Upload
danielgaid
View
223
Download
0
Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
8/10/2019 Gregor Benton, Two Purged Leaders of Early Chinese Communism (Peng Shuzhi and Chen Duxiu)
1/13
Two Purged Leaders of Early Chinese CommunismMmoirs de Peng Shuzhi. L'Envol du communisme en Chine by Claude Cadart; ChengYingxiang; Peng Shuzhi; Chen Duxiu. Founder of the Chinese Communist Party by Lee FeigonReview by: Gregor BentonThe China Quarterly, No. 102 (Jun., 1985), pp. 317-328Published by: Cambridge University Presson behalf of the School of Oriental and African StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/653851.
Accessed: 06/11/2014 10:45
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at.http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].
.
Cambridge University Pressand School of Oriental and African Studiesare collaborating with JSTOR to
digitize, preserve and extend access to The China Quarterly.
http://www.jstor.org
This content downloaded from 186.124.180.252 on Thu, 6 Nov 2014 10:45:52 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cuphttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=soashttp://www.jstor.org/stable/653851?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/stable/653851?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=soashttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cup8/10/2019 Gregor Benton, Two Purged Leaders of Early Chinese Communism (Peng Shuzhi and Chen Duxiu)
2/13
Review
Article
Two
Purged
Leaders of
Early
Chinese
Communism
Memoirs
de
Peng
Shuzhi.
L'Envol
du communismeen Chine.
By
Claude
Cadart and
Cheng
Yingxiang. [Paris:
Gallimard,
1983.
490
pp.
FF95.00.]
Chen
Duxiu. Founder
of
the Chinese Communist
Party. By
LEE
FEIGON.
[Princeton:
Princeton
University
Press,
1983. 279
pp.
$33.00.]
In
December
1952
Trotskyism
in
China
was
wiped
out for a
generation
when two to three hundred of its adherents were seized in a nationwide
police
raid.
Earlier,
a handful of its leaders
had
slipped
abroad,
hoping
to
co-ordinate work
in
China from
safe
places beyond
the
Party's
reach. For
years they
had
no news of
their
jailed
comrades; then,
in
June
1979,
12
survivors
stepped unexpectedly
into freedom.
Trotskyism
in
China was never the
heresy
that
it
became
in
Stalin's
Russia,
and
anti-Trotskyism
in its
most virulent form was a
foreign
transplant
that did
not
take
in
the Chinese Communist
Party (CCP).
This,
Wang
Fanxi
explains,
was
mainly
because the real threat to the
Party's
China-based leaders came not from the
Trotsky-Chen
faction,
but
from Moscow's well-connected
Wang Ming
clique.'
On rare
occasions
the
CCP leaders even warmed a little to
the
Trotskyists,
though
mostly
they
treated
them
as
enemies.
Since
Deng Xiaoping's
return
to
power, Party
historians
have
begun
to
reassess
Trotskyism,
and have
partly
rehabilitated some of
its
supporters.
In
Mao's
days Trotskyism
was
classified as
counter-revolutionary ;
now
it is
simply wrong.
This new tolerance
even survived a
brief attack
during
1983's
spiritual pollution
campaign.
On 8
November 1983
Beijing
Radio,
reporting
on a
Nanning
conference,
listed
Trotskyism
among
the
pollutions
to
be cleaned
away,
but this
reference was
omitted
from a
repeat
broadcast the
next
day.
The most visible
result of this
reassessment
has been
the
rehabilitation
of Chen
Duxiu,
who
founded
both the
official
Party
and
(in
1931)
its
Trotskyist
offshoot. The
restoration
of Chen
to his
proper
place
in
Party
history
is of
course
part
of a
wider
trend to
recognize
the
strengths
as
well
as the
weaknesses of
leaders who
ended their
careers
in
political
disgrace,
but it could
hardly
have
happened
but for
the softer
line on
Trotskyism.
Chen's
rehabilitation
has been the
work
mainly
of
younger
historians,
particularly
at
Anhui
University
and
Shanghai
Normal
University,
though
these
have
enjoyed
the
support
of
some
Party
veterans
like Xiao
Ke
(who
said in
1981 that
unless
we
conscientiously
research
Chen
Duxiu,
the
future
Party
history
that we
write
will
be
one-sided ).2
Starting
in
1979,
a fresh
version of
Chen's
political
biography
was
released
episode
by
episode
to
the
Chinese
public.
First,
his
role
in
the
May
Fourth
1.
Wang
Fan-hsi,
Chinese
Revolutionary,
Memoirs,
1919-1949,
trans.
by Gregor
Benton
(Oxford:
Oxford
University
Press,
1980),
pp.
111-12.
2. Quoted in Jin Zhao, Chen Duxiu pingfande qianqianhouhou ( Before and after the
rehabilitation of
Chen
Duxiu ),
Zhongbao
yuekan,
No. 7
(1983),
pp.
34-35.
This content downloaded from 186.124.180.252 on Thu, 6 Nov 2014 10:45:52 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp8/10/2019 Gregor Benton, Two Purged Leaders of Early Chinese Communism (Peng Shuzhi and Chen Duxiu)
3/13
The
China
Quarterly
Movement and
in
founding
the CCP was
officially acknowledged.
Then
Xiang Qing
and others wrote that Chen's
right opportunism
was
mainly the result of Comintern meddling,3 and some historians even
defended his controversial stand on the Chinese Eastern
Railway
incident
of
1929,
when he
disputed
the Central Committee's
slogan
of armed
defence of the
Soviet Union. 4
Finally,
a
study
showed
up Wang Ming
and
Kang
Sheng's charge
that
in
1938 Chen Duxiu
took
money
from the
Japanese
as a
groundless
slander.5
One reason
for this new view of
Trotskyism
is that
Deng's government
has loosened
intellectual controls
more
generally
in
China and
encouraged
scholars to seek truth from
the
facts,
including
the truth
about
Party
history. But there is also a special reason why Deng and other returnees
in
the
leadership
are now
prepared
to
be
fair to
Chen Duxiu.
In
1938
Kang
Sheng, just
back from Moscow where
he
was
trained
by Wang Ming
and
the
NKVD,
wrote
alleging
that Chen was
in
the
pay
of
Japan,
and so
started the main
anti-Trotskyist campaign
in
China.
Kang
later switched
his
allegiance
to Mao and was the
Maoists'
chief
inquisitor during
the
Cultural Revolution. When
Kang
died
in
December 1975 he was
among
those most hated
by
Deng's group,
which
expelled
him
posthumously
from the
Party.
When the time came to
expose Kang's frame-ups,
consistency required that his first great frame-up (that of 1938) also be
exposed.
In the
new,
more liberal climate even Chen's
Trotskyism
is no
longer
entirely
taboo,
and
some
scholars can
now
consider it
objectively.6
Many
books and
articles
on Chen
have
been
published
in
China
in recent
years,
and
memoirs
by
Chinese
Trotskyists
have
appeared
in the
Chinese
press,
including
a
neibu
edition
of the memoirs
of
Wang
Fanxi,7
which is
greatly
admired
in some
Chinese academic circles.8
Many foreign
writings
sympathetic
to
Trotskyism
have
recently appeared
in
Chinese
trans-
lation.9
Still,
Chen's rehabilitation is
unlikely
ever to extend to his
Trotskyist
period;
for
that the
resistance
of senior
officials
is
too
great.
This
explains
the
cancelling
of the
planned
conference
on
Chen
Duxiu at
Anqing
in
1980-81
and the
non-appearance
of the
promised
Chen Duxiu
3.
Xiang
Qing,
Guanyu gongchanguoji
he
Zhongguo
wenti
( On
the Comintern
and
China ),
Xinhua
yuebao
(New
China
Monthly),
No. 4
(1980),
pp.
75-79.
4.
Wang
Fan-hsi,
Chinese
Revolutionary,
p.
122;
and Jin
Zhao,
Before and
after.
5.
Kang
Sheng,
Chanchu
Rikou zhentan
minzu
gongdide
Tuoluociji
feibang
( Root
out
the
Trotskyists,
who
are
spies
for
Japan
and
public
enemies
of
the
nation ), Jiefang
zhoukan(LiberationWeekly),Nos. 29 and 30 (28 Januaryand 8 February1938, respectively);
and Sun
Qiming,
Chen Duxiu
shifou
Hanjian
wentide tantao
( On
whether Chen Duxiu
was a
traitor ),
Anhui daxue xuebao
(Anhui
University
Journal),
No.
2,
1980.
6.
E.g.,
Jiang
Qi
and Shou
Shangwen,
Ruhe
quanmian
pingjia
Tuoluocijide
yisheng
( How
to
make
a rounded
assessment
of
Trotsky's
life ),
Shijie yanjiu
dongtai,
and
Jiang
Qi
and
Zhang
Yueming,
Tuoluosiji
'buduan
geming
lun'
pingxi
( Trotsky's
'theory
of
permanent
revolution' ),
ibid. No.
11
(1980);
both
reprinted
in
Shiyue pinglun
(October
Review) (Hong
Kong),
Nos.
8/9
(1983),
pp.
57-59
and 63-65.
7.
Wang
Fanxi,
Shuang
Shan
huiyilu
(Shang
Shan's Memoirs) (Xiandai
shiliao
biankan
she, 1980).
Outside
China,
Wang's
memoirs
have also
appeared
in
Japanese
and German.
8. Lee
Feigon,
book
review,
Theory
and
Society,
No. 2
(1983), pp.
259-65.
9.
Among
them:
Ernest
Mandel,
From Stalinism
to
Eurocommunism;
Pierre
Frank,
History of the FourthInternational; saac Deutscher, Stalin;and PerryAnderson, Considera-
tions
on Western
Marxism.
This content downloaded from 186.124.180.252 on Thu, 6 Nov 2014 10:45:52 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp8/10/2019 Gregor Benton, Two Purged Leaders of Early Chinese Communism (Peng Shuzhi and Chen Duxiu)
4/13
Two
Purged
Leaders
of
Early
Chinese Communism
yanjiu.'0 Trotskyism
remains a
suspect ideology
in
China,
and
was
handled
gingerly
even
by
dissidents like
Wang
Xizhe,
Chen Fu and
Shi
Huasheng who were attracted by its theses on socialist democracy.
In
the west too
literature
by
or
about
Chinese
Trotskyists
is
now
growing.
Two
recent
additions to
it
are
the
memoirs of
Peng
Shuzhi
(P'eng
Shu-tse)
and
Lee
Feigon's
book on
Chen
Duxiu.'2
Peng
and Chen were
closely
linked
in
both
the
Party
and the
opposition,
and shared
a
jail
in
the 1930s. But
in
jail
they quarrelled,13
and
they
differed
greatly
in
politics
and even
more
so
in
character.
Peng
Shuzhi was born into a small landlord
family
in
1895 and
died
in
American exile
in
1983,
shortly
after
his
book came out.
Publicly
his
death
was ignored in China, though Cankao xiaoxi printed an AFP despatch
on it.
L'Envol
du communisme
en
Chine,
published
in
co-operation
with
France's Centre National
de
la Recherche
Scientifique,
is the first
of
three
volumes
of memoirs
spoken by Peng
to his
daughter Cheng Yingxiang
and
her
husband Claude
Cadart,
checked
by
them
against
written
records,
and
put
into
polished
French. It describes his
childhood,
his
adolescence,
his
stay
in
Russia,
and
events
in
Party
history up
to 1925.
The
later
volumes
will
cover the
years
1925
to
1927,
and
the
story
of
the Chinese
Left
Opposition.
Peng
grew up
in an isolated
valley
in one of the
poorer
parts
of Hunan's
Wuling
Mountains,
made famous
by
the writer Shen
Congwen.
Through
lineage
ties
he
received
a
higher schooling
in
Changsha,
and at the
age
of
25
he
went
to
Moscow,
sponsored by
the friend of
a
friend. This
man,
an
influential
Hunan
radical,
was
(so
we are
told)
bowled over
by
the
astonishing young Peng. (Modesty
is
not
among Peng's qualities. My
memoirs,
he
says, represent
a contribution
of
exceptional
interest
...,
a
unique
contribution of its
sort
to
the
history
of
present-day
China.
..
. )
En
route to
Moscow
in
early
1921
Peng spent
several
weeks
among
Chinese Red
Beards
newly
recruited
to
the Soviet
Red
Army,
and tried to
teach them some
Marxism.
In
Moscow
began
a
life
of
study
and intense
political
engagement.
In
November
1923
Chiang
Kai-shek,
then
in
the
Soviet
capital,
threw a
party
for
Peng
and six other
Chinese.
Peng
writes
that the
Communist Shen
Xuanlu danced
portentously
over crossed
swords
and
Chiang
shouted
Long
live the
world
revolution,
long
live
the
Comintern. Seven
years
later,
all but
Peng
of
Chiang's
seven
guests
were
dead,
shot on
Chinese streets or in
Chiang's prisons.14
Peng's
role in
the
early
communist
movement
was
not
unimportant.
After his return from
Moscow
in
1924 he
became one
of its main
leaders
for a
while,
editing Xiangdao
and
Xin
qingnian.
Then,
in
1927,
he and
10.
Jin
Zhao,
Before
and after.
11.
See
Shiyue
pinglun,
Nos.
8/9 (1983),
pp.
54-56.
12.
Claude
Cadart
and
Cheng
Yingxiang,
Memoires de
Peng
Shuzhi. L'Envol du
communisme
en
Chine
(Paris:
Gallimard,
1983);
and
Lee
Feigon,
Chen Duxiu.
Founder
of
the
Chinese Communist
Party (Princeton:
Princeton
University
Press,
1983).
See also Le
Trotskysme
et la
Chine
des
ann6es
trente,
Cahiers Leon
Trotsky,
No. 15
(September
1983).
In
1982
and
1983
Vols. 3 and 1 of
Peng
Shuzhi,
Xuanji
(Selected
Works),
were
published
in
Hong
Kong
by
Shiyue
chubanshe.
13. Wang Fan-hsi, Chinese Revolutionary,p. 208.
14.
Memoires
de
Peng
Shuzhi,
pp.
338-39.
319
This content downloaded from 186.124.180.252 on Thu, 6 Nov 2014 10:45:52 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp8/10/2019 Gregor Benton, Two Purged Leaders of Early Chinese Communism (Peng Shuzhi and Chen Duxiu)
5/13
320
The China
Quarterly
Chen Duxiu
were made
Stalin's
scapegoats
for
the defeat of
the revolution
and,
after
they
went
over to
Trotsky
in
1929,
were
vilified as traitors.
In
time Peng's name was dropped entirely from Party histories, though
Chen's
was
kept
on
as a
handy
bugbear.
There are
various minor
errors
in
Peng's
book
-
Thalheimer is
confused
with
Thalmann,
Anti-Diihring
is
attributed to
Marx,
Yang
Hansheng
is
mistaken for
Yang
Xianzhen
-
that
are
apparently
mere
slips
of
memory
and can be
disregarded.
More
serious are the
several
issues on which
Peng's
testimony
clashes head-on
with that
of other
veterans.
Though
Peng's publisher
advertises him
as a
batisseur of the
CCP,15
it
was
only
in
Moscow
that he
joined
the
Party,
some time after
its First
Congress in China.
Peng
dismisses this
Congress
in which he took no
part
as of small
event,
claiming
that the main
work had
been done earlier
by
the
socialist and
communist
groups
with
which he himself
was linked. But
his role
even
in
these
groups
was minimal.
He did not
join
the Socialist
League
set
up by
He
Minfan
in
his
native Hunan but
proceeded
straight
to
Shanghai,
Moscow-bound. In
Shanghai,
like others in
the Russian-
language
class,
he
joined
the Socialist
League
in
mid
1920,
but was
only
a
nominal
member: he
spoke
no
Shanghainese
and
in
any
case would
soon
be off
abroad.
In Russia he was
among
the first few let into the
CCP's new Moscow
branch,
control
of which became a
prize
and the
object
of
scheming by
some
Chinese students.
He claims that
during
his
stay
in
Moscow he was
secretary
of
the CCP
group
there,
but this
claim is
questionable.
One
source
suggests
that
not
Peng
but Luo
Yinong
held this
important
post.16
Peng depicts
himself then as a wise
keeper
of
the
Party gate,
and
says
that
among
those he
sponsored
for
membership
were Liu
Shaoqi
and Ye
Ting,
two of the
Party's
later heroes. But
Peng's
fellow
student Xiao
Jingguang
recalls that Liu
joined
the
Party
in
the winter of
1921,
at the same time
as
Peng,
and
not
(as
Peng
claims)
with Ren
Bishi,
who
joined
in
1922.
Moreover,
we know from another source
that
Luo
Yinong
was
among
those who officiated over Liu
Shaoqi's zhuandang,
or transfer into
Party
membership. Zhuandang
required
two
sponsors
whose
recommendation
was then
put
before a branch
plenum.17 Probably
several
people
entered
the
Party
at
more or less the same
time,
sponsoring
one another
in
order
to meet formal
Party requirements,
and
Peng's
claim
to
glory
here is
dubious. As for Ye
Ting,
mainland sources record that he
only
went to
15. Peng's wife Chen Bilan even wrote that Peng joined the CCP in the autumn of 1920
(before
it was
founded).
See her introduction to
P'eng
Shu-tse,
The Chinese Communist
Party
in
Power,
ed.
by
Leslie Evans
(New
York: Monad
Press,
1980),
p.
16.
16.
Zheng
Chaolin,
Yiben
gei
ziji
tuzhimofende
huiyilu
( A
self-whitewashing
memoir ),
Pt
1,
Zhongbao
yuekan,
No.
4
(1984), pp.
47-48.
A
mainland source
says
that Liu
Shaoqi
was the first Moscow
ganshizhang
or executive chief
-
a
term
that it
equates
with
secretary
-
and that after Liu returned
to
China
in
1922,
responsibility
for the
Moscow
branch was
temporarily
taken over for a short
period by Peng
Shuzhi and
Luo
Yinong (Qin
Yanshi
et
al.,
Liu
Bojian,
in
Hu Hua
(ed.),
Zhonggong
dangshi
renwu zhuan
(Chinese
Communist
Party Biographies)(Xi'an:
Shaanxi renmin
chubanshe,
1982),
Vol.
4,
p.
263).
17. Xiao
Jingguang,
FuSu xuexi
qianhou
( Before
and
after
going
to the Soviet Union
to
study ),
in
Zhongguo
renmin
zhengzhi xieshangyi quanguo weiyuanhui,
wenshi
ziliao
yanjiu weiyuanhui (eds.), Gemingshi ziliao (Materials on the History of the Revolution),No.
3
(Beijing:
Wenshi
ziliao
chubanshe,
1981),
p.
14.
This content downloaded from 186.124.180.252 on Thu, 6 Nov 2014 10:45:52 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp8/10/2019 Gregor Benton, Two Purged Leaders of Early Chinese Communism (Peng Shuzhi and Chen Duxiu)
6/13
Two
Purged
Leaders
of
Early
Chinese Communism
Russia
in
the
autumn of 1924
(by
when
Peng
was
back in China
-
he left
in
July
1924)
and did not
join
the
Party
until 1925.18
But
according
to an
independent source,19Ye was already in Russia in the summer of 1924.
Still,
its
author
doubts
Peng's
claim
to
have
recruited Ye
into the
Party,
since recruitment
of
Kuomintang
members
usually
took some months.
Peng enjoyed
his
years
in
Moscow and
stayed
on
longer
than most
Chinese,
who
quickly rejoined
the
fight
at
home. The
longer
he
stayed,
the
more connections he
acquired. Peng
calls
these thin cow
years
that
required
a
special
sacrifice,
but his sacrifice cannot
compare
with
that
of
Communists like Liu
Shaoqi
who
went back
to
risk
their
skins
and
share
the
workers' hard life.
Peng
had
various
privileges
in
Moscow;
some he
renounced, others (including his salary) he kept. He says that the CCP's
right
turn in 1923
outraged
him,
but
going
back to correct
it
interested
him
less
at
first than
travelling
in
Germany
and
France,
which he was about to
do
when the
Party
called
him home
in
1924. He also claims that
he
and
others
in
Moscow
were so shocked
by
the
Party's
new line of
organic
collaboration
with the
Kuomintang
that
they pledged
unanimously
not
to
follow
it,
but this is
unlikely.
True,
sectarianism flourished
in the
hothouse
world of Moscow
student
politics,
and
many
an
apprentice
Party
boss must have balked at
the
thought
of
yielding
even
a
little
power
to outsiders. But working with or joining bourgeois parties was by then
such
a routine Comintern tactic
that the
proposal
can
hardly
have been
the
surprise
that
Peng
now
says
it was.
Besides,
there is no evidence that
any
decision
to
abandon
entry
was taken
at the
1925
Fourth
Congress,
though
Peng
calls this
Congress
a
victory
for
what
he claims was his
campaign
to
redefine
the
[Party's]
strategy
on bases
completely
inde-
pendent
of those of the
Kuomintang.
In
fact
the record
suggests
that
Peng's position
after the
Congress
was not as
he now
claims.
Far from
opposing
the
policy
of
entry,
he
argued
in
February
1925
that it was the
duty of workers to join the Kuomintang, for how else could they truly
lead the
national
revolutionary
movement? 20
After his arrival
in
Shanghai
in mid 1924
began
the
period
Peng
calls
straightening
out the
Party.
It
was doubtless this
chapter
that led
Peng's
publisher
to bill him
as the
theoretician-strategist
of the Second Chinese
18.
Liu
Shaoqi tongzhi
shengping
huodong
nianbiao,
1898-1969
(A
Chronicle
of
the
Activities
of
ComradeLiu
Shaoqi,
1898-1969)
(Zhongguo geming bowuguan,
April
1980), p.
1;
Xiao
Jingguang,
Yi
zaoqi
fuSu xuexi
shide
Shaoqi
tongzhi
( Memories
of
Comrade
Shaoqi's early study in the Soviet Union ), in HuainianLiu Shaoqi tongzhi(In commemora-
tion
of
Comrade
Liu
Shaoqi) (Changsha:
Hunan
renmin
chubanshe,
1980),
pp.
77-88;
Gao
Jun and Fan
Yinzheng,
Ren
Bishi,
Chinese
Communist
Party
Biographies,
Vol. 8
(1983),
p.
7;
Liu
Yiyu
and
Liu
Jingchun,
Luo
Yinong,
ibid.
p.
80;
Huang
Houheng,
Zhenjingchuxian
baixibunao
( Keep
calm in times
of
danger,
be
indomitable ),
in
Huiyi
Ye
Ting
(In
Memory
of
Ye
Ting) (Beijing:
Renmin
chubanshe,
1981),
p.
34 and Ye
Qinhe,
Fengyu
choumou
yu xiongying
( Amid
storms
to
raise
a
great
falcon ),
ibid.
p.
140;
and
Zhongshan
daxue
Ye
Ting
bianxie
zu,
Ye
Ting
(Shaoguan:
Guangdong
renmin
chubanshe,
1979), pp.
14-15.
19.
Quoted
by Wang
Fanxi in a letter to me.
20.
Peng
Shuzhi,
letter of 2
February
1925,
in
Zhongyang
dangshi
ziliao
zhengji
weiyuanhui, Zhongyang
dangshi yanjiuhui
(eds.), Zhonggong dangshi
ziliao
(Materials
on
Chinese CommunistParty History), Vol. 3 (Zhongyang dangxiao chubanshe); quoted in
Zheng
Chaolin,
Self-whitewashing,
Pt
1,
p.
49.
321
This content downloaded from 186.124.180.252 on Thu, 6 Nov 2014 10:45:52 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp8/10/2019 Gregor Benton, Two Purged Leaders of Early Chinese Communism (Peng Shuzhi and Chen Duxiu)
7/13
322
The China
Quarterly
Revolution.
At heart
Peng's
view of
Party
affairs
in
those
years
is
quite
simple.
He holds that
because of
the Stalin triumvirate's
meddling,
the
correct line of the Second Congress was overthrown and an opposite,
wrong
line was forced
on the
Party
at its
Hangzhou
Plenum and
its Third
Congress
of 1923
-
thanks to
which
it
became
mired
in
Menshevism. 21
Thus the
scene is set
for the
Bolshevik
Peng
to save the
Party
from
its
Menshevik
floundering.
The truth
is more
mundane. None
of the Chinese
Communists
of
the
time
knew much
Marxism,
and
most
faithfully
observed
the directives
of
the
Comintern,
to which
they
sincerely
looked
for
guidance.
In 1923 the
Comintern issued two
directives on
CCP-Kuomintang
relations.
The
first,
dated 12 January 1923, stressed the weakness of the workers' movement
and
thus the need
for
co-operation
between
the two
parties
(though
it
warned
against
liquidating
the
Party's political
and
organizational
independence).
The
second,
dated
May
1923,
said for
the
first time that
hegemony
in
the national
revolution
belongs properly
to the
workers'
party.22
Chen
Duxiu
wrote some
articles
in the
spirit
of the first
direc-
tive;
Peng,
in
Moscow,
got
the
corrected
line sooner
and
subsequently
conveyed
it to the
Party.
The
January
directive
calling
for
co-operation
with the
Kuomintang
did
not come out of the blue: the Dutch Communist Henk Sneevliet (Maring)
had recommended
a similar
policy
to the
Chinese
Communists
in 1922.
Negotiations
with
Sun
Yat-sen on
the issue
were carried
out
by
the
Soviet
diplomat
Adolph
Joffe.
Neither Sneevliet
nor
Joffe
were
Stalinists:
on
the
contrary,
Joffe
became
a
leading
Trotskyist
and
Sneevliet
an
oppositionist
and
at
one
point
an
ally
of
Trotsky
(though
the two
engaged
in
long
polemics
and
finally
broke).
Sneevliet
was
no creature of
the
Comintern
but
a
strong-willed,
independent-minded
revolutionary
and
an
early
leader
of
the left
wing
of
the
Indische
Sociaal-Democratische
Vereeniging
in the Netherlands Indies. In 1916 Sneevliet and his comrade Adolph
Baars
had
turned
their
attention
to
the nationalist Sarekat
Islam
and
influenced
many
of its
younger
leaders,
and
in
July
1920 Sneevliet
had
won
the
approval
of the
Second
Congress
of the
Comintern
for his
policy
of
co-operation
with Sarekat
Islam.
His views
on what
tactic to
pursue
in
China
can
best be
seen
as
a
projection
of
his
experience
with
Sarekat
Islam;
it is
far
too
simple
to attribute
the
line of collaboration
with
the
Kuomintang
to
Stalin's
Menshevism. 23
In
any
case,
the
Manifesto
of the Third
Congress
does
not
entirely
bear
21.
Les
Evans and
Russell
Block
(eds.),
Leon
Trotsky
on
China,
introduced
by
P'eng
Shu-tse
(New
York:
Monad
Press,
1976),
pp.
39-40.
22.
Zhongguo
shehui
kexueyuan
jindaishi
yanjiusuo
fanyishi
(eds.)
Gongchanguoji
youguan
Zhongguo
gemingde
wenxian
ziliao
(Documentary
Materials
of
the
Comintern
Relating
to
the Chinese
Revolution)
(Beijing:
Zhongguo
shehui
kexue
chubanshe, 1981),
pp.
76-77
and
78-79.
Liu
Qifa
and
Qian Feng,
Diyici
guogong
hezuode
celue
wenti
( On
the
tactics
of the
first
co-operation
between
the
Guomindang
and the Chinese
Communist
Party ),
Jiang
Han
luntan,
No.
4
(1981),
make
a
similar
connection
between
changes
in
Comintern
and
CCP
policy
in the
years
1924-25.
23. See
Harry
Albert
Poeze,
Tan
Malaka,
Strijder
voor
Indonesii's
Vrijheid.
Levensloop
van 1897 tot 1945, The Hague: B. V. de Nederlandsche Boek- en Steen-drukkerijv/h H. L.
Smits,
1976,
pp.
114-117,
for
details
of
Sneevliet's
activities
in Sarekat
Islam.
This content downloaded from 186.124.180.252 on Thu, 6 Nov 2014 10:45:52 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp8/10/2019 Gregor Benton, Two Purged Leaders of Early Chinese Communism (Peng Shuzhi and Chen Duxiu)
8/13
Two
Purged
Leaders of
Early
Chinese
Communism
out
Peng's
contention
that the
CCP had become Menshevik
because
of
the new
turn.
True,
it
allowed that the
Kuomintang
should be the
central
force of the national revolution and should assume its leadership, but
its main
point
is to criticize the
Kuomintang,
and it describes
the
CCP's
central
task as to lead the workers and
peasants
into
joining
the
national
revolution. 24
By
the time
Peng published
his
memoirs,
he was one of
perhaps
only
three survivors of the 1925 Fourth
Congress,
the others
being
Li
Weihan
and
Zheng
Chaolin.
Zheng
was
not
only
also
a
Trotskyist (though
within
Trotskyism
he and
Peng
were often at
odds)
but had
been
Peng's
fellow
student for a while
in
Moscow.
In
1952
Zheng disappeared
for
27
years
into a communist jail (having already spent seven years in a Kuomintang
one),
but since
his
release
in
1979
Chinese historians have
occasionally
consulted
him
about the
Party's early years.
In
1983
Zheng published
a
note25 that
puts
Peng's
role at the Fourth
Congress
in
a
different
light
and
throws doubt
on
Peng's
contention
that he
put
the
Party
back onto
the Bolshevik road
in
1925 and thus
preserved
it
for a
while from
Russian
meddling. Zheng's
note
suggests
that
the new line on
proletarian
hegemony,
far from
being Peng's personal
achievement,
was
a
Comintern instruction known to all Chinese students in
Moscow. The
Comintern,
shy
about
publicly
manipulating
its Chinese section,
got
the
CCP's Moscow branch
to
sponsor
the new
line,
which
Peng
was
chosen
to
represent
in
China. Even
so,
at the
Fourth
Congress
it
was not
Peng
but
Voitinski who
drafted
the
key
resolution on it.26
Zheng's theory
is
supported
by
a recent
study
which
shows that
the
CCP,
with
Voitinski's
help,
took the
first
step
toward
raising
its own
banner as
early
as
May
1924
-
while
Peng
was still in
Russia.27
In
June 1981
Zheng
Chaolin
discussed this and
other
points
in a
private
letter to
a friend
that
came into
Peng's
hands.
Peng replied
at
length
to
Zheng's
criticisms, and on 8
February
1982
Zheng
answered,
whereupon
the
exchange
ended. In
early
1984
Peng's
rebuttal,
and
part
of
Zheng's
counter-rebuttal,
were
published
in
Hong Kong.28
Peng's
contribution
dwells at
length
on
Zheng's charge
that
Voitinski
was the
true
source of
the new
proletarian
line,
for
if
Zheng
was
right
on
this
point,
much of
Peng's
claim to
glory
would
evaporate.
To
support
his
case,
Peng flatly
denies that Voitinski
even
attended the Fourth
Congress,
let
alone
wrote
24.
Conrad
Brandt,
B. Schwartz and
J. K.
Fairbank
(eds.),
A
Documentary
History
of
Chinese Communism New York: Atheneum, 1967), pp. 71-72.
25.
Zheng
Chaolin,
Guanyu
Muluhuosika
(Mlokhoska)
dimingde
shuoming ( On
the
place-name
Mlokhoska ),
Dangshi
yanjiu
ziliao
(Research
Materials
on
Party
History),
No.
3
(1983).
See also
Zheng
Chaolin,
Self-whitewashing,
Pt
1,
p.
50.
26.
Li
Weihan
interviewed in
Beijing
ribao
(Beijing
Daily),
14
July
1980;
according
to
Fu
Shangwen,
Zhonggong
'Sida'
tichu
wuchanjieji
ingdaoquan
wenti
tantao
( On
the
raising
of
the
issue
of
proletarian
hegemony
at the
Fourth
Congress
of
the
Chinese
Communist
Party ),
Lishi
jiaoxue,
No.
12
(1983),
Peng
participated
in
drafting
the
Congress
resolution
(quoted
in
Zhen
Yan,
Dui
ruogan
zhengyixing
lishi
wentide
tantao
( On
some
historical
controversies ),
unpublished
manuscript).
27.
Liu
Qifa
and
Qian
Feng,
On the
tactics.
28.
Peng
Shuzhi,
Dui
Zheng
Chaolin
xugou
gushide
jielu
( Exposing
Zheng
Chaolin's
fantastic stories ) and Zheng Chaolin, Peng Shuzhi biyanxiashuo ( Peng Shuzhi's blind
ramblings ),
Zhongbao
yuekan,
No.
1
(1984), pp.
62-71.
323
This content downloaded from 186.124.180.252 on Thu, 6 Nov 2014 10:45:52 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp8/10/2019 Gregor Benton, Two Purged Leaders of Early Chinese Communism (Peng Shuzhi and Chen Duxiu)
9/13
8/10/2019 Gregor Benton, Two Purged Leaders of Early Chinese Communism (Peng Shuzhi and Chen Duxiu)
10/13
Two
Purged
Leaders of
Early
Chinese
Communism
while
teaching
at a
Party university
one
hot
day
in
1921,
and
cocking
a
snook at
his
outraged
boss.
Peng's
aim
is
to
show
Mao in a
bad
light;
readers will judge for themselves whether he achieves it.
The
Trotskyist Zheng
Chaolin
has
called
Peng
a
Wang
Ming
before
Wang Ming, 34
and
the
analogy
is
apt, though
it
should not be stretched
too far. Like
Wang, Peng
started his
communist career not
in
China but
in
Moscow,
where
apparently
he
and
Luo
Yinong
were the
only
Chinese
members of
the Russian
Party;
when
he
returned to China
in
1924
he drew
great
strength
from this
Russian
link,
just
as
Wang Ming
did
in
the
1930s. Of the students who went back around the
same
time
as
Peng,
many
stepped
into
leading posts
in the
Party's
national
and
provincial
bodies, just like Wang Ming's Returned Students (the Twenty-eight
Bolsheviks )
in
1930.
The
Comintern,
said
Zheng
Chaolin,
.
appointed
Peng
Shuzhi
our
leader,
and
gave
us a
theory
and a
line
to take
back.35 Just
as
Wang
was
co-opted
straight
onto the
Politburo
in
1930
without ever
having
faced
election,
so
Peng
shot
straight
into the
leadership
in
1924.
If
Wang
was
the
protege
of
Mif,
Peng
too had
his
patron
in
the
person
of
Grigori
Voitinski,
who
planted
him
in
Shanghai
to
push
through
the
Comintern's
directive.
Given
Wang Ming's
Moscow
training,
his
specialities naturally
in-
cluded
anti-Trotskyism, though
back in China this issue had little
resonance or
relevance.
Even here the likeness
holds,
if
only just: though
Peng
in time
became
a
Trotskyist, Zheng
Chaolin
recalls that when at the
Fourth
Congress
Voitinski
proposed
a denunciation of
the Russian Left
Opposition,
in
a
quiet
hall,
it was
Peng
who rose to second
it.36
Peng
denies
this
story
and even denies
that
any
such resolution was
put
to the
Congress.
But the text of a
Fourth
Congress
resolution
denouncing
Trotskyism
was
published
in
a
recent
Party
series,37
and another series
carries
the
text
of
a
letter
dated 2
February
1925
to the
CCP's Moscow
branch
listing among Congress
items A
Report
on
the International
Communist Movement
by
the
Representative
of the
ECCI and a
Report
on
Leninism and
Trotskyism.
The author of
this letter was ...
Peng
Shuzhi.38
Wang Ming's
best-known
speciality
was
Bolshevization :
the
im-
position
on the
Party
of iron
discipline,
extreme
centralism,
and
unconditional obedience of
the
sort that
Wang
drank
in
at the
Comintern.
Peng
too was
this
kind of
Bolshevizer.
Indeed,
Bolshevization
34.
Zheng
Chaolin,
Self-whitewashing,
Pt
1,
p.
49
and
Wang
Fanxi,
Shuang
Shan
huiyilu
(Shuang
Shan's
Memoirs)
(Hong
Kong:
Zhouji
hang,
1977),
p.
266.
35.
Zheng
Chaolin,
Self-whitewashing,
Pt
1,
p.
50.
36.
Zheng
Chaolin,
Peng
Shuzhi,
p.
70. See also
Zheng
Chaolin,
Self-whitewashing,
Pt 2. The resolution on
Trotskyism
is
also
noted
in
Zhongguo geming
bowuguan dangshi
chenlie
yanjiubu,
Zhonggong
dangshi
zhuyao shijianjianjie
(Important
Events
in the
History of
the
Chinese Communist
Party)
(Chengdu:
Sichuan renmin
chubanshe,
1982),
p.
62.
37.
Zhongguo jiefangjun zhengzhi
xueyuan shijiao yanshi
(eds.),
Zhonggong
dangshi
cankao
ziliao
(Reference
Materials
on
the
History
of
the
Chinese
Communist
Party),
Vol.
3,
p.
180.
38.
Zhongyang dangshi
ziliao
zhengji
weiyuanhui,
Zhongyang dangshi
yanjiuhui
(eds.),
Zhonggong dangshi ziliao (Materials on Chinese Communist Party History), Vol. 3
(Zhongyang
dangxiao
chubanshe).
325
This content downloaded from 186.124.180.252 on Thu, 6 Nov 2014 10:45:52 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp8/10/2019 Gregor Benton, Two Purged Leaders of Early Chinese Communism (Peng Shuzhi and Chen Duxiu)
11/13
326
The
China
Quarterly
reached China in not
one
wave but
two:
in
1925 with
Peng,
and
again
in
1930
with
Wang. According
to Cai
Hesen,
it
was
Peng
who
brought
the
regime of bureaucratic centralism to the Party; according to Zhang
Guotao,
Wang
Ming simply
carried on where
Peng
left
off.39
Still,
as
a
revolutionary Peng
was
braver,
more
independent
and
more
principled
than
Wang.
As Moscow's
man,
his rise
in
China
stopped
short
of
general secretary,
unlike
Wang,
who was the
Party's highest-flying
helicopter
ever. And as a
Party
chief,
Peng's
backer
Voitinski was less
arbitrary,
inflexible and autocratic than
Mif.
Moreover,
though
in
1924
the Comintern
was
already
in
the habit
of
infiltrating
its
supporters
into
the
leadership
of national
parties,
its
tactic was to
supplement
and
not
yet
to
supplant
national leaders, and it was not yet wholly converted into a
machine
for
forcing
Moscow's views on the world communist
movement.
It
is
no
surprise
that
Peng,
often
the victim
of
gross
slanders,
put
so
much
vituperative energy
into
writing
himself back
into the
history
from
which
he was
wrongfully
struck out.
He was well
placed
to enrich our
understanding
of the
Party's
early
years.
But his obsession
with
magnify-
ing
his
own
role
and
belittling
that
of
others
stands between
him and
the
truth often
enough
to make
his
record
of these events worthless
in
parts
and
everywhere
dubious.
It is
necessary
to
say
this
because memoirs
by
veterans of
Peng's
generation
are
exceedingly
rare,
and
Peng's
will be
widely
read and
quoted.
Already
scholars
writing
in
French
publications
of
various
political persuasions
have
praised
Peng's
book as a valuable
resource,
apparently
without
noting
its flaws.40
Lee
Feigon's
book,
the
first full
study
of
Chen
Duxiu,
is one
of the few
works
to
analyse
his
Trotskyist
writings,
and
a
sturdy
though by
no
means
uncritical defence
of
him.
Feigon's great
merit
is to
methodically strip
away
the
layers
of
right
and
left-wing political prejudice
that have
gathered
around Chen.
The
man thus
bared
is
of
quite
another
cut than
Peng:
bolder,
less
rigid,
more
open-minded,
and more
given
to self-
criticism
and self-doubt.
Feigon's
book
is
primarily
intellectual
history
but
displays
a keen
sociological
sense of how
material
and ideal interests
combine
to set the course
of
politics,
and
usefully
scotches some
well-worn
myths
about Chen:
that
he
once
visted
France;
that he
ignored
the
peasantry ;
that he
became
a
Trotskyist only
as
a
desperate
reaction
to his
expulsion
from
the
Party;
and that
he was
merely
a westernized
in-
tellectual.
Feigon
subjects
to
telling
criticism
the thesis
that Chen
was an un-
thinking believer
in western solutions
to
China's
problems.
That a
person
of Chen's
towering presence,
immense breadth
and indelible
influence
lacked
roots
in China's culture
is
indeed
implausible,
and
Feigon
shows
that
Chen
was first and foremost
a Chinese
patriot
for
whom
democracy
was
a
way
of
restoring
life
and
strength
to the Chinese
people.
Torn
39.
Cai
Hesen,
Jihuizhuyi
shi
( A history
of
opportunism ),
reprinted
in
Gongfei
huoguo
shiliao huibian
(Historical
Materials
on the Communist
Bandits'
Ruining
of
China),
4 Vols.
(Taibei, 1961),
Vol.
1,
pp.
604-605;
and
Zhang
Guotao,
'Wode
huiyi (My
Memoirs),
3
Vols.
(Hong
Kong:
Mingbao
yuekan
chubanshe,
1973),
Vol.
2,
pp.
408-410.
40. See Jie
Ya,
'Gongchanzhuyi
zai
Zhongguode
faren'
-
Faguo
baokan
dui
Peng
Shuzhihuiyiludepingjia ( 'Communism takes off in China' - Reviews in French periodicals
of
Peng
Shuzhi's
memoirs ), Shiyue
pinglun,
No.
1
(1984),
pp.
44-45.
This content downloaded from 186.124.180.252 on Thu, 6 Nov 2014 10:45:52 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp8/10/2019 Gregor Benton, Two Purged Leaders of Early Chinese Communism (Peng Shuzhi and Chen Duxiu)
12/13
327
between
tradition and the
wish for radical
change,
Chen was
a
complex
character
whose
private
and
public
selves were often at odds. This
fiery
revolutionary was a scholar of Buddhism, Sanskrit and the etymology of
Chinese
characters. This
scourge
of the
Chinese
family
wrote
beautiful
calligraphy
for his ancestral
temple.
This
feminist had
sex with several
hundred
prostitutes
and lived
openly
with his
sister-in-law while
getting
his wife
pregnant.
Of the
many epithets
Chen
attracted,
the
one he liked
best was
an
oppositionist
for life
to
any
established
authority. 41
Another view is that
he
was
communism's first
great
dissident,
and
in
this
there
is
much truth.
For Chen
as
for
today's
generation
of
April
Fifth,
pure democracy
was
an indispensable part of the socialist society, and at the end of his life it
was to this his intellectual first
love that he returned.42It is
easy
to see
why
interest
in
Chen soared
among
scholars emboldened
by
the
post-Mao
talk
of the need for
democracy
in
China.
Democracy
ran a
poor
course in
the Chinese
revolution,
and even
anti-
Stalinists like
Peng
Shuzhi were not free
from Bolshevik
contempt
for
it. But Chen
Duxiu,
having
found traditional
strategies
for
social
change
wanting,
fixed once
for
all
on
socialism with
democracy
as the
appropriate
remedy
for
China's ills.
Feigon
shows
that
though
Chen
got
his
in-
spiration
for the
Party
from the Bolsheviks, his idea of it was
quite
different from
theirs. He believed
(like
Lunacharski)
that
revolution is the
work
of
saints,
and
opposed
creating
a
strong
Party
chief.
He
even
let
non-Marxists and anarchists
join
the
Party.
Different
points
of
view
vied
rather
freely
under his
leadership,
and
though
the
outcome of this
contest
was settled
largely
in
Moscow,
it
was some time
before the
CCP was
transformed
wholly along
Russian
lines.43
Though
Peng
and
others
brought
authoritarian
habits into the
Party,
it was
not until
1927,
when
Chen was
sacked as
Party
leader,
that these
habits
became
general.
Feigon's
book is
painstakingly
researched,
though
a
few small errors
have
crept
into it.
Yi
Ding
is the
pen-name
not of
Wang
Fanxi but of Lou
Guohua;
the
photograph
of
Chen Duxiu in
traditional
garb
was
taken
not at
Beijing University
in
the
late 1910s but
in
the
spring
of
1937;
and the author
occasionally misspells
Chinese
words.
Feigon's
main
fault is that
he
sometimes
pushes
a
good
idea
too
far.
Though
it
may
be true that
Chen
Duxiu was
rooted
in
a
tradition
of
elite
dissent,
Feigon's
claim
that
the
Trotskyists
stayed
in
the cities
after 1927
because
they
were
unequipped by
outlook or
breeding
to
organize
the
peasants
is
doubtful.
If
outlook
and
breeding
decided
strategy,
few
Communists
of
any stripe
would
have
gone
into
the
villages,
and few
Trotskyists
would
have
gone
into
factories or
city
slums.
Also
unconvincing
are
the
theses that
the
aggression
of
Mao's Cultural
Revolution
was
in
part
inspired by
Chen's cultural
iconoclasm,
and that
41.
Wang
Fanxi,
Chen
Duxiu,
Father
of Chinese
Communism in
Gregor
Benton
(ed.),
Wild
Lilies.
Poisonous Weeds.
Dissident Voices
from
People's
China
(London:
Pluto
Press,
1982),
p.
167.
42.
Ibid.
pp.
157-67.
43. On this point, see also Mao Zedong sixiang wansui(Long Live Mao Zedong Thought)
(1969),
p.
160.
This content downloaded from 186.124.180.252 on Thu, 6 Nov 2014 10:45:52 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp8/10/2019 Gregor Benton, Two Purged Leaders of Early Chinese Communism (Peng Shuzhi and Chen Duxiu)
13/13
328
The China
Quarterly
the CCP's
obscurantist
political
vocabulary may
be
rooted
in
Chen's
use of a
special language
. . .
to communicate
political
and social
concerns among ... the elite. May Fourth can be more plausibly linked
to the
post-Mao
cultural
reconstruction;
and the obvious
source of the
CCP's ruinous
jargon
is Soviet
Marxism.
Now that
the
black-out
on Chinese
Trotskyism
has been
partly
lifted,
we see a
complex, original political
movement
in
some
ways scarcely
less
diverse
than the
Party
from which it
sprang.
Until
recently
it
was
only
outside
China
that studies on
Chinese
Trotskyism
could be
published;
now Chinese scholars too are
making
their contribution to our
knowledge
of it.
Apart
from the intrinsic interest of this movement as a failed
experiment in urban revolution in the land of peasant revolution, its
importance
for scholars is
that it shared both
personnel
and concerns with
the official
Party.
The
biographical history
of Chinese Communism
cannot
stop
short of its
Trotskyist
offshoot,
as Chinese historians are now
starting
to
see.
Moreover,
the
study
of
Chinese
Trotskyism
will throw
light
from
many
interesting
new
angles
on familiar
questions
of the
Chinese revolution.
GREGORBENTON