Chapter 22 Northern Expedition

In December 1926, the Kuomintang Northern Expeditionary Army arrived in Wuhan, and soldiers wearing new-style green uniforms and big-brimmed hats could be seen in the city at any time.The leftist government of the Kuomintang, together with a small number of Communists, attempted to control the rapidly developing and unruly Chinese revolutionary situation.Chiang Kai-shek is far away in Nanchang in the east, forming a unified system of his own.By the spring of 1927, Wuhan was the center of China's revolutionary movement, but it was falling apart inside. The Communist Party and the Nationalist Party—like an inseparable pair—both moved their headquarters to Wuhan.

The Kuomintang organization found an elegant villa for Mao Zedong. ［43］This villa originally belonged to a merchant.Gray brick walls screened off the hustle and bustle of the main street, and rooms decorated with black vertical boards formed a courtyard. Yang Kaihui moved from Changsha to live with Mao Zedong, and her mother also brought Mao Zedong's two children, and lived there for several months.The other bedroom is for Peng Pai, a peasant movement organizer from Guangdong.Mao Zedong even had a study in which he finally finished his essay on Hunan's peasant problems. Mao Zedong spent part of his time teaching classes.In a nearby mansion with red columns and arcades, the Wuhan branch of the Guangzhou Peasant Movement Institute was established, which was still jointly established by the KMT and the Communist Party. In the first half of 1927, Mao Zedong gave lectures here to students from Hubei, Hunan, Jiangxi and other provinces.

Mao Zedong felt that the political climate in Wuhan was turning negative.Professor Chen Duxiu did not like the "Investigation Report on the Peasant Movement in Hunan". Only a part of it was published in "Guide". . In Wuhan, Mao met his old colleagues from Anyuan, Li Lisan and Liu Shaoqi, who were leading the labor movement in China's second-largest industrial city and believed Mao was too concerned with peasant issues. Within the Communist Party, Mao Zedong had always been criticized for being a right-winger, and now he is somewhat radicalized, and actually radicalized.His days with the Kuomintang are coming to an end.

The tense life did not exhaust Mao Zedong's Evans.He strolled on the Guishan and Snake Mountains facing each other on both sides of the river.On Snake Mountain, he was fascinated by a gray and white building. This ancient tower was the Yellow Crane Tower built in the 3rd century AD.Mao Zedong was on the scene and fell into deep thought. Perhaps it is in China's long cultural tradition—of course it has not completely left politics—to find spiritual sustenance again, and Mao Zedong filled out a poem in ancient style: Misty and rainy, Turtles and snakes lock the river. His thoughts flew to nature and to the past:

Where does Huang He go? There are tourists left. pour the wine, My heart is racing with waves! [44] . Has he put the Hunan countryside behind him?This is not the case.His thoughts are wandering in another world, and writing poems in Linjiang is just a temporary pleasure. The problem facing Mao Zedong—the upsurge of the peasant movement in southern China and how he went about it—was also the problem facing the entire era.The issue was debated in a series of meetings, each time Mao Zedong being the notable participant because his "Report," which had circulated, dealt with the most difficult issues of the day.

However, most leaders of the Wuhan regime did not yet have a clear understanding of the revolutionary upsurge in Hunan. When Mao Zedong finally addressed the issue, the KMT leaders were alarmed.Mao Zedong asked the peasants to confiscate the land of the landlords (the method is very simple, the peasants resist the rent and refuse to pay), and he contributed to this in both the executive committee of the Kuomintang and the newly established land committee. When Mao Zedong made these remarks to the Land Committee, it was clear where the opposition came from.The military officers in Hunan are all exploiters of the peasants, as Mao Zedong said, but most of these officers are closely related to the Kuomintang.

In Guangdong, it may have been less costly for the KMT to take radical measures, but doing so during the Northern Expedition would have been almost self-destructive, since a large number of northern officials working for the KMT in Kwangtung owned land.Mao knew he was on the verge of breaking with the Kuomintang. He ridiculed a military commander who accused the peasants of being "almost reddened." He said: "If there is no such thing as redification, what kind of national revolution will it be!" The camp of the national revolution is splitting. Hunan is not typical of China.When Mao Zedong returned from Shaoshan, he firmly believed that the power of the peasants was irresistible.However, it was a big mistake to propose that China should follow the Hunan road in 1927.

Mao Zedong's former boss in Shanghai, Kuomintang leader Wang Jingwei, wrote to Mao accusing him of being a seditionist.Even a close friend from Changsha—a communist whom Mao had personally selected to head the KMT organization in Hunan Province—told the Land Commission that Mao's land expropriation program would inevitably lead to "conflicts between the poor and the rich." fierce struggle between the [45] Within the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, one of the more popular proposals at the time was to limit the "excessive" actions of the peasants in order to preserve the smooth progress of the United Front and the Northern Expedition.

Mao Zedong still lived in the villa, and went to the meeting when he was out.But such politicking seems to have faded into obscurity.Beyond Wuhan, China is becoming polarized.The united front on the banks of the Yangtze River is like a fragile bamboo branch, which is about to be snapped off by a gust of wind from downstream. Chiang Kai-shek dealt a fatal blow to the united front.He had long since relinquished his ties with the Communist Party, and by means of the bayonet—the only political method he favored—he had once again and forever torn apart its cooperation. Once in Shanghai, Chiang Kai-shek went on a rampage of arrests and massacres of leftists (Zhou Enlai narrowly escaped).This is the exposure of Chiang Kai-shek's ferocious face, and it also shows the purpose of the Northern Expedition in his heart.And it was the leftists in Shanghai who fought the warlords in the north and welcomed Chiang Kai-shek's Northern Expedition.

Elsewhere in eastern and southern China, warlords have also begun to suppress some radical leftist groups.In Beijing, there was an attack on the Soviet Russian embassy, ​​and many leftists were arrested. One of the victims was Mao Zedong's former superior, Li Dazhao. Not long after Mao Zedong learned that Li Dazhao was slowly hanged with extreme cruelty by the warlord Zhang Zuolin, his Wenhua Publishing House in Changsha was also banned by the warlord.The flames of revolution are being extinguished.