Introduction

This book will examine the Soviet Union’s relations with China before, during, and after the 1 August 1927 Nanchang Uprising. The Nanchang Uprising was the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) first independent military action and-even though a dismal failure-is celebrated today as the birthplace of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Following Mao Zedong’s adoption of guerrilla tactics during the 1930s, the PLA played a key role in achieving the CCP’s 1949 rise to power. For this reason, the Nanchang Uprising has had an important and enduring impact on modern Chinese history. Unlike other histories of this event, however, this book will argue that Stalin orchestrated such revolutionary events not to assist China’s socialist revolution, but to destroy his political rivals in the USSR, including Leon Trotsky, Gregory Zinoviev, and Nikolai Bukharin. The Nanchang Uprising took place during tumultuous times. With the

break in the Communist-Guomindang United Front in April 1927, Soviet assistance and participation in the Northern Expedition to reunite China came to an end. In July, the so-called Left Guomindang (GMD) in Hankouwith the cities of Wuchang and Hanyang, also called Wuhan-and the CCP split, leaving the Soviet Union without any backing whatsoever within China’s Nationalist movement. Faced with arrest and possible imprisonment, the Soviet military advisers withdrew to the Soviet Union, with the head adviser Mikhail Borodin leaving China in late July 1927. All chances for a Chinese socialist revolution to develop out of the

Nationalist revolution seemed doomed to fail. However, under orders from Moscow, the Chinese Communist Party declared that the time was ripe for urban revolution. The uprising in Nanchang on 1 August 1927 was the first revolt of its type, resulting in the establishment of China’s first-ever workers’ soviet, or council in Russian; this soviet lasted for only a few days before being destroyed by the Nationalist Army. Later, in December, a second CCP-supported urban revolt in Canton-the Canton Commune-quickly collapsed. Finally, a third little-known uprising in Bargu during September 1928 was similarly short-lived. Both the Nanchang Uprising and the Canton Commune proved disastrous

for the Chinese Communists. As a result of these failures, the Chinese

Communists were forced to retreat into the countryside, where they were eventually isolated and besieged by Nationalist forces. The failure of the Bargu revolt weakened the Inner Mongolian Communists as well. All of these defeats seemed to prove that China was not ready for a socialist revolution. Why then did Moscow order them to take place? As this book will strive to show, these events in China cannot be under-

stood without examining the intra-party battles taking place in Moscow throughout 1925-28. Both of the failed urban uprisings in China corresponded with government and party conferences in Russia. For example, news of the Nanchang Uprising reached Moscow during the August plenum of the Central Committee, while the Canton Commune was timed to correspond with the Bolsheviks’ Fifteenth Party Congress. Meanwhile, the Bargu revolt was timed to fall during a plenary session of the Moscow party committee. The timing of these revolutionary events was to have a crucial impact on

the Soviet government’s and Bolshevik party’s decisions on a whole host of issues, including “Socialism in One Country,” the adoption of the first FiveYear Plan, and collectivization. In particular, Stalin used the existence of the Nanchang Uprising to disprove the claims of the United Opposition-under the leadership of Trotsky and Zinoviev-that Chinawas not ready for socialism. As a result of the Canton Commune, Trotsky and Zinoviev, plus 75 of their closest supporters, were expelled from the Bolshevik party. During the Bargu revolt, Stalin openly attacked his former ally Bukharin, accusing him of leading an anti-government Right Opposition; during the 1929 Sino-Soviet War, Bukharin was then ousted from the Politburo. This book will argue that Stalin time after time willingly sacrificed the

Chinese andMongolian Communists in order to manipulate events inMoscow and thereby eliminate his political rivals, foremost among them Trotsky and Zinoviev, but later also including Bukharin. China’s Communist leaders could not help but suspect that they had merely become pawns in the ongoing factional struggle in Moscow. Such self-serving tactics were later to become a major source of friction between Mao Zedong and Stalin.