The Long March was a military retreat undertaken by the Red Army of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the forerunner of the People's Liberation Army, to evade the pursuit of the National Army of the Chinese Nationalist Party (CNP/KMT). Strictly speaking, the Long March was a series of marches, as various Communist armies in the south escaped to the north and west. However, the most famous began in the Jiangxi province in October 1934 and ended in the Shaanxi province in October 1935. The First Front Army of the Chinese Soviet Republic, led by an inexperienced military commission, was on the brink of annihilation by Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek's troops in their stronghold in Jiangxi province. The CCP, under the eventual command of Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, escaped in a circling retreat to the west and north, which reportedly traversed over 9,000 kilometres (5,600 mi) over 370 days. The route passed through some of the most difficult terrain of western China by traveling west, then north, to Shaanxi.
Zhu De was a Chinese general, military strategist, politician and revolutionary in the Chinese Communist Party. Born into poverty in 1886 in Sichuan, he was adopted by a wealthy uncle at age nine. His uncle provided him with a superior early education that led to his admission into a military academy. After graduating, he joined a rebel army and became a warlord. It was after this period that he adopted communism. Joining the Chinese Communist Party, he ascended through the ranks of the Chinese Red Army as it closed in on securing the nation in the Chinese Civil War. By the time China was under Mao's control, Zhu was a high-ranking official within the party. He served as commander-in-chief of the Eighth Route Army during the Second Sino-Japanese War and commander-in-chief of the Eighth Route Army during the Chinese Communist Revolution, and the People's Liberation Army after liberation. In 1955, he ranked first among the ten founding marshals of the People's Republic of China, of which he is regarded as one of the principal founders. Zhu remained a prominent political figure until his death in 1976. As the chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress from 1975 to 1976, Zhu was the head of state of the People's Republic of China.
The Chinese Soviet Republic (CSR) was an East Asian proto-state in China, proclaimed on 7 November 1931 by Chinese communist leaders Mao Zedong and Zhu De in the early stages of the Chinese Civil War. The discontiguous territories of the CSR included 18 provinces and 4 counties under the communists' control. The CSR's government was located in its largest component territory, the Jiangxi–Fujian Soviet. Due to the importance of the Jiangxi–Fujian Soviet in the CSR's early history, the names Jiangxi Soviet and Kiangsi Soviet are sometimes used to refer to the CSR as a whole. Other component territories of the CSR included the Northeastern Jiangxi, Hunan-Jiangxi, Hunan-Hubei-Jiangxi, Hunan-Western Hubei, Hunan-Hubei-Sichuan-Guizhou, Shaanxi-Gansu, Szechuan-Shensi, Hubei-Henan-Anhui and Haifeng-Lufeng Soviets.
Agnes Smedley was an American journalist, writer, and activist who supported the Indian Independence Movement and the Chinese Communist Revolution. Raised in a poverty-stricken miner's family in Missouri and Colorado, she dramatized the formation of her feminist and socialist consciousness in the autobiographical novel Daughter of Earth (1929).
Red Star Over China is a 1937 book by Edgar Snow. It is an account of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) that was written when it was a guerrilla army and still obscure to Westerners.
The history of the People's Liberation Army began in 1927 with the start of the Chinese Civil War and spans to the present, having developed from a peasant guerrilla force into the largest armed force in the world.
New Masses (1926–1948) was an American Marxist magazine closely associated with the Communist Party USA. It succeeded both The Masses (1912–1917) and The Liberator (1918-1924). New Masses was later merged into Masses & Mainstream (1948–1963). With the coming of the Great Depression in 1929 America became more receptive to ideas from the political Left and New Masses became highly influential in intellectual circles. The magazine has been called “the principal organ of the American cultural left from 1926 onwards."
The John Reed Clubs (1929–1935), often referred to as John Reed Club (JRC), were an American federation of local organizations targeted towards Marxist writers, artists, and intellectuals, named after the American journalist and activist John Reed. Established in the fall of 1929, the John Reed Clubs were a mass organization of the Communist Party USA which sought to expand its influence among radical and liberal intellectuals. The organization was terminated in 1935.
The Shanghai massacre of 12 April 1927, the April 12 Purge or the April 12 Incident as it is commonly known in China, was the violent suppression of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) organizations and leftist elements in Shanghai by forces supporting General Chiang Kai-shek and conservative factions in the Kuomintang. Following the incident, conservative KMT elements carried out a full-scale purge of Communists in all areas under their control, and violent suppression occurred in Guangzhou and Changsha. The purge led to an open split between left-wing and right-wing factions in the KMT, with Chiang Kai-shek establishing himself as the leader of the right-wing faction based in Nanjing, in opposition to the original left-wing KMT government based in Wuhan, which was led by Wang Jingwei.
The encirclement campaign against the Northeastern Jiangxi Soviet was a campaign launched by the Chinese Nationalist Government intended to destroy the communist Chinese Soviet Republic and its local military forces. It was met by the Communists' Counter-encirclement campaign at Northeastern Jiangxi Soviet, also called the Counter-encirclement campaign at Northeastern Jiangxi Revolutionary Base. The Nationalist campaign lasted from December 1930 to July 1931, and resulted in the destruction of the target base area.
Kang Keqing was a politician of the People's Republic of China, and the wife of Zhu De until his death in 1976.
The Central Revolutionary Base, commonly called the Central Soviet (Zone), the Kiangsi–Fukien Soviet, or the Jiangxi–Fujian Soviet, was the largest component territory of the Chinese Soviet Republic, an unrecognized state established in November 1931 by Mao Zedong and Zhu De during the Chinese civil war. Geographically, the Jiangxi–Fujian Soviet-occupied the mountainous parts of Jiangxi and Fujian provinces of China and was home to the town of Ruijin, the county seat and headquarters of the Chinese Soviet government.
The Anti-Bolshevik League incident, or AB League Incident, was a period of political purge in the territory of a Chinese Communist revolutionary base in Jiangxi province. Mao Zedong accused his political rivals of belonging to the Kuomintang intelligence agency "Anti-Bolshevik League". Mao's political purge resulted in killings at Futian and elsewhere, and the trial and execution of Red Army officers and soldiers.
Battle Hymn of China, by Agnes Smedley. Also published as China Correspondent. This book is a first-hand account of the Sino-Japanese War, from the viewpoint of a left-wing US woman who tried sharing the lives of ordinary Chinese.
Communist-controlled China or the Revolutionary Base Area, officially called the Soviet Zone from 1927 to 1937, and the Liberated Zone from 1946 to 1949, was the part of the territories of China controlled by the Soviet-backed Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from 1927 to 1949 during the Republican era and the Chinese Civil War with Nationalist China.
The Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army or Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army, commonly known as the Chinese Red Army or simply the Red Army, was the armed forces of the Chinese Communist Party from 1928 to 1937. It was formed when Communist elements of the National Revolutionary Army splintered and mutinied in the Nanchang Uprising. The Red Army was reincorporated into the National Revolutionary Army as part of the Second United Front with the Kuomintang to fight against the Japanese during the Second Sino-Japanese War of 1937–1945. In the later stages of the Chinese Civil War they splintered off once again and renamed the People's Liberation Army.
Hu Di was a Chinese filmmaker and Communist secret agent during the Republic of China era. After the Kuomintang (KMT) began its suppression of the Communists in 1927, Hu worked as a mole in the Kuomintang secret service, together with Qian Zhuangfei and Li Kenong. Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai called them "the three most distinguished intelligence workers of the Party." Hu was executed in September 1935 by the renegade Communist commander Zhang Guotao during the Long March.
The Ningdu revolt, also known as the Ningdu uprising, was a rebellion by the 26th Route Army of the National Revolutionary Army of the Republic of China in Ningdu County, Jiangxi Province on December 14, 1931. 17,000 soldiers of the 26th Route Army defected from the Kuomintang to the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army of the Chinese Communist Party. After the conclusion of the Central Plains War, the 5th Route Army of the Northwest Army, formerly under the command of Feng Yuxiang, was redesignated as the 26th Route Army and brought the direct control of the Nationalist Government of Chiang Kai-shek. Sun Lianzhong was made commander of this army. Members of this unit had contacts with the communists dating to the Northern Expedition. When the 26th Route Army was brought to participate in the campaign against the Jiangxi Soviet, plans were made to bring members to the communist side. In November 1931, a telegram from the Nationalist Government to Sun was received by the deputy army commander and chief of staff, Zhao Bosheng. Zhao was secret member of the communist party. Zhao contacted the commanders of the 26th Route Army, 25th Division's 73rd and 74th Brigade to plot an uprising. The two brigade commanders agreed to the plan and contacted the communists, who sent Wang Jiaxiang and Zuo Quan with the 12th Division of the Red 4th Army to assist them. On December 14, the 26th Route Army, with the exception of one regiment of its 25th Division went over to the communists. On December 16, they reached the territory controlled by the Jiangxi Soviet and was made the Red 5th Army Corps. Zhao and the two brigade commanders died later during the Chinese Civil War, but those who helped them were prominent later, including Ji Pengfei and Huang Zhen.
The Great Road: The Life and Times of Chu Teh, by Agnes Smedley, is an unfinished biography of Chinese Communist leader Zhu De.
Dorothy Markey, known by the pen name Myra Page, was a 20th-century American communist writer, journalist, union activist, and teacher.
