Chapter 50 Zhang Guotao learned a lot?

In June 1935, after the Central Red Army joined the Fourth Red Army on the Long March, Mao Zedong encountered another severe challenge: Zhang Guotao's separatist incident. Zhang Guotao is one of the founders of the Communist Party of China, a member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee, the main leader of the Hubei, Henan and Anhui revolutionary bases in the early days of the Agrarian Revolution, and the general political commissar of the Red Fourth Front Army.Later, he led the establishment of the largest and most populous revolutionary base in the country - the Sichuan-Shanxi Base.The Red Fourth Front Army is the largest force in the Red Army, with 100,000 officers and soldiers.

As mentioned earlier, in June 1935, the Central Red Army, which had been fighting alone for a long time, crossed the first snow mountain in the Long March, Jiajin Mountain, and joined forces with the Red Fourth Front Army. Comrades met, and everyone was ecstatic. , Tears filled my eyes, thinking that from now on, comrades in arms will work together, and the revolution will be a smooth road. However, Zhang Guotao had strategic differences with the central government. Based on selfishness and ambition, Zhang Guotao slandered the central government for "retreating and fleeing", attacking the central leaders as "cowhide", "big gunners", and "scholars", "only come to revolution if you have to play basketball, enter restaurants, and smoke cigarettes."It also artificially expanded the conflict between the two armies. Some cadres and soldiers of the Fourth Front Army "provoked, grabbed food, snatched guns, beat people, armed siege, etc. against the First Army."

Relying on the capital of a strong army and a strong horse, Zhang Guotao stretched out his hand to demand power.He incited some people to propose to the central government that Xu Qiang be the deputy commander-in-chief of the Red Army, Chen Changhao be the general political commissar of the Red Army, and he himself wants to be the chairman of the Military Commission. However, these could not satisfy Zhang Guotao's ambitions. As a result of the expansion of selfish desires, Zhang Guotao insisted on going south and ordered his subordinates to "thoroughly carry out inner-party struggle."The situation had developed to such an extent that it was impossible to wait for Zhang to lead his troops to go north, so the central government had to lead the first and third armies to move northward alone in the name of raising food overnight.

On October 5, the arrogant Zhang Guotao announced the establishment of a separate "Central Committee" in Zhuomu Diao, calling himself the "Chairman of the Central Committee", and announced that Zhang Wentian, Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, and Bogu "should withdraw from their jobs, expel members of the Central Committee and the party, and order them to be wanted." Later, Zhang Guotao may feel that it should not be too much, and he called Mao Zedong and others, saying that the Central Committee "should be called the Party's Northern Bureau" and "the name of the Central Committee must not be falsely used anymore."

In dealing with this extraordinary event, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China showed superb fighting art, "using the greatest patience and adopting appropriate methods" to fight against Zhang Guotao: Let Zhu De and others who are already in Zhang's department do the work of fighting for unity; let Lin Yuying, who has just returned from the Communist International, help and educate Zhang as an "international representative". There is no ambiguity about matters of principle. On January 22, 1936, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China made the "Decision on Comrade Zhang Guotao's Establishment of the Second "Central Committee", pointing out that this move "is tantamount to severing himself from the party and the Chinese revolution", and ordered him to "immediately cancel his pseudo' Central', abandoning all anti-Party tendencies".At the same time, the "Decision on Comrade Zhang Guotao's Mistakes" made at the Russian Conference on September 12, 1935 was announced to the whole party.

On specific issues, the central government still adopts a flexible approach. On January 24, 1936, Zhang Wentian called Zhang Guotao, proposing that Zhang could set up the Southwest Bureau, directly under the international delegation, and temporarily have a horizontal relationship with it.The Central Committee does not directly lead the Fourth Front Army for the time being. After a lot of work, Zhang Guotao went bankrupt in the "Southwards" and failed in the "Westwards", and the Second and Sixth Army Corps joined him again. Ren Bishi, He Long, Zhu De, Xu Xiangqian, Liu Bocheng and others jointly urged Zhang Guotao in 1936. On June 6, he announced the cancellation of his "Central Committee of the Communist Party of China".

On July 27, after Zhang Guotao went north, the Party Central Committee approved the establishment of the Central Northwest Bureau in due course, with Zhang Guotao as secretary and Ren Bishi as deputy secretary.So far, the split crisis caused by Zhang Guotao's establishment of a separate "central government" has been satisfactorily resolved. In January 1937, after the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China settled down in Yan'an, it began to criticize Zhang Guotao's mistakes within the Central Committee. From March 27 to 30, an enlarged meeting of the Politburo was held to further systematically expose and criticize its mistakes.

Zhang Guotao was very resistant at the beginning, and once said to Zhang Wentian: "Zhang Guotao has been defeated, there is no need to fight with great fanfare at this critical juncture." , adopt the policy of persuasion and education, and clarify the right and wrong of thoughts.Even Zhang himself admitted that many of the speeches at the meeting "are quite in favor of Mao Zedong" and "the arguments are fairly fair." In order to give him time to correct his mistakes in actual actions, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China decided not to give him an organizational conclusion for the time being.

On April 6, Zhang Guotao wrote "About My Mistakes", admitting that "my mistakes are mistakes of the whole line". Now that Zhang Guotao admitted his mistake, in August, the Party Central Committee arranged for Zhang Guotao to be the vice chairman of the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region Government. However, Zhang Guotao, who lost his military power, was unwilling to be only a vice chairman of the border region government. In April 1938, he defected under the pretext of offering sacrifices to the Yellow Emperor's Mausoleum, pushing the contradiction between him and the party to a desperate situation.

After the central government learned of the situation, "in order to save him in the end, we called the comrades of the Wuhan Central Committee to find him, persuade him, promote his consciousness, and return to work in the party." After Zhang Guotao arrived in Wuhan, Wang Ming, Zhou Enlai and others did the work in person, trying to leave room for redemption. In the absence of Zhang Guotao's repentance, Zhou Enlai proposed three solutions to him on behalf of the Central Committee: "(1) correct his mistakes and return to work in the party (this is what we hope most); (2) ask for leave from the party and take a temporary break; (3) automatically declare his separation from the party, and the party announces his expulsion from the party."

Zhang Guotao chose the third method, severing himself from the party.The Party Central Committee announced his expulsion from the party. Under such circumstances, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China asked Zhang Guotao's wife, Yang Zilie, who lived in Yan'an, to take their children and go to Wuhan to reunite with Zhang under the pretext of doing Zhang's work.Regarding the handling of Zhang Guotao's issue, the central government "has really done its best." How to treat the cadres of the Red Fourth Front Army, the central policy is also clear: "Comrade Zhang Guotao should bear the main responsibility for the mistakes made by the Red Fourth Front Army in the past." "The cadres of the Fourth Front Army are the cadres of the Central Committee, not Zhang Guotao's personal cadres." However, due to the influence of "cruel struggles and merciless blows" over the years, simple and rude excessive behaviors still appeared in actual work. For example, at the criticism meeting of the Anti-Great Organization, some people linked Zhang Guotao's issue with the vast number of cadres of the Red Fourth Front Army, saying that they "run away" and "split". This aroused the resentment of Xu Shiyou and others.They said: "Didn't the Central Red Army also withdraw from the Central Soviet Area? If you say fleeing, it should be called fleeing." Faced with these cognitive problems and ideological emotions, at that time they failed to take in-depth and meticulous ideological work to solve them. Instead, they shouted slogans, saying that Xu Shiyou and others were "opposed to the central government" and "bandits", and they were not allowed to "talk nonsense". The emotional Xu Shiyou, Wang Jianan and others decided to "go to Sichuan to fight guerrillas and let them see if we are really revolutionary."During the planning process, someone thought it was inappropriate and reported it to the organization.More than 30 cadres including Xu Shiyou were arrested.Xu himself was tried by a military court, expelled from the party, dismissed from the post of army commander, and sentenced to one year in prison. There was also a problem in the anti-big security company. When the soldiers criticized Zhang Guotao's line, there was an argument when discussing "whether Mao Zedong's knowledge is greater or Zhang Guotao's knowledge is greater", and the relevant departments criticized the soldiers who believed that "Zhang Guotao was more knowledgeable". After learning about these situations, Mao Zedong set out to correct them.He said humorously: Zhang Guotao is still more knowledgeable!When Zhang Guotao criticized Mao Zedong, he did not criticize soldiers. Mao Zedong instructed: Only criticize Zhang Guotao's mistakes, not the cadres of the Fourth Front Army who should not be responsible for Zhang Guotao's line, let alone the soldiers.Mao Zedong visited Xu Shiyou many times and had heart-to-heart talks with him.Xu Shiyou's thinking became clear, and he also established a deep relationship with Mao Zedong. As a result, the Party Central Committee and Mao Zedong succeeded in dealing with Zhang Guotao's issue.Although Zhang Guotao had run the Fourth Front Army of the Red Army for many years and regarded the army as his lifeblood, when he defected, even the guards around him were unwilling to go with him.