Stilwell regarded the Communists as a local phenomenon and a natural outcome of oppression. “Carrying their burdens of famine and drought, heavy rent and interest, squeeze by middlemen, absentee landlordism,” he wrote of the farmers, “naturally they agitated for a readjustment of land ownership and this made them communists—at least that is the label put on them. Their leaders adopted the methods and slogans of communism but what they were really after was land ownership under reasonable conditions.
