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

next time, Li Chin-yung, who was director of an underground radio
station and a former Sun Yat-sen University student who had had
special radio training in Moscow, received the instruction about Ch'en
Shao-yu from the Comintern, and he was arrested. In both cases, of
course, security was compromised. Further attempts to get Ch'en to
Jui-chin seemed just too risky, and so Ch'en stayed in Moscow for
another four years. He did not reach China until 1937, when he went
to Yenan.
Ch'en Shao-yu exiled himself to Moscow, still entertaining, no
doubt, the illusion that in due time he would be invited to become
the helmsman of the Chinese revolution, as Lenin returned to Russia
in April, 1917, on the eve of the October Revolution. But Ch'en overlooked
the possibility that "When the sun rises, there comes a Mao
Tse-tung out of the east!" After having remained safely abroad and
then having returned when it was safe to do so, he was confronted by
the fact that Mao had recruited a strong crew both in the Party and
the Army, and that Mao had already made himself known to the
world. Indeed, Mao had seized Party leadership, and Ch'en had
returned too late to effectively dispute that leadership. Ch'en's failure
and defeat were the outcome of his own cowardice and opportunism.*
When Ch'en Shao-yu left Shanghai sometime in July or August,
1931, Lu Fu-t'an, a member of the Central Politburo, became acting
secretary general of the CC. Lu, a mine worker by profession, joined
the Party in 1926. He had, among other things, been secretary of the
CCP's Tsingtao Municipal Committee, of the Shantung Provincial
Committee, and secretary of the CCP faction in the All-China Trade
Union. Though a veteran Communist, his capabilities as acting secretary
general of the CC left much to be desired. He was soon replaced,
on September 1, 1931, by Ch'in Pang-hsien, a member of the
CC and secretary general of the CYC, who now relinquished his CYC
* One account of the relations between Mao Tse-tung and Ch'en Shao-yu in the early
1930s has it that Mao, in an effort to curb Chou En-lai's power, tricked Ch'en Shao-yu into
going to the Kiangsi Soviet, where Mao placed him under house arrest. It was only as
a result of intervention by the Comintern representative, so this account goes, that Mao
eventually released Ch'en, after which Ch'en went to Moscow. (See Wu Hsiang-hsiang, ed.,
Chung-kuo Kung-cti an-tang chih-t'u shih [A penetrating look at the Chinese Communist
Party], p. 158).
This account obviously dramatizes the power struggle within the CCP. To my certain
knowledge, however, Ch'en Shao-yu did not at any time visit the Kiangsi Soviet. The
account, therefore, strikes me as wholly inaccurate.
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