Tings Chak: A Long March

“Marching on the blood of martyrs”, words inscribed on the monument to the comrades of the Long March in Ruijin, Jiangxi

The Long March (1934-1935) led by the Chinese communists is one of the greatest revolutionary achievements of the 20th century. For more than a year, the Red Army and its peasant supporters covered 9 thousand kilometers, crossed 18 mountains and 24 rivers. Wearing sandals made from dried grass, they marched an average of 50 kilometers a day and engaged in battles every 72 hours, while being pursued by air raids and hundreds of thousands of enemy soldiers on the ground. Of the 86,000 people organized in four columns who set out on this journey, many starved, were killed, deserted or gave up along the way – only 8,000 soldiers reached the end of the Long March. 2024 marks the 90th anniversary of the start of the Long March, as well as the 75th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). This story has been told and retold countless times by revolutionaries around the world. Some key lessons and inspirations can be drawn from this story for current struggles, including the importance of organization, socialist experimentation, and mobilization of the masses to advance a national and revolutionary project.

Cross the river feeling the stones

“Crossing the river by feeling the stones” is a slogan first coined by the leader of the Communist Party of China (CPC), Chen Yun, in 1950, but which can easily be used to describe the entire Chinese revolutionary process. The Long March was one of those great crossings of the communist movement. After a series of failed uprisings led by the still small urban proletariat in the late 1920s, a section of the communists, led by Mao Zedong, retreated to the countryside to form the Chinese Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army. Although the CCP’s central command was still based in Shanghai, dominated by Moscow-trained leaders, the communists led by Mao began to form small soviets, culminating in the creation of the Chinese Soviet Republic in Ruijin, Jiangxi, in 1931.

Six years later, the Soviet region had undergone land reform and land had been redistributed to peasants. More than 10,000 cooperatives were created and the small group of revolutionary soldiers who fled the cities had grown to form an army of tens of thousands of men and women, workers and peasants. To break the economic and informational blockade imposed by the nationalists (KMT), the first CCP banks were founded – producing 1 yuan notes with Lenin’s portrait – along with media instruments such as the predecessor Xinhua News Agency. Furthermore, unemployment, opium, prostitution, child slavery, and compulsory marriage had been eliminated. As Edgar Snow described in his book “Red Star Over China,” the work of mass education increased the literacy levels of peasant men and women within a few years, more than had been done in all of rural China for centuries.

The years spent in this region, engaged in building the CCP’s mass line, experimenting with new forms of governance, and defending the red base against external attacks, were formative experiences for Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, Zhu De, Deng Xiaoping, and others. revolutionaries of that generation. In other words, socialist construction and experimentation did not begin when the CCP took power in 1949, but was built on two decades of experiments and experiments, from Ruijin to Yan’an, crossing the river while feeling the stones.

A strategic retreat

The Long March was a strategic retreat by Ruijin. Nationalists led by Chiang Kai-shek undertook several rounds of military attacks on the Soviet. For the fifth and final siege campaign, receiving military guidance from German Nazi advisors, Chiang mobilized up to 900,000 soldiers with advanced resources and equipment (including 400 warplanes). The communists, on the other hand, had a strength of 180,000 soldiers and a very limited supply of ammunition and weapons, mainly rifles and no heavy artillery. The siege was planned as a funeral march for the communists, and Chiang believed he had finally “exterminated the threat of communism.” But they were wrong. When the first two columns organized a surprise attack to breach the fortifications to the south and west, thousands of peasant guards remained to hold off the nationalist forces. In exchange for their lives, they bought time so that the communist columns could carry out their strategic retreat.

In the middle of the Long March, the Zunyi Conference was held, at which the CCP Politburo was elected. Mao Zedong emerged as the Party’s main leader and its president, replacing the old political core led by Bo Gu, the “28 Bolsheviks” who had returned from studying at Sun Yatsen University in Moscow. This conference consolidated the direction of revolutionary strategy with the peasantry at its center. History is not made by individuals alone – although leaders are important – but is based on the organized power of the masses.

Do not take from the masses a needle or even the tip of a thread

The Long March mobilized the mass power of the peasant majority, ethnic minorities, young people and women under communist leadership. Already during the Ruijin period, the Red Army had systematized its method of working in the field, summarized in the “Three Rules of Discipline and the Eight Recommendations” issued in 1928. The Three Rules were: Obey orders in all actions; Do not take from the masses neither a needle nor the simple end of a thread; Hand over all captured assets to the authorities. The Eight Recommendations were: Speak politely; Buy and sell honestly; Return everything borrowed; Compensate for all losses caused; Do not hit or insult people; Do not cause damage to plantations; Do not take liberties with women; Do not mistreat prisoners. With these well-developed practices, which contrasted sharply with the brutal approach of nationalists, feudal lords, and warlords, communists gained popular support everywhere the Long March passed. Thus, more than a retreat, the Long March became an opportunity for the Party’s massification within the country.

In particular, the communists passed through ten ethnic minority regions, where the Miao, Yao, Zhuang, Dong, Tujia, Shui, Li, Buyi, Gelao, Naxi, Yi, Tibetan, Bai, Qiang, Hui, Dongxiang and Yugu peoples lived. , representing more than half of the territories that the Red Army crossed during the Long March. During this period, the CCP promoted its political program while advocating equality among all ethnic groups and opposing ethnic oppression, helping ethnic minorities carry out economic and political struggles against landlords and warlords locations. Without the support of the Yi people, for example, the Red Army would never have been able to successfully pass through Daliangshan, Sichuan. A special detachment of the Chinese Yi People’s Red Army was formed.

Young people played an important role during the Long March, present in the Party from the lowest to the highest levels, from the period from Ruijin to Yan’an. In 1936, the average age of the Red Army ranks was just 19 years old, while the CCP leadership, who had already been in the Party for over a decade, was between 30 and 40 years old. In turn, women also played a key role, both in providing food and clothing to Red Army soldiers along the way, but also as participants in the Long March. All 32 women who marched with the First Army survived, and their main tasks were agitation and propaganda, caring for wounded soldiers, and gathering supplies and financial resources for the Red Army. It was only with the massive support of local peasants, ethnic minorities, women and youth that the communists were able to navigate treacherous landscapes, escape enemy attacks, obtain enough food and supplies to survive and complete the Long March.

The Long March unified the country against Japanese imperialism. While mobilizing and raising awareness among the masses across the country, the communists also charted the course that would later become the Second United Front, starting in 1936. The aim was to unite all classes and all patriotic forces in the communist-led struggle against Japanese imperialism, which was seen as the main contradiction. Rarely mentioned in Western versions of World War II are the 20 million Chinese who died resisting Japanese fascism during a brutal occupation that lasted 14 years (1931-1945).

The Chinese people rose up

In October 1935, only 8,000 Red Army soldiers arrived in Yan’an, Shaanxi province. An important site of Chinese civilization with roots dating back 3,000 years, Yan’an had become a poor, dusty and remote border town of about 10,000 people by the time the communists made it their new capital. As one of the soldiers told journalist Edgar Snow: “This is culturally one of the darkest places on earth… We have to start all over again.” And they started all over again, building on Ruijin’s Soviet period experiences.

In the “Yan’an decade” that followed, the group of poorly fed and poorly equipped communists mobilized the support of tens of millions of peasants in the region, won popular support in the cities, grew Party membership to 1.2 million peasants people and built a Red Army consisting of a million soldiers, supported by millions of armed peasants. In October 1949, 14 years after arriving in Yan’an, Mao Zedong would declare the establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in Beijing. Today, as the PRC celebrates its 75th anniversary, the CCP is an organization with more than 98 million members. The Long March remains a revolutionary inspiration and a common thread connecting different periods of socialist experimentation, from Ruijin to Yan’an to Beijing.

*Edited by Fernanda Alcântara and published in MST page