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

Whampoa Military Academy. In the beginning Chiang had no access to any available funds.
Sometime later, Liao Chung-k'ai sent a telegram to Chiang Kai-shek stating: 'I am in possession
of some money for the Academy. I will not ask for your expenditure report if you
will not ask me the source of the money' " (Shen Yun-loong, The Origin of the Chinese
Communist Party [Taipei: Free China Press, 1959], p. 40). Shen later said that the money
came from the Russians as a result of their selling a large quantity of Russian kerosene on
the Canton market.
3. It is beyond any doubt that Soviet Russia took it upon herself to bear the whole
burden. But owing to the domestic as well as foreign circumstances of Soviet Russia at that
time, it probably was imprudent to disclose the real source of the funds for the university.
Thus, the Russian authority purposefully claimed that the university was not solely supported
and established by Russia, that the Chinese people themselves provided the main material
support, which was not actually the case.
4. Hu Han-min, an important figure in the CEC of the KMT and a long-time, close
associate of Dr. Sun Yat-sen, had left China for Russia in September, 1925. He had come
under a cloud in China when his brother had been suspected of being involved in the
assassination of Liao Chung-k'ai, and it was thought that Hu Han-min himself may have
been implicated. I understand that Michael Borodin had suggested that he visit Russia because
of these circumstances. In Russia, among other things, he attended the Congress of the
International of Peasants, to whose executive committee he was elected. He also attended the
Sixth Plenum of the ECCI as the first KMT delegate to attend such a plenum, the KMT
having been admitted to the Comintern. Hu Han-min arrived back in China on April 29,
1926. The solution of the legal status of Sun Yat-sen University came at the time when the
KMT was granted a special membership in the Comintern. As early as June, 1924, when the
Comintern held its Fifth Congress, the KMT reportedly submitted its application for membership
in the Comintern: "The KMT also applied for membership in the Comintern, but
it was not accepted, not being a Communist organization" (William Z. Foster, History of
the Three Internationals [New York: International Publishers, 1955], p. 347). But the
KMT was not the least discouraged when her application was politely denied. The KMT
steadily worked toward this goal as may be seen by the following: "The sixth enlarged
plenum of the ECCI met from February 17 to March 15, 1926 . . . . Hu Han-min, a member
of the Kuomintang attended for that party, which had been admitted to the Comintern
as a sympathizing party. In the meeting of the CPSU political bureau in March 1926 the
decision to admit the Kuomintang was carried out against the vote of Trotsky" (Jane Degras,
The Communist International 1919-1943, Documents [London, New York, Toronto: Oxford
University Press, 1960], II, 245).
5. Original text in the collection of historical documents in the KMT archives, Taipei.
6. See note 5 of this chapter.
7. See note 5 of this chapter.
8. Shao Li-tzu, who at the time was closely associated with Chiang Kai-shek, attended
the Seventh Plenum of the ECCI in November, 1926, as the representative of the KMT. On
several occasions early in 1927 I heard him make speeches from the balcony of Comintern
headquarters in Moscow.
9. Kao Yin-tzu, ed., Chung-hua min-\uo ta-shih-chi (Chronicle of major events in the
Republic of China; Taipei, 1957), p. 264.
10. See note 5 of this chapter.
11. See note 5 of this chapter.
12. Both Li Chou-sheng and Wang Pao-li were members of the so-called 28 Bolsheviks.
Li Chou-sheng, a favorite of Ch'en Shao-yu, returned to China during the summer of 1930,
where he worked in Shanghai in the Organization Department of the CC of the CCP.
According to the confession Hsiang Chung-fa made to his Nationalist captors before they
executed him, Li was for a time in charge of the Organization Department. In 1932, when
the Shanghai Bureau of the CC was created following the departure of the CC itself to
Jui-chin, he became the first chairman of that bureau, in which I was in charge of propaganda.
Because of his position in the Shanghai Bureau, the Fifth Plenum of the Sixth CC elected
him a member of the CC and an alternate member of the Politburo. He was arrested on June
26, 1934, in Shanghai—a day still vivid in my memory—for there were massive raids on
Communist organizations in Shanghai that day, and I was nearly captured. As it turned
out, though, I succeeded Li Chou-sheng as chairman of the Shanghai Bureau.
13. Yang Ming-chai and Voitinsky first visited Li Ta-chao in Peking, and through Li's
introduction they met Ch'en Tu-hsiu in Shanghai. In Shanghai they founded the School
of Foreign Languages whose function was to select students for Moscow's KUTV. In
Shanghai and Canton they organized the Chinese Socialist Youth Corps and also did organizational
work in the Shanghai trade unions.
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