Chapter 16 "Immortals" who came down from Kunlun Mountain

Just as the Eighth Route Army followed the instructions of the Yan'an Party Central Committee and turned to guerrilla warfare in an all-round way, actively implementing strategies in the four corners of Shanxi, and establishing anti-Japanese base areas, the imperial envoy Wang Ming descended from the sky. In November 1937, Wang Ming, head of the CCP delegation to the Communist International, member of the Executive Committee of the Communist International and secretary of the Secretariat, led Kang Sheng, Chen Yun, Zeng Shan and others to Yan'an by Soviet military plane.At the welcome meeting held in Yan'an, Mao Zedong delivered an impassioned speech, saying that the arrival of Wang Ming and others "is a great joy" and "joy descended from the sky", and even compared Wang Ming and others to "coming down from Kunlun Mountain". immortal".As soon as Wang Ming spoke, he said, "Some comrades don't understand the united front, and they want to destroy the united front."It also said that Chiang Kai-shek is an organized force of the Chinese people. If he does not unite with Chiang Kai-shek, it will objectively help Japan.

His speech, even Li De, the military adviser sent by the Communist International, thought: "It can be regarded as a very cautious criticism of Mao's internal party policies and national policies." Wen Tian (fourth from right in the front row) and others welcomed Wang Ming and others back from the Soviet Union at Yan'an Airport. From December 9th to 14th, the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China held a special meeting to listen to the instructions of the Communist International.At the meeting, Wang Ming even put on the posture of an imperial envoy, criticizing the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and Mao Zedong.He criticized the Luochuan meeting for putting too much emphasis on independence and self-reliance, and proposed that "everything passes through the united front" and "everything is subject to the united front". The formulation of who attracts the Kuomintang and the Communist Party should not say who leads the other, but that the Kuomintang and the Communist Party are "jointly responsible and jointly leading." Don't just call the proletarian leadership, which will scare away the allied forces.

He criticized the party's policy of independent mountain guerrilla warfare, and believed that "without a unified national defense force and a unified regular army, Japanese imperialism cannot be defeated, and guerrilla warfare cannot defeat Japan."It is proposed to establish a unified state power throughout the country, a unified national defense force, and the army must "really have unified command, unified discipline, unified armed forces, unified supply and unified combat plan". After the Politburo meeting in December, Wang Ming went to Wuhan to negotiate with the Kuomintang at the invitation of Chiang Kai-shek. On the 23rd, the Yangtze River Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China was established, with Wang Ming as secretary and Zhou Enlai as deputy secretary. On December 27, Wang Ming wrote the article "The Key to Saving the Situation", which prominently promoted that the Kuomintang, like the Communist Party, was "a collection of a large number of outstanding and progressive young people in China", saying that "there were no fascists" in the Kuomintang, and that Chiang Kai-shek Waiting is "the person who resolutely led the War of Resistance and will become China's immortal national hero."

At the Politburo meeting held from February 27 to March 1, 1938, Wang Ming further developed his proposition at the December meeting, proposing that all anti-Japanese armies, including the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army, should "establish and generally implement the strategic policy of focusing on mobile warfare combined with positional warfare and supplemented by guerrilla warfare," and emphasized that the army should "unify command, organization, arming, discipline, treatment, combat plan, and combat operations." .He developed the original "five unifications" to "seven unifications".This shows that Wang Ming and Mao Zedong had differences on how to balance the interests of the party and the needs of the united front.These propositions are the ropes that bind the people's armed forces led by the party to carry out anti-Japanese guerrilla warfare independently.

By August and September 1938, when the Japanese army would attack Wuhan, Wang Ming published nearly 10 editorials in a row in the Xinhua Daily under his control, stating: “Wuhan’s gains and losses are closely related to China’s future of continuing the war of resistance and striving for final victory. Big; turn Wuhan into an unbreakable Madrid!" Madrid is the capital of Spain. In February 1936, the Popular Front initiated and established by the Spanish Communist Party won the parliamentary elections. In August, German and Italian fascists carried out armed intervention.Under the call of the Communist International, communists and progressives from 54 countries including the Soviet Union, France, and Canada formed an international column of 350,000 people, went to Spain, and fought the famous Madrid Defense Battle together with the Popular Front. In March 1939, although Madrid fell, it wrote a glorious chapter of proletarian internationalism and made great contributions to the world's anti-fascist aggression struggle.

Wang Ming wants to turn Wuhan into "Madrid of China", but ignores that China does not yet have the conditions to defend Wuhan for a long time. Under the attack of a powerful enemy, it is harmful to continue the long-term war of resistance.He put aside the stage of the War of Resistance and the strength of our army. The opposition party focused its work on the countryside behind the enemy lines, despised guerrilla warfare, and tried to defend Wuhan.And, most importantly, Wang Ming forgot the fact that in the anti-Japanese national united front, it was not the Communist Party of China that was in power, but the Kuomintang, and Chiang Kai-shek was in power.If everything really goes through the united front, it will dissolve the Communist Party as Chiang Kai-shek wished, and throw away all the old foundations of the people's army. When Chiang Kai-shek wins the War of Resistance and turns his face, the Communist Party will fall into a passive position.Everything is obeyed by the Kuomintang, and Chen Duxiu has learned the lesson.Spain in 1936 was different. With the Western Communist Party in power, it was of course correct to call for "obedience to the Popular Front" and "everything goes through the Popular Front".Therefore, Mao Zedong pointed out: "Where is China's Madrid, look at which places have the conditions of Madrid."

In Mao Zedong's view, China could not live without the Anti-Japanese National United Front, because without it Japan could not be defeated, and the Communist Party itself could not survive; but in the united front, the Communist Party must not lose its independence and become confused with the Kuomintang.Otherwise, turning cooperation into unity will inevitably sacrifice the united front and lose opportunities for possible development. Why did Wang Ming, the "immortal" who came down from Kunlun Mountain, get into trouble with Mao Zedong as soon as he returned to China? If we replay the historical footage, we will understand Wang Ming's performance above.

Wang Ming, formerly known as Chen Shaoyu, was born in 1904 in Jinjiazhai, Anhui.He joined the party in 1925 and is undoubtedly a junior in the leadership of the Communist Party of China.When he was sent by the party organization to study at Sun Yat-sen University in Moscow this year, his life took a major turning point.He worked hard on Russian and Leninism, and the results were good. From then on, this young and intelligent guy, with his fluent Russian and familiarity with the teachings of Lenin and Stalin, was awarded by Mif, the representative of the Communist International and the vice president of Sun Yat-sen University. He valued him and got acquainted with Stalin.Under Miff's support, in January 1931, Wang Ming, who had previously only worked as a propaganda officer in the Shanghai and East District of the Communist Party of China, secretary of the Central Propaganda Department and not even a member of the Central Committee, jumped three ranks in a row at the Fourth Plenary Session of the Sixth Central Committee to become Member of the Standing Committee of the Politburo and became the de facto leader of the CCP.I don't know if it's "a scholar dies for his confidant" or to gain a firm foothold. In short, this Wang Ming, who has been selected and raised by Miff, has nothing to do but memorize some Marxist-Leninist phrases, is willing to do it. He called himself a "100% Bolshevik", and advertised that he was "100% loyal to the international line" and "100% implemented the instructions of the Communist International". He also had a famous slogan: "To support the Soviet Union is to support the Chinese revolution." He has no China in his heart.Because he was afraid of white terror, Wang Ming simply left China and hid in the "red safe" of the Soviet Union. He served as the head of the CCP delegation to the Communist International, directly received the spirit of the Communist International in Moscow, and remotely commanded and issued orders to the domestic Communist Party.This situation continued until after the start of the Red Army's Long March, the communication between the CCP and Moscow was cut off.

In Moscow, Wang Ming even appeared as a "defender" of the Communist International and the Soviet Union, taking their will as his will. After the "September 18th" Incident and the "January 28th" Incident in China, as a leader of the Communist Party of China, Wang Ming ignored the fact that Japan wanted to annex the whole of China, but followed Soviet newspapers to pick up people's teeth and insisted that Japanese imperialism occupied The three northeastern provinces are the prelude to the attack on the Soviet Union, "a direct step in the armed attack on the Soviet Union."For this reason, he did not mention resisting Japan and saving the country, but instead emphasized "supporting the Soviet Union."He also repeatedly emphasized that "the overthrow of the Kuomintang is a prerequisite for the victory of the anti-imperialist national revolutionary war", giving others a handle.Not only that, he failed to see the necessity of winning over the middle class, and listed all capitalists, landlords, bureaucrats, warlords, and usurers as "enemies that should be defeated."

Mao Zedong satirized Wang Ming's extreme "Left" leaning closed-doorism: "Revolutionary power must be pure and pure, and the road of revolution must be straight and straight. Only what is written in the Bible is correct. The national bourgeoisie is completely counter-revolutionary forever. For the rich peasants, it cannot retreat a single step. For the yellow trade unions, only Fight it desperately. If you shake hands with Cai Tingkai, you must call him a counter-revolutionary at the moment of shaking hands. Is there any cat who does not eat oil, and how can there be a warlord who is not a counter-revolutionary? Intellectuals are only three days revolutionary, and recruiting them is dangerous. Therefore, the conclusion: closed-doorism is the only magic weapon, and the united front is an opportunistic strategy."

It is puzzling that Wang Ming, who is so "left" leaning, returned home after six years of leaving the motherland, but his attitude took a 180-degree turn, and he strongly advocated goodwill with the Kuomintang.He even gave up the rights that the CCP leaders had worked so hard to win from Chiang Kai-shek. To unravel the mystery of why Wang Ming leaned to the right, for a person who obeys "command orders" in everything, we have to find the answer from the changes in the Soviet Union's foreign policy and the views of the Communist International. The report at the meeting With the rampant fascist forces, the danger of war is also increasing. In order to avoid the passive situation of fighting on two fronts, the Soviet Union urgently needs to find a force in the East to prevent the Japanese imperialists from invading the Soviet Union.At that time, Stalin believed that the Chinese Communist Party was too weak to accomplish this task, and that only Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang could accomplish this task.Therefore, the Soviet Union not only restored diplomatic relations with the Nanjing government in the spring of 1935, but also signed the "Sino-Soviet Non-Aggression Treaty" with the Nanjing government on August 21, 1937. It provided great military assistance to Chiang Kai-shek and required the CCP to unite with Chiang Kai-shek to fight against Japan. , and formed the anti-Japanese national united front with the Kuomintang as the center, accommodated and obeyed Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang, supported Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang, and avoided friction as much as possible.Stalin and the Communist International did not know much about the situation in China. They believed that most of the central leaders were born in the countryside, with few workers. It would be difficult for the Chinese Red Army to immediately understand this policy and join hands with its former enemies to fight against Japan. newcomers to the situation to help the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.”And Wang Ming drafted the "August 1 Declaration" in 1935. On November 7 of the same year, he published the article "Response to those who oppose the anti-imperialist united front" in the "Salvation Daily". Loyal to the line of the Communist International, but Stalin listened to his will, and he was the best candidate to "aid" the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.Therefore, Wang Ming returned to China with high ambitions, and adopted the slogans of "everything goes through the united front" and "everything obeys the united front" according to the Spanish model.