Mao did not believe in his tiny Party’s prospects, or that communism had any broad appeal. He made this crystal-clear at the CCP’s 3rd Congress in June 1923. The only hope of creating a Communist China, he said, was by means of a Russian invasion. Mao “was so pessimistic,” Maring (who chaired the congress) reported, “that he saw the only salvation of China in the intervention by Russia,” telling the congress “that the revolution had to be brought into China from the north by the Russian army.” This was in essence what happened two decades later.
His enthusiasm for the Moscow line shot Mao into the core of the Party, under Maring. There he exerted himself as never before, now that he could see hope in what he was doing. Moscow’s chief bagman in China, Vilde, who doubled as the Soviet vice-consul in Shanghai, singled out Mao and one other person in a report to Moscow as “most definitely, good cadres.” Mao was appointed the assistant to Party chief Professor Chen, with responsibility for correspondence, documents, and taking the minutes at meetings. All Party letters had to be co-signed by him and Chen. In imitation of Chen, Mao signed with an English signature: T. T. Mao. One of the first things Chen and he did was to write to Moscow for more money—“now that our work front is expanding.”
HAVING SHEPHERDED its local Communist clients into the Nationalists, Moscow now sent a higher-level operator to control both the CCP and the Nationalists and to coordinate their actions. Mikhail Borodin, a charismatic agitator, was appointed Sun Yat-sen’s political adviser at Stalin’s recommendation in August 1923. A veteran of revolutionary activities in America, Mexico and Britain, he was a good orator, with a powerful voice, a dynamic organizer and a shrewd strategist (he was the first person to recommend that the Chinese Communists should move to northwest China to get near the Russian border, which they did a decade later). He inspired descriptions like “majestic,” and radiated energy even when ill.
Borodin reorganized the Nationalists on the Russian model, dubbing their institutions with Communist names, such as Propaganda Department. At the Nationalists’ First Congress in Canton, in January 1924, Mao and many other Chinese Communists took part, and the tiny CCP secured a disproportionate number of posts. Moscow now started to bankroll the Nationalists in a big way. Most importantly, it funded and trained an army, and established a military academy. Set on a picturesque island in the Pearl River some ten kilometers from Canton, the Whampoa Academy was modeled on Soviet institutions, with Russian advisers and many Communist teachers and students. Planes and artillery were shipped in from Soviet Russia, and it was thanks to Russian-trained troops, backed in the field by cohorts of Soviet advisers, that the Nationalists were able to expand their base substantially.
Mao was very active in the Nationalist Party, and became one of sixteen alternate members to its top body, the Central Executive Committee. For the rest of the year, he did most of his work in the Nationalist office in Shanghai. It was Mao who helped form the Hunan Nationalist branch, which became one of the biggest.
Mao even went as far as seldom attending meetings of his own Party. His keenness about working with the Nationalists drew fire from his fellow Communists. His old — and more ideological — friend Cai later complained to the Comintern that in Hunan “our organisation lost almost all political significance. All political questions were decided in the Nationalist provincial committee, not in the Communist Party Provincial Committee.” Another dedicated labor organizer concurred: “Mao at that time was against an independent trade union movement for workers.”
Moreover, Mao suddenly found himself cold-shouldered by some of Moscow’s envoys, as his patron Maring had left China the previous October. Although Mao got on well with Borodin, he struggled to defend himself against the ideological purists. Moscow had ordered the Chinese Communists to keep their separate identity and independence, while infiltrating the Nationalists, but the ideologically woolly Mao could not draw the line between the parties. On 30 March 1924, one of these ideologue envoys, Sergei Dalin, wrote to Voitinsky:
What you would hear from CC [Central Committee] Secretary Mao (undoubtedly a placeman of Maring’s) would make your hair stand on end — for instance, that the [Nationalist Party] was and is a proletarian party and must be recognised by the Communist International as one of its sections … This character represented the Party in the Socialist Youth League … I have written to the Party’s CC and asked it to appoint another representative.
Mao was duly fired from this position. Criticized as “opportunistic” and “right-wing,” he found himself kicked out of the Central Committee, and was not even invited to attend the next CCP congress scheduled for January 1925. His health now took a downturn, and he grew thin and ill. A then house-mate and colleague told us that Mao had “problems in his head … he was preoccupied with his affairs.” His nervous condition was reflected in his bowels, which sometimes moved only once a week. He was to be plagued by constipation — and obsessed by defecation — all his life.
Mao was edged out of Shanghai at the end of 1924. He returned to Hunan, but not to any Party position, and the only place to go was his home village of Shaoshan, where he arrived on 6 February 1925 with over 50 kg of books, claiming he was “convalescing.” He had been with the Communist Party for over four years — years full of ups and downs. At the age of thirty-one, his lack of ideological clarity and fervor had landed him back in his family property. Mao’s setbacks during these initial years of the CCP are still kept tightly covered up. Mao did not want it known that he had been ineffectual at Party work, or extremely keen on the Nationalist Party (which became the main enemy for the Communists in the years to come) — or that he was ideologically rather vague.
Si-yung was to die of illness in 1931.
Siao-yu parted company with Mao around now, and later became a Nationalist government official. He died in Uruguay in 1976.
Total Party membership nationwide was 195 as of the end of June 1922.
The CCP at that point had 994 members.
4. RISE AND DEMISE IN THE NATIONALIST PARTY (1925–27 AGE 31–33)
FOR EIGHT MONTHS MAO LIVED in the family house in Shaoshan. He and his two brothers had inherited the house and a fair amount of land from their parents, and the property had been looked after by relatives. The two brothers had been working in Changsha for the Party, having been recruited by Mao. Now they both came home with him. In Changsha, only 50 km away, the Hunan Communists were organizing strikes, demonstrations and rallies, but Mao was not involved. He stayed at home, playing cards a lot of the time.
But he was watching out for a chance to return to politics — at a high level. In March 1925, Sun Yat-sen, the Nationalist leader, died. His successor was a man whom Mao knew, and who was favorably disposed towards him — Wang Ching-wei. Wang had worked with Mao in Shanghai the year before, and the two had got along very well.
Born in 1883, Wang was ten years Mao’s senior. Charismatic, and an eloquent orator, he also had film-star good looks. He had played an active part in Republican activities against the Manchus, and when the Revolution broke out in October 1911 was in prison under a life sentence for his repeated attempts to assassinate high officials of the Manchu court, including the regent. Released as the dynasty collapsed, he became one of the leaders of the Nationalist Party. He was with Sun Yat-sen in Sun’s last days, and was a witness to his will, which was a strong credential to succeed him. Most important, he had the blessing of Borodin, the top Russian adviser. With about 1,000 agents in the Nationalist base, Moscow was now the master of Canton, which had taken on the air of a Soviet city, decked out with red flags and slogans. Cars raced by with Russian faces inside and Chinese bodyguards on the running-boards. Soviet cargo ships dotted the Pearl River. Behind closed doors, commissars sat around red-cloth-covered tables under the gaze of Lenin, interrogating “troublemakers” and conducting trials.