We conclude our close reading of Mao’s January 5, 1930 letter to Lin Biao. In this episode, Mao discusses his method for understanding the possibilities for revolution in China, as well as the particular tactics to be employed by the Red Army. He also conducts a minor self-criticism.
Further reading:
Stuart Schram, ed., Mao’s Road to Power, vol. 3: From the Jinggangshan to the Establishment of the Jiangxi Soviets, July 1927-December 1930
Pang Xianzhi and Jin Chongji, Mao Zedong: A Biography, vol. 1: 1893-1949
Mao Zedong, “A Single Spark Can Start a Prairie Fire”
Some names from this episode:
Lin Biao, commander of the first column of the Fourth Red Army
Lu Diping, general who ruled Hunan from 1928–29 and Jiangxi from 1929-31
Episode artwork:
Envelope from a different letter that Mao wrote to Lin Biao
Listen now:
Transcript:
Welcome to episode 135 of the People’s History of Ideas Podcast.
Last episode, we began making a close reading of Mao Zedong’s January 5, 1930 letter to Lin Biao, which was later turned into Mao’s well-known essay, “A Single Spark Can Start a Prairie Fire.” This episode, we will pick up that discussion, and we’ll see Mao getting into some more detail on why he thought Lin Biao’s pessimistic attitude toward the revolutionary possibilities in China in the new year of 1930 was wrong.
Here’s Mao, continuing with the letter from last episode:
MRP3 236-237
The Great Revolution refers to the period beginning with the May 30th Movement which saw peasant and workers’ movements break out all across southern China, and also saw the National Revolutionary Army conquer southern China. This Great Revolution ended with the Guomindang purge of the Communists. We covered the period in episodes 26 through 55 of this podcast.
And a quick reminder, the term ‘subjective forces of the revolution’ is just a fancy way of referring to the revolutionary movement, the actual people trying to make a revolution.
Back to the letter:
MRP3 237-238
All the material in the third point here is stuff we discussed between episode 81 (where we discussed the 1928 south Hunan uprising) and episode 115 (where we discussed Mao’s response to the letter that Zhou Enlai had written to him on February 7, 1929).
Going back to the letter, this next key point that Mao makes is a long one, and enumerates the many contradictions favoring the development of a revolutionary high tide in China:
MRP3 238-240
Wow, Mao’s ability to see the bright side in what seems like an incredibly negative situation is, for me at least, very powerful and somewhat contagious. This is, as it will turn out, one of his great strengths as a revolutionary leader, to look at an objective situation, however unfavorable it may appear to be on the surface, and to find where the revolutionary possibilities lie.
At this point in the letter, Mao shifts to make repeated references to his letter of April 5, 1929 to Zhou Enlai (which we focused on in episode 115). He does this in order to show how the Central Committee also in its February 7, 1929 letter to Mao (which is what he was responding to in his April 5 letter) had made similarly pessimistic assessments of the objective situation and the possibility for the subjective forces to quickly expand as Lin Biao had made in his 1930 New Year’s greetings to Mao. And Mao also takes this opportunity to expand on things that he had written in that letter regarding Red Army tactics.
Mostly what is going to be new for us here is where Mao expands on what he had already articulated regarding the Red Army’s tactics, as well as a minor self-criticism that he makes regarding the timeline that he had set for taking over all of Jiangxi. But this is a review of some of Mao’s core thinking on guerrilla warfare, so it’s worth reviewing most of what he says here, even if much of it will not be new for us.
MRP3 240-244
Here, Mao shifts to discuss the plan that he put forward after conquering western Fujian of moving on to conquer Jiangxi within a year. He begins this discussion with another lengthy and, I think for our purposes, excessively detailed citation from his April 5, 1929 letter. So let’s skip that real quick since we talked about it back in episode 115 anyways, and see what Mao has to say about that now that most of a year has passed and clearly, the Communists were not going to conquer all of Jiangxi on the timeline that Mao had earlier proposed. After that, Mao is going to wrap up the letter to Lin. So let’s see what he says:
MRP3 245-246
OK, we read just about the whole letter that Mao wrote to Lin Biao. This letter is really something of a nodal point in Mao’s development. We can see in it so much of what we have covered in the past few years of this podcast succinctly summed up as policy. And keeping in mind much that he says here will be useful as we see what Mao does in Jiangxi in the coming years.
The letter also came at a time when Mao had just had his authority affirmed by the Gutian Conference, and now he was in a good position to educate the Communists, soldiers, and peasant activists in his ‘sphere of influence’ in his idea of a revolutionary strategy for China as a whole, and how he thought the Red Army should operate. Clearly, as he stated in this letter to Lin, even though he had previously articulated almost everything in this letter, there were many people in the party who either disagreed with him, or who did not understand what he had been trying to say, even though they had been his partisan followers, such as Lin Biao. But this letter would become a tool for educating people in his line.
Alright, next episode, we will look at what Mao and the Red Army do next.
Until then, be well.