The awakening of the East
The one great asset that emerged after Lenin's demise in January 1924 was what he had predicted two decades before: namely, the 'awakening of the East' - in this instance the Far East. Strategically the prospect of stripping the imperialist powers, above all Britain, ofthe assets that underwrote empire, was beguiling indeed. India took the greatest share of British export, China stood a close second. The consequences of losing both or even one of these crucial markets, that were also the recipients of billions in capital investment, were both incalculable and uplifting. India, however, trod its own path. The passive resistance movement established by Gandhi differed from the Bolsheviks (and Indian Communists) crucially not only as to ends but also as to means. That left China.
Lenin had been to the fore in establishing Soviet credentials with China's bourgeois nationalist movement under Sun Yat-sen. In 1918 a message had been sent declaring all unequal treaties null and void. Yet nothing was heard in reply. Finally, at the end of 1920, Russian emissaries reported back favourably on Sun as 'violently anglophobe'.[133] But he led no party as such and Moscow saw its job as not merely to found a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) but also build the nationalist movement against the West and Japan. In the summer of 1922 emissary A. A. Ioffe reported to Deputy Commissar of Foreign Affairs (for the East) Lev Karakhan that Beijing was
for us extremely favourable. The struggle with world capitalism has vast resonance and massive possibilities for success. The spirit of world politics is felt here extremely strongly, much greater than, for instance, in Central Asia, where Lenin attributed it. China is without doubt the focal point of international conflicts and the most vulnerable place in international imperialism, and I think that precisely now, when imperialism is undergoing a crisis in Europe, and when revolution is imminent, it would be very important to deliver imperialism a blow at its weakest point.[134]
Accusations of 'revolutionary opportunism' were met with the rebuttal that 'revolutionary nationalism' was a force to be reckoned with in its own right. 'We have no alternative.'[135]
With Sun's death early in 1925 the Chinese nationalist movement passed into the hands of a less principled successor, Chiang Kai-shek, who formed it into a party: the Guomindang. Even under Sun, however, the interests of the nationalists intersected with those of Russia only at certain key points, not all along the line. Rather like Germany under Stresemann from 1926, the Guomindang saw its close relations with Moscow as a major bargaining counter to be cashed in when others offered more; an exercise engaged in with the British in the late 1920s and the Japanese from the early 1930s.[136]
By 1925 minimal Soviet investment had paid off handsomely. And when on 30 May the British foolishly fired on unarmed protestors in the Shanghai International Settlement, the entire nationalist movement rose in protest, the fledgling and hitherto insignificant CCP in the vanguard of direct action. The Soviet, and therefore Comintern, commitment to revolutionary nationalism in China was only conditional; yet that very condition - driving the British out - was sufficient to send Anglo-Soviet relations into a tailspin from which it never entirely recovered, and with damaging consequences in the longer term after Hitler came to power in Germany when Moscow needed London as an ally against Berlin.
Thus Comintern aspirations were displaced fortuitously from West to East. Comprehension of the East was, however, not a great deal better than of the West. And the Russians soon got carried away in expectation of cutting the British Empire down to size. They were therefore entirely unprepared when London laid its trap: negotiating a secret compromise with Chiang that not only encouraged but also facilitated the massacre of Communist cadres within his ranks and a breach in diplomatic relations with Moscow that finally foreclosed on the Leninist investment in revolutionary nationalism. London also cut relations with Moscow in the spring of 1927. The Russians therefore had every cause to regret having vested so much in what turned out to be a futile and costly venture. Only the CCP had more reason for regret. Its last outpost of strength was washed away in a tide of blood by Chiang at Canton that December. All that remained were peasants deep in the vast interior, much vaunted by the unknown Mao Zedung but a cause of deep scepticism in Moscow, where decisions were in the making to break the back of recalcitrant peasants resisting the forced collectivisation of agriculture.
Revolutionary phrase versus cautious pragmatism
Had decisions on Comintern strategy hinged entirely on principles of revolutionary solidarity, the Soviet state would have faced the prospect of extinction, since objective reality did not match up to exaggerated expectations. Rapallo realpolitik would, for instance, never have come about, thus leaving Russia dangerously isolated in a hostile world. Had decisions hinged entirely on reasons of state, however, the Comintern would have lost its membership abroad; and although Moscow not infrequently undercut fraternal parties, this was usually only in extremis. In the late 1920s, however, neither factor was critical to Comintern strategy. What was critical was the advancement of Stalin within Russia. He had always been deeply sceptical of the Comintern's value - lavochka (corner shop) was the dismissive term he used to describe it. None the less the prevailing view was that the Comintern was the sacred repository for the ultimate objective - world revolution - and its membership was inextricably tied into the Soviet party; indeed the Polish party was so difficult to differentiate-it also sprang from the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party- that later Stalin wiped it out.
What made necessary the complete subordination of the Comintern to Stalin was that it was effectively a continuum with the Soviet party - so domination of the latter also necessitated domination of the former. What made possible that subordination were practices begun by Lenin for completely different purposes. Strict discipline was governed by the notorious twenty- first condition of Comintern membership, which originated not from Russian hands but at the enthusiastic suggestion of the founder of the Italian Communist Party, Amadeo Bordiga. This greatly facilitated the process begun by Lenin known as Bolshevisation, which was to ensure that the sections were fine-tuned to (successful) Russian revolutionary standards. The core assumption behind the purge was the fixed and unalterable belief that failure to accomplish revolutionary goals was not the result of the absence of revolutionary conditions but the absence of revolutionary aptitude.
Ifthis were not distortion enough, it rapidly became an instrument to bolster the power and influence of those Russians at the head of the Comintern - initially Zinoviev-to advance their own proteges at the expense of meritocracy. Thus it was that initially the Left (including Bordiga) captured the Comintern, was soon forced to give way to the Right, and both were then obliged to cede to Stalin; precisely parallel to the shift of power within the Soviet Communist Party. Bolshevisation therefore reached its apogee as Stalinisation. And by then whatever virtue there had originally been had long surrendered to bureaucracy. It is no accident that later the indigenous revolutions were accomplished only by those who, one way or another, evaded Moscow discipline (Tito, Hoxha, Mao and Castro).
133
Memorandum from A. Potapovto Chicherin, 12 Dec. 1920, M. Titarenko et al. (eds.),
135
Speech by Maring, 6 Jan. 1923, at a session of the Comintern executive committee (IKKI) ibid., doc. 56.
136
For the larger picture see E. H. Carr,