Mao: The Unknown Story Read online

  By the end of a year of marriage, Gui-yuan had resolved to leave Mao. She confided to a friend that she was unlucky to have married him and felt she had “made a big sacrifice” by doing so. When Mao decided to leave the outlaw land, in January 1929, she tried desperately to stay behind. Gui-yuan may well have been thinking about more than just leaving Mao. She had been swept into a maelstrom while still only in her teens, and now her desire to quit was so strong that she was prepared to risk capture by the Reds’ enemies. However, Mao ordered her to be taken along “at any cost.” She cried all the way, repeatedly falling behind, only to be fetched by Mao’s guards with his horse.

  MAO’S STANDING WITH the Party began to change in April 1928, when a large Red unit of thousands of men, the surviving Nanchang mutineers, the troops he had angled for right from the start, sought refuge in his base. They came to Mao as a defeated force whose much-depleted ranks had been routed on the south coast the previous October, when the Russians failed to deliver the promised arms. The remnants of the force had been rallied by a 41-year-old officer called Zhu De, a former professional soldier with the rank of brigadier, and something of a veteran among the mainly twentyish Reds. He had gone to Germany in his mid-thirties, and joined the Party before moving on to Russia for special military training. He was a cheerful man, and a soldier’s soldier, who mingled easily with the rank and file, eating and marching with them, carrying guns and backpacks like the rest, wearing straw sandals, a bamboo hat on his back. He was constantly to be found at the front.

  Mao had always coveted the Nanchang mutineers, and when he first arrived in outlaw territory had sent a message urging Zhu to join him, but Zhu had declined. Shanghai’s orders had been to launch uprisings in the southeast corner of Hunan around New Year 1928, and Zhu, as a loyal Party man, had followed orders. The uprisings failed abysmally, thanks to the sheer absurdity and brutality of Moscow’s tactics. According to a report at the time, the policy was to “kill every single one of the class enemies and burn and destroy their homes.” The slogan was “Burn, burn, burn! Kill, kill, kill!” Anyone unwilling to kill and burn was termed “running dog of the gentry [who] deserves to be killed.”

  In line with this policy, Zhu’s men razed two whole towns, Chenzhou and Leiyang, to the ground. The result was to foment a real uprising — against the Communists. One day, at a rally held to try to force peasants to do more burning and killing, the peasants revolted and killed the attending Communists. In village after village and town after town where Zhu’s men were active, rebellions sprang up against the Reds. Peasants slaughtered grassroots Party members, tore off the red neckerchiefs they had been ordered to wear, and donned white ones to demonstrate their allegiance to the Nationalists.

  Once Nationalist troops began to apply pressure, Zhu had to run, and thousands of civilians went with him: the families of the activists who had done the burning and killing, who had nowhere else to go. This was what Moscow had intended: peasants must be coerced into doing things that left no way back into normal life. To “get them to join the revolution,” the Party had decreed, “there is only one way: use Red terror to prod them into doing things that leave them with no chance to make compromises later with the gentry and bourgeoisie.” One man from Leiyang recounted: “I had suppressed [i.e., killed] counter-revolutionaries, so I could not live peacefully now. I had to go all the way … So I burned my own house with my own hands … and left [with Zhu].”

  After these people left, the cycle of revenge and retribution brought more casualties, among them a young woman who had been adopted by Mao’s mother, called Chrysanthemum Sister. She had followed Mao into the Party and married a Communist, and they had a young child. Although it seems she and her husband did not support the killings by the Reds, nevertheless her husband was executed after Zhu’s army left Leiyang, and his head exhibited in a wooden cage on the city wall. Chrysanthemum Sister was imprisoned. She wanted to recant, but her captors refused permission. She wrote to a relative that she was made to “suffer all the pains I had never imagined existed” and yearned for death: “I long to die and not go on being tortured … It would be such relief to leave this world. But my poor [baby], it’s so painful to think of him. I had so many plans about bringing him up. Never did I dream all this was going to happen … My baby must not blame me …” Chrysanthemum Sister was later executed.

  Zhu came to Mao as a defeated man, while Mao could represent himself as the person who had in effect saved what was the largest detachment of Communist troops still functioning, at a time when other Red bases were crumbling. All the uprisings the Russians had ordered in the past months had ended in failure. The most famous Red base, Hailufeng, on the south coast, collapsed in late February 1928. During its two-month existence, the area, called “Little Moscow”—there was even a “Red Square,” with a gateway copied from the Kremlin — became a carnage ground under its leader Peng Pai, a man with a thirst for blood. Over 10,000 people were butchered; “reactionary villages were razed wholesale to the ground.”

  These failed areas had carried out killing and burning on a much larger scale than Mao’s. Mao was not a fanatic. He would stop his men from burning down Catholic churches (which were often the best buildings in rural areas) and fine houses, telling them to keep them for their own use. Killing served its purposes, but it should not jeopardize his broader political interests.

  By the time Zhu De came to Mao, Moscow had begun to stop the “aimless and disorderly pogroms and killings” which it termed, with the Communist penchant for jargon, “blind-action-ism” and “killing-and-burning-ism.” Shanghai ordered killing to be more targeted. This was exactly what Mao had been doing. He emerged as shrewd and far-sighted, and this dealt him back into the game — and into the Party’s good graces. And Stalin’s too. Even Mao’s disobedience vis-à-vis the Party now had a plus side, as Stalin badly needed a winner — someone with initiative, not just a blind subordinate. Moscow’s ability to operate in China, already weakened by Chiang Kai-shek’s policy switch in spring 1927, had been further impaired after Russian diplomats were caught red-handed in an attempted putsch in Canton (known as “the Canton Commune”) in December 1927. Some missions, including the one in Changsha, were shut down, and Moscow lost diplomatic cover for many of its operatives.

  As soon as Zhu De arrived, Mao acted to retrieve his Party mandate, writing to Shanghai on 2 May demanding to form a Special Committee headed by himself. Without waiting for a reply, he had it announced at a rally to celebrate the Mao — Zhu link-up that Mao was the Party commissar — and Zhu the commander — of what was to become known as “the Zhu — Mao Red Army.” Mao then held a “Party congress” with delegates appointed by himself, and just set up the Special Committee, with himself as its head.

  There was an extra reason why Mao required an urgent Party mandate. The contingent Zhu commanded was 4,000 strong, and far outnumbered Mao’s, which counted just over 1,000; moreover, half of Zhu’s men were proper soldiers, with battle experience. So Mao needed a Party mandate to secure his authority. To establish some martial credentials in the presence of Zhu’s army, Mao sported a pistol when he met them, one of the few times he was ever seen carrying one. He soon gave it back to a bodyguard. Mao believed in the gun, but he was not a battlefield man.

  While waiting for endorsement from Shanghai, Mao began to behave like a good Party member, accepting Party orders and regular inspectors, and filing long reports. Till now he had not bothered to find out how many Party members there were in his territory, and had given vague — and exaggerated — answers to an inspector: this county had “over 100,” that one “over 1,000.” Now Party committees started to function.

  He also began to carry out land redistribution, central to the Communist program. He had not bothered to do this before, as it was irrelevant to how he ruled, which was simply by looting.

  MEANWHILE, MAO’S LETTER demanding a Party post, which, like all other correspondence, was carried by special messenger, was sent on by Shangha
i to Moscow. It reached Stalin on 26 June 1928, right in the middle of the CCP’s 6th Congress, then meeting in secret just outside Moscow. That this was the only time any foreign party held a congress in Russia speaks for the exceptional importance Stalin ascribed to China, as does the fact that the Russians arranged and paid for over 100 delegates to travel clandestinely from China.

  Stalin’s line was delivered by Comintern chief Nikolai Bukharin in an address that spanned nine buttock-numbing hours. Mao was not among those present. He had already adopted a tyrant’s golden rule, one to which he stuck for the rest of his life: not to step out of his lair unless he absolutely had to.

  Moscow had reservations about Mao. Chou En-lai, the key figure at the Congress, said in his military report that Mao’s troops had “a partly bandit character,” meaning that Mao did not always toe the line. Yet, fundamentally, Mao was in favor with Moscow, and was cited at the Congress as a key fighting leader. The fact was that he was the most effective man in applying the Kremlin’s policy which, as Stalin reiterated to the Chinese Party leaders in person on 9 June, was to establish a Red Army. While in Russia, every delegate to the Congress received army training, and detailed military plans were drawn up. Stalin, the old bank-robber, got personally involved in the financing via a huge counterfeiting operation.

  Mao fitted Stalin’s bill. He had an army — and a base — and was an old Party member. Moreover, he now had the highest profile, even if of a notorious kind, among all Chinese Communists. He was, as Stalin was later to say to the Yugoslavs, insubordinate, but a winner. And however disobedient he might be, Mao clearly needed the Party, and needed Moscow, and this made him essentially subject to control.

  Mao’s demands were met in full. By November he had been told that he was in charge of the Zhu — Mao Red Army and its territory around the outlaw land. This was a key moment in his rise. He had faced down the Party — and Moscow itself.

  This mutiny entered myth as a purely Chinese operation under the misleading name of “the Nanchang Uprising,” and 1 August was later designated the founding day of the Chinese Communist Army. But, as Stalin bluntly put it, the operation was “on the initiative of the Comintern, and only on its initiative.” These words were deleted from the published version of Stalin’s speech. The man in charge of delivering arms to the mutineers was Anastas Mikoyan.

  One of Mao’s closest subordinates confirmed that by the time Mao turned up, “the Autumn Harvest Uprising had failed.”

  One of the Russians in Shanghai told Moscow that “everything has been given over to fire and the sword and people were shot right and left.”

  He praised Lenin, not inappositely, with these words: “His law has no detail. It just kills all opposition. His workers and peasants can just kill off all the landed tyrants, bad gentry, landlords, capitalists, with no need to report to anyone …” The regime called on people to “disembowel and slice off heads … slaughter on the spot with no hesitation. Have absolutely not a shred of feeling …,” “kill, kill freely. To kill is the topmost important work in an uprising.” Children were praised for “automatically killing reactionaries.”

  6. SUBJUGATING THE RED ARMY SUPREMO (1928–30 AGE 34–36)

  MAO RECEIVED Shanghai’s endorsement as head of the Zhu — Mao Army in November 1928, and at once began planning to leave the outlaw land with the army, to take over new domains and new armed forces. He was also leaving because the region was about to be attacked. In June that year, Chiang Kai-shek had defeated the Peking government and brought much of China under his control, setting up his capital in Nanjing. Chiang’s troops were on their way to Mao’s territory. Mao set off on 14 January 1929. The bulk of the Zhu — Mao Army, now some 3,000 strong, left with him, as did Zhu De, whom Shanghai had appointed military supremo of the army.

  Fifteen months after his arrival, Mao left behind a depleted land. In his first experience of running a base he had shown that he had no economic strategy but looting, tantamount to “slash and burn.” A Party inspector wrote to Shanghai:

  Before the Red Army came … there was quite an atmosphere of peaceful and happy existence … the peasants … had quite enough to live on … Since the Red Army came, things were totally changed. Because the Red Army’s sole income was robbing the rich … because even petty bourgeois, rich peasants and small pedlars were all treated as enemies, and because after great destruction, no attention was paid to construction or to the economic crisis, the countryside is totally bankrupt, and is collapsing by the day.

  Mao’s men had bled the place dry, and the locals loathed them. When he departed, he left behind his wounded and the civilian Communists. Those captured by the regular government army were lucky — they were merely machine-gunned to death. Those who fell into the hands of local forces were disemboweled, burned alive, or slashed slowly to death. Many hundreds were killed.

  A report to Shanghai by the stay-behind Party committee revealed that the bitterness bequeathed by Mao’s regime was so intense that even the Nationalists “burning houses and killing ring-leaders did not generate hatred from the average masses for the reactionaries.” People were defecting when they could: those “under our Red power naturally do not dare to act reactionary,” the report stated. “But the masses outside [our control] are crossing over to the Nationalists en masse.” The report blamed the locals, saying that they “have always been no good.”

  The original outlaws, who were mostly locals and stayed behind, fared much better. Most of them survived — including the two chiefs, Yuan and Zuo. However, these two met their deaths a year later, in March 1930—at the hands of Communists who returned to the area. Moscow had ordered the CCP to double-cross those it termed “bandits”—in effect, to use them and then kill them. “Alliance with bandits and other similar groups is only applicable before an uprising,” stated one resolution. “Afterwards you must disarm them and severely suppress them … Their leaders must be regarded as leaders of counter-revolutionaries, even if they helped uprisings. And these leaders must all be completely eliminated.”

  Yuan and Zuo’s followers fled back into the depths of the mountains and became fiercely anti-Communist. A Red search unit reported that “the local population resented us, and did everything to protect the [outlaws].” Having lived under both the bandits and the Communists, the locals knew which they preferred.

  ON THE JOURNEY out of the outlaw land, Mao loped along, cracking jokes to his entourage. He had cause to be cheerful. Shanghai and Moscow’s acceptance of his demands showed that he could get his way. Indeed, at that very moment, January 1929, in Moscow, GRU chief Jan Berzin and Stalin’s China apparatchik, Pavel Mif, were meeting to discuss how the Soviet army could give “practical help to Zhu — Mao,” whom Moscow was tracking closely. This is the first known occasion when Moscow was arranging military aid specifically for the Mao — Zhu force, now publicly described as “the most formidable among the Communists.”

  Government forces were in hot pursuit, and Mao’s army had to fight pitched battles, in one of which Zhu De’s wife was captured. Later she was executed and her head stuck on a pole in Changsha. It was during this low point in Zhu’s fortunes that Mao mounted a power grab against him. Within two weeks of leaving the outlaw land, Mao had abolished Zhu De’s post as military supremo, awarded by Shanghai, and concentrated all power in his own hands. As the Red force was being attacked by the Nationalists, Zhu did not retaliate. He was no match for Mao in exploiting a crisis.

  Mao did not inform Shanghai about his seizure of power. Instead he wrote to tell Shanghai how glad he was to submit to Party orders. “How should the Red Army proceed?” he wrote. “We particularly thirst for instructions. Please could you send them winging my way?” “The resolutions of the 6th Congress are extremely correct. We accept them jumping for joy.” “In the future, we hope the Centre gives us a letter every month.” Mao was currying favor with Shanghai hoping that when they got wind of his coup against Zhu De, they would be better disposed towards him.

>   Still, Zhu De refrained from exposing Mao. Zhu had no craving for power, nor any gift for intrigue. And since reporting to Shanghai was the job of the chief, to write himself would amount to declaring war on Mao.

  In March, Mao had another lucky break, this time involving the Nationalists. Although a central government had been in place for nearly a year, Chiang Kai-shek faced powerful opponents, some of whom now started a war against him. Troops who were hot on Mao’s trail were pulled back to deal with the rebels. A delighted Mao informed Shanghai that the enemy, who had come within half a kilometer of his rearguard, had “suddenly turned back” and let him go.

  By this time Mao had entered the southeast coastal province of Fujian, where he managed to capture Tingzhou — a sizable city, but weakly defended. Located on a navigable river teeming with cargo boats, it was a wealthy place, with strong overseas links. Grand European buildings stood next door to ornate bazaars selling wares from all over Southeast Asia. Mao filled his coffers by robbing the rich. “Our supply is no problem,” he told Shanghai, “and morale is extremely high.”

  The army acquired a uniform for the first time, from a factory that had been making them for the Nationalists. Up till then Red soldiers had been wearing clothes of all kinds and colors, sometimes even women’s dresses and Catholic priests’ vestments. (One Italian priest was particularly worried about the Reds taking his fascist shirt.) The Communists’ new uniform, gray, was like the Nationalist one, but had a red star on the cap, and red insignia.

  The city’s defender, Brigadier Kuo, had been captured alive on Mao’s specific orders, and then killed. A rally was held at which his corpse was hung upside down from a chestnut tree by the dais where Mao made a speech, and the corpse was then paraded through the streets. To show that the old order had been supplanted, Mao also had the city hall razed to the ground.