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Nationalism and Communism in India: The Impact of the 1927 Comintern Failure in China

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

John P. Haithcox
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The Seventh Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI), which was held between November 22 and December 16, 1926, principally to consider the Chinese question, met at a crucial period in the history of the Chinese Communist movement. During the previous summer, Chiang Kai-shek had launched his famous Northern Expedition against northern militarists and the legal government in Peking. His Communist allies had participated by arousing peasant discontent behind enemy lines and by infiltration of northern armies. It was now feared that the Communists might soon become the victims of their own success. Chiang had already given evidence of his displeasure of Communist activities. In March he had staged a “coup” against his Russian advisers and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), but a reconciliation had been effected. In October Stalin had telegraphed instructions to the CCP directing them to restrain the peasant movement in order to avoid antagonizing the officer corps of the Kuomintang army, which was largely recruited from the landholding class.

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The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 24 , Issue 3 , May 1965 , pp. 459 - 473
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Copyright © Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1965

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References

1 Trotsky, L. D., The Stalin School of Falsification (New York: Pioneer Publishers, 1937), pp. 165 and 173Google Scholar. See also Stalin, J., Marxism and the National and Colonial Question: A Collection of Articles and Speeches (4th ed.; London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1947), p. 237.Google Scholar

2 “Theses on the Situation in China by the Seventh Extraordinary Plenum of the Executive Committee of The Communist International, November 22–December 16, 1926,” in North, Robert C. and Eudin, Xenia J., M. N. Roy's Mission to China: The Communist-Kuomintang Split of 1927 (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1963), p. 132Google Scholar. All of the documents hereafter cited from this book, except the present one, where translated from Kitaiskaia revoliutsiia i Kommunisticheskii lnternatsional. Copies of the latter book, published in Moscow in 1929, were only recently discovered in the library of the University of California at Berkeley and the Hoover Library at Stanford University. Although the first section of this paper uses this source, the author assumes sole responsibility for the interpretations placed thereon. As North and Eudin have pointed out, they did not attempt in their introductory chapters (pp. 12–128) to present a complete analysis of the translated documents (pp. 131–376), which contain a wealth of hitherto unavailable material relevant to the study of Communist revolutionary strategy in underdeveloped areas (sec North and Eudin, pp. 4–5).

3 Ibid., p. 142.

4 Ibid., p. 138.

5 Stalin, , “The Revolution in China and the Tasks of the Comintern: Speech Delivered at the Tenth Sitting, Eighth Plenum of the ECCI, May 24, 1927,” Works, II, (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1952), pp. 291–292.Google Scholar

6 “Theses on the situation in China,” p. 141.

7 Ibid., p. 140.

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9 “Seventh Meeting of the Enlarged ECCI,” ibid., VI, 83 (1926), 1432. See also Roy, , “Discussion of the Report on the Situation in China,” Inprecor, VI, 91 (1926), 1603–1604.Google Scholar

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11 Wilbur, C. Martin and How, Julie Lien-ying (eds.), Documents on Communism: Nationalism and Soviet Advisers in China, 1918–1927. Papers Seised in the 1927 Peking Raid (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1956), p. 381. The left Kuomintang was organized in Dec, 1926.Google Scholar

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13 Ibid.

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17 Borodin had been in favor of supporting the Nordiern Expedition not only to avoid a split with the Wuhan Government but also because he supported the view that the revolution could not be defended in the relatively industralized South, where imperialists and Chinese bourgeois forces were strong. He felt that a new center of Communist activity should be established in the northwest provinces. (See North and Eudin, p. 76). It is interesting to note that the Fifth Comintern Congress rejected this “inadmissible … tendency to abandon … the existing base under the pretext of expansion” on the grounds that this relatively well-developed area should not be left to the bourgeoisie. (See “Theses on the Political Situation and the Tasks of the Chinese Communist Party,” translated in North and Eudin, p. 248.)

18 Roy, My Experiences in China, pp. 30–33.

19 “Resolution on the Continuation of the Northern Campaign: Adopted by the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party in Hankow, April 16, 1927,” as translated in North and Eudin, pp. 176–177.

20 Note by Roy appended to the “Resolution on the Continuation of the Northern Campaign,” p. 177.

21 “Theses on the Political Situation and the Tasks of the Chinese Communist Party” (Adopted by the Fifth Congress of the CCP, May 9, 1927). as translated in North and Eudin, pp. 243–253.

22 The coup d'état occurred on May 21, 1927.

23 Roy, My Experiences in China, p. 45.

24 Ibid., p. 53. For a translation of the telegram, see North and Eudin, pp. 106–107.

25 For Borodin's reaction, see Brandt, Conrad, Stalin's Failure in China 1924–1927 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1958), p. 135Google Scholar. For Roy's reaction see Roy, loc. cit.

26 For a discussion of the genesis of the Comintern's attitude toward nationalist movements, see Haithcox, John P., “The Roy-Lenin Debate on Colonial Policy: A New Interpretation,” The Journal of Asian Studies, XXIII, 1 (1963), 93–101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

27 Roy, , Our Task, in India (Calcutta: Committee for Action for Independence of India, 1932), p. 22.Google Scholar

28 Roy, My Experiences in China, p. 49.

29 North and Eudin, p. 107.

30 For an account of this incident, see Leang-li, T'ang, The Inner History of the Chinese Revolution (London: G. Routledge & Sons, Ltd., 1930), p. 280Google Scholar, and also North, Robert C., Moscow and the Chinese Communists (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1953), pp. 107–108.Google Scholar

31 Roy, My Experiences in China, pp. 49–53.

32 North and Eudin, p. 122.

33 Ibid., pp. 125–126. Gene D. Overstreet and Windmiller, Marshall, Communism in India (Bombay: The Perennial Press, 1960), p. 98Google Scholar, report that Roy left China on Aug. 8 and remained in Moscow until Oct. 3, 1927, when he left for Berlin.

34 The interests of anti-imperialism and local class-struggle are often dealt with as though belonging exclusively to the sphere of Soviet foreign policy and the Communist International respectively. Such a bifurcation, which obfuscates their interrelationship and suggests a permanent opposition, is highly misleading.

35 The nationalist character of the demand of the Malayalam-speaking people for a separate linguistic state of Kerala and the rise to power of the Kerala Communists as champions of this demand is revealed in Namboodripad, E. M. S., The National Question in Kerala (Bombay: People's Publishing House, 1952), pp. 154–156Google Scholar and Gopalan, A. K., Kerala—Past and Present (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1959), pp. 75–78Google Scholar. See also Harrison, Selig, India: The Most Dangerous Decades (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1960). pp. 193–199.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

36 Johnson, Chalmers A., Peasant Nationalism and Communist Power: The Emergence of Revolutionary China, 1937–1945 (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1962), p. 13Google Scholar, maintains that the success of the CCP is not attributable to its post-1935 United Front with the Kuomintang; for (a) the front virtually ceased to exist after the New Fourth Army incident of Jan., 1941 and (b) Communists expanded into Japaneseoccupied territories and not into areas where the facade of United Front was still being maintained, such as in Hankow. “Peasant nationalism” as developed in China in the 1930's and 1940's represented a policy which successfully united these two mutually reinforcing and potentially revolutionary forces. As Johnson has acknowledged (p. 195, n. 9), the concept of “peasant nationalism” was first used by Taylor, George E. in The Struggle for North China (New York: International Secretariat, Institute of Pacific Relations, 1940), pp. 41–42.Google Scholar

37 For the distinction between mass nationalism and other forms of nationalism, see Carr, E. H., Nationalism and After (London: Macmillan & Co., 1945)Google Scholar and Chalmers Johnson (n. 36), pp. 6 and 20. Mass nationalism is a peculiarly twentieth-century phenomenon.

38 Johnson, p. 5, argues that nationalist sentiment did not arise among the peasantry until the Japanese occupation of 1937.

39 See Haithcox, loc. cit. pp. 94–95.

40 Lenin, Vladimir I., “The Report on the National and Colonial Questions at the Second Congress of the Communist International,” Selected Worlds, X (New York: International Publishers, 1938), 240–241.Google Scholar

41 Roy, My Experiences in China, p. 18. This tendency was no doubt augmented by the Stalin-Trotsky feud. Stalin was forced to stand by his policy at all costs in the face of Trotsky's opposition to the alliance.

42 Ibid., p. 8.

43 Letter from Roy to Dange, Nov., 1922, quoted in Government of India, Home Department, Communism in India, 1924–27 (Calcutta; Government of India Printing Press, 1927), pp. 19–20. This report was prepared by D. Petrie, Director of the Intelligence Bureau.

44 “Debate on the National Question-Roy,” (20th Session, July 1, 1924), Inprecor, IV, 50(1924), 518–519. See also Roy, “The Labour Government in Action,” Inprecor, IV. 24(1924), 226.

45 Roy, The Future of Indian Politics (London: R. Bishop, 1926).

46 Letter from Roy to J. P. Bergerhotta, Feb., 1926, quoted in Government of India, Home Department, p. 54.

47 Roy, , “Elections in India,” Inprecor, VI, 84 (1926), 84–85.Google Scholar

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49 Roy, “Assembly Letter,” a letter to Indian communists dated Dec. 30, 1927, intercepted and read into the record of the Indian Legislative Assembly. Meerut Sessions Judgement, pp. 186–189, cited in Overstreet and Windmiller, pp. 104–106.

50 Tagore, Saumyendranath, Historical Development of the Communist Movement in India (Calcutta: Red Front Press, 1944), p. 7.Google Scholar

51 Government of India, Home Department, p. 61.

52 Meerut, District Court, Judgement Delivered by R. L. Yorke, Additional Sessions Judge, Meerut. on 16th January, 1933 in the Meerut Conspiracy Case (Simla: Government of India Press, 1932–33), I, 229.Google Scholar

53 Roy, , “Imperialism and Indian Nationalism,” Inprecor, VIII, 1 (1928), 1–3.Google Scholar

54 Government of India, Home Department, pp. 47–48.

55 Hunt, R. N. Carew, “Willi Muenzenberg,”. St. Antony's Papers Number IX, pp. 72–87.Google Scholar

56 Government of India, Home Department, loc. cit.

57 Indian Quarterly Register, I (1927), 207, quoted in Brecher, Michael, Nehru: A Political Biography (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1959), p. III.Google Scholar

58 Nehru, Jawaharlal, Soviet Russia (Bombay: Chetana, 1929), p. 6.Google Scholar

59 Brecher, p. 116.

60 Nehru, , Toward Freedom: The Autobiography of Jawaharlal Nehru (2nd ed.; Boston: Beacon Press, 1958). p. 129.Google Scholar

61 Ibid.

62 Tendulkar, D. G., Mahatma: Life of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (Bombay: By the author and V. K. Jhaveri, 1951–54), II, 402.Google Scholar

63 Nehru, Toward Freedom, pp. 129–130.

64 Menon, V. P., The Transfer of Power in India (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1957), pp. 35–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

65 Brecher, pp. 130–131.

66 In defense of his policy, Stalin argued that the former petty-bourgeois leaders had been discredited in the eyes of the masses. “Is it not clear that only a correct policy can lead to such results?” he argued. “Did anyone ever say that the revolutionary bloc with the Wuhan Government was to last forever? Are there such things as eternal blocs?” (See Inprecor, VII, 45 [1927], 999–1006).

67 Borkenau, Franz, World Communism: A History of the Communist International (Ann Arbor: Univ. of Mich. Press, 1962), pp. 279–83Google Scholar. (First published in London, 1938, under the title The Communist International). The work cited is a first edition Ann Arbor Paperback. An alliance was formed in 1924 between the British TUC and the Russian trade-union movement. Following the failure of the general strike in England in 1926, the TUC was eager to disassociate itself from the discredited Communists and in June, 1927, following the rupture of diplomatic relations between England and Russia over China, withdrew from the committee.

68 The first meeting of the League occurred on Nov. 3, 1928. See Mitra, Nripendra Nath (ed.), Indian Annual Register, 1928 (Calcutta: The Annual Register Office, 1929), II, 6 and 513.Google Scholar

69 “Draft Programme of the Communist International,” (adopted by the Programme Commission of the ECCI, May 25, 1928), Inprecor, VIII, 30 (1928), 540–559Google Scholar. See also The Communist International Between the Fifth and The Sixth World Congresses (London: Communist Party of Great Britain, 1928), pp. 468–469.Google Scholar

70 Kuusinen, Otto V., “The Revolutionary Movement in the Colonies,” Inprecor, VIII, 68 (1928), 1230–31Google Scholar. The son of a Finnish tailor, Kuusinen, at the time of his death on May 17, 1964, at the age of 82, shared with Premier Khrushchev, Mikhail A. Suslov, and Fred R. Kozlov the honor of membership on both the Secretariat and the Presidium of the CPSU. His daughter, Herta, is today a leading figure in the Finnish Communist party (New York Times, May 18, 1964, p.2).

71 “Theses on the Revolutionary Movement in the Colonies and Semi-Colonies,” (adopted by the VI World Congress), Inprecor, VIII, 88 (1928), 1665–70.Google Scholar

72 ibid.

73 Letter from ECCI dated Dec. 2, 1928, Meerut Case Evidence, Exhibit No. P. 334, cited in Overstreet and Windmiller, pp. 128–129.

74 Roy, , “The Indian National Congress,” Inprecor, VIII, 91 (1928), 1732–33Google Scholar. Earlier, in August of the same year, Roy had predicted that the “petty-bourgeoisie radical nationalists” would break away from bourgeois leadership (See Roy, , “The Indian Constitution,” Inprecor, VIII, 54 [1928], 954–955)Google Scholar.

75 Ibid.

76 Lozovsky, , “Continuation of the Discussion on the Reports of Comrads Kuusinen and Manuilsky,” Inprecor, IX, 48 (1929), 1037–39.Google Scholar

77 “Open Letter of the Y.C.I. to the All-Indian Youth Congress and to All Young Workers and Peasants of India,” Inprecor, X, 1 (1930), 25.Google Scholar

78 Roy, , Our Differences (Calcutta: Saraswaty Library, 1938), p. 38.Google Scholar

79 Roy's manifesto to the CPI, July, 1930, quoted in A. K. Hindi [Tayab Shaikh], M. N. Roy—The Man Who Looked Ahead (Allahabad: The Modern Publishing House, 1938), p. 233.

80 Roy, My Defence (Pondicherry: Committee for Indian Independence, 1932), pp. 113–114. This is a statement Roy prepared in his own defense at his trial at Cawnpore, India, Nov. 3, 1931, to Jan. 9, 1932.

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85 Hoffer, Eric, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements (New York: Harper and Row, 1951), p. 4.Google Scholar

86 Ibid., p. 69.

87 Talmon, J. L., The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy (London: Seeker and Warburg, 1952), pp. 1–3Google Scholar. Talmon distinguishes between two schools of political thought in reference to their attitude toward politics. These are the liberal, empirical attitude which presupposes politics to be “a matter of trial and error, and regards political systems as pragmatic contrivances of human ingenuity and spontaneity” and the totalitarian, absolutist attitude which posits the existence of “a sole and exclusive truth in politics.” Wolin, Sheldon S. in Politics and Vision: Continuity and Innovation in Western Political Thought (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1960), p. 293, makes a similar distinction.Google Scholar