Development and Disaster: Who Was to Blame?

EPILOGUE Development and Disaster: Who Was to Blame?

Heading back to Moscow from Shanghai, Sneevliet ran into Borodin, who was on his way to Guangzhou to carry out Sneevliet’s tactic, the reorganization of the Guomindang (GMD) and to manage the cooperation between Sun Yat-sen, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and Soviet Russia. It was an excruciating moment for Sneevliet. If he had not realized it before, now he understood that he would never return to China to play a key role. Sneevliet thought that any decisions about the future would be taken on the basis of the report he intended to deliver in Moscow. The decision had already been taken. The chance meeting was a seminal moment in his life and in the nature of Soviet engagement in the Chinese Revolution. Symbolically, it marked a clear step in passing the baton from the internationalist vision of a global proletarian revolution to a vision more tightly embedded in the demands and priorities of the Russian national interest. What more obvious sign could there be than the exit of the Dutch, globe-trotting revolutionary and the entrance of a Russian member of the Bolshevik Party. In Russia, the interests of the Soviet state were increasingly identified as identi- cal to those of the proletarian revolution on the global stage. This was not surprising. Failure of revolution in the advanced capitalist societies left Russia alone to face the threat of capitalism and its imperialist penetration throughout the rest of the world. The main priority was to protect the home of socialism and slowly but surely this became synonymous with revolutionary diplomacy. Although the process was not yet fully completed, the signs were there. Sneevliet’s challenge that Moscow’s policy on the Chinese Eastern Railway caused some to view Soviet Russia as no different from other imperial powers and his call for a clear anti-imperialist policy set off alarm bells. Sneevliet was and remained critical of Soviet Russia’s dual-(sometimes three)-track policy. As a foreign national, Sneevliet could not be relied on to carry out Moscow’s behest unquestioningly, unlike Borodin the loyal communist and Russian. The tactic pursued and imposed by Sneevliet on the CCP left a three-fold legacy that played out through the remainder of the 1920s. First, how one viewed revolutionary work depended on where one sat. The revolution looked very different working in Guangzhou in the open, under the protection of GMD military power and developing a peasant movement, than it did hiding in safe houses and trying to mobilize work- ers in Shanghai. Chen Duxiu’s and Voitinsky’s reports painted very different pictures than those of Borodin and the Guangzhou comrades. Disparate visions led to conflicts between the two sets of comrades about the direction of the revolution.

Second, there was the challenge of justifying collaboration with the GMD amidst an evolving situation, with the CCP expanding rapidly as a serious force under its protection. This caused some GMD members to worry about the rise of CCP power. The tactic that was grudgingly adopted at the Third Party Congress, following the Comintern’s January “Resolution,” dictated the approach that would be followed until the disas- trous events of 1927. Despite growing awareness that there was concern within the GMD about collaboration, it was difficult to break free. Third, the “tragedy”, and who should be blamed for the failure, formed a core com- ponent in the fight between Stalin and Trotsky for the heart and soul of the Bolshevik Party. Early accounts blamed Stalin (Isaacs, 1938; Brandt, 1966) for pursuing a policy that forced the CCP to remain within the GMD after its usefulness as an umbrella under which the CCP could build support had ended. The GMD, to use Stalin’s metaphor, was not a lemon that could be easily squeezed and then thrown away. Trotsky and his followers placed the blame squarely on Stalin’s shoulders and showed how he blocked the entreaties of the Oppositionists within the Bolshevik Party to shift course. Indeed, Trotsky claimed that Stalin’s policy had been wrong from 1924 (Trotsky, 1937 [1971]). Compounding problems of interpretation for those in Moscow were the different perceptions of the tactic and Chen Duxiu himself wavered between proposing CCP withdrawal and insisting that the CCP must remain within the GMD. There were obvious rivalries between Borodin and Chen about who should speak for the revolution and the CCP. Moscow received different signals depending on the channel. In a perceptive comment to the Fifth Party Congress (1927), Chen summarized the entire dilemma of the united front from within. Chen raised three questions: how should the proletariat withdraw from the nationalist united front with the bourgeoisie; when would the proletariat no longer need its assistance and be able to carry out revolution independently; and when could the CCP openly attack the bourgeoisie? Until February 1926, the approaches promoted by the Party Center in Shanghai and in Guangzhou (the base of the GMD and Borodin) were often in conflict. During his self-defense against accusations of counterrevolutionary behavior (Moscow, 1930), Borodin noted the difference in perception. There had been “two lines in the Chinese revolution,” one in Shanghai and one in Guangzhou (Holubynchy, 1979, pp. 376a and 377). The friction undermined the CCP’s capacity to act coherently when challenged by opponents in the GMD. Whereas Chen Duxiu, on certain occasions, called for CCP members to withdraw and to create an open CCP-GMD alliance, the Guangzhou Party organization proposed the takeover of the GMD leadership from within. The conflicting views were clear for all to see with key policies and in the drafting of competing documents. For example, there were divisions about the wisdom of Sun Yat- sen traveling to Beijing in late 1924-early 1925 after the fall of anti-communist warlord, Wu Peifu and his replacement by Feng Yuxiang, the “Christian General.” Finally, Sun