Chen Duxiu. Chen Duxiu is one of the main founders of the Communist Party of China and has served as the first general secretary of the Communist Party of China for five consecutive terms. His life was marked by ups and downs, with dramatic changes from one of the founders of the Communist Party of China, who enjoyed the highest prestige in the party, to being expelled from the party after the breakdown of the KMT-CCP cooperation, and finally being characterized as a "Trotskyist". When he died alone, he did not provoke any repercussions from society, but quietly walked towards the end of his life with regret and disappointment.
This year marks the 90th anniversary of the birth of the Communist Party of China, the first organization of the Communist Party of China founded by Chen Duxiu in Shanghai. With admiration for Chen Duxiu, a historical celebrity, the author traces his tortuous revolutionary process and life trajectory, trying to explore the root of his life tragedy and solve the historical mystery of why he died in bleakness.
The Comintern cooperated with the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, and Chen Duxiu went from resolute resistance to indecisiveness
Before the founding of the Comintern, Lenin had already focused his attention on Sun Yat-sen and looked forward to Sino-Russian cooperation. In June 1920, the Second Congress of the Comintern proposed that the Comintern should form a provisional alliance with the bourgeois democrats in the colonies and backward countries, provided that the independence of the parties was maintained. On December 10, 1921, Ma Lin, a representative of the Comintern, visited Sun Yat-sen in Guilin, Guangxi, and proposed that Sun Yat-sen form an alliance with the Communist Party of China. Sun Yat-sen was deeply worried, believing that forming an alliance with ** before the victory of the Northern Expedition would cause imperialist interference, affect the great cause of the Northern Expedition, and be detrimental to the reunification of China. Marin then persuaded that even if there was no alliance with Russia, the nationalist propaganda of the Kuomintang would inevitably lead to imperialist interference. After some consideration, Sun Yat-sen finally said: I am willing to send one of the best comrades to ** to make contact. Later, Ma Lin went to Guangzhou and other places to inspect and have a good impression of the Kuomintang, believing that the Kuomintang program provided the possibility for people of different factions to join the Kuomintang.
Ma Lin returned to Shanghai and suggested to Chen Duxiu and other CCP leaders that "the 'exclusionary attitude' towards the Kuomintang should be given up and political activities should be carried out in the Kuomintang" and that "the communist cell must not give up its independence." This suggestion was immediately opposed by Chen Duxiu. On April 6, 1922, Chen Duxiu sent a letter to Weijinsky stating six reasons for his opposition to the Communist Party and the Youth League joining the Kuomintang. Marin also left Shanghai on the 24th and returned to Moscow for help.
In February 1922, Darling, a member of the Executive Committee of the Young Communist International, came to China to attend the First Congress of the Chinese Socialist Youth League. At the beginning of April, Darling received instructions from Paix, a member of the Soviet Russian diplomatic corps, to establish direct contact with Sun Yat-sen and find out Sun Yat-sen's domestic and foreign policies, his attitude towards Soviet Russia, and the role of the Kuomintang in Canton**. At the end of April, the conference was held in Guangzhou, and Chen Duxiu, Zhang Guotao and others attended the meeting. At the meeting, Dahlin proposed that the Communist Party join the Kuomintang as a political party, but maintain political and organizational independence. The controversy lasted for several days, but no practical plan was come up, and Chen Duxiu was also vacillated between various opinions, and he couldn't make up his mind for a while.
For what reason did Chen Duxiu oppose KMT-CCP cooperation? First of all, it is out of responsibility for the future of the revolution. As early as August 1921, Chen Duxiu took leave to return to Shanghai to do party work in the name of stomach problems. When he returned to Shanghai with Bao Huiseng, he said: There is no need for us to rely on the Third International, we have no position at present, and we will find international contacts in the future. After returning to Shanghai and meeting Ma Lin, Chen Duxiu said to everyone: We cannot rely on Ma Lin, we must rely on the Chinese to organize the party themselves, the Chinese revolution depends on the Chinese themselves, and we must work and make revolution at the same time. The second is out of concern for the Kuomintang. Chen Duxiu believed that the Kuomintang had many faults, such as "paying attention to the upper strata, colluding with bandits, being opportunistic, easy to compromise, having complex internal elements, and fighting openly and covertly," and so on, and that cooperating with it would be detrimental to the development and progress of its own work.
After fierce debates and ideological struggles, the KMT-CPC cooperation changed from "democratic alliance" to "intra-party cooperation".
In the course of repeated proposals, the Chinese Communist Party gradually realized the transformation from rejecting the Kuomintang to establishing a united front with the Kuomintang. On June 15, 1922, the CCP issued a proposition on the current situation, clearly pointing out that before the proletariat failed to gain power, "it should also contact the democrats to jointly revolutionize the feudal warlords, so as to achieve the destruction of the warlords and the establishment of democratic politics", "invite the Kuomintang and other revolutionary democrats and revolutionary socialist groups to ......."Together, build a united front of democracy". By this time, the Communists had realized that the main task at present was to join hands with the bourgeoisie in the anti-imperialist and anti-feudal national revolution. On the 30th, Chen Duxiu sent a letter to Weijinsky: "We very much hope that the Kuomintang of the Sun Wen faction can be enlightened and reformed and can join hands with us, but our hope is also very small. Subsequently, the "Second National Congress" of the Communist Party of China passed a resolution on the alliance with the Kuomintang in the form of cooperation outside the party, which was the path chosen by the Chinese Communists themselves; After the Second National Congress, the CCP officially became a branch of the Comintern, and from then on the CCP had to obey the command of the Comintern.
After returning to Moscow, Marin submitted a "Report to the Executive Committee of the Comintern", again proposing that the CCP should join the Kuomintang to achieve cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, and obtain the support of the Comintern. The next day, the Comintern Far East instructed the Chinese Communist Party: According to the decision of the Presidium of the Comintern on July 18, the Committee of the Communist Party of China must immediately move to Canton after receiving this notice, and all work must be carried out in close contact with Comrade Philip. In August, after returning to Shanghai, Marin criticized the united front as "an empty and unenforceable left-leaning idea", and at his suggestion and insistence, the ** Committee of the Communist Party of China held a meeting at the end of August in West Lake in Hangzhou to discuss the issue of cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party.
At the meeting, Marin insisted that Communists must join the Kuomintang. Chen Duxiu opposed Marin's model of cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, stressing that the bourgeois nature of the Kuomintang should not be denied just because it included some non-bourgeois elements, and that the joining of the Kuomintang by communists would be detrimental to the revolutionary situation. When Marin said that this was a policy that had already been decided by the Comintern, Chen Duxiu proposed that "there can only be conditional obedience", that is, Sun Yat-sen should abolish the model of thugs and swear to obey his original method of joining the party, and reorganize the Kuomintang according to the principles of democracy, otherwise, "he will oppose even the orders of the Comintern." The West Lake Conference finally decided that the Kuomintang would abolish the thug model, and a small number of responsible comrades of the CCP would join the Kuomintang in accordance with the party's instructions. The "Big Three" of the Communist Party of China formally decided to realize the cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, maintain the party's political, ideological, and organizational independence, and Communist Party members joined the Kuomintang in their individual capacities.
The setbacks of the revolution also contributed to the establishment of cooperation between the KMT and the CCP. On June 16, 1922, Chen Jiongming, with the support of imperialism, bombarded the ** Mansion and betrayed the revolution, which greatly damaged Sun Yat-sen's vitality and frustration; In 1923, the warlord Wu Peifu suppressed the Jinghan Railway Strike, creating the "27**" revolution to pay a heavy price, and the CCP began to realize the necessity of building a revolutionary armed force and alliance. After experiencing the frustration of the revolution, Sun Yat-sen and Chen Duxiu realized the importance of the cooperation between the KMT and the Communist Party, and to a certain extent, promoted the realization of the KMT-CCP cooperation.
After the intra-party cooperation, the KMT and the CCP turned into enemies, and Chen Duxiu repeatedly proposed to withdraw from the KMT, and the KMT-CCP cooperation eventually broke down
The formal establishment of the cooperation between the KMT and the CPC does not mean that the KMT and the CPC have embarked on a smooth road of treating each other with all sincerity and helping each other. Soon after the cooperation was established, 11 rightists of the Kuomintang, such as Deng Zeru and Lin Zhimin, jointly wrote to Sun Yat-sen opposing the reorganization of the Kuomintang and wantonly slandering the Communist Party. At a banquet held on the closing day of the First National Congress of the Kuomintang, Mao Zuquan, a deputy from Jiangsu, publicly declared: "If the Communists accept our program, then they should abandon their program and dissolve their policies, otherwise they should not join the Kuomintang." In June 1924, the rightists put forward the "Communist Party Case" to the Kuomintang Executive Committee in the name of the Supervisory Committee, claiming that the Communist Party's entry into the Kuomintang "is indeed the greatest obstacle to the survival and development of the Party", and advocated that it is not suitable for the Kuomintang to have a party within the party. On July 13, a depressed Chen Duxiu wrote to Weijinsky that "we must stop supporting the Kuomintang in the form we have so far, and we must take the initiative into our own hands, which means that we cannot support the Kuomintang unconditionally and indefinitely, but must support the activities of the leftists, and if this is not the case, we are the enemy of support." On September 17, Chen Duxiu published an article in the Guide refuting the attacks of the Kuomintang right wing on the Communist Party and the workers' and peasants' revolutionary movement. In the face of differences, Comintern representative Borodin held that "we do not have enough strength to fight against the rightists" and "not to deepen these differences of opinion, not to widen them."
In July 1925, Dai Jitao published "The National Revolution and the Chinese Kuomintang", arguing that the Communist Party of China joined the Kuomintang as "borrowing the shell of the Chinese Kuomintang to develop its own organization" and "only using the political protection and economic sustaining power of the Kuomintang to expand its own life". Chen Duxiu did not compromise in the face of major rights and wrongs, and actively responded to the battle. In September, Chen Duxiu published "A Letter to Dai Jitao", in which he refuted Dai Jitao's attacks and slanders-for-tat, especially criticized his fallacies of class struggle, and discussed the relationship between class struggle and national struggle. In October, Chen Duxiu proposed at an enlarged meeting of the Communist Party of China held in Beijing that in order to resist the Kuomintang's tendencies, we should withdraw from the Kuomintang in time and become independent. His comments were not taken into account. According to incomplete statistics, "from July 1924 to June 1927, Chen Duxiu proposed to withdraw from the Kuomintang ten times." In the face of the attack of the right wing of the Kuomintang, the Comintern instructed the CCP to continue to carry out the established policy, "in order to work secretly and to avoid unnecessary friction with the Kuomintang, all military personnel of the Communist Party should generally be transferred in accordance with the organizational system of the Kuomintang." After the "Zhongshan Ship Incident," Chen Duxiu made a final effort and wrote a report to the Comintern again, advocating that the cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party should be changed from intra-party cooperation to an alliance outside the party. The Comintern rejected his suggestion and published an article in Pravda in which it was firmly criticized. Chen Duxiu had to compromise in the end. "Intra-party cooperation" eventually led to a complete rupture of the KMT-CCP relationship, brought heavy losses to the CCP, and left a dignified mark in Chinese history.
"Intra-party cooperation" saved the Kuomintang but led to the defeat of the Great Revolution and the tragedy of Chen Duxiu
The "intra-party cooperation" method has always been regarded as the best way to carry out the national revolution in the turbulent 20s of the 20th century, and it is the only way for the KMT and the Communist Party to cooperate under the historical conditions at that time. It is undeniable that "intra-party cooperation" was the most likely form of cooperation between the KMT and the Communist Party at that time, and cooperation also led to the formation of the revolutionary united front, strengthened the revolutionary forces, and played a role that could not be underestimated in promoting the development of the revolution. However, in the light of the eventual rupture of the KMT-CCP cooperation and its implications, the "intra-party cooperation" method is debatable, as it saved the KMT but led to the defeat of the Great Revolution and the tragedy of Chen Duxiu.
First, the "intra-party cooperation" of the Kuomintang and the Communist Party was the result of the continuation of the Soviet Union's foreign policy in China and Marin's personal subjective wishes.
In 1920, the Soviets completely smashed the armed intervention of imperialism and the armed rebellion of the counter-revolutionary forces in the country, the political power was further consolidated, and foreign policy was increasingly put on the agenda; At the same time, the proletarian revolution in Europe suffered successive defeats, and the Comintern's Western strategy suffered a setback, and it began to turn its attention to the East in search of partners in order to organize the forces of the anti-imperialist struggle; After the May Fourth Movement, advanced Chinese intellectuals and young student groups, who admired the Soviet experience and Marxism, demonstrated their strength, and since then, the question of the East, especially the question of the Chinese revolution, has gradually become the center of attention of the Comintern. The "Second Congress" of the Comintern openly declared that "the cause of the Soviet ** is the cause of the Comintern", which meant that the Comintern openly declared the supremacy of the interests of Soviet Russia. The Comintern was the first to choose the warlords Chen Jiongming and Sun Chuanfang, and later gave full support to Sun Yat-sen, which shows that the Comintern was looking for a strong military support in formulating the Eastern course in order to consolidate the new regime and safeguard vested interests, not for the sake of the proletariat of the whole world uniting.
Marin was a key figure in the KMT-CCP cooperation, and he not only first proposed "intra-party cooperation", but also promoted the eventual formation of "KMT-CCP cooperation". Some of the formulations in Marin's report to the Executive Committee of the Comintern on July 17, 1922, were not true, for example, he believed that the Kuomintang consisted of intellectuals, overseas Chinese, soldiers, and workers, and completely ignored the existence of feudal bureaucrats and warlords in the Kuomintang. While overestimating the Kuomintang, Marin did not attach importance to the newly formed Communist Party of China. He argued that the Chinese Communist Party "has bleak propaganda prospects if it does not work organizationally with the Kuomintang." These ideas of his seriously affected the Comintern's policy toward China.
When Marin returned to Moscow in December 1922, he was annoyed to find that those opposed to Kuomintang-Communist cooperation had prevailed within the Comintern. At the meeting of the Presidium of the Executive Committee to discuss the China issue, Marin said of the West Lake meeting that "the members of the Executive Committee who participated in the discussion unanimously agreed that the most favorable conditions for our work can be created by actively participating in this nationalist movement" and that "the CCP ** expressed its approval of joining the Kuomintang organization in an individual capacity." It can be seen that Marin did not reveal the facts and inventory of the West Lake Conference. The strategy of "intra-party cooperation" between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, which was formed after the meeting, on the one hand, emphasized the necessity of cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, and on the other hand, proposed that the CPC must maintain its own independence and its own special work, which became the criterion for the Comintern to guide the cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, and also set the tone for the work of the Communists.
Second, the "intra-party cooperation" of the Kuomintang and the Communist Party objectively saved the Kuomintang from its existence in name only.
Before the KMT-CCP cooperation, the KMT was already more important than it was. For a long time, the factions within the Kuomintang were complex and the organization was lax; Party members have impure motives, and most of them join the Kuomintang for promotion; The perennial warlord melee has greatly damaged the vitality of the Kuomintang and demoralized it. Sun Yat-sen failed to master his own army in the protracted war, so he had to turn to some powerful warlords in the south, and the defection of the Guangdong warlord Chen Jiongming made him deeply disgusted and disheartened. At this time, the Comintern extended an olive branch to Sun Yat-sen, and with the help of the Comintern and the Chinese Communists, Sun Yat-sen began the reorganization of the Kuomintang.
1923 was a year of change of fortune for Sun Yat-sen and the Kuomintang. In that year, Sun Yat-sen and Yue Fei talked and tried their best to win the Soviet Union's military assistance to him, and raised three major questions: First, was the Soviet Union ready to provide Sun Yat-sen with 2 million gold rubles immediately? Second, did the Soviet Union attack Zhang Zuolin if necessary to lure him away from Beijing? Thirdly, is the USSR ready to give Sun Yat-sen's 100,000 troops *** and a certain number of officers in a year or two? Yue Fei's answer was yes, and this was undoubtedly a God-given opportunity for the Kuomintang to come back from the dead. The issuance of the "Sun-Wen-Yue-Fei Joint Declaration" marked the finalization of Sun Yat-sen's policy of uniting Russia with the Communist Party.
After the establishment of the Whampoa Military Academy, on March 20, the Politburo meeting of the Russian Communist Party (CPR) ** decided: "Comrade Frunze is entrusted with the personal responsibility for the distribution of 500,000 rubles, 10,000 rifles and a certain number of artillery." After that, the Comintern also sent many military and technical advisers and professionals to Canton. From March 1925 to July 1926, the revolutionary army received 38,828 rifles, 17,029 Japanese rifles, and 12 million German bullets46.2 million rounds of 6 mm caliber ammunition, 48 cannons, 12 mountain guns, more than 10,000 grenades, 230 machine guns with bullets, 18 mortars, and medicines. At the beginning of the Northern Expedition in June 1926, the Kuomintang Army had a total of 8 armies, 26 divisions and 9 brigades, with less than 200,000 people; According to statistics, from July 1926 to April 1927, the regular Kuomintang troops were expanded to 38 armies and some independent divisions and brigades, and the total strength of the Northern Expedition suddenly expanded to more than 400,000.
Third, the "intra-party cooperation" of the KMT and the CPC is not conducive to the preservation and independent growth of the CCP's strength.
Kuomintang-Communist cooperation is a big reef in China's future and the focus of all disputes. As for the method of "intra-party cooperation", there are differences of thought within the Kuomintang, and there is no unity of thought within the Communist Party. Li Da's angry resignation from the party in 1923 is a typical example. The Communists in the Kuomintang after the "intra-party cooperation" had a dual identity: on the one hand, they were Communist Party members who had to fight for the realization of communism in China; On the one hand, the Kuomintang members, who had to implement the Kuomintang program and abide by the constitution and discipline of the Kuomintang, were trapped hand and foot. With the development of the current situation, the activities of the Communist Party in the Kuomintang made the Kuomintang see the strength of the Communist Party. After the "First National Congress" of the Kuomintang, the friction gradually became clear. The Comintern blindly advocated compromise with the Kuomintang rightists, Chen Duxiu's ideas and suggestions were repeatedly rejected and criticized by the Comintern, and the Comintern's vigorous support and assistance to the Kuomintang made the Kuomintang rightists even more rampant and arrogant. In April 1927, the Kuomintang finally set off a climax and launched a counter-revolutionary coup d'état, frantically ** Communists and the revolutionary masses, and the cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party broke down completely. Although the cooperation between the KMT and the Communist Party has achieved certain results in a certain period of time, "it cannot be proved that if the KMT-CCP cooperation is changed to a united front, the achievements will not be equal or greater." The rupture of the cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party led to the serious revolutionary forces, which caused China to encounter foreign aggression at the same time, but also set off a wave of civil strife, and the two parties that implemented this policy fell into the abyss of disputes, and finally turned from friendly parties to invincible enemies, and the two parties of the Kuomintang and the Communist Party engaged in a 10-year civil war.
Fourth, the "intra-party cooperation" of the Kuomintang and the Communist Party has created Chen Duxiu's epic pathos in a certain sense.
For the failure of the Great Revolution, Chen Duxiu, as the first general secretary of the Communist Party of China, did bear considerable responsibility for the mistakes in guiding his work, but it was undoubtedly unfair and unreasonable for the Comintern and Stalin to put all the blame on Chen Duxiu. Under the intervention of Moscow, Chen Duxiu was forced to resign from the post of general secretary of the Communist Party of China from July 12, 1927. At the ensuing "87 Conference" and the enlarged meeting in November, the Comintern delegates refused Chen Duxiu's participation and fiercely criticized Chen Duxiu. Chen Duxiu thus left the center stage of the Chinese revolution without explanation. The bad struggle against Chen Duxiu after the defeat of the Great Revolution directly affected Chen Duxiu's political path in his later years and set the tone for his epic pathos.
The hammer of the defeat of the Great Revolution made Chen Duxiu embark on a difficult journey to devote himself to the cause of "Trotskyism". As early as 1923, there was a divergence of lines within the Comintern and the CPSU, and the representatives of the two lines were Stalin and Trotsky. Trotsky advocated intra-party democracy, opposition to bureaucracy, etc., thus forming the "Moscow Opposition" of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. After Lenin's death, the political struggle between the two factions became brutal, and Trotsky was eventually expelled from the party until he was exiled, and later founded the "Provisional International of the Communist International Opposition" to guide the Trotskyist movement in various countries. After the defeat of the Great Revolution, Chen Duxiu fell into a state of emotional entanglement, and self-blame, depression, and loneliness invaded him all the time. He does not want to shirk responsibility, but he is dissatisfied with Moscow's complete shirking of responsibility; He felt very uncomfortable that the CCP had completely accepted the accusations of the Comintern. In May 1929, Chen Duxiu, who was depressed, saw Trotsky's "Summary and Prospect of the Chinese Revolution" and other articles brought back from the Soviet Union by Wang Yiping, a returned student, and was pleasantly surprised to find that Trotsky's ideas on the cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party coincided with his own. Subsequently, Chen Duxiu did not hesitate to send a letter to the Comintern to express his dissatisfaction, and began to gradually and systematically study and accept Trotsky's ideas and theories.
At the same time, negotiations between China and the Soviet Union on issues related to the China Eastern Railway failed. On July 10, under the instigation of Chiang Kai-shek, Zhang Xueliang ordered the forcible takeover of the Eastern Railway, arrested and drove away Soviet personnel, and the Soviet Union counterattacked in an all-out manner, and signed the "Protocol of the Boli Conference" in December to declare the Chinese side defeated and end the war, known as the "Middle East Road Incident" in history. After the "Middle Road Incident", the Comintern instructed the CCP to "support the Soviet Union" and "defend the Soviet Union with arms", Chen Duxiu, because he was deeply worried about the Comintern's desire to sacrifice the Chinese revolution, sent a letter to the CCP on the issue of the Chinese revolution, but the CCP ** refuted Chen Duxiu's views one by one, holding that Chen Duxiu's two letters "deviated from the ** line", and gave Chen Duxiu a serious warning. Under the influence of a series of instructions from the Comintern, and against the background of the entire anti-to-trust and anti-rightist struggle, Chen Duxiu was expelled from the party on November 15, 1929. Chen Duxiu, full of grief and indignation, categorically stated that he had "irreconcilable differences" with the Comintern and made it clear that he stood on the "opposition" of the Chinese Communist Party. In this way, Chen Duxiu devoted himself to the cause of "Trotskyism" with resentment against the Communist International, anger against the CCP, and with the hope and persistence that "China's revolution should be led by the Chinese themselves."
In August 1937, Chen Duxiu, who had been imprisoned by the Kuomintang for more than four years, was released from prison, and immediately campaigned for the War of Resistance against Japan, actively supporting the cooperation of the Kuomintang and the Communist Party to resist Japan for the survival of the nation. After careful consideration, the CCP put forward three conditions for cooperation with Chen Duxiu, of which the first clause of "preceding all conditions" demanded that Chen Duxiu "openly renounce and resolutely oppose all theories and actions of the Trotskyists, and publicly declare his separation from the Trotskyist organization and admit his mistake of joining the Trotskyists in the past." Seeking cooperation seems to have turned into a "surrender"! Chen Duxiu "didn't know where he came from", looked at the open door of Yan'an, was full of depression and indignation, and categorically announced that he "does not belong to any party"! After Chen Duxiu moved to Jiangjin, he visited him in the spring of 1939 and persuaded him to go to Yan'an. Chen Duxiu thought that there was no reliable person there and refused; There was also a visit from Hu Zongnan, a prominent figure of the Kuomintang, and Chen Duxiu also refused to make it public**. In May, after Chen Duxiu was admitted to the Stone Wall Hospital, illness and poverty plagued him all the time. On May 27, 1942, Chen Duxiu passed away in loneliness and disappointment.
It can be seen that the "intra-party cooperation" of the Kuomintang and the Communist Party not only began Chen Duxiu's 20-year grudge with Moscow, but also laid the groundwork for the tragedy of his life to a large extent.
Author: Luo Xiaohong.
*: People's Daily Online-Communist Party of China News Network.