But the next round of battles showed that his army was still no match for Chiang’s. Within weeks of the Russian withdrawal the Nationalists had seized every major city in Manchuria except Harbin, the nearest to Russia, and the Communist forces had been reduced to a state of collapse. They retreated north in chaos, under aerial bombardment, harried by Nationalist tanks and motorized troops. Lin Biao’s political commissar later admitted that “the whole army had disintegrated” and fallen into what he called “utter anarchy.” One officer recalled being chased northward non-stop for forty-two days: “It really looked as though we’d had it …”
Not only were the Reds collapsing militarily, but they were at a huge disadvantage with the civilian population, which longed for national unity after fourteen years of brutal Japanese rule, and saw the Nationalists as representing the government. Lin Biao reported to Mao: “People are saying that the 8th Route Army shouldn’t be fighting the government army … They regard the Nationalists as the Central Government.”
The CCP had a further disadvantage, that of being linked in people’s minds with the much-hated Russians. Russian troops plundered not only industrial equipment, but people’s homes; and rape by Russian soldiers was frequent. When the belated publication of the Yalta Agreement in February 1946 revealed the huge extraterritorial privileges Stalin had grabbed in Manchuria, anti-Soviet demonstrations erupted in many cities there, as well as in other parts of China. There was a widespread feeling that the CCP had got into Manchuria on the back of the Russians and was not working for the interests of China. When demonstrators shouted slogans like “The CCP should love our country,” onlookers applauded. Rumors circulated that the Party was offering the Russians women in exchange for weapons.
The locals treated the Chinese Reds quite differently from the Nationalists. One Red officer recalled: “We were hungry and thirsty when we got to Jilin … There was not a soul in the street … But when the enemy entered the city; somehow the folks all appeared, waving little flags and cheering … Imagine our anger!”
The Red troops were disheartened, and vented their fury even on their top brass. Lin Biao was once caught in his jeep in a crowd of retreating troops. When his guard asked the men to make way for “the chief,” he was greeted with yells like: “Ask that chief, are we retreating to the land of the Big Hairy Ones?” The sobriquet was the locals’ derogatory term for the Russians.
At this point it looked as though the Chinese Reds might be driven across the border into Russia, or be scattered into small guerrilla units in the mountains, which Lin Biao anticipated. On 1 June, he asked Mao for permission to abandon Harbin, the last big city the Reds held, about 500 km from the Russian border. The CCP’s Manchuria Bureau gave Mao the same fatalistic message the next day: “We have told Brother Chen [code name for the Russians] that we are ready to leave [Harbin] …” Mao twice implored Stalin to intervene directly, in the form of either a “military umbrella” or “joint operations.” Stalin declined, as intervention would have international implications, although he allowed CCP units to cross into Russia. On 3 June, Mao had to endorse plans to abandon Harbin and go over to guerrilla warfare “on a long-term basis.”
Mao was on the ropes. Then he was rescued — by the Americans.
In the Yalta Declaration, these are presented as reparations due Russia by Japan, but the reality was that they were gouged out of
Stalin also had his own aggressive agenda: a tentative scheme to detach part of the Mongolian region of China adjacent to Outer Mongolia and merge it with the Soviet satellite. Russo — Mongolian occupation forces actually formed an Inner Mongolia provisional government, ready for the merger, but the scheme was then dropped.
When two years later he urged sending large forces deep into Nationalist areas, the commanders asked what would happen to the wounded without a base area to fall back on. Mao’s airy response was: “It’s easy … leave the wounded and the sick to the masses.”
