Welcome to episode 128 of the People’s History of Ideas Podcast.
Last episode, we took our discussion of the 1929 Sino-Soviet War through the Soviet Union’s successful offensive along the Songhua River in October.
As we noted last episode, this October offensive along the Songhua River had dealt a devastating blow to the Manchurian warlord armed forces allied with the Guomindang. But still, the warlord/Guomindang forces did not sue for peace. But it wouldn’t take much more for that to happen.
Now, just a note, I realize that it is somewhat clunky to keep referring to the army opposed to the Soviets as ‘the Manchurian warlord armed forces allied with the Guomindang.’ Some historians might just refer to them as the Chinese side (of what is after all called the Sino-Soviet War). However, I am reluctant to do that. As we will see here momentarily, major Chinese political forces intervened on the side of the Soviets. Not only did the Chinese Communist Party more-or-less conceive of this war as something of a second major front which had been opened in the ongoing civil war which they were waging in the southeast of the country. (We will discuss Communist activities in a little bit here.) But also, as I will explain in a second, a major warlord chose this moment to turn on Chiang Kai-shek, essentially aligning himself with the Soviet Union (and not for the first or last time). So, to refer to the forces that the Soviets were fighting simply as the Chinese side in the war seems inaccurate, erasing the actual Chinese support for the Soviets, which was far from marginal (and, after all, includes the people who ended up winning the Chinese Civil War eventually in 1949).
One option is to refer to ‘the Manchurian warlord armed forces allied with the Guomindang’ simply as the Guomindang. Because this is less clunky, I am mostly going to do that here, but I want to clarify that this is not entirely accurate. As we discussed two episodes ago, the Manchurian warlord Zhang Xueliang had pledged allegiance to the Guomindang and added his domains to those which were formally governed by the regime ruled by Chiang Kai-shek with its capital in Nanjing. However, in practice Zhang maintained control over his army and most aspects of Manchurian government until the Japanese drove him out of Manchuria in 1931. So, while he was allied with the Guomindang and formally subordinate to Chiang Kai-shek, in practice his government and armed forces were distinct from and not really integrated with those of the Nanjing regime.
So, let’s talk about the major warlord who picked this precise moment to turn on Chiang Kai-shek.
As we noted last episode (and sporadically across several other episodes going years back), the Christian warlord of northwestern China, Feng Yuxiang, had been a sometime ally of the Soviet Union for some years. He was also, from 1927 until October 1929, an ally of Chiang Kai-shek. You might remember, for example, back in episode 54, in 1927, how Feng Yuxiang straddled his competing allegiances to Chiang Kai-shek and to the Soviets by, on the one hand, colluding with Chiang Kai-shek to purge the Communists from the Guomindang, while, on the other hand, defying Chiang Kai-shek’s order to arrest Mikhail Borodin and allowing Borodin’s party safe passage on the way back to the Soviet Union through territory that Feng Yuxiang controlled.
The Soviet Union had continued to cultivate its relationship with Feng Yuxiang, and as recently as May 1929 had sent arms and ammunition to Feng. The relationship between the Soviets and Feng paid off when, on October 10, 1929, Feng rebelled against Chiang Kai-shek, just two days before the Soviets launched their major offensive in Manchuria along the Songhua River. Feng’s betrayal of the Guomindang forced Chiang Kai-shek to divert National Revolutionary Army forces that had been supposed to be sent to fight in Manchuria to wage war on a new front with Feng Yuxiang. Although damaging to the Guomindang, Feng’s change of sides was not entirely unexpected. As the American military attaché Joseph Stilwell noted, Feng “double crosses everybody—is strictly for himself.” And Stilwell would know, as a representative of the other foreign power that assiduously courted Feng Yuxiang for his allegiance.
For reasons of historical taxonomy, Feng Yuxiang’s rebellion against Chiang Kai-shek is typically conceptualized as part of what is known as the Central Plains War. As we discussed back in episodes 111 and 113, the Central Plains War broke out when a bunch of warlords who had allied with Chiang Kai-shek to unite China under one government resisted Chiang’s efforts to consolidate power. The beginnings of this war in early 1929 were an important part of Mao’s calculus after the Communists took the city of Changting that the overall situation was favorable for rapidly expanding territorial gains in Fujian and Jiangxi and creating a new, larger Communist base area. Mao was very eager to seize upon the opportunity provided by the fighting among the reactionaries to increase Communist strength. Anyways, as we can see, even though the Central Plains War and the Sino-Soviet War are conceptualized as different events, Feng Yuxiang’s decision to join the warlord coalition against Chiang Kai-shek occurred (not-accidentally) at a time which favored the Soviet war effort in Manchuria.
The final Soviet offensive which precipitated the end of the war took place more-or-less simultaneously in two major pushes, one along Manchuria’s eastern border with the USSR, and the other along the western border. The operation on the western front began on the evening of November 16, and the operation on the eastern front began on the morning of November 17.
On the eastern front, the Soviet operation was focused on seizing and disabling a major coal mine, the Muleng coal fields near the city of Mishan, about 40 kilometers inside Chinese territory. The fighting here was fierce, with the Soviets moving a main strike force with horse-drawn carts over frozen swamps and through hilly terrain to swiftly seize the objective while other forces maneuvered to block Guomindang reinforcements. Apparently troops on both sides fought courageously, but the Soviets had the benefit of better organization and better equipment, not the least of which was warplanes. In a display of resourcefulness, the Guomindang forces stacked thousands of soybean cakes to use as obstacles against the Soviet offensive. The soybean cakes were disc shaped, usually about two feet in diameter, five inches thick, and were mainly used as livestock feed. Apparently, when stacked together, they were about as effective as sandbag barriers would have been.
Despite the fierce fighting, by evening the Soviets had occupied the mines, which they held for a few days while rendering them useless before retreating back across the Soviet border. Soviet sources say that the Guomindang suffered nearly 1500 killed during the day’s fighting. I don’t have figures for Soviet casualties.
The Soviet strike on the western front with Manchuria was also focused on seizing a coal mine, this one being the Dalainor mine near the border city of Manzhouli. The Soviets struck across the border on the evening of November 16. In order to make the Soviet advance as stealthy as possible, troops were prohibited from smoking so that the embers of their cigarettes wouldn’t show in the dark. The Soviets maneuvered around Manzhouli to hit at Dalainor, but the mine was heavily fortified, and it took about a day and a half of fierce fighting for the Guomindang resistance to collapse, despite the Soviets’ use of tanks and airplanes. The Guomindang had set up lines of trenches, including some as deep as 13 feet which were designed to stop tanks, as well as minefields and lines of barbed wire. They had also set up blockhouses, although the effectiveness of these fortifications was mitigated when the Guomindang troops decided that they wanted to burn wood in order to provide heat. The smoke that exited the blockhouses drew Soviet troops’ attention to the chimneys, which they would then drop grenades down once they had managed to approach the blockhouses.
But the cold was indeed fierce, fluctuating between -10 and -20 degrees centigrade, and with a fierce wind providing additional windchill. As one soldier recalled, the Soviet army advanced too far in advance of where food was prepared for hot food to be delivered to the front lines, and so the loaves of bread brought up to augment the field rations were frozen solid by the time they arrived and had to be cut into pieces with hatchets. And making warming fires in the darkness was impossible, because it would immediately draw fire.
The carnage of the battle was truly horrifying. During one Guomindang attempt to retake a hill, they charged en masse straight into sixteen machine guns that the Soviets had set up and the cries of the Chinese soldiers as they were gunned down were reported to be even louder than the sound of the guns. In another indication of just how gruesome the fighting was, Soviet cavalry, many of whom were Mongolian horsemen, were ordered to remove their winter coats, despite the freezing weather, so that their saber arms would be free. A great deal of the fighting was done with these sabers and with bayonets, which were used side-by-side with more recent military technologies like tanks and airplanes.
On the morning of November 18, the Guomindang forces collapsed and Dalainor fell. About 800 Chinese troops were allowed to flee in disorder into the city of Manzhouli, where they began looting and pillaging the city. Some of the Guomindang forces in Manzhouli which still retained their discipline attempted to break out of the city on November 19, but were mowed down as they advanced and had to retreat back into the city. Then on November 20 the Chinese commander in the city utilized the offices of the Japanese consul as intermediary to surrender to the Soviets.
When they entered Manzhouli, the Soviets found many Guomindang soldiers still looting the city, including a good number who had stolen civilian dress, including women’s clothing and foreign dresses and bonnets, presumably to disguise themselves while trying to escape. The Soviets filmed this and turned it into a propaganda film.
The next Soviet war aim was to seize the city of Hailar, about 200 kilometers to the east of Manzhouli. Under the psychological pressure of the collapse of Manzhouli and Dalainor, as well as the impact of continuing attacks by Soviet airplanes, the Guomindang forces at Hailar fell to burning and looting the city before retreating well in advance of the Soviet troops who occupied the city on November 25. The Soviets had promised the Japanese that they would advance no further into Manchuria than Hailar and they kept their word. But the retreating Guomindang forces burned and pillaged their way for several hundred kilometers east, with no pursuit by Soviet forces, until they were gunned down by more disciplined Guomindang forces as the looters and pillagers attempted to enter the city of Qiqihar.
Meanwhile, on November 24, Zhang Xueliang contacted the Soviets and sued to end the war, indicating that he now accepted the terms that the Soviets had laid out for peace back in July, which amounted essentially to a restoration of the pre-war status quo, with the Soviets in full control of the Chinese Eastern Railway. The odd thing about this was, of course, that Zhang Xueliang was not the Chinese head of state. Zhang was formally Chiang Kai-shek’s subordinate, but it was his troops who were doing all of the fighting. So, Zhang’s initiative in suing for peace is very revealing of the way in which Chiang Kai-shek did not really control whole areas of China where his warlord allies had formally joined his government, but in fact still wielded most of the power in their old territories. But, with Zhang now wanting to end the war (and really, what choice did he have?), Chiang Kai-shek had to acquiesce as well.
Actually hammering out the details of the peace didn’t take long, and I’ll save you the nitty-gritty of the back-and-forth that took place. Again, if you want more details than I have given here, I highly recommend checking out Michael Walker’s book The 1929 Sino-Soviet War.
Now, if you have a good memory, you may recall that, back during the days of the united front between the Communists and the Guomindang, in late 1925, Chiang Kai-shek had sent his son, Chiang Ching-kuo, to study in Moscow at the Sun Yatsen Communist University of the Toilers of China. So, if you remember that, you might have been wondering what happened with Chiang Kai-shek’s son after Chiang turned on the Communists in 1927, and then especially after he went to war with the Soviet Union in 1929? You may have assumed, for example, that Chiang had warned his son to get out of Moscow back before he turned on the Communists in 1927. But that wasn’t something that could be done so simply back in the 1920s, and also, Chiang appears to have been concerned that suddenly pulling his son out of the university might have tipped his hand that he was about to turn on the Communists.
Let’s take a minute here and look into some of the details, because Chiang Ching-kuo’s story is illustrative of just how complicated the world of Chinese revolutionary politics was at the time. While a student at Sun Yatsen University, Chiang Ching-kuo became an enthusiastic revolutionary, and embraced a set of contradictory ideas. On the one hand, unlike most Communist students at the university, he saw the Guomindang (under his father’s leadership), as eventually leading a proletarian revolution in China. He had, in his mind, reconciled the communist doctrine taught at the university with his social position as the son of one of the main Guomindang leaders. On the other hand, he also became an enthusiastic adherent of Trotsky’s ideas (despite Trotsky’s opposition to the united front policy pursued by the Communists which formed the basis for Chiang Ching-kuo even being in Moscow). In his role as rector of Sun Yatsen University, Karl Radek had convinced many Chinese students to become adherents of Trotsky’s ideas, and some of them, including Chiang Ching-kuo, even met with Trotsky.
Further complicating the political situation at Sun Yatsen University is the fact that two of Feng Yuxiang’s kids were also students in Moscow, and Feng’s teenage daughter cohabitated with Chiang Ching-kuo for a time. So, Chiang Ching-kuo wasn’t just passively living a university experience in Moscow, he was actively participating in a mixed up and complex political environment. Anyways, when his father turned on the Communists, Chiang Ching-kuo denounced his father, although how much of this denunciation was genuine and how much was the result of a pragmatic urge for self-preservation is hard to say. In any case, in order to remove him from the university, but still give him a path forward where he could be a useful participant in the revolution (and also a useful hostage if need be), Chiang Ching-kuo was given an early graduation from Sun Yatsen University, made to denounce his Trotskyist convictions, and enrolled in a military academy. In 1928, when Zhou Enlai was in Moscow for the 6th Pary Congress, he met with Chiang Ching-kuo and told him that his denunciation of Chiang Kai-shek had been a good thing, but that he should not forget to write his father from time to time. Zhou Enlai and other members of the Communist leadership saw Chiang Ching-kuo as potentially playing a useful role in relation to his father at some point.
So, to answer the question that I started this aside with, which was something along the lines of “how on earth could Chiang Kai-shek wage all this warfare against the Chinese Communists and the Soviet Union while his son was in the Soviet Union, and what happened to Chiang Kai-shek’s son?” Chiang Kai-shek’s son remained in the Soviet Union as a participant in the revolutionary process there, but also as something of a hostage. Not long after the Sino-Soviet War ended he even became a candidate member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. As it turned out, he wouldn’t come back to China until the second united front between the Communists and the Guomindang, in 1937, bringing his steelworker Belarussian wife and Russian-speaking children along with him (and the story of how a former Soviet steelworker became the first lady of the Republic of China on the island of Taiwan would be a whole other aside which we will have to put off for another day).
And, in another note related to Chiang Kai-shek’s relationship with the Soviet Union, despite the Soviet victory in the 1929 war and Chiang Kai-shek’s general animosity toward communism, Chiang Kai-shek retained an admiration for the Soviet military men who he had served with during the Northern Expedition, and who beat him in the 1929 war. During a meeting between Stalin and Chiang Kai-shek in 1939, Chiang asked Stalin if Blyukher could be sent back to China to help fight the Japanese (he didn’t know that Blyukher had been killed by the NKVD in 1938; apparently he died while being tortured and never broke down and confessed to the false charges that were put on much of the top military leadership during the 1937-1938 purge of the military). And already in 1938 Cherepanov had been sent to China, where he helped to organize the Guomindang defense of Wuhan against the Japanese invasion.
Alright, this is a good spot to wrap things up, so next episode, we will discuss some of the ways in which the Sino-Soviet War intersected with the development of the Chinese Communist Party.