ABSTRACT
The December 1927 Canton Commune was the culmination of years of effort on the part of the Comintern to formulate what it claimed would be a successful China policy. As we have seen in the previous chapter, following the Nanchang Uprising the policy of organizing other “armed uprisings” was adopted as early as 7 August 1927, while the decision to stage an uprising in Guangzhou-Canton-was already made by 17 November 1927. The Comintern stated that an uprising in Canton would spur a worker-peasant revolution. A second Northern Expedition led by the Communists would then follow, allowing the Chinese Communist Party to defeat the Guomindang and reunite China under its power. The Canton Commune was a disaster for many reasons: bad timing, lack
of organization, and insufficient support among the Canton workers were simply some of the more obvious problems. But even though the Canton Commune failed miserably, it had a direct impact on the factional struggles taking place in the USSR. In fact, the Comintern insisted that the uprising be carried out on schedule mainly to satisfy Moscow’s timing, not that of the Chinese revolution. The intended “benefit” that accrued to the Soviet leadership was that when news of the Canton Commune reached Moscow, it gave Stalin and Bukharin the crucial leverage they had formerly lacked to expel Trotsky, Zinoviev, and a number of other United Opposition leaders from the Bolshevik party. By the time that news of the Canton Commune’s defeat first began to
appear at the Fifteenth Party Congress, Trotsky and Zinoviev had already been ousted from power; no amount of recriminations on the part of the United Opposition could reverse this decision. Although proclaiming that the defeat of the United Opposition would increase party unity, a new-the Right Opposition-faction soon appeared, and Bukharin eventually became its leader. Only during 1928 and 1929, therefore, was Stalin able to destroy his
former ally Bukharin and take full power for himself once again. Control over the course of the Chinese revolution proved to be a major weapon in Stalin’s factional arsenal.
