One symptom of Mao Zedong's political allegiance to Stalinism was his strident denunciation from the late 1930s of the Trotskyist forces, whose leaders had split from the Communist Party. After seizing power, Mao's regime arrested all the Trotskyists in China, along with some sympathisers. Some were in jail for over 25 years. The Hong Kong section of the Fourth International is preparing for the transition to Chinese rule by stepping up its long-running campaign for the political rehabilitation of the Chinese Trotskyists. The following article by ZHANG KAI is abridged from their publication October Review. AFTER HALF a century of false allegations, branding the 1930s Chinese Trotskyists as "traitors" and "Japanese agents", the Chinese Communist Party has taken steps in its publications to remove such allegations - but in a 'characteristically Chinese' way.
The first move came back in September 1981, when the Peoples' Daily deleted a key line in its reprint of a 1937 Mao Zedong speech. The omitted sentence read:
"It is now obvious that the Trotskyists have become a traitor organisation and are directly receiving subsidies from Japanese secret agents"
This was said in October 1937, and the speech was published in the magazine July in 1938.
The deletion of this line five year's after Mao's death must have been a decision of the top CCP leadership.
The CCP's quiet correction of the false allegations is more obvious in a footnote OUR HISTORY to the second edition of The Collected Works of Mao Zedong:
"During the resistance war against Japan, the Trotskyists advocated resistance in their propaganda work, though they attacked the Chinese Communist Party for its United Front policy of resistance. The charge that Trotskyists were traitors was a result of the wrong assertion at the time in the Comintern, alleging that the Chinese Trotskyists were related to the secret agents of the Japanese imperialists." (Vol 2, p 516, footnote 6).
The above footnote amounts to a positive statement of the following points:
• During the war against Japan, the Trotskyists advocated resistance:
• It was a "wrong assertion" on the part of the CCP to allege that the Trotskyists were "Trotskyist bandits and traitors serving Japanese secret agents";
• Such a mistake "was a result of the Comintern under the control of Stalin, and not based on actual evidence:
• I was all slander on political ene- Try Chinese Communist troops carry banners of Stalin through Canton in 1947 Mao in 1949 sky and Trotskyists.
Many years ago the Soviet Union announced that there was no evidence supporting the Moscow Trials. It would be difficult for the CCP to hang on to these false allegations.
According to the CCP, the first ones to allege that the Trotskyists were "bandits and traitors" were two central committee members Kang Sheng and Chen Shaoyu (Wang Ming), who returned from Moscow.
The "earliest" allegation appeared in Kang Sheng's article in Liberation weekly published in January and February 1938. The article, entitled "Eliminate Trotskyist bandits who are Japanese spies and public enemies of the Chinese people!", alleged that *The Japanese agents in Shanghai, through the introduction of the pro-Japanese Tang Youren, conducted co-operation negotiations with the Trotskyist bandit "party central"'.... The outcome of the negotiation was: The Trotskyist bandits 'would not stand in the way of the Japanese invasion of China', and Japan would give the "Trotskyist party central' $300 every month as subsidy.... The Japanese subsidy was collected of Chen Duxiu's Trotskyist party central." From this point on the label of "traitor" was attached to Chen Duxiu, Peng Shuzhi and the Chinese Trotskyists. The allegation aroused objection from many people at the time, who said that people should not be arbitrarily called names. Chen Duxiu and others also wrote open letters demanding concrete evidence from Kang Sheng to support the allegations. The CCP publications replied saying that Chen Duxiu should come up with evidence to disprove the allegation. In the CCP Political Bureau meeting of December 1937, Wang Ming said "Even if Chen Duxiu is not a Japanese agent, he should be portrayed as a Japanese agent".
From then on the CCP used this allegation to attack Trotskyists and their resistance organisations. The CCP and Kuomintang both targeted the Trotskyist "traitors", and eliminated Trotskyist-led armed forces. Many people sacrificed their lives, and more suffered from infamy. The lies were sustained for several decades.
Rehabilitated
Since 1978, various pressures have persuaded the CCP to rehabilitate many of its victims. Today, the allegation of "traitor" has been removed by the CCP.
However the 'counter-revolutionary' allegation has not been completely removed.
In the first edition of Mao's Collected Works, a footnote said:
"The Trotskyist clique was initially an anti-Leninist current in the Russian workers' movement, and later degraded to a totally counter-revolutionary bandit gang....
"It is a gang of unprincipled, unthinking assassins, saboteurs, spies, murderers, a bandit gang employed by foreign agents and it is the deadly enemy of the working class. ...
"In China there are also a handful of Trotskyists, and they formed a counterrevolutionary small clique in 1929, spreading counter-revolutionary propaganda, and it is entirely a dirty instrument of the imperialists and Kuomintang, working against the people.... " (Vol 1, In the 1947 edition of Ci Hai (The Great Dictionary) published by the China Bookstore, the explanation of "Trotsky' is: "an agent bought up by the imperialists, treacherous in betraying the interests of the state of the USSR".
In the third year after the CCP seized state power, all Trotskyists in China were arrested on charges of 'counter- revolution'. Sympathisers of Trotskyism were also arrested. Some were jailed for over a quarter of a century.
Now the last batch of Trotskyists held in jail have also been released; but still the charge of counter-revolution against them has not been officially withdrawn.
However the slanderous charges against Trotskyists are disappearing from official publications.
There is also more recognition that the Trotskyists are a current in the international communist movement, though such attributes as 'opportunism' or 'ultra-leftism' are still attached to them.
In 1985, for example, Yen Zhimin wrote a book entitled "The Trotskyist Fourth International - the ultra-left in contemporary world socialism"
In the 1991 edition of Mao's Collected Works, the footnote from Volume One with all the slanderous charges has been deleted and replaced by a new evaluation which does not explain Trotskyist ideas, but refers to Trotskyism as a dissident current in the workers' and communist movement - not a counter- revolutionary current.
With the CCP now quietly removing its previous false allegations on the Trotskyists, it is time they also withdrew the charge of counter-revolution.
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK No. 73-74, December 1994, Page 17