Historical Research and Documentary Material on the Third Revolutionary Civil War (1945-49)

Abstract

Historical research on events of this period made definite progress in 1960 when vol. 4 of Selected Works of Mao Zedong (Mao Zedong xuanji) was published and began a nationwide study movement. However, the research efforts at that time were confined to writing revolutionary reminiscences and publishing personal reflections. Not many papers and monographs were published, still less work was done on collating and compiling material. This state of affairs began to change after the Cultural Revolution. From the founding of the People's Republic to the time when the Cultural Revolution began, two major issues had been raised and discussed: 1. On the topic (tifa) of the principal contradiction during the period of the third revolutionary civil war, two different opinionsemerged. One opinion held that the domestic contradiction became the principal contradiction during this period that centered around the civil war and, therefore, we should frame the problem as the contradiction as the contradiction between the Chinese people and the Kuomintang reactionaries. Another opinion argued that class contradiction moved upward and became involved with the national contradiction between U. s. imperialism and the Chinese people, that is, the counterrevolutionary war launched by Chiang Kai-shek was "a war in which the United States supplies the money and guns and Chiang Kai-shek supplies the men to fight for the United States and slaughter the Chinese people in order to turn China into an American colony." Therefore, we should formulate the problem as the contradiction between the Chinese people and the U.S.-Chiang reactionaries. Most comrades were inclined toward the former formulation. Some other comrades reasoned that the term U.S.-Chiang reactionaries could be defined in two ways: One was U.S. imperialism plus Chiang Kai-shek reactionaries. Another was Chiang Kai-shek as the running dog of U.S. imperialism. Even the Selected Works of Mao Zedong does not use the term US-Chiang reactionaries.