Two Purged Leaders of Early Chinese Communism

Mmoirs de Peng Shuzhi. L'Envol du communisme en Chine by Claude Cadart; Cheng

Yingxiang; Peng Shuzhi; Chen Duxiu. Founder of the Chinese Communist Party by Lee Feigon
Review by: Gregor Benton
The China Quarterly, No. 102 (Jun., 1985), pp. 317-328
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the School of Oriental and African Studies
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/653851 .
Accessed: 06/11/2014 10:45
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Cambridge University Press and School of Oriental and African Studies are collaborating with JSTOR to
digitize, preserve and extend access to The China Quarterly.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 186.124.180.252 on Thu, 6 Nov 2014 10:45:52 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Review Article
Two Purged Leaders of Early Chinese
Communism
Memoirs de Peng Shuzhi. L'Envol du communisme en Chine. By Claude
Cadart and Cheng Yingxiang. [Paris: Gallimard, 1983. 490 pp.
FF95.00.]
Chen Duxiu. Founder of the Chinese Communist Party. By LEEFEIGON.
[Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983. 279 pp. $33.00.]
In December 1952 Trotskyism in China was wiped out for a generation
when two to three hundred of its adherents were seized in a nationwide
police raid. Earlier, a handful of its leaders had slipped abroad, hoping to
co-ordinate work in China from safe places beyond the Party's reach. For
years they had no news of their jailed comrades; then, in June 1979, 12
survivors stepped unexpectedly into freedom.
Trotskyism in China was never the heresy that it became in Stalin's
Russia, and anti-Trotskyism in its most virulent form was a foreign
transplant that did not take in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). This,
Wang Fanxi explains, was mainly because the real threat to the Party's
China-based leaders came not from the "Trotsky-Chen faction," but
from Moscow's well-connected Wang Ming clique.' On rare occasions the
CCP leaders even warmed a little to the Trotskyists, though mostly they
treated them as enemies.
Since Deng Xiaoping's return to power, Party historians have begun to
reassess Trotskyism, and have partly rehabilitated some of its supporters.
In Mao's days Trotskyism was classified as "counter-revolutionary";now
it is simply "wrong." This new tolerance even survived a brief attack
during 1983's "spiritual pollution" campaign. On 8 November 1983
Beijing Radio, reporting on a Nanning conference, listed Trotskyism
among the pollutions to be cleaned away, but this reference was omitted
from a repeat broadcast the next day.
The most visible result of this reassessment has been the rehabilitation
of Chen Duxiu, who founded both the official Party and (in 1931) its
Trotskyist offshoot. The restoration of Chen to his proper place in Party
history is of course part of a wider trend to recognize the strengths as well
as the weaknesses of leaders who ended their careers in political disgrace,
but it could hardly have happened but for the softer line on Trotskyism.
Chen's rehabilitation has been the work mainly of younger historians,
particularly at Anhui University and Shanghai Normal University,
though these have enjoyed the support of some Party veterans like Xiao
Ke (who said in 1981 that "unless we conscientiously research Chen
Duxiu, the future Party history that we write will be one-sided").2 Starting
in 1979, a fresh version of Chen's political biography was released episode
by episode to the Chinese public. First, his role in the May Fourth
1. Wang Fan-hsi, Chinese Revolutionary, Memoirs, 1919-1949, trans. by Gregor Benton
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), pp. 111-12.
2. Quoted in Jin Zhao, "Chen Duxiu pingfande qianqianhouhou" ("Before and after the
rehabilitation of Chen Duxiu"), Zhongbao yuekan, No. 7 (1983), pp. 34-35.

This content downloaded from 186.124.180.252 on Thu, 6 Nov 2014 10:45:52 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

The China Quarterly

Movement and in founding the CCP was officially acknowledged. Then
Xiang Qing and others wrote that Chen's "right opportunism" was
mainly the result of Comintern meddling,3 and some historians even
defended his controversial stand on the Chinese Eastern Railway incident
of 1929, when he disputed the Central Committee's slogan of "armed
defence of the Soviet Union."4 Finally, a study showed up Wang Ming
and Kang Sheng's charge that in 1938 Chen Duxiu took money from the
Japanese as a groundless slander.5
One reason for this new view of Trotskyism is that Deng's government
has loosened intellectual controls more generally in China and encouraged
scholars to "seek truth from the facts," including the truth about Party
history. But there is also a special reason why Deng and other "returnees"
in the leadership are now prepared to be fair to Chen Duxiu. In 1938 Kang
Sheng, just back from Moscow where he was trained by Wang Ming and
the NKVD, wrote alleging that Chen was in the pay of Japan, and so
started the main anti-Trotskyist campaign in China. Kang later switched
his allegiance to Mao and was the Maoists' chief inquisitor during the
Cultural Revolution. When Kang died in December 1975 he was among
those most hated by Deng's group, which expelled him posthumously
from the Party. When the time came to expose Kang's frame-ups,
consistency required that his first great frame-up (that of 1938) also be
exposed.
In the new, more liberal climate even Chen's Trotskyism is no longer
entirely taboo, and some scholars can now consider it objectively.6 Many
books and articles on Chen have been published in China in recent years,
and memoirs by Chinese Trotskyists have appeared in the Chinese press,
including a neibu edition of the memoirs of Wang Fanxi,7 which is greatly
admired in some Chinese academic circles.8 Many foreign writings
sympathetic to Trotskyism have recently appeared in Chinese translation.9 Still, Chen's rehabilitation is unlikely ever to extend to his
Trotskyist period; for that the resistance of senior officials is too great.
This explains the cancelling of the planned conference on Chen Duxiu at
Anqing in 1980-81 and the non-appearance of the promised Chen Duxiu
3. Xiang Qing, "Guanyu gongchanguoji he Zhongguo wenti" ("On the Comintern and
China"), Xinhua yuebao (New China Monthly), No. 4 (1980), pp. 75-79.
4. Wang Fan-hsi, Chinese Revolutionary,p. 122; and Jin Zhao, "Before and after."
5. Kang Sheng, "Chanchu Rikou zhentan minzu gongdide Tuoluociji feibang" ("Root
out the Trotskyists, who are spies for Japan and public enemies of the nation"), Jiefang
zhoukan(Liberation Weekly), Nos. 29 and 30 (28 January and 8 February 1938, respectively);
and Sun Qiming, "Chen Duxiu shifou Hanjian wentide tantao" ("On whether Chen Duxiu
was a traitor"), Anhui daxue xuebao (Anhui University Journal), No. 2, 1980.
6. E.g., Jiang Qi and Shou Shangwen, "Ruhe quanmian pingjia Tuoluocijide yisheng"
("How to make a rounded assessment of Trotsky's life"), Shijie yanjiu dongtai, and Jiang Qi
and Zhang Yueming, "Tuoluosiji 'buduan geming lun' pingxi" ("Trotsky's 'theory of
permanent revolution'"), ibid. No. 11 (1980); both reprinted in Shiyue pinglun (October
Review) (Hong Kong), Nos. 8/9 (1983), pp. 57-59 and 63-65.
7. Wang Fanxi, Shuang Shan huiyilu (Shang Shan's Memoirs) (Xiandai shiliao biankan
she, 1980). Outside China, Wang's memoirs have also appeared in Japanese and German.
8. Lee Feigon, book review, Theory and Society, No. 2 (1983), pp. 259-65.
9. Among them: Ernest Mandel, From Stalinism to Eurocommunism;Pierre Frank,
History of the FourthInternational;Isaac Deutscher, Stalin; and Perry Anderson, Considerations on Western Marxism.

This content downloaded from 186.124.180.252 on Thu, 6 Nov 2014 10:45:52 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Two Purged Leaders of Early Chinese Communism

yanjiu.'0 Trotskyism remains a suspect ideology in China, and was
handled gingerly even by dissidents like Wang Xizhe, Chen Fu and Shi
Huasheng who were attracted by its theses on socialist democracy."
In the west too literature by or about Chinese Trotskyists is now
growing. Two recent additions to it are the memoirs of Peng Shuzhi (P'eng
Shu-tse) and Lee Feigon's book on Chen Duxiu.'2 Peng and Chen were
closely linked in both the Party and the opposition, and shared a jail in
the 1930s. But in jail they quarrelled,13and they differed greatly in politics
and even more so in character.
Peng Shuzhi was born into a small landlord family in 1895 and died in
American exile in 1983, shortly after his book came out. Publicly his death
was ignored in China, though Cankao xiaoxi printed an AFP despatch
on it. L'Envol du communismeen Chine, published in co-operation with
France's Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, is the first of three
volumes of memoirs spoken by Peng to his daughter Cheng Yingxiang
and her husband Claude Cadart, checked by them against written records,
and put into polished French. It describes his childhood, his adolescence,
his stay in Russia, and events in Party history up to 1925. The later
volumes will cover the years 1925 to 1927, and the story of the Chinese
Left Opposition.
Peng grew up in an isolated valley in one of the poorer parts of Hunan's
Wuling Mountains, made famous by the writer Shen Congwen. Through
lineage ties he received a higher schooling in Changsha, and at the age of
25 he went to Moscow, sponsored by the friend of a friend. This man,
an influential Hunan radical, was (so we are told) bowled over by the
"astonishing" young Peng. (Modesty is not among Peng's qualities. "My
memoirs," he says, "represent a contribution of exceptional interest ..., a
unique contribution of its sort to the history of present-day China. .. .")
En route to Moscow in early 1921 Peng spent several weeks among
Chinese Red Beards newly recruited to the Soviet Red Army, and tried to
teach them some Marxism. In Moscow began a life of study and intense
political engagement. In November 1923 Chiang Kai-shek, then in the
Soviet capital, threw a party for Peng and six other Chinese. Peng writes
that the Communist Shen Xuanlu danced portentously over crossed
swords and Chiang shouted "Long live the world revolution, long live the
Comintern." Seven years later, all but Peng of Chiang's seven guests were
dead, shot on Chinese streets or in Chiang's prisons.14
Peng's role in the early communist movement was not unimportant.
After his return from Moscow in 1924 he became one of its main leaders
for a while, editing Xiangdao and Xin qingnian. Then, in 1927, he and
10. Jin Zhao, "Before and after."
11. See Shiyue pinglun, Nos. 8/9 (1983), pp. 54-56.
12. Claude Cadart and Cheng Yingxiang, Memoires de Peng Shuzhi. L'Envol du
communismeen Chine (Paris: Gallimard, 1983); and Lee Feigon, Chen Duxiu. Founderof the
Chinese Communist Party (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983). See also "Le
Trotskysme et la Chine des ann6es trente," Cahiers Leon Trotsky, No. 15 (September 1983).
In 1982 and 1983 Vols. 3 and 1 of Peng Shuzhi, Xuanji (Selected Works), were published in
Hong Kong by Shiyue chubanshe.
13. Wang Fan-hsi, Chinese Revolutionary,p. 208.
14. Memoires de Peng Shuzhi, pp. 338-39.

This content downloaded from 186.124.180.252 on Thu, 6 Nov 2014 10:45:52 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

319

320

The China Quarterly

Chen Duxiu were made Stalin's scapegoats for the defeat of the revolution
and, after they went over to Trotsky in 1929, were vilified as traitors. In
time Peng's name was dropped entirely from Party histories, though
Chen's was kept on as a handy bugbear.
There are various minor errors in Peng's book - Thalheimer is confused
with Thalmann, Anti-Diihring is attributed to Marx, Yang Hansheng is
mistaken for Yang Xianzhen - that are apparently mere slips of memory
and can be disregarded. More serious are the several issues on which
Peng's testimony clashes head-on with that of other veterans.
Though Peng's publisher advertises him as a batisseur of the CCP,15 it
was only in Moscow that he joined the Party, some time after its First
Congress in China. Peng dismisses this Congress in which he took no part
as of small event, claiming that the main work had been done earlier by
the socialist and communist groups with which he himself was linked. But
his role even in these groups was minimal. He did not join the Socialist
League set up by He Minfan in his native Hunan but proceeded straight to
Shanghai, Moscow-bound. In Shanghai, like others in the Russianlanguage class, he joined the Socialist League in mid 1920, but was only a
nominal member: he spoke no Shanghainese and in any case would soon
be off abroad.
In Russia he was among the first few let into the CCP's new Moscow
branch, control of which became a prize and the object of scheming by
some Chinese students. He claims that during his stay in Moscow he was
secretary of the CCP group there, but this claim is questionable. One
source suggests that not Peng but Luo Yinong held this important post.16
Peng depicts himself then as a wise keeper of the Party gate, and says that
among those he sponsored for membership were Liu Shaoqi and Ye Ting,
two of the Party's later heroes. But Peng's fellow student Xiao Jingguang
recalls that Liu joined the Party in the winter of 1921, at the same time
as Peng, and not (as Peng claims) with Ren Bishi, who joined in 1922.
Moreover, we know from another source that Luo Yinong was among
those who officiated over Liu Shaoqi's zhuandang, or transfer into Party
membership. Zhuandang required two sponsors whose recommendation
was then put before a branch plenum.17 Probably several people entered
the Party at more or less the same time, sponsoring one another in order
to meet formal Party requirements, and Peng's claim to glory here is
dubious. As for Ye Ting, mainland sources record that he only went to
15. Peng's wife Chen Bilan even wrote that Peng joined the CCP in the autumn of 1920
(before it was founded). See her introduction to P'eng Shu-tse, The Chinese CommunistParty
in Power, ed. by Leslie Evans (New York: Monad Press, 1980), p. 16.
16. Zheng Chaolin, "Yiben gei ziji tuzhimofende huiyilu" ("A self-whitewashing
memoir"), Pt 1, Zhongbao yuekan, No. 4 (1984), pp. 47-48. A mainland source says that Liu
Shaoqi was the first Moscow ganshizhang or "executive chief" - a term that it equates with
"secretary"- and that after Liu returned to China in 1922, "responsibility for the Moscow
branch was temporarily taken over for a short period by Peng Shuzhi and Luo Yinong" (Qin
Yanshi et al., "Liu Bojian," in Hu Hua (ed.), Zhonggong dangshi renwu zhuan (Chinese
CommunistParty Biographies) (Xi'an: Shaanxi renmin chubanshe, 1982), Vol. 4, p. 263).
17. Xiao Jingguang, "FuSu xuexi qianhou" ("Before and after going to the Soviet Union
to study"), in Zhongguo renmin zhengzhi xieshangyi quanguo weiyuanhui, wenshi ziliao
yanjiu weiyuanhui (eds.), Gemingshi ziliao (Materials on the History of the Revolution),No.
3 (Beijing: Wenshi ziliao chubanshe, 1981), p. 14.

This content downloaded from 186.124.180.252 on Thu, 6 Nov 2014 10:45:52 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Two Purged Leaders of Early Chinese Communism

Russia in the autumn of 1924 (by when Peng was back in China - he left in
July 1924) and did not join the Party until 1925.18 But according to an
independent source,19 Ye was already in Russia in the summer of 1924.
Still, its author doubts Peng's claim to have recruited Ye into the Party,
since recruitment of Kuomintang members usually took some months.
Peng enjoyed his years in Moscow and stayed on longer than most
Chinese, who quickly rejoined the fight at home. The longer he stayed, the
more connections he acquired. Peng calls these "thin cow years" that
required a special sacrifice, but his sacrifice cannot compare with that of
Communists like Liu Shaoqi who went back to risk their skins and share
the workers' hard life. Peng had various privileges in Moscow; some he
renounced, others (including his salary) he kept. He says that the CCP's
right turn in 1923 outraged him, but going back to correct it interested him
less at first than travelling in Germany and France, which he was about to
do when the Party called him home in 1924. He also claims that he and
others in Moscow were so shocked by the Party's new line of "organic
collaboration" with the Kuomintang that they pledged unanimously not
to follow it, but this is unlikely. True, sectarianism flourished in the
hothouse world of Moscow student politics, and many an apprentice
Party boss must have balked at the thought of yielding even a little power
to outsiders. But working with or joining bourgeois parties was by then
such a routine Comintern tactic that the proposal can hardly have been
the surprise that Peng now says it was. Besides, there is no evidence that
any decision to abandon "entry" was taken at the 1925 Fourth Congress,
though Peng calls this Congress a victory for what he claims was his
campaign to "redefine the [Party's] strategy on bases completely independent of those of the Kuomintang." In fact the record suggests that
Peng's position after the Congress was not as he now claims. Far from
opposing the policy of entry, he argued in February 1925 that it was the
duty of workers to join the Kuomintang, for how else could they "truly
lead the national revolutionary movement?"20
After his arrival in Shanghai in mid 1924 began the period Peng calls
"straightening out the Party." It was doubtless this chapter that led Peng's
publisher to bill him as "the theoretician-strategist of the Second Chinese
18. Liu Shaoqi tongzhi shengping huodong nianbiao, 1898-1969 (A Chronicle of the
Activities of ComradeLiu Shaoqi, 1898-1969) (Zhongguo geming bowuguan, April 1980), p.
1; Xiao Jingguang, "Yi zaoqi fuSu xuexi shide Shaoqi tongzhi" ("Memories of Comrade
Shaoqi's early study in the Soviet Union"), in Huainian Liu Shaoqi tongzhi (In commemoration of Comrade Liu Shaoqi) (Changsha: Hunan renmin chubanshe, 1980), pp. 77-88; Gao
Jun and Fan Yinzheng, "Ren Bishi," Chinese CommunistParty Biographies, Vol. 8 (1983),
p. 7; Liu Yiyu and Liu Jingchun, "Luo Yinong," ibid. p. 80; Huang Houheng,
"Zhenjingchuxian baixibunao" ("Keep calm in times of danger, be indomitable"), in Huiyi
Ye Ting (In Memory of Ye Ting) (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1981), p. 34 and Ye Qinhe,
"Fengyu choumou yu xiongying" ("Amid storms to raise a great falcon"), ibid. p. 140;
and Zhongshan daxue "Ye Ting" bianxie zu, Ye Ting (Shaoguan: Guangdong renmin
chubanshe, 1979), pp. 14-15.
19. Quoted by Wang Fanxi in a letter to me.
20. Peng Shuzhi, letter of 2 February 1925, in Zhongyang dangshi ziliao zhengji
weiyuanhui, Zhongyang dangshi yanjiuhui (eds.), Zhonggong dangshi ziliao (Materials on
Chinese Communist Party History), Vol. 3 (Zhongyang dangxiao chubanshe); quoted in
Zheng Chaolin, "Self-whitewashing," Pt 1, p. 49.

This content downloaded from 186.124.180.252 on Thu, 6 Nov 2014 10:45:52 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

321

322

The China Quarterly

Revolution." At heart Peng's view of Party affairs in those years is quite
simple. He holds that because of the Stalin triumvirate's meddling, the
"correct" line of the Second Congress was overthrown and an opposite,
wrong line was forced on the Party at its Hangzhou Plenum and its Third
Congress of 1923 - thanks to which it became mired in "Menshevism."21
Thus the scene is set for the "Bolshevik" Peng to save the Party from its
"Menshevik" floundering.
The truth is more mundane. None of the Chinese Communists of the
time knew much Marxism, and most faithfully observed the directives of
the Comintern, to which they sincerely looked for guidance. In 1923 the
Comintern issued two directives on CCP-Kuomintang relations. The first,
dated 12 January 1923, stressed the weakness of the workers' movement
and thus the need for co-operation between the two parties (though it
warned against "liquidating" the Party's political and organizational
independence). The second, dated May 1923, said for the first time that
"hegemony" in the national revolution belongs properly to the workers'
party.22 Chen Duxiu wrote some articles in the spirit of the first directive; Peng, in Moscow, got the corrected line sooner and subsequently
conveyed it to the Party.
The January directive calling for co-operation with the Kuomintang did
not come out of the blue: the Dutch Communist Henk Sneevliet (Maring)
had recommended a similar policy to the Chinese Communists in 1922.
Negotiations with Sun Yat-sen on the issue were carried out by the Soviet
diplomat Adolph Joffe. Neither Sneevliet nor Joffe were Stalinists: on the
contrary, Joffe became a leading Trotskyist and Sneevliet an oppositionist
and at one point an ally of Trotsky (though the two engaged in long
polemics and finally broke). Sneevliet was no creature of the Comintern
but a strong-willed, independent-minded revolutionary and an early
leader of the left wing of the Indische Sociaal-Democratische Vereeniging
in the Netherlands Indies. In 1916 Sneevliet and his comrade Adolph
Baars had turned their attention to the nationalist Sarekat Islam and
influenced many of its younger leaders, and in July 1920 Sneevliet had
won the approval of the Second Congress of the Comintern for his policy
of co-operation with Sarekat Islam. His views on what tactic to pursue in
China can best be seen as a projection of his experience with Sarekat
Islam; it is far too simple to attribute the line of collaboration with the
Kuomintang to Stalin's "Menshevism."23
In any case, the Manifesto of the Third Congress does not entirely bear
21. Les Evans and Russell Block (eds.), Leon Trotsky on China, introduced by P'eng
Shu-tse (New York: Monad Press, 1976), pp. 39-40.
22. Zhongguo shehui kexueyuan jindaishi yanjiusuo fanyishi (eds.) Gongchanguoji
youguan Zhongguo gemingde wenxian ziliao (Documentary Materials of the Comintern
Relating to the Chinese Revolution)(Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe, 1981), pp.
76-77 and 78-79. Liu Qifa and Qian Feng, "Diyici guogong hezuode celue wenti" ("On the
tactics of the first co-operation between the Guomindang and the Chinese Communist
Party"), Jiang Han luntan, No. 4 (1981), make a similar connection between changes in
Comintern and CCP policy in the years 1924-25.
23. See Harry Albert Poeze, Tan Malaka, Strijder voor Indonesii's Vrijheid.Levensloop
van 1897 tot 1945, The Hague: B. V. de Nederlandsche Boek- en Steen-drukkerijv/h H. L.
Smits, 1976, pp. 114-117, for details of Sneevliet's activities in Sarekat Islam.

This content downloaded from 186.124.180.252 on Thu, 6 Nov 2014 10:45:52 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Two Purged Leaders of Early Chinese Communism

out Peng's contention that the CCP had become "Menshevik" because of
the new turn. True, it allowed that the Kuomintang "should be the central
force of the national revolution and should assume its leadership," but
its main point is to criticize the Kuomintang, and it describes the CCP's
central task as "to lead the workers and peasants into joining the national
revolution."24
By the time Peng published his memoirs, he was one of perhaps only
three survivors of the 1925 Fourth Congress, the others being Li Weihan
and Zheng Chaolin. Zheng was not only also a Trotskyist (though within
Trotskyism he and Peng were often at odds) but had been Peng's fellow
student for a while in Moscow. In 1952 Zheng disappeared for 27 years
into a communist jail (having already spent seven years in a Kuomintang
one), but since his release in 1979 Chinese historians have occasionally
consulted him about the Party's early years. In 1983 Zheng published a
note25 that puts Peng's role at the Fourth Congress in a different light and
throws doubt on Peng's contention that he put the Party back onto
the "Bolshevik" road in 1925 and thus preserved it for a while from
Russian meddling. Zheng's note suggests that the new line on "proletarian
hegemony," far from being Peng's personal achievement, was a
Comintern instruction known to all Chinese students in Moscow. The
Comintern, shy about publicly manipulating its Chinese section, got the
CCP's Moscow branch to sponsor the new line, which Peng was chosen to
represent in China. Even so, at the Fourth Congress it was not Peng but
Voitinski who drafted the key resolution on it.26 Zheng's theory is
supported by a recent study which shows that the CCP, "with Voitinski's
help," took the first step toward "raising its own banner" as early as May
1924 - while Peng was still in Russia.27
In June 1981 Zheng Chaolin discussed this and other points in a private
letter to a friend that came into Peng's hands. Peng replied at length to
Zheng's criticisms, and on 8 February 1982 Zheng answered, whereupon
the exchange ended. In early 1984 Peng's rebuttal, and part of Zheng's
counter-rebuttal, were published in Hong Kong.28 Peng's contribution
dwells at length on Zheng's charge that Voitinski was the true source of
the new "proletarian" line, for if Zheng was right on this point, much of
Peng's claim to glory would evaporate. To support his case, Peng flatly
denies that Voitinski even attended the Fourth Congress, let alone wrote
24. Conrad Brandt, B. Schwartz and J. K. Fairbank (eds.), A Documentary History of
Chinese Communism(New York: Atheneum, 1967), pp. 71-72.
25. Zheng Chaolin, "Guanyu Muluhuosika (Mlokhoska) dimingde shuoming" ("On the
place-name Mlokhoska"), Dangshi yanjiu ziliao (Research Materials on Party History), No. 3
(1983). See also Zheng Chaolin, "Self-whitewashing," Pt 1, p. 50.
26. Li Weihan interviewed in Beijing ribao (Beijing Daily), 14 July 1980; according to Fu
Shangwen, "Zhonggong 'Sida' tichu wuchanjiejilingdaoquan wenti tantao" ("On the raising
of the issue of proletarian hegemony at the Fourth Congress of the Chinese Communist
Party"), Lishi jiaoxue, No. 12 (1983), Peng "participated in drafting the Congress
resolution" (quoted in Zhen Yan, "Dui ruogan zhengyixing lishi wentide tantao" ("On some
historical controversies"), unpublished manuscript).
27. Liu Qifa and Qian Feng, "On the tactics."
28. Peng Shuzhi, "Dui Zheng Chaolin xugou gushide jielu" ("Exposing Zheng Chaolin's
fantastic stories") and Zheng Chaolin, "Peng Shuzhi biyanxiashuo" ("Peng Shuzhi's blind
ramblings"), Zhongbao yuekan, No. 1 (1984), pp. 62-71.

This content downloaded from 186.124.180.252 on Thu, 6 Nov 2014 10:45:52 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

323

324

The China Quarterly

the political resolution for it. But other sources, including Li Weihan,
independently confirm Zheng's recollection.29
Frequently in his book Peng attacks the personal integrity of his
political opponents, and he aims a special poison at the CCP martyr Qu
Qiubai, who ousted him from the Party's standing committee in 1927.
Peng calls Qu a rightist, while claiming that he himself stood for true
Marxism in the Party. But this is not how Communists saw things at the
time. "In the Central Committee ... Petrov [Peng] represents the right, Qu
Qiubai the left, and the Old Man [Chen Duxiu] the centre," wrote three
dissenting Russian Comintern officials (then working in Shanghai) in
1927.30 Since Peng's argument is that the Party "rearmed" at the Fourth
Congress against the likes of Qu Qiubai, it is inconvenient for him to
admit that Qu was actually among those who approved the new line, so he
writes him out of the Congress entirely, claiming that he was away in
Guangzhou at the time. Yet Qu not only attended the Congress but played
a central role in it: he chaired the group responsible for its political
resolution, translated Voitinski's draft of that resolution, and answered
delegates' questions on the resolution.31
Peng's self-image is that of innovator, but his memoirs suggest that on
the contrary he was something of a dogmatist. His favourite Marxist
books included Bukharin's Historical Materialism, Deborin's Dialectics of
Natural Science,32 and Engels' Anti-Dihring: works widely criticized as
mechanical or schematic reductions of the Marxist idea. After Peng's
conversion to Trotskyism in 1929, he saw all leaders of the official Party as
Stalinists, but this did not stop him liking some more than others. Some of
the distinctions he draws are telling. Mao (who had a strictly utilitarian
approach to dogmas) he loathed, but even when old he kept some respect
and affection for the more orthodox and cautious Liu Shaoqi.33 The
contrast between Peng and Mao is delightfully brought out by a story
Peng tells about Mao going naked but for a napkin about his haunches
29. Li Weihan, interview. See also "Weijingsiji fu Shanghai mishi" ("Voitinsky's secret
trip to Shanghai") in Zhongguo geming yu Sulian guwen (The Chinese Revolution and Soviet
Advisers) (Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe, 1981).
30. "La lettre du Shanghai, par trois membres de la mission de 'I.C. en Chine," in P.
Brou&(ed.), La question chinoise dans l'InternationaleCommuniste(1926-1927) (Paris: EDI,
1965), p. 79. This letter, which circulated widely among Soviet oppositionists, blamed what it
saw as the CCP's wrong tactical line equally on the Party's "right-wing" leaders and the
Comintern representatives Borodin and Voitinski.
31. Li Weihan, interview. See also Li Weihan, "Huainian Qiubai" ("In memory of
Qiubai") in "Yi Qiubai" bianji xiaozu (eds.), Yi Qiubai (Remembering Qiubai) (Beijing:
Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 1981), p. 241; Zheng Chaolin and Zhou Yongxiang, "Wo dui
Qu Qiubaide yixie huiyi" ("Some recollections of Qu Qiubai"), Shanghai wenshi ziliao xuanji
(Selected Shanghai Historical Documents), No. 42 (1983), pp. 42-52; Zhou Yongxiang (ed.),
Qu Qiubai nianpu (Chronology of the Life of Qu Qiubai) (Guangdong renmin chubanshe,
1983), pp. 42-43; Zhonggong zhongyang dangxiao dangshi jiaoyanshi ziliaozu (eds.),
Zhongguo gongchandanglici zhongyao huiyiji (ImportantMeetings of the Chinese Communist
Party), 2 Vols. (Shanghai: Renmin chubanshe, 1982), Vol. 1, pp. 41-47; and Zheng Chaolin,
"Self-whitewashing," Pt 2, Zhongbao yuekan, No. 5 (1984).
32. The text has Dialectics of Nature, but this is by Engels. Strangely, neither Engels
(1925) nor Deborin (1929) was published until after Peng left Russia, though he says he used
this title in preparing his lectures.
33. P'eng Shu-tse, "The relationship and differences between Mao Tse-tung and Liu
Shao-ch'i" in The Chinese Communist Party in Power, pp. 306-325.

This content downloaded from 186.124.180.252 on Thu, 6 Nov 2014 10:45:52 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Two Purged Leaders of Early Chinese Communism

while teaching at a Party "university" one hot day in 1921, and cocking a
snook at his outraged boss. Peng's aim is to show Mao in a bad light;
readers will judge for themselves whether he achieves it.
The Trotskyist Zheng Chaolin has called Peng a "Wang Ming before
Wang Ming,"34 and the analogy is apt, though it should not be stretched
too far. Like Wang, Peng started his communist career not in China but in
Moscow, where apparently he and Luo Yinong were the only Chinese
members of the Russian Party; when he returned to China in 1924 he drew
great strength from this Russian link, just as Wang Ming did in the
1930s. Of the students who went back around the same time as Peng,
many stepped into leading posts in the Party's national and provincial
bodies, just like Wang Ming's "Returned Students" (the "Twenty-eight
Bolsheviks") in 1930. "The Comintern," said Zheng Chaolin, " .
appointed Peng Shuzhi our leader, and gave us a theory and a line to take
back.35 Just as Wang was co-opted straight onto the Politburo in 1930
without ever having faced election, so Peng shot straight into the
leadership in 1924. If Wang was the protege of Mif, Peng too had his
patron in the person of Grigori Voitinski, who "planted" him in Shanghai
to push through the Comintern's directive.
Given Wang Ming's Moscow training, his specialities naturally included anti-Trotskyism, though back in China this issue had little
resonance or relevance. Even here the likeness holds, if only just: though
Peng in time became a Trotskyist, Zheng Chaolin recalls that when at the
Fourth Congress Voitinski proposed a denunciation of the Russian Left
Opposition, in a quiet hall, it was Peng who rose to second it.36 Peng denies
this story and even denies that any such resolution was put to the
Congress. But the text of a Fourth Congress resolution denouncing
Trotskyism was published in a recent Party series,37 and another series
carries the text of a letter dated 2 February 1925 to the CCP's Moscow
branch listing among Congress items "A Report on the International
Communist Movement by the Representative of the ECCI" and a
"Report on Leninism and Trotskyism." The author of this letter was ...
Peng Shuzhi.38
Wang Ming's best-known speciality was " Bolshevization": the imposition on the Party of "iron discipline," extreme centralism, and
unconditional obedience of the sort that Wang drank in at the Comintern.
Peng too was this kind of "Bolshevizer." Indeed, "Bolshevization"
34. Zheng Chaolin, "Self-whitewashing," Pt 1, p. 49 and Wang Fanxi, Shuang Shan
huiyilu (Shuang Shan's Memoirs) (Hong Kong: Zhouji hang, 1977), p. 266.
35. Zheng Chaolin, "Self-whitewashing," Pt 1, p. 50.
36. Zheng Chaolin, "Peng Shuzhi," p. 70. See also Zheng Chaolin, "Self-whitewashing,"
Pt 2. The resolution on Trotskyism is also noted in Zhongguo geming bowuguan dangshi
chenlie yanjiubu, Zhonggong dangshi zhuyao shijianjianjie(ImportantEvents in the History of
the Chinese Communist Party) (Chengdu: Sichuan renmin chubanshe, 1982), p. 62.
37. Zhongguo jiefangjun zhengzhi xueyuan shijiao yanshi (eds.), Zhonggong dangshi
cankao ziliao (Reference Materials on the History of the Chinese CommunistParty), Vol. 3,
p. 180.
38. Zhongyang dangshi ziliao zhengji weiyuanhui, Zhongyang dangshi yanjiuhui (eds.),
Zhonggong dangshi ziliao (Materials on Chinese Communist Party History), Vol. 3
(Zhongyang dangxiao chubanshe).

This content downloaded from 186.124.180.252 on Thu, 6 Nov 2014 10:45:52 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

325

326

The China Quarterly

reached China in not one wave but two: in 1925 with Peng, and again in
1930 with Wang. According to Cai Hesen, it was Peng who brought the
regime of "bureaucratic centralism" to the Party; according to Zhang
Guotao, Wang Ming simply carried on where Peng left off.39
Still, as a revolutionary Peng was braver, more independent and more
principled than Wang. As Moscow's man, his rise in China stopped short
of general secretary, unlike Wang, who was the Party's highest-flying
"helicopter" ever. And as a Party chief, Peng's backer Voitinski was less
arbitrary, inflexible and autocratic than Mif. Moreover, though in 1924
the Comintern was already in the habit of infiltrating its supporters into
the leadership of national parties, its tactic was to supplement and not yet
to supplant national leaders, and it was not yet wholly converted into a
machine for forcing Moscow's views on the world communist movement.
It is no surprise that Peng, often the victim of gross slanders, put so
much vituperative energy into writing himself back into the history from
which he was wrongfully struck out. He was well placed to enrich our
understanding of the Party's early years. But his obsession with magnifying his own role and belittling that of others stands between him and the
truth often enough to make his record of these events worthless in parts
and everywhere dubious. It is necessary to say this because memoirs by
veterans of Peng's generation are exceedingly rare, and Peng's will be
widely read and quoted. Already scholars writing in French publications
of various political persuasions have praised Peng's book as a valuable
resource, apparently without noting its flaws.40
Lee Feigon's book, the first full study of Chen Duxiu, is one of the few
works to analyse his Trotskyist writings, and a sturdy though by no means
uncritical defence of him. Feigon's great merit is to methodically strip
away the layers of right and left-wing political prejudice that have
gathered around Chen. The man thus bared is of quite another cut than
Peng: bolder, less rigid, more open-minded, and more given to selfcriticism and self-doubt. Feigon's book is primarily intellectual history but
displays a keen sociological sense of how material and ideal interests
combine to set the course of politics, and usefully scotches some well-worn
myths about Chen: that he once visted France; that he "ignored the
peasantry"; that he became a Trotskyist only as a desperate reaction to his
expulsion from the Party; and that he was merely a westernized intellectual. Feigon subjects to telling criticism the thesis that Chen was an unthinking believer in western solutions to China's problems. That a person
of Chen's towering presence, immense breadth and indelible influence
lacked roots in China's culture is indeed implausible, and Feigon shows
that Chen was first and foremost a Chinese patriot for whom democracy
was a way of restoring life and strength to the Chinese people. Torn
39. Cai Hesen, "Jihuizhuyi shi" ("A history of opportunism"), reprinted in Gongfei
huoguo shiliao huibian (Historical Materials on the Communist Bandits' Ruining of China),
4 Vols. (Taibei, 1961), Vol. 1, pp. 604-605; and Zhang Guotao, 'Wodehuiyi (My Memoirs),
3 Vols. (Hong Kong: Mingbao yuekan chubanshe, 1973), Vol. 2, pp. 408-410.
40. See Jie Ya, "'Gongchanzhuyi zai Zhongguode faren' - Faguo baokan dui Peng
Shuzhi huiyilude pingjia" (" 'Communism takes off in China' - Reviews in French periodicals
of Peng Shuzhi's memoirs"), Shiyue pinglun, No. 1 (1984), pp. 44-45.

This content downloaded from 186.124.180.252 on Thu, 6 Nov 2014 10:45:52 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

327
between tradition and the wish for radical change, Chen was a complex
character whose private and public selves were often at odds. This fiery
revolutionary was a scholar of Buddhism, Sanskrit and the etymology of
Chinese characters. This scourge of the Chinese family wrote beautiful
calligraphy for his ancestral temple. This feminist had sex with several
hundred prostitutes and lived openly with his sister-in-law while getting
his wife pregnant.
Of the many epithets Chen attracted, the one he liked best was "an
oppositionist for life to any established authority."41 Another view is that
he was communism's first great dissident, and in this there is much truth.
For Chen as for today's generation of April Fifth, "pure" democracy was
an indispensable part of the socialist society, and at the end of his life it
was to this his intellectual "first love" that he returned.42It is easy to see
why interest in Chen soared among scholars emboldened by the post-Mao
talk of the need for democracy in China.
Democracy ran a poor course in the Chinese revolution, and even antiStalinists like Peng Shuzhi were not free from "Bolshevik" contempt for
it. But Chen Duxiu, having found traditional strategies for social change
wanting, fixed once for all on socialism with democracy as the appropriate
remedy for China's ills. Feigon shows that though Chen got his inspiration for the Party from the Bolsheviks, his idea of it was quite
different from theirs. He believed (like Lunacharski) that revolution is the
work of saints, and opposed creating a strong Party chief. He even let
non-Marxists and anarchists join the Party. Different points of view vied
rather freely under his leadership, and though the outcome of this contest
was settled largely in Moscow, it was some time before the CCP was
transformed wholly along Russian lines.43 Though Peng and others
brought authoritarian habits into the Party, it was not until 1927, when
Chen was sacked as Party leader, that these habits became general.
Feigon's book is painstakingly researched, though a few small errors
have crept into it. Yi Ding is the pen-name not of Wang Fanxi but of Lou
Guohua; the photograph of Chen Duxiu "in traditional garb" was taken
not at Beijing University in the late 1910s but in the spring of 1937;
and the author occasionally misspells Chinese words.
Feigon's main fault is that he sometimes pushes a good idea too far.
Though it may be true that Chen Duxiu was rooted in a tradition of elite
dissent, Feigon's claim that the Trotskyists stayed in the cities after 1927
because they were unequipped by "outlook or breeding" to organize the
peasants is doubtful. If outlook and breeding decided strategy, few
Communists of any stripe would have gone into the villages, and few
Trotskyists would have gone into factories or city slums.
Also unconvincing are the theses that the aggression of Mao's Cultural
Revolution was in part inspired by Chen's cultural iconoclasm, and that
41. Wang Fanxi, "Chen Duxiu, Father of Chinese Communism" in Gregor Benton (ed.),
Wild Lilies. Poisonous Weeds. Dissident Voicesfrom People's China (London: Pluto Press,
1982), p. 167.
42. Ibid. pp. 157-67.
43. On this point, see also Mao Zedong sixiang wansui (Long Live Mao Zedong Thought)
(1969), p. 160.

This content downloaded from 186.124.180.252 on Thu, 6 Nov 2014 10:45:52 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

328

The China Quarterly

the CCP's "obscurantist political vocabulary" may be rooted in Chen's
use of a "special language . . . to communicate political and social
concerns among ... the elite." May Fourth can be more plausibly linked
to the post-Mao cultural reconstruction; and the obvious source of the
CCP's ruinous jargon is Soviet Marxism.
Now that the black-out on Chinese Trotskyism has been partly lifted,
we see a complex, original political movement in some ways scarcely less
diverse than the Party from which it sprang. Until recently it was only
outside China that studies on Chinese Trotskyism could be published;
now Chinese scholars too are making their contribution to our knowledge
of it. Apart from the intrinsic interest of this movement as a failed
experiment in urban revolution in the land of peasant revolution, its
importance for scholars is that it shared both personnel and concerns with
the official Party. The biographical history of Chinese Communism
cannot stop short of its Trotskyist offshoot, as Chinese historians are now
starting to see. Moreover, the study of Chinese Trotskyism will throw
light from many interesting new angles on familiar questions of the
Chinese revolution.
GREGORBENTON

This content downloaded from 186.124.180.252 on Thu, 6 Nov 2014 10:45:52 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions