The Long March. Sun Shuyun

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ room, and some drab information boards below. They carried a very brief summary of Mao's life and his activities in Yudu. A shaky staircase led to the second floor which was where he slept. After Ruijin, this was quite a come-down.

      I told the old man my disappointment. ‘What do you expect?’ he asked, lighting a cigarette and taking a puff. ‘Mao only stayed here briefly, and that was when he was really down. When you are down, even dogs don't come near you.’ Then the man went inside and came back with a stool to sit in the sun, puffing away.

      The old man had mentioned that Mao spent a lot of time in the house reading and thinking, or pacing in the courtyard. Occasionally he went out to inspect the progress of the pontoons over the river, or talked to the local people. He must have reflected on his life, what had happened that had left him out of the centre of power, isolated here while hectic preparations were being made for the Long March. While his courtyard was so quiet the swallows could land undisturbed, as the caretaker put it, Yudu was a bustling place, busier than on a market day. Whole regiments of soldiers marched in and out of the town gates; mules groaned under heavy loads; orderlies dashed here and there without a minute's rest; peasants pulled bamboo poles and door planks towards the river for the pontoons.

      Zhou Enlai only told Mao in August of the decision to leave the base, although it had been made as early as May. Mao had not been consulted, nor had his advice been sought about what to do: what to take or leave behind, who were to go or stay, what route should be taken for the breakout, what would become of the Jiangxi Soviet, whether they were coming back. He only knew that the Red Army was to leave from Yudu, the southern-most county of the Jiangxi Red base, and then head west to join He Long's 2nd Army near the border of Hunan and Hubei. Mao was shown the list of senior Party officials who were to leave. He looked grim as he went through it – many of his close associates were not on it, including one of his brothers. The list had been decided, like everything else, by the trio of Zhou Enlai, the Commissar of the Red Army, Bo Gu, the Party Secretary, and Braun, the Comintern adviser to the Red Army.

      Many leaders and senior commanders came through Yudu to check up on the preparations, but few bothered to call on Mao. Gong Chu saw more of him than most. He was Commander of the Red Army in Yudu and of the force left behind to guard the Jiangxi base when the Long March began. He gave a graphic account of Mao's state in the days leading up to the March. Mao had had an attack of malaria and was lank and grey. Gong asked him about his health, and Mao replied: ‘I have not been well recently, but more painful is that I feel extremely low.’¹ He invited Gong to come and see him: ‘I hope you can come and have a chat whenever you have the time in the evenings.’ He took up the invitation; Mao's wife joined them, and she would ‘prepare delicious suppers. The three of us would chat and drink and smoke, often …till midnight …From my observation, Mao's place was not visited by other people except me … It really felt as if he was isolated and miserable.’

      On another visit, Gong found Mao sadder still, complaining about his loss of power, how the people who had fought with him in the Jinggang Mountains were pushed aside, and how his Party enemies wanted all the power in their hands. Reflecting on the punishment meted out to him, he even cried. ‘Tears ran down his cheeks. He was coughing from time to time, and his face looked drawn and dried and sallow. Under the flicker of a tiny oil lamp, he was quite a picture of dejection.’²

      Mao's state of mind was understandable. He had rescued the Party and founded the Jiangxi base, and was rewarded by being removed from his position. In the 1920s, the young Communists followed every instruction from Moscow religiously. When Moscow told them to work with the Nationalist government, they did so – until Chiang decided that they were too much of a threat. The White Purge of 1927 was horrific in its butchery, and reduced the Communists almost to nothing. But gradually they restored themselves. Next Moscow came up with a plan to organize armed uprisings and take major cities, as had happened in the Russian Revolution. They tried this in Nanchang, Wuhan and Canton – but all of them failed spectacularly.

      Mao was instructed to lead an attack on Changsha, a heavily fortified city. Instead, he took his men and headed for the Jinggang Mountains on the border between Hunan and Jiangxi, where Chiang had little control – no doubt inspired by peasant rebels of the past, particularly those immortalized in The Water Margins, his favourite Chinese novel. The book tells of a group of rebels who rose against the Emperor and became so powerful that the Emperor had to yield to their demands. It mattered little that he had only 600 men. As Mao said, ‘A single spark can start a prairie fire.’ He joined with two local bandit kings and managed to set up a base there.

      His reputation spread. In May 1928, Zhu De, the Nationalist brigadier who had turned to Communism, brought Mao the remains of his troops from the failed Nanchang uprising. Six months later, they were joined by Peng Dehuai, who defected from the Nationalist army with 1,500 soldiers. Together they had 5,000 men, and made up the core of the Red Army, with Mao the head. This nascent army was too big for the Jinggang Mountains to support, so Mao decided to make a move and they found a new home in the flatter hills surrounding Ruijin.

      The Red base in Jiangxi grew and grew, even spreading to neighbouring Fujian Province. On 7 November 1931 the Communists established the Chinese Soviet Republic, with Mao as the leader. He felt he deserved his position – he had provided a base, vision and hope for the Chinese Revolution – but he was soon to be disappointed. With help from the Communists’ spy-master who defected to him, Chiang wiped out the Party HQ in Shanghai. Many of those who survived decided to join Mao in Jiangxi, now the biggest Communist base in the country. Zhou Enlai arrived in Ruijin in August 1931, and all the top leaders followed; a nucleus was left in Shanghai just as a liaison with Moscow.

      Mao soon began to feel the squeeze from the Party heavyweights. ‘After the men who had lived in foreign villas arrived, I was thrown into the cesspool …Really, it looked as though I had to prepare my funeral.’³ Zhou, always trusted by Moscow to obey orders, replaced him as the top man in the base. Zhang Wentian, the Red Professor, took over the running of the Jiangxi Soviet Government from Mao. He did not even bother to visit Mao for a year after he arrived in Ruijin. He confessed later, ‘I had no idea what sort of person Mao was, what he thought, and what he was good at. I had not the least interest in finding out either.’⁴ The 25-year-old Wang Jiaxiang, straight from his studies in Moscow, became head of the Red Army's political department. Finally, and most importantly, after only three years’ study in Moscow, Bo Gu became the protégé of the Communist Party's representative in the Comintern, and was made Party Secretary when he was no more than 25. For Mao, he was someone of no experience at all; Bo Gu did not think much of Mao either. ‘Marxism can't come out of country hills,’ he declared. Otto Braun, who was already in Jiangxi, and who never got on with Mao, threw his weight behind the Moscow-trained ‘Bolsheviks’.

      Mao's loss of power has always been presented as the Party leaders pushing him aside. In October 1932, he was stripped of his role as Commissar of the Red Army, and only retained the nominal title of Chair of the People's Committee of the Jiangxi base. From then, till the Long March began in October 1934, Mao had no authority. How had he lost everything so quickly, so completely, when the Party owed him so much – their very survival? It was difficult to understand.

      The old caretaker at Mao's house suggested I should visit the Yudu Revolutionary Martyrs’ Museum. ‘So many of us died for the Revolution. It is grand, the pride of the town,’ he said with his first show of animation. ‘You won't be disappointed there.’

      This museum was easy to find, directly off Long March Avenue, the town's main thoroughfare. Three heroic statues in classic Socialist Realist style – a soldier, an officer and a peasant woman – stood in front of the entrance. The entrance hall was like a funeral parlour, packed with large wreaths dedicated to the martyrs. The exhibition was СКАЧАТЬ