7/22/2019 John W. Garver - Mao, The Comintern and the Second United Front http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/john-w-garver-mao-the-comintern-and-the-second-united-front 1/10 Comment: Mao, the Comintern and the Second United Front Author(s): John W. Garver Source: The China Quarterly, No. 129 (Mar., 1992), pp. 171-179 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the School of Oriental and African Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/654602 Accessed: 09/03/2010 09:52 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cup . Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. 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 Press and School of Oriental and African Studies are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The China Quarterly. http://www.jstor.org
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7/22/2019 John W. Garver - Mao, The Comintern and the Second United Front
Comment: Mao, the Comintern and the Second United Front
Author(s): John W. GarverSource: The China Quarterly, No. 129 (Mar., 1992), pp. 171-179Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the School of Oriental and AfricanStudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/654602
Accessed: 09/03/2010 09:52
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless
you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you
may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.
Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at
Comment: Mao, the Comintern and theSecond United Front
John W. Garver
Sheng and I are in essential agreement that between mid-1935 andlate 1936 repeatedinterventions by the Comintern induced changesin CCP policy which brought it successivelycloser to a united frontwith Chiang Kai-shek. We disagree about whether there weresignificant discrepanciesbetween CCP and Comintern line on thisissue at specific points. I argue there were. Sheng arguesthere werenot. The Comintern did not itself adopt a truepolicy of a united front
with Chianguntil late 1936, Shengimplies. The Comintern'spolicy ofa united front with Chiangevolved slowly, and as it inched towardsthis goal it communicatedthe ideas to Mao who adopted them fullyand promptly. Mao was amenable to Stalin'sadvice, Sheng says; hewas sensitive and responsive to Cominterndirectives. Any discre-pancies between Comintern and CCP lines were differences ofemphasis, not of substance,accordingto Sheng.I, on the other hand,arguethat Mao's policy was consistently more anti-Chiangthan theComintern's.
There is no question thatCominternpolicytowardsChiangevolvedslowly during 1935-36. Sheng cites the continuing anti-Chiangrhetoric in Cominternstatements in late 1935 to prove that Moscow,like Mao, did not truly favour a united front with Chiang. In doingthis Shengdiscounts the novel statements of willingness to unite withChiang which were buriedamongstthe hostile anti-Chiangrhetoric nComintern statements of November-December 1935. It is thesesubtle proposals of unity, concealed within otherwise hostile state-ments, that I andother scholarshave stressed.Sheng focuseson what I
consider to be backgroundrhetoric.The Jiuguobaoappeal of 7 November 1935 is a prime example.
Heretofore there has been a consensusthat this statement'sassertionthat undercertainconditions Chiangmight be included in the unitedfront representeda call for unity with him. Not so says Sheng. Shengstresses instead the anti-Chiangrhetoric of the article, and concludesthat it was not designedto encourageChiang to form a united frontwith the CCP,but to discredit him. There are severalproblems withthis conclusion. First, no one disputes that Wang Ming inched
towards the idea of unity with Chiang. On the one hand, Wang sawthe need to unitewith him andreluctantlyconceded thatneed in the 7November article. On the other hand, Wang still saw Chiang as theenemy of the Chinese people. This inconsistencycan be explained ineither psychological or tactical terms. In terms of the former, it takestime for a person's mind to achievewhat RobertJervis calls irrationalcognitive consistency. It took time, in other words, for Wang toconvince himself that all argumentspointed in the same direction,that since Chiang was to be united with against Japan he was no
longer a vile class enemy. In terms of tacticaladvantages,Wang may
7/22/2019 John W. Garver - Mao, The Comintern and the Second United Front
have desired to cover himself against charges of naivety shouldChiangrejectproposals of unity.Neither the cognitive northe tactical
explanationdenies the significanceof Wang'snovel roposal of unitywith Chiang.
Other articles in Jiuguo aoand Jiug:uohibaoater in Novemberand December 1935 were even more conciliatory towards Chiang,referring to him as Mister and Commander. These statementshave been wellresearched,but it maybe useful to quote one here as anexample. A manifesto drawn up by the CCP Cominterndelegationand issued in the name of the CCP in Jiug:uohibaon 9 December1935 said: No matterwhether the forces of CommanderChiang,no
matterwhetherthe forces of any other partyor faction . . . all shouldimmediatelybury old hatreds. . . immediately suspend all civil war,point all gun barrelstoward the outside, and fight unitedly againstJapan. l
Sheng dismisses such statementsbecause in February1936, afterthe CCP had launchedits EasternExpeditionacrossthe Yellow Riverinto Shanxi,Jiuguohibao'sreatment of Chiangshowed increasedhostility, in Sheng's words. To Sheng this is proof that any shift inComintern line towardsChiang in late 1935 was merepropaganda
and not sincerebelief. Here I would make two points. First, evenduringFebruary-March,Jiuguohibao'sreatmentof Chiangwasstillmuch more generous than that of Hongsezkongguon Baoan.Secondly and more importantly,Wang Ming and the ECCIhadeveryinterest in maintaining the appearanceof unity between Baoan andMoscow. Unity towards the outside is one of the fundamentalprecepts of democratic centralism. Had Comintern publicationscontinued to refer to Chiangas Commander while the Red Armywas makingwar in Shanxi,interrlaldifferenceswould havebeen made
open to the public.The idea that a desire to discredit a person (ChiangKai-shekinthis case) is an indication that that person is deemed to be outsidethe united front shows fundamentalmisunderstandingof the Lenin-ist concept of a united front. The internationalcommunist move-ment during the 1920s and 1930s was filled with debate over themerits of a united front from above as opposed to a unitedfrontfrom below. Much of this debate was about how best to discreditclass enemies (social democrats, progressive bourgeois politiciansand so on) with
whom the proletariat might find it expedient tounite. To imagine that, from a Leninist perspective, a desire tounite with someone precludedefforts to discredit that personis
simply wrong.Sheng and I reachdiametricallyopposedconclusionsregarding he
Cominternmessagethat Lin Yuying carried to Baoan in November
1. Cited in YangYunruoand YangGuisong,GongshanguoCihe Zhongguogeming(The Cominternand the ChineseRevolution) Shanghai:Shanghairenminchubanshe,1988), pp. 354-55.
7/22/2019 John W. Garver - Mao, The Comintern and the Second United Front
1935. The success of those negotiationspresentedan extremelydiretwo-frontthreat to the USSR. The ROCcould play an importantrole
in counteringthis threat should Chiangdecide to adopt a policy ofresistance to Japan. But would Chiang do this, or would he reachsome sort of compromisesettlementwithJapan?Stalinhadno wayofknowing.
In the event that Chiang settled with Japan, a well-armedCCPcould be ratheruseful. A CCP-controlledstate in China'snorth-westwould be even better. But in termsiof contribution to enhancingSoviet security, Red guerrillaarmies to harassJapaneseforces or aRed buffer state south-eastof Mongoliacould not begin to compare
with resistance to Japan by the ROC under Chiang Kai-shek. TheSoviet governmentand the Cominternworkedto induce Chiangtoswing the ROC into resistanceto Japan. One aspect of this was theComintern'seffort to push the CCP to moderate its policy towardsChiang. A major factor inclining Chiang towards settlement withJapan was fear that the CCP would use the opportunity of anROC-Japan war to undermine GMD rule. Stalin wanted Mao tomoderate CCP policy to ease these fears. But Stalin still needed tokeep alive the option of a CCP bufferstate should Chiangdecide to
appeaseJapan. Stalin wanted to keep his options open until Chiangandthe ROCwere committedagainstJapan,hence his expressionsofwillingnessto arm the CCP and his supportfor the CCP'sefforts towin over Zhangand Yang.
Forty years ago Allen Whiting found multiple and sometimescontradictory Soviet policies toward China during 1917-24.2 Thecontradictions between the requirementsof these multiple policiessometimes created problems for Moscow, Whiting concluded, butSoviet leadersfelt no need to forgoany possiblyadvantageousareaofactivity for the sake of logical
consistency. Soviet policies in 1936regarding he desirabilityof a CCP-GMD anti-Japaneseunited frontand the creation of a CCP-led anti-Japanese state bordering onMongolia seem to have been similar. The driving force of Sovietpolicy was not logical consistency but a desire to exploit allopportunitieswhich uncertainfuturedevelopmentsmightprove to beprofitable.It seems that Mao enthusiasticallyembracedsome Sovietpolicies (the north-weststrategy),but was not so enthusiastic aboutothers (a united front with Chiang).RepeatedCominterndirectiveswere necessaryto prompthim to adopt the latterpolicies.
The concept of trust plays, I believe, an inordinately argeroleinSheng'sanalysis;he arguesthat since Stalin did not trust JapanandChiangKai-shek, it would not have made sense for him to push theCCP towards a united front with Chiang. There are two problemswith this analysis.First, trust is an unmeasurableconcept, at leastunless one uses psychometrictechniques. Debate about trust is a
2. Allen S. Whiting, Soviet Policies in China, 1917-1924, (Columbia:ColumbiaUniversity Press, 1953).
7/22/2019 John W. Garver - Mao, The Comintern and the Second United Front
the dangerof Japan launchinga war of aggression.He recognizesonlyback-handedly he implications of the Eastern Expeditionon Soviet
peace diplomacy toward Japan, and ignores Otto Braun's strongobjections to the EasternExpedition on thesegrounds.He ignores thequestions raised by Jiuguo hibao egarding the possible adverseinternationalpolitical consequences of the expedition, as well as thefact that it was Jiuguo hibao, ot Baoan, that announced its end inMarch. He also ignoressubsequent Soviet reports,cited in note 82 ofmy ChinaQuarterlyrticle,that the Comintern directlycensured theinitiation of the Easterncampaign. Sheng'sbasis for overturning hisconsiderablebody of evidence suggestingCominterndispleasurewith
the Eastern Expedition is the fact that Lin Yuying broughtto BaoanStalin's approvalof a drive to Mongolia'sbordersand that the plan forthe Eastern Expedition was drawn up subsequently.Posthoc ergopropter oc.One of Mao's stratagems or dealing with Stalinand theCominternwasto takeMoscow'sformulationsand creatively nterpretthem in a manner he felt conducive to the expansion of revolutionarypower in China. This may have been the relationshipbetween Stalin'sapproval of a CCP effort to open lines of internationalcommuni-cation and Mao's decision for a drive into central Shanxi.
Sheng notes that in June 1936, shortlyafter the end of the EasternExpedition and after regularradio contact was re-established,Maowas suddenly aware of Chiang [Kai-shek]'shope that an advanceby the Chinese Red Army to the Suiyuan-Chahar-OuterMongoliaborder (i.e. the objective of the second and third stages of the EasternExpedition) would incite a Japanese-Soviet war. These wereexactly the sort of objectionsenumerated by Otto Braun in his early1936 letter to the CCP Politburo criticizingthe EasternExpedition.How did Mao come to accept the objections of this German
interloper? How did Mao gain his sudden awareness into therequirementsof USSR peacediplomacy?WasMao's newunderstand-ing a result of Cominterninstruction? Soviet sources assert it was.
Soon after the EasternExpedition WangMing discussedin Jiuguoshibaohe factors pushing Chiang towards an anti-Japaneseunitedfront. Shengdismisses this because Wangtalked only of two sets ofcircumstances.Then when the CCP continued its efforts, in Sheng'swords, to splitthe GMD fromwithin andundermine ChiangKai-shek, the chieftain of Chinesetraitors, Shengconcluded that this was
fully in agreementwith WangMing's stanceat the time. The basisfor this conclusion is, apparently, he fact that Wang had previouslycited only two factors pushing Chiang toward anti-Japanesenational unity. In reachingthis conclusion Sheng ignores the mid-1936warningsofTheCommunistInternationalthat allinternecinewarfare n China facilitates the dark and dirty actions of the Japaneseplunderers, and of Wang Ming himself that one should notplace. . . Chiang Kai-shek in the same category as the Japaneseplunderers. These were cited in notes 97 and 100 of my ChinaQuarterlyrticle.
7/22/2019 John W. Garver - Mao, The Comintern and the Second United Front
Shengsays that an ECCIdirectiveof 15 August 1936 said thatthe
ECCIwas in agreementwith the CCP'sunited frontpolicy conveyed
in the Wayaobao Resolution. I have not seen the 15 August 1936ECCIdirective, but I doubt that at that late date Moscowendorseda
policy of revolutionarywar against Nanjing. It would be helpful if
Sheng provided us with a more extensive quotation from this
document. Sheng also asserts that the ECCI's 15 August 1936
directiveendorsedCCPleadershipof the united front.Thequotation
he cites to document this, however,concernsthe CCP'spolitical and
organizationalindependence within the united front. Leadershipof
the united front and independence within the united front are two
ratherdifferentthings.Sheng'scontentionregardingECCIsupportfor civil war againstthe
Nanjinggovernmentin August 1936 does not squarewith the ECCI's
July 1936 critiqueof CCPpolicy. Followinga CCP radioreporton its
work in early July, the ECCI discussed China. It concluded that
because the CCP was relatively weak while the danger posed by
Japanese aggression was great, the CCP should unconditionally
abandon the struggle for soviet power and seek instead a united,
democratic republic. Specifically, the CCP should work to draw
Chianginto the united front.This wasa directcritiqueof CCPpolicy.Strangely,Shengcites the articlein the AustralianJournalof ChineseAffairs in which I present this evidence, but does not consider its
significance. Instead he cites Dimitrov defending the CCP againstWangMing'scriticismandconcludesthatthis demonstratesharmony
between Dimitrov and Mao. Again a non sequitur.Shengmay misunderstandmy argumentregarding Maoversusthe
Comintern. I have not arguedthat Mao openly rejectedComintern
directives, or that he was, in Sheng's words, antagonistic and
revolt, and continuing revolutionary civil war against Chiang Kai-shek and the Nanjing government. When Mao creativelyinterpreted
Comintern directions in this manner, however, he made profusedeclarations of loyalty to Moscow. Even as late as the zhengfengcampaign of 1942-44 when Mao decisively eliminated Sovietinfluence within the CCP, he presented it as a virtual emulationcampaign of Stalin. Because of this, I cannot accept Sheng's use ofMao's professions of loyalty to the Comintern to prove he was notdeviating from Cominternpolicy.
Finally, there is the question of the Zunyi Conference.Sheng saysMao had Comintern support for the changes in leadershipmade at
that conference. I say he did not. First, Sheng ignores the extensiveand first-handevidence regardingStalin'sAugust 1938 endorsementof Mao's leadership of the CCP-evidence discussed in length onpages 75-80 of my 1988 book cited by Sheng in his second note.Secondly, there is substantialevidence that from 1935 to 1938 WangMing and his supporterswere unhappy with and sought to undo theresults of the Zunyi Conference. Some of this evidence is referencedby note 35 of my ChinaQuarterlyrticle. More is presented in my1988 book.Thirdly,there is the fact that ChenYun'sdelegationwhich
was dispatched to Moscow by the CCP Centre with the explicitpurpose of gaining Comintern endorsement of the Zunyi decisionscame into conflict with WangMing. Lastly,Bo Gu and Otto Braun,indisputablyMoscow loyalists, were the major losers at Zunyi.
Shengpresents two sorts of evidence to substantiatehis thesis thatthe Comintern endorsed Mao's moves at Zunyi. The first arestatements in Comintern and Soviet publications lauding Mao justbefore and after Zunyi. These statements are, it seems to me, ratherdifferent from an explicit statement by Stalinto the effect that Mao
is the leader of the CCP. Such a statement is what I call anendorsementof Mao's leadership and came only in August 1938.Short of such an endorsement, the Comintern had good reason topraise Mao. He did have very considerable nfluence in the ChineseParty and its army, and unless the Cominternwanted to alienate himand thereby undermine its own influenceinside China, at least untilthe Comintern was in a position to remove him or hem him in, itneeded to praise him. Mao needed certainthings from Moscow, butMoscow also needed certainthings from Mao.
Sheng's second category of evidence is the fact that Cominterninstructions after Zunyi often worked in Mao's favour especiallyregardingMao's strugglewith Zhang Guotao. It is clear that Moscowfavoured Maoover Zhang,butwhile important,this is not the same asan explicit endorsement of Mao's leadershipby Stalin.
We shouldbewareof readingback into history the understandingoflater generations. Stalin and his Cominternapparatchikin Moscowhad little reasonto oppose Mao in 1935. Theyhad no way of knowingthat over the next decade he would repeatedly deviate fromComintern line and ultimately emancipatethe CCP from Moscow's
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control. From Moscow's perspective, Mao must have seemed to be aparochial but resourceful and effective revolutionaryleader. More-
over, Mao understood that he needed Soviet support. WhyshouldnstMoscow have expected that he could be educated to become a loyalinternationalist? In other words, I doubt if Mao's assumption ofparamount leadership at Zunyi met Comintern opposition. Nor isthere any evidence, that I know of, suggesting his. But neither did ithave Comintern endorsement. That endorsement came only in theautumn of 1938 in a power-for-policytrade-off between Mao andStalin.