The opening of the Soviet Communist Party and Comintern secret archives has given access to a mass of new information on the training of revolutionary cadres in the USSR.[97] There were a number of important training centres such as the International Lenin School which was for top Party officials, but it is the Sun Yat-sen University (UKT) which is of interest here because for an important period after 1930 this was where many of the key leaders imposed by the Comintern on the CCP were educated and trained.
From 1925, hundreds of young Chinese Communists began to flock to Russia to study at the UKT which attempted to completely mould a student’s thinking, starting from philosophical fundamentals and his/her world view, but central was a thorough training in Stalinist concepts of Party organisation and discipline.[98] It is no surprise then, to learn that the most important course was the study of Stalin’s Problems of Leninism.[99] After 1927 students were also expected to attend courses on ‘Trotsky’s mistakes’.
In November 1925, Sun Yat-sen University for the Toilers of China was officially opened in Moscow with nearly 300 students. The life span of this university was only five years and at its height it had less than a thousand Chinese students enrolled, but it was a crucial element in the domination of the CCP by the leading faction in the Russian Communist Party. Its students dominated the leadership of the CCP from about 1930 until 1935, and many continued to occupy important posts thereafter. For example, of the ninety-five members of the CC elected by the 8th National Congress of the CCP in 1956, more than a quarter had studied at the UKT.[100]
It is necessary to describe events at UKT to understand what practices these future leaders of the CCP accepted as normal to ‘Bolshevism’ and how they gained their authority.
Karl Radek was appointed Rector at the founding of the University.[101] However, beginning with Chiang Kai-shek’s coup in March 1926, he questioned the CCP policy of entrism and suggested it might be weakening the prospects of revolution. Stalin criticised him personally in Pravda of 21 April 1927 and he was removed as Rector.
Radek was replaced by Pavel Mif, a keen Stalin supporter who was first promoted to the directorship of the Chinese Section of the Comintern and then to Rector of the UKT. In two years Mif successfully organised around himself a group of students which would become known as the ‘28 Bolsheviks’ and whom Mif, as the CI representative in China would place into the leadership of the CCP. Mif quit as Rector in the summer of 1929 to go to China, and the University was closed the following year.
When Mif assumed his post as Rector, a student by the name of Wang Ming (Chen Shaoyu) made every effort to become associated with him and win his confidence. Wang Ming had joined the CCP after becoming a student at UKT so he had little or no experience of Communist Party work in China. He had been a member of the first class to graduate (in 1927, aged about 23) but he remained at the University as a translator, occasionally assisting Mif in studying the reports and other documents sent by the CCP to the Comintern. Mif recognised Wang Ming as someone who could be useful to him and from then on Ming acted as Mif’s mole reporting on university and Party affairs.
Initially the Chinese Communists in Moscow formed their own Party branch, probably as a matter of expediency as so few spoke Russian. However, in late 1926 the Moscow branch of the CCP was dissolved and its members transferred to the Russian Party, although most were demoted to candidate members with no vote on policy decisions. From this time on all Party meetings within the University were attended by ‘Russians’ employed or vetted by the secret police, and all key Party posts within the University were held by Russians.[102]
Usually there were twenty or so students in each Party cell, each with a Russian overseer. At meetings every student had to speak on the topic under discussion. No-one was allowed to remain silent – an approach designed to single out and deal with deviant ideas before they developed and ensure everyone adhered to acceptable views.[103]
In February 1927, Krupskaya was invited to speak at the University, and gave a talk, the formal topic of which was “Communist Education”. The Party branch had an especially tyrannical attitude towards women students which was codified in its document A Concrete Guide to the Work of Training, and from what Krupskaya said it would appear that she had been briefed about what was going on.
Krupskaya was concerned to demolish the Guide’s insistence that Party members had no right to individual free will, a common attitude amongst the bureaucracy at that time. In communist organisations there has to be discipline and direction, but it should be the self-discipline generated through carrying out mutually agreed tasks for a common goal. Krupskaya argued that a Communist worked according to Party instructions but beyond that a Communist had his/her own life to live. After all, both joining and leaving the Party were individual acts. It was quite incorrect to see free will as a manifestation of lack of discipline. Party unity could not be achieved by the terroristic imposition of ideas on Party members, rather it required the conscious agreement of Party members on the issue involved. Creating an atmosphere in the Party whereby members were suspicious of each other could seriously damage the Party as a whole. Party unity, she said, should be based on trust and understanding. Such arguments implicitly criticised the Party regime and helped many potential oppositionists make up their minds.
After the hall was cleared of men, she met with the women students of the University. An important topic raised was the heavy criticism of female Party members if they became pregnant. The Party branch had taken the position that Communist women must not bear children. To do so, the branch contended, turned them into mere housewives, who gave a higher priority to raising a family than carrying out revolutionary work. Some students had been intimidated into having abortions. Krupskaya conceded that having a child could make working in the underground difficult, but argued that forced abortions were not the solution. She suggested that the University nursery for the children of female students, located in suburban Moscow, should be extended for this purpose. Krupskaya’s visit gave the women students enormous intellectual and emotional support.
The upsurge in spirits felt by the students at the March 1927 seizure of power by the workers in Shanghai made Chiang Kai-shek’s subsequent betrayal all the more shocking (see Section 6.3). The students were expected to accept that Chiang’s coup was for the best because the slaughter of thousands of Communists represented the KMT getting rid of its right wing. Dutifully the student body followed the Party line and declared its support for the ‘truly revolutionary’, Left KMT government in Wuhan headed by Wang Ching-wei (Wang Jungwei). However, Stalin’s previous policy of cuddling up to Chiang (the Moscow Party had planned to display a huge effigy in honour of Chiang at the May Day demonstration) led inevitably to questions being asked about Comintern Chinese policy.
On 13 May, Stalin attended the University to explain policy on China.[104] Stalin’s obvious faith in the Left KMT government in Wuhan as “the centre of the struggle of the Chinese labouring masses against imperialism” and his projection that it could become the “organ of a democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry” would soon be shown to be dangerous nonsense. The Party bureau arranged for all Party cells in the University to hold meetings to discuss the speech. The cell directors were instructed to use the meetings not to defend Stalin’s speech but to criticise the opposition. There was to be no attempt to discuss the Chinese Revolution from the standpoint of seeking valid answers to pressing issues, the meetings being solely to support Stalin in the faction struggle taking place within the AUCP(B). This approach did not go down well with the students.[105]
Within two months the killing of Communists began in the area governed by the ‘truly revolutionary’ Left KMT. The students (now numbering over 550) asked the obvious question: What was wrong with the Comintern policy that it had led to the slaughter of thousands of CCP members, not once but twice? To many students it was incomprehensible that the ECCI had passed a resolution (14 July 1927) instructing the Chinese Communists to remain within the Left KMT at a time when Left KMT generals were killing Communists. They also found it hard to stomach the idea that free discussion of these events and differences within the Party were so severely repressed.[106]
The attitude of the Party branch committee became more repressive, reports at meetings were now largely limited to the ‘crimes’ of the opposition, reading material to gain an objective view of events was actively discouraged, attempts were made to ensure opposition documents did not enter the University, only material expressing unreserved support for the Central Committee was approved. Such restrictions served only to increase the natural interest of many students to discover what the Opposition was really saying.[107]
Faced with a disaster in China, Stalin moved quickly and decisively. On 11 November 1927, the CC announced that meetings of oppositionists, even in private dwellings would be broken up by force.[108] Three days later a special session of the CC and Control Commission expelled all oppositionists who were members of the CC (Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Rakovsky, Smilga, and Yevdokimov). In the days that followed, hundreds of oppositionists were arrested. The 15th Party Congress (2-19 December 1927) opened with not one of the 1,600 delegates from the Opposition, and unanimously declared the programme of the Opposition to be incompatible with Party membership.[109]
To demonstrate to his own followers that his policies on China were correct, Stalin had the CCP organise a stunt to coincide with the Congress. An uprising was to take place in Canton as proof that his political line for China was correct and had enabled the CCP to launch a successful bid for power. The Congress accepted the news at face value and enthusiastically hailed this “victory”.
The reality was very different. With little or no preparation, with no support either from the urban masses or the surrounding peasants, and with many thousands of KMT soldiers in and around Canton, the Communist International demanded the CCP seize the city (see Section 6.3 for details). Elleman has described how the dates of Congress and insurrection were juggled so that the insurrection would have greatest impact, and argues that over seven thousand workers paid with their lives to hide Stalin’s mistakes in China.[110] By 14 December, the last of the defenders of the Canton Commune had been wiped out and the reign of terror began, although that news was not brought before the Congress.
While formally endorsing all Party resolutions there was a growing mood in the student body that the CI could not be relied upon to correctly guide the revolution in China. Under pressure of events, many students opened their minds and searched for answers to their questions. Many of these would become members of the Trotskyist Opposition. However, those students on the right (e.g. the 28 Bolsheviks) were coming to very different conclusions; that it was the unrealistic demands made by the peasants for freedom and land that had triggered Chiang’s two coups.[111]
At the beginning of 1928 a number of veterans of the failed Canton, August Harvest, and Nanchung uprisings together with activists from the women’s movement began to arrive at the UKT.[112] The reports and stories these people provided did much to radicalise many independently-minded students and cause them to doubt the official line.
Due to Mif’s absence in China (with Wang Ming in attendance), there was a short hiatus between Radek leaving and Mif taking up the post of Rector. In that short time a bitter struggle for personal authority erupted between two factions: on the one hand the Party Branch faction dominated by the ousted leaders of the Moscow CCP branch (‘the survivors’) and on the other the Academic Affairs faction led by senior academics supported by a significant number of students. Mif returned and with Wang Ming rallying the uncommitted majority of students, the Rector was soon in charge. In this brief struggle Wang Ming emerged as the Rector’s spokesperson and thus a leader in the student body; in this capacity he began to form alliances that would be the basis of the 28 Bolsheviks.
Almost immediately afterwards, the 10th anniversary of the October Revolution took place and during the celebrations students from UKT staged a public demonstration of support for the Opposition. With the help of a member of staff (Bella Epshtein, who would be shot in the spring of 1938), ten or eleven students constructed placards with the slogan “Long live the leaders of the world revolution; Zinoviev, Radek, Preobrazhensky.”[113] These students marched with the KUTK contingent and then, when opposite Lenin’s mausoleum, unfurled their banner and began to shout slogans in support of the Opposition. A shocked Stalin instructed Mif to conduct a thorough investigation of Trotskyist activities at the UKT and to report his findings promptly to the CC of the AUCP(B).
The subsequent hurried investigation unanimously decided to expel from the Party Epshtein and those students they managed to identify. Staff members found to be Trotskyists or even Trotskyist sympathisers were expelled from the Party and fired.[114] It was during this episode that the political crystallisation of the 28 Bolsheviks took place.
Importantly, the 28 Bolsheviks did not need a separate organisation of their own because with the support of the Russian authorities they now controlled the Party branch. Mif did not create the 28 Bolsheviks; their performance in this, the first anti-Trotskyist struggle at UKT, was a self-selection process whereby they came to Mif’s attention as a force which could be useful to him. Once formed, the 28 Bolsheviks determined to root out any potential threats to their dominance, and moved against the remnants of the Academic Affairs faction (now under the name Second Line) which was beginning to re-assert itself.
The charge was that Second Liners – the majority of whom came from Kiangsu and Chekiang provinces – had formed an illegal anti-Party association, the “Jiangsu-Zhejiang Friendly Association”, based on provincial loyalties.[115] Whilst levelling this charge, the 28 Bolsheviks worked hard to hide the fact that nearly every one of them came from the Yangtze River valley.[116]
The 28 Bolsheviks could produce nothing solid and finally the Central Control Commission of the AUCP(B) resolved that there was inadequate evidence to support the anti-Party accusations. As Yueh, one of the 28 Bolsheviks, later admitted:
Some slight evidence was uncovered to suggest the vague possibility that such an organisation may have been formed, although at the time I did not believe that it existed formally. But the use of exaggeration as a weapon in power struggles is not an unusual undertaking anywhere, and perhaps this weapon is used within Communist parties more freely than elsewhere.
The tactics of the 28 Bolsheviks went beyond unfounded accusations to include using the GPU against their fellows. This alienated the student body which in its majority now rallied to the Second Line. Such behaviour speaks volumes on the mindset of the 28 Bolsheviks who – to further their positions within the University and Party – were quite prepared to make unfounded accusations that would result in a number of the Second Line leaders being sentenced to years of forced labour in unspeakable conditions. It should be remembered that this was a struggle for positions of personal authority between two Stalinist groups, and that Wang Ming stopped at nothing to achieve his goal of top place, considering any tactic legitimate, no matter how shameful.
Wang Ming now prepared to challenge the authority of the entire Chinese Comintern delegation by tying it to the Second Liners and spicing the charge of provincialism with allegations of ‘Trotskyism’. The 28 Bolsheviks now extended the critique to include an attack on Ch’u Ch’iu-pai on the grounds of ‘left opportunism’. Ch’u Ch’iu-pai had been elected General Secretary of the CCP on 7 August 1927 and now, as was becoming common practice in the CI, he was being deemed responsible for the recent failures of the CCP.[117] Mif took these criticisms to the ECCI and Ch’u was removed from the post of General Secretary in July 1928 at the 6th Congress of the CCP and kept in Moscow as Chinese delegate to the CI. Zhou Enlai who had been present assessed just how ambitious was the attack made by Wang Ming: “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.”[118] After receiving Zhou Enlai’s report, the CC of the CCP formally accepted the judgement of the Comintern!
By the 6th World Congress of the CI Stalin had concluded that the CC of the CCP did not contain “a single Marxist mind … capable of understanding … the events now occurring.” In a letter of 9 July 1928, he spelled out his solution:
It’s time to really busy ourselves with the organisation of a system of Party advisors attached to the CCP Central Committee, the Central Committee departments, regional organisations in each province, the departments of these regional organisations, the Party youth organisation, the peasant department of the Central Committee, the military department of the Central Committee, the central organ [newspaper], the federation of trade unions of China … The structure has to be set up so that all these Party advisors work together as a whole, directed by the chief advisor to the Central Committee (the Comintern representative). … The Party advisors will compensate for the enormous shortcomings of the CCP Central Committee and its top regional officials. They will serve (for the time being) as the nails holding the existing conglomerate together as a Party.[119]
This proposal revealed Stalin’s approach toward fraternal relations with the CCP, which was to take control of it from top to bottom through his agents. Mif who was Stalin’s appointee would be well aware of Stalin’s wishes; it is obvious that the 28 Bolsheviks were an important step in that direction.
The 16th Conference of the AUCP(B) of April 1929, initiated a purge within the Russian Party and it was decided to extend this to a vigorous purge of all foreign communists in the Soviet Union.[120] In the autumn of 1929: “iron faced” purge commissars, experienced secret policemen toughened by numerous opposition witch hunts, descended on UKT.[121] A series of meetings was scheduled over which these commissars presided. Wang Ming carefully selected members on whose loyalty he could count and these members were given the task of bombarding ‘anti-Party’ elements with accusations.
The purge meetings at UKT were shattering experiences, the slightest political or personal blemish was publicly and endlessly questioned until an atmosphere of hysteria prevailed. This witch-hunt resulted in at least one suicide amongst the students. By the end the GPU had the names of some eighty to ninety students. These were arrested as suspected leaders of the opposition and immediately taken to the underground jail beneath the GPU HQ on Lubyanka Square in Moscow. The automatic method of interrogation was sleep deprivation while being forced to stand to attention until a ‘confession’ was obtained; members of the 28 Bolsheviks participated in these interrogations.[122] The interrogation techniques used on those who did not immediately confess are not described.
The purge increased in intensity and sophistication and by its end the GPU had arrested 171 Chinese as Trotskyists. The fate of most of these is not known, but the overwhelming majority were immediately expelled from the Party, a good proportion was sent to concentration camps such as the forced labour camps of the Altai gold mines in Siberia where it has been reported many were worked to death; few were sent back to China as there was no wish to spread Trotskyism.[123]
Wang Ming returned to China in early 1929. The main force of the 28 Bolsheviks returned by the end of 1930 and made Shanghai their headquarters. In November or December 1930, Mif went to Shanghai where he secretly met with the 28 Bolsheviks to plan a leadership coup within the CCP to overthrow and replace the Party Secretary, Li Lisan, and establish the ‘Wang Ming Empire’ with Wang appointed General Secretary at the 4th Plenum of the CC in January 1931 at the tender age of 26, with no practical experience of political work in China.[124]
During a key period in the growth and development of the CCP its leadership was largely in the hands of those who had been thoroughly trained in the ideas of the TSOC. But these people had also been trained in the Stalinist methods used during the purges in Russia. They had practical experience of suppressing internal Party democracy, of using outright lies, smears, blackmail, threats, intimidation and even physical violence as acceptable means of settling political disputes within the Party. These people had, in many cases, personally participated in brutal GPU interrogations of Trotskyists and others.[125]
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Saich, T. The Chinese Communist Party during the Era of the Comintern (1919-1943), www.hks.harvard.edu.
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Yueh Sheng, Sun Yat-sen University in Moscow and the Chinese Revolution: A Personal Account. Univ. of Kansas, Center for East Asian Studies, East Asian Series, 1971, p1.
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Wang Fan-hsi. Op. cit.
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Pantsov, The Bolsheviks … Op. cit. p183.
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Pantsov, A, Chinese Students … Op. cit.
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Yueh, Op. cit. p217.
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Boorman, H. and Howard, R. Biographical Dictionary of Republican China, Columbia U.P., 1967, Vol. 3.
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Pantsov, Chinese Students … Op. cit.
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Yueh, Op. cit. p174 – 175.
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Yeung, Op. cit p180-182.
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Pantsov’s interview with Wang Fanxi, Leeds 1992, p 187.
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Kegan, R. The Comintern, the 28 Bolsheviks and the Alumni of Sun Yat-sen Unversity. Int. Rev. of History and Political Science, Vol 11, p79-80, 1974.
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