ABSTRACT
As a result of Chiang’s April coup, the debate erupted anew among the major leaders of the Bolshevik party over the proper course to pursue in China. This debate lasted from the middle of April to the end of May when the Executive Committee of the Communist International held its Eighth Plenum. The various opinions expressed by Radek, Zinoviev, and Trotsky once again clashed with Bukharin and Stalin. As before, the main issue under dispute was the United Front policy, with Trotsky arguing for a complete break and the immediate creation of revolutionary soviets, while the Centrists supported the continuation of the United Front between the Chinese Communist Party and the Left Guomindang. Even though thousands of Communists and Communist sympathizers had
been killed in China, and even though Chiang Kai-shek appeared to be in full control over the Nationalist Army, the Hankou government-made up of Communists and their Left Guomindang allies under the leadership of Wang Jingwei-was still proclaimed by the Centrists as a viable revolutionary alternative. By contrast, the United Opposition warned that this new “United Front” would also inevitably break apart, to the further detriment of the Chinese Communists and the Chinese revolutionary movement. Once again, the Centrists defeated the United Opposition; following orders
from the Politburo, the Comintern ordered the continuation of the United Front policy, only this time between the CCP and the Left Guomindang. When recalling these events many years later, Trotsky would claim of this period: “The arguments of the Opposition were never refuted.”1 As this chapter will attempt to show, Stalin and Bukharin did not have to refute the United Opposition, since Radek, Zinoviev, and Trotsky presented differentand often wildly contradictory-programs for how to resolve the crisis in China. Faced with the very disunity of the “United” Opposition, the Centrists continued to monopolize control over the China policy. The factional debates that erupted after Chiang’s April purge of the
Chinese Communist Party from the United Front not only had an immediate impact on the formulation of a new Comintern China policy, therefore, but the various views expressed during this period would resurface from time to time during debates held later during 1927. In particular, many of the
disjointed and chaotic opinions expressed by Radek, Zinoviev, and Trotsky during this period would later be cited by Stalin and Bukharin to discredit, condemn, and eventually expel the leaders of the United Opposition from the Bolshevik party.
