ABSTRACT
The timing of the Nanchang Uprising-corresponding to the very first day of the August plenum-was too exact to be a coincidence. It not only allowed Stalin and Bukharin to defeat the United Opposition before the Central Committee, but it helped to set up the final act of the play-the expulsion of Trotsky from the Bolshevik party. With this action, Stalin’s philosophy of “Socialism in One Country” decisively defeated Trotsky’s “Permanent Revolution.” This decision, in turn, sent the Soviet Union down an isolationist path of industrial development that inevitably put the interests of the Soviet state above those of its foreign sympathizers, like China. Although “Socialism in One Country” helped guarantee the survival of
the Soviet state, and so this tactic arguably produced many positive gainsespecially during and immediately after World War II-the long-range prognosis for the Bolshevik party was poor; from the perspective of the early twenty-first century, over 15 years after the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the USSR, the enormous implications of this decision are now all too clear. If Trotsky had won this battle during late 1927, then the USSR’s prospects for spreading world revolution-especially during the turmoil of the Great Depression-would have been greater. For this reason, the Chinese Communists were destined to play a critical role during a major turning point in twentieth-century history. Of course, it should be emphasized that the Chinese Communists were not
the instigators of this change, they were merely the tools; they were not the players, but the pawns. Stalin was able to defeat Trotsky during the USSR’s factional infighting only over the corpses of loyal Chinese allies. Also, as this chapter will show, it was not enough that the CCP had to initiate a series of urban uprisings in China exactly on schedule: it was also expected to lose. This simple fact helps to explain why Comintern advisers like Borodin and Bliuker were withdrawn from China only four days prior to the Nanchang Uprising; if Stalin was serious about this CCP uprising, why did he refuse to assist them? In fact, if the CCP had won, and thereby proved the efficacy of world revolution, this would have supported Trotsky’s call for permanent revolution, even while undermining Stalin’s “Socialism in One Country.” Stalin needed to avoid this possibility.
