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for the party and for Soviet China policies. The Chinese Communists who survived the 1927 defeats and did not defect in their wake had to start rebuilding the party almost from scratch. Some party members blamed the Soviet Union and the Communist International (Comintern) for having insisted on the CCP continuing its alliance with the GMD past the point when it served the interests of the Chinese Communists. In Moscow Joseph Stalin who had been among the main promoters of a united-front policy in China did his standing within the CPSU leadership no good by continuing to insist that his political "advice" had been "correct."
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During the 1930s, when the GMD pushed the CCP to the periphery of Chinese lands and politics, Soviet control over the party declined. Partly as a result of their fall in fortunes, the CCP went through a series of inner conflicts in which Moscow and the Comintern had only limited influence, and from which Mao Zedong emerged as the dominant leader around 1936. The party heads also started to have their own first experiences in directing protracted warfare and in civil administration, albeit in small areas in south or northwest China. In addition, Soviet preoccupation with East Asia declined dramatically as tensions in Europe grew during the early 1930s. 14
The Japanese attack on China in 1937 rescued the CCP from political isolation and, probably, from territorial oblivion. Public opinion inside and outside the GMD forced Jiang Jieshi to make a temporary truce with the Communists in order to fight the invaders. Mao, while hailing the brittle truce as a Cominternstyle "united front," made good use of the anarchy that followed from the war to expand his party's influence in north and central China. Partly because of the breakdown in state authority, partly because of the appeal of the party's radical program in a time of crisis, the CCP suddenly found itself in control of large territories, with a potential to operate almost as an independent state actor. 15
With this sudden change in the party's fortunes began a slow. and troubled reestablishment of Soviet interest in the CCP. On one hand, Mao ignored some key Comintern instructions regarding the conduct of the war against Japan, incurring the wrath of the secretary general of the Communist International, Georgi Dimitrov. On the other hand, Moscow was rather pleased with the party's "theoretical" development, seeing how Mao Zedong adopted the most recent Soviet and Comintern doctrines and slogans. The Comintern archives show that nearly all of Mao's concepts from the anti-Japanese war period "protracted war," "new democracy," "three-thirds system,'' "antileftism" were inspired and sanctioned by Moscow. But while there is little reason to question Mao's wish to implement Soviet theory in China, there are few grounds to doubt

     

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that he and other CCP leaders left their own mark on these concepts when they presented them to a Chinese audience.
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Mao regarded the 1943 dissolution of the Comintern, which Stalin carried out primarily as a tactical move to appease his wartime allies against Adolf Hitler, as a welcome sign that Moscow would agree to more independence for each party in the carrying out of Communist policies. The CCP chairman's main foreign policy aim at the end of World War II, however, was to encourage the Soviet Union to enter the war against Japan, defeating the enemy and supporting the CCP. Mao therefore tailored his party's policies to fit as closely as possible with Moscow's requirements, even in those cases when understanding Soviet motives was difficult, as in Stalin's negotiations with the Guomindang in the summer of 1945. 17
Although Mao could accept Stalin's explanations of the August 1945 Soviet-GMD treaty as part of an international strategy that ultimately would benefit the Chinese Communists, the CCP leader still expected the Soviets to work closely with his party as soon as the Red Army entered Manchuria. Mao