2. Who Discovered Chiang Kai-shek?

Karl Marx, Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud are considered as three geniuses whose ideas helped shape the modern world.

All three were Jewish.

Two men from the Comintern who helped shape the Chinese revolution were also Jewish. They were M. M. Borodin and Pavel Mif.

Borodin discovered Chiang Kai-shek inside the KMT.

Mif discovered Wang Ming inside the CPC.

Discovered by these talent spotters, Chiang and Wang were given top positions in their respective parties.

Many people thought Chiang was Sun's hand-picked successor.

And they concluded that Sun had chosen the wrong person.

Chiang often referred to himself as “the Chairman's sole successor.” Allegedly, on his deathbed Sun called out for “Kai-shek” in an obviously affectionate manner.

Unfortunately this anecdote comes from Chiang's own account.

Li Rong, the bodyguard who never left Sun's sickbed, remembered things differently:

“It was 20:30 [March 11] and [Sun] had never discussed a single personal matter. He stopped talking at 1:00 on the 12th. He called “darling” once at 4:30 and he called “Jingwei”once at 6:30. At 9:30 that morning, the great man of our age left this world and his spirit returned to heaven.”

On his deathbed, Sun called out Soong Ching-ling and Wang Jingwei, but not Chiang.

Sun died in March 1925. On July 1 that year, the government of the Republic of China was established in Guangzhou. And Chiang, the so-called “Chairman's sole successor,” was a relatively insignificant political figure, a member of no important KMT or government committees, and not even an alternate member of any of those committees.

And Sun never named his successor.

Chiang first met Sun in Tokyo in 1905, introduced by Chen Qimei. But Sun's trusted military associates were Huang Xing, Chen Qimei, Zhu Zhixin, Deng Keng, Ju Zheng, Xu Chongzhi and Chen Jiongming. On hearing of Chen Qimei's death, Sun said, “I have lost my Great Wall.” When Zhu Zhixin died, Sun said, “I have lost my right arm and my left one.” Sun had great expectations for Chen Jiongming. “I want Jingcun (Chen Jiongming) to be the Keqiang (Huang Xing) of Year 1 of the Republic or the Yingshi (Chen Qimei) of Year 2 of the Republic,” he said. “Then I will trust him like I trusted Keqiang and Yingshi.”

Chiang was not one of the men he counted on. So it was many years before he appointed Chiang to any important positions in the army.

The first time Chiang demonstrated his military potential to Sun was when he filed a report discussing the war in Europe and a possible strategy for dealing with Yuan Shikai. That caught Sun's attention at last. While serving in Chen Jiongming's troops, Chiang continued to have Sun's ear. His insights on how to prepare Guangdong's armed forces for war and how the tension between the north and south of China was likely to develop in the near future led Sun to consider him a decent staff officer. But little more than that.

So the positions Sun gave him were mostly advisory in nature. In chronological order, Chiang was made chief of staff to Ju Zheng, military advisor to Sun's presidential office, director of war to Chen Jiongming, chief of staff to Xu Chongzhi and chief of staff at the generalissimo's office.

The first man to appreciate Chiang's potential as more than a staff officer was Chen Jiongming. After serving in Chen's troops for a while, Chiang tendered his resignation. Chen tried to stop him leaving and told him, “The Guangdong Army can survive one hundred defeats but cannot survive one day without you serving it.”

Chen was right. Later he was defeated at the hands of Chiang Kai-shek.

Chiang and Chen had a good relationship. In April 1922, Chen, in preparation for defecting from Sun, resigned as commander in chief of the Guangdong Army and as Governor of Guangdong. Sun accepted his resignation. Not knowing Chen's intentions in leaving, Chiang tried to intercede with Sun on Chen's behalf. When that failed, he too resigned. On a ship to Shanghai, he wrote to Chen, “Whatever you go through I go through with you. Thousands of li apart, our minds are connected.”

But when Chen Jiongming turned against Sun, friendship was cast away and Chiang chose to stand by Sun.

Chiang's loyalty in the face of Chen's betrayal made a big impression on Sun Yat-sen. In later years he went on to write fondly about Chiang and the kind of loyalty he showed during his confrontation with Chen, “Kai-shek came to Guangdong to join me at this hard time. Every day he would stay on my side. His suggestions usually hit the mark. He would have died together with me and the navy men.”

Sun appreciated Chiang's courage but found his personality and workstyle hard to deal with.

Chiang had an explosive temperament and tense relations with those around him; he would resign at the slightest offense, go absent without leave and refuse to return to duty no matter who cabled him.

In October 1922, Sun made Chiang chief of staff to Xu Chongzhi. He stayed for only a few months before quitting that post and returning home, citing “lack of progress in military affairs.” He would not be dissuaded from leaving even when Sun sent Liao Zhongkai with a formal order signed by himself.

In June 1923, Sun made Chiang chief of staff of the generalissimo's office. He left within a month, citing “unacceptable infighting,” and returned to Xikou in Zhejiang.

In early 1924, Sun appointed Chiang as head of the preparatory committee for establishing the Whampoa Military Academy. One month later, Chiang resigned on the grounds that “funds are nowhere to be found.” He resigned as the academy's commandant in September.

Chiang was a serial resigner. In the six years between July 1918, when he resigned as Chen Jiongming's director of warfare, and September 1924, when he resigned as commandant of Whampoa, Chiang resigned and was reinstated no fewer than 14 times.

Sun put up with Chiang for most of these resignations, but could not accept his quitting Whampoa. It was Maring's idea in 1921 to establish a military academy to support the revolution. After the release of the Sun-Joffe Manifesto in 1923, Joffe pledged Russian assistance in terms of funds, weaponry and personnel. Sun had been running a revolution for decades and had suffered enough from not having his own armed forces; to establish an army of his own was a long-cherished dream. For that dream to finally come within reach in his later years and to have Chiang constantly quit on him was a blow to the heart. Sun was deeply disappointed in Chiang Kai-shek.

But it would be foolish to suggest that Chiang was unaware of Whampoa's importance, he who had always valued great military strength. He was genuinely dissatisfied; but it was not solely for lack of funds that he quit. His issue was the fact that Sun did not make him his delegate to the KMT's First National Congress in January 1924. The provincial offices failed to nominate him too. It was one of the most important meetings in the history of KMT and he could not even get into the hall.

On November 13, 1924, Sun set out north. KMT archives record that two days earlier he ordered “the [Whampoa] New Army to be renamed the Party Army and appointed Chiang secretary of military affairs.” It was the last position Sun would ever give him. Between setting out north and his death four months later Sun never wrote to him or gave him any further directions.

In November 1963, Chiang recalled in Taiwan, “I joined the party when I was 21 and was 27 before the chairman started granting me face time alone. In the years that followed he gave me constant guidance and support, and put me to the test in many important positions, too. But I never asked for any jobs from him. And he never gave me any position that was openly senior. I was not nominated to the Central Committee until I was 40 and that was 20 years after joining the party.”

There was a touch of bitterness in his account of those years.

So if Sun never gave Chiang any positions that were “openly senior,” who did?

The inevitability of Chiang's rise to power is a big subject of modern Chinese history. But its accidental nature owes much to Borodin, the Russian advisor.

It was he who pushed Chiang Kai-shek to the top.

Borodin himself was also a mystery. He found creative ways to carry out the Comintern's and Stalin's directives in China like no other of Moscow's emissaries was able to do. He helped set the course of the Chinese revolution in a way that no other could.

Borodin was a veteran revolutionary. Latvian by birth, he worked first in Russia, then in Spain, Mexico, the United States, Britain and China. His life was a legend.

Between July 30 and August 23, 1903, the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party held its second national congress in Brussels and London. Of the 57 congress delegates, 43 had the right to vote. Since eight of them had two votes apiece, the actual number of votes was 51.

These dry and easily forgettable numbers bore huge significance for 20th century history.

In a session discussing a clause regarding membership, a rift opened up.

Lenin made a draft proposal that “anyone recognizing the party's charter, providing material support to the party and being a member of an organization affiliated to the party”was eligible to become a member of the party. Martov agreed about charter recognition and material support, but said the candidate did not have to belong to an affiliated organization in order to qualify. Instead, the candidate could just be someone who “regularly assists the party under the direction of a party organization.”

The rift was thus started. After a marathon debate, Lenin's proposal was defeated by 23 votes to 28.

Martov had the upper hand over Lenin at first; he maintained his winning streak for a number of issues discussed during the rest of the congress.

Until the 27th session, change took place when the Bund's autonomous position was brought up for a vote. After the congress rejected autonomy for the Bund, the five Bund representatives walked out. Two “Economist” delegates also left the meeting as they believed their “Overseas Federation of Russian Social Democrats” would cease to exist after the congress.

After the sudden walk-out, the congress was left with 44 votes and the seven votes lost were all Martov's.

Another delegate flipped position.

Which took Lenin's votes from 23 up to 24, and Martov's down to just 20 votes, from 28 originally. Lenin suddenly had a decisive majority of 24 votes to 20.

It was a super-fast turnaround; a turnaround in world history.

Lenin's 24, as they were called by historians in the West, now had control of the congress.

Lenin later called his faction Bolsheviks, the majority, and Martov's Mensheviks, the minority. From a difference of just four votes, two political factions that would rock the world were born, their names becoming an essential inclusion in dictionaries of every language in the world.

A history of world revolution would have to be rewritten.

In the Bolshevik-Menshevik split born at the RSDLP congress a key role was played by the Bund. The name came from the Yiddish word for “federation” or “union.” Its official name was The General Jewish Labor Bund in Lithuania, Poland and Russia. It was the biggest labor organization in Russia to espouse Marxism. Martov had been a leader of the Bund. In 1900, a 16-year-old Jewish man named Mikhail Markovich Gruzenberg joined the Bund. In 1903, the year the Bund quit the RSDLP congress, Gruzenberg quit the Bund and joined Lenin's Bolsheviks.

Gruzenberg was the original name of Borodin.

It was the Soviet representative in China, Lev Karakhan, who introduced Borodin to Sun Yat-sen.

And according to Sun, Borodin was the most impressive, most admirable Comintern figure he had ever met. He called Borodin “a man like no other.”

Karakhan did not give Borodin the mission to reform the KMT. Borodin himself did not expect it to be the first thing he would do once in China. As well as being the first thing, reforming the KMT turned out to be the most consequential thing he would do in China too.

Prior to Borodin's arrival, the KMT could hardly be called a political party at all. It had no political, theoretical or organizational coherence. There were no party charter, no elections and no regular meetings. The membership roll was a joke: One estimate put membership at 30,000, but only 3,000 were actually registered. On the other hand, some 6,000 people were paying some sort of membership fee. On admission to the party, members gave their thumbprints and swore allegiance to Sun himself. But even Sun did not know how many members there were or who they were.

Borodin told Sun the cold truth: The KMT did not exist as an organized political force.

Sun was shocked. Nobody had ever told him anything like this. He had started work on reforming his party and documents such as the KMT program had been drafted. But Sun had had little success when relying on help from within the party. This time he had high hopes of Borodin, and told him that the old party members would not do, but the new members were OK. Sun resolved to “learn from the Russians.” For reforming the KMT, he would count on Borodin to apply in China the experience of Soviet Russia's proletariat in founding a political party.

Borodin set to work like a precise and indefatigable machine. He wanted a radical overhaul of the party and would do it along strictly Russian communist organizational lines, while getting help from the Chinese Communists and the KMT left wing. The crucially important manifesto for the KMT's First National Congress was the work of this Bolshevik. Qu Qiubai, a Communist, translated it and Wang Jingwei, a KMT member, polished it.

The KMT thus evolved from a mafia-like organization to a political party in the modern sense, and for this Borodin must take most of the credit.

In 1988, 40 years after Borodin's death, Lee Teng-hui became chairman of the KMT in Taiwan. When Western commentators observed that Lee had broken his party away from its old Leninist way of working, many of us were surprised. We were unaware that the KMT, which had been calling for the destruction of the Communist Party, had been built to Lenin's formula.

People who met Borodin all left with a deep impression of him. He had piercing eyes, deep thoughts, and a charismatic personality. Even when speaking, a pipe never left his hand. He was extremely sensitive to everything. His far-sightedness would win over the press of all political persuasions. Wherever he went he was the center of the crowd. When he walked into a room he owned it. Aleksandr Cherepanov, a Russian advisor, said Borodin was able to see the historic significance in localized events. Where others saw chaos, he saw patterns and trends in inter-connected anecdotes.

This was his winning quality.

He also showed respect for Chinese traditions, customs and etiquette. There were no portraits of Lenin in his room, only of Sun Yat-sen. All who had contact with him were indelibly impressed by his charisma and his power to win over an audience. He was very good at getting different factions to work together. While he was in Guangzhou, power struggles in the city tended to quieten down. People of different factions turned to him for advice and they usually went home satisfied. In time, his residence became a political hub, with people coming and going all the time. As Li Zongren recalled, it was an honor to be invited in for a chat.

Borodin was like a breath of fresh air in Guangzhou. His style won over everyone and his name became known to everyone in the Far East. Revolutionaries called him the “Lenin of Guangzhou.” In the foreign settlements of Shanghai he was called “the Red beast” of “the Red capital.” Western commentators said he was repeating the Russian revolution in Guangdong.

Even Soong Mei-ling, wife of Chiang Kai-shek, fell for Borodin's charms.

She recalled that Borodin would always stand out in a crowd as he addressed his audience. When he walked into a room, one could immediately hear his measured baritone. His English was free of any Russian accent and was actually close to that of the American mid-West.

Even after Chiang Kai-shek turned against Borodin and issued a nationwide warrant for his arrest, his wife Soong Mei-ling maintained her view of him as an extraordinary figure.

Zhou Enlai too was influenced by Borodin.

Everyone in the People's Republic of China knew Zhou's style, but few realizes how much Borodin had to do with shaping it.

Zhou Enlai was working in Guangdong at the time. Borodin was never to be dictated by the circumstances, moving smoothly between the KMT, the CPC, Moscow and the Comintern. He never left anything to chance but instead made plans for everything and worked hard to realize them. His intelligence and charisma left a deep impression on Zhou and strongly influenced him. Borodin often gave the CPC Guangdong Committee instructions that were at odds with the orders from the CPC Central Committee in Shanghai, but the Guangdong Committee would carry out Borodin's instructions to the letter.

Zhou would grow into a skillful statesman with stamina and composure under stress, someone who would deal thoughtfully with all manner of situations, effectively work with people of different backgrounds and politics and personally handle everything from the big-picture issues to the finest detail. An observer would see Borodin in him.

But for all his smarts, Borodin was played by Chiang after the death of Sun.

Three obstacles stood between Chiang and power: Xu Chongzhi, the director of military affairs; Hu Hanmin, the chief of foreign affairs; and Liao Zhongkai, the treasury secretary. In normal circumstances, these powerful figures seemed like an immovable road block.

But the impossible happened in just a few months.

On August 20, 1925, Liao Zhongkai was assassinated at KMT headquarters. The KMT Central Committee, the State Council and the Military Committee called an emergency meeting. All eyes turned to Borodin.

In the months following the death of Sun, Borodin had become the de facto boss in Guangzhou. Ostensibly, the KMT leaders made all the decisions, but it was Borodin's word that counted. His power and influence were unparalleled. Government officials, KMT Central Committee members and Communists met with him in his sitting room while translators worked downstairs translating Chinese documents into Russian and English and Russian and English directives into Chinese. The printing press ran day and night, churning out all kinds of materials, reports and directives. Borodin was the brain of the KMT Central Committee.

Borodin made a crucial suggestion at this crucial meeting: form a special committee with Wang Jingwei, Xu Chongzhi and Chiang Kai-chek, one with full powers over political, military and police affairs.

It would be organized on the model of the Russian Cheka, with the aim of purging counterrevolutionaries. Borodin himself would be the advisor to this special committee.

Borodin's suggestion was effectively the decision. It was passed immediately.

Of the three men “with full powers over political, military and police affairs,” Wang was already the president of the National Government and Xu was its military chief. By contrast, Chiang had never served in an office more senior than chief of staff of the Guangdong army or commandant of Whampoa. Now, for the first time ever, he was handed enormous powers.

Borodin had let the genie out of the bottle.

Borodin had favored Chiang before the meeting, and this had prompted a major disagreement with Galen (Vasily Blucher), the Soviet military advisor. Galen suggested Moscow should support Xu and develop a military force parallel to Whampoa. To guard against the unexpected, no individual or any political faction should be allowed to grow strong enough to become a center of power, he argued. But Borodin saw Xu's Guangdong army as an old style force, unequal to the revolutionary task. Chiang's Whampoa force, by contrast, was a new army built on the right ideological basis, and revolutionary in spirit. It was up to the job. At the forming of the National Government in July, Galen had again counseled caution against military dictatorship. He suggested forming a military committee with Xu as commander-in-chief. Borodin disagreed. He supported Chiang. The rift between them widened over time and Moscow had to get involved.

What Galen did not know was that Borodin knew Stalin. Their acquaintance had begun in 1905 at the Bolshevik convention in Tampere, Finland. At the time Stalin, five years Borodin's senior, was just a young Georgian by the name Ioseb Jughashvili. As with Borodin, hailing from Latvia, it was Stalin's first such assembly.

The verdict from Moscow was obvious: Galen was reassigned.

A large part of Stalin's trust in Chiang came from Borodin.

Galen, the military advisor, had flagged up a politically inspired concern while Borodin, the political advisor, had fallen for Chiang's military potential. He walked into his political blind spot and, with his own hands, gifted huge powers to Chiang Kai-shek.

As the old Chinese saying goes, “For every thousand good decisions the wise man must err once.” Borodin erred on an epic and momentous scale, undoing all his previous good judgments with this one error.

Louis Pasteur famously said “fortune favors the prepared mind.” Chiang was prepared for his day, and did not hesitate for a second putting to work his full powers for political, military and police affairs. The military machine went into action. Its target was Xu Chongzhi, the man who had given him hard times before.

Using Liao Zhongkai's assassination as pretext, Chiang had Xu's residence surrounded, accusing him of complicity in the crime. Xu fled to Shanghai.

His next victim was Hu Hanmin, whose cousin Hu Yisheng was implicated in Liao's murder. Hu was detained for questioning before being expelled to the Soviet Union.

Liao got a splendid funeral.

Liao's murder allowed Chiang to kill three birds with one stone. The three obstacles were cleared away. Between Chiang and total power there was now an open road.

It took Borodin six months to realize he had let the genie out of the bottle. With Xu, Hu and Liao gone, he could no longer contain Chiang in the way he had planned.

He had helped Chiang take a decisive move towards seizing political power for himself.

Borodin rated Chiang highly and the CPC not at all. The reasons were self-reinforcing. He made a condescending observation about the CPC, dismissing it as having “a grand total of only 40 members… their sole activity being to study Chinese translations of Comintern documents.” Labor activities such as strikes “pushed it temporarily above the parapet, otherwise it would stay in its little retreat - in the foreign settlements - and give out commands in the aftermath.” His deepest contempt was reserved for the CPC Central Committee in Shanghai. During the three years that he worked in China, Borodin turned the policy of KMT-CPC cooperation into KMT-Soviet cooperation and the cooperation was actually just with Sun, Wang Jingwei and Chiang. The CPC were nothing but bargaining chips in his negotiations with the KMT.

On August 21, 1924, during a KMT plenary session of its Central Committee, when discussing the issue of “containing the Communists,” Borodin suggested to Sun that they form an international liaison committee to control the CPC. Chen Duxiu was incandescent with rage at this. He called an emergency meeting in reaction and fired off a harshly worded telegram to Borodin: One, debates on any issues relating to the CPC should not be allowed at KMT conferences and any such debates would not be recognized; two, the CPC would not recognize the international liaison committee formed under the leadership of the KMT to address interparty relations; and three, their fellow Communists had been tasked with going on the offensive against counterrevolutionaries at the KMT conference, since the time had come to move from defense to offense.

By the time Guangzhou heard about the move, it was already too late. Borodin and Qu Qiubai put in a lightweight defense over the communist representatives issue; they gave their consent to the international committee, which would monitor relations between the Comintern and the CPC. The resolution required the CPC to share information on any of its activities that might concern the KMT. Outraged, Chen Duxiu wrote several letters to the Comintern protesting the resolution. He spoke scathingly of Borodin and his compromise. In particular, he was “very dissatisfied” about Borodin's “unilateral conduct” in not communicating with the CPC Central Committee. Chen urged the Comintern to give Borodin a warning and to rule that he had no authority to lead the CPC organization in Guangdong.

But Borodin was the apple of Stalin's eye at the time. The Comintern remained silent.

Not every Russian advisor in Guangzhou agreed with how Borodin bet everything on the KMT while slighting the CPC away. Nikolay Kuibyshev, who succeeded Galen as the military advisor, said: “The Communists deserve credit for every political achievement made by the National Revolutionary Army. This is an obvious fact even as we look at Whampoa Military Academy as an example. Whampoa's concentration of Communists is higher than in any other place; it is also the steadiest part of the NRA as a result.” Borodin had driven away Galen; now he started to move against Kuibyshev. “The national revolution is an unimaginably delicate scheme,” he said, and therefore “needing manipulation.”Borodin gave himself personal credit for the revolution being the way it was in Guangzhou in early 1926 because of his “manipulation of” the KMT leadership, taking advantage of the military and political power of Chiang and Wang and luring them with the bait of Soviet military aid. He believed he had Guangzhou under his complete control. In Beijing, in February 1926, Borodin gave a Guangzhou-bound delegation of Russian Communists a complacent briefing, “When you go to Guangzhou, you will be convinced that the ideological landscape of southern China is under our influence…. Is there any problem we cannot solve? Everything we propagate, everything we propose gets their undivided attention. Our policy and our decisions are being executed with the greatest chance of success.” Hyper-confidently he bragged, “the military leaders are completely under our influence” and the four military chiefs including Chiang, were “completely reliable.”

Under Borodin's subjective leadership, Moscow believed the priority for the Chinese revolution was to “augment the leadership role of the KMT, the surest and truest guardian of national liberation ideology, and elevate it above everything else.” The Chinese Communists had to yield to the center and right wing of the KMT.

But it was not long before the master manipulator found himself in an awkward position. He fatally underestimated Chiang's capabilities.

Having buried Liao Zhongkai and driven out Hu Hanmin and Xu Chongzhi, only three obstacles stood in Chiang's way: Front of stage was Wang Jingwei, chairman of the National Government; in the background was Borodin, the government's advisor; and, firmly in his sights, his arch-enemy, the CPC. The Zhongshan Warship Incident (also known as the Yongfeng Warship Incident, the March 20 Incident and the Canton Coup) would present Chiang an opportunity to crush all three with one blow.

Chiang waited seven months for this opportunity to come. Borodin was transforming the shambolic KMT into a powerful and effective organization. Until all its power was delivered into his own hands, Chiang needed Borodin's power and influence. Of the three men, Wang, Chiang and Borodin, the Russian advisor's was still the decisive voice. The Western Hills Group, an anti-Communist grouping within the KMT, accused Chiang of “treating [Borodin] as a mentor and listening to him on every important issue of government…. All important meetings of the party or the government are held at Borodin's residence as if it were a government above the government.” Far from caring about the criticism, Chiang said that only the French Marshal Foch stood comparison with Borodin as a commander. He repeatedly quoted Sun, who had said Borodin's opinions were his opinions. Therefore, Chiang maintained, to follow Borodin was to follow Sun Yat-sen.

He correctly credited his elevation to Borodin's political support and the Russian military aid and advisors.

He was awaiting his chance.

The moment came.

Victory in the Second Eastern Expedition boosted Chiang's fame as a military commander. On his route back to Guangzhou, crowds of men, women, kids and oldsters lined the streets to cheer their hero. The celebration climaxed when Chiang arrived in Shantou as representatives of society stood in ranks to welcome him. Streets overflowed with people; the sounds of the marching band resonated through the city; fireworks cracked in the air. The procession was led by the trade unions, next came the rifle squad, then the foot soldiers. Then came the motorcade, followed by the entourage of guards. Even Sun Yat-sen had never had such an impressive reception.

Wang Jingwei, Tan Yankai, Wu Chaoshu, Gu Yingfen and TV Soong sent him a joint telegram from Guangzhou: “We, your comrades, join in admiration at the great victory you have achieved. The chairman's unfinished work is now in your hands. The Province of Guangdong is now united, the roar of the National Revolution is heard across the country because of you. As we celebrate the triumph, we also await your thoughts on the many big plans for the province. We look forward to your return.”

VIPs of the National Government, polite and modest as never before, stood in single file to pay their respects to this rising star Chiang Kai-shek, the commander with his eyes on the prize.

And it did not end there.

In January 1926, the Second KMT National Congress was convened in Guangzhou. A total of 256 members participated in the voting for the central executive committee. Of the 249 valid votes cast, 248 went Chiang's way.

This was the 20-year-long ascent Chiang would recall years later, from joining the party at 21 to being elected to the central executive committee.

He was 40 that year.

About one hundred of those entitled to vote were CPC members. Basically they voted unanimously for Chiang.

Perhaps the one valid vote that did not go his way was actually his own? At any rate, that's how it appeared, and it made him look humble.

Two hundred and forty-eight votes was better than a clean sweep of 249.

Soong Ching-ling, elected with 245 votes, spoke highly of the situation in Guangdong after the victorious Eastern Expedition: “Everything with the government and military situation here is making progress, going better than when Mr. Sun was still with us.”

There could be no higher endorsement than those words from Sun Yat-sen's widow: “going better than when Mr. Sun was still with us.”

Chiang Kai-shek could not even get into the KMT's First National Congress; by the Second, he was the coming man.

At the entrance to Guangzhou First Park hung a paired couplet. It read: “Jingwei to tame the roaring ocean. Kai-shek to fix the broken heaven.”

People cannot recall anyone being commended as highly as Chiang Kai-shek.

With his reputation at a peak, Chiang moved into action.

In March 1926, in the Zhongshan Warship Incident, he killed three birds with one stone.

This time he had new targets: the CPC, the Russian advisors and Wang Jingwei.

Borodin happened to be out of Guangzhou at the time, but the other Russian advisors were put under house arrest. Then the “Party Purge Act” stripped Borodin of any actual power he had previously enjoyed.

After the Party Purge, the Communists were forced to give up their seats on the KMT Central Committee. They also had to quit the First Army. In the aftermath of the Zhongshan Warship Incident, the Communists exited the First Army and the Soviet chief advisor Kuibyshev was expelled. For a long time these were viewed as the malign consequences of Chen Duxiu's “compromising” policy vis-a-vis Chiang. The truth, however, is that the Soviet advisors Andrei Bubnov and Borodin were the actual decision makers and they forced this conciliatory policy on Chen. Later, Bubnov gave six reasons in defense of his action. His first reason was so as not to “scare off the big bourgeoisie,” since without them the Communists “would be unable to assume leadership of the National Revolution, a job that they are totally not ready for.” In a report on reaction to the Zhongshan Warship Incident, Bubnov argued that the CPC should just do the hard work to “ensure the success of the revolution” and not seek to lead it. Otherwise, “any radical action might scare off the big bourgeoisie,” “plunge the Guangzhou government into crisis and ultimately lead the National Revolution to defeat.”

Bubnov's senior advisor was Borodin.

Bubnov went back to Moscow via Shanghai, where he shared his take on things with Chen Duxiu, who knew nothing about recent events in Guangzhou. In a rushed response, he issued an instruction on behalf of the CPC Central Committee describing Chiang as having been misled by the rightists. While his “action is extremely wrong, the situation cannot be solved by simply punishing Chiang.” Rather, they should “pull him out of the abyss of his own error.”

The withdrawal of the Communists from the KMT Central Committee and the First Army was turned into their way of “pulling [Chiang] out of the abyss of his own mistake.”

Chiang did not do much in terms of payback. All he did was to oust Wu Tiecheng, Sun Ke and Wu Chaoshu. This was necessary if he wanted to establish a dictatorship, yet in a letter sent to Lev Karakhn on May 30, 1926, Borodin complacently described their expulsion as “a greater blow for the rightists than for the Communists…. The rightists had their weapon against us taken away.”

Borodin continued to live in the bubble of his own dream world.

Chiang was acting to create his own reality.

Chiang's third target, after the Communists and the Russian advisors, was Wang Jingwei.

Of Chiang's three targets, Wang was the only one who understood what had happened with the Zhongshan Warship Incident.

He later recalled, “No one of the central executive committee or the political committee had any prior knowledge of what was going to happen on March 20. I was the chairman of the political committee. What should have been my responsibility? Guangzhou was put under martial law on March 20 and not a soul on the military committee knew a thing about it. As chairman of the military committee, what should have been my responsibility?”

He denounced Chiang's action as “revolt.”

But after criticizing Chiang, he just retreated behind closed doors and laid low. Nothing happened.

Only seven months earlier, Wang had worked together with Chiang to oust Hu Hanmin, taking advantage of the assassination of Liao Zhongkai.

On the fifth night after Liao's assassination, Wang and Chiang sent more than 50 Whampoa cadets to Hu's residence, with orders to kill him if he resisted arrest or attempted to flee. Hu had just gone to bed when he heard a din on his doorstep. He jumped out of bed, threw on some clothes and fled via the back door. Once outside, the chilly night air brought him somewhat to his senses and to the realization that this was surely Wang Jingwei's doing. He went straight to Wang's home, where Chen Bijun, Wang's wife, was amazed to see Hu, trembling and scared. When Hu explained what had brought him there, Chen Biun was outraged. She phoned Wang and asked sternly, “What crime has Mr. Hu committed? Why are you sending soldiers after him at this time of night?” Wang, who was waiting for news of Hu being arrested or shot dead, offered a sanctimonious reply, “All counterrevolutionaries must be rounded up and they all must be killed! This is what everyone wants!” Chen told her husband in a lower voice, “Mr. Hu is here with me now.”Furious, Wang smashed the phone down. Fearing things might be getting out of hand, the government arranged for Hu to go on a diplomatic mission to the USSR, out of trouble.

Now, just seven months later, it was Wang's turn to go on the run. Chiang accused him of plotting with the Communists to abduct him to Vladivostok aboard the Zhongshan Warship, which is why the events of March 20 took place.

Wang had not waited for Chiang to move against him, like the two of them had tried with Hu Hanmin. At the beginning of March, he quit Guangzhou for Hong Kong, citing the need for medical treatment. From there he sailed to Marseilles in self-imposed exile.

Now there was no one left to stop Chiang assuming political and military power in the Kuomintang.

Borodin had opened the Pandora's box.

While exploitation of contradictions is a part of a revolutionary's tool box, it can only work once you have gathered enough power for yourself. Borodin overlooked that important point. The Zhongshan Warship Incident became a power trade between Borodin and Chiang. By means of that trade, to all appearances the two men achieved a level of mutual trust that allowed no substitute. Before the Northern Expedition, discussing who to leave behind to take care of things, Chiang described Borodin as one of only two persons he could trust and as “the only great political activist since the passing of the chairman.”

But the sun was setting on this “great political activist.”

Borodin started to sense it and started making contingency plans as Chiang moved out of his control.

On August 9, 1926, when Guangzhou officials met with Comintern representatives, Borodin unveiled his plan to “let Chiang self-destruct.” At the time, most of the commanding officers in the First Army were Whampoa graduates, whereas the other armies were filled with graduates of the Baoding Military Academy. The in-fighting between Chiang and the Baoding faction was ferocious and with the Northern Expedition marching from victory to victory, the Baoding faction would gain power over Chiang and “hurry him to his political death.”

But the Comintern's Far East Bureau no longer had confidence in the master of manipulation. Grigori Voitinsky, the first Comintern envoy sent to China by Lenin, had established relations with Chinese revolutionaries in March 1920. On September 12, 1926, Voitinsky in Shanghai sent a report to Moscow. As regards the Northern Expedition, he said that while it helped spread the revolution across China it also had the effect of sanctifying Chiang's military dictatorship. That, Voitinsky argued, was the result of the compromise policy that Borodin had practiced following the Zhongshan Warship Incident, throwing the Communists and the left under the bus while caving in to the KMT leadership. On September 22, in another report to Moscow, Voitinsky wrote, “Comrade Borodin has formed a whole set of opinions that fly in the face of our overall China policy.” He recommended that “Borodin be dismissed and replaced.” In a third report to Moscow, filed on November 6, Voitinsky wrote, “The fight for liberation in China is so unique that it is difficult to stick to the true strategy for the revolution in such a struggle. On the one hand, there is the risk of slipping into opportunism; on the other, you risk sliding to the extreme left and breaking the united front in the National Revolution…. How incredibly complex is the reality in which the Chinese Communists have to operate!”

Voitinsky's reports infuriated Stalin.

He gave his response on November 11: “The Far East Bureau has been warned about mistakes on the above-mentioned issues.” Not only did he keep Borodin in place, he actually increased his powers: “Comrades in China of all parties are under the leadership of Comrade Borodin…. Comrade Borodin shall report directly to Moscow.” He awarded Borodin the Order of the Red Flag and stipulated that “the Far East Bureau must consult Comrade Borodin before making any decisions or taking any actions on matters pertinent to China policy, the KMT or military and political issues.”

It was not long before the drama began. The Soviet operative dismissed and replaced was Voitinsky, not Borodin. On March 10, 1927, the USSR Politburo reorganized the Far East Bureau with Janis Lepse as its secretary. Borodin was now officially a member of the bureau. Voitinsky was stripped of his power as bureau chief even as he was mentoring the Chinese Communists in preparing for their fifth congress in that capacity.

The Far East Bureau was soon put under Borodin's leadership.

Stalin had no idea that time was running out on Borodin.

On April 12, 1927, Chiang staged a counterrevolutionary coup in Shanghai - the Shanghai Massacre.

At a Soviet politburo meeting on May 5, Stalin proposed “the forming of a new, reliable army in Guangzhou.” He decided to dispatch 200 military trainers to Guangzhou together with 500,000 roubles in funding. But who was to form this “reliable army”? Would it be the CPC or the KMT? Stalin gave no details. On May 13, Stalin shared his thinking: “It is impossible to use a new army now, or to replace the current armed forces with the Red Army. The reason is simple. There is nothing to replace it with at the moment.” Therefore, the May 5 plan did not come to much. Instead, Moscow maintained and strengthened its policy of military assistance to “the KMT generals” and ordered the Communists to “maintain leadership” from within the KMT ranks.

On May 21, Xu Kexiang staged the Mari Mutiny in Changsha.

The news rattled Stalin, who issued “emergency orders” to Borodin and his associates on May 30 to: 1) mobilize 20,000 Communists and 50,000 peasants and factory workers and forge new armies with them, so as to “form our own reliable army” and “eliminate reliance on the unreliable military leaders,”; and, 2) “set up a revolutionary court martial consisting of some prominent KMT people and non-Communists” to prosecute the counterrevolutionary officers.

As Stalin was well aware, these “emergency orders” were far from enough to change Moscow's policy, sustained for four years, of arming the KMT but never the CPC. And Borodin, the master of scheming, had never been an advocate for arming the peasants and workers. He encouraged Chen Duxiu to give Moscow an ambiguous reply: “Orders received. Will execute when applicable.” The orders were actually for Borodin and his two Russian colleagues and it was they who should have answered. But knowing what unpleasant consequences might flow from giving Stalin a “No,” they got the compliant Chen to do this unenviable job. He could carry the can.

Borodin's scheming could no longer hold everything together for him. On July 15, Wang Jingwei pushed through the resolution to “separate from the Communists,” setting up a rival government in Wuhan. The Great Revolution had failed.

Modern China is a grand stage, on which tragedies, comedies and farces have been performed. On this stage, obscure and unknown characters could grow to giants in the limelight and extraordinary talents fade into oblivion. In just one year of political turmoil (1926-1927), Chiang's erstwhile mentor Borodin went from being “the only great political activist since the passing of the chairman,” as Chiang put it, to a “conspirator who plotted to topple the regime and incite Red revolution,” who must be executed by firing squad.

The role changes for a politician can be so quick and so dramatic. Borodin was never as sophisticated as Chiang thought him. And Chiang was never as simple as Borodin took him for. The former cadet in Japan held deep respect for people who opposed him openly, but hated those he thought were using him. Galen, who had advised against promoting Chiang over everyone else, fell victim of Stalin's purges in Russia and was arrested in October 1938. When China's ambassador to the USSR, Yang Jie, informed Chiang of Galen's arrest, the generalissimo tried to save Galen's life. He sent Sun Ke as his special envoy to Stalin with his wish to hire Galen as his personal advisor. Unfortunately, the Soviet purges moved fast and Galen was executed just one month after his arrest. The only thing Stalin told Sun was that Galen was dead.

Chiang wanted to save the life of Galen, the general who had been against him, as much as he wanted to take the life of Borodin, who had lifted him out of obscurity.

Karakhan's gift to Sun Yat-sen was Borodin.

Chiang's gift to Borodin was an arrest warrant. NPK6d+En2B6IMJvOPxwhcDjhpXXuOO5+RPqUrb5wQ1VwyZknPElfnNT1q6Tmn0zD