Mao: The Unknown Story

On 25 July, Chou recommended meeting Mao’s demands, “in order to facilitate battle command at the front.” His colleagues wanted to give the job to Chou, but Chou pleaded: “If you insist that Chou is to be the chief political commissar, this would … leave the government Chairman [Mao] with nothing to do … It is awkward in the extreme …” On 8 August, Mao was appointed chief political commissar of the army.

MAO HAD REGAINED control of the army, but differences with his colleagues only deepened. In summer 1932, Chiang was focusing his attacks on two Red territories north of Jiangxi; on Moscow’s instructions the Party ordered all its armies to coordinate their movements to help these areas. Mao’s assignment was to lead his army closer to the two bases under assault and draw off enemy forces by attacking towns. He did this for a while, then when the going got tough simply refused to fight anymore. In spite of urgent cables asking for help, he basically sat by for a month while Chiang drove the Reds out of these other two bases.

Chiang’s next target was Jiangxi. Moscow had decided that the best strategy here was to meet Chiang’s attack head-on, but once again Mao just withheld his consent, insisting that it would be much better to disperse the Communist forces and wait and see. Mao did not believe that the hugely outnumbered Red Army could defeat Chiang, and seems to have set his hopes on Moscow bailing out the Chinese Reds. At the time, Moscow and Nanjing were negotiating to restore diplomatic relations, which Moscow had severed in 1929 over China’s attempt to take control of the Chinese Eastern Railway in Manchuria. Mao’s calculation seems to have been that Chiang would have to allow the Chinese Reds to survive as a gesture to Moscow.

Mao’s colleagues regarded his passive delaying tactics as “extremely dangerous.” Mao would not budge. “Sometimes arguments became endless, endless,” as Chou put it; “it is impossible to know what to do.”

An emergency meeting had to be convened at the beginning of October, which turned into a showdown with Mao. All the eight top men in the Red base gathered in the town of Ningdu for a meeting chaired by Chou. The anger that flared against Mao can be felt through the jargon the participants used to describe the scene, where, as they put it, they “engaged in unprecedented two-line struggle [“two-line” means as if against an enemy], and broke the previous pattern of yielding to and placating” Mao, which was a reference to Chou’s kid-glove treatment of Mao.

Mao was denounced for “disrespect for Party leadership, and lacking the concept of the Organization”—in other words, insubordination. The tone would have been harsher still if it had not been for Chou, who, as some of his colleagues reported, “did not criticise Tse-tung’s mistakes unambiguously, but rather, in some places, tried to gloss over and explain away” his actions. The top cadres still in Shanghai, especially Po Ku, were so infuriated with Mao that they wired their colleagues in Ningdu without consulting Moscow’s representatives (which was most unusual, and a sign of how angry they were), calling his actions “intolerable” and saying he must be removed from the army. There was even a suggestion that he should be expelled from the Party.

Giving Moscow no time to intervene, the leaders in Ningdu dismissed Mao on the spot from his army post, although in deference to Moscow’s orders not to impair Mao’s public image, the troops were told that he was “temporarily returning to the central government to chair everything.” Moscow was told that Mao had gone to the rear “owing to sickness.”

During the conference, Mao cabled Shanghai twice from Ningdu, which was clearly an attempt to enlist Moscow’s help. But Ewert, Moscow’s man in Shanghai, who had also lost patience with Mao, chose to report to Moscow by courier, not cable, so the news of Mao’s dismissal did not reach Moscow until the conference was over. Ewert found himself having to explain his failure to save Mao to Moscow. The “decision … to remove and criticise” Mao had been taken “without prior agreement with us” and Ewert said he disagreed with it: “a decision like this [should not] be taken without exhausting all other possibilities …” Although “there is no doubt whatever that … Mao Tse-tung is wrong … friendly persuasion must be used with Mao.”

Moscow ordered the CCP: “Regarding your differences with comrade Mao Tse-tung, we repeat: Try to win him for the line of active struggle in a comradely way. We are against recalling Mao Tse-tung from the army at the present time if he submits to discipline.” On 2 November, Stalin was asked “urgently” for his opinion. Mao’s colleagues were then told to explain why they had pushed Mao out of the army. Moscow criticized Mao’s critics, and praised Chou’s gentle handling.