The ultra-left policies of Third Period Stalinism had split the German working class in the face of the Nazis and allowed Hitler to come to power “without breaking a pane of glass”. A frightened Stalin turned to diplomacy to protect the Soviet Union from the results of his own policies. The Soviet leadership cynically manipulated the national Communist Parties in its own interests to relieve the twin pressures of Germany in the west and Japan in the east. The national Communist Parties would seek to control the class struggle using so-called Popular Fronts; in return their own bourgeoisie would extend goodwill towards the Soviet Union.
Thus, the 7th World Congress of the CI (25 July – 21 August 1935) advocated a Popular Front policy for a number of countries of which China was one.[3] The CCP was to reach a detente with Nationalist China to protect the Soviet Union’s eastern seaboard.[4] The CCP itself almost never used the term Popular Front preferring instead “United Front”. In this way it hoped to demonstrate the similarity in political and social content with the so-called United Front of 1925-27, and to preserve the fiction that this venture was a continuation of the ‘unity’ of 1925-27!
The 7th World Congress had Wang Ming announce that the anti-imperialist peoples’ United Front was the only “means for the general mobilisation of the entire Chinese nation for the sacred national revolutionary war against Japanese imperialism.”[5] Only eighteen months previously the same Wang Ming had, at the 13th Plenum of the ECCI, boldly affirmed that no improvement in the condition of the Chinese masses was possible without completion of the agrarian revolution, without the overthrow of the Kuomintang and its replacement by a Communist government.
Many Marxists in Western Europe have made strenuous efforts to differentiate Mao from Stalin. The adoption of the United Front strategy is one example. While the 7th World Congress was in session, the Red Army was resting in the town of Maoerhkai from which it issued the Maoerhkai Appeal on 1 August 1935 calling on all classes and armies in China to form a political and military alliance against Japan. It promised the CCP would co-operate with the KMT if it stopped attacking its own people and fought the Japanese invaders. The Maoerhkai Appeal thus appeared to anticipate the Comintern’s own Popular Front appeal made the very next day. For some time, radicals in Europe and the USA argued this was an independent CCP initiative not only because it pre-dated the appeal of the 7th World Congress (if only by a day) but also because the Congress cited China as a prime example of how to proceed. However, with the opening of Soviet and CCP records it is now clear that the Maoerhkai Appeal was drafted by Wang Ming in Moscow, and an integral part of the Comintern move towards the Popular Front strategy.[6]
Naturally, at this stage the appeal was not directly to Chiang or the KMT. How could it be? KMT armies were at that very moment attempting to annihilate the Red Army and the CCP. It would take a little time before Chiang would be claimed as the ally of the CCP and saviour of China.
The call was largely ignored by Chiang Kai-shek; the Red Army had been defeated at Jiangxi and had been reduced to a small rump, there had been a bumper crop in 1935, there was an economic upturn as world trade revived, and an accompanying political stabilisation. Still hoping a compromise could be reached with Japanese imperialism, the Chinese bourgeoisie conducted a purely defensive struggle which slowed down the Japanese advance but could not withstand a determined imperialist attack nor ever achieve Chinese national liberation.
With moves towards Popular Frontism under way, the Chinese contingent to the 7th Congress led by Wang Ming approved a series of proposed changes to CCP policies that would make them more acceptable to the KMT; these included making landlords who actively supported the resistance to Japan, exempt from expropriation. This, if effected, would end land redistribution and the land revolution. The changes were considered sufficiently important for an envoy carrying details of the 7th Congress decisions and Wang’s proposals, to be airlifted into North Shensi.[7]
Moscow now called for the CCP to enter an alliance with the Nationalists and for a joint military struggle against the Japanese to protect the Soviet Union from attack. With such a strategy the natural choice of leader for the CCP was Mao, and at the 7th Congress he was singled out for praise as an “outstanding and valiant standard-bearer” of the Communist movement. In Moscow’s exhibition hall of CCP history, the only personal portrayals of CCP leaders were Mao and Zhu De. In the Communist International, No. 33-34, 1935, Mao was praised as the “legendary leader of the Chinese people.”[8] The myth of ‘Mao-versus-Wang’ with Wang the red comprador, was spread later by Maoist historians to absolve Mao from responsibility for mistakes in Party policy. Unfortunately, many young militants in the West were deceived by this into believing that Mao was politically opposed to Wang, and that Mao had adopted an anti-Stalin stance.
The last stages of the Long March had been named The Anti-Japanese March and the Red Army was supposedly ‘in preparation’ for fighting the Japanese, but in its day-to-day activities it had to defend itself from the immediate enemy, the ‘troops of the Chinese traitors’. This was reflected in a continuation of its policy of “resist Japan and oppose Chiang.”[9] We can safely assume that this policy was a pretty faithful reflection of the hatred of Chiang felt by most of the Red Army troops.
At the end of March 1936, the ECCI intervened to accelerate the process of forming an anti-Japanese front with the KMT.[10] On 5 May 1936, Mao Zedong, as Chairperson of the Soviet Government of China, and Zhu De, commander-in-chief of the Red armies, made the first formal overtures in an appeal addressed to the Nanjing government and the Military Affairs Commission (of which Chiang Kai-shek was chair). This appeal called for cessation of hostilities between the Red Army and the Nanjing troops and called for a “peace conference in order to realize our common aim of resisting the Japanese.”[11]
Chiang felt he had nothing to gain from discussing terms with a vanquished adversary. His position was enormously strengthened when, on 24 June, Pravda condemned as a Japanese plot, an attempt by local authorities in Guangdong and Guangxi to force Chiang into fighting the Japanese! The Chinese Stalinists would have to do a lot more belly-crawling before they would shake Chiang’s blood-stained hand.
In public, the ECCI declared its sympathy with the internal difficulties faced by the CCP in making a complete about-face: from defending the Soviets against the attacks of KMT armies to transforming and restructuring those same Soviets to be subordinate to the National government and placing the Red Army under the command of Chiang Kai-shek.[12] In private, in his notes made during a meeting with Stalin, Dimitrov was more obdurate: the CCP must take a leading role in the war against Japan and for that the confiscation of land must stop; there was to be only one slogan “For a free China against Japanese war-mongers”, no further fighting against Chiang Kai-shek until victory in the war against Japan; it was “not advisable” for the CCP “to engage in theoretical discussions” they could leave such discussion until after the war.[13] It can be understood why even in such an obedient Party as the Chinese, there was a delay in adjusting to the Moscow line.
However, the CCP’s move towards a Second United Front was by no means exclusively the result of pressure from Moscow, it also had its Chinese line of descent. After all, Mao had been an active protector of the rich peasants in Jiangxi and before that had been strongly in favour of alliance with the KMT. But now there were two big differences; the KMT and CCP had been at war since 1927 and it was clear that even if Chiang were forced into an alliance, he would turn on the Communists as soon as he felt able, secondly Mao was within grasp of Party leadership and this would be a factor in his decisions – and as we know the struggle for leadership in undemocratic Stalinist parties could be a matter of life or death for hundreds, even thousands of comrades. These considerations led to a difference in emphasis – but not in political line – between Moscow and Mao, which would later be presented by some as a fight for the independence of the CCP from Moscow.[14]
With direct CCP-Moscow radio contact re-established, July – August 1936 formed a watershed in the CCP’s transition towards the Popular Front. On 22 July, the Party endorsed Wang’s land policy and began a campaign in its press to convince the KMT that it offered no threat to essential bourgeois interests. To do this Wang Ming reminded the bourgeoisie how the CCP had renounced the agrarian revolution and attempted to keep the peasants in check during the peasant upsurges of 1925-1927.[15]
Mao Zedong outstripped even this, offering the Chinese bourgeoisie the same renunciation of revolutionary struggle as in 1927. He then went one step further, offering guarantees that should the forces of the revolution raise their heads, should rank and file militants speak of “class against class”, the CCP stood ready to play the role of executioner.[16]
The Politburo meeting on 10 August formally endorsed Zhou Enlai’s statement that “the old slogan ‘to resist Japan one must oppose Chiang first’ is no longer suitable.”[17] The government was renamed the “People’s Soviet Government” and the Chinese Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army became the “People’s Red Army”, later to be re-named “People’s Liberation Army”. The name “Communist Party” was ordered to be removed from all governmental institutions and replaced by “Anti-Japanese Salvation Association”. The omnipresent red star was replaced by the Chinese sun on a blue field, the symbol of the Anti-Japanese United Front. All previous laws in the Soviet districts limiting the civil rights of the bourgeoisie were repealed and a decision made not to confiscate the land of rich peasants. The CCP would protect the property and the factories of the big and small merchants and capitalists. In an echo of the worst decisions of 1925-27, the CCP pledged to limit itself to demanding a bourgeois democratic republic and declared the estates of serving officers and anti-Japanese big landowners were no longer subject to confiscation.[18]
An ECCI directive of 15 August advised the CCP to negotiate with Chiang directly and to immediately announce that the CCP was prepared to send a delegation to Chiang, or welcome a KMT delegation in the Soviet area. However, the directive contained several warnings: the establishment of a Japanese national united front should not be used to reduce soviet power, nor should the Red Army be integrated into the KMT armies.[19]
This might sound a big step forward in the thinking of the ECCI but no such luck. The Russian bureaucracy had observed Chiang’s dealings with the Japanese and appreciated that Chiang would be only too keen to accept a face-saving deal with Japan that left the Imperial Army free to attack the Soviet Union. It was a necessary defensive measure to preserve an armed force loyal to the CCP because that might become the only barrier between the advancing Japanese army and the USSR. The Red Army had to be maintained independent of the bourgeoisie, under the exclusive leadership of the CCP. Submerging the Red Army into the NRA could lead to its destruction. What was being suggested was still the same old goal of a national bourgeois democratic regime, but now the Red Army would fight for it in parallel with, rather than as part of, the Nationalist armies. The degree of separation and subordination would depend on circumstances. The struggle for socialism would, as previously, take place at some unspecified time in the future.
As a result the CCP sent an open letter to the KMT on 25 August, appealing for KMT-CCP unity against Japan. The Open Letter to the KMT, drafted by Mao followed ECCI advice:
We are prepared to form a strong revolutionary united front with you as was the case during the … great Chinese Revolution of 1925-7, when there existed a broad united front for struggle against national and feudal oppression, for that is the only proper way to save our country to-day. You … have not yet forgotten the glorious history of collaboration between the Communist Party and the Kuomintang. … It was precisely thanks to this collaboration that all the national and feudal oppressors shook before us. At that time our national oppressors and Japanese imperialism in particular, were very much afraid that our collaboration might lead to final victory and the complete emancipation of China. Therefore they sowed the seeds of strife between us and set in motion all possible means, threats, and temptations as a result of which one side gave up its collaboration and buried the united front. Do you feel no pricks of conscience when you recall this to-day?[20]
Such a blatant falsification of events was not meant to deceive the leadership of the KMT (who, after all, were still intent on destroying the CCP and killing every Chinese Communist), it was meant to counter the very real mistrust felt by the majority of the Party.
On 1 September, the Party Centre directed Party organisations to formally relinquish the old slogans of “Resist Japan and oppose Chiang” and “Down with Chiang Kai-shek.”[21] The directive stated that political and military agreement with the KMT would require the Soviets and Red Army to be placed under the unified command of the national defence government and allied anti-Japanese armed forces. But added, “the independence of the soviets and the Red Army in their organisations and leadership shall not be abolished.” KMT officers and administrators would not be allowed to join the Red Army or Soviet area government. The CCP would continue to enlarge and consolidate its own political and military forces to assure a thorough victory in the anti-Japanese war and the creation of a bourgeois democratic republic.[22]
But in 1927 the CCP could have led a mighty mass movement of many millions in a revolutionary situation; in 1937 it stood at the head of 100,000 badly equipped, poorly disciplined peasant soldiers without the faintest concept of the working-class movement. In 1927 the CCP had stood in opposition to the peasant struggle and had suppressed its demands; now ten years later it was promising to repeat its mistakes.
Before the call for the Popular Front, the CCP had repeatedly addressed itself to the front line units of the KMT offering a fighting alliance against the Japanese army setting only the elementary conditions: an end to the offensive against the Soviet districts, democratic rights for the people and the right for volunteers to organise and arm themselves into anti-Japanese fighting units. Appeals of this kind were designed to tear the supports from under the Kuomintang, thereby relieving the pressure on the Soviet districts, promoting the anti-Japanese struggle, and preparing for the defeat of Chiang Kai-shek’s regime. This was accompanied by a propaganda campaign along the lines that Chiang Kai-shek and the whole KMT had been unmasked as preparing to partition China in the face of the Japanese advance. To aid this process, prisoners taken by the Red Army, after first aid treatment were subject to intensive political instruction and released. All this good work was now found to have been an error and was summarily ended: the anti-imperialist front was to be promoted ‘in a new manner’.
The arguments used in 1926-27 were dusted off and brought out to justify the Second United Front but on their own, were clearly inadequate. Three new reasons were produced. The first was the universal indignation of the Chinese people at the expansionist policies of Japan (in fact popular opposition with mass boycott and student actions was greatest in 1931-32 when Japan seized Manchuria); the second was the increased strength of the Red Army which had grown to a “mighty military factor throughout China” (in fact the Red Army having been defeated at Jiangxi, had arrived in Shensi on the outskirts of China a shadow of its former self); the third reason was that the national bourgeoisie were freeing themselves from their illusions in the KMT and were turning towards the toiling masses (in fact the national bourgeoisie had opted to support the KMT in 1926-27 and were still clinging to it).
Anyone who stated the elementary truth, only recently promulgated by the CCP, that the overthrow of the KMT was the condition of a successful national-revolutionary war was branded an “enemy of the Chinese people” and an “agent of Japanese imperialism”. The policies of class struggle and agrarian revolution were publicly jettisoned. The theme of Stalinist propaganda welcomed the “People’s Anti-Japanese United Front” embracing “all parties and groups” (in practice the CP and KMT), leading to the establishment of an “All-Chinese Government of National Defence”. Care was taken to remove any suggestion that the CCP was even hinting at the overthrow of the KMT regime, even as a distant aim. Wang Ming declared any such suggestion to be “an absolutely false and unfounded legend spread by pro-Japanese elements … It is slander, provocation!”[23]
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Degras, J. The Communist International, 1919-1943, OUP, 1956, Vol 3:353-355.
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Benton, G. The “Second Wang Ming Line” (1935-38), The China Quarterly, No. 61, 1975, p61-94.
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Wang Ming, Report to the 7th World Congress, 1935. www6.svsu.edu/~jalewis2.
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Benton, The Second… Op. cit.
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Benton, The Second… Op. cit.
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Sheng, M. Mao, Stalin, and the Formation of the Anti-Japanese United Front: 1935-37, The China Quarterly No. 129, 1992, p149-170.
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Sheng, Op. cit.
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Sheng, Op. cit.
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Mao Zedong, Open Cable Message for Armistice and Negotiations for Establishing an Alliance Against Japanese Aggression, 5 May 1936, w.m.org.
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Dimitrov, G. Speech on the Chinese Question, 10 Aug 1937, w.m.org.
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Dimitrov, G. Notes on the Chinese Question, 11 Nov 1937, w.m.org.
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Benton, G. The Second… Op. cit.
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Wang Ming, Revolutionary Movement at www6.svsu.edu/~jalewis2/Communist%20International/1935.
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Isaacs, Op. cit. p440.
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Sheng, Op. cit.
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Shum Kui Kwong, The Second Wang Ming Line (1935-38) The China Quarterly No 69, 1977, p136-154.
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Sheng, Op. cit.
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Mao Zedong – Open letter from the CCP to the KMT, 26 Aug 1936 w.m.org.
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Sheng, Op. cit.
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Benton, The Second… Op. cit.
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Wang Ming, Communist International, Oct. 1937, Vol.14, No.10.