Chapter 14 Chapter 2 The World Revolution 6

6 The social revolutionaries of the twentieth century did not discover until very late the means of taking the road to revolution by means of guerrilla warfare.The reason may be that the guerrilla The tactics of the team are mostly of the nature of the peasant movement.The peasant movement, on the other hand, often has a traditional ideological temperament, and in the eyes of skeptical urban new factions, it is suspected of being conservative, reactionary, or even counter-revolutionary.Speaking of which, during the French Revolution and the period when Napoleon brought the revolution to the whole of Europe, the so-called guerrilla warfare with huge forces everywhere was the same, and didn't they all point their finger at France?The guerrilla activities of those irregular troops were never launched for France and the ideals of the French Revolution.Therefore, it was not until after the Cuban Revolution in 1959 that the term "guerrilla" officially entered the Marxist vocabulary.As for the Bolsheviks, during the civil war between the Red and White armies in Russia, in addition to fighting with regular troops, they also launched fighting with irregular troops many times.They call this type of attack "partisan".During World War II, the underground anti-enemy movements inspired by the Soviet spirit all regarded this tactic as authentic.In retrospect, it is strange how little guerrilla action occurred during the Spanish Civil War.Because in the republic occupied by Franco's troops, there was a lot of room for guerrilla warfare.In fact, after World War II, the Communist Party organized quite large guerrilla centers from the periphery.Before the Great War, however, guerrilla warfare was not at all among the tools of the revolutionaries.

China is an exception.There, some (but not all) Communist leaders began to adopt guerrilla tactics - this happened in 1927, after the Kuomintang led by Chiang Kai-shek turned its back and abandoned the cooperation between the KMT and the Communist Party to launch a purge of the party.In addition, the riots planned by the Communist Party in various cities (such as Guangzhou in 1927) failed one after another, and they had to embark on the road of guerrilla warfare.Mao Zedong, who was the main figure in advocating this new strategy - and eventually he became the leader of Communist China as a result of this - Mao had been involved in the revolution for more than 15 years, and recognized the fact that most of China was under the effective control of the central government beyond domination.Mao also ardently admired the classic novels describing China's green forests—from which he realized another fact: guerrilla warfare has been a traditional method used in Chinese social conflicts since ancient times. In 1917, the young Mao Zedong asked his students to emulate the spirit of the Water Margin. In 1927, Mao Zedong established his first independent guerrilla area in the mountains of Jiangxi, as well as a Water Margin-style cottage.Any Chinese deeply influenced by classical education can see the similarity between the two (Schram, 1996, pp. 43-44).

But the tactics of the Chinese revolutionaries, however heroic and impressive they were, were completely infeasible in a country with relatively advanced and modern domestic transportation and a government accustomed to governing regions of the country, no matter how remote and difficult.In fact, later developments proved that guerrilla tactics could not be successfully carried out even in China itself for a short period of time.The Nationalist government launched several violent attacks, and finally in 1934, the Communist Party was forced to abandon the independent Soviet Red Zones they had established in the provinces of central China, and began its legendary 25,000-mile long march, retreating to the sparsely populated and remote northwest border area.

Since 1920, when leaders of the Brazilian rebel army, such as Preste, fell to the Communists in the backward jungle areas, no important left-wing organization has taken the guerrilla line.The only exception was the fighting (1927-1933) led by General Cesar Augusto Sandino in Nicaragua against US Marines supporting the government of that country. Fifty years later, that same war sparked the Sandinista Front of National Liberation revolution in Nicaragua. [It is puzzling that the Comintern portrays a Brazilian revolutionary, Lambiao, in a guerrilla line.Lan was born in the green forest and is a well-known hero in Brazilian serial story books. ] And Mao Zedong himself did not become the guiding star of the revolutionary movement until after the Cuban Revolution.

However, the outbreak of World War II brought an immediate and general impetus to the guerrilla revolution: the troops of Hitler’s Germany and its allies occupied most of Europe, including most of the territory of the Soviet Union, and countries organized their own underground resistance against the enemy exercise needs.After Hitler turned to launch an offensive against the Soviet Union, various communist movements mobilized.The underground anti-enemy activities, especially armed anti-enemy activities, are becoming more and more powerful.In the final defeat of the German army, various anti-enemy organizations contributed to varying degrees (see Chapter 5).At the end of the war, the occupation regimes or fascist regimes all over Europe disappeared one by one.A number of countries that were particularly successful in wartime militancy, when social revolutionaries led by communist parties came to power, or at least attempted to come to power (including Yugoslavia, Albania, and countries with first British and then American military intervention) Greece etc.).For a while, even Italy north of the Apennines was threatened (though perhaps not for long) by the communist regime—but the left-wing revolutionaries did not.The reasons for this are still debated.As for the communist regimes established in East Asia and Southeast Asia after 1945 (China, North Korea, and French Indochina), they should actually be seen as the direct descendants of the anti-enemy movement during the war.Because even in China, it was not until after the Japanese army launched an offensive to attack most of China in 1937 that the Red Army led by Mao began to re-develop its power and move towards the road to power.The second wave of the world social revolution arose out of World War II, just as the first wave arose out of World War I—although in reality, the two are very different.This time, the revolutionary road to power begins with the launching of war, not the aversion to it.

The nature and policies of the new revolutionary regime are discussed elsewhere (see Chapters 5 and 13).In this chapter, our concern is with the revolutionary process itself.The revolutions that occurred in the middle of this century are often the fruits of victory after long-term battles; they are very different from the old French Revolution of 1789, and the plots of the October Revolution in Russia are also different, and they are even different from the old regimes such as the feudal dynasty in China and the Porfiri in Mexico. The slow-motion disintegration of the Austrian regime [Porfiriato, editor's note: refers to the Diaz dictatorship, 1876-1880 and 1884-19if] (see Chapter 12 of The Age of Empires) is completely different.The difference between them can be divided into two points.First, it is clear at a glance who initiates the revolution, who wins and who loses, and who takes power—this is the same as a successful military coup.The revolutionaries of the brief 20th century were political groups linked to the Soviet Victory Forces.Of course, relying solely on underground resistance against the enemy cannot defeat the armies of Germany, Japan and Italy—even in China. (As for the victorious countries in the West, they were strongly anti-communist regimes.) After the revolution, there was no political interruption or power vacuum.On the contrary, after the defeat of the Axis forces, among the powerful anti-enemy forces in various places, there are only two cases where they did not immediately take power.One is the region where the Western allies maintain strong influence (such as South Korea and Vietnam), and the other is the country where the internal anti-axis forces are divided, such as China. The corrupt and decadent Kuomintang government confronted.Standing aside and watching, is the Soviet Union, which is watching the changes with cold eyes.

Second, the road of guerrilla seizure of power will inevitably go out of the city and go to the countryside, leaving the cities and industrial centers where the traditional forces of the socialist labor movement are located, and moving to the rural areas in the interior.To be more precise, the ideal place for guerrilla warfare is in the bushes, deep mountains, forests, and occupying remote areas far away from human settlements and no one.In Mao Zedong's words, to capture a city, one must first encircle the city with the countryside.From the point of view of the European resistance movement, it is necessary to wait until the end of the war, at least until the fighting in one's own region has ceased, in order to rise up in the cities (such as the Paris riots in the summer of 1944 and the Milan riots in the spring of 1945). possible. The Warsaw incident in 1944 was a reflection of the immature urban uprising. There was only one bullet in the magazine of the insurgents.In short, for most of the population, even in revolutionary countries, the road from guerrilla to revolution is long and long.This path often means long waits, inability to do anything, until change comes from elsewhere.In the resistance movement, there are undoubtedly only a very small number of fighters who can really exert their effects, as well as all the organizations and forces they can mobilize.

Even in areas they control, guerrilla organizations must have the backing of the masses to be effective.What's more, in the long-term conflict and confrontation, the guerrilla forces must recruit a large number of local troops to supplement their helpers.Therefore, (for example, in China) a party originally composed of workers and intellectuals has been transformed into an army of peasant soldiers.However, the relationship between this unit of peasant soldiers and the masses is destined not to be as simple as a fish in water as described by Mao Zedong: the so-called guerrilla team is like a fish, swimming happily in the water of the people.In fact, in a typical guerrilla zone, as long as any illegal organization is hunted down, as long as the behavior is restrained (according to local standards), the villagers will sympathize with them and support them to fight against the invading foreign troops or the government. any personnel.But the local factions in the countryside are deeply rooted, and winning the friendship of one party often means immediately offending the other party. From 1927 to 1928, the Communist Party of China established the Soviet regime in rural areas, but they couldn't figure out the reason.They unexpectedly discovered that after Sovietizing a certain village, they could of course take advantage of the benefits of the clan folks, one by one, to establish a series of "red village" networks.But on the other hand, at the same time, they are caught in the muddle of grievances and feuds in these villages—the enemies of the "red villages" have also set up a similar network of "black villages" in the same way.The Communists complained: "Sometimes, it should be a class struggle, but it turns out to be the East Village and the West Village. In the end, sometimes the troops have to be mobilized to attack the entire village of the other side and wipe out the whole village in one fell swoop." ” (Rate-China, 1973, pp. 45-46) Smart guerrilla revolutionaries often learn to deal with such unpredictable situations.However, as the Yugoslav writer and Communist Party leader Milovan Djilas said when recalling the Yugoslav guerrilla warfare, liberation was extremely complicated, and it was not as simple as just oppressed people uniting to fight against foreign conquerors.