6 Growth of the Red Army
Mao Tse-tung's account had begun to pass out of the category of "personal history, "and to sublimate itself somehow intangibly in the career of a great movement in which, though he retained a dominant role, you could not see him clearly as a personality. It was no longer "I"but "we"; no longer Mao Tse-tung, but the Red Army; no longer a subjective impression of the experiences of a single life, but an objective record by a bystander concerned with the mutations of collective human destiny as the material of history.
As his story drew to a close it became more and more necessary for me to interrogate him about himself. What was he doing at that time? What office did he hold then? What was his attitude in this or that situation? And my questioning, generally, evoked such references as there are to himself in this last chapter of the narrative：
"Gradually the Red Army's work with the masses improved, discipline strengthened, and a new technique in organization developed. The peasantry everywhere began to volunteer to help the revolution. As early as Chingkangshan the Red Army had imposed three simple rules of discipline upon its fighters, and these were：prompt obedience to orders; no confiscations whatever from the poor peasantry; and prompt delivery directly to the government, for its disposal, of all goods confiscated from the landlords. After the 1928 Conference[second Maoping Conference]emphatic efforts to enlist the support of the peasantry were made, and eight rules were added to the three listed above. These were as follows：
"1. Replace all doors when you leave a house;[*]
"2. Return and roll up the straw matting on which you sleep;
"3. Be courteous and polite to the people and help them when you can;
"4. Return all borrowed articles;
"5. Replace all damaged articles;
"6. Be honest in all transactions with the peasants;
"7. Pay for all articles purchased;
"8. Be sanitary, and, especially, establish latrines a safe distance from people's houses.
"The last two rules were added by Lin Piao. These eight points were enforced with better and better success, and today are still the code of the Red soldier, memorized and frequently repeated by him.[**] Three other duties were taught to the Red Army, as its primary purpose：first, to struggle to the death against the enemy; second, to arm the masses; third, to raise money to support the struggle.
"Early in 1929 several groups of partisans under Li Wen-lung and Li Shao-tsu were reorganized into the Third Red Army, commanded by Wang Kung-lu, and with Ch'en Yi as political commissar. During the same period, part of Chu Pei-teh's min-t'uan mutinied and joined the Red Army. They were led to the Communist camp by a Kuomintang commander, Lo P'ing-hui, [‡] who was disillusioned about the Kuomintang and wanted to join the Red Army. He is now commander of the Thirty-second Red Army of the Second Front Army. From the Fukien partisans and nucleus of regular Red troops the Twelfth Red Army was created under the command of Wu Chung-hao, with T'an Chen-lin as political commissar. Wu was later killed in battle and replaced by Lo P'ing-hui.
"It was at this time that the First Army Corps was organized, with Chu Teh as commander and myself as political commissar. It was composed of the Third Army, the Fourth Army commanded by Lin Piao, and the Twelfth Army, under Lo P'ing-hui. Party leadership was vested in a Front Committee, of which I was chairman. There were already more than 10, 000 men in the First Army Corps then, organized into ten divisions. Besides this main force, there were many local and independent regiments, Red Guards and partisans.
"Red tactics, apart from the political basis of the movement, explained much of the successful military development. At Chingkangshan four slogans had been adopted, and these give the clue to the methods of partisan warfare used, out of which the Red Army grew. The slogans were：
"1. When the enemy advances, we retreat！
"2. When the enemy halts and encamps, we trouble them！
"3. When the enemy seeks to avoid a battle, we attack！
"4. When the enemy retreats, we pursue！
"These slogans[of four characters each in Chinese]were at first opposed by many experienced military men, who did not agree with the type of tactics advocated. But much experience proved that the tactics were correct. Whenever the Red Army departed from them, in general, it did not succeed. Our forces were small, exceeded from ten to twenty times by the enemy; our resources and fighting materials were limited, and only by skillfully combining the tactics of maneuvering and guerrilla warfare could we hope to succeed in our struggle against the Kuomintang, fighting from vastly richer and superior bases.
"The most important single tactic of the Red Army was, and remains, its ability to concentrate its main forces in the attack, and swiftly divide and separate them afterwards. This implied that positional warfare was to be avoided, and every effort made to meet the living forces of the enemy while in movement, and destroy them. On the basis of these tactics the mobility and the swift, powerful 'short attack' of the Red Army was developed.[*]
"In expanding soviet areas in general the program of the Red Army favored a wavelike or tidal development, rather than an uneven advance, gained by 'leaps' or 'jumps, ' and without deep consolidation in the territories gained. The policy was pragmatic, just as were the tactics already described, and grew out of many years of collective military and political experience. These tactics were severely criticized by Li Li-san, who advocated the concentration of all weapons in the hands of the Red Army, and the absorption of all partisan groups. He wanted attacks rather than consolidation; advances without securing the rear; sensational assaults on big cities, accompanied by uprisings and extremism. The Li Li-san line dominated the Party then——outside soviet areas——and was sufficiently influential to force acceptance, to some extent, in the Red Army, against the judgment of its field command. One result of it was the attack on Changsha and another was the advance on Nanchang. But the Red Army refused to immobilize its partisan groups and open up its rear to the enemy during these adventures.
"In the autumn of 1929 the Red Army moved into northern Kiangsi, attacking and occupying many cities, and inflicting numerous defeats on Kuomintang armies. When within striking distance of Nanchang the First Army Corps turned sharply west and moved on Changsha. In this drive it met and joined forces with P'eng Teh-huai, who had already occupied Changsha once, but had been forced to withdraw to avoid being surrounded by vastly superior enemy troops. P'eng had been obliged to leave Chingkangshan in April, 1929, and had carried out operations in southern Kiangsi, resulting in greatly increasing his troops. He rejoined Chu Teh and the main forces of the Red Army at Juichin in April, 1930, and after a conference it was decided that P'eng's Third Army should operate on the Kiangsi-Hunan border, while Chu Teh and I moved into Fukien. It was in June, 1930, that the Third Army and the First Army corps re-established a junction and began the second attack on Changsha. The First and Third Army corps were combined into the First Front Army, with Chu Teh as commander-in-chief and myself as political commissar. Under this leadership we arrived outside the walls of Changsha.
"The Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Committee was organized about this time, and I was elected chairman. The Red Army's influence in Hunan was widespread, almost as much so as in Kiangsi. My name was known among the Hunanese peasants, for big rewards were offered for my capture, dead or alive, as well as for Chu Teh and other Reds. My land[*] in Hsiang T'an was confiscated by the Kuomintang. My wife and my sister, as well as the wives of my two brothers, Mao Tse-min and Mao Tse-t'an, [**] and my own sons were all arrested by Ho Chien[the warlord governor]. My wife (K'ai-hui) and my sister (Tse-hung) were executed.[1] The others were later released. The prestige of the Red Army even extended to my own village, in Hsiang T'an, for I heard the tale that the local peasants believed that I would be soon returning to my native home. When one day an airplane passed overhead, they decided it was I. They warned the man who was then tilling my land that I had come back to look over my old farm, to see whether or not any trees had been cut. If so, I would surely demand compensation from Chiang Kai-shek, they said.
"But the second attack on Changsha proved to be a failure. Great reinforcements had been sent to the city and it was heavily garrisoned; besides, new troops were pouring into Hunan in September to attack the Red Army. Only one important battle occurred during the siege, and in it the Red Army eliminated two brigades of enemy troops. It could not, however, take the city of Changsha, and after a few weeks withdrew to Kiangsi.[2]
"This failure helped to destroy the Li Li-san line and saved the Red Army from what would probably have been a catastrophic attack on Wuhan, which Li was demanding. The main tasks of the Red Army then were the recruiting of new troops, the sovietization of new rural areas, and, above all, the consolidation under thorough soviet power of such areas as already had fallen to the Red Army. For such a program the attacks on Changsha were not necessary and had an element of adventure in them. Had the first occupation been undertaken as a temporary action, however, and not with the idea of attempting to hold the city and set up a state power there, its effects might have been considered beneficial, for the reaction produced on the national revolutionary movement was very great. The error was a strategic and tactical one, in attempting to make a base of Changsha while the soviet power was still not consolidated behind it."
To interrupt Mao's narrative for a moment：Li Li-san was a Hunanese and a returned student from France. He divided time in Shanghai and Hankow, where the Communist Party had "underground"headquarters——only after 1930 was the Central Committee transferred to the soviet districts. Li dominated the Chinese Party from 1929 to 1930, when he was removed from the Politburo and sent to Moscow. Like Ch'en Tu-hsiu, Li Li-san lacked faith in the rural soviets, and urged that strong aggressive tactics be adopted against strategic big capitals like Changsha, Wuhan, and Nan-chang. He wanted a "terror"in the villages to demoralize the gentry, a "mighty offensive"by the workers, risings and strikes to paralyze the enemy in his bases, and "flank attacks"in the north, from Outer Mongolia and Manchuria, backed by the U.S.S.R.[*]
To continue：
"But Li Li-san overestimated both the military strength of the Red Army at that time and the revolutionary factors in the national political scene. He believed that the revolution was nearing success and would shortly have power over the entire country. This belief was encouraged by the long and exhausting civil war then proceeding between Feng Yu-hsiang and Chiang Kai-shek, which made the outlook seem highly favorable to Li Li-san. But in the opinion of the Red Army the enemy was making preparations for a great drive against the soviets as soon as the civil war was concluded, and it was no time for possibly disastrous putsch-ism and adventures. This estimate proved to be entirely correct.
"With the events in Hunan, the Red Army's return to Kiangsi, and especially after the capture of Kian, 'Lilisanism' was overcome in the army; and Li himself, proved to have been in error, soon lost his influence in the Party. There was, however, a critical period in the army before 'Lilisanism' was definitely buried. Part of the Third Corps favored following out Li's line, and demanded the separation of the Third Corps from the rest of the army. P'eng Teh-huai fought vigorously against this tendency, however, and succeeded in maintaining the unity of the forces under his command and their loyalty to the high command. But the Twentieth Army, led by Liu Teh-ch'ao, rose in open revolt, arrested the chairman of the Kiangsi Soviet, arrested many officers and officials, and attacked us politically, on the basis of the Li Li-san line.[3] This occurred at Fu T'ien and is known as the Fu T'ien Incident. Fu T'ien being near Kian, then the heart of the soviet districts, the events produced a sensation, and to many it must have seemed that the fate of the revolution depended on the outcome of this struggle. However, the revolt was quickly suppressed, due to the loyalty of the Third Army, to the general solidarity of the Party and the Red troops, and to the support of the peasantry. Liu Teh-ch'ao was arrested, and other rebels disarmed and liquidated. Our line was reaffirmed, 'Lilisanism' was definitely suppressed, and as a result the soviet movement subsequently scored great gains.
"But Nanking was now thoroughly aroused to the revolutionary potentialities of the soviets in Kiangsi, and at the end of 1930 began its First Extermination Campaign[*] against the Red Army. Enemy forces totaling over 100, 000 men began an encirclement of the Red areas, penetrating by five routes, under the chief command of Lu Ti-p'ing. Against these troops the Red Army was then able to mobilize a total of about 40, 000 men. By skillful use of maneuvering warfare we met and overcame this First Campaign, with great victories. Following out the tactics of swift concentration and swift dispersal, we attacked each unit separately, using our main forces. Admitting the enemy troops deeply into soviet territory, we staged sudden concentrated attacks, in superior numbers, on isolated units of the Kuomintang troops, achieving positions of maneuver in which, momentarily, we could encircle them, thus reversing the general strategic advantage enjoyed by a numerically greatly superior enemy.
"By January, 1931, this First Campaign had been completely defeated. I believe that this would not have been possible except for three conditions achieved by the Red Army just before its commencement. First, the consolidation of the First and Third Army corps under a centralized command; second, the liquidation of the Li Li-san line; and third, the triumph of the Party over the anti-Bolshevik (Liu Teh-ch'ao) faction and other active counterrevolutionaries within the Red Army and in the soviet districts.
"After a respite of only four months, Nanking launched its Second Campaign, under the supreme command of Ho Ying-ch'in, now Minister of War. His forces exceeded 200, 000 men, who moved into the Red areas by seven routes. The situation for the Red Army was then thought to be very critical. The area of soviet power was very small, resources were limited, equipment scanty, and enemy material strength vastly exceeded that of the Red Army in every respect. To meet this offensive, however, the Red Army still clung to the same tactics that had thus far won success. Admitting the enemy columns well into Red territory, our main forces suddenly concentrated against the Second Route of the enemy, defeated several regiments, and destroyed their offensive power. Immediately afterwards we attacked in quick succession the Third Route, the Sixth, and the Seventh, defeating each of them in turn. The Fourth Route retreated without giving battle, and the Fifth Route was partly destroyed. Within fourteen days the Red Army had fought six battles, and marched eight days, ending with a decisive victory. With the break-up or retreat of the other six routes the First Route Army, commanded by Chiang Kuang-nai and Ts'ai T'ing-k'ai, withdrew without any serious fighting.
"One month later, Chiang Kai-shek took command of an army of 300, 000 men 'for the final extermination of the "Red bandits."' He was assisted by his ablest commanders：Ch'en Ming-shu, Ho Ying-ch'in, and Chu Shao-liang, each of whom had charge of a main route of advance. Chiang hoped to take the Red areas by storm——a rapid 'wiping-up' of the 'Red bandits.' He began by moving his armies 80 li a day into the heart of soviet territory. This supplied the very conditions under which the Red Army fights best, and it soon proved the serious mistake of Chiang's tactics. With a main force of only 30, 000 men, by a series of brilliant maneuvers, our army attacked five different columns in five days. In the first battle the Red Army captured many enemy troops and large amounts of ammunition, guns and equipment. By September the Third Campaign had been admitted to be a failure, and Chiang Kai-shek in October withdrew his troops.
"The Red Army now entered a period of comparative peace and growth. Expansion was very rapid. The First Soviet Congress was called on December 11, 1931, and the Central Soviet Government was established, with myself as chairman. Chu Teh was elected commander-in-chief of the Red Army. In the same month there occurred the great Ningtu Uprising, when more than 20, 000 troops of the Twenty-eighth Route Army of the Kuomintang revolted and joined the Red Army. They were led by Tung Chen-t'ang and Chao Po-sheng. Chao was later killed in battle in Kiangsi, but Tung is today still commander of the Fifth Red Army——the Fifth Army Corps having been created out of the troops taken in from the Ningtu Uprising.
"The Red Army now began offensives of its own. In 1932 it fought a great battle at Changchow, in Fukien, and captured the city. In the South it attacked Ch'en Chi-t'ang at Nan Hsiang, and on Chiang Kai-shek's front it stormed Lo An, Li Chuan, Chien Ning and T'ai Ning. It attacked but did not occupy Kanchow. From October, 1932, onward, and until the beginning of the Long March to the Northwest, I myself devoted my time almost exclusively to work with the Soviet Government, leaving the military command to Chu Teh and others.
"In April, 1933, began the fourth and, for Nanking, perhaps the most disastrous of its 'extermination campaigns.'[*] In the first battle of this period two divisions were disarmed and two divisional commanders were captured. The Fifty-ninth Division was partly destroyed and the Fifty-second was completely destroyed. Thirteen thousand men were captured in this one battle at Ta Lung P'ing and Chiao Hui in Lo An Hsien. The Kuomintang's Eleventh Division, then Chiang Kai-shek's best, was next eliminated, being almost totally disarmed; its commander was seriously wounded. These engagements proved decisive turning points and the Fourth Campaign soon afterwards ended. Chiang Kai-shek at this time wrote to Ch'en Ch'eng, his field commander, that he considered this defeat 'the greatest humiliation' in his life. Ch'en Ch'eng did not favor pushing the campaign. He told people then that in his opinion fighting the Reds was a 'lifetime job' and a 'life sentence.' Reports of this coming to Chiang Kai-shek, he removed Ch'en Ch'eng from the high command.
"For his fifth and last campaign, Chiang Kai-shek mobilized nearly one million men and adopted new tactics and strategy. Already, in the Fourth Campaign, Chiang had, on the recommendation of his German advisers, begun the use of the blockhouse and fortifications system. In the Fifth Campaign he placed his entire reliance upon it.
"In this period we made two important errors. The first was the failure to unite with Ts'ai T'ing-k'ai's army in 1933 during the Fukien Rebellion. The second was the adoption of the erroneous strategy of simple defense, abandoning our former tactics of maneuver. It was a serious mistake to meet the vastly superior Nanking forces in positional warfare, at which the Red Army was neither technically nor spiritually at its best.[4]
"As a result of these mistakes, and the new tactics and strategy of Chiang's campaign, combined with the overwhelming numerical and technical superiority of the Kuomintang forces, the Red Army was obliged, in 1934, to seek to change the conditions of its existence in Kiangsi, which were rapidly becoming more unfavorable. Second, the national political situation influenced the decision to move the scene of main operations to the Northwest.[5] Following Japan's invasion of Manchuria and Shanghai, the Soviet Government had, as early as February, 1932, formally declared war on Japan. This declaration, which could not, of course, be made effective, owing to the blockade and encirclement of Soviet China by the Kuomintang troops, had been followed by the issuance of a manifesto calling for a united front of all armed forces in China to resist Japanese imperialism. Early in 1933 the Soviet Government announced that it would cooperate with any White army on the basis of cessation of civil war and attacks on the soviets and the Red Afmy, guarantee of civil liberties and democratic rights to the masses, and arming of the people for an anti-Japanese war.[6]
"The Fifth Extermination Campaign began in October, 1933. In January, 1934, the Second All-China Congress of Soviets was convened in Juichin, the soviet capital, and a survey of the achievements of the revolution took place. Here I gave a long report, and here the Central Soviet Government, as its personnel exists today, was elected. Preparations soon afterwards were made for the Long March. It was begun in October, 1934, just a year after Chiang Kai-shek launched his last campaign——a year of almost constant fighting, struggle and enormous losses on both sides.
"By January, 1935, the main forces of the Red Army reached Tsunyi, in Kweichow. For the next four months the army was almost constantly moving and the most energetic combat and fighting took place. Through many, many difficulties, across the longest and deepest and most dangerous rivers of China, across some of its highest and most hazardous mountain passes, through the country of fierce aborigines, through the empty grasslands, through cold and through intense heat, through wind and snow and rainstorm, pursued by half the White armies of China, through all these natural barriers, and fighting its way past the local troops of Kwangtung, Hunan, Kwangsi, Kweichow, Yunnan, Sikang, Szechuan, Kansu, and Shensi, the Red Army at last reached northern Shensi in October, 1935, and enlarged its base in China's great Northwest.[*]
"The victorious march of the Red Army, and its triumphant arrival in Kansu and Shensi with its living forces still intact, was due first to the correct leadership of the Communist Party, and second to the great skill, courage, determination, and almost superhuman endurance and revolutionary ardor of the basic cadres of our soviet people. The Communist Party of China was, is, and will ever be faithful to Marxism-Leninism, and it will continue its struggles against every opportunist tendency. In this determination lies one explanation of its invincibility and the certainty of its final victory."[7]
[*]This order is not so enigmatic as it sounds. The wooden doors of a Chinese house are easily detachable, and are often taken down at night, put across wooden blocks, and used for an improvised bed.
[**]They were also sung daily in a Red Army song.
[‡]See BN.
[*]For details see Lin Piao, BN.
[*]The rent from which Mao had used earlier for the peasant movement in Hunan.
[**]See BN.
[*]Briefly to supplement this quite inadequate account of Li, see note 3 to this chapter and Li Li-san, BN.
[*]This campaign is described in interesting detail by Yang Chien in The Communist Situation in China (Nanking, 1931).
[*]There was considerable confusion, in many accounts written of the anti-Red wars, concerning the number of major expeditions sent against the soviet districts. Some writers totaled up as many as eight "extermination"or "annihilation"drives, but several of these big mobilizations by Nanking were purely defensive. Red Army commanders spoke of only five main anti-Red campaigns. These were, with the approximate number of Nanking troops directly involved in each, as follows：First, December, 1930, to January, 1931, 100, 000; Second, May to June, 1931, 200, 000; Third, July to October, 1931, 300, 000; Fourth, April to October, 1933, 250, 000; Fifth, October, 1933, to October, 1934, 400, 000 (over 900, 000 troops were mobilized against the three main soviet districts). No major expedition was launched by Nanking during 1932, when Chiang Kai-shek was using approximately 500, 000 troops in defensive positions around the Red districts. It was, on the contrary, a year of big Red offensives. Evidently Nanking's defensive operations in 1932, which were, of course, propagandized as "anti-Red campaigns, "were misunderstood by many writers as major expeditions.
[*]In this account Mao made no reference to the important meeting of the Central Committee held at Tsunyi, which elected him to the leadership. For further comment on the Fifth Campaign and Tsunyi, see note 3 to this chapter and Li Teh in BN.