The Communist Party of Malaya (CPM) was founded on April 30 (conditional date), 1930, on the basis of the Communist Party of South Seas in the presence of a representative of the Comintern, Ho Chi Minh (Nguyen Ai Quoc). Since the mid-1930s, it has been active, leading strike action in the cities of Malaya through its controlled trade union, the General Workers ' Union. After the Japanese invasion of Malaya (December 1941), she took part in the anti-Japanese resistance, organized a guerrilla movement and created the Anti-Japanese Malay Peoples ' Army (AANM) in 1942. The CPM was predominantly Chinese in composition and maintained constant ties with the Communist Party of China.

At the end of March 1942, the Japanese military police (kempeitai) detained a suspicious person in occupied Singapore, listed according to documents as Wong Show Tong. The prisoner fell into the hands of Major Satoru Onishi, the head of the unit for identifying and further eliminating anti-Japanese local Chinese. The Major had considerable experience in the military police. Prior to the Malaya campaign, he served in Manchuria1.

During the first interrogation, the arrested man revealed that he was a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Malaya and that his real name was Wong Kim Gyok. During further investigation, Vaughn claimed that he was none other than the general secretary of the Communist Party Central Committee. He runs the Communist underground in Singapore and Malaya, and if he remains in this capacity, he can provide invaluable services to the Japanese. Recruitment of the traitor took place. For instruction, as well as in the interests of preserving the conspiracy, Bon was placed in a separate cell for a month with all the comfort available for that time. After being released from prison at the end of April 1942, the prisoner who became an informant gave Kempeitai a list of members of the Central Committee and the Singapore City Committee of the CPM. As a result of the lightning raids, Huang Chen, the party's "brain" and head of the Central Committee's propaganda department, and a number of other leaders were captured. Over the following months, the traitor regularly provided his handler, Onisi, with information about the party's activities in occupied Malaya [Chin Peng, 2003, p. 82].

Since the CPM was initially largely built on the model of traditional Chinese secret societies with strict rules of internal secrecy, in party circles, including the upper echelon, the figure of the leader was surrounded by an aura of mystery. And the Secretary General himself strongly supported this image. Ssi-

1 In March 1947, Major Satoru Onishi was found a war criminal by a tribunal in Singapore and sentenced to life imprisonment. After spending five years in a local prison, he was deported to Japan and soon released.

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secret units knew the secret "invisible man"by sight. It was known that he uses many pseudonyms, but prefers to be called Lai Te (Lai Te or Loi Tek) among his fellow party members, which is a Chinese phonetic adaptation (transcription) of the English wright ("master") [Chin Peng, 2003, p. 58].

According to legend, he studied in the Soviet Union and France, and after returning to China, he worked in the Shanghai City Committee of the CPC and the Far Eastern Bureau of the Comintern. On the instructions of the latter, he and Ho Chi Minh were sent to Vietnam to organize an underground operation in Saigon. Then he was assigned to move to Singapore to reorganize the CPM, which was experiencing a crisis then (in the early 30s of the XX century) due to disagreements in the leadership on the tactics of struggle.

In reality, the person hiding behind the Lai Tae mask was a Vietnamese national, who spoke Beijing and Cantonese with a strong accent, but did not know the Chinese hieroglyphic script. Before coming to Singapore in late 1932 or, according to other sources, in late 1934, he was a mid-level functionary of the Indochina Communist Party. He was arrested in Saigon and recruited by the French security service before being handed over to his British colleagues. In Singapore, an overbooked agent got a job as a warehouse worker at the port, joined a local trade union and a Communist Party cell. Here he continued his activities as a double agent, and the alleged experience of working in the Comintern was a password that opened access to party circles.

In 1934, the British security service arrested the entire Singapore City Committee, which served as the CPM Central Committee. Foo Tah Ching, the party's first general secretary, and his closest associates were convicted by a special court. Their fate is not exactly known, but according to some sources, they were deported to Kuomintang China (Lim Cheng Leng, 1998). In 1937, Lai Tae, who was rapidly promoted to the first roles in the party, became its new general secretary.

There was a curious episode in Lai Tae's pre-war biography. A few days after the German attack on the USSR, through his chief of British counterintelligence, he proposed organizing the mobilization of Singaporean Chinese to serve in the British army as part of a joint struggle against German Nazism and Japanese militarism. The offer looked flawless in every way. On the one hand, in the eyes of his party comrades, his image of an internationalist who was ready to immediately come to the aid of the motherland of victorious socialism was significantly strengthened. On the other hand, the British would have an open opportunity to identify the most active part of the local communists.

At first, Straits Settlements Governor Shenton Thomas rejected the offer, but in December 1941, when the Japanese invaded Malaya and began to smash the British army, he agreed to recruit local Chinese and train them at accelerated training centers subordinate to the Special Operations Directorate of British Intelligence. It was supposed to continue to transfer them behind the front line to conduct sabotage in the rear of the advancing Japanese army.

The apotheosis of the traitor's destructive activities was the events of the early morning of September 1, 1942 in the village of Sungei Dua in the Batu Caves district in the northern suburbs of Kuala Lumpur. At Lai Tae's direction, an extended meeting of the party's top leadership and the AANM command staff was convened here. About 40 senior KPM functionaries, commanders and political commissars of the AANM were ordered to attend the meeting.

The night before, kempeitai officers, disguised as Japanese soldiers who were on leave and spent time in the company of women of easy virtue, surrounded

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meeting point. The Japanese knew the escape routes of underground fighters in case of emergency.

The operation began at dawn. In the fierce skirmish that broke out, the Communists, who shot back to the last bullet, lost more than half of their comrades. Among the dead were 22 members of the Central Committee, including the heads of a number of regional party committees and political commissars of partisan formations. All their personal guards were completely killed. Only Central Committee member Siao Ping and a handful of others managed to escape the encirclement. But the Japanese also suffered heavy losses: Lieutenant Colonel, Major and Captain Kempeitai were among the dead [Chean Boon Kheng, 1979, p. 19].

The "Master" himself, who was usually punctual, did not attend the meeting for some unknown reason. The events in Batu Caves were the most serious failure of the CPM since the beginning of the Japanese occupation. In the course of an internal party investigation, most of the surviving members of the leadership laid the blame for the betrayal on one of the alleged participants in the meeting, who was arrested by the Japanese on their way to the meeting place.

Less than a few weeks after the Batu Caves tragedy, the Secretary-General sent out an order to convene a new meeting. The invitation was sent to escaped Central Committee member Chai Ke Ming, who, despite his 30-year-old age, was considered a leading ideologist of the party and a possible candidate for the post of leader of the CPM. The party Secretary of the Sultanate of Perak, Ah Nan, and his deputy, who were among the few survivors of the Batu Caves massacre, were also scheduled to attend. Apparently, the new idea of the main Japanese informant was to finally eliminate the top leadership of the Communist Party of Malaya.

The meeting was scheduled at the railway station of the city of Kampar. After that, the participants of the meeting had to proceed to the partisan base in a mountainous and wooded area. However, a few minutes before the arrival of the Chai Ke Ming train, the Japanese conducted a raid, arresting Ah Nan and his assistant. Chai Ke Ming managed to survive only by a lucky chance: his train was late. Ah Nan was shot after being interrogated, and his deputy, unable to withstand the tortures, agreed to cooperate with Kempeitai. As in the case of Batu Caves, Lai Tae did not show up for the meeting. For the second time, Japanese counterintelligence managed to deliver a very sensitive blow to the party.

Ke Ming's Tea was also measured out for a short time. In mid-March 1943, after being summoned by Lai Tae to Singapore, he disappeared without a trace. Only years later did it become clear that he was captured by the Japanese and soon executed.

In many ways, the fate of Xiao Ping, who led the breakthrough through the Japanese cordon during the events in Batu Caves, was dramatic. He was also instructed to go to Singapore, but was captured by the Japanese on the way. During the first interrogation, he pretended to cooperate with Kempeitai and was released to start working as an agent. However, Xiao Ping immediately contacted the party leadership and informed them in detail about the attempt to recruit him. According to the strict rules in force in the CPM at that time, a party member who had been in the hands of the enemy was put on special registration and partially restored to the party ranks, but for full rehabilitation he was obliged to personally expose and execute one of the traitors [Chin Peng, 2003, p. 89-90].

In mid-1943, Lai Tae set up a meeting with Chin Peng, the new star in the party sky, the de facto head of the regional party organization of the Sultanate of Perak. It was he who was later destined to lead the investigation into the double-dealing activities of the then leader of the Communist Party. In his memoir" My Side in History", published in 2003, he described the first meeting with Lai Tae. According to him, he was a stocky man of medium height, with a dark complexion, features that were similar to those of a young man.-

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torogo looked more like a European than an East Asian. During the conversation, Lai Tae elaborated on the situation in the international communist movement. I was struck by his eloquence and deep knowledge of the issue. Chin Peng had a deep impression that "the party is in good hands" [Chin Peng, 2003, p. 92].

His second meeting with Lai Tae took place at the end of December 1943 in the mountainous region of Blantan, in southern Perak, during negotiations with representatives of the British Southeast Asian Command on the terms of cooperation with the Malay communist guerrillas. As a result of the meeting, the Blantan Agreement was signed, according to which the British pledged to provide assistance with weapons, ammunition, medicines, as well as money for the widespread deployment of the anti-Japanese guerrilla movement. At the meeting, Lai Tae positioned himself as the only person authorized to speak on behalf of the leadership of the CPM and the AANM, and also strongly emphasized the need for significant financial assistance. It is interesting that the British side participated in the negotiations career intelligence Major F. Spencer Chapman, who knew Lai Tae from pre-war times and was aware that he was an agent of the British Secret Police. The British were thus firmly convinced that the armed communist movement was under their control.

The signing of the Blantan Agreement was the first sign of Lai Tae's awareness that the balance of power in World War II was steadily tipping in favor of the Allies. The party leader apparently came to the conclusion that it was time to cut ties with the Japanese and return to the side of the future winners. This was confirmed by the fact that regular contacts with British emissaries sent by various routes to the territory of occupied Malaya remained out of sight of Japanese counterintelligence. In general, the delivery of British weapons and ammunition to the AANM fighters by air was successful.

At the same time, the political line of Lai Tae was marked out. In October 1944, he came up with an unexpected initiative, proposing to divide the AANM into two armies: an "open" one, designed to interact with the British, and a "secret" one, which should lead an armed struggle against returning colonizers. Further, the plan assumed that with the beginning of the Allied landings, they would begin to capture small towns and strategic objects and create their own local administration.

However, at the end of August 1945, the Secretary-General issued instructions to the contrary effect. It contained instructions to abandon the tactics of armed struggle, disband the AANM and switch to methods of legal political work, acting through trade unions and mass organizations. Relying on its authoritarian power in the party, the "master" convinced the members of the CPM Central Committee that the new deal fully corresponds to the line of the international communist movement.

In fact, the traitor acted on the advice of his handlers from the British intelligence services, who were interested in the theoretical and practical disarmament of the Malay communists. This is confirmed in the chapters of the book "Outstanding Strategist of Psychological Warfare" by Malaysian author Lim Cheng Leng, reprinted in August 1998 by the Kuala Lumpur Sun newspaper. One of them stated that Lai Tae informed the British that Chin Peng was secretly storing weapons to continue the anti-colonial struggle [Lim Cheng Leng, 1998].

Under pressure from Lai Tae, the party's strategic agenda was radically revised. Instead of achieving independence and creating a "democratic republic of Malaya", the goal was to establish" self-government " within the British Empire. Such a political somersault disoriented the cadres of the CPM and its potential allies in the camp of radical Malay nationalists.

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Peter Taaffe, leader of the British Socialist Party and author of several works on the history and current situation of the left movement in various countries of the world, drew particular attention to these important points. In a lengthy review article devoted to the publication of Chin Peng's memoirs, he expressed the opinion that in the period of powerlessness between the surrender of Japan and the return of the British administration, the CPM had a real chance to establish control over Malaya and Singapore. Moreover, the Japanese army soldiers who did not want to surrender to the "white English barbarians"began to go over to the side of the partisans. However, on the orders of Lai Tae, most of them (about 400 people) were shot (Taaffe, 2005)

One of the few people in the leadership of the CPM who first noticed the sharp zigzags in the General Secretary's political line and suspicious moments in his career and behavior was Yeung Kuo, a member of the new Politburo, the authoritative secretary of the Selangor Sultanate regional committee. In addition to objective reasons, he had personal motives for "disliking" Lai Tae. Sensing him as a dangerous rival, Lai Tae launched a campaign of harassment against him, accusing him of distorting the party line and effectively removing him from practical work [Chean Boon Kheng, 1979, p. 23].

Yun Kuo shared his findings with Chin Peng, directly calling Lai Tae a "spy" who served during the occupation of the Japanese, and before the war-the British. The basis for this conclusion was the numerous facts he summarized, which showed that the party leader of that time invariably got away with it, while the CPM constantly lost its best cadres. It also suggested far-reaching conclusions that Lai Tae, who in every way flaunted close ties with fraternal parties, was practically unknown outside of Malaya. In particular, Li Che Shing, Chairman of the Communist Party of Thailand, and Alimin, one of the leaders of the Indonesian Communists, who visited Kuala Lumpur in early 1946, met Lai Tae for the first time.

Yun Kuo had a confidential conversation with Chin Peng in mid-October 1946. Its participants agreed not to reveal their cards for the time being, organizing covert surveillance of Lai Tae, and also informing reliable comrades in the Central Committee in a highly secret manner [Chean Boon Kheng, 1979, p. 23].

The opportunity to speak out against Lai Te arose at the end of 1946 at the next plenum of the CPM Central Committee. When Lai Tae appeared at its opening, he soon left, saying, as usual, that he had urgent business to attend to. In his absence, it was decided to focus on the most urgent problems: financial and organizational. After Jin Peng's report, most members of the Communist Party Central Committee condemned Lai Tae's authoritarian and "feudal" leadership style. It was decided to conduct a further investigation into the fate of the party's cash receipts, which, according to the most conservative estimates, amounted to up to two million Malay dollars. The Secretary-General, who appeared on the third day of the plenary session, suddenly found himself in a critical situation and tried to justify himself on all counts of the charges against him. Having faked a nervous breakdown, an experienced provocateur and sophisticated schemer requested to resign and, taking advantage of the fact that many participants remained "mesmerized" by his authority, left the meeting unhindered.

In early 1947, a regular meeting of the party leadership was convened in the suburbs of Kuala Lumpur, but the general secretary did not appear. The search for him failed, leading at first to speculation that he might have been arrested by the British. A special commission was appointed to search for and release the disappeared leader. Chin Peng, who headed it, went to Singapore, where he found out that Lai Tae, despite the post-war economic devastation, led a real life in Singapore.

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an Epicurean, with considerable funds apparently stolen from the party's coffers.

Finally, a group of Vietnamese communists who arrived illegally in Malaya around the same time helped to finish the portrait of the traitor. The CPM regularly supplied the Viet Minh with weapons and provided them with financial assistance. This time, the Vietnamese were interested in the implementation of Lai Tae's promise to send a new large batch of weapons. To this end, about 400 firearms were stored at several locations on the east coast of Malaya, and a junk was rented to transport cargo across the South China Sea. However, while in Kuala Lumpur, the Vietnamese received information through their channels that the site of the alleged delivery of weapons at Cape Camau (the extreme southern point of Vietnam) was unexpectedly blocked by the French. It became clear why the "Master"had recently been so insistent in seeking complete data on secret weapons depots in Malaya.

The" moment of truth " came on March 6, 1947, when Chin Peng made a report to the Central Committee plenum on the current situation. A three-point decision was made: to recognize Lai Tae as a Japanese and British spy, expel him from the party and sentence him to death. Ma Ting, the head of the Singapore City Committee, was assigned to lead the operation to eliminate the traitor.

Chin Peng, who was elected the new general secretary of the Communist Party Central Committee, traveled to Bangkok and Hong Kong to inform foreign comrades about the decision of the March plenum and ask for assistance in the search for the fugitive Lai Tae. The denouement of the drama of the biggest betrayal in the history of the CPM was steadily approaching its logical conclusion.

Chin Peng described its ending in some detail in his memoirs. While in Bangkok, he accidentally noticed the traitor in the crowd, but lost sight of him. It remained to ask for help from local Vietnamese comrades. They promised to complete the retribution operation before Chin Peng returned from Hong Kong. However, while in this British colony, while reading the local press, he suddenly found a familiar name on the list of air passengers flying to Bangkok - Chang Chan Hong. At one time, he personally prepared Lai Tae's passport in this name. Chin Peng hurried back to the Thai capital, where he once again addressed the Vietnamese. But the final point in the fate of the renegade was not put by them, but by members of the Thai Communist Party. A few days later, the party's general secretary, Lee Jae-shin, informed Jin Peng about this, but for ethical reasons did not go into details.

The details of the final operation to eliminate the "triple agent" Chin Peng learned only in 1950 in Beijing in an interview with one of the Thais who participated in the execution of the traitor. According to him, the special group traced the last route of Lai Tae, who was allegedly heading to the safe house. He was captured in the backyard of a Bangkok shopping center, and after a short resistance, Lai Tae passed away, and his mortal body was dumped in the waters of the Chao Phraya River, flowing in the Thai capital. Many years later, it became known that a British secret Service officer was sent from Singapore to Bangkok to warn the agent that he was being hunted throughout Southeast Asia, but he was too late [Chin Peng, 2003, p. 189-191].

In his memoirs, Chin Peng expressed regret that this is how the life of a traitor ended. He would like to meet him face-to-face in Bangkok and then force him to appear before the party's court.

The revelation of the traitor, who for a long time remained the "invisible man", was so shocking that ordinary party cadres of the Communist Party were informed about him only in April-May 1948. A booklet entitled "Wright (Lai Tek) Incident Statement"was published for internal use. In it, the renegade was accused of clogs-

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It also contained the most important details of his activities as an agent of several special services. Up until the 60s of the 20th century, the Communist Party cadres held conversations about the betrayal of Lai Te. And in June 1975, the Voice of the Malay Revolution radio station, broadcasting from Hunan Province, China, described Lai Tae as "a special agent of imperialism who committed many crimes and was exposed by the party in March 1947 by Comrades Chin Peng and Yun Kuo, who made a great and important contribution to exposing and expelling Lai Tae" [Lim Cheng Leng, 1998]. For more than a decade, Jin Peng established himself as the leader of the CPM22.

list of literature

Chean Boon Kheng. The Masked Comrades. A Study of the Communist United Front in Malaya, 1945 - 48. Singapore: Times Books International, 1979.

Chin Peng. My Side of History. Singapore: Media Masters, 2003.

Lim Cheng Leng. Toppling Loi Tek // Sunday Magazine. 09.08.1998.

Said Zahari. Meniti Lautan Gelora. Sebuah Memoir Politik. Kuala Lumpur: University Kebangsaan Malaysia, 2001.

Taaffe P. My Side of History by Chin Peng//http/www.socialistworld.net/index/ 04.03.2005.

2 The CPM lasted until the beginning of 1992. The official dissolution of the party was preceded by the signing of an agreement on the cessation of hostilities between the CPM and the authorities of Malaysia and Thailand on December 2, 1989. Speaking at the ceremony of disbanding one of the guerrilla units in Southern Thailand, which has become the main base area of the Communist Party of Thailand since the beginning of the 60s, Chin Peng said that " the agreement is honorable and beneficial for all parties... Both politicians and the common people have benefited from it" [Said Zahari, 2001, p. 311].

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