Armed Insurrection A. Neuberg Tukhachevsky Ho Chi Minh Piatnitsky Wollenberg A. Ncubcrg NLB Armed Insurrection Formerly published as Da hr:waffm:te Aufitand in 1928 and l.'insurrr:ction. armie in 1931 This edition first published 1970 Translated from the French and German by Qlintin Hoare © 1\LB, 1970 NLB, 7 Carlisle Street, London WI Designed by Gerald Cinamon Maps and Diagrams drawn by Paul \Vhite Typesf't in Monotype Ehrhardt and printed by Western Printing Services Ltd, Bristol SHN t]02J08 JI 9 How we wrote Armed Insurrection 9 Introduction 25 r. The Second International and Insurrection 29 2. Bolshevism and Insurrection 41 3· The Reval Uprising 6r General Political Situation in Estonia in 1924 61 1v1ilitary Preparation of the Insurrection 64 The Course of the Insurrection 68 Reasons for the Defeat 73 4· The Hamburg Uprising 81 The General Situation in Germany in 1923 8r The Political Situation in Hamburg 85 Preparation of the Insurrection 88 The Combat Organization's Attack and the Course of the Insurrection 94 Conclusions 101 5. The Canton Insurrection I o5 General Remarks IDS The Situation in China I o6 The Situation in Kwangtung I o8 The Immediate Preparation of the Insurrection 1 12 The Plan and Course of the Insurrec.:tion I 17 Lessons to be Drawn fr om the Canton Insurrection 122 6. The Shanghai Insurrections 133 The Insurrection of 24 October 1926 135 The Second Shanghai Insurrection (22 February 1927) 139 The Third Shanghai Insurrection (21 March 1927) 143 7· Communist Activity to Subvert the Armed Forces of the Ruling Classes 151 8. The Organization of the Proletariat's Armed Forces 171 g. The Direction of the Party's Military Work 181 :ro. The Character of !v!ilitary Action at the Beginning of the Insurrection 185 General Remarks 185 Armed Forces of the Ruling Classes 188 The Regular Army 188 hiaritime and River Fleets 192 Police and Gendarmerie 192 Volunteer Military Organizations of the Ruling Classes 194 Armed Forces of the Proletariat 194 Combat Objectives during the Insurrection H)8 The Elements of Surprise and 'Timing' at the Outset of the Insurrection 206 Activity and Determination in Combat during the Insurrection 2q The Plan for the Armed Insurrection 219 1 I. The Character of the Insurgents' Operations during the Insurrection 223 Preliminary Remarks 22 3 Characteristics of the City 226 Reconnaissance in Street Fighting 229 Liaison in Street Fighting 235 Defensive Action in Street Fighting: General Principles 239 The Defence of a City Occupied by the Insurgents and Defensive Operations inside the City 241 Setting up a Barricade 246 Attack in Street Fighting 249 12. The Party's :\1ilitary Work among the Peasants 255 Appendix 273 Maps and Diagrams The Insurrection in Reval1 192 3 6g The Insurrection in Hamburg, 1923 87 The counter-revolutionary forces in Canton, 11 December 1927 116 Shanghai at the time of the insurrections, 1926----7 134 Diagram of a barricade 247 Translator's Note : This translation has been made from the French edition of I9J1, and extensively checked against the 1928 German edition. For ease of reading, titles of books have been given in English, even where no English edition in fact exists; this follows the practice of the French edition with respect to works in German, Russian, etc. References from Marx and Engels are to the two-volume Selected Works (Moscow, I958), and to the Selected Correspondence (Moscow, I953)· References from Lenin are to the three-volume Selected Works (Moscow, r967) or to the current English edition of the Collected Works (translated from the Russian Fourth Edition). References from the Sixth World Congress of the Communist International are to the Proceedings and the Theses and Resolutions as published in Inprecorr. In all the above cases, quotations are given in the existing translation; in other cases, and in the case of short quotations from A1arx, Engels or Lenin where no precise reference is given, the quotations have been translated from the French version given by Neuberg. For Chinese proper names I have used the Wade-Giles system of transliteration, except for names more familiar in another form- e.g. Canton, Soochow. Wollenberg's introduction has been translated from the German. The footnotes are all Neuberg's, but references have in some cases been made more precise. Square brackets have been used for interpolations by the translator, e.g. Rcval [Tallin], N[eumann]. How we wrote Armed Insurrection by Erich Wollenberg I. BACKGROUND In the spring of 1928 Piatnitsky, 1 the Organizing Secretary ofthe Comin­ tern, called me into his office. I was at that time on the technical staff of the Marx-Engels Institute in Moscow, in charge of its military bureau, and taught in the military schools in which German com­ munists were trained as specialists in insurrection. Among those who took part in the discussion, in addition to Piatnitsky, were : General Cnschlicht, 2 second-in-command to the People's Commissar for Defence and in charge of liaison between the General Staff of the Red Army and the Comintern; 'Ercoli', i.e. Togliatti, head of the Agitprop (agitation and propaganda) division of the Co min tern ; two or three high-ranking Soviet officers who taught as I did in the military schools for German communists; and a number of other Comintern functionaries. Piatnitsky explained the aim of our discussion. He said that Alfred Langer's The Road to Victory: the Art of Armed Insurrection' was an outstanding manual for functionaries with a ?vfarxist-Lcninist training. A new, revised and expanded edition must be prepared. In addition, now was the right moment to publish a popular work on armed insurrection, aimed at a wider public of communists and sympathisers. Fur this purpose the teaching material which the Red Army Staff had devised for the German communist military schools was exceptionally suitable. 1 AnOld Bolshevik who was liquidated during the Stalinist purges (1936--8). �Old Bolshevik, liquidated like Piatnitsky. s This book, published secretly in Germany (in German) in 1928 and reprinted in an illegal second edition in I9JI, was the work of a team of German communist military specialists in Moscow, under the direction of 'Alfred' (pseudonym of Turc Leben, an officer first in the Finnish and later in the Soviet Army). 'Alfred' was assigned to the Comintern (Piatnitsky) by the Red Army Staff. At first the names of all the co-authors were to be given on the title-page (my pseudonym was 'Walter'). However, since this made a terribly long ('langi!T') name for a relatively smaU book, we banded together under the name 'Alfred Langer'. 10 The various individual sections of the new book were to he pr<>­ vided by the Red Army Staff and handed over to comrade Ercoli (Togliatti), who was responsible for putting the work together and publishing it as quickly as possible. The new book, partly to distinguish it fr om the 'Langer' book, was to be called simply Armed Insurrection. In order to avoid the suspicion of Soviet interference in the internal aifairs of other countries, it would have to leave aside the important experiences of the 1919 armed insurrections in Hungary and Bavaria, which had led to the creation of Red Armies and the seizure of power by the proletariat.' Piatnitsky also said that the new hook must carry an 'author's' name, and naturally this could not be either a Russian name or that of any existing communist functionary. Since it was to be published first in German, and since it was a new book on the subject of armed insur­ rection, we chose the name '_.iVeubcrg'. Vv7e added an 'A' before this surname ; a 'B' would have served equally well. It may seem astonishing that an illegal communist hook should have to have an 'author's name' and a 'publisher'. The German edition, which also had the subtitle: 'Attempt at a Theoretical Presentation', carried the imprint: 'rgz8 - Otto Meyer, Printer and Publisher - Zurich'. These particulars would allow any comrade found in possession of the 'treasonable' book to claim that he had bought it at a meeting or legal demonstration, from an unknown seller, in the innocent belief that it was a legal publication. 'Look, here is the name of the author, and tl1e Swiss publisher!' In these notes on 'Neuberg's' book I have set myself the following task: r. to indicate the political background to the various insurrections; 2. to reveal certain distortions which were made in the presentation of the revolutionary events, 'in the interests of the Soviet State, the Com­ intern, and the current leadership of the communist parties concerned'. In addition, I have put names to such authors of the individual sections as are known to me. The firsttwo sections ('The Second International and Insurrection'; 'Bolshevism and Insurrection') were both written by the Old Bolshevik, 0. Piatnitsky, who lived for several years in Germany before the First World War. I have nothing to add to what he says here. 4 These experiences were dealt with in a book by a Hungarian communist, and in my Th( Strugg/( Df th� Bavarian Red Army, which had been brought out in Russian by the State militarypublishing house in 1928 (with a second edition in 1931). How we wrote Armed Insurrection II 2. THE REVAL INSURRECTJO:-o; The study of the Reval insurrection (Chapter 3) was written by a team under the direction of General Unschlicht. It was based partly on the eye-witness accounts of Estonian communists who had fled to the Soviet Union after the crushing of the insurrection. The way in which the organization and execution of the Reval rising was presented corresponds by and large to historical truth.