Much of the communist propaganda surrounding the Long March is hype rather than history. "The March" refers to a series of forced marches during the final stages of the Second World War in Europe. Interestingly, this is also true in Taiwan, where the defeated KMT leadership fled at the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949. It was a key moment in the civil war, and also in the development of communism in China. In the fifth campaign Chiang mustered about 700,000 troops and established a series of cement blockhouses around the communist positions. The main body under Mao proceeded toward northern Shaanxi, where the communist leaders Gao Gang and Liu Zhidan had built up another base. The phrase "long march" is a reference to the prolonged struggle of the Chinese communists, which included a physical Long March of their army across China. The First Red Army wanted to avoid confronting either the Tibetans to the west or the Nationalist army to the east, so they crossed the 14,000-foot (4,270-meter) Jiajinshan Pass in the Snowy Mountains in June. This text tells the story of one girl during that terrible event. If the locals refused to feed them, the Red Armies might take people hostage and ransom them for food, or even force them to join the march. The Communist Party. At that time of year, snow was still heavy on the ground, and many soldiers died of hunger or exposure. To cross into Gansu Province, they needed to get through the Lazikou Pass. Early in 1934, the communist Red Army of China was on its heels, outnumbered and outgunned by the Nationalists or Kuomintang (KMT), led by Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. Long March, (1934–35), the 6,000-mile (10,000-km) historic trek of the Chinese communists, which resulted in the relocation of the communist revolutionary base from southeastern to northwestern China and in the emergence of Mao Zedong as the undisputed party leader. The journey took two years. From their base at Yan’an, the communists grew in strength and eventually defeated the Nationalists in the struggle to control mainland China. However, once the Red Army soldiers engaged them in battle, the local militia pulled back very quickly. What was the reason for the Long March? The heroism attributed to the Long March inspired many young Chinese to join the Chinese Communist Party during the late 1930s and early 1940s. The Long March is the story of Choona, a young Choctaw who must make his own decision about whether to answer the Irish people's plea for help. ThoughtCo, Aug. 25, 2020, thoughtco.com/what-was-the-long-march-195155. The Long March was an epic retreat by the three Red Armies of China that took place in 1934 and 1935, during the Chinese Civil War. The government rewrote history, painting the armies as liberators of the peasants, and exaggerating incidents like the Battle for Luding Bridge. For the Chinese Communist Party, it is the story of the Long March. (Some unknown amount of the reduction in forces was due to desertions, rather than deaths.). In June 1935 a force that had been in the Sichuan-Shaanxi border area under Zhang Guotao, a longtime communist leader, joined the main army, and at Mao’ergai in northern Sichuan a power struggle ensued between Mao and Zhang. Zhang had 84,000 well-fed troops, while Mao's remaining 10,000 were weary and starving. In October 1934 the remaining 86,000 troops in the Jiangxi-Fujian border base—including administrative personnel and some 30 women—broke through the Nationalist lines at their weakest points and fled westward. She gave birth to a daughter along the way and gave the child to a local family. Zhang’s group, accompanied by Zhu De, headed toward the extreme southwestern part of China. This estimate is based on measurements two British trekkers made while retracing the route—a large arc that ended in Shaanxi Province. A woman returns to Belfast after ten years in England and becomes involved in the Maze prison protest. Late in July, the Red Armies ran into an impassable flooded river. Morale was low when they arrived in Zunyi, in the southwestern province of Guizhou, but at a conference there in January 1935 Mao was able to gather enough support to establish his dominance of the party. The Long March most commonly refers to the transfer of the main group of the First (or Central) Red Army, which included the leaders of the Communist Party of China, from Yudu in the province of Jiangxi to Yan'an in Shaanxi. The Chinese communist Central Committee, which had removed Mao from the leadership early in 1934, abandoned his guerrilla warfare strategy and used regular positional warfare tactics against the better-armed and more-numerous Nationalist forces. The subsequent arrival of other units (including that of Zhu De) swelled their total strength by late 1936 to about 30,000 troops. The Long March also solidified Mao's position as the leader of the Communist forces. In this sense, the Long March lasted from October 16, 1934, to October 19, 1935. The events of the Long March became such a potent symbol of Communist Chinese determination that no … The Long March (长征, Changzheng) started when Communist forces, surrounded by the Nationalist army, had to flee their base in Jiangxi province, October 1934. Zhang sent a coded message to one of his subcommanders, who was in Mao's camp, ordering him to seize Mao and take control of the First Army. Szczepanski, Kallie. Szczepanski, Kallie. From their base in Jiangxi Province, southern China, the Red Armies set out in October of 1934, and according to Mao, marched some 12,500 kilometers (about 8,000 miles). The Long March saved Mao Zedong and the Communist Party from the attacks by the Guomingdang. Among the missing were Mao’s two small children and his younger brother, Mao Zetan, who, although he had not been on the Long March, had been a guerrilla fighter in Jiangxi before dying in April 1935. The protagonist, Choona, a young Choctaw boy, is familiar with the terrible Great March (or the Trail of Tears) which his tribe had been forced to undertake when their lands were taken away from the tribe, and as the reader learns (along with Choona) of the overlaps between these two displaced peoples, s/he also learns the importance of being true to yourself and others. The communists threw grenades down on the Nationalists' position, sending them running. The communists successfully fought off the first four campaigns using tactics of mobile infiltration and guerrilla warfare developed by Mao. This union of the two armies is called the Great Joining. They left a rearguard to defend their retreat; interestingly, the rearguard suffered far fewer casualties than the Long March participants. In a word, the Long March has ended with victory for us and defeat for the enemy. His survivors joined forces in Shaanxi Province, their final destination, with the few remaining troops from Zhang's Fourth Army, as well as the remnants of the Second Red Army. Along the route, some communists had left the march to mobilize the peasantry, but most of the missing had been eliminated by fighting, disease, and starvation. The first three months of the march were disastrous for the communists: subjected to constant bombardment from Chiang’s air force and repeated attacks from his ground troops, they lost more than half of their army. However, the sub commander was very busy, so handed the message to a lower ranking officer to decode. Nonetheless, Zhang was supposed to defer to Mao, who held a higher rank in the Communist Party. In the autumn of 1933, the Guomindang leader Chiang Kai-shek launched a huge attack against the … We undertake the Long March to Rome to remember the countless millions of indigenous worldwide who for 500 years have suffered and died through the wars, forced resettlement, disease and conquest justified by two papal orders or bulls, called Romanus Pontifex (1455) issued by Pope Nicholas V and Inter Caetera (1493) pronounced by Pope Alexander […] More recent estimates put the distance at a much shorter but still impressive 6,000 km (3,700 miles). The march then headed toward northwestern China, near the safety of the Soviet border and close to the territory occupied by the Japanese in northeastern China. In reality, their opponents were a small group of soldiers belonging to a local warlord's army. Imagine being one of the soldiers on this retreat, perhaps a pregnant female soldier, possibly even with bound feet. This area is a treacherous swamp where the Yangtze and Yellow River drainages divide at 10,000 feet in elevation. Mao's wife, He Zizhen, was very pregnant when the Long March began. The troops carried packs weighing between 25 and 80 pounds on their backs as they climbed. Between 1930 and 1934 Chiang Kai-shek launched a series of five military encirclement campaigns against the Chinese communists in an attempt to annihilate their base area (the Jiangxi Soviet) on the border between Jiangxi and Fujian in southeastern China. Menu. Modern Chinese Communist mythology celebrates the Long March as a great victory, and it did preserve the Red Armies from complete annihilation (barely). The Red Army's strength and morale were seriously undermined as it faced defeat after defeat, and suffered numerous casualties. Secrecy and rear-guard actions confused the Nationalists, and it was several weeks before they … Kimball believes that the counterculture transformed high culture as well as our everyday life in terms of attitudes towa The warlord's troops were armed with antique muskets; it was Mao's forces that had machine guns. With Cheng-Chung Lee, Yat-sen Sun, Kai-Shek Chiang, Enlai Zhou. Mao sent fifty of his soldiers who had mountaineering experience up the cliff face above the blockhouses. The Long March. There was no firewood to be found, so soldiers burned grass to toast grain instead of boiling it. The KMT version of the Long March held that the communist troops were little better than barbarians, wild men (and women) who came down out of the mountains to fight the civilized Nationalists. Primary Sources Long March. Dr. Kallie Szczepanski is a history teacher specializing in Asian history and culture. Survivors later reported that the Great Morass was the worst part of the entire Long March. As a result, the communist forces suffered heavy losses and were nearly crushed. When his planned coup failed to materialize, Zhang simply took all of his troops and headed south. The Long March. This mountain passage narrows down to a mere 12 feet (4 meters) in places, making it highly defensible. Who brought the Long March to victory? The two armies were divided evenly so that each commander had 42,000 of Zhang's soldiers and 5,000 of Mao's. In The Long March, Roger Kimball, the author of Tenured Radicals, shows how the "cultural revolution" of the 1960s and '70s took hold in America, lodging in our hearts and minds, and affecting our innermost assumptions about what counts as the good life. The pendulum is approaching a reset, and the neoliberal establishment is … The long march through the institutions (German: der lange Marsch durch die Institutionen) is a slogan coined by Communist student activist Rudi Dutschke around 1967 to describe his strategy for establishing the conditions for revolution: subverting society by infiltrating institutions such as the professions. Luding is a chain suspension bridge over the Dadu River in Sichuan Province, on the border with Tibet. Those communists who survived managed to established the Jiangxi Soviet. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). Omissions? Mao himself had been demoted before the march and was also sick with malaria. Long March, (1934–35), the 6,000-mile (10,000-km) historic trek of the Chinese communists, which resulted in the relocation of the communist revolutionary base from southeastern to northwestern China and in the emergence of Mao Zedong as the undisputed party leader. The Red Armies left Jiangxi with an estimated 100,000 troops and recruited more along the way. He had to be carried for the first several weeks in a litter, borne by two soldiers. The region is beautiful, covered with wildflowers in the summer, but the ground is so spongy that the exhausted soldiers were sinking into the mire and could not free themselves. She has taught at the high school and university levels in the U.S. and South Korea. Be on the lookout for your Britannica newsletter to get trusted stories delivered right to your inbox. The Long March made the survival of the imperilled Chinese Communist Party possible, gave Mao Zedong a secure grasp on its leadership and ultimately led to the creation of the People’s Republic of China. Mao, at the time of the communists’ departure, was not in control of events; Zhu De was the commander of the army, and Zhou Enlai was the political commissar of the party. 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