(April 1931)

Having heard the report on the Lisan Line and the Fourth Plenum, the Enlarged
Meeting of the Central Bureau fully agrees with the letter from the International
and the resolution of the Fourth Plenum. It is the unanimous opinion of the
Enlarged Meeting that the Lisan Line is an anti-Marxist-Leninist, anti-Comintern
adventurist line. Since the resolution of the Politburo on June 11, it [i.e., the Li
Lisan Line] has completely controlled the Central Committee and the entire
Party. In the soviet areas, however, the Lisan Line has played a leading role since
the Soviet Conference.² When the International gave the Chinese Party a correct line in the July resolution, the Third Plenum, which was convened for the purpose of accepting the International's line, not only failed to accomplish this task
of liberating the Party from the Lisan Line and converting it to the line of the
International, but instead compromised with the Lisan Line and prevented the
International's line from being carried out within the Party.
The Enlarged Meeting has specially pointed out the great significance of the
Fourth Plenum. It has severely criticized the Central Bureau's erroneous line
during the period described above and sharply denounced the disrespect shown
by the Central Committee of the time toward the International's instructions and
representatives. The Enlarged Meeting has completely accepted the line of the
International, effected a thorough change in the Party's political line, and correctly indicated the Party's current tasks. At the same time, the Fourth Plenum
restructured the Central Committee and its Politburo, expelling the comrades
most responsible for the Lisan Line from the Politburo and the Central Committee and admitting new comrades who actively support the International's line to
the Central Committee and the Politburo. The Fourth Plenum and the Central
Committee established after its meeting have dealt another severe blow to the
anti-International and anti-Party Rightists led by Luo Zhanglong and others,³ and
are capable of overcoming the Rightists. The Enlarged Meeting expresses its
complete agreement with all the resolutions taken and work done by the Fourth
Plenum and the Central Committee established after the Plenum.
It is the unanimous opinion of the Enlarged Meeting that the line pursued by
the Front Committee of the Fourth Army before the Tingzhou Meeting⁴ was
generally correct and constituted an application of the correct line of the Chinese
Party's Sixth Congress. The Front Committee of the Fourth Army is resolutely
struggling for workers' and peasants' political power and has firmly opposed the
vagabond line, which rejects political power. The Front Committee is resolutely
carrying out the land revolution in order to win over the masses, and has waged
an unyielding struggle against all kinds of opportunism in the course of the land revolution. In the course of these struggles, the Front Committee of the Fourth
Army has contributed much valuable experience with regard to the land question. The Front Committee acquired a correct understanding of the Red Army
and established the whole Red Army system, including the establishment of such
things as Party leadership, the system of political commissars, soldiers' committees, the military supply system and the line for fund-raising, and especially the
line for mass work. In addition, the Front Committee has been aware of the
importance of arming the local masses, and has correctly carried out the policy
toward the cities. To accomplish these tasks resolutely, the Front Committee has
waged a firm and protracted struggle against adventurism, opportunism, flightism, and the vagabond line. The vagabond line launched its formal attack at the
Seventh Conference of the Fourth Army Group, played a leading role, and dominated the Front Committee.⁵ The correct line of the Party was defeated for a
time. After severe battles during the Eighth Conference and, in particular, the
Ninth Conference,⁶ the leadership of the vagabond line proved bankrupt in practice. Only then were conclusions drawn in the struggle between the correct line
and the vagabond line. The reason the Front Committee was able correctly and
firmly to fight for the implementation of the line laid down by the Sixth Congress of the Chinese Party lay in the ability of the Front Committee to analyze
correctly the political situations during each period. In particular, it was only the
clear recognition of the true nature of the struggle in semicolonial China, and of
the role of peasant warfare, which assured the possibility for the soviets to exist
and develop, and only by drawing on experience from actual struggles in the
soviet movement could policies be applied correctly, and right and left opportunism opposed. But beginning with the Tingzhou Meeting (at this time the
Fourth Army combined with the Third Army to form the Front Committee of the
First Army Group), the Front Committee accepted the Lisan Line and gave up
the task of strengthening the soviet areas. Instead, it adopted an adventurist line,
making rash advances toward the big cities. Nevertheless, in spite of the influence of the Lisan Line, the Front Committee did not stray from its own correct
line as far as some particular issues were concerned, such as the land question,
local armed forces, and the mass work of the Red Army. But after the attack on
Changsha (at this time the First Army Group combined with the Third Army

Group to form the General Front Committee), facts proved that the Lisan Line
was incorrect and would not work. Consequently, the General Front Committee
first began to have doubts about the Lisan Line, then opposed it, and finally
reverted to the correct line. This change formally took place at the Luofang
Conference in Xinyu.⁷ This change has already been clearly stated in Party
documents. This result came about only through the many serious struggles at
the meetings in Yuanzhou, Xiajiang, and Taipingyu. Finally, at the Huangpi
Conference in Ningdu, it was pointed out in more specific terms that there were
two lines within the Party, and that only by overturning the incorrect one (the
Lisan Line) and implementing the correct one could the revolution move forward
along the road to victory.⁸
During the period of the Lisan Line, the Front Committee of the Third Army
Group adopted the Lisan Line in its entirety. Nonetheless, under the leadership
of its previous Army Committee and its subsequent Third Army Group Front
Committee, the Third Army Group fought many an heroic battle, including those
in Changsha, Yuezhou, Ping[jiang], Liu[yang], and Daye, creating indeed a most
glorious chapter in the Red Army's history.⁹ In the past, the Third Army Group
neglected certain issues such as winning over the masses, carrying out land
reform, and establishing soviet political power, and the Red Army's strategy was
mobile guerrilla warfare. As far as the whole of the political line was concerned,
the Third Army Group's first attack on Changsha constituted an application of
the Lisan Line. The Third Army group was, however, able to occupy Changsha
and achieve a victory of such great political significance because the Front
Committee of the Third Army Group had correctly estimated the balance of
forces between the local enemy and our troops in Changsha (the Front Committee mistakenly estimated the balance of forces among the various classes in the
whole country on the basis of the Lisan Line), and also because of the courageous struggles of the Third Army Group. As for the second attack on Changsha,
it was even more obviously an instance of adventurism. But the battles for
Changsha clearly proved that the Lisan Line could not be carried out. It proclaimed the complete bankruptcy of the Lisan Line, causing the General Front

Committee to change its line and quickly bringing the Third Army Group back
to the correct line under the leadership of the General Front Committee. Even
though Party committees all over the country were not able immediately to
comprehend the lessons of the battle for Changsha and counter the Lisan Line,
the General Front Committee, after changing its line, correctly established the
strategy for smashing the attack of the enemy, namely, luring the enemy deep
and firmly opposing adventurism. The result was the great victories of Longgang
and Dongshao.

The Party's line in Jiangxi can be explained by dividing it roughly into three
periods:
First is the period before the February 7th Conference of 1930. This is a
period during which the opportunist line continued to dominate, the main point
being that no soviet régime was established. Even two or three years after the
Red Area was founded, the land was still not redistributed, and the Party and
other revolutionary bodies were filled with landlords and rich peasants. Even
though the land revolution had already been launched, it was not possible to
provide correct leadership for the peasant struggles and build a foundation for
the revolution.

Second is the period between the February 7th Conference (the joint meeting
of the Front Committee of the Fourth Army, the western Jiangxi Special Committee, and the committees of the Fifth and Sixth armies) and the Second Plenum
(the Second Plenum of the Southwestern Jiangxi Special Committee).¹⁰ This was
a period during which opportunism was corrected and the land revolution was
resolutely carried out. Only in this way were the broad masses in southwestern
Jiangxi mobilized to launch several valiant attacks on Ji['an] and create the
Third is the period between the Second Plenum12 and the Futian Incident. The
Second Plenum was actually a meeting led by the Lisan Line and was in fact an
attack on the Party manipulated by the AB Corps. After the Second Plenum, the
Lisan Line totally ruled the Party in Jiangxi, so that the principle of equal redistribution of land was called into question, all local armed forces were concentrated
into the Twentieth Army and the Thirty-fifth Army, the task of consolidating the
soviet areas was abandoned, and rash attacks were launched on central cities and
on Jiangxi as well. To criticism from the First Front Army's Front Committee, the
response was, "Enlarging and deepening at the same time is peasant consciousness pure and simple" and "Attacking Ji'an first and Jiujiang next will waste the
revolutionary high tide in China."13 Such was the madness of the Lisan Line, and
as a result it became a banner for the AB Corps and brought about the counterrevolutionary Futian Incident.

cause the General Front Committee had already made a correct evaluation in the
past were such bad consequences prevented from happening.
The Central Bureau's conclusion regarding the Futian Incident was wrong as
well. 16 The Central Bureau's circular says, "It cannot be affirmed that the Futian
Incident was a rebellion by the liquidationists of the AB Corps." It also says, "The
Futian Incident evolved out of unprincipled factional disputes within the Party."
This is to obscure the counterrevolutionary nature of the Futian Incident, to fail to
recognize that the Futian Incident was led by the AB Corps and was a counterrevolutionary revolt in which some supporters of the Lisan Line were involved, and
to interpret this incident instead as "a factional struggle within the Party." Such an
interpretation is very wrong in that it is divorced from a class stand, and such an
explanation means a slackening in the struggle against the AB Corps, enabling the
AB Corps to continue its activities and the expansion of its organization in the
context of such an incorrect conclusion. For this reason, the decision made by the
Central Bureau is not only erroneous but also extremely dangerous.
In the Central Bureau's resolution on the land question, the distinction between the correct line and the erroneous line is blurred. The Central Bureau has
not clearly recognized the current democratic phase of the revolution, nor has it
recognized the fact that, given the land relationships currently existing in China,
the Party should resolutely lead the equal distribution of all land. The Central
Bureau's resolution wavers on equal distribution. For example, to say that "equal
distribution is an illusion of the petty bourgeoisie" means a failure to recognize
that equal distribution of land is the most thorough way to destroy feudal relationships. It would be an illusion only if, after equal distribution, the peasants
were to believe that equal distribution means that the gap between rich and poor
had been eliminated, or that socialism had already come about. The Party should
cautiously criticize such illusions. To make a generalization that equal distribution is an illusion is to weaken the resolution on the equal distribution of land,
and can be used to oppose the land revolution. Moreover, it was very un-circumspect of the Central Bureau to have decided to use a distribution method
based primarily on labor power and secondarily on number of household members, without going through detailed investigation or study beforehand, and without making use of experience accumulated in past struggles. What is more, the
Central Bureau failed to grasp that the Chinese land revolution has taken the
form of harsh peasant warfare, and that only through equal distribution based on
the number of household members can the masses be rapidly won over. In
addition, with regard to the question of opposing the rich peasants, the Central
Bureau has failed to make a distinction between policies against the rich peasants before and after the insurrection.1" Before the insurrection, the main thing was
not only to oppose the leadership of rich peasants in terms of politics, but also, in
economic terms, to abolish all debts owed to rich peasants and to confiscate their
land. Since the insurrection (now, for example), the main thing is to purge the
influence of the rich peasants in terms of politics, to drive the rich peasants from
the soviets, to strengthen the leadership of the farm laborers and poor peasants,
and to put the rich peasants politically into a position of being ruled. It is not, on
the contrary, to be as in the Central Bureau's announcement that says, "Disarm
the rich peasants economically and eliminate semicolonial exploitation by the
rich peasants" (once the land has been distributed, semicolonial exploitation has
already been eliminated). Not only are the erroneous instructions of the Central
Bureau unable to rectify all the Left-deviationist mistakes of the past with regard
to the question of the rich peasants, but they actually foster these mistakes.
Finally, the Central Bureau failed to make profound use of the rich experiences
previously accumulated in the process of carrying out the land revolution and
failed to take seriously the process of theoretical struggles over the land question
in the past. All of this constitutes one important reason why the Central Bureau
committed the mistakes described above.
Finally, the Central Bureau has not paid enough attention to various problems
such as reforming the soviets, creating a truly iron-hard Workers' and Peasants'
Red Army, establishing soviet bases, and making preparations and carrying out
propaganda for convening the First National Soviet Congress. All of this is a
result of the conciliatory line.
The disastrous effects of the application of the Lisan Line in the soviet areas
are obvious: the size of the soviet areas was considerably diminished and the
local armed forces were absorbed into the Red Army. From the standpoint of
certain actions, the Party and the soviets were divorced from the masses; the
Party and the soviets became organizationally looser; the AB Corps and other
counterrevolutionary factions got a chance to expand and were even able to
sneak into the Party and the soviets. The Red Army has also suffered considerable damage in the past because of overly vigorous expansion. 18
In its evaluation of the current situation, the Enlarged Meeting completely
agrees with the Central Committee's "Resolution Against the Warlords' Attack on the Red Army and the Soviet Areas, "19 as well as its several orders to the Red
Army. The Enlarged Meeting unanimously agrees that the recent development of
the revolution has led reactionary rule to unite to attack the revolution, and the
Red Army and the soviet areas in particular. On the other hand, the Guomindang
is carrying out a policy of deception. For example, [they use] such things as the
"National Assembly," "amnesty," and "restricting and reforming" to fool the
masses, and they organize counterrevolutionary organizations in the soviet areas
such as the AB Corps, the Social Democratic Party, the Reorganization Clique,
the North Pole Society, 20 and so on, in an attempt to sabotage the soviets and the
Red Army from within. But at the same time it must be pointed out that even
though the ruling class is united in its attacks on the revolution, its internal
contradictions not only exist but continue to develop. The uneven development
of the revolutionary forces in China gives rise to a difference in the degree of
threat that the various revolutionary forces pose toward the various kinds of
warlords, so that when they are attacking the Red Army, it is still possible for
warfare to break out among the warlords. Moreover, Hu Hanmin was recently
detained by Chiang Kaishek, 21 and preparation for warfare among the northern
warlords has become extremely intense. This proves the sharpness of the contradictions within the ruling class, and that there are active preparations for large-scale warfare among the warlords.

Although the Nanjing government has sent massive military forces to attack
the Red Army and the soviet areas, the Red Army has ample capacity to counter
this kind of attack, because the White Army is not in good condition, its officers
and soldiers are not at one, the soldiers lead a miserable life, and among the
various minor warlords attacking the Red Army there is disharmony and even
conflict. As for the Red Army, there is complete unanimity from top to bottom,
or "ten thousand people of one mind." In addition, there is support from the
broad masses of workers and peasants, so that the Red Army is not at all fighting
in isolation. Therefore, in the fierce struggle between the Red Army and the
White army, the Red Army and the broad masses of workers and peasants, under
the correct leadership of the Communist Party, will be able to win a second great
victory and defeat the attack by the imperialist Guomindang. Our first great
victory at Longgang and Dongshao is proof of this.
Our main tasks under the circumstances which exist at present are:
and the local armed forces with the main force of the Red Army; make use of all
advantageous strategies and tactics to break through the enemy's encirclement
and attack. In the process of breaking through the enemy's attack, we must
achieve the goal of making the Jiangxi soviet areas into a base for a nationwide
soviet, convene a national soviet congress in that base, and establish a temporary
central government. Preparatory work and the call for the national soviet congress should begin immediately.
Peasants' Red Army; rectify shortcomings and mistakes in our previous work;
remold military and political cadres; promote as many workers as possible to
shoulder leadership positions; improve the military training of soldiers; establish
iron discipline; purge the AB Corps and other reactionary elements from the Red
Army, and block all possibility of any reactionary elements worming their way
back into the Red Army.
of landlords and despotic gentry, rich peasants, vagabonds, and the like, but also
setting up an agenda for routine work of the soviet. To gain deeper trust from the
masses in our work, both the phenomenon of the Party taking on the work of the
government and the unhealthy phenomenon of "the Party as legislative organ
and government as executive organ" should be eliminated at once, and a consistent working system between upper and lower levels of government should be
established. The government should immediately issue an election law as well as
economic policies and regulations.
tion based on number of household members. In places where equal distribution
was not properly carried out, the principles of drawing on the plentiful to make up
for the scarce and drawing on the fat to make up for the lean must be applied. In
places where redistribution has already been properly carried out, private ownership of the land should be confirmed; it is not permissible to cause disruption and
make further redistributions. Members of landlords' families and appendages of
the feudal system, such as exploiting elements among Daoist priests, monks,
geomancers, and so on, are not eligible to receive land, but they are permitted to
rent land (the specific procedures will be laid down in new resolutions); merchants
(excluding poor people in villages and small towns whose main way of making a
living is farming but who have some business on the side) are not permitted to
receive land. As for the houses of landlords and their families, they are to be
confiscated without exception and reallocated to the masses of poor peasants, but
these elements may be permitted to move into the poorer houses that have been
vacated.
union and agenda for labor union work, lead the class struggle correctly, and implement the government labor law. Within the soviet areas at present, the work of the
farm laborers' union is an important part of the labor union movement. Independent
laborers may not join the labor union, but if an independent laborer retains his status
as a poor peasant after having been allocated some land, he may join the poor
peasant league in the same way as other poor peasants.
oughly all counterrevolutionary factions.
particular that opposing imperialist attacks on the soviet areas and the Red Army,
and opposing imperialist wars, especially the war being prepared against the
Soviet Union, and establish and organize the League Against Imperialism.
cadres to assume a leadership role.
the White armies, in an effort to lead the revolutionary movement in the White
areas, throw the enemy's rear defense into disorder, and bring about the disintegration of the enemy armies.
The Enlarged Meeting pointed out that only by correctly carrying out the struggle
on both fronts can the Party correctly accomplish these tasks. The main dangers
confronting the Party at present are still Right-deviationist opportunism and Right-deviationist sentiments such as depression, pessimism, hopelessness, concessions to
the class enemy, and so on. These opportunist sentiments are especially liable to be
fostered because of the enemy's attack and the sharpening of the class struggle
within the soviet areas. Consequently, the Party must do its utmost to oppose Right
opportunism, but at the same time it must never relax in the slightest the struggle
against the Lisan Line, and must purge all vestiges of the Lisan Line, particularly the
Lisan Line in our practical work. Correctly carrying out the struggle between the two
lines and firmly implementing the line of the International and the resolution of the
Fourth Plenum will undoubtedly lead to great new victories.

---

Notes

Our source for this document is Mao Zedong ji. Bujuan, Vol. 3, pp. 247–55, which
reproduces the text found in Zhongyang geming genjudi shiliao xuanbian (Selected Historical Materials Regarding the Central Revolutionary Base), Vol. 2 (Nanchang: Jiangxi
renmin chubanshe, 1982), pp. 299–307 (hereafter, Zhongyang genjudi shiliao).
began on April 17, 1931, in the town of Qingtang in Ningdu xian. Called in large measure
to hear about and endorse important policy changes brought about by the new Fourth
Plenum national Party leadership, the conference also discussed political and military
issues raised by the ongoing fallout from the Futian Incident and the imminent Second
Encirclement Campaign. (For details regarding this meeting, see the Introduction.) Mao
played an active role at the Qingtang conference, and although this resolution is not
attributed to him in sources published in China, it is pointed out that the conference
expressed a strongly positive judgment regarding his military line during the preceding
period (see, for example, Nianpu, Vol. 1, p. 340). This point is made very clearly in this
resolution, which therefore seems of sufficient relevance to Mao's thought and actions to
justify its inclusion here.
by Li Lisan in Shanghai at the end of May 1930, which Mao had refused to attend (see the
Introduction to Volume III).
mid-June 1930, at which he was obliged to accept some organizational and policy changes
imposed by Li Lisan. See Volume III, Introduction, p. liii, and "On the Problem of the
Rich Peasants," June 1930, pp. 433-49.
drafted by Mao was adopted (for a translation of this, see Volume III, pp. 195-230).
November 1, 1930, finally took the decision to stop trying to seize large or medium-sized
cities, and to return to the base area to oppose the Guomindang's forthcoming "encirclement and suppression" campaigns (Party Meetings, pp. 120-22). See the resolution of
October 26, 1930, drafted by Mao, translated in Volume III, pp. 574-89.
(probably late in the month, though sources differ on this point) in the town of this name in
northern Ningdu xian. In addition to repudiating the Li Lisan Line, the conference discussed the developing First Encirclement Campaign, and prompted Mao's essay, "Eight
Great Conditions for Victory" of December 22, 1930, translated in Volume III, pp. 714-
21.
in the Hunan-Hubei-Jiangxi border area during the summer of 1930.
¹⁰. The period referred to here is between February and August 1930. The February
7th Conference (also known as the Pitou Conference) brought to dominance in the Party
and soviet government organs of southwestern Jiangxi a group of cadres sympathetic to
policies favored by Mao and antagonistic toward many of those promoted by the Li Lisan
¹¹. This is a quotation from the statement drafted by Mao and adopted at the Pitou
Conference which was issued on February 16, 1930. The full text is translated in Volume
III, pp. 268-71.
the Southwestern Jiangxi Special Committee in August 1930. See, in particular, in Vol-ume III, "The Mistakes in the Land Struggle in Jiangxi" of November 14, 1930, and the
notes thereto, pp. 680-83.
are quoted at the end of Mao's report of November 14, 1930, cited in the previous note.
in Ningdu xian. The members, appointed by the Central Committee, included Zhou Enlai,
Xiang Ying, Mao Zedong, Zhu De, Ren Bishi, and others, with Zhou Enlai as the secretary. Before Zhou took up the post, Xiang Ying served as acting secretary.
the case in this period, by the English initials of the first two words of its name. The issue
was no doubt that of whether or not the Youth League should have separate organizations
within Red Army units at various levels. In 1928-1929, Mao's view had been that, while it
was important to address the special needs of young soldiers, this could be done by the
Party. (See Volume III, pp. 59-60 and 211-12.) Presumably, Mao's view on this point
remained the same, but others must have raised the issue once again.
Bureau during January-March 1931. For more details, see the Introduction to this volume.
uprisings.
should be. Some wanted to use local units primarily as sources of recruits for regular army
units, and wished to expand the main Red Army as rapidly as possible, in part to generate
forces large enough to seize large cities. Others feared that stripping communities of their
locally recruited guerrillas would leave many areas vulnerable to attacks by elite-led
militias and to uprisings by internal counterrevolutionaries. It proved difficult to maintain
a proper balance between these competing demands.
Central Committee Documents, Vol. 7 (1931), pp. 50-54.
used to refer to the followers of Wang Jingwei within the Nationalist Party. Both of these
parties, along with the AB Corps and the Third Party, were prominent among the targets of
the Party's campaigns to eliminate counterrevolutionaries. The North Pole Society was
another such organization, though much less important.
Guangdong. In 1905, while a student in Japan, he was one of the founding members of the
Tongmenghui, and from that time forward he was a close and trusted associate of Sun
Yatsen. Following the reorganization of the Guomindang in 1924, Hu Hanmin became a
member of the Central Executive Committee and the Central Political Council. Following
Sun Yatsen's death in March 1925, Hu was considered one of the three main candidates
for his succession. Accused of complicity in the assassination of Liao Zhongkai in August
1925, he was forced to retire from active political life for a time, but in April 1927 he
became chairman of the Guomindang government in Nanjing. In October 1928, he was
appointed president of the Legislative Yuan. After the collapse of the 1930 revolt against
Nanjing led by Feng Yuxiang, Wang Jingwei, and Yan Xishan, Hu opposed Chiang
Kaishek's proposal to adopt a provisional constitution, arguing that, in accordance with
Sun Yatsen's ideas, a single-party dictatorship and a period of political tutelage were
necessary before a constitutional government could be established. Hu resigned the presidency of the Legislative Yuan on February 28, 1931, and was placed under house arrest by
Chiang. As a result, four senior Guomindang members issued a statement on April 30
impeaching Chiang for the illegal arrest of Hu, and in May, an opposition national government was founded in Guangdong. The conflict was only resolved in the context of the
national crisis created by the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in September 1931.

--- Notes
Liuyang in Hunan. A friend of Mao's from their student days in Changsha, he was one of
the founders of the New People's Study Society (see, in Volume I, pp. 164-66, the poem
Mao addressed to him in 1918). He joined the Chinese Communist Party in 1921, and
worked for many years afterward in the labor movement. In late 1930, he became deeply
involved (as part of the group associated with He Mengxiong) in the intra-Party factional
struggle surrounding the removal of Li Lisan from Party leadership. Luo, He, and their
supporters then struggled unsuccessfully against the "Returned Student" faction at the
Fourth Plenum in January 1931, after which they withdrew and tried to set up their own
alternate Central Committee. For these actions, Luo and others were expelled from the
Party soon thereafter.
vened by Mao on June 22, 1929, at Longyan in Fujian. Immediately afterward, he was
obliged to withdraw from active leadership until November because of illness. The current
Chinese assessment of the conference is that it played "a certain positive role," but failed
to recognize the extent of "roving rebel ideology" in the army (Zhongguo gongchandang
huiyi gaiyao [A Summary Account of Chinese Communist Party Meetings] [Shenyang:
Shenyang chubanshe, 1991), pp. 88-90 [hereafter, Party Meetings]). See also the Introduc-tion to Volume III, p. xlv.

present soviet areas. The February 7th Conference "called on all revolutionary
comrades within the Party to arise, overthrow the opportunist political leadership, eliminate the landlords and rich peasants from the Party, and see to it that
the Party is rapidly bolshevized."¹¹ The defect during this period, however, is
that opportunists were not resolutely and thoroughly purged from the organization, and moreover that during the latter half of this period, the influence of the
Lisan Line was accepted in political matters, thereby causing the soviet areas to
neglect the work of consolidation.


leadership. The Second Plenum of the Southwestern Jiangxi Special Committee, which
began on August 5, 1930, was marked by a reorganization of the local leadership and a
resurgence of Li Lisan-style policies.


The Central Bureau of the Soviet Areas was founded under the conciliatory line
adopted by the Third Plenum, so its line was naturally one of conciliation with the
Lisan Line. 14 In terms of the overall arrangement of its work, the Central Bureau
assuredly did not firmly carry out the International's instructions on the work in the
soviet areas. Still less did it criticize or rectify any mistakes that the Party had made
in its previous work under the influence of the Lisan Line, although it did correctly
solve many individual problems (such as the problem of the local armed forces, the
relationship between labor unions and the soviets, the CY issue in the Red Army, 15
and so on). The Central Bureau's evaluation of the current situation is wrong. It has
not in any way pointed out that the counterrevolution's attack on the revolution, and
particularly on the Red Army and the soviet areas, is the central problem in the
political life of China today. Instead it declares that the warlords attack the Red
Army only for the purpose of preparing for chaotic warfare among themselves (see
Circular No. 8). Such an erroneous assessment may lead to slackness in carrying out
our main task-smashing the enemy's attack and may engender an attitude of waiting around for the warlords to begin fighting among themselves. Only be-


--- Notes

1. Mobilize all forces and correctly coordinate the worker and peasant masses

2. Immediately establish a concrete plan for training a true iron Workers' and

3. Continue to transform the soviet régime, not only purging the descendants

4. As for the land question, it is established that there will be equal distribu-

5. Reinforce the leadership of the proletariat, establish a sound class-based labor

6. Intensify efforts to root out counterrevolutionaries so as to wipe out thor-

7. Within the soviet areas, intensify anti-imperialist work and propaganda, in

8. Firmly carry out the work of remolding the Party, purge class-alien elements, thoroughly remold cadres, and create new, genuine worker and peasant

9. Strengthen work in the White areas, particularly revolutionary work inside

1. This is one of several resolutions passed at an important Party conference, which

2. The reference is to the conference of representatives from the soviet areas convened

4. I.e., before the conference convened by Mao at Nanyang in Tingzhou xian in

6. The famous Gutian Conference of December 1929, at which the Gutian Resolution

7. The conference convened by Mao at Luofang, in Xinyu xian, from October 25 to

8. This conference of high-ranking Red Army leaders occurred in December 1930

9. The references are to battles during the army's campaigns in the Changsha area and

12. The reference is not to the Second Plenum of the Central Committee, but to that of

13. These two sentences from a report of the Special Committee to the Central Committee

14. The Central Bureau of the Soviet Areas was set up on January 15, 1931, at Xiaobu

15. The reference is to the Communist Youth League, designated, as was frequently

16. These comments concern the statements of the Xiang Ying-dominated Central

17. "Insurrection" here is a general reference to Communist-influenced local peasant

18. There was considerable controversy during this period over what the mutual relationship and respective roles of the regular Red Army forces and local guerrilla units

19. This resolution had been issued on January 20, 1931; the text is available in

20. The Social Democratic Party (Shehui minzhu dang) was a leftist but non-Communist organization which was centered in Fujian. The Reorganization Clique was the term

21. Hu Hanmin (1879-1936), zi Zhantang, hao Bugui shizhu, was a native of

3. Luo Zhanglong (1896-1994), bom Luo Aojie, zi Zhongyan, was a native of

5. The Seventh Conference of Party Representatives from the Fourth Army was con-