The Chinese Revolution27 Nov 2023

Conflict Among the Communists

Mao had long desired revolution to peace. Even as a student, he wrote of his desire for the destruction of the old universe.

Thanks to his teacher Yang Changji, he met early leaders of the Communist Party, got a job as a junior librarian in Beijing and met his second wife. Yang Kaihui fell deeply in love with Mao and stayed loyal to him, even after Mao left her and took a new wife. She preferred to be executed than to renounce Mao.

Mao felt ignored by the urban intellectuals at Peking University. Later, those intellectuals and students who had travelled to France and Moscow, controlled the Communist Party of China. Many of them believed urban workers were key to the Chinese Revolution. They started putsches trying to capture key Chinese cities. Those efforts failed and even more urban communists were captured and eliminated.

Gu Shunzhang, head of the Communist Secret Service was arrested and chose to collaborate and revealed the names and locations of key Communists. Ho Chi Minh of Vietnam was arrested and deported. Others were killed, including the Secretary General of the Chinese Communist Party. Li Lisan was blamed for this failures.

Mao Zedong survived in Jiangxi and Fujian provinces by leading Soviets there. He led investigations into local conditions, including in Xunwu, before land redistributions. Mao came to understand in detail the peasant situation, who were the revolutionary classes and who were the true counterrevolutionaries.

At times Mao and his group called other Communists counterrevolutionaries and engaged in purges. They were not alone. This was a challenging time for Communists.

They benefited from the KMT armies being distracted. First by the Central Plains War and then by Japan's invasion of Manchuria. Efforts by Chiang Kai-shek to eliminate the Communists would have to wait.

Image: "Burning up Land Deeds by Gu Yuan (1919-1996)" by lukenotskywalker60 is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Note from the host: AI was used in this episode to dramatize some voices from quotes I selected using the sources listed in my sources section.

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