Mao: The Unknown Story

FROM 1939, after Mao ordered the Party to adopt an aggressive stance towards the Nationalists, large-scale engagements were fought behind Japanese lines between Communist and Nationalist forces over territory, in which the Communists usually came off best. By January 1940 the 8RA, under Zhu De and Peng, had grown to at least 240,000 (from 46,000 at the beginning of the war). And the N4A, operating under Liu Shao-chi near Shanghai and Nanjing, had tripled, to 30,000. A score of sizable bases sprang up in the Japanese rear. The base of Jinchaji alone, only some 80 km from Peking, expanded to control a population of 25 million. At this point, with the war more than two years old, when realism had replaced initial patriotic ardor, many Red leaders came to admire the brilliance of Mao’s cold vision. Peng De-huai described Mao in a speech in February 1940 as “a wise leader with political foresight, who can foresee developments and is good at dealing with them.” And it was in this period that Chou En-lai made a total conversion to Mao.

Mao had done well for the CCP. But he had to keep Stalin on board. For many months, he concealed the clashes with the Nationalists from Moscow. He only owned up when the fighting had grown conspicuous and serious in June 1939, and then he claimed that it was purely self-defensive, portraying the Nationalists as intent on wiping the Communists off the face of the earth.

Mao knew how to play to his audience in Moscow. In spring 1939, Stalin had sent his top documentary film-maker, Roman Karmen, to Yenan to film Mao. Mao left a book of Stalin’s open in his study when Karmen arrived and then posed for a long take holding a text by Stalin, with a picture of the author prominent on the front cover. He toasted Stalin, saying that the only place abroad he wanted to go was Moscow, to see Stalin. When he bade farewell to Karmen at the entrance to his cave, in the dark, he made a point of asking which way Moscow lay, sighing deeply and then falling into a long silence. “With what warmth Mao talks of comrade Stalin!” Karmen wrote.

Most crucially, Mao had his men in Moscow to bolster his position — and to denigrate his foes. He had made sure that the CCP’s envoys in Moscow were his allies — first, the Red Prof, then Ren Bi-shi. As he embarked on a course of action towards Chiang that was in defiance of Stalin’s orders, he sent a string of additional emissaries, starting with Lin Biao, who went to Russia at the end of 1938 for treatment for bullet wounds. Lin had been shot by Nationalist troops while he was wearing a captured Japanese coat, and was mistaken for a Japanese.

Lin took with him only documents that Mao wanted Moscow to see, so Stalin was kept in the dark about Mao’s machinations and real policies. Lin built Mao up as “the solid, decisive and principled leader of the CCP,” badmouthing Chou as a “swindler” and Zhu De (“the former gendarme”) as “not one of us.”

Lin was followed in June 1939 by Mao’s brother, Tse-min, ostensibly also for “health” reasons — although, as the Russians observed, he did not spend a single day in the hospital. Tse-min’s main task was to undermine Wang Ming, whom he called “a scoundrel,” denouncing him for, amongst other things, exaggerating the strength of the Chinese Red Army in the presence of Stalin — a potentially deadly accusation. Another aim of Mao’s was to have Wang Ming’s role downgraded at the forthcoming Party congress. Wang Ming was scheduled to deliver the second report, on organization. But Tse-min told Moscow that Wang Ming was not the right person, making the false allegation that he “had never run practical org[anisation]work.” Tse-min also threw mud at other foes of Mao, like Po Ku and Li Wei-han, an old Hunan Communist leader, both of whom he accused of “major crimes,” saying they should be kept out of all leading bodies. He likened Po Ku to “opportunists, Trotskyists and bandits.”

Mao’s third “extra” emissary, Chou En-lai, arrived just as the war in Europe started, checking into the Kremlin hospital on 14 September for an operation on his right arm, which had been badly set after he broke it in a fall from a horse. Chou had just converted to Mao — an unconditional conversion that made him Mao’s very faithful servant from then on. He worked assiduously to build up Mao, and told the Russians that the CCP leadership “considered that he [Mao] must be elected GenSec [General Secretary].” He assured Moscow that the CCP’s policy remained that “the anti-Japanese war comes above everything else,” and that the Party was committed to “the united front” with Chiang. He detailed the expansion of Red forces and territory, larding his account with a number of exaggerated claims, such as that the 8RA had fought no fewer than 2,689 battles against the Japanese. CCP membership, he stated, had “increased sevenfold [to] 498,000” since the war had started.