Reconstruction and Rectification of the Communist Party in the Shanghai Underground: 1931–34
Recently scholars have shown that Mao's accusations against the Russian Returned Students stemmed from his need to bolster his own legitimacy by discrediting their role in the 1931–34 period. According to the 1945 “Resolution on questions in the history of the Party,” the Returned Students were “doctrinaire sectarians” whose “‘offensive line’ for the Party” and “repeated failures in political work” caused “serious damage to the Party in the White areas.” But closer investigation indicates that in the bastion which they are accused of weakening and decimating, the Returned Students devoted considerable attention to strengthening Party organization, educating cadres and mobilizing mass support. Although factional struggles and aggressive tactics characterized the policies of the Twenty-Eight Bolsheviks in the 1931–34 period, their contributions to the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) eifort to maintain a viable organization in the cities cannot be ignored. That the urban Party, hurt severely by the Kuomintang (KMT), survived at all can be attributed to efforts that Mao later denigrated.
Tradition and Personal Experience
will serve me for the Morningsat Home: I am very sorry for the Fruit: I hope the Gooseberries & Currants will not share the Fate of the Cherries: I hope I shaII see my Cousin in the Holydays, as from the short Time I saw him, I like him uncommonly: I intended to send this Yesterday but could not find Time & as I have nothing more to say, I will concIude, with assuring you that I remain your most dutiful & affectionate Nephew, T. ARNOLD.
Research Notes on the Changing Loci of Decision in the Chinese Communist Party
In the course of the Cultural Revolution, both Chinese official and Red Guard sources have revealed that the so-called Chung-yang kung-tso hui-i (Central Work Conference)—an institution hitherto not well known to outside observers—had met frequently during 1960–66 and that these meetings were connected with decisions on important policy issues. While its existence and jurisdiction have never been formally stipulated by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Constitution of 1956 or 1945, the Central Work Conference appears to have become an important locus of decision in the Party during the 1960s. There are indications that it functioned alongside of the Party's regular decision-making bodies, the Central Committee (CC) and the Politburo, and that it replaced, and possibly pre-empted, the functions of other institutional devices which Mao Tse-tung has utilized during the second half of the 1950s. This article examines briefly the participants in, and functions of, the Central Work Conference and other types of Party meetings, attempting to shed some light on the loci of decision in the CCP. Appended to the article is a list of known Party meetings from 1949–66, compiled from official and Red Guard publications, which may be of some use to students of Chinese Communist affairs.