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The Oyüwan Soviet Area, 1927–1932

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

Robert W. McColl
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Extract

One of the striking differences between the Russian and Chinese Communist revolutions was the Chinese use of rural bases (Soviet Areas) to capture national political control—surrounding the cities with the countryside. Remarkably, these bases, their evolution, characteristics, and role in the various intra-Party struggles remain one of the least studied or understood elements in our knowledge of Chinese Communist history.

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The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 27 , Issue 1 , November 1967 , pp. 41 - 60
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1967

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References

1 See Eto, Shinkichi, “Hai-lu-feng—The First Chinese Soviet Government,” Peking: The China Quarterly (October–December, 1961) No. 8, p. 162Google Scholar, for a discussion in English of this Institute and its staff.

2 Nung-hsüeh, Shan, Chung-kuo nung-min ch'an-ch'eng shih ti yen-chiu, (Studies on the Struggles of the Chinese Farmers) (Shanghai, 1935).Google Scholar

3 T'ang Leang Li in his, Suppressing Communist Banditry in China (Shanghai: China United Press, 1934) p. 35Google Scholar says

“The doubtful elements … had been left at the rear during the march from Canton to the Yangtze, and their leaders were concentrated in Kiangsi between Kiukiang and Nanchang.”

Also see, Guillermaz, J., “The Nanchang Uprising,” The China Quarterly (July–September, 1962) No. 11, pp. 161–68.Google Scholar

4 I have discussed the location factors of such bases in “A Political Geography of Revolution,” The Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. XI, No. 2, June, 1967.Google Scholar

5 Biographical data on Hsu Hai-tung can be found in, Who's Who in Communist China, (Hong Kong: Union Research Institute, 1965)Google Scholar, Boorman, Howard L., Men and Politics in Modern China (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960)Google Scholar, and Snow, Edgar, Red Star Over China (New York: Random House, Inc., 1944), pp. 323–28.Google Scholar

6 Shan Nung-hsüeh, op. cit., gives a brief account of the farmers' movement in Hupeh, p. 597. Also see Figure 1.

7 Cited in Isaacs, Harold R., The Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution, second edition (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1961), p. 226.Google Scholar

8 Strong, Anna Louise, China's Millions (New York: Knight Publishing Co., 1935), pp. 162–63Google Scholar discusses this conversion of whole villages in Hupeh and compares it to the more individualistic pattern in Hunan and Kwangtung.

9 Eto, , op. cit., p. 182Google Scholar gives the number of students in the Institute from each province. Also see, Strong, , op. cit., p. 160Google Scholar, and Chung-kuo chin tai nung yeh shift tzu liao (Source Materials on Modern Chinese Agriculture History), II, 1912–1927 (Peking: San Lien, 1957), 694.Google Scholar

10 Chung-kuo chin tai nung yeh shih tzu liao, ibid.

11 Taube, O., Soviety v. Kitae (Soviets in China), (Moscow: Partiinoe Izdatyel'stve, 1934), p. 378.Google Scholar

12 A contemporary report provides this description of the march:

from Chiangling to Chienli, Hsienti, Tungyang, everywhere opening the prisons to release the haoshên, who then acted as guides to hunt down the commissioners of the present associations and the executive committee members and to slaughter them. They killed right and left almost all the way to Wuchang. In the hsien adjacent to Honan, the gentry united with the Red Spears to massacre the peasants. In western and northern Hupeh they joined with Chang Lien-shen and Yü Hsüeh-chung…. In Yanghsin they poured kerosene over the peasants and burned them alive. In Hwangkang they used red hot irons to sear the flesh and to kill. In Lotien they bound their victims to trees and cut them to death with one thousand cuts into which they rubbed sand and salt. They cut open the breasts of women comrades, pierced their bodies perpendicularly with wires, and paraded them naked through the streets. In Tsung-chang, every comrade was pierced twenty times.

Yi-tsen, Tsai, “Difficulties and Recent Tactics of the Hupeh Peasant Movement,” Min Kuo Jih Pao, June 12–13, 1927Google Scholar, cited in Isaacs, op. cit. p. 227.

13 At this Conference it was decided to give the go-ahead for an agrarian revolution, and to support the creation of a Workers' and Farmers' Army. See Kan-chih, Ho, A History of the Modern Chinese Revolution (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1959), pp. 97–123Google Scholar, and Brandt, , Schwartz, and Fairbank, , A Documentary History of Chinese Communism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1959), p. 97.Google Scholar

14 Kan-chih, Ho, op. cit., pp. 205 and 250Google Scholar, and Wales, Nym, inside Red China (New York: Doubleday, Doran & Co., Inc., 1939), p. 137Google Scholar, and Wales, Nym, Red Dust (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1952), p. 152.Google Scholar

15 A commentary on this Congress and translations of the resolutions on the Political and Farmers' Movement can be found in Brandt, Conrad, et al., A Documentary History of Chinese Communism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1959), pp. 123–65.Google Scholar

16 Biographic accounts of Hsü Hsiang-ch'ien are available in, Who's Who in Communist China, op. cit., and Wales, Nym, Red Dust, op. cit., pp. 148–62Google Scholar. The latter is an autobiography and much more detailed.

17 Eto, , op. cit.Google Scholar

18 Kan-chih, Ho, op. cit., p. 205Google Scholar, Wales, Nym, Red DustGoogle Scholar, ibid., and Chiao fei chan-shih (Military History of Suppressing [Communist] Bandits), VI (Taipei: Ministry of Defense, 1962).Google Scholar

19 A detailed description of the strategic and topographic nature of these villages, cities and the whole general border area can be found in, Chiao fei chan-shih, ibid., pp. 448–57.

20 Taube, O., op. cit., p. 23Google Scholar and ibid., p. 448.

21 The best documentary collection on the Li Li-san period and its policies in English is found in Tso-liang, Hsiao, Power Relations within the Chinese Communist Movement, 1930–1934 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1961), pp. 14–49Google Scholar and passim.

22 Ch'en, Jerome, Mao and the Chinese Revolution (London: Oxford University Press, 1965), pp. 156–57Google Scholar and Chiao jet chan-shih, VI, pp. 447–57Google Scholar, contain detailed accounts of this reorganization.

Other sources include, Smedley, Agnes, The Greta Road (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1956), pp. 274–76Google Scholar, and Hua, Hu, Chung-kuo ko-ming-shih chiang-i [Lectures on the History of the Chinese Revolution], (Peking: 1959), p. 241.Google Scholar

23 This estimate was given by Kung Yung-kang, in his article, “The Revolutionary Bases in the Countryside in 1928–1933,” People's China, April, 1947, No. 8, p. 32.Google Scholar

24 Smedley, Agnes, China's Red Army Marches (New York: International Publishers, 1934), p. 154.Google Scholar

25 Details of this evaluation can be found in, Chino fei chan-shih, op. cit.

26 Chiao fei chan-shih, ibid., pp. 450–51 gives details on this process and the men involved.

27 Ibid., p. 453.

28 “O-yü-wan ch'u ti su-wei-ai yun tung” [The Oyüwan Area's Soviet Movement], Hung Ch'i Chou Pao, No. 25, November 27, 1931Google Scholar, and Hsü Hsiang-ch'ien's autobiography to Nym Wales, Red Dust, op. cit., pp. 148–62.Google Scholar

29 This comment has been made by a number of sources, including a personal interview with Mr. Kung Chu in the summer, 1965. Also see Snow, Edgar, Red Star Over China, op. cit., p. 179Google Scholar, Ch'en, Jerome, Mao and the Chinese Revolution, op. cit., p. 172Google Scholar, and Tso-liang, Hsiao, Power Relations within the Chinese Communist Movement, 1930–1934, op. cit., pp. 150 and 220–21.Google Scholar

30 Tso-liang, Hsiao, op. cit., p. 195Google Scholar and “Pi pi pai pai ti su-wei-ai yun-tung” [The Mushrooming Soviet Movement], Hung Ch'i Chou Pao, No. 25, November 27, 1931, pp. 48–60.Google Scholar

31 According to the editorial in the Communist International, November 11, 1931Google Scholar, Oyüwan was commended for its “forward and positive line” while the Central Soviet (Kiangsi) was criticized for its “procrastination” and errors of “opportunism” in failing to attack key cities following the November, 1931, Party Conference (The First All-China Congress of Soviets). Later (1936) Mao criticized the leaders of Oyüwan for their “Left” opportunism, Tse-tung, Mao, “Problems of China's Revolutionary War,” Selected Worlds, Vol. 1 (New York: International Publishers, 1954), 201–02.Google Scholar

32 “Pi pi pai pai su-wei-ai yun-tung,” op. cit., p. 54.Google Scholar

33 Ibid. p. 55.

34 Accounts of this purge can be found in, Tso-liang, Hsiao, op. cit., pp. 193–94Google Scholar, Wales, Nym, Red Dust, op. cit., p. 154Google Scholar, and “Pi pi pai pai te su-wei-ai yun-tung,” op. cit., pp. 56–57.Google Scholar

35 Snow, Edgar, Red Star Over Ciana, op. cit., p. 330Google Scholar, and “O-yü-wan ch'u ti su-wei-ai yun-tung,” op. cit.

36 Hsü Hsiang-ch'ien gives the details of this situation to Wales, Nym, Red Dust, op. cit., p. 154Google Scholar. Also Tso-liang, Hsiao, op. cit., pp. 193–94Google Scholar. See also “Oyüwan ch'u ti su-wei-ai yun-tung,” op. cit.

37 Mach'eng, it will be recalled, was one of the original hsien of the Oyüwan base. See above p. 7.

38 K'ai-shek, Chiang, Soviet Russia In China (New York: Parrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1957), p. 163.Google Scholar

39 O'Ballance, Edgar, The Red Army of China (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, Inc., 1962), pp. 76–77.Google Scholar

40 9Tse-tung, Mao, “Resolution on some Questions in the History of Our Party,” April 20, 1945Google Scholar, in Mao Tse-tung—Selected Worlds, Vol. 4 (New York: International Publishers Co., Inc., 1956), 187.Google Scholar

41 Wales, Nym, Inside Red China, op. cit., pp. 139 and 347.Google Scholar

42 See, Chung-kuo hsien-tai ko-ming shih ts'an-k'ao kua t'u (Collected Wall Maps of the Chinese Revolution) (Peking: Chinese People's University, 1958) and the report of Col. David D. Barrett, “Communist Account of Clashes with the Chinese National Government in Kiangsi and Anhui, 1939–41” with maps (on file in the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, Stanford).

43 In an interview with the author in the summer of 1965, Mr. Rung Chu (author of Wo yü Hung-chun [The Red Army and I], Hong Kong: South Wind Publishing Co., 1954Google Scholar), stressed that Chang Kuo-t'ao was not present at the Tsunyi Conference, but had wired word from his base in Szechwan reprimanding Mao for his attacks on the Returned Students. Chang's concern was for what Moscow would think. At Maoerkai, Chang had more, fresher, and better equipped troops than Mao and was clearly the more powerful. As Mao's name was better known, however, Mao was selected Chairman and Chang Vice-Chairman. Other sources include Ho Kan-chih, op. cit., Wales, Nym, Red Dust, op cit.Google Scholar, and North, Robert, Moscow and the Chinese Communists (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1953).Google Scholar