ABSTRACT
Before turning to the events surrounding the Nanchang Uprising itself, it is important to outline the factional infighting in Moscow that made a Chinese urban rebellion necessary in the first place. After the CCP was purged by the Right Guomindang in April and then kicked out of the Hankou government in July, one practical step for the Chinese Communists would have been to declare their independence, raise the banner of Communism, and continue forward on their own. That this did not happen is due mainly to the dispute in Moscow between the United Opposition and the Centrists. It was Trotsky who had been calling for over a year for the Chinese
Communists to leave the United Front. This fact was well known both in the USSR and throughout the international Communist movement. As a result, Stalin could not admit that the Comintern policy in China was a failure, for fear of strengthening the United Opposition and undermining his own legitimacy. Instead, he now called for the United Front to continue-but this time without either the Right or the Left Guomindang-at the same time that he advocated the fulfillment of an agrarian revolution in China. As this chapter will discuss in some detail, in order to defeat Trotsky,
Stalin had to prove that the Chinese Communists remained a viable force in the Chinese revolution. A successful urban revolt would be the best way to do this. Even an unsuccessful urban revolt-so long as it was timed to correspond to political events in Moscow-could also be extremely helpful. Thus, the Comintern order for the CCP to organize a military putsch to take control of Nanchang had relatively little to do with the comparative strengths and weaknesses of the Chinese Communists and the Guomindang; by contrast, it had everything to do with the ongoing factional battles between Trotsky and Stalin.
