NOTES

NOTES

1 This war took place in October 1927.

2 This war took place in November and December 1927.

3 The system of the soldiers' representative conferences and soldiers' committees m the Red Army was later abolished. In 1947, the People's Liberation Army inaugurated a system of armymen's conferences and soldiers' committees, both under the leadership of cadres.

4 These troops, originally under the command of Comrades Yeh Ting and Ho Lung, staged the Nanchang Uprising of August 1, 1927. They were defeated in their advance on Chaochow and Swatow, Kwangtung Province, and some units, led by Comrades Chu The, Lin Piao and Chen Yi, withdrew to southern Hunan via Kiangsi to carry on guerrilla operations. They joined Comrade Mao Tse-tung's forces in the Chingkang Mountains in April 1928.

5 In the revolutionary days of 1927 most of the cadres in the Guards Regiment of the National Government at Wuchang were members of the Communist Party. At the end of July 1927, after Wang Ching-wei and his associates had betrayed the revolution, the regiment left Wuchang to join in the uprising at Nanchang. Learning en route that the revolutionary forces had already gone south from Nanchang, the regiment made a detour to Hsiushui in western Kiangsi to join the peasant armed forces of Pingkiang and Liuyang.

6 In the spring of 1927 peasant armed forces of considerable strength were formed in the area of Pingkiang and Liuyang, Hunan Province. On May 21, Hsu Keh-hsiang staged a counter-revolutionary coup in Changsha and massacred the revolutionary masses. The peasant armed forces then marched on Changsha on May 31 to hit back at the counter-revolutionaries, but were stopped by the opportunist Chen Tu-hsiu and turned back. Thereupon a section was reorganized into an independent regiment to engage in guerrilla warfare. After the Nanchang Uprising on August 1, these armed peasants joined forces with the former Guards Regiment of the Wuchang National Government at Hsiushui and Tungku in Kiangsi Province and at Pingkiang and Liuyang in Hunan Province, and staged the Autumn Harvest Uprising in co-ordination with the armed coal miners of Pinghsiang, Kiangsi. In October Comrade Mao Tse-tung led these forces to the Chingkang Mountains.

7 In early 1928, while Comrade Chu The was directing revolutionary guerrilla warfare in southern Hunan, peasant armies were organized in the counties of Yichang, Chenchow, Leiyang, Yunghsing and Tzehsing, where the peasant movement had already taken firm root. Comrade Chu The subsequently led them to the Chingkang Mountains to join the forces under Comrade Mao Tse-tung.

8 Shuikoushan in Changning, Hunan Province, is well known for is lead mines. In 1922 the miners there led by the Communist Party formed a trade union and for years conducted struggles against the counter-revolution. Many of the miners joined the Red Army after the Autumn Harvest Uprising of 1927.

9 The Anyuan Coal Mines in Pinghsiang County, Kiangsi Province, employing twelve thousand workers, were owned by the Han-Yeh-Ping Iron and Steel Company. From 1921 onwards Party organizations and a miners' union were set up there by the organizers sent by the Hunan Provincial Committee of the Communist Party.

10 In 1929 the Party representatives in the Red Army were renamed political commissars. In 1931 the company political commissars were renamed political instructors.

11 Expropriation of the local tyrants was only a temporary measure to defray part of the army's expenses. The expansion of the base areas and the growth of the army made it possible and necessary to defray army expenses through taxation.

12 This practice of equal cash payment, necessary at the time, remained in force over many years in the Red Army. Later on, however, officers and men received payments which differed slightly according to rank.

13 Here Comrade Mao Tse-tung lays special stress on the need for a definite measure of democracy in the revolutionary army, since, in the early period of the Red Army, without the stress on democracy it would not have been possible to arouse the revolutionary enthusiasm of the new peasant recruits and the captured White troops who had joined our ranks, nor would it have been possible to eliminate the warlord ways of the reactionary armies which had infected our cadres. Of course, democracy in the army must not transcend the limits of military discipline, which it must serve to strengthen and not weaken. Therefore, while a necessary measure of democracy should be promoted, the demand for ultra-democracy, which amounts to indiscipline, must be combated. Such indiscipline became a matter of serious concern at one point in the early days of the Red Army. For Comrade Mao Tse-tung's struggle against ultra-democracy in the army, see "On Correcting Mistaken Ideas in the Party", pp. 105-16 of this volume.

14 Comrade Yeh Ting commanded an independent regiment during the Northern Expedition in 1926. With Communists as its nucleus the regiment became famous as a crack force. It was expanded into the 24th Division after the capture of Wuchang by the revolutionary army and then into the Eleventh Army after the Nanchang Uprising.

15 Subsequent experience in the Red Army showed that a ratio of one Party member to two non-Party men was adequate. This proportion was generally maintained in the Red Army and later in the People's Liberation Army.

16 Instigated by Chiang Kai-shek and Wang Ching-wei, the counter-revolutionary Kuomintang army commanders in Hunan, including Hsu Keh-hsiang and Ho Chien, ordered a raid on the provincial headquarters of the trade unions, the peasant associations and other revolutionary organizations in Changsha on May 21, 1927. Communists and revolutionary workers and peasants were arrested and killed en masse. This signalized the open collaboration of the two counter-revolutionary Kuomintang cliques, the Wuhan clique headed by Wang Ching-wei and the Nanking clique headed by Chiang Kai-shek.

17 Confiscation and redistribution of all the land was a provision in the Land Law promulgated in the Hunan-Kiangsi border area in 1928. Comrade Mao Tse-tung later pointed out that the confiscation of all land, instead of only the land of the landlords, was a mistake stemming from inexperience in agrarian struggles. In the Land Law of Hsingkuo County, Kiangsi, adopted in April 1929, the provision "confiscate all the land" was changed into "confiscate the public land and the land of the landlord class".

18 In view of the importance of winning over the intermediate class in the countryside, Comrade Mao Tse-tung soon corrected the erroneous policy of dealing too sharply with it. Apart from the present article, Comrade Mao Tse-tung's views on policy towards this class were also set forth in proposals to the Sixth Party Congress of the Red Army (November 1928), including "The Prohibition of Reckless Burning and Killing" and "Protection of the Interests of the Middle and Small Merchants"; in the January 1929 proclamation of the Fourth Red Army which declared "merchants in the towns who have gradually built up some property are to be left alone so long as they obey the authorities"; in the Land Law of Hsingkuo County adopted in April 1929 (see Note 17), etc.

19 With the spread of the revolutionary war, the extension of the revolutionary base areas and the adoption of the policy of protecting industry and commerce by the revolutionary government, it became possible to change this situation, and a change did in fact occur later. What was crucial was resolutely to protect the industry and commerce of the national bourgeoisie and oppose ultra-Left policies.

20 Labour-power is not an appropriate criterion for land distribution. In the Red areas land was in fact redistributed equally on a per capita basis.

21 The Pacification Guards were a kind of local counter-revolutionary armed force.