Memoirs of a Chinese Revolutionary by Wang Fan-hsi. Oxford University Press. Hardback £15
Twenty-four years ago the memoirs of Wang Fan-hsi were painstakingly scratched on flimsy wax stencils and produced in an edition of twenty copies. The first English translation of this unique book has been published by Oxford University Press.
It is unique as the only personal record of major events in the history of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Other recollections that do exist have to meet orthodox political requirements of the day. No one dares to write as individuals about the past. Those in favour today are the disgraced of tomorrow. The rise of the new democracy movement in China today will find these memoirs, untainted by the twists and turns of the Maoist bureaucracy, a valuable asset in relearning the experiences of the past.
Of the major events Wang recounts, his recollections of the growth of the left opposition in Moscow in 1927 and 1929 are invaluable. Arriving in Moscow ignorant of [illegible] Soviet Union (CPSU), he assumed along with [illegible] the opposition as something poisonous and threatening. [illegible] Wang recalls going to see Pudovkin's film The Last Days of St Petersburg. Every time Trotsky or Stalin appeared the audience erupted. Some clapped and cheered, others whistled and stamped. But since the lights were out there was little chance of detection. It was almost like casting a vote in a secret ballot, Wang commented. The support for Trotsky was as loud, if not louder, than that for Stalin.
These memoirs do not dwell on fundamental questions such as: should the CCP have [illegible] students arriving in Moscow. The first hand experience of the failure of the Third International's policies in China, along with the publication of Zinoviev's theses on the Chinese revolution in April 1927 and Trotsky's writings, led to a rapid growth of the [illegible]. Wang estimates that more than 200 (over half) of the Chinese students joined the opposition. Official sources put the figure at 29. Wang's account of their organisation must be among the rarest first hand examples that are currently in print. A striking feature he illustrates is the extent of the isolation of the CCP from the debates within the CPSU. Being ignorant of the facts it was unable to develop its own critique within the Third International. The prestige of the Russian revolution outweighed any criticism of Stalin's policy in regard to China. After the defeat of 1927 the CCP depended for its existence on Soviet aid. Given the massive unemployment, party workers sympathetic to the opposition were reluctant to break because of their financial dependance. Chou En-lai told Wang that the bulk of the party's expenses were met by dues paid by Leningrad members of the CPSU. In Wang's view it is these factors, plus the increasing repression of the Trotskyists, squeezed between the KMT and the CCP, that contributed to the failure of Chinese Trotskyism.
The differences between the Stalinist and Trotskyist political line for the CCP after 1927 gives us an interesting insight into the way in which the Third International's directives were taken up. On returning to China in 1929 Wang worked in the CCP under Chou En-lai. He recounts an incident in which the Central Committee of the party had to interpret the Moscow resolution forecasting the imminence of 'a new revolutionary high tide'. At first the Central Committee was inclined to a cautious interpretation, afraid of repeating previous errors. Chou was very hesitant. They returned to the original Russian text which had two inflexions: 'high tide' and 'on the rise'. Chou finally decided to translate it as 'rising tide'. Wang recalls that the word imminent was to be understood as 'still quite a long way off'. A simple illustration of the difficulties the CCP leadership had in applying the line.
The Trotskyists maintained that a massive defeat had been suffered and that the Chinese revolution was not near any new high tide. Wang recounts how they saw their immediate tasks as rebuilding the shattered trade unions, establishing the party in the towns, and centralising the struggle for a constituent assembly. It was at this time that Chen Tu-hsiu, the founder of the CCP, began to move to 'Trotskyism. After the debacle of 1927 Stalin heaped all responsibility on Ch'en who, after all, had only faithfully put the International's line. Ch'en was stunned. The documents of the Left Opposition helped him to understand his role and gave way to his conversion to Trotskyism. He was expelled from the CCP in 1929. This resulted in a massive crisis within the party which was followed by a purge of Trotskyists including Wang. The early thirties saw the decline of both the Trotskyists and the CCP. Via the long march the CCP retreated to the North West countryside leaving a small group of Chinese Trotskyists in the towns.
Wang himself does not develop the question as to whether or not the CCP would have benefited from adopting the policies of the Trotskyists. However he does admit that the Trotskyists themselves hastened their own downfall by concentrating their efforts exclusively in the towns. Even from a purely tactical standpoint he considers that moving into the rural areas would have preserved their cadre. The entry of the Japanese into the war led to the partial alliance of the CCP and the KMT. The war created conditions which the CCP was able to exploit. Wang is critical of the Trotskyists for not actively participating and encouraging the formation of armed detachments of workers. Those few comrades who did organise guerilla units were annihilated either by the Japanese or the CCP. The Trotskyist movement was relegated to the side lines as the CCP came to power.
However, does the victory of the Chinese revolution diminish the role of the Trotskyists? Does it vindicate Stalin? In his introduction, the translator, Gregor Benton, most clearly repudiates this view as does Wang in a chapter which is to be found in the Chinese edition but not in the English. The course of the Chinese revolution broadly conformed to Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution according to which the bourgeois democratic revolution would grow over, with no intervening stages, into the socialist revolution. The irony is, as Gregor Benton says, that the fundamental tenet of Trotskyism was put into practice, not by the Trotskyists themselves, but by the Maoists through a process of trial and error.
Wang's memoirs end with a period of great sadness for the author. The persecution of Trotskyism in 1952-57 resulted in the loss of many of his closest comrades. One amongst them, Chang Ch'ao-lin, was released, after 29 years, in 1979. Despite this unhappy period we can read these memoirs with renewed optimism at the rise of the democratic movement in China. As Wang says:
Now that I am approaching the end of my life's journey, I cannot but feel happy to find what appears before me is not the darkness after the sunset but the bright glimmering of day break.