(November 28, 1929)

Duxiu's recent actions are truly outrageous. The Central Committee documents denouncing him have arrived here, and we should make them widely
known.⁵

A Communist salute to you,
Mao Zedong

5. The reference is to Chen Duxiu (1879–1942), zi Zhongfu, the former chairman of
the Party. Regarding his background and earlier activities, see the various texts about him,
or signed jointly by him and Mao, in Volumes I and II of this edition. After his disgrace at
the "August 7 Emergency Conference" of 1927, he had remained a member of the Party
and continued to put forward views at odds with those of the leftist faction which had
assumed control of the organization. In the summer of 1929, when conflict erupted between China and Russia following Zhang Xueliang's seizure of the Chinese Eastern Railway, Chen Duxiu sent a letter to the Central Committee arguing that, by aligning itself
completely with Moscow, the Party was placing the interests of the Soviet Union above
those of China. It is presumably Chen's conduct in this matter which is here stigmatized as
"truly outrageous," though Mao may also be referring to the sympathy for Trotsky and
Trotskyism which Chen Duxiu had openly expressed. Li seized upon the pretext of Chen's
line regarding the railway to announce his expulsion from the Party on November 15,
1929. If "the Central Committee documents denouncing" Chen Duxiu, presumably
brought by Chen Yi, included this circular, communication between Shanghai and the
soviet area had in this case been remarkably rapid. Mao's later comments regarding the
affair of the Chinese Eastern Railway (see below, the note to the "Letter... to the Soldiers
of the Guomindang Army," January 1930) suggest that he did actually agree with the
Central Committee on this issue, but in any case it would have been politic for him to say
so, in the light of his own increasingly tense relations with Li Lisan.