Speaking of the establishment and development of the Central Soviet Region and its loss, it is a different kind of history in the history of the Chinese revolution and the history of the Party.
If you get the reasons and lessons learned mainly from textbooks about the reasons and lessons for the failure of the fifth anti-"encirclement and suppression" campaign in the Central Soviet Region, you will undoubtedly get the impression that a group of young and ignorant young high-ranking cadres squeezed out Mao Zedong, the founder of the Central Soviet Region, gave up the correct strategy, and blindly commanded the whole way, resulting in the failure of the fifth anti-"encirclement and suppression" campaign, and finally losing the Central Soviet Region, and having to start a major strategic shift in a hurry.
But as it is often said, "the devil is in the details". If we look closely at the details of history, then this history will take on a different look. Mr. Huang Daoxuan's book "Tension and Limits: The Revolution in the Central Soviet District (1933-1934)" provides us with the opportunity to take a closer look at this different history. This book uses detailed historical materials to show the social outlook of the Central Soviet Region before the fifth anti-"encirclement and suppression" in 1933, as well as the strategies, tactics, and action plans of the Kuomintang and the Communist Party during the first year of the fifth anti-"encirclement and suppression" campaign.
Historian Mr. Chen Yinke once put forward the principle of "sympathy for historical understanding", emphasizing that historical research should think about and evaluate historical events from the perspective of the era in which the parties lived. Let us neither stand on the shoulders of giants and ridicule giants, nor look at history simplistically in terms of the conclusions and principles of highly generalized textbooks. As the author Huang Daoxuan said:
Behind the lofty position of political qualitative, what is cut off may be the details that are specifically affecting social history, and history is separated from the details, which always reminds people of the human skeleton in the museum, indeed, it is a person, but is it really still a person?
Born in Ganzhou, Jiangxi Province in 1966, Huang Daoxuan was admitted to the Department of Modern History of the Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences after graduating from the Department of History of Jiangxi Normal University in 1986, majoring in the history of the Communist Party of China. From 1989 to the Institute of Modern History, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. His main research interests are the history of the Communist Party of China and the history of the Republic of China.
Because he was born in Ganzhou, Jiangxi Province, he has some more natural conditions that cannot be chosen for the study of this period of history: his ears and eyes since childhood can allow him to experience the original form of the revolution more closely, more intuitively, and more conveniently. "The memories of rural life in my childhood, the winding tunnels dug by the Red Army in the mountains behind my school in middle school, and the foreign research papers on the social conditions in the rural areas of southern Gannan that I read in college all seem to have come back to life, guiding me to pursue the raging fire that once provoked great changes in my hometown. From 2002 to 2012, when this book was published, it was exactly "ten years of sharpening a sword".
So, what refreshing conclusions are given to us in the book?
1. How to view the rise of the Soviet area: "tension" and "limit"
When the Kuomintang split in 1927, the Communist Party of China was caught off guard, and when it was on the verge of desperation, it began to resist from scratch, and only a few years later, hundreds of thousands of armed people stood up, creating another legend after the cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party of China and the Northern Expedition. The author uses two words to analyze the development of the Central Soviet District: tension and limits.
Tension refers to the exertion of the revolutionary initiative of the Communist Party of China. The authors note:
As the first revolutionary movement independently led by the Communist Party of China, the Soviet Revolution basically laid the ideological and logical foundation of the armed revolution of the Communist Party of China, established the first central power of the Communist Revolution in China, and demonstrated the political philosophy, mobilization ability and control art of the Communist Party of China through independent control of the Soviet area. In fact, although the specific power structure and mode of operation have been adjusted since then, several important principles of the CCP revolution, such as armed struggle, mass line, agrarian revolution, and social reconstruction, have been firmly established during this period.
In this, the genius creation of Mao Zedong and Zhu De plays a key role:
"The development of the CCP in the Central Soviet Region itself is, to a certain extent, the result of Mao Zedong and Zhu De using their genius to go off the beaten track (such as the creation of military genius and the precise grasp of power). ”
In the early stages of the Soviet revolution, the CCP brought its revolutionary initiative into full play, and the Communist Party's seemingly endless energy in this process shocked not only its opponents at the time, but also those who read history many years later without being overwhelmed by it.
However, "supernormal energy cannot break through the boundaries of what can be done, what can be done, and what cannot be done." Under the historical circumstances of the time, by the mid-1930s, the revolutionary tension in the Central Soviet District had begun to reach its limits, and "the extraordinary development of the CCP under various circumstances seemed to finally come to a halt."
So, in the mid-1930s, what problems did the Chinese Communist Party encounter that became limits? Both external and internal.
Ruijin Su Conference Site:
2. The fifth "encirclement and suppression" was carried out by Chiang Kai-shek
The limits caused by the outside were mainly the general war of the Kuomintang. In the fifth anti-"encirclement and suppression" that began in 1933, Chiang Kai-shek had already changed his strategy towards the central Soviet area.
In the previous four "encirclement and suppression" campaigns, Chiang Kai-shek was repeatedly defeated for objective reasons: He had been busy with warlord warfare, the situation was turbulent, and he was unable to go all out to deal with the Soviet areas; there were many factions and disunity within the Nationalist army; he underestimated the enemy and advanced recklessly, and so on. But the main aspect, as Chiang Kai-shek summed it up:
In the past, we couldn't suppress bandits, not because we didn't have enough force, but because we were mentally bad.
Before the fifth "encirclement and suppression", starting in July 1933, Chiang Kai-shek spent three months establishing the Officer Training Corps in Lushan. The training regiment paid special attention to the education of the fighting spirit and the spirit of unity, and established the fighting will and unity spirit of the commanders at all levels, so as to narrow the distance between the regiment and the Chinese communists in this regard. The results of the training, according to Chiang's own words:
Because the time was too short, there was not much progress in the academic course, but the mental thoughts, appearances, attitudes, and movements of each person were completely different from those of two weeks ago.
As a result of the training, the appearance of the Kuomintang army has indeed changed. Nearly half a year after the start of the fifth anti-"encirclement and suppression" campaign, Zhou Enlai wrote with deep understanding:
Chiang Kai-shek's training of these officers cannot be said to have been without considerable results, and if we see the incompetence of the officers of the White Army in the four wars, then we see that they are now much more cunning and alert. They have learned how to guard against our ambushes, how to avoid the annihilation of entire divisions and brigades in mobile warfare, how to strengthen their reconnaissance, search, and communication work, and how to rely on the fortress to fight us and quickly retract back to the fortress.
Strategically, Chiang Kai-shek positioned the new "encirclement and suppression" as a general military, political, economic, and social war. The most threatening is the war of resources. Chiang Kai-shek saw very clearly that the Nationalist army had built blockhouses and set up a large number of posts and outposts, imposed a strict economic, communications, and postal and telecommunications blockade, strictly forbade the flow of grain, salt, industrial products, and raw materials into the Soviet areas, and cut off their contact with the outside world.
Not only do we surpass them several times, or even dozens of times, hundreds of times more than them in terms of land, economy, weapons, and army, but in terms of the number of strong men, it can be said that our replenishment is endless, and they simply have nothing but the 50,000 or 60,000 people who exist!
Many years later, Deng Xiaoping recalled the situation and said with emotion:
If a comrade had participated in the civil war of the Soviet period for ten years, he would have understood this. At that time, whether it was in the Central Soviet Region, the Hubei-Henan-Anhui Soviet Region, or the Hunan-Hubei Western Soviet Region, they were all surrounded by the enemy on all sides. The enemy's policy is to fight on the periphery of the Soviet zone and inside the Soviet zone, to consume as much as possible the manpower, material and financial resources of our Soviet zone, and to deplete us so that even if we win some military victories, we will not be able to last.
In terms of tactics, it emphasizes steady and steady progress, and advances at all levels. The general operational guideline was that "the main force of the bandits should be occupied without first looking for the main force of the bandits, and the aim should be to occupy the important places that the bandits must fight," and the Red Army should be forced to carry out a decisive battle with the main force in its true face by advancing layer by layer by means of tight fortifications and pillboxes, and by means of slow but effective occupation. The core of this tactic is to force the Red Army to engage in a protracted war of resources, attrition, and manpower.
Under this style of play, the guerrilla warfare that the Red Army had previously excelled in basically lost its effect. The premise of guerrilla warfare is to lure the enemy into going deeper, but this time the enemy will not go deep in any case, will not be greedy for merit, and "will do his best to deprive the Red Army of the opportunity to engage in general movement warfare, especially to encounter battles and attacks." As Lin Biao pointed out:
The method of luring the enemy into the depths is no longer a reliable and effective method for dealing with an enemy who has suffered a crushing defeat and has learned countless bloody lessons.
In desperation, the Red Army also changed its style of play, which is the so-called "short assault":
The so-called "short assault" means to attract the enemy with a defense, and at the same time ambush the main force nearby, and when the enemy army appears in our forward position, the main force in ambush "carries out a short surprise attack and attack in order to disintegrate the enemy in front of the fortress."
Against the backdrop of the overall strategy being constrained by others, although the short assault can play a certain effect, the results are still limited.
Politically, Chiang Kai-shek launched tactics of attacking the people in the Soviet areas and the Red Army, deliberately changing the negative image of the Kuomintang regime and the Kuomintang army, and changing the image of the rich defenders of the Kuomintang regime. They deliberately kept a distance from the elite in the villages, restricted the activities of the local tyrants, and formulated and promulgated the "Regulations on the Punishment of Local Tyrants and Inferior Gentry". At the same time, a series of economic measures have been taken to "rejuvenate the countryside", alleviate people's livelihood, and shake the CCP's popular base. In order to revive the rural economy, Chiang Kai-shek even vigorously promoted cooperatives, an institution with socialist overtones.
In short, objectively speaking, Li De's later defense of "the enemy is strong and I am weak" is not a lie. The author of the book notes:
"If we are not overly obsessed with the result, in the face of the historical process of the Soviet revolution of 1933-1934, and think about it calmly, it is amazing enough that the CCP was able to hold out for a year in such a small area as southern Jiangxi and western Fujian, relying on extremely limited manpower and material resources, and under the attack of the Kuomintang army, which was determined to win and went all out, and finally retreated calmly. ”
3. There are many problems in the Central Soviet District itself
The biggest problem in the Central Soviet District, of course, was the exclusion of Mao Zedong and the rejection of Mao Zedong's correct line. However, there is also a reason why the central leaders were able to easily squeeze Mao Zedong out of the core of military leadership by entering the Soviet zone empty-handed. According to Huang Kecheng's recollection of a conversation between him and cadre He Ducai, mentioning the reasons for Mao Zedong's exclusion, it is very revealing:
After the Provisional Central Committee entered the Central Soviet Region from Shanghai, it easily seized Mao Zedong's power and replaced the correct political and military line with an erroneous political and military line. The comrades in the Soviet districts believed that the Party Central Committee was, of course, an important reason. However, if Mao Zedong had not lost some of the hearts and minds of the people on the organizational line, it would not have been easy to exclude Mao Zedong in the central Soviet area.
During this period, Mao Zedong's political and military talents were convincing to everyone, but he was not very convincing in terms of organization, that is, in employing people. This shows that Mao Zedong at that time was not really mature - it had to wait until after the Long March and before the Zunyi Conference, which gave Bogu and others a chance.
And this is the provisional central leadership collective, which is even more immature. The two main leaders, Qin Bangxian and Zhang Wentian, were only 24 and 31 years old respectively, and basically had no experience in facing the enemy on the battlefield. It was also a disaster for them to enter the Central Soviet District at this time, to take on duties that were not commensurate with their abilities. The author sighs:
Judging from the general trend of history, the setback suffered by the CCP in 1934, and the unsuccessful leadership of the CPC Central Committee led by Bogu and others cannot be blamed, but these young people who were pushed to the center stage by history are actually themselves sacrifices of history. Compared with the predecessors and descendants of the communist revolution, what they have changed or can change is really limited, and in the face of the rolling tide of history, it is difficult for them to take on the heavy responsibility of leading the trend, and more often than not, they just go with the flow. They did not and could not change the course of history.
In addition, the problems of suppressing the rebellion, the work style, the flight of the masses, the expansion of the red and the desertion, and the antagonism between the red zone and the white zone, which no one could have imagined and which are rarely mentioned in textbooks, have all brought tremendous trouble to the anti-"encirclement and suppression" campaign in the central Soviet region.
Ruijin Second Soviet Conference Site:
Fourth, if Mao Zedong is allowed to command, how will the fifth "encirclement and suppression" be broken?
If we say that the situation at that time was that the tension of the Communist Party of China had reached the limit, was it doomed to failure? The author believes that this is not necessarily the case, and one of the plans put forward by Mao Zedong was to take advantage of the outbreak of the Fujian Incident.
The main force of the Red Army should undoubtedly break through to the Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui, and Jiangxi regions with Zhejiang as the center, gallop across Hangzhou, Suzhou, Nanjing, Wuhu, Nanchang, and Fuzhou, turn strategic defense into a strategic offensive, threaten the enemy's fundamental and important areas, and seek combat in the vast areas without fortresses. By using this method, we will be able to force the enemy attacking the southern part of Jiangxi and the western part of Fujian to come to the aid of its fundamental areas, smash its attack on the Jiangxi base areas, and come to the aid of the Fujian People's Government,—— and this method will certainly be able to assist it. If this plan is not used, the fifth 'encirclement and suppression' will not be broken, and the Fujian People's Government will have no choice but to fall.
The author points out with regret that abandoning the Central Soviet Region, which had been in operation for several years, and concentrating troops to attack the enemy's rear line of operations, such a battle plan really requires extremely high imagination and great determination, and it fully embodies Mao Zedong's uninhibited thinking, arrogant character, and peculiar strategy, and is consistent with his consistent military policy. However, for the military and political decision-makers, including the Comintern, against the background of not completely despairing of the prospect and having fond memories of the previous victories against the "encirclement and suppression" movement, it is indeed unlikely that they will face such a ruined idea from the outset.
At that time, the young leaders of the CCP could hardly afford to take the enormous risks that this would bring, and any misstep in making such an unconventional choice could mean that they would have to bear severe political consequences, and the pressure would not have been imagined by my generation, who had already seen the results and did not have to take responsibility. Moreover, with the existing strength of the Red Army, it is quite risky to advance into the deep area of the Kuomintang regime and to fight in an area where there is no mass base and where there is limited room for maneuver.
In fact, the small Long March was rejected, and later the Red Army still had to take a big long march. In the course of the Long March, we saw that without Mao Zedong's command, the Long March would have only been a dead end. It can be said that even if the leaders of the Soviet zone adopted the strategy of the Little Long March, victory was by no means guaranteed.
The history of the Chinese revolution has finally proved that China in the first half of the 20 th century can only be a huge stage for the victory of Mao Zedong, a great man of a generation.