II. The Question of the Uprising

(A) Zedong's and Lirong's¹ views:
(1) The development of the Autumn Harvest Uprising in Hunan will solve
the land problem for the peasants. Nobody can deny this. But if we wish to create
and unleash this uprising, it will not do to rely on the power of the peasants
alone. There must be military support. With the help of one or two regiments, the
uprising can take place; otherwise, it will fail in the end.
(2) The development of the uprising must lead to the seizure of political
power. If you want to seize political power, to try to do it without the support of
military forces would be sheer self-deception. Our Party's mistake in the past has
been that it neglected military affairs. Now we should concentrate 60 percent of
our energies on the military movement. We must carry out the principle of
seizing and establishing political power on the barrel of a gun.²
[balance omitted]

Report of the Hunan Provincial Committee to
the Central Committee of the Chinese
Communist Party¹

On the Methods for Carrying out the
Autumn Harvest Uprising in Hunan

(August 19, 1927)

Dear Brother Shirong:²

At present, in terms of objective circumstances, the Hunan Autumn Harvest
Uprising has indeed come at a most opportune time. We here have now decided
on the following methods:

1. The Hunan Autumn Harvest Uprising should start from Changsha, and
southern and western Hunan should rise up simultaneously. We should
resolutely seize all of Hunan, in order to carry out a land revolution, and
set up a worker-peasant-soldier soviet régime.
2. The uprising in Changsha will have the workers and peasants as its main
force. It has been decided to move Chen Lie's and Li Longguang's regiments forward to kindle the flames of the uprising, so if only we employ
to the greatest possible extent all other methods for smashing the reactionary government, the uprising can be carried through.
3. Once Changsha is taken, a revolutionary committee should immediately be
set up to carry out all the revolutionary measures of the political power of
the workers, peasants, and soldiers.
4. Right now in Hunan, because of Xu Kexiang's rebellion against Tang
Shengzhi and the fact that Tang's forces have all been sent to the front to
fight against Xu, southern Hunan and Changsha are literally cut off from
each other. Consequently, a separate committee has been organized in

Our source for this document is Mao Zedong ji. Bujuan, Vol. 9, pp. 321-22, which
reproduces the text as published in Qiushou qiyi (The Autumn Harvest Uprising) (Beijing:
Zhonggong zhongyang dangxiao chubanshe, 1982).
southern Hunan to direct the uprising there. If it should by any chance
prove impossible to take southern Hunan at present, we have decided to
take the three xian of Donggui, Rucheng, and Zixing and set up the political power of the workers, peasants, and soldiers. The southern Hunan and
the other revolutionary committees will resolutely carry out a policy of
agrarian revolution.

The above are the principles we have adopted here for dealing with the
Autumn Harvest Uprising in Hunan. As for the details, they will be related to
you face to face by some of the more experienced friends. It is our hope that you
will send a reply approving our position as soon as you have received this letter,
and that you will give us all the support you can.

Xiang Caixia³

(August 20, 1927)

[Preceding passage omitted] . . . (3) A certain comrade has come to Hunan
announcing that a new instruction from the International proposes the immediate
establishment of soviets of workers, peasants, and soldiers in China.¹ On hearing
this, I jumped for joy. Objectively speaking, the situation in China has long since
reached 1917, but formerly, everyone held that we were in 1905. This has been
an extremely great error. Soviets of workers, peasants, and soldiers are wholly
adapted to the objective situation, and we must therefore resolve to establish
immediately the political power of the workers, peasants, and soldiers in the four
provinces of Guangdong, Hunan, Hubei, and Jiangxi. As soon as it is established,
this political power should rapidly achieve victory in the whole country. We
expect that the Central Committee will without a doubt accept the instruction of
the International and will, moreover, apply it in Hunan.

This new instruction of the International influences my view of the
Guomindang, since in the period of soviets of workers, peasants, and soldiers,
we should no longer use the banner of the Guomindang. We must raise high the
banner of the Communist Party, to oppose the flag of the Guomindang carried by
Chiang [Kaishek], Tang [Shengzhi], Feng [Yuxiang], Yan [Xishan], and other
warlords. The Guomindang banner has already become the banner of the warlords,
and only the banner of the Communist Party is the banner of the people. I was not
very well aware of this point when I was still in Hubei. In the past few days, since I
have arrived in Hunan and seen what Tang Shengzhi's provincial party committee²
is like, and what the people's attitude toward it is, I have come to the conclusion that
we really cannot use the Guomindang banner any more, and that if we do, we will

We have translated this document from Mao Zedong ji, Vol. 2, pp. 11-12, which reproduces the text published at the time in the internal Party organ Zhongyang tongxin (Central
Correspondence), no. 3, August 30, 1927.

--- Notes

1. Lirong is Yi Lirong (1898-), Mao's longtime friend and comrade from the New
People's Study Society, who is still living today in Beijing. For details, see the note to
Mao's letter to him dated November 1920, in Volume I of this edition, p. 611.

1. This report was drafted at a meeting of the Hunan Provincial Committee on August
19, 1927, in which Mao Zedong participated. Mao was probably not the author, but it
reflects his views on the agrarian revolution, and on the Autumn Harvest Uprising.

1. Mao is referring here to Meyer's summary of current policies at the meeting on
August 18. Neither Moscow nor the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party
had in fact called for "the immediate establishment of soviets," because Stalin still believed in the possibility of collaborating with the Left Guomindang, and abandoned that
hope only in mid-September. Meanwhile, the Chinese comrades were instructed merely to
explain the idea of Soviets, without actually forming any. It is not clear whether Mao or
Meyer was responsible for this misunderstanding.

2. Here Mao has put the idea he had first enunciated on August 7 in different words:
"... zai qiangganzi shang duoqu zhengquan, jianshe zhengquan."


2. Shirong, or Wu Shirong, was another code name for the Central Committee.


2. The reference is, of course, to the Guomindang party committee in Hunan. Judging
by the document of August 1, 1927, which appears above, already by that date Mao had
few illusions about Tang Shengzhi.


3. Xiang is pronounced like the traditional name for Hunan, though the character is
quite different. The whole of the signature is presumably a code name for "Hunan Provincial Committee."
A Letter from Hunan to
the Central Committee