Now when we talk about the August 1st Nanchang Uprising, we all know that this is an uprising that opened the prelude to our Party's independent leadership of the armed struggle and the creation of a revolutionary army, and an uprising that fired the first shot of armed resistance against the Kuomintang reactionaries.
Speaking of the leaders who launched this uprising, everyone is familiar with Zhou Enlai, He Long, Ye Ting, Zhu De, Liu Bocheng, and so on.
Tan Pingshan, the absolute protagonist who first proposed to launch an uprising and served as the supreme leader in the uprising, was gradually unknown and gradually ignored because his fame was far from being comparable to that of Zhou, He, Ye, Zhu and others.
I have to say that this is a great pity.
On closer examination, Tan Pingshan is a veteran-level figure with the same name as Li Dazhao and Chen Duxiu, and once had the saying of "Southern Tan, Northern Li, and Middle Chen".
Born in 1886 in Gaoming County, Guangdong Province, Tan Pingshan was gifted and intelligent since childhood, and despite his poor family, his family helped him to complete his studies.
It was also because of his reading that he broadened his horizons and opened up revolutionary ideas, and in 1909, while studying at the Liangguang Normal School, he joined the League led by Sun Yat-sen without hesitation and threw himself into activities against the Qing government.
In 1911, the Xinhai Revolution broke out and Qing rule collapsed. In January 1912, the Republic of China was founded, Tan Pingshan was outstanding in the anti-Qing struggle, he was elected as one of the 96 representatives of the Provisional Assembly of Guangdong Province in Leizhou, participating in the activities of the Provisional Assembly of Guangdong Province.
On November 7, 1917, the October Revolution in Russia was victorious, and the Bolshevik armed forces led by Lenin established Soviet power, which greatly encouraged the proletarian revolutions of all countries in the world.
Also in this year, Tan Pingshan, Tan Zhitang, Chen Gongbo and a group of Guangdong youths were admitted to Peking University.
Through the October Revolution in Russia, Tan Pingshan saw the dawn of the new century and joined the Marxist Research Society and the Journalism Research Society initiated by Li Dazhao and other organizations.
In the summer of 1920, Tan Pingshan graduated from Peking University, returned to Guangzhou with Tan Zhitang, Chen Gongbo and others, initiated the establishment of the Guangdong Socialist Youth League organization, and founded the Guangdong Qunbao to publicize the October Revolution and Marxism and promote the development of the revolutionary mass movement in Guangdong.
At the end of this year, Chen Duxiu was hired by Chen Jiongming as the chairman of the Guangdong Education Commission and also came to Guangzhou.
Tan Pingshan, Tan Zhitang and Chen Gongbo visited the door and helped Chen Duxiu establish the Guangdong Communist Group.
In July 1921, the "First Congress" of our Party was held in Shanghai, and the Communist Party of China was established, but Tan Pingshan was unable to attend due to the incident, so Chen Gongbo went to Shanghai as a representative of Guangdong to attend the congress.
On the "May Day" Festival in 1922, Tan Pingshan, Deng Zhongxia, Zhang Guotao and others attended the first national labor conference in Guangzhou, and mobilized 100,000 workers in Guangzhou to hold a large parade.
In this parade, Tan Pingshan held aloft the red flag and walked at the front of the line.
On June 16 of that year, Chen Jiongming rebelled in Guangzhou, and Chen Gongbo, Tan Zhitang, and others did not see the revolutionary situation clearly, but also maintained contact with Chen Jiongming, so they were expelled from the party.
Tan Pingshan left Guangdong in time and went north to work at the Beijing Police Supervision School.
In June 1923, Tan Pingshan attended the "Three Congresses" of our party held in Guangzhou and was elected as a member of the CPC Central Committee Executive Committee and a member of the Central Bureau. Subsequently, he was elected as a representative of our Party to participate in the preparations for the reorganization of the Kuomintang.
Sun Yat-sen welcomed Tan Pingshan's arrival and appointed him, Liao Zhongkai, and nine others as members of the Kuomintang Provisional Central Executive Committee, responsible for preparing for the reorganization.
On January 20, 1924, the Kuomintang "First Congress" was held in Guangzhou, and Sun Yat-sen personally presided over the opening ceremony of the congress. Tan Pingshan delivered the "Report of the Provisional Central Executive Committee" to the congress, and was elected as a member of the Kuomintang Central Executive Committee and a standing committee member, and served as the director of the Central Organization Department and presided over the daily affairs of the Central Secretariat.
In January 1925, the "Four Congresses" of our Party were held in Shanghai, and Tan Pingshan was elected as a member of the Central Executive Committee.
It has to be said that Tan Pingshan enjoys a very high status in both the Kuomintang and the Communist Party.
In the winter of 1926, Tan Pingshan also went to the Soviet Kremlin to attend the Seventh Session of the Communist International, and made important speeches at the Twelfth and Thirteenth Sessions, so that he was elected Chairman of the Chinese Committee of the Communist International at the Twenty-seventh Meeting.
On April 27, 1927, Tan Pingshan attended the "Five Congresses" of our Party and was elected as a member of the Central Committee; at the following First Plenary Session of the Fifth Central Committee, he was elected as a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee.
On July 15, 1927, the Wang Jingwei clique openly betrayed the revolution in Wuhan, and the cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party was completely broken.
On July 19, Tan Pingshan, Li Lisan, Deng Zhongxia and others hurried from Wuhan to Jiujiang to hold a symposium and brew an uprising.
In this sense, Tan Pingshan was the earliest initiator of the Nanchang Uprising.
In order to win over He Long's army, Tan Pingshan personally went to the Headquarters of the Twentieth Army to talk to He Long, and got a positive response from He Long.
Lao Qin would like to add here that He Long had not yet joined our party at that time, and the Twentieth Army under his command had some "green forest background", and Tan Pingshan's act of talking to He Long was of a certain risk, so it was regarded by some people as "unorganized and undisciplined".
However, Tan Pingshan did not look away, He Long is a heroic figure who pursues light, he listened to Tan Pingshan's words and said without hesitation: "I follow the Communist Party"!
Therefore, our Nanchang uprising has added a fresh force out of thin air!
On July 27, Zhou Enlai, under the assignment of the central authorities, took Chen Geng to Nanchang, met with Tan Pingshan, Li Lisan, Wu Yuzhang, Lin Boqu, Peng Pan, Yun Daiying, Liu Bocheng, Nie Rongzhen, Xu Teli, and others to set up a committee of former enemies, studied the deployment of the uprising, and determined the specific time of the uprising—the evening of July 30.
Everything was ready to stop, and only when the hour came, the grand plan of the uprising was fully launched.
However, on the morning of 29 July, Zhang Guotao, in the name of the central deputy, sent two secret telegrams to the former party committee in Jiujiang, repeatedly emphasizing the word "prudence" and demanding that everything wait until he arrived.
Zhang Guotao was also afraid that these two telegrams would not be enough to prevent the uprising from proceeding, so he rushed to Nanchang on the 30th and obstructed the action on the grounds that "the uprising needed to be approved by Zhang Fakui, commander-in-chief of the Second Front of the National Revolutionary Army", so that the uprising could not be held as scheduled.
In the early morning of the 31st, the discussion on whether to revolt was still in a stalemate.
Zhou Enlai was so angry with Zhang Guotao that he slapped the table on the spot.
Zhou Enlai had always been gentle and elegant, and Zhang Guotao was indifferent to Zhou Enlai's accusations.
Tan Pingshan is different, he has always been acting vigorously, seeing Zhang Guotao so messed up, he could no longer bear it, broke his mouth and scolded, calling Zhang Guotao a "bastard", and also let people pull Zhang Guotao out to shoot.
Angered by Tan Pingshan, Zhang Guotao fell.
As a result, the uprising was launched at 2 a.m. on August 1.
The process of the uprising was very smooth, and in just four hours, the rebel army completely controlled the whole of Nanchang.
However, Nanchang was later counterattacked by the enemy.
Faced with the situation in which the enemy was strong and we were weak, the rebel contingent withdrew from Nanchang City and braved the scorching heat to go south.
When the troops arrived in Ruijin, Tan Pingshan and Zhou Yiqun held a solemn ceremony for He Long to join the party at ruijin primary school.
The main rebel army was eventually severely defeated in the Chaoshan area, and Tan Pingshan moved to Hong Kong.
Because Tan Pingshan organized the Nanchang Uprising, the Kuomintang Central Committee in Wuhan expelled Tan Pingshan from the Kuomintang on August 8, 1927.
For the Reaction of the Kuomintang, Tan Pingshan smiled and did not bother.
However, to his great surprise, under the guidance of "Left" blind activism, in November of the same year, the enlarged meeting of the Provisional Politburo of the Central Committee also passed the "Resolution on Political Discipline", which punished a number of party cadres, among whom Chairman Mao was expelled from the Politburo and Zhou Enlai was also disciplined.
Tan Pingshan received the most severe punishment and was directly expelled from the party.
As for the reasons for Tan Pingshan's expulsion from the party, the "Resolution on Political Discipline" states that in Jiujiang and Nanchang, "his personal actions were fully developed," "speculation in conversation with He Long," and "the central authorities did not care about the party and did it themselves."
Li Lisan, who instigated the Nanchang uprising with Tan Pingshan, said that it was Tan Pingshan who showed "consistent opportunism" in the Nanchang uprising.
Zhou Enlai later recalled that it was mainly Tan Pingshan who threatened on the eve of the Nanchang uprising that "Zhang Guotao would kill him if he opposed the uprising."
Zhang Guotao's memoirs in his later years also said that Tan Pingshan "once put up a leader's shelf" during the Nanchang uprising.
It can be basically confirmed that the reason for Tan Pingshan's expulsion from the party is that his attitude towards Zhang Guotao is too fierce.
After Tan Pingshan was expelled from the party, he could not participate in party work.
In March 1928, he initiated the organization of the Third Party ("Chinese Revolutionary Party") in a hotel owned by foreigners in Shanghai, with members including Deng Yanda, Deng Chumin, Zhang Bojun, and Zheng Taipu.
After the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, Tan Pingshan established the "Three People's Comrades Federation" (hereinafter referred to as the "Democratic Alliance").
After the founding of new China, Tan Pingshan held a ministerial-level position - he was appointed as a political commissar of the State Council and director of the People's Supervision Commission until his death.
Tan Pingshan died on April 2, 1956, at the age of 70.