Sixty-nine years ago (this article was published in 1999 – ed.), a massive wave of revolutionary terror swept through the Communist-led Jiangxi Soviet. Thousands of Red Army officers and soldiers, as well as Party members and ordinary people in the base area, were brutally killed in a purge called the “purge of the AB regiment”[1]. This was not done by Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang, the sworn enemies of the CCP, but by the CCP organization in the base area and the General Committee of the Red Front Army under the personal command of Mao Zedong. This historical fact was later completely rewritten as Mao Zedong rose to the top of the Communist Party. It was not until the 1980s and 1990s that the broad outlines of the events of that year emerged, leaving aside Mao’s personal responsibility, but there are still many obscure points. This article examines why Mao initiated the “fight against the ABs” in the Red Army and the base areas. What was the basis Mao sought for the Great Purge? What was the relationship between the Great Terror and the establishment of a new society? Why did Mao stop using the “fight against the ABs” to resolve conflicts within the Party after he took control of the Communist Party?
The cause of the incident: violence to maintain leadership authority
Mao Zedong’s reputation in the Chinese Communist revolutionary movement began in 1927 after the split of the Communist Party, when he was the first to take the path of armed resistance against the Kuomintang and became the famous leader of the Communist Party’s armed revolution. Before that, Mao was one of the founding fathers of the CCP, but from 1921-27, the party’s reputation was dominated by Chen Duxiu and others, and although Mao was recognized as an expert in the agricultural movement, he was still among the younger generation and did not play any leading role in the party’s decisions.
When the Communist Party was separated and the CCP went underground, the heartland of the revolution gradually shifted from the cities to the countryside, and the form of struggle, organizational composition and character of the Party changed profoundly. As the CCP had transformed from a legal party to a secret party, the democratic centralism of the Leninist party was fully institutionalized, and the authority of the CCP Central Committee as the leading command of the Chinese revolution was basically established, thus the CCP began the stage of the military communist revolution.
The main sign of entering the stage of military communist revolution was that after 1927, the CCP had an unprecedented territory under its own control – the Red Zone – and from then on the CCP could openly implement its own revolutionary program to transform China in these territories, which was a new situation that the CCP had never encountered since its establishment. It was under such circumstances that Mao Zedong came to prominence and fame, and the Party’s reputation gradually gathered in his body.
Mao undoubtedly did the greatest service to the CCP revolution, and his efforts in rural Jiangxi and his practice opened up a new path for the CCP. But in the late 1920s and early 1930s, Mao was only an armed comrade under the Party leadership and had to accept the leadership of the CCP Central Committee from Shanghai. For a considerable period, Mao was not only not the rightful leader of the Party, but even in the Jiangxi Soviet, Mao’s personal authority had not yet been completely consolidated.
Mao got his start in the CCP by his familiarity with the countryside and the peasantry and his skill in leading military struggles, yet one major difference between modern Chinese revolutionary warfare and the peasant wars of past generations is that the armed revolution against the Kuomintang was under the direct leadership of the Communist Party. The Party provided the ideological doctrinal system for the armed revolution and had the full right to interpret this doctrinal system. The Party also provided the organizational framework and the source of cadres for the armed revolution, and the Party had not only the power to give orders to establish the revolutionary armies, but also the organizational command to appoint and mobilize cadres. Despite Mao’s overwhelming merit in creating the Red Army and opening up the Red Base Areas, he was still constrained by the Party.
In 1927-29, Mao worked hard in Jiangxi and was largely subservient to the Central Committee in Shanghai, although he was dissatisfied with the constraints. Although Mao did transgress from Time to time in theoretical matters, his statements were generally within the ideological framework of the CPC Central Committee. Mao also did not overstep his authority in organizational relations. Mao often reported in writing to the higher party committees and the CPC Central Committee about the struggle in the base areas.
The CPC Central Committee viewed Mao’s career in Jiangxi with considerable admiration, and in 1928, when the Sixth Congress was held in Moscow, Mao was elected to the Central Committee without his presence. In general, the Shanghai Central Committee was optimistic about Mao’s activities, including Mao’s leadership in the Red Army in Jiangxi, especially during the controversy between Zhu De and Mao in 1929, when the Central Committee took a clear position in support of Mao, contributing to the establishment of Mao’s leadership in the Jiangxi Soviet.
After the Gutian Conference in 1929, Mao’s authority in the Jiangxi Soviet had been initially formed, and the two most important conditions contributing to the formation of Mao’s leadership authority were both in place: first, the CPC Central Committee’s clear support for Mao provided a legal basis for Mao’s authority; second, Mao’s deeds were outstanding, and under his leadership the base territory was expanded and the population increased. Zhu De, who once disagreed with Mao, lost his prestige due to military defeat, while Mao’s military success provided a factual basis for Mao’s authority. As a concrete manifestation of Mao’s leadership authority, in 1930, Mao became the General Political Commissar and Secretary of the General Front Committee of the Red First Army. In a situation where a unified Soviet Party leadership had not yet been established, the General Front Committee of the Red First Army led by Mao became the highest leadership body in the Jiangxi Soviet. In the war environment, the army was the most important pillar to maintain the existence of the Soviet Union, and the army-party-soviet power was highly integrated. This special status of Mao gave him a lot of freedom – Mao henceforth had a flexible right to interpret the instructions of the central government, and Mao could combine his own opinions with those of the central government and enforce them in the name of the central government. However, Mao was not the CPC Central Committee after all, and there were still parts of the Red Army and Party organizations within the Soviet Union that invoked the CPC Central Committee to negatively counter Mao’s new authority.
The late 1920s and early 1930s were the haphazard years of the CCP’s armed revolution, and for a while the contradictions within the revolutionary camp were temporarily concealed under the general goal of rebelling against the Kuomintang. But within the base areas, the contradictions between foreign and local cadres, between cadres left behind in the Soviet Union and domestic cadres, and between intellectual and peasant-born cadres still existed, and the only force that could be brought together came from the authority of the CCP Central Committee, including the theoretical authority of the ideological doctrine system provided by the Central Committee. Only at this time the CCP Central Committee was far from the countryside, and the leadership of the city Central Committee over the base areas had to be reflected through Mao Zedong, so Mao’s personal knowledge, wisdom, personality factor and style and attitude became particularly important.
Mao was the most politically discerning and strong-willed of all the armed comrades in the Jiangxi Soviet, and he made the best use of his soldiers in the war, but his style was so arbitrary that many of his comrades in the army were “fearful” of him [2]. In the 1929 dispute between Zhu and Mao, Zhu De was sympathetic and supported by most cadres of the Fourth Red Army (the predecessor of the Red Army) because of his generosity and democratic style, and in July 1929 Chen Yi went to Shanghai to report and ask the Central Committee’s opinion on the dispute between Zhu and Mao, and the Central Committee explicitly expressed its support for Mao. Chen Yi returned to Gan, personally invited Mao out of the mountain, Zhu De, Chen Yi for loyal Communist Party members, all obey the Central Committee, re-rationalized the relationship with Mao, so that the differences and contradictions within the Red Army can be resolved. However, the differences between Mao and the local Red Army and Party organizations in southwest Gan were sharpened for various reasons.
It was under these circumstances that the purge of Mao’s “AB Group” occurred. The immediate cause of this incident was that Mao’s authority in the Jiangxi Soviet had just been established, but was challenged by the local Red Army and Party organizations in southwest Ganxi, led by Li Wenlin. In order to maintain his authority in the base area, Mao broke free from the constraints of party morality and party ethics and resorted to extreme measures to suppress party comrades whom he suspected of being dissident forces.
What did Mao want to achieve by using bloodshed and unconventional means to settle intra-party disputes? In a word, Mao wanted to be the Lenin of the Jiangxi Soviet Union. Since Mao had not yet become the Lenin of the Chinese party and did not have the legal authority to order the party, he resorted to extreme measures to suppress the opposition within the party.
Suppressing the “counter-revolution”, what’s the shame?
How to solve the contradiction between the massive terror inflicted on the Party and the military, and the enormous conflict with Party morality and Party ethics? Mao Zedong had his own solution. He claimed that the Party and the Red Army in southwest Gan, led by Li Wenlin, had been controlled by opportunism and the rich peasant line, and that in order to save the revolution, they had to be completely reformed, so that Mao’s suppression would have an ideological banner.
Li Wenlin, one of the founders of the Party and the Red Army in southwest Ganxi who came from an intellectual background, was once very close to Mao and the Fourth Red Army. But by the early 1930s, the local Red Army in Jiangxi and the Party and League agencies in southwest Gangsinan, which had undergone many combinations, disagreed with Mao on several issues, and the relationship with Mao became increasingly strained.
The disagreement between the southwest Gangsinan side and Mao Zedong focused on two issues: (1) the issue of land reform policy. The southwestern side advocated the implementation of the decision of the Sixth Communist Party Congress on “confiscating the land of the gentry and landlords” and opposed Mao’s idea of “confiscating all land”. At the end of November 1929, Mao Zedong proposed to merge the two special committees of Ganxi and Xiang-Gan border to form a new Ganxi Special Committee, and Mao also decided to merge the Second and Fourth Red Regiments led by Li Wenlin into Peng Dehuai’s division to form the Sixth Red Army. In January 1930, Mao Zedong appointed Liu Shiqi and Zeng Shan, cadres of the Fourth Red Army, to form the Ganxi Special Committee as the highest body to lead Ganxi, but they were resisted by the Ganxi side.
In order to resolve the conflicts with the local Red Army and party organizations in southwest Gan, Mao Zedong held a joint meeting with the front committee of the Red Army and the heads of the southwest Gan in Pietou Village, Ji’an County, where the special committee was located, from February 6 to 9, 1930, with Jiang Hanbo also participating as an inspector of the CPC Jiangxi Provincial Committee, and Liu Shiqi and others cooperating with Mao Zedong in organizing the meeting.
At the “February 7” meeting, two months after the meeting, Mao Zedong organized the meeting. At the “February 7” meeting, Mao Zedong, who had resumed leadership of the Red Army with the approval of the CPC Central Committee two months earlier, with the help of Liu Shiqi and Zeng Shan, launched a fierce struggle against the heads of the local Red Army and party organizations in southwest Gan, which laid the seeds for the “purge of the AB regiment” campaign later.
Mao Zedong and others cited two main “serious political mistakes” of the local Red Army and party leaders in southwestern Ganzhou: (1) Mao and others criticized Jiang Hanbo and Li Wenlin, the leaders of southwestern Ganzhou, for proposing to “confiscate the land of the gentry and landlords”, which was (1) Mao and others criticized Jiang Hanbo and Li Wenlin, who were in charge of the southwest of Ganxi, for their idea of “confiscating the land of the gentry landlords”, which was a “complete move towards the line of the rural bourgeoisie (rich peasants)” and pointed out that “if this development continues, the strategy of the working class in fighting for the peasants will be completely abolished, and the road of Trotsky and Chen Duxiu will be followed, and the agrarian revolution will be completely abolished. (2) Mao and others accused Jiang Hanbo and others of using “non-political and trivial words to incite comrades to oppose the Party leaders of the correct line” [3] – the “Party leaders” mentioned here refer to Liu Shiqi, who was assigned by Mao Zedong as secretary of the Ganxi Special Committee.
The “February 7” meeting chaired by Mao Zedong had the effect of On February 16, the General Committee of the Fourth Red Army, of which Mao was the secretary, issued “Notice No. 1 of the Committee”, formally announcing the launch of “The circular pointed out that [4].
There is a serious crisis in the Party in southwest Ganxi, that is, the landlords and rich peasants fill the Party’s local guidance organs at all levels, the Party’s policy is completely opportunistic policy, if not completely purged, not only can not carry out the Party’s great political task, but also the revolution will be defeated. The Joint Conference called on the revolutionary comrades in the Party to rise up, to defeat the opportunist political leadership, to expel the landlords and rich peasants from the Party, and to bring about the rapid Bolshevikization of the Party.
The concept of “overthrowing the opportunist leadership” was still a concept of intra-party struggle, which first appeared around the “August 7 Conference” in 1927. This concept, which first appeared around the time of the August 7 Conference in 1927, only announced the change of Chen Duxiu’s line and his suspension from the leadership of the Central Committee. After that, although the CCP had increasingly emphasized ideological unity, some traces of the democratic tradition of the Revolutionary period remained in the Party. According to party morality and party ethics at that time, dissenting views could still be debated within the party, and the Central Committee or the Comintern headquarters in Moscow had the final say, and there were no cases of physical elimination of dissenting party comrades.
The transition from the concept of intra-party struggle to the concept of struggle against the enemy required a transition and transformation, and Mao found this intermediary link with ease. He declared that the opportunist leaders within the Party were themselves rich and poor counterrevolutionaries, thus smoothly linking the slogan of the struggle against the enemy, “Down with the Kuomintang and eliminate the rich and poor counterrevolutionaries,” with the concept of the intra-Party struggle, “Down with the opportunist leaders,” and at one stroke gaining In the spring of 1930, news of the infiltration and sabotage of the Kuomintang’s “AB Corps” was already circulating in the Soviet Union, and its organizations were being broken up one after another, and the atmosphere of vigilance against the enemy in the base areas was at an all-time high. In such a situation, Mao could use the term “suppression of counter-revolution” to demand that the Red Army, the Party organizations and the Soviet power in the base areas fully support and obey the policy of suppressing the “AB League”.
In 1930, after the “February 7” Conference, the revolutionary terror was so great that the Party organizations and the Soviet power in the Red Army and the base areas gave their full support and obedience to the policy of suppressing the “AB League. After the “February 7” Conference in 1930, an atmosphere of revolutionary terror had gradually developed in the Jiangxi Soviet. On June 25, the West Road Committee of the Special Committee of the Communist Party of China in Southwest Jiangxi issued the “Propaganda Outline of the Anti-Regrouping AB Group”, ordering organizations at all levels to
If the masses are found to have wavering bad performance, should be arrested and handed over to the Soviet government to investigate, all out of the rusty through the red area must be strictly checked, if there is suspicion should be arrested and handed over to the Soviet government, the circulation of the people in the red area should hold the Soviet pass note.
The masses of workers and peasants only class distinctions, do not care to relatives and friends, who come to their own homes or found elsewhere there are wrong actions of people regardless of relatives and friends, should be reported to the Soviet to take office.
The Outline also called for the “implementation of red purges” and “red terror” to “purge the spies under the red flag”: “Now the Soviets at all levels should step up Now the Soviets at all levels should intensify the work of purging counter-revolutionaries, arrest and kill the reactionary rich peasants of the gentry and landlords as a warning, but the killings should be evidenced by reactionary facts, and accidental killings are strictly forbidden.” [5] Although this “Outline” mentioned that there must be evidence of killings and accidental killings were strictly forbidden, once the door of terror was opened, the situation soon got out of control.
In July and August 1930, the “purge of the AB Corps” was quickly transferred from the grassroots to the higher authorities, and in August Li Wenlin became secretary of the newly established Jiangxi Provincial Action Committee, which was ordered by Li Lisan to attack the big cities. Li Wenlin was not inferior to Liu Shiqi, the former secretary of the Special Committee, in terms of enthusiasm for “fighting the AB group”, but even more so. In the document “Emergency Circular No. 20 – Mobilizing Party Members and the Masses to Thoroughly Purge the AB League” issued on September 24, 1930, the Special Committee of Gangsouthwest declared: “The Red Flag Society Lenin Youth Society and the Gangsouthwest Government have AB League groups… All the AB League members of the Gangsouthwest Government who have infiltrated the Special Committee of the Party and the League… All the members of the regiment were busted. And the organizations in each county and district have been reported.”
This “Emergency Circular” also specifies in detail the interrogation methods and the basic principles of execution of the “AB Group”: “The AB Group is very insidious and cunning, treacherous and tough, and will never confess unless tortured with the most brutal, we must use both soft and hard methods to continue the strict form (torture) interrogation. We must use both hard and soft methods to continue the strict form (torture) interrogation, to figure out the source of their words, find clues, follow the trail of questioning, the main thing is to make the confession of the AB group, in order to eliminate the fundamental.”
Once the “AB League” members were found, the next step was to shoot them. The Emergency Circular demanded [6].
The leaders should of course be executed by extraordinary means, but care must be taken that they are killed by the masses in a mass meeting. ⋯⋯… the ABs of the rich peasants, petty bourgeoisie and above, and hooligans and landlubbers should be killed without Amnesty. ⋯⋯…Workers and peasants who joined the AB group have a historical status and are more capable of activity are killed without amnesty.
By October, among the 30,000-odd Communists in southwest Gan, “more than 1,000 landlords and rich peasants had been expelled” (the “February 7th” meeting called for the “purging of the AB group”). The “February 7” conference called for the “ruthless and resolute expulsion from the Party of those who represent the rich peasants, regardless of their class and past work”), and the elimination of more than a thousand “AB groups. One fourth of the staff of the Soviet Government of Southwest Gan was branded as “AB group” and most of them were killed [8].
On October 14, 1930, Mao Zedong wrote a letter to the CPC Central Committee in Ji’an, Jiangxi Province. On October 14, 1930, Mao wrote a letter to the CPC Central Committee in Ji’an County, Jiangxi, informing it of his views on the situation of the Party in southwest Gan and the measures he was prepared to take. In this letter, Mao continued to develop his views on the situation in southwestern Gan. In this letter, Mao continued to develop his basic views on the Party and League structure in southwest Gan during the “February 7” meeting, pointing out that the Party in southwest Gan “is in a very serious crisis, with the whole Party being led entirely by the rich peasant line. The majority of the guiding organs at all levels, both inside and outside, were stuffed with the leading organs of the AB group. Mao affirmed that in order to “salvage this crisis”, he decided to conduct a purge campaign with the call to “fight the AB League” in order to “fundamentally transform the Party and League institutions in southwest Gan”[9]. [9].
Did Mao really believe that there were so many “AB groups”? After 1927, the CCP, struggling for survival, was under the extreme cruelty of blockade and extermination for a long time, and as a self-defense reaction, Mao used to give serious estimation to the Anti-Communist behavior of the Kuomintang. Mao took a particularly serious view of such issues as the KMT’s dispatch of sabotage agents to Communist areas and the KMT’s use of the “surrender policy” to coerce CCP personnel to act as agents. During the fierce struggle between the Communists and the Kuomintang, Mao had formed a mindset that he would rather believe in the activities of the Kuomintang in the Communist areas than not. In terms of “vigilance”, no senior Communist leader surpassed Mao Zedong. On the other hand, even Li Wenlin and others were fighting against the “AB group”, so Mao had no reason not to believe that there were many “AB groups”.
However, Mao Zedong was definitely a realist, he knew very well that there could not be so many “AB groups” in the Soviet Union, since the floodgates of terror had been opened, he could lead the way and suppress all the open and potential opponents together, Mao made an amazing move: before suppressing Li Wenlin and other leaders in southwest Gan, he took the lead in his own Before suppressing Li Wenlin and other leaders in southwestern Gan, Mao took the lead in carrying out a major purge of the Red Army (the First and Third Red Army Corps) under his command and launched the “Fight AB Corps” campaign.
In October 1930, Mao led the Red Army to capture Ji’an, but then withdrew, and Mao also mobilized Peng Dehuai to withdraw after the capture of Changsha. Mao’s moves caused dissatisfaction among some Red Army commanders and a momentary confusion in the army. In order to eliminate the instability in the army, Mao led the army out of Ji’an, in late November to mid-December in the First Army quickly launched a “rapid army rectification” – its main content is in the division, regiment, battalion, company, platoon set up purge organization, arrest and kill the army in the land rich In less than a month, the army was in a state of discontent. In less than a month, more than 4,400 members of the “AB Regiment” were purged from the 40,000-strong Red Army [10], including “dozens of chiefs” (referring to the chiefs of the “AB Regiment”). These people were executed.
The “fight against the AB Corps” within the Red Army was extremely violent, and all the members of the Party who were rich or intellectuals, and those who had disagreed with Mao in the past, were in danger and in a precarious situation. Huang Kecheng was the political commissar of the Third Division of the Red Army Corps at the time, and the division’s organization section chief and political affairs section chief were all purged as “AB Corps”. Propaganda section chief He Ducai joined the Communist Party during the Revolutionary period, participated in the Nanchang riots, and then followed Zhu De to Jinggang Mountain. He was soon transferred out of the Red Army Corps and became a propaganda chief under Huang Kecheng. He Ducai and Huang Kecheng befriended each other, and “they talked about everything together”. He Ducai believes that Mao Zedong is a remarkable person, in terms of ability, no one can surpass Mao Zedong, his political ideas are undoubtedly the most correct. However, Mao’s organizational line was not right, “Mao Zedong was too creditable to those who obeyed him and could not treat people with different opinions equally, not as generous and frank as Zhu Laozi. He Ducai also cited the example that some people with very bad qualities were used by Mao because they would be obedient and were given great power, and were not held accountable for doing bad things [11]. If not, the brilliant and faultless He Ducai was soon killed under the notorious name of “AB group”.
Since Mao Zedong killed the Red Army under his own leadership, he had no qualms about killing the local Red Army in southwest Gan, which had always sung against him. As mentioned earlier, Li Wenlin was very resolute on the issue of “purging the AB group”, but in October 1930, with the increasing severity of the phenomenon of indiscriminate killing revealed in the “purging of the AB group”, Li Wenlin’s attitude At the end of October, the provincial executive committee issued a circular criticizing the simplistic mistakes in the “purge of the AB League”, stressing that the scope of surrender should be extended to the workers and peasants, and that care should be taken in the capture of old comrades, and that if the case was serious, the culprits must be taken to the purge committee of the provincial executive committee for trial, relieving the grassroots organizations below the county level of the power of execution. [12]. Curiously, while Li Wenlin’s purge frenzy cooled down, Mao began to heat up.
In November 1930, the sharp edge of Mao’s “fundamental transformation” finally stabbed at the CCP’s Jiangxi Provincial Action Committee and the local Red Army in southwest Ganxi under its jurisdiction. This action was all the more tragic because Li Wenlin and others insisted on carrying out the line of Li Lisan’s Central Committee and opposed the idea of abandoning the attack on Nanchang.
In May 1930, Li Wenlin, a representative of southwest Gansu, went to Shanghai to attend the National Conference of Soviet Regional Representatives chaired by Li Lizan, which called for concentrating on attacking large cities and striving for the first victory in one or several provinces. After his return, Li Wenlin presided over the second plenary meeting of the Special Committee of Southwest Ganxi in early August and deployed to implement the spirit of Li Lisan. The “Second Plenary Session” accused Mao of a series of views and practices without naming him, dismissed Liu Shiqi, who supported Mao’s ideas and was sent by Mao to be the secretary of the Southwest Gan Special Committee, and recommended that the Shanghai Central Committee expel him from the Party. All this provoked Mao’s great anger. Mao had long been accustomed to acting as the highest representative of the Central Committee in the Jiangxi Soviet, so how could he tolerate someone opposing himself in the name of supporting the Central Committee under his own eyes [13]? At this time, Mao did not know the term “Li San Line”, so he decided that the “Second Plenary Session” was a meeting of the “AB Group abolitionists”.
In October 1930, when the Red Front Army captured Ji’an, a note allegedly signed by Li Wenlin’s landlord father with his real name was found among the documents of the local authorities of the Kuomintang[14], although the exact content of the note is unknown, there is already evidence linking Li Wenlin to the “AB League”. In the middle and end of October, Li Wenlin openly opposed Mao’s military strategy of “luring the enemy deeper” at the Xiagang and Luofang meetings, and advocated the implementation of Li Lisan’s instructions to attack the big cities, thus intensifying the conflict with Mao. “At the end of November 1930, Li Wenlin was detained in Huangpi, Ningdu County [15], followed by a group of people with whom Li Wenlin had work connections. Mao Zedong wrote a letter to the reorganized Jiangxi Provincial Committee on December 3, 1930, identifying Duan Liangbi (a member of the Standing Committee of the Provincial Committee and Secretary of the Special Committee of the Southwest Ganxi Regiment) and Li Baifang (Secretary General of the Provincial Committee) as members of the “AB Regiment” and ordering “the capture of Li Baifang and others and a strict search for He ordered that “Li Baifang and others should be arrested and the counter-revolutionary clues in southwest Gansu should be searched for and exterminated”. In this letter, Mao asked the provincial executive committee, upon receiving this letter, to “carry out the task of exterminating the counter-revolution immediately with Comrade Li (i.e. Li Shaojiu) without the slightest hesitation” and to “catch the rich peasants and hooligans in all counties and districts, and kill them in large numbers. If the Party and the government of the area are not caught and killed, the person in charge of that area can be arrested and interrogated” [16].
Li Shaojiu went to Futian on December 3 with Mao’s instruction letter, and on the 5th Mao sent two Red Army soldiers to deliver a second instruction letter to Li Shaojiu and the Provincial Committee, who had already left. In the letter, Mao instructed them to “find more important people” from the clues of those who had been caught. In order to supervise the implementation of the two letters, Mao also sent Gubai, the secretary general of the General Forward Committee, to Futian to “assist in the purge”.
In the afternoon of December 7, Li Shaojiu, then secretary-general of the General Political Department of the Red Army and chairman of the purge committee, arrived at Futian, the seat of the Jiangxi Provincial Soviet Government, and handed over Mao’s letter of instruction to the head of the Jiangxi Provincial Soviet Government, then arrested Duan Liangbi, Li Baifang, Jin Wanbang, Zhou Coronet, Xie Hanchang, Ma Ming and eight other major leaders of the Provincial Executive Committee and the Red Army. Li Shaojiu used a variety of criminal laws on these comrades, such as “beating the earth and burning incense”, and the beaten comrades “were all intact” and “had broken fingers and burned all over their bodies and could not move”. On December 8, the wives of Li Baifang, Ma Ming, and Zhou Coronet, who had been detained to see their husbands, were also arrested and tortured as part of the “AB group”. They were subjected to severe punishments, including “beating with ground thunderbolts, burning their bodies with incense, burning their cunts, and cutting their breasts with small knives” [17]. Under the torture, Duan Liangbi confessed that Li Wenlin, Jin Wanbang, Liu En, Zhou Guan, and Ma Ming “were the leaders of the AB regiment, and that there were a large number of AB regiments in the Red Army School”. As General Xiao Ke recalled in 1982, “Even after half a century, it is still a tragic sigh. Those of us who ‘came through’ also find it unbearable to look back” [18].
From December 7 to the evening of December 12, in just five days, Li Shaojiu and others sat in Futian and carried out a vigorous purge, arresting more than 120 members of the “AB Group” and dozens of key criminals, and executing more than 40 of them [19], among whom Li Shaojiu personally arranged the execution of 25 people before he left for Donggu. The brutal actions of Li Shaojiu and others finally led to the Futian Incident, which shocked the Soviet Union on December 12, 1930.
The outbreak of the Futian Incident caused a serious crisis within the Jiangxi Soviet Union and did great damage to Mao Zedong’s reputation. Mao personally stepped in, without shame, and drafted “a letter of reply from the general front committee” on December 20, 1930 to justify his actions. In this letter of reply, Mao insisted that “Su AB group” are well-founded. He said: the Red Army “AB” key criminals’ confessions “many prove that the provincial executive committee within the Jiangxi AB group of provincial headquarters, Duan Liangbi, Li Baifang, Xie Hanchang for its primary. Mao identified Duan Liangbi as the chief criminal of the “AB League” and the evidence was overwhelming. He said: “If Duan, Li, Jin and Xie are loyal revolutionary comrades, even if they are aggrieved for a while, there will always be a day to clear their injustice, so why should they confess and frame other comrades? Others can still confess, Duan, Li, Xie, such as the provincial executive committee and the army political department director of the heavy responsibility, why can it?” [20] Mao knew full well that Duan and others were designated as “AB regiment” by torture to extract confessions, but he did not criticize the torture to extract confessions, but accused Duan and others of not being able to suffer for the revolution for a while, and if they could not suffer for the revolution, they must have a ghost in their hearts. According to Mao’s logic, as long as Duan Liangbi and others admitted to being the leaders of the “AB group”, it would prove that they were the real “AB group” – this logic and way of thinking of Mao became the basis for the future This logic and way of thinking of Mao became the conventional way of thinking of the future ultra-leftist trial and purge, and was the most important ideological root of the repeatedly prohibited letters of forced confession. Under such a way of thinking, Mao’s insistence on “purging the AB group” was not only not wrong, but also a great contribution to the revolution. He said, “The AB regiment has set up in the Red Army the AB regiment’s commander-in-chief, commander-in-chief, army division chief, five regular riots, and made a good riot flag, if not severely extinguished, I am afraid the Red Army has long ceased to exist.” Mao claimed that the Futian Incident had brought “the original form of the rebellion to light” and called for a resolute suppression of the Incident [21].
Mao was justified because he believed that he was the symbol of the Red Army and the Party, that Mao was the center of the base, and that he was the representative of the Communist International in China [22], and that to oppose Mao was to be the “AB group”, and that all those killed were counter-revolutionaries, so there was no shame in that! In Mao’s eyes, as long as the goal is noble – to extinguish the “AB group” is to defend the revolution, even if the means are harsher, it does not matter. In the Great Terror, the General Front Committee and Mao’s personal authority was fully established, and Mao became the Lenin of the Jiangxi Soviet Union in the Great Terror!
Revolutionary Terror and the Purification of the New Society
Did Mao have other purposes for indulging in the “fight against the AB group”? In other words, did Mao have another intention, namely, to rebuild the new society in the base areas through the Great Terror?
According to various sources, after the 1920s, Mao Zedong had become a faithful believer in the Marxist theory of class struggle, and Mao’s leadership in opening up the revolutionary base in Jiangxi itself had the obvious purpose of creating a new proletarian society, and the first prerequisite for creating such a new society was to bring the old world to its knees. According to this ideological logic, the representatives and symbols of the old world, the landlords and the gentry and the intellectuals who were dependent on them, must become the objects of the revolution, so that fighting for the workers and peasants and eliminating the landlords and gentry counter-revolution became two sides of the same coin.
Under the leadership of Mao Zedong, the base area of southern Gan in 1930 had developed greatly and was about to become one with the base area of western Fujian. The main goal of the new social reform was to combat the remaining rich and the children of the rich in political and social Life, including the purging of intellectual members of the Party who came from rich families. In the “purge of the AB group”, members of the Party from wealthy families were the first to be eliminated, indicating the “purification” nature of this struggle.
Within the CCP, Mao Zedong had long been known for his anti-dogma and anti-far-left views, which won him the support of the entire party. But in the early 1930s, this was not the case with Mao, whose ultra-leftism was in some ways comparable to that of the Comintern, especially in its approach to the rich peasants.
In June 1930, Mao presided over the formulation of the “Resolution on the Rich Peasants”. In June 1930, Mao presided over the formulation of the “Resolution on the Rich Peasants”, which emphasized the principle of “drawing more and making up for less, fattening and thinning”, but in dealing with the rich peasants, Mao’s attitude did not differ from the relevant policy of the Communist International, and was even more drastic. Mao fiercely attacked the rich peasants, declaring that “the exploitation of the rich peasants is even more cruel than that of the landlords” and that “this class has been counter-revolutionary from the beginning”. Mao even targeted at the rich middle peasants who did not rent out their land and did not hire workers, calling them the “third kind of rich peasants” and calling for “resolute support for the masses to confiscate their land and abolish their debts”. What’s more, Mao actually invented the concept of “rich peasant communists” and regarded all comrades who supported the Sixth Communist Party Congress to “confiscate the land of the gentry and landlords” as “rich peasant elements in the Party”. He demanded that they be “purged from the Party” and “unconditionally expelled from the Party the rich peasants and all those with rich peasant lines” [23].
In this way, Mao’s decision to initiate the “purge of the AB group” did have multiple purposes. The suppression of the Red Army and the Party organization in southwest Gan was not only to destroy the centrifugal forces in the organization, but also to clear the obstacles within the Party in order to carry out Mao’s ideal of social transformation. In Mao’s world, repression was interlinked with “purification,” the final goal of which was to establish a new world dominated by Mao.
Where did this logic of Mao’s ideology come from? On the level of “purification”, Mao was influenced by the Marxist theory of class struggle and violent revolution, especially by the experience of the October Revolution in Russia, and on January 24, 1928, Mao himself wrote a couplet for the inaugural meeting of the Suichuan County Workers’ and Peasants’ Government: “In those days, you exploited workers and peasants, good is good, profit in profit; to this day, I slaughter the inferior, fear not, knife on knife.” [24] If we look at the level of “repression” of the party opposition, we cannot find direct evidence that Mao was influenced by the Soviet experience, because the Soviet experience of repressing the party opposition was in the process of formation at this time. The Great Purge was still a few years away. The judgment that can be drawn is that Mao’s purges within the Party were basically the result of his experience and experience in fighting against the enemy, and in this respect Mao seems to have been more influenced by the experience of peasant rebellions and the “Water Margin”, or simply the product of Mao’s own realization. In this way, Mao created for the first time in the international communist movement a model for applying the way of struggle against the enemy to the party, and in this sense, the “purge of the AB group” was original.
After the Zunyi Conference, Mao returned to the core of the Red Army and the Party. In the new situation, the conflicts within the Party and the army were still very prominent, but Mao changed his strategy and no longer used the extreme methods of “purging the ABs” to solve the conflicts within the Party and the base areas. Has Mao recognized and corrected his past mistakes? The reality may not be so simple. Indeed, in his speech at the Seventh Communist Party Congress in 1945, Mao mentioned that “the purges have taken an extremely painful path. The counter-revolution should be opposed, and when the Party was immature, it took a wrong turn on this issue and made mistakes” [25], but Mao never gave a detailed explanation and “self-criticism” about his relationship with the “purge of the AB group”. Not only was the “purge of the AB group” always affirmed, but the Futian Incident was also treated as an iron case of “counter-revolutionary riot” and was not rehabilitated for a long time. Nevertheless, after Mao came to power, it is true that he no longer engaged in the physical elimination of the “AB group” in the Party.
After 1935, Mao occupied the central position in the CCP leadership, and in 1938, Mao was recognized by the Communist International as the leader of the CCP. As Mao’s position in the Party strengthened, his ideas and opinions became an important part of the CCP’s ideological doctrinal system, and Mao thus acquired the Party’s ideological legitimacy. Revolutionary terror against the party now takes more the form of deterrence and less resort to outright violence. In general, revolutionary terror was used only as an aid to complement Mao’s political Education. In later years, Mao, as the master of revolutionary tactics, was able to master the revolutionary terror machine with ease, just as a herbalist prepares a prescription, knowing how to mix the weight of these two aspects according to the needs of reality, and under Mao’s manipulation, the revolutionary terror machine had acquired a certain “intelligence”. In 1944, Mao decisively announced the suspension of the salvage campaign in Yan’an and the base areas – a campaign that had led many old Party members in the base areas to believe that another “purge of the AB group” was in the offing, but they were wrong. When Mao’s goals were basically achieved, the revolutionary terror machine against the Party was immediately stopped. With the support and assistance of Liu Shaoqi, Mao mastered a new method: through the institutional mechanism established in the interrogation and rescue campaign, he used the Party apparatus to cleanse the Communist Party so that it would always be in a constant state of being “purified.
In this way, the “purge of the AB group” in the early 1930s has become a final event. From the Yan’an period onward, Mao kept reiterating that “no one should be killed and most of them should not be caught”, but Mao could not forget the tense years of the “purge of the ABs” that were in full swing. “, Mao still made his own “criticism and inheritance” – in the Party to suspend the physical elimination, while preserving and carrying forward the revolutionary tradition of mass purges, from then on the suppression and “purification From then on, repression and “purification” took a new form, and were closely combined with the Party’s institutional measures of auditing and purging, so that the rescue movement was followed by the Anti-Rightist Movement and the Cultural Revolution.
[Notes].
[1] The “purge of the AB regiment” in the Jiangxi Soviet had gone through two stages: the first stage: from 1930, after the “February 7” meeting, to 1931, the first stage was the “purge of the AB regiment”. The first stage was from 1930 after the “February 7” meeting to January 1931; the second stage was from April 1931 to the end of 1931. In the first stage, from October 1930 to January of the following year, Mao Zedong and the Red Front Army General Committee under his leadership played a leading role in the “fight against the AB League”. According to preliminary statistics, 4,500 officers and soldiers of the Red Front Army alone were killed during this period, and by October 1930, the Southwest Ganxi Special Committee had eliminated more than 1,000 members of the “AB Group,” not including the number of members of the Party and government agencies killed in the base area after this period. The second phase of the “purge of the AB group” in the Jiangxi Soviet was led by the Central Committee delegation headed by Ren Bishi and the General Front Committee of the Red Front Army led by Mao Zedong, and the targets of the killings were mainly the cadres of the Red Army in southwest Gan who participated in the Futian Incident and the cadres of the local authorities in southwest Gan, the exact number of deaths is unknown. Sources: I. Mao Zedong: “A Letter from the General Front Committee in Reply” (December 20, 1930), in Chinese People’s Liberation Army Political Academy: “Reference Materials for Teaching the History of the Chinese Communist Party“, vol. 14 (Beijing: Chinese People’s Liberation Army Political Academy, 1985), p. 634; II. “Xiao Ke on the Purges in the Early Central Soviet Area”, in Chinese Revolutionary Museum, ed. (May 1932), in Jiangxi Provincial Archives and the Party History Department of the Party School of the Jiangxi Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China, edited by Selections from the History of the Central Revolutionary Base Areas, Vol. 1 (Nanchang: Jiangxi People’s Publishing House, 1983), pp. 477-78, 480; iv. -On Organizational Issues,” in Selected Historical Materials of the Central Revolutionary Base Areas, vol. 1, p. 631; v. Liao Gailong said on September 23, 1981, “The Red Front Army was only 30,000 to 40,000 people in the Soviet Union at that time, and the two purges before and after had killed more than 6,000 people, half of whom were killed, that is to say, one out of ten Reds was killed. That is to say, one out of ten Red Army men was killed, and almost all of them were cadres.” Liao Gailong again quoted Mao Zedong on December 10, 1980: “Chairman Mao said, “We killed 4,500 people, but we saved 40,000 Red Army.” Quoted in Party History Materials Collection Committee of the CPC Central Committee and Party History Research Office of the CPC Central Committee, edited by Party History Materials Newsletter (1981 consolidated edition) (Beijing: Party School of the CPC Central Committee Press, 1982), pp. 89, 144.
[2] Gong Chu, Memoirs of General Gong Chu (Hong Kong: Ming Pao Monthly News Agency, 1978), pp. 171, 205-207, 348, 357.
[3] “The Resolution of the Former Committee to Expel Jiang Hanbo from Party Membership” (April 4, 1930), in Selections from the History of the Central Revolutionary Base Areas, supra, pp. 576-77.
[4] “The First Circular of the Front Committee” (February 16, 1930), in Selected Historical Materials of the Central Revolutionary Base Areas, middle volume, p. 173.
[5] [6] [8] Selected Historical Materials of the Central Revolutionary Base Areas, lower volume, pp. 634-35; 646, 648-49; 110.
[7] Selections from the History of the Central Revolutionary Base Areas, upper volume, pp. 626, 631.
[9] Documentary Research Office of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, edited by Mao Zedong’s Chronology (1893-1949), upper volume (Beijing: Central Literature Publishing House and People’s Publishing House, 1993), p. 319. See also Dai Xiangqing and Luo Huilan, The AB Regiment and the Beginning and End of the Futian Incident (Zhengzhou: Henan People’s Publishing House, 1994), p. 93.
[10] [20] [21] Same as note [1] Mao Zedong, “A Letter from the General Front Committee in Reply.
[11] Huang Kecheng’s Autobiography (Beijing: People’s Publishing House, 1994), pp. 100-101.
[12] Ganxi Administrative Committee: “Circular Xi Zi No. 7” (October 21, 1930), cited in Chen Yongfa, “Review of the Early Communist Party Purge – the AB Regiment Case,” Collected Works of the Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica, No. 17, supra (June 1988), p. 203.
[13] Mao Zedong emphasized in “A Letter from the General Front Committee in Reply” that “the Second Plenary Session was mainly against the Second Seventh Conference, and to expel Liu Shiqi was to oppose the Second Seventh Conference and Mao Zedong.”
[14] See Note [2] Gong Chu, p. 353; however, according to a 1987 investigation report by the CPC Jishui County Party History Office, Li Wenlin’s father was only a wealthy middle peasant and had died of illness as early as May 1927. See “Investigation on the Wrongful Death of Li Wenlin,” in CPC Jiangxi Provincial Party History Materials Collection Committee and CPC Jiangxi Provincial Committee Party History Research Office, Jiangxi Party History Materials, 1st series, p. 326.
[15] Li Wenlin was secretly arrested by the General Front Committee at the end of November 1930, released after Xiang Ying assumed the post of Secretary of the Central Bureau of the Soviet Union, and was sent to work for the Wantai Hedong purge committee in February 1931. On May 30, 1932, Li Wenlin was executed as the “chief criminal of the AB Group” and was not rehabilitated until 1987.
[16] Quoted in Note [9], Dai Xiangqing and Luo Huilan, p. 98.
[17] “Provincial Executive Committee Emergency Circular No. 9” (December 15, 1930), cited in the above book, p. 105.
[18] See note [1], “Xiao Ke on the Purge Movement in the Early Central Soviet Area.
[19] Zeng Shan, “Declaration for the Futian Incident” (January 14, 1931), cited in note [9], Dai Xiangqing and Luo Huilan, pp. 105-106.
[22] In 1931, Mao Zedong argued with Tu Zuochao, a radio technical cadre who had returned from the Soviet Union, about this, see Tu Zuochao, “A Fire I Fired with Chairman Mao,” Hundred Years of Tide, No. 5, 1999, pp. 25-27.
[23] “The Rich Peasant Question – Resolution of the Joint Meeting of the Front Committee and the Minxi Special Committee in June 1930,” in Selected Historical Materials of the Central Revolutionary Base Areas, next volume, pp. 398-99, 400, 402, 404, 410, 413.
[24] Quoted in Yu Boliu and Xia Daohan, Studies on the Jinggangshan Revolutionary Base Area (Nanchang: Jiangxi People’s Publishing House, 1987), p. 124.
[25] See Room 1 of the Party History Research Office of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China: Notes on Some Issues in the History of the Chinese Communist Party (Upper Volume) (Beijing: Central Party History Publishing House, 1991), p. 121.
Twenty-first Century, a bimonthly magazine, August 1999
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