In 1946, the famous American progressive journalist and writer, then 61-year-old Anna Louis Strong (hereinafter referred to as "Anna"), came to China for the fifth time, because she had always been full of interest in the Chinese revolution, so she broke through all difficulties and went to Yan'an this time, eating millet with the fighters in the Liberated Areas, living in cave dwellings, and had a very close relationship.
It was also during this visit that she met Chairman Mao for the first time in her life and conducted an in-depth personal interview with him. During this period, Anna intentionally or unintentionally mentioned his old rival Chiang Kai-shek, originally thought that Chairman Mao would not be willing to talk, but did not expect that he was very generous, not only willing to talk, but also talked very thoroughly, from beginning to end to tell his three meetings with Chiang Kai-shek in his early years, involving many well-known historical events, historical figures, and some of his personal views on his old opponent Chiang Kai-shek, these are very precious historical materials, and later, Anna wrote a book "Chinese Conquered China" accordingly.
Based on Anna's interview, the following is a detailed review of Chairman Mao's three early meetings with Chiang Kai-shek (before the Chongqing negotiations), as well as Chairman Mao's sharp personal comments on the "Zhongshan ship incident" and Chiang Kai-shek.
The three meetings were in January 1924, January 1926, May 1926, and for nearly 20 years they did not see each other again until the Chongqing negotiations in August 1945.
▲ On August 6, 1946, Chairman Mao was interviewed by Anna in front of the Yangjialing Cave in Yan'an, and put forward the famous thesis that "all reactionaries are paper tigers".
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="34" >, the intersection of generalizations</h1>
Chairman Mao and Chiang Kai-shek met for the first time in their lives at the First National Congress of the Kuomintang in January 1924, when Chairman Mao was 31 years old and Chiang Kai-shek was 37 years old.
At that time, a total of 165 deputies attended the congress, of which Seat No. 39 sat Chairman Mao, the representative of Hunan, who was a very special person at that time, both a member of the Kuomintang and a member of the Communist Party, and both were very key positions, so at this meeting, he was very valued by Sun Yat-sen, sat in a very high position, and he himself stood up many times to speak.
▲ Photo of the first congress of the Kuomintang in 1924
At the same time, Chiang Kai-shek was actually sitting in the meeting, but he was not a delegate, but only attended the meeting as an observer, and at that time he had no position in the Kuomintang, only equivalent to Sun Yat-sen's chief bodyguard. He was very silent throughout the congress, and only on the fourth day did he officially make a brief appearance in the public eye when Sun Yat-sen announced the establishment of the Whampoa Military Academy, and he was appointed president of the Whampoa Military Academy, and the rest of the time Chiang Kai-shek listened in silence to others.
▲ Chiang Kai-shek in 1924 (left), with Sun Yat-sen in his seat
After the congress, Chairman Mao was elected as an alternate member of the Kuomintang Central Executive Committee by a high vote, and was entrusted by Sun Yat-sen with a heavy responsibility and sent to Shanghai to work.
At that time, Chiang Kai-shek was only the principal of the Whampoa Military Academy, and his position and status in the party were far inferior to chairman Mao's, and after the congress, he silently returned to his hometown in Xikou, Ningbo.
During the whole congress, because of different positions, different hometowns, and different beliefs, they were only general friends, pingshui met, and almost no in-depth exchanges occurred; moreover, Chairman Mao's Xiangtan accent was very heavy at that time, and Chiang Kai-shek's Ningbo accent was also very heavy.
In this way, the first meeting between the two people ended in a hurry, and it was estimated that no one expected that this mighty Hunan and heroic Zhejiang people would become rivals for a lifetime in the future, and also directly affected the course of China's history.
Mao Zedong in 1924
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="42" >2, "now is not what it used to be"</h1>
"When Chiang Kai-shek and I met again, he was no longer what he used to be, and he had become a new upstart with a heavy army, but what about me? Pursued by Zhao Hengxi's troops, he fled from Hunan to Guangzhou. Pressed by Anna, Chairman Mao recalled his second meeting with Chiang Kai-shek in early 1926.
"Aren't you in Shanghai, how can you escape from Hunan to Guangzhou?" Anna was a little surprised, because according to Chairman Mao's previous account, he had been sent to Shanghai to work since the end of the "First Congress" in early 1924, but what Anna did not know was that Chairman Mao was forced to "flee" Shanghai at the end of that year.
Discovering Anna's doubts, Chairman Mao added about his days as a secretary in Shanghai, an unforgettable experience that was very difficult and thankless at both ends, not only mentally tortured, but also physically ill due to fatigue.
▲ On August 6, 1946, Mao Zedong gave an exclusive interview to Anna on a stone bench in front of the Yangjialing cave.
Chairman Mao explained to Anna: "I am not only the secretary of the Shanghai Executive Department of the Kuomintang in Shanghai, but also the secretary of the CPC Central Committee, and this secretary is not very good; whether in the Kuomintang or in the Communist Party, my secretary is very difficult, and the Kuomintang side says that I am a 'cross-party member' and a 'hairy boy', and excludes me; on the Communist side, I have differences with Chen Duxiu, and his 'parent' style is very strong, and there is no room for different opinions." In this case, my mood was extremely bad, I could not sleep at night, and I became homesick. So on the eve of the Fourth National Congress of the Communist Party of China, I returned to Hunan on the pretext of "recuperating from illness.". ”
Only then did Strong understand, so he asked, "Have you been elected to the Fourth National Congress of the Communist Party of China?" Chairman Mao laughed and said: "In addition to the four major congresses of the COMMUNIST Party of China, Mao Zedong's name fell behind Sun Shan, Chen Duxiu was elected general secretary of the CPC Central Committee and also concurrently served as the director of the Central Organization Department. ”
"What about Chiang Kai-shek?" Anna asked urgently.
"Chiang Kai-shek was relieved at this time, and he was appointed commander-in-chief of the Eastern Crusade Army, and still cooperated with the Kuomintang and the Communists, and asked Zhou Enlai, a member of the Communist Party, to serve as director of the General Political Department of the Eastern Crusade Army." Chairman Mao smiled and recalled.
▲Chiang Kai-shek
In fact, since the first meeting, Chairman Mao was mainly active in the political field, while Chiang Kai-shek trained a large number of outstanding military generals through the Whampoa Military Academy, and on July 8, 1925, after the Whampoa Military Academy was expanded to become the First Army of the National Revolutionary Army, he personally became the commander of the army, showing a strong military command ability.
On October 1 of the same year, Chiang Kai-shek led the Eastern Crusade army out of the division, on October 14, the first battle was successful, by the end of November, Chen Jiongming's troops were swept away in one fell swoop, the Eastern Crusade was a complete victory, and after Chiang Kai-shek's class returned to Yangcheng, his reputation was greatly enhanced, and he became the "hero of the Eastern Crusade" in the eyes of everyone, so by January 4, 1926, when Chairman Mao and Chiang Kai-shek met for the second time, it was indeed "no longer what it used to be".
At the second session of the Kuomintang at that time, Mao Zedong was still sitting on the delegates' table, but Chiang Kai-shek sat on the rostrum; during the congress, with the aura of "hero of the Eastern Crusades," he made a report on the military situation to the congress on his toes, and with great ambition, he issued a bold statement: "Last year we could reunify Guangdong, and this year it will not be difficult to reunify China!" ”
Chiang Kai-shek during the Northern Expedition in 1926
After the end of the Second Kuomintang Congress, Mao Zedong was still elected as an alternate member of the Central Executive Committee, while Chiang Kai-shek was elected to the Central Executive Committee with the highest number of votes, and seemed to hold the military power of the Kuomintang.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="93" >3, Zhongshan ship incident</h1>
Hearing Mao Zedong's account of meeting Chiang Kai-shek for the second time, Anna asked curiously: "At this time, are you aware of Chiang Kai-shek's counter-revolutionary plot?" ”
Chairman Mao did not shy away: "I was aware that something was going to happen, and when I found out that the Zhongshan and Baobi ships were heading for Huangpu, I asked Li Zhilong whose orders it was?" Li Zhilong said that it was Principal Jiang's order. At the same time, I found that all the units of the First Army controlled by Chiang Kai-shek had been 'waiting for a while' for several days and nights. I reported these anomalies to Chen Yannian, secretary of the Guangdong Regional CPC Committee, and asked him to pay attention to these unusual movements of Chiang Kai-shek. Chen Yannian, the son of Chen Duxiu, general secretary of the CPC, replied that there was a reason for the incident and that there was no solid evidence, so he could only heighten his vigilance and wait and see what happened. ”
▲Zhongshan ship
Mao Zedong's hunches proved to be very accurate, and soon after Chiang Kai-shek single-handedly planned and implemented the "Zhongshan Incident", which was his first public large-scale "anti-communist" operation after the death of Sun Yat-sen in 1925, and he never looked back.
At dawn on March 20, 1926, Chiang Kai-shek secretly commanded soldiers with live ammunition, took advantage of the darkness of the dawn to arrest Li Zhilong, occupy the Naval Bureau, surround the provincial and port strike committees, disarm the workers' pickets, put Zhou Enlai under house arrest, imprison the Soviet advisory group station, and also surround Wang Jingwei's residence in the name of protection, and impose martial law throughout Guangzhou. The "Zhongshan Ship Incident" that shocked China and foreign countries broke out.
After the incident broke out, Mao Zedong was already on guard, and he immediately went to Chen Yannian and suggested that all the members of the Kuomintang Central Executive Committee and the Supervisory Commission in Guangzhou should be secretly concentrated in the Ye Ting Independent Regiment in Zhaoqing, and at the same time they should hold a meeting to call Chiang Kai-shek, reduce his military power, expel him from the party, and exert pressure on Chiang Kai-shek politically and in public opinion.
This is a good suggestion, perhaps Mao Zedong had a premonition that Chiang Kai-shek's ambitions were far more than that, Chiang Kai-shek ostensibly supported the cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communists, but in fact did not have a good feeling for the Communists, he wanted a comprehensive and high degree of centralization, and the Communists were the biggest "stumbling block" he faced at that time.
▲ On December 1, 1927, Chiang Kai-shek and Soong Mei-ling held a wedding in Shanghai, and after the marriage between Chiang and Song, it played an immeasurable role in Chiang Kai-shek's position in the political arena.
However, unfortunately, these suggestions of Mao Zedong were not adopted in the end, and although he had a fierce debate at the time, they were to no avail.
Speaking of this, Chairman Mao said to Anna with great emotion, "After this incident, Chiang Kai-shek is equivalent to killing three birds with one stone: first, he arrested Li Zhilong and struck at the Communist Party; second, Wang Jingwei fled, and Chiang Kai-shek took control of the party, government, and army; third, he threatened soviet military advisers to return to China, and the Soviet Union agreed." ”
"Chiang Kai-shek first showed his counter-revolutionary flair, and he succeeded in one fell swoop." Chairman Mao sighed and said.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="99" >4, parting ways</h1>
In fact, only two months after the Zhongshan Incident, on May 15, 1926, Mao Zedong and Chiang Kai-shek met again, at the Second Plenary Session of the Second Central Committee of the Kuomintang, which was also their last meeting before the Chongqing negotiations.
At that time, Mao Zedong attended the meeting as an alternate member of the Central Executive Committee, sitting in a very inconspicuous place below, while Chiang Kai-shek sat high in the middle of the rostrum and became the presiding officer of the meeting, which almost meant that he became the leader of the Kuomintang.
On May 20, Chairman Mao, in his capacity as acting propaganda minister of the Kuomintang, delivered a "Report on the Work of the Propaganda Department" to the congress, after which he immediately resigned from this post and devoted a great deal of energy to the investigation and study of the peasant revolutionary movement.
In early 1927, he visited the five counties of Xiangtan, Xiangxiang, Hengshan, Liling, and Changsha, and in August of that year wrote the "Report on the Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan", which was one of the most important investigation reports in his life, which directly prompted him to thoroughly understand the unique and important position of the peasant movement in the Chinese revolution, and in September of that year issued the fiercest shout: "The peasant question is the central problem of the national revolution, and if the peasants do not rise up to participate in and support the national revolution, the national revolution will not succeed." ”
▲The "Hunan Peasant Movement Investigation Report" which has been well received at home and abroad
At the same time, Chiang Kai-shek began the brutal murder of Communists, the "April 12" counter-revolutionary coup killed a large number of innocent Communists and the masses of the people, and the first cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party was completely defeated.
After saying this, Chairman Mao seemed to be unable to sit still any longer; he solemnly stood up, walked back and forth a few steps in the courtyard, and then said to Anna in a loud voice: "Chiang Kai-shek said that the people cannot have two masters, and the sky cannot have two days. ”
He said: "From a long-term point of view, the really powerful force does not belong to the reactionaries, but to the people. The so-called "heaven has no two days" must be based on an important foundation, that is, the people support this sun, and when this sun is not supported by the people, no matter how high it rises, it will eventually be "shot" down by the people.
At that time, it was the early stage of the Kuomintang-Communist Civil War, and the People's Liberation Army was under great pressure, not only backward in numbers, but also inferior in weapons and equipment to Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang troops. Two words: the will of the people. He said: "Although Chiang Kai-shek has american assistance, the people's hearts are not smooth, morale is not high, and the economy is in difficulty. We don't have foreign aid, but we have a desire for the people, high morale, and a way to do it for the economy. Therefore, we can defeat Chiang Kai-shek. Facts have proved that his thesis is correct, and in the face of Chiang Kai-shek, Chairman Mao seems to be more inferior, the more he appears to be ambitious, and such a belief in victory finally supports the Chinese ushers in a new bright sun.