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

planned to stay on for a while to attend the forthcoming congresses of
the Comintern and the Young Communist International, while others
were scheduled to return to China as soon as the Sixth CCP Congress
closed. And, of course, all these precautions were taken to protect the
delegates from being identified before they could return to China. No
news of the congress was made public while it was in session. Sun
Yat-sen University in Moscow was not far from the site of the congress,
yet only a few of its students, not to mention the general public, knew
anything about the congress. I went to watch the opening session of
the Sixth Comintern Congress on July 17, 1928, and it was there that I
first saw some of the Chinese delegates who had attended the Sixth
CCP Congress. Some of them I recognized, while others I did not.
They sat in the delegates' section, whereas I sat in the audience. Only
during intermissions did we speak to one another, and then we merely
exchanged pleasantries. They kept their mouths shut about the Sixth
CCP Congress. In his marathon report to this Comintern Congress
Bukharin nowhere mentioned the convening of the Sixth CCP Congress.
Obviously the silence on the subject was maintained because not
all delegates to the Sixth CCP Congress had yet returned to China.
As Ch'ing Man-yun recalled, the delegates to the Sixth CCP Congress
at no time appeared in public while they were at the congress—they
did not even go on a sightseeing tour of Moscow. Some important
CCP delegates to the Sixth CCP Congress who stayed in Moscow were
invited to speak at Sun Yat-sen University, but not until early September,
when Sun Yat-sen University resumed classes after summer vacation,
about two months after the Sixth CCP Congress had adjourned.
THE DATE OF THE CONGRESS
Communist historians have not given the specific date on which the
Sixth CCP Congress convened, although they are generally agreed
that it took place in June, 1928. Pavel Mif, who was in charge of
organizing the congress, said only that "The Sixth National Congress
of the Communist Party of China was convened in the Summer of
1928." 17 All files of the congress were presumably available to him, yet
he did not choose to disclose its precise dates even nine years later, when
the congress had become history. No wonder non-Communist his-
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