In 1923, Sun Yat-sen's ideological changes were even more significant, and the pace of the United Russia and the United Communist Party was greatly accelerated.
On New Year's Day, Sun Yat-sen issued the Manifesto of the Chinese Kuomintang. In addition to emphasizing the Three People's Principles and the Five-Power Constitution, he also pointed out the status and role of the people, stressing that "the revolutionary cause should be initiated by the people and accomplished by the people," indicating the change from relying on local warlords to relying on the broad masses of the people. In January, Sun Yat-sen met with Soviet and Russian Vice Foreign Minister Yue Fei and issued the "Joint Declaration between Sun Wen and Yue Fei," marking the final determination of the policy of uniting with Russia. In June, the Third Congress of the Communist Party of China came to an end, and it was decided that all Communist Party members and Communist Youth League members should join the Kuomintang in their personal capacity. In August, Sun Yat-sen sent a "delegation of Dr. Sun Yat-sen" to Soviet Russia to inspect politics, party affairs and military affairs. In October, Borodin arrived in Guangzhou to take over the work of Marin, and was hired by Sun Yat-sen as a trainer of the Kuomintang organization, and later as a political adviser, and the reorganization of the Kuomintang soon entered the implementation stage, and Sun Yat-sen appointed nine people, including Liao Zhongkai, Hu Hanmin, and Tan Pingshan, as members of the Provisional Central Executive Committee of the Kuomintang, and five people, including Wang Zhaoming (Jingwei) and Li Dazhao, as alternate members of the Central Executive Committee, to form the Provisional Executive Committee of the Kuomintang Central Committee, which was fully responsible for the reorganization of the Kuomintang and the preparatory work for the First National Congress.
From January 20 to 30, 1924, the First National Congress of the Chinese Kuomintang was held in Guangzhou.
At this time, the north was cold and windy, and all trees were depressed, just like the dark rule of the reactionary warlords. However, on the land of the south, there is green grass, flowers blooming, and warmth like spring.
This is also a grand meeting of cooperation between the KMT and the CPC. Among the 165 delegates attending the meeting, 23 were communists, including Li Dazhao, Tan Pingshan, Mao Zedong, Zhang Guotao, Li Lisan, Qu Qiubai, and Lin Boqu. As one of the members of the presidium of the conference, Li Dazhao walked into the venue side by side with Sun Yat-sen.
The congress adopted the "Declaration of the First National Congress of the Chinese Kuomintang," which made a new interpretation of the Three People's Principles in line with the trend of the times. In nationalism, the content of opposing imperialism is highlighted, in nationalism, it is emphasized that democratic rights should be "shared by ordinary people," and in people's livelihood, the two principles of "equal land rights" and "control of capital" are emphasized. Soon after the meeting, Sun Yat-sen put forward the slogan "The tiller has his land." In fact, the policy of the three revolutions of the United Russia, the United Communist Party, and the support of the peasants and workers was established.
The congress elected the Central Executive Committee of the Chinese Kuomintang. Ten members of the Communist Party, including Li Dazhao, Tan Pingshan, Mao Zedong, Lin Boqu, and Qu Qiubai, were elected as members or alternate members of the Central Executive Committee, accounting for about a quarter of the total number of members. After the meeting, the Communist Party members who held important positions in the Party Department of the Central Committee of the Kuomintang included Tan Pingshan, head of the Organization Department, Lin Boqu, head of the Peasant Department, and Mao Zedong (September 1925), acting head of the Propaganda Department.
The successful convening of the First National Congress of the Kuomintang marked the formal formation of the first KMT-CPC cooperation.
The Chinese Kuomintang was reborn.
The young and militant Chinese Communist Party has a legitimate platform for struggle, at least in the south.
The Kuomintang and the Communist Party rallied under the banner of the national revolution, and soon gathered the revolutionary forces of the whole country, setting off a great revolutionary torrent of anti-imperialism and anti-feudalism.
The workers' movement is on the rise again. In July 1924, thousands of Chinese workers staged a political strike in the Shamian Concession of Guangzhou to protest against the "new police law" of the British and French imperialists, which restricted the free entry and exit of Chinese residents. The struggle lasted for more than a month and was finally won. In May 1925, Japanese capitalists shot and killed Chinese worker Gu Zhenghong (a member of the Communist Party), workers and students in Shanghai held demonstrations, and British patrolmen in the concession suddenly opened fire on Nanjing Road, killing 13 students, workers, and countless others. A nationwide May Day Movement broke out. Around 17 million people across the country participated directly in the movement. From the trading cities to the remote towns and villages, the roars of "down with imperialism" and "abolish unequal treaties" sounded everywhere. The May Day Massacre also directly triggered a strike by Hong Kong workers, with more than 100,000 of them returning to Guangzhou, forming a massive general strike of workers from Guangdong and Hong Kong. With the strong support of the Guangdong Revolutionary Government, the general strike lasted for 16 months.
The peasant movement was launched. As early as 1922, Peng Pai began to organize peasant associations in the Haifeng area of Guangdong Province to mobilize peasants to wage rent reductions. At this time, peasants in various counties in Guangdong established peasant associations one after another, organized peasant self-defense armies, and waged struggles against local tyrants and shoddy gentry and corrupt officials. At the suggestion of the Communists, the Central Executive Committee of the Kuomintang decided to open a peasant movement training center in July 1924, which was presided over by Communists Peng Pai, Ruan Xiaoxian, Mao Zedong and others, and cultivated a large number of backbone forces of the peasant movement.
The revolutionary armed forces were established. At the suggestion of Soviet Russian advisers and communists, the First National Congress of the Kuomintang decided to establish a military academy. The school was located on Huangpu Island near Guangzhou, so it was called the Huangpu Military Academy. In order to establish this school, the Soviet government subsidized the start-up costs, sent a number of military cadres to take charge of military education, and brought in guns and ammunition. Sun Yat-sen, who had suffered greatly from relying on local warlords for a long time in the past, regarded the establishment of this school as the starting point for the establishment of the party army and had great hopes for it. He appointed Chiang Kai-shek as the president, Liao Zhongkai as the party representative, and himself as the premier.
On June 16, 1924, the Whampoa Military Academy held a grand opening ceremony.
Sun Yat-sen, dressed in white civilian clothes and wearing a "Napoleonic hat," stepped off the "Xianggu" warship accompanied by his wife Soong Ching-ling, and then stepped into the school gate, which was only 20 meters away from the Pearl River. On the beam of the school gate, the words "Army Military Academy" just written on it are particularly conspicuous. At this time, loud singing and slogans came out of the campus, and hundreds of lively students lined up with guns and marched in orderly steps to welcome them.
Sun Yat-sen delivered a speech at the opening ceremony, which lasted more than an hour. Although his accent is very Cantonese, it can still be understood by most Chinese people. He began by saying bitterly:
Today is the date of the start of the school. Why do we have this school? Why do you have to open this school? You must know that the revolution in China has been going on for 13 years, and the results we have obtained now are only the era of the Republic of China, but not the fact of the Republic of China. From this point of view, the 13 years of the Chinese revolution and until today have only received an empty name. Therefore, China's thirteen-year revolution was a complete failure, and it is still a failure even today.
He went on to compare the Russian Revolution with the Chinese Revolution, arguing that the Russian Revolution was victorious because "the revolutionary army was the backing of the revolutionary party." However, in the 13 years since the Chinese revolution, ordinary bureaucrats and warlords still dare to brazenly change the Zhengshuo of the Republic of China and control the Republic of China. He went on to say:
What hope do we have for opening this school today? It is necessary to recreate the revolutionary cause from today, and to use the students in this school as the foundation to form a revolutionary army. You students will be the backbone of the revolutionary army in the future. With such good backbones and a revolutionary army, our revolutionary cause can be successful. Without a good revolutionary army, China's revolution would always have failed. Therefore, the only hope for opening this military academy here today is to create a revolutionary army to save China from peril.
Sun Yat-sen elaborated on what a revolutionary army is. He said that none of the armies he has heard about in the past 13 years are revolutionary armies, they have not received revolutionary education, and they all came to the army to earn a living. The revolutionary army must be full of revolutionary aspirations, never have the mentality of being promoted to an official position and making a fortune for the rest of its life, but only know how to save the country and the people, and practice "revolutionary doctrine."
"Revolutionary doctrine" is the most important characteristic of the revolutionary army that distinguishes it from the old army. In order to achieve this, the Whampoa Military Academy studied the principles of army building of the Soviet Russian Red Army and established a party representative system, stipulating that all orders and official documents issued by the army would not be effective unless they were co-signed by the party representatives, so as to prevent the army from becoming a tool for individual arbitrariness. Not only that, the Whampoa Military Academy has also established a political work system, which has put political education in the same important position as military training, and has paid attention to cultivating students' patriotic thinking and revolutionary spirit. In this regard, Zhou Enlai and other communists have made fruitful efforts. At the Whampoa Military Academy and even in the entire Chinese military circles, Zhou Enlai can be called a pioneer in revolutionary political work.
In September 1924, at the age of 26, Zhou Enlai returned from Europe and served as chairman of the Guangdong District Committee of the Communist Party of China and head of the Propaganda Department. In November, he took over as head of the Political Department. The first director of the Political Department of the Huangpu Military Academy was Dai Jitao, who soon left the school for Shanghai. Shao Yuanchong, the acting director, used to be Sun Yat-sen's secretary, and he rarely came to the school, and he didn't care much about education when he came occasionally. At the beginning, Shao Yuanchong gave two lectures when he arrived at the school, but he was the least popular with teachers and students, because he did not look at the object and was full of foreign terms, and his eloquence was poor. This person took up his post at the Whampoa Military Academy purely for the purpose of winning the rank of major general. Previously, he pursued Zhang Mojun, a celebrity in the domestic female world, and Zhang Mojun's condition was that Wen had a master's degree and Wu had the rank of major general before he could marry. So Shao Yuanchong went to Columbia University in the United States to study for a master's degree, and after returning to China, he asked Sun Yat-sen for the rank of major general. Mr. Sun saw him as pitiful, and remembered that he had followed him as a secretary, and that he could not arrange for a real post in the army for this man who was powerless and had never understood military affairs, so he had no choice but to send him to the Whampoa Military Academy as the director of the political department, which could be regarded as a major general. Major General Shao Yuanchong arrived, and Zhang Mojun also agreed to marry him, so he had no intention of going to the school to work. In November 1924, Sun Yat-sen went north, and Shao Yuanchong followed, so that Zhou Enlai took over the post of director of the Political Department.
In contrast to his predecessor, the head of the Political Department, Zhou Enlai's political lectures were the most popular among students, and most of the lectures he taught were on topics such as "Analysis of the Revolutionary Situation at Home and Abroad." Because Zhou Enlai studied in Japan, France, and Germany, and because he was concerned about the situation at home and abroad and its development and changes, every lecture was broad and informative, and at the same time, dialectical materialist analysis and a clear revolutionary stance were permeated in it. He speaks clearly, gestures strongly, speaks in a coherent manner, and is easy to take notes and memorize. When others are lecturing, the leader of the team usually walks back and forth to observe the students' situation; But when Zhou Enlai took the stage to speak, no one moved, and the chiefs all sat and listened attentively, taking notes from time to time.
Zhou Enlai not only gave lectures well, but also used his outstanding talent to make the political work of the Whampoa Military Academy sound and impressive. Wang Yichang, who was then director of the guidance unit of the Political Department of the Huangpu Military Academy, later recalled: "Since then, the political work of the Huangpu Military Academy has been vigorously carried out. Comrade Zhou Enlai spends a small amount of time every day looking through the newspaper clips and work diaries we have prepared for him, and reviewing correspondence, and spends a large amount of time talking to people and grasping the implementation of work. He thinks things well, deals with problems quickly, and has a moderate grasp of principle and flexibility. There is nothing he does that is not a matter of course. ”
In the military academy, Yun Daiying, the chief political instructor, was the only person who could match Zhou Enlai's teaching prestige. His long, emaciated face, some say resembling the Indian "Mahatma" Gandhi, and a pair of glasses with deep myopia, always filled with a charming and persistent look on his face. Since most of the Whampoa students enrolled were young students, most of them had read his articles published in the magazine "New Youth" before, and many students fell in love with him before they met. Yun Daiying not only explains in simple terms during lectures, but is also very approachable and instructive to students after class. For example, courses such as the history of social development and dialectical materialism are still very unfamiliar to most students, but after he explained them in vivid language, everyone was able to understand them very well, and they unconsciously understood some basic tenets of Marxism. At that time, the common evaluation of the students was: "Teacher Yun deserves to be a teacher of youth sports." ”
Students of the Whampoa Military Academy are recruited from all over the country. Since most of the areas outside Guangdong were under the rule of the warlords at that time, it was impossible to openly recruit students, so the delegates to the First National Congress of the Kuomintang were entrusted to return to the province to recruit their descendants. Interestingly, Mao Zedong, who was a member of the executive committee of the Kuomintang Shanghai Executive Department at this time, was also in charge of the re-examination of the first batch of students in Shanghai. At the first meeting of the National Defense Commission in 1954, he also said: I also recruited a class of students for Huangpu in Shanghai, and the address is No. 44 Huanlong Road, Shanghai. Another "close contact" between Mao Zedong and the Whampoa Military Academy was on September 3, 1926. On that day, Mao Zedong was invited to give a speech at the Whampoa Military Academy. Although Mao Zedong had to resign from his post as director of the Propaganda Department of the Kuomintang Central Committee, which he had been acting for eight months, due to the passage of the "Bill on Sorting Out Party Affairs" a few months ago (one of which was that Communist Party members were not allowed to serve as ministers of the Kuomintang Central Committee), he was still the director of the Peasant Lecture Institute and a well-known "expert on the peasant movement," and his speech was warmly welcomed by the teachers and students.
The Whampoa Military Academy has trained a large number of military talents for the Kuomintang and the Communist Party. Looking through the list of students in the first phase of Whampoa, many of the famous figures on both sides of the Kuomintang and the Communist Party in the future were among them. On the Communist side, such as Xu Xiangqian (forward), Chen Geng, Zuo Quan, Jiang Xianyun, Xu Jishen, Wang Erzhuo, Zhou Shidi, Cai Shenxi, Xuan Xiafu and others; On the Kuomintang side, such as Hu Zongnan, Du Yuming, Zheng Dongguo, Fan Hanjie, Li Xianzhou, Guan Linzheng, Huang Wei, Wang Jingjiu, and Sun Yuanliang, as well as Wang Shuming, Song Xilian, Li Mo'an, and Hou Jingru, who were members of the Communist Party at the beginning and later joined the Kuomintang. In the protracted fighting between the Kuomintang and the Communist armies, a large part of the commanders on both sides on the battlefield were former Whampoa classmates. At that time, this group of aspiring young people came from all over the country precisely for a common revolutionary goal. Just like the excited and high-pitched "Whampoa Military Academy School Song" sang:
The tide of anger is surging, the party flag is flying,
This is the Whampoa of the revolution!
Doctrine must be implemented, discipline must not be relaxed,
Prepare to be a pioneer of struggle!
Fight a bloody road and guide the oppressed people.
Carrying Hands, Forward Lines
The road is not far, don't be surprised, dear and sincere......