BOOK REVIEW
Red Star Over China, First Revised and Enlarged Edition, Edgar Snow, Bantam Books, New York, 1994
I am using the the then current spelling of names and places as they are used in this edition of the book.
For militant leftists the defense of October 1917 Russian Revolution was the touchstone issue of international politics for most of the 20th century. In the end the demise of the Soviet Union and the other non-capitalists states of East Europe in the early 1990’s formally, at least, put an end to that question in those areas. However, the issue of the fate of China in the first half of the 21st century is in an important sense the touchstone Russian question of international politics today. The question, forward to socialism or back to some neo-capitalist formation like those in Russia and East Europe to this reviewer is an open question today. With that perspective in mind, and not unmindful of the publicity given China recently as the host of the 2008 Olympics, it is high time that this reviewer spent more time on this issue than he has thus far in this space. As preparation, it is always best to get some historical background, especially so for that new generation of militants who are unfamiliar with the last hundred years of leftist history.
As I have recently mentioned in another China review in this space, The History of The Chinese Communist Party 1921-1949, the Communist International and Russian Communist Party fights over strategy for the Chinese revolution between the Stalinists and the Trotsky-led Left Opposition in the mid-1920’s are must reading. As is the history of the defeat of the Second Chinese Revolution in the cities in 1927 and a little later. However, for a view of the Chinese Revolution in the period after its defeat no better place to start for a quick early overview of the heroic days of the Chinese revolution and the besieged Chinese Communist Party before the seizure of power, is journalist Edgar Snow’s reportage on the military fight to shape China’s future between the Maoist-led Red Army and Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist Army in the mid-1930s.
Snow’s journalistic endeavors have come in for more than their fair share of criticism, especially in the post-1949 period when the debate over who ‘lost’ China raged in the West, especially the United States. That criticism is somewhat irrelevant (and antiqued) now. The value of his work for us is that he was the first Western journalist to actually go to the outer regions of China where the Red Army was holed up in Yenan after the heroic and historic Long March. The Long March itself represented an understanding that the pro-Communist forces which held so much promise of seizing power in the 1920’s were fighting a rearguard action in the mid-1930s. Snow’s first-hand interviews with Mao, Chu Teh, Lin Piao, Ho Lung or, in their absence, those close to them provided that critical “first draft of history” that is always being touted by newspaper people. Moreover, his analysis and description of life in the Chinese soviet areas, the kind of issues that were on the top of people’s minds and the critical 1930s issue of the struggle against the furiously encroaching Japanese holds up fairly well.
The first question that any working class militant today has to ask, at least one who has imbibed the Russian Revolution as the touchstone event of the 20th century, is how a communist party assumed to represent the historic interests of the urban working class came out of the boondocks building a peasant army which at its height was fighting for land distribution and a national independence struggle against the Japanese. Part of that answer is the afore-mentioned defeat in the cities in the 1920s due to disastrous strategic problems concerning the nature of the “third-word” national bourgeoisie in the age of imperialism (a question that still stymies the international working class movement). Part was the overwhelming peasant nature of early 20th century Chinese society and the practical difficulties of creating any military force not centered on the peasantry. However, the biggest part is a conception on the part of the Chinese Communist leadership that guerrilla warfare was the only practical way to defeat the Japanese, Chiang Kai-shek, American imperialism or who ever decided to take aim at China.
This distortion led to serious problems later, not only in practical matter of organizing a rural society for the tasks of industrialization but by making a virtue out of, perhaps, necessity. The so-called Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR) that convulsed China for a decade from the mid-1960s emblazoned on its banner the notion of the countryside (on a world scale) defeating the cities (on a world scale). That is the Chinese struggle writ large. But so much for that now.
The true value of Snow’s book lies for its detailing of the following accounts. First, a rather vivid description of the various hardships of his getting to Yenan as an individual that reflected the Communists' difficulties in trying to bring a whole army north. Secondly, a vivid description of the set up of the soviets and the social, political and cultural arrangements of life in the soviet areas. Thirdly, in Snow’s random interviews of the rank and file soldiers of the Red Army, the peasants whose co-operation was critical to the defense of the soviet areas and of the cultural/educational/administrative workers who kept the apparatus working through thick and thin. Lastly, Snow has painstakingly provided a plethora of end notes and biographical sketches concerning the fates of the various characters from all factions that people his journals, a wealth of data about various events up until 1937 and, perhaps, most importantly, much updated information including material on the GPCR from subsequent trips to China. This later material gathered at a time when very little was known about what was going on in China, especially around the intra-bureaucratic struggle behind the scenes of the GPCR. Retroactive kudos to Edgar Snow.
Red Star Over China, First Revised and Enlarged Edition, Edgar Snow, Bantam Books, New York, 1994
I am using the the then current spelling of names and places as they are used in this edition of the book.
For militant leftists the defense of October 1917 Russian Revolution was the touchstone issue of international politics for most of the 20th century. In the end the demise of the Soviet Union and the other non-capitalists states of East Europe in the early 1990’s formally, at least, put an end to that question in those areas. However, the issue of the fate of China in the first half of the 21st century is in an important sense the touchstone Russian question of international politics today. The question, forward to socialism or back to some neo-capitalist formation like those in Russia and East Europe to this reviewer is an open question today. With that perspective in mind, and not unmindful of the publicity given China recently as the host of the 2008 Olympics, it is high time that this reviewer spent more time on this issue than he has thus far in this space. As preparation, it is always best to get some historical background, especially so for that new generation of militants who are unfamiliar with the last hundred years of leftist history.
As I have recently mentioned in another China review in this space, The History of The Chinese Communist Party 1921-1949, the Communist International and Russian Communist Party fights over strategy for the Chinese revolution between the Stalinists and the Trotsky-led Left Opposition in the mid-1920’s are must reading. As is the history of the defeat of the Second Chinese Revolution in the cities in 1927 and a little later. However, for a view of the Chinese Revolution in the period after its defeat no better place to start for a quick early overview of the heroic days of the Chinese revolution and the besieged Chinese Communist Party before the seizure of power, is journalist Edgar Snow’s reportage on the military fight to shape China’s future between the Maoist-led Red Army and Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist Army in the mid-1930s.
Snow’s journalistic endeavors have come in for more than their fair share of criticism, especially in the post-1949 period when the debate over who ‘lost’ China raged in the West, especially the United States. That criticism is somewhat irrelevant (and antiqued) now. The value of his work for us is that he was the first Western journalist to actually go to the outer regions of China where the Red Army was holed up in Yenan after the heroic and historic Long March. The Long March itself represented an understanding that the pro-Communist forces which held so much promise of seizing power in the 1920’s were fighting a rearguard action in the mid-1930s. Snow’s first-hand interviews with Mao, Chu Teh, Lin Piao, Ho Lung or, in their absence, those close to them provided that critical “first draft of history” that is always being touted by newspaper people. Moreover, his analysis and description of life in the Chinese soviet areas, the kind of issues that were on the top of people’s minds and the critical 1930s issue of the struggle against the furiously encroaching Japanese holds up fairly well.
The first question that any working class militant today has to ask, at least one who has imbibed the Russian Revolution as the touchstone event of the 20th century, is how a communist party assumed to represent the historic interests of the urban working class came out of the boondocks building a peasant army which at its height was fighting for land distribution and a national independence struggle against the Japanese. Part of that answer is the afore-mentioned defeat in the cities in the 1920s due to disastrous strategic problems concerning the nature of the “third-word” national bourgeoisie in the age of imperialism (a question that still stymies the international working class movement). Part was the overwhelming peasant nature of early 20th century Chinese society and the practical difficulties of creating any military force not centered on the peasantry. However, the biggest part is a conception on the part of the Chinese Communist leadership that guerrilla warfare was the only practical way to defeat the Japanese, Chiang Kai-shek, American imperialism or who ever decided to take aim at China.
This distortion led to serious problems later, not only in practical matter of organizing a rural society for the tasks of industrialization but by making a virtue out of, perhaps, necessity. The so-called Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR) that convulsed China for a decade from the mid-1960s emblazoned on its banner the notion of the countryside (on a world scale) defeating the cities (on a world scale). That is the Chinese struggle writ large. But so much for that now.
The true value of Snow’s book lies for its detailing of the following accounts. First, a rather vivid description of the various hardships of his getting to Yenan as an individual that reflected the Communists' difficulties in trying to bring a whole army north. Secondly, a vivid description of the set up of the soviets and the social, political and cultural arrangements of life in the soviet areas. Thirdly, in Snow’s random interviews of the rank and file soldiers of the Red Army, the peasants whose co-operation was critical to the defense of the soviet areas and of the cultural/educational/administrative workers who kept the apparatus working through thick and thin. Lastly, Snow has painstakingly provided a plethora of end notes and biographical sketches concerning the fates of the various characters from all factions that people his journals, a wealth of data about various events up until 1937 and, perhaps, most importantly, much updated information including material on the GPCR from subsequent trips to China. This later material gathered at a time when very little was known about what was going on in China, especially around the intra-bureaucratic struggle behind the scenes of the GPCR. Retroactive kudos to Edgar Snow.
