Sun Yat-sen University in Moscow and the Chinese Revolution - KU ...

of Nanking when we had had a good chance of doing so, thereby
making it impossible for KMT forces to carry out the kind of coup
they carried out in Shanghai. Probably we lacked sufficient information
to conclude that we could have controlled Nanking. But we did
know that the Second and Sixth armies of the National Revolutionary
Army, which had been the first to march into Nanking, had had
Communist leanings. It was not until the next year that some of us
were able to learn all about the circumstances surrounding the events
at Nanking. For it was then that Lin Tsu-han and Wu Yu-chang, who
had been personally involved in the Nanking developments, and
Chiang Hao, Hsia Hsi, and others, who had detailed knowledge of
these developments, arrived at Sun Yat-sen University. Lin Tsu-han
had been political commissar of the Sixth Army. Wu Yu-chang had
been one of the most important members of the Wuhan government
and was at the time a member of the CEC of the KMT. These men
gave students at Sun Yat-sen University their versions of what had
happened at Nanking. Later, too, I worked closely at Vladivostok
with both Lin Tsu-han and Wu Yu-chang for nearly two years, and
we talked off and on about the Nanking Incident. But it was mostly
from Lin Tsu-han that I learned about Nanking. We came from adjoining
counties in Hunan Province, and we had an especially pleasant
personal relationship.
As best I can recall, the following is Lin Tsu-han's version of what
happened at Nanking. Li Fu-ch'un, a Communist, was political commissar
of the Second Army, which was commanded by General Lu
T'i-p'in, a Hunanese who was loyal to the KMT. There were many
Communists among the commanders at middle and lower levels of
Lu's army, and, for all practical purposes, Communist influence prevailed
among his troops. Lin Tsu-han himself was political commissar
of the Sixth Army, which was commanded by General Ch'en Ch'ien,
another Hunanese, whose KMT membership went back to the earliest
years of that party. Considerably senior to Chiang Kai-shek in the
KMT, Ch'en Ch'ien was at odds with Chiang, under whom he had
no wish to serve. His uneasy relationship with Chiang caused him
to lean towards the Communists, not as a matter of conviction but by
way of strengthening his own position vis-a-vis Chiang. Lin Tsu-han
utilized this state of affairs tirelessly in trying to induce Ch'en Ch'ien to
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