charge owing their immediate loyalties to Mao.
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Letter from ECCI to CCP, 29 Oct 1929, in Saich T. The Rise … Op. cit.
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Schwartz, B. Chinese Communism and the Rise of Mao, Harper Torchbooks 1967 p174 et seq.
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Braun, Op. cit. p57.
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Short, P. Mao A Life, John Murray, 2004, p265-267.
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Anon. The Peasant War in China, Rev. Hist., 1990, 2(4)22-25.
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Schwartz, Op. cit.
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Thornton, R. The Emergence of a New Comintern Strategy for China: 1928. In International Communism and the Communist International 1919-43, MUP, p104-110.
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Short, Op. cit. p268-271.
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Saich, The Rise … Op. cit. p509-524.
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Schwartz, Op. cit.
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Dorrill, W. Origins of the Maoist Myth, China Quarterly, Vol 36 1968, p45-60.
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Short, Op. cit.