The ECCI’s advice and material support which ensured the successful launch and initial growth of the CCP would become its antithesis with the coming to power of the Bukharin/Stalin bloc in the Russian Communist Party, after which the ECCI would systematically mis-direct the CCP. The ECCI would go so far as to justify in advance, the failure of the KMT to solve the land question by revolutionary means because its “multi-class composition” meant it could not be expected “to undertake the confiscation of private property.”[63] With such an appraisal, the efforts of the young CCP to lead an agricultural revolution were doomed before they began.
In the Second Chinese Revolution, many workers were organised in such groups as the Canton-Hong Kong Strike Committee and the Shanghai General Labour Union (which for a time were functioning practically as Soviets). The workers were mobilised, and Communists occupied leading positions in a nationwide movement, launching a number of large strikes and giant demonstrations. The coming months would see the working class engaged in several victorious armed revolts as when the worker masses in Hangkow and Chiuchiang seized the British settlements, and in Shanghai where they occupied the entire city with the exception of the foreign concessions.[64]
While the young CCP was weak and composed almost entirely of intellectuals, and while the KMT had the support of large numbers of workers the bloc within was an acceptable tactic. Indeed the entry tactic if treated as an episode on the road to an independent party could have been a magnificent success. Unfortunately, its ongoing application in a distorted form in completely changed conditions would prove disastrous for the Chinese Revolution.[65]
Stalin had a track record of successful manipulation and manoeuvring within the Russian Communist Party (RCP(B))[66] but his successes in Russia had been due to the ebb of the revolution. In China the revolution was on the rise and bureaucratic calculations of who would be voted onto what committee and which resolution would be passed by the KMT Congress were worthless in the face of class war. It would not be the Communists and the left who would eject the right from the KMT, but the right and left of the KMT who would eject and massacre the Communists.
The KMT’s 2nd National Congress in January 1926 had, apparently, been for the CCP a huge success. On 13 March, the ECCI declared that the KMT identified ideologically with the CI.[67] Just one week later on 20 March, Chiang Kai-shek carried out his first coup against the Communists.
-
Isaacs, Tragedy …, Op. cit.
-
Peng Shuzi, The Causes of the Victory of the Chinese Communist Party over Chiang Kai-Shek, February, 1952 w.m.org.
-
Pantsov, A. The Bolsheviks and the Chinese Revolution 1919-1927, Curzon. 2000, p106.
-
(Note: the Russian Communist Party changed its name twice during the period covered by this book. In 1918 it had adopted the name Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik) (RCP(B)), between 1925 and 1952 it was the All-Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) (AUCP(B)), and after 1952 it was known as Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU)).
-
Degras, J. (ed), The Communist International 1919 – 1943, Documents, OUP, 1956, Vol 2, p275 et seq.