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

The sages and idiots, after a thousand years, who knows for sure ?
They all ended in the graves where tall grasses grow.
As far as Stalin and Trotsky were concerned, their dispute about
China was settled by death. But Trotsky was without an heir in China,
and no one from China looked after his grave. Stalin can count on
sacrifices offered by Mao Tse-tung and Company on such occasions
as the New Year and other festivals, or a lonely wreath placed in front
of his grave by visiting Chinese Communist dignitaries. From this
viewpoint, Trotsky was really a loser to the end.
Notes
1. The Hoover Library has a copy of this document, a xeroxed copy of which it has
kindly furnished me.
2. Ch'en Tu-hsiu ta-ju \ung-ch'an \uo-chi hsin (Ch'en Tu-hsiu's Letter to the Comintern),
a copy of which is in the Hoover Library. It is reproduced in Wang Chieh-min, Chung-\uo
Kung-ch'an-tang shih kao (A draft history of the CCP; Taipei, 1965), II, 116-118.
3. There were something like twenty classes in Sun Yat-sen University at the time.
Communist and Komsomol members in each class were organized in a cell which met once
each week. To each cell was assigned a Russian professor who was a Communist Party
member; he was the guide during the cell's meetings. A Chinese who had knowledge of
the Russian language and an acceptable political background was also assigned to each cell
as the deputy guide. It was his function to assist the Russian guide in directing the meetings.
4. Some Trotskyite students held a secret meeting in the theater on the second floor of
the university's student club. It was late afternoon and dark at the time, and they thought the
theater was deserted. But old Ho Shu-heng, a delegate to the founding congress of the
CCP, happened to be napping in a seat in one corner of the theater. Unbeknown to the
Trotskyites, he heard them make their plans to assassinate me. When they left, he immediately
reported what he had heard to Ignatov, the secretary of the bureau of the Party branch.
Ignatov promptly contacted a Russian general, whose Russian name I have forgotten but
who had been an adviser in Canton, where he used the Chinese name K'ung Chieh-chih.
At that time K'ung Chieh-chih was commander of the Moscow garrison and concurrently the
chief professor of military affairs at Sun Yat-sen University. He acceded to Ignatov's request
that Browning revolvers be supplied to me and to each of two bodyguards who were promptly
assigned to guard me. These bodyguards were Chinese students at Sun Yat-sen University
who were of working-class origin. They were trained gunmen who had worked in the
Intelligence Department of the CC of the CCP in Shanghai.
5. See note 1 of this chapter.
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