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

and other labor camps. A few of them, I know, died in those camps;
but the majority of them, after surviving terrible hardships, were sent
back to China. But when these potential new recruits to the Trotskyite
opposition movement arrived back in China, the opposition in China
itself already had spent itself and was no longer capable of functioning
at all. Trotskyism was transplanted to China; but due to unsuitable
soil and climatic conditions, it withered before taking root.
Various factors doubtless contributed to the failure of the Chinese
Trotskyite movement. Among the more important factors surely was
their assessment of the Chinese situation after 1927. Trotskyism, it
will be recalled, was imported into China shortly after the defeat of
the 1925-1927 revolution. The oppositionists recognized this defeat as
an indisputable fact, which, of course, it was. But surely they erred
in crediting too much significance to the military victory of the KMT,
as one reads their position in Ch'en Tu-hsiu's "Letter to All Comrades."
According to Ch'en Tu-hsiu, the military victory of the KMT had so
strengthened the position of the "Chinese bourgeoisie" that it had
produced a stable regime which would prevail for many years to come.
Thus, the Trotskyites urged the Chinese people to conduct their
political activities within the framework of "bourgeois democracy"
and to "struggle for the convocation of a National Assembly." 5 While
the Trotskyites paid lip service to the establishment of Soviets, actually
they concentrated their efforts on the convocation of a National Assembly,
which, had it ever convened, could have accomplished little
under the domination of one party. There was little general interest
in a National Assembly because no one had faith in the newly established
government, which would have manipulated any National Assembly
that might be convened. And, of course, there was widespread
disappointment with the new government because it had not fulfilled
the promises it had made prior to the Northward Expedition.
The oppositionists were, of course, fully aware of the desperation,
fatigue, and frustration that prevailed in China after the revolution's
defeat. Yet they did not, apparently, realize that these reactions were
merely one side of the coin, the other side of which was a deep, popular
feeling of dissatisfaction with the status quo. This latter situation was
so much the case that the Trotskyites' call for the convocation of a
National Assembly struck many people as just one more political trap.
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