Chiang Ching-kuo - Moscow

Moscow

In 1925, Chiang Ching-Kuo went on to Moscow to study at a Communist school. While in Moscow, Chiang Ching-kuo was given the Russian name Nikolai Vladimirovich Elizarov (Николай Владимирович Елизаров) and put under the tutelage of Karl Radek at the Communist University of the Toilers of the East. Noted for having an exceptional grasp of international politics, his classmates included other children of influential Chinese families, most notably the future Chinese Communist party leader, Deng Xiaoping. Soon Ching-kuo was an enthusiastic student of Communist ideology, particularly Trotskyism; though following the Great Purge, Joseph Stalin privately met with him and ordered him to publicly denounce Trotskyism. Chiang even applied to be a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, although his request was denied.

In April 1927, however, Chiang Kai-Shek purged the KMT leftists and Communists from the Central Government and expelled his Soviet advisers. Following this, Chiang Ching-kuo wrote an editorial that harshly criticized his father's actions and was detained as a "guest" of the Soviet Union as a practical hostage. Debate still continues as to whether he had been forced to write it, and it is known that some years beforehand he had seen many of his Trotskyist friends arrested and killed by the Russian secret police. It is possible that Chiang Ching-kuo was held to be used by Stalin as leverage in Sino-Soviet relationships. Nevertheless, the Soviet government sent Chiang Ching-kuo to work in the Ural Heavy Machinery Plant, a steel factory in the Urals, Yekaterinburg, where he met Faina Ipat'evna Vakhreva, a native Belarusian. They married on March 15, 1935, and she would later become known as Chiang Fang-liang. In December of that year, a son, Hsiao-wen was born. A daughter, Hsiao-chang, was born the next year.

Chiang Kai-shek wrote about the situation in his diary, "It is not worth it to sacrifice the interest of the country for the sake of my son." Chiang even refused to negotiate a prisoner swap for his son in exchange for the Chinese Communist Party leader. His attitude remained consistent, and he continued to maintain, by 1937, that "I would rather have no offspring than sacrifice our nation's interests." Chiang had absolutely no intention of stopping the war against the Communists.

Stalin allowed Chiang Ching-kuo to return to China with his Belarusian wife and two children in April 1937 after living in the USSR for 12 years. By then, the Nationalists under Chiang Kai-shek and the Communists under Mao Zedong had signed a ceasefire to create the Second United Front and fight the Japanese invasion of China, which began in July. Stalin hoped the Chinese would keep Japan from invading the Soviet Pacific coast, and he hoped to form an anti-Japanese alliance with the senior Chiang.

On his return, his father assigned a tutor, Hsu Dau-lin, to assist with his readjustment to China. Chiang Ching-Kuo was appointed as a specialist in remote districts of Jiangxi where he was credited with training of cadres and fighting corruption, opium consumption, and illiteracy. Chiang Ching-kuo was appointed as commissioner of Gannan Prefecture (Chinese: 贛南) between 1939 and 1945; there he banned smoking, gambling and prostitution, studied governmental management, allowed for economic expansion and a change in social outlook. His efforts were hailed as a miracle in the political war in China, then coined as the "Gannan New Deal" (贛南新政). During his time in Gannan, from 1940 he implemented a "public information desk" where ordinary people could visit him if they had problems, and according to records, Chiang Ching-kuo received a total of 1,023 people during such sessions in 1942. In regards to the ban on prostitution and closing of brothels, Chiang implemented a policy where former prostitutes became employed in factories. Due to the large number of refugees in Ganzhou as a result from the ongoing war, thousands of orphans lived on the street; in June 1942, Chiang Ching-kuo formally established the Chinese Children's Village (中華兒童新村) in the outskirts of Ganzhou, with facilities such as a nursery, kindergarten, primary school, hospital and gymnasium. During the last years of the 1930s, he met Wang Sheng, with whom he would remain close for the next 50 years.

The paramilitary "Sanman Zhuyi Youth Corps" was under Chiang's control. Chiang used the term "big bourgeoisie", in a disparaging manner to call H.H. Kung and T.V. Soong.

Chiang and his wife had two more sons, Hsiao-wu, born in Chungking, and Hsiao-yung, born in Shanghai. Out of his affair with Chang Ya-juo, Chiang also had twin sons in 1941: Chang Hsiao-tz'u and Chang Hsiao-yen. (Note the identical generation name of Hsiao between all sons, legitimate or not.)