19 THE LONG MARCH

In early November, Red Army units, after breaking through the second line of blockhouses, emerged into southeastern Hunan. They numbered more than 86,000 troops, divided into five army groups (First, Third, Fifth, Eighth, and Ninth) and two so-called field columns—the staff column (whose secret code name was Red Star) and the transport column (whose secret code name was Red Order). The first column included members of the Central Revolutionary Military Council, including Mao Zedong. The second column consisted of members of the Central Committee, Central Executive Committee, and Council of People's Commissars staff members and various service personnel, including the medical company, one of whose nurses, as we know, was He Zizhen. Marching with the second column was the “reserve division,” consisting entirely of unemployed peasants who had been drafted as porters for half a yuan per day. These people, in the words of Otto Braun “transported hundreds of bundles of leaflets, chests of silver bullion, and arsenal machinery …… Members of the reserve division were, for all practical purposes, unarmed, for the spears, swords, and daggers they carried could hardly be counted.”¹ The ratio of fighters to noncombatants was roughly 3:1. For all the soldiers there were forty thousand rifles and more than a thousand light and heavy machine guns. There were also several pieces of heavy artillery, which were soon discarded since they impeded forward progress and for which there were no shells. All the soldiers carried packages of rice and salt, provisions calculated to last for two weeks.²

The final goal of the march had not been determined. After they broke through the blockade ring, it was assumed that everything would become clear. There had been no radio contact with the ECCI since early October 1934, after the final collapse of the Shanghai Bureau. After seizing the clandestine apartment of the secretary of the bureau, the Guomindang police confiscated the radio set that had been the sole means of communication among the CCP Central Committee, the Far Eastern Bureau, and the ECCI.³ There was also no contact with other soviet areas. News reached the Central Committee that troops of the Second and the Sixth Front Army Groups of the Red Army, under the overall command of He Long, were operating somewhere along the juncture of Hunan, Hubei, and Sichuan provinces. The secretary of the CCP committee for these forces was Ren Bishi, who had been sent to join He Long in May 1933. There was also intermittent information about the guerrilla units under Zhang Guotao, the so-called Fourth Front Army, which, it was thought, after being beaten by Chiang Kai-shek in October 1932 had retreated to northwest Sichuan. But no one really knew whether this was really so. Only one thing was more or less clear: the army groups had to move in a westerly direction, to the Guangxi-Hunan-Guizhou border triangle, which, according to available information, as Braun writes, “was free of enemy fortifications.”⁴ The carefully calculated route traversed areas densely settled by Hakkas,⁵ who, naturally, greeted the Red Army as liberators. Their support enabled the Red Army to overcome obstacles and arrive in Guizhou in December. The Guomindang forces did not risk attacking the main force, because they feared an uprising of the Hakka who lived according to their own clan rules and did not recognize the authority of the Guomindang.

Despite their successful breaching of several lines of enemy fortifications and their relatively safe completion of the first stage of what is now known as the Long March, the troops were depressed. Many of the officers and men grumbled and the difficulties of the march intensified their dissatisfaction. Every day the number of deserters and laggards increased. Those who continued were at the end of their rope. This created a unique opportunity for Mao to return to power. By taking advantage of this mood and properly channeling it, he would be able to take revenge on Bo Gu. He had to play the game boldly, setting the members of the leading troika against each other and counterpoising Bo Gu and Otto Braun against the other members of the Politburo. He had to act decisively, but without excessive ego.

Mao managed this task brilliantly. By the time they arrived in Guizhou, he had won over a majority of the members of the party leadership. Almost all the army commanders were on his side. Most important, he concluded a secret alliance with Luo Fu, the former close comrade in arms and devoted friend of Bo Gu. Mao had first met him in Shanghai in the early 1920s, when everyone still knew him as Zhang Wentian, a talented young journalist and novelist who had gone to school in China, Japan, and America, studied Western literature as well as physics and mathematics, and was well versed in the social sciences. Seven years younger than Mao and older than Bo Gu by the same number of years, Luo Fu embodied two epochs in the development of the communist movement. Along with the future creators of the CCP he had taken part in the May Fourth Movement, and together with “Mif's fledglings” he had studied in Moscow from 1925 to 1930 at the Sun Yat-sen University of the Toilers of China. Tall and thin like Bo Gu and Otto Braun, he differed from them in possessing great tact. Behind the thick lenses of his eyeglasses one could see the intelligent eyes of an intellectual.⁶

Mao had begun wooing Luo Fu in the Central Soviet Area several months before the Long March. As the military situation deteriorated, Mao noted that Luo Fu became increasingly nervous and periodically expressed dissatisfaction with the authoritarian methods of Otto Braun and Bo Gu. Mao decided to take advantage of this. Then Luo Fu unexpectedly dropped in to “consult” with Mao about military affairs that he wished to understand better. The conversation was tête-à-tête. After the meeting Mao began deliberately to promote Luo at the rare meetings of the Politburo that he attended. Meanwhile, Luo intensified his dispute with Bo Gu. At the end of April, after the most recent major defeat of the Red Army, Luo Fu caused a real scandal for his old friend by criticizing Bo. Otto Braun supported Bo, while Wang Jiaxiang, who was still in the hospital but closely followed the course of military actions in the Central Soviet Area, supported Luo Fu.⁷

By the beginning of the retreat, relations among Mao, Luo, and Wang had become so solid that when Mao suggested the three of them should be in the same column, his new friends readily agreed.⁸ Mao had turned everything around. In Braun's words, by the end of the first stage of the march, under Mao's influence the “conspirators” constituted “the political leadership …… of the faction which waged a subversive struggle to take over the Party and Army leadership.”⁹ Each of the three assiduously “cultivated” the army commanders and the members of the party leadership. Wang Jiaxiang, who was always in an extremely irritable state, from his stomach pain or some other reason, was particularly active in this regard.¹⁰ For the time being, Zhou Enlai remained on Bo Gu's side, but he was undependable. Mao had no doubt that this flexible and cautious man would go with whoever was stronger.

Mao was not mistaken. In Liping, the first town in Guizhou seized by the Red Army, during a Politburo meeting Zhou supported Luo, Mao, and Wang when they demanded that Bo convene immediately a plenum of the leadership to discuss the results of the struggle against the Guomindang's fifth punitive campaign. Bo Gu had to agree, although he knew the meeting would be aimed against him and Otto Braun.

During the next three weeks, while the Red Army advanced northward in Guizhou toward Zunyi, the second-largest commercial center in the province, both warring factions prepared for the decisive political battle. It was decided to hold the conference in Zunyi, which, intelligence reports suggested, would not be difficult to occupy. Thus the Red Army soldiers could rest while the leaders engaged in resolving the intraparty disputes.

Zunyi was captured early on a rainy morning, Monday, January 7, 1935. The soldiers, tired, wet, and famished from the march, were happy to get food and shelter. Their two-week supply of provisions had long since been exhausted and the poor Hakka in the villages lacked provisions for themselves. In poverty-stricken Guizhou, located in a mountainous, rain-drenched area unsuitable for agriculture, most rural people were poor. There is a saying, “In Guizhou not three days go by without rain; there are not three li of level ground, and you will never find anyone there with three copper coins.” After a difficult march of fifteen hundred miles, the soldiers wanted to spend a few warm days in peace. On January 9, Mao Zedong, Bo Gu, and other party and army leaders entered Zunyi. Mao, Luo Fu, and Wang Jiaxiang stayed in its vicinity, in a spacious private house belonging to a commander of the Guizhou army. While Red Army soldiers gorged themselves in the small restaurants on spicy Sichuan cabbage, boiled meat, chicken, and red peppers, the three “conspirators” devised a strategy for the coming conference. Bo Gu was also actively preparing. At his request, Kai Feng, one of the few remaining Bo Gu loyalists, held several “edifying” talks with Nie Rongzhen, an important political commissar in the Red Army, but Nie categorically refused to support Bo.¹¹

Everything had been decided in advance. The ground had swiftly eroded under the feet of Bo Gu and Otto Braun. Nevertheless, on the eve of the conference Mao held a secret meeting with his supporters at which the impassioned Wang Jiaxiang dotted all the i's. “We shall throw them out when we meet,” he asserted.¹²

Finally, the day of decision arrived. Early on the morning of January 15, nineteen men gathered in a small room on the second floor of the residence of Bai Huizhang, a divisional commander in the Guizhou army. (They were soon joined by one more person.) These were Politburo members and candidate members who had marched with the troops of the Central Red Army as well as several commanders and political commissars of the army groups. Deng Xiaoping, who again became head of the technical secretariat of the Central Committee on the eve of the conference, was present, as were Otto Braun and his interpreter. Everyone, with the exception of Braun and his interpreter, sat around a large rectangular table on which an old kerosene lamp was standing. The conference would probably last a long time, so the lamp would likely be needed. A dim light filtered into the room through a tinted glass window. Outside it was drizzling as usual.

Bo Gu opened the meeting by reading a report on the reasons for the defeat in the battle against the fifth punitive campaign. Zhou Enlai followed with a supplementary report. Both of them tried to justify their actions. Bo laid all the blame on objective reasons, Zhou on subjective ones. Then Luo Fu took the floor, speaking for Mao and Wang Jiaxiang as well as himself, and subjected the military and political line of the general secretary to a withering criticism. When he finished, Mao spoke next for a full hour. In Braun's words, “[i]n contrast to his usual wont, he made use of a painstakingly prepared manuscript.” This was hardly surprising; the conference was of vital significance to him. Completely destroying the arguments of Bo and Zhou, he accused them as well as Braun of bearing the main responsibility for the retreat from the Central Soviet Area. Mao asserted that they initially adhered to “purely passive defensive tactics” and then “switched to positional warfare,” after which, at the decisive moment, they “turned and ran.” Mao called this kind of conduct a “childish game of war.” He also directed “his attack on leadership techniques” of Bo and Braun.¹³

No sooner had he finished than up jumped Wang Jiaxiang, who fully supported Mao and Luo. Many wished to speak. Ultimately, the conference lasted three days. The military methods of Braun and the political leadership of Bo Gu were subjected to particularly sharp criticism in the speeches of Zhu De, Peng Dehuai, Nie Rongzhen, and, especially, Lin Biao, who deemed Braun's tactics simply “clumsy and stupid.”¹⁴ The only person who defended Bo Gu was Kai Feng, the Young Communist and one of Mif's people; he leveled the standard accusation at Mao, namely, that he did not understand Marxism-Leninism. Mao recalled,

During the Zunyi conference Kai Feng said to me “Your methods of warfare are not particularly clever; they are based on just two books, The Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Sun Zi's The Art of War. How can one wage war by relying on these books?” At the time I had only read Romance of the Three Kingdoms, not The Art of War. Yet this comrade spoke with such assurance that I had read it! I asked him how many chapters were there in The Art of War and what did the first chapter say. But he was unable to reply at all. It was clear that he himself had not read this book. Afterwards, setting aside other things, I made it my business to read The Art of War.¹⁵

During these speeches, Otto Braun sat quietly near the door, chain-smoking. He felt awful, not only because he thought the conference was a “base insinuation” but also because he was suffering from an attack of malaria. Bo Gu felt no better, even though he was not ill. Unbalanced in the best of times, he was continually flashing a nervous smile, baring his large teeth, and surveying everyone with a venomous look. Zhou Enlai instantaneously reoriented himself and, taking the floor for the second time, fully acknowledged the correctness of Mao and his supporters.¹⁶ But Braun, who refrained from saying anything, “requested permission to spend some time with the First Corps” so that he “could better acquaint” himself, “through direct experience at the front, with the Chinese civil war so highly extolled by Mao.”¹⁷

In sum, the Mao Zedong faction achieved total victory. Luo Fu composed a draft resolution that asserted Bo Gu's report was “basically incorrect,” and that the main reason for the surrender of the Central Soviet Area was mistakes in military leadership and in the tactical line. It was adopted.¹⁸

Following the conference the members of the Politburo held a separate organizational session at which Mao was co-opted into the Standing Committee. He was also appointed deputy to general political commissar Zhou, who no longer posed a danger to him. Although Bo Gu retained his former position, the influence of the new troika of Mao, Luo Fu, and Wang Jiaxiang was now dominant.¹⁹

After the organizational meeting Mao rushed off to Zizhen with a wildly beating heart.

“Is the meeting over? How are you ” she asked excitedly.

At this he broke into a smile.

“Everything went not badly. Now I have the right to speak.”

Many years later he told his daughter Li Min how they had celebrated his victory.

That day your mother waited for me for a very long time. I returned home and had not sat down when she peppered me with questions. I wanted to play a trick on her, but I was bursting with joy. When someone is happy they become talkative. I folded my hands behind my back and began pacing around the room, speaking unhurriedly, “The meeting figured that a Buddha like me might still prove useful, therefore, they dragged me out into the light and put me on the Standing Committee of the Politburo of the Central Committee. This means they still respect old Mao, and suppose that he is still good for something. I am unworthy, yes, unworthy. I understand that they chose me for the leadership of the CC just to fill an empty spot. To be sure, I did not play at modesty; when the fate of the country is at stake every simple peasant has a role to play!”

Your mother looked at me attentively, and was all ears. That evening we were enormously happy.²⁰

In speaking to his daughter, Mao omitted only one thing: her mother was expecting another baby and his struggle for power, combined with the hardships of the march, had undermined her health. Zizhen was terribly exhausted. She was due to give birth in a month, and she knew she could not keep the baby. The Long March was continuing, and children were an unnecessary burden. Mao apparently did not think about this. He was intoxicated with victory.

Zizhen gave birth in February 1935, in a small village in the north of Guizhou, in a straw hut belonging to a poor peasant family of the Yi nationality. In this area, as in many border regions in Sichuan and Yunnan, there were many non-Han Chinese. Among them the Yi were the most numerous. They hated the Han Chinese and saw no difference between the Guomindang and the communists, and often attacked small groups of Red Army soldiers. At the approach of large contingents of the Red Army, all of the Yi gathered their cattle and their goods and chattel and went off into the forests and mountains, leaving only empty houses for the Red Army. It was in one such house that Zizhen delivered her baby. The infant girl cried long and loud, but the exhausted mother tried not to look at her. The commander of the medical brigade recalled: “After the baby was washed off, we wrapped her in a white cloth. [As for what to do next] I consulted with the venerable Dong.ⁿ³⁸ Dong wrote a note and attached thirty yuan to it. Basically, what it said was ‘The army on the march cannot take with it this newly born child. We are leaving it for you to bring up. Let it be like your granddaughter. When she grows up, she will look after you.'”²¹ Placing the infant girl, covered with rags, onto the sleeping bunk where she had just been born, along with the note and the money, everyone, including Zizhen, left the house. The “Iron Stream” continued to flow westward. There was no time for emotion.

What happened to the little girl, whom the mother had not even named, is not known. Rumor has it that after the departure of the communists, the inhabitants of the house took her into their family and named her Wang Xiuzhen, meaning “Beautiful Treasure Wang,” but three months later she died from a cancerous tumor.²² No one knows if this is true.

Mao never even saw his new daughter. He had no particular interest in her anyway. The struggle for power continued. Neither Bo Gu nor Otto Braun acknowledged their mistakes. Kai Feng vented his aggressive temper. Some members of the Politburo, even though they accepted the new triumvirate of Mao, Luo Fu, and Wang Jiaxiang, still did not actively support them. So they had to act energetically and uncompromisingly. Mao and Luo went for broke.

In early February, at a meeting of the Standing Committee, Luo suddenly demanded that Bo Gu yield the position of general secretary to him. Mao supported him. Two others present, Chen Yun and Zhou Enlai, did not object. Bo Gu, who was losing his self-control, capitulated. A month later, on March 4, the new party leader implemented an important decision via the Revolutionary Military Council: “To establish a special Front Command and to designate Comrade Zhu De as Front Commander and Comrade Mao Zedong as Front Political Commissar.”²³ Zhu De remained commander in chief of the entire Central Red Army and Zhou Enlai was formally the general political commissar. The following day, in the name of the Central Revolutionary Military Council, Zhu De, Zhou Enlai, and Wang Jiaxiang clarified the situation. Only battle-ready units would come under the direct purview of the Front Command, while noncombatants would be assigned to the operational leadership of the newly established Field Command.²⁴

Finally, Mao had actually recaptured the positions he had lost in Ningdu in October 1932. Although he did not formally become general political commissar again, most of the power in the army was in his hands as front political commissar. Standing on the summit, he had to be circumspect, as those who remained below might be jealous. Grasping this, Mao consulted with Luo Fu about appointing another, military, troika to take charge of army matters. He proposed that Zhou Enlai be appointed as chairman, with himself and Wang Jiaxiang as the other members.²⁵ Notwithstanding Zhou Enlai's nominal leadership, Mao's was the decisive voice in this group. He commanded the army, but both Zhou's and Wang's vanity was assuaged. Both of them could prove useful to him.

Meanwhile, the goal of the Long March gradually came into focus, namely, to unite with Zhang Guotao's forces in northwestern Sichuan. Mao was very excited. In late February or early March, he composed new verses.

忆秦娥·娄山关

West wind fierce,

西风烈，

immense sky, wild geese honking,

长空雁叫霜晨月。

frosty morning moon.

Frosty morning moon.

霜晨月，

Horses hooves clanging,

马蹄声碎，

bugles sobbing.

喇叭声咽。

Tough pass,

雄关漫道真如铁，

long trail, like iron.

Yet with strong steps

而今迈步从头越。

we climbed that peak.

Climbed that peak:

从头越，

green mountains like oceans,

苍山如海，

setting sun like blood.²⁶

残阳如血。

His army marched forward at a rapid pace, some twenty-five to thirty miles per day, but their goal was still distant. Zunyi, ruined and deserted, had long since been left behind. Prior to the departure of the Red Army, in the words of an eyewitness, “[t]he city presented a desolate sight.” The once-flourishing commercial center lay in ruins.²⁷ But Mao was not thinking of the inhabitants of this poor town. What counted was that his army had rested there and replenished its supplies.

Yet officers and men continued to suffer enormous difficulties. There was a shortage of clothing and military supplies. Otto Braun recalled that “marching was done at night because the Kuomintang [Guomindang] air force flew incessant sorties during the day, bombing and strafing us.” In one such attack Zizhen was badly wounded. The shrapnel that remained in her body tormented her. (Later, when Zizhen was X-rayed, seventeen pieces of shrapnel were found in her body.)²⁸ She had to make the rest of the journey by stretcher.

“The advance, flank, and rear guards endured dozens of attacks, occasionally on all sides at once,” wrote Braun.

The situation worsened when we crossed the jagged mountains on the Kweichow [Guizhou]-Yunnan border. The narrow path led up and down sheer cliffs. Many horses fell and broke their legs; only the mules kept their footing. Rations were becoming an ever more critical problem as we advanced into Yunnan. There was hardly anything to eat in the mountains. Soldiers sliced flesh from dead horses until nothing but the skeletons remained. Even in the plains few vegetables and little rice were found …… One can imagine then what it was like in the Army as a whole. The number of deaths, more from disease and exhaustion than battle wounds, increased daily. Although several thousand volunteers had been enlisted since the beginning of the year, the ranks had visibly dwindled.²⁹

Of the 86,000 men who had begun the Long March in the Central Soviet Area, barely 20,000 survived by the time they reached Sichuan.

But these survivors continued to plod forward. In early May they traversed the broad and stormy Jinsha River, as the Yangzi River was called in that place. A month later, passing along the border with Sikang (Tibet), they traversed another mighty mountain stream, the Dadu River. This crossing was particularly difficult. A narrow chain suspension bridge, constructed in the early eighteenth century, linked the northern and southern banks of the seething river, which was squeezed between the mountains. When the CCP troops approached, enemy soldiers removed the plank roadway halfway across, and when the communists started to cross, Guomindang aviation began to bomb them mercilessly. Nevertheless, the Red Army fighters managed to get to the other side.

Afterward their route passed through an uninhabited and trackless mountain wilderness. The Red Army troops were shod in light slippers or straw sandals, and every day it got colder and colder. Only by traversing these mountains could they emerge onto the northwest Sichuan plateau. “Rivers in full spate had to be forded, dense virgin forests and treacherous moors crossed, mountain passes four to five thousand metres high surmounted,” Braun recalled. “More and more, our route was lined with the bodies of the slain, frozen or simply exhausted. All of us were unbelievably lice-ridden. Bleeding dysentery was rampant; the first cases of typhus appeared.”³⁰

Finally, in mid-June, units of the Central Red Army approached one more narrow chain bridge with wooden planking across a small mountain stream, the Fori River, in Maogong County in western Sichuan. Here the long-awaited linkup with the advance guard of Zhang Guotao's army took place. Zhang himself and his staff were in neighboring Maoxian, two days distant. Informed of the joyful reunion, he hurried to meet them. On June 25, Mao and Zhang finally embraced each other. That same night a dinner party was held. No one talked about the Long March or the Zunyi Conference or the adventures of the Fourth Front Army. “Mao Tse-tung [Mao Zedong], a Hunanese, who was fond of chili, made chili-eating the topic of merry conversation, discoursing at length on the theme that chili-eaters were revolutionaries. He was refuted by Ch'in Pang-hsien [Bo Gu], a native of Kiangsu [Jiangsu] Province, who did not eat chili. Such talk was fun and helped create an atmosphere of light-heartedness.”³¹ It seemed that the Long March was over, but major trials still lay ahead.

Zhang Guotao, the thirty-eight-year-old veteran of the communist movement, craved absolute power and was averse to compromise. Tall, with high cheekbones and a prominent jaw that jutted slightly forward, he looked pugnacious. He had an explosive temperament and during his long tenure in the CCP he had been in opposition more than once—first vis-à-vis Maring, then Lominadze, and then Qu Qiubai. During the high tide of the struggle against Trotskyism, some people in the ECCI tried to accuse him of links to the Trotskyite underground, but nothing came of their efforts.³² Overall he was well thought of in the Comintern, and although he was sometimes picked on, this was mostly out of the Bolshevik duty to be eternally suspicious of everyone. He was considered loyal and in November 1927, three years before the “purge,” he was even awarded the Soviet Order of the Fighting Red Banner as a “brave warrior of the Chinese Revolution.” Nevertheless, former KUTK students Luo Fu, Bo Gu, Wang Jiaxiang, and Kai Feng, assuming that there was no smoke without fire, were suspicious of Zhang Guotao, viewing him as an “old opportunist” and a “covert Trotskyite.” He, in turn, as one of the founders of the party, viewed Mif's upstarts with scarcely concealed contempt.

Therefore, the outpouring of “joy” upon meeting could fool no one. A new conflict in the leadership was inevitable and from it only Mao could emerge the winner. The “Moscow students” who wanted to squeeze out Zhang Guotao would have to rally around him. Only Mao, with his ability to weave intrigues and to maneuver in what seemed to be hopeless situations, could guarantee a favorable balance of forces from their perspective.

Mao himself was wary of Zhang. Although for now Zhang did not dispute the decisions taken at Zunyi intended to enhance Mao's authority, Mao anticipated such a challenge. He understood that Zhang considered himself the “master of the situation.” He had seven or eight times as many troops as those in the Central Red Army. His soldiers were better armed, better fed, better outfitted, and better shod. They had not lost their fighting spirit, and Zhang enjoyed undisputed authority among the commanders and political commissars of his army. There was no comparison between his troops and the exhausted and ragged units of the Central Army, which had almost completely lost their fighting ability. Moreover, of the ten thousand that had managed to get to Maogong, two thousand were noncombatants.³³

Under these circumstances the spirit of “spontaneous friendship” quickly dissipated. Zhang began to demand power. In July his troops strengthened the claims of their leader by provoking a series of military clashes with Mao's detachments.³⁴ Mao and the other CCP leaders had to back off. In mid-July, Luo Fu was prepared to hand over the position of general secretary to Zhang, but Zhang preferred the more important position at the time, general political commissar of the united Red Army, which was soon reorganized into nine corps. (Four of these were assigned to the First Front Army and five to the Fourth Front Army.) Zhou stepped down and Mao relinquished the post of front political commissar. Control of the army passed to Zhang Guotao. His commanders demanded that Zhang also be given the post of chairman of the Central Revolutionary Military Council. Zhang graciously retained Zhu De in that position, but power in the CRMC was now concentrated in Zhang's hands.³⁵

Meanwhile, the Long March continued. The united army moved north to the juncture of Sichuan, Gansu, and Shaanxi, where the Politburo had decided to establish a new Soviet area. It was impossible to remain in western Sichuan, largely because the local tribes detested the communists who had robbed them. These were wild and dangerous places that suffered from utter deprivation. The Red Army needed provisions. Therefore, as one of the participants wrote, “for better or worse, we were forced to take every crumb we found and continuously send requisition parties into the mountains to hunt stray livestock.”³⁶ This could not go on for long. Aggressive mountaineers increasingly attacked the Red Army soldiers who had brought them nothing but sorrow.

Just then Mao and Luo Fu decided to strike back at Zhang Guotao. Several days after Zhou Enlai had yielded the post of general political commissar to Zhang, around July 20 the march halted, and the Politburo gathered for a crucial meeting. In a calm voice, Luo Fu asked Zhang Guotao to give an account of the work he had accomplished since the time he had left Shanghai for the soviet region on the Hubei-Henan-Anhui border in April 1931. (Zhang, facing attacks from Chiang Kai-shek, had been forced to evacuate this region in October 1932.) After Zhang's report, Mao unleashed a sharp attack against him, accusing him of committing serious errors in surrendering the old base area. Zhang rejected all the accusations and the conference ended inconclusively. But the new intraparty conflict had now sharpened. Two weeks later, Luo Fu accused Zhang Guotao of having abandoned his new base in northern Sichuan. At this Zhang finally exploded: “And how is it that you, who lost the entire Central Soviet Area, consider your line correct?”³⁷ He now grasped that Mao and Luo Fu were purposely exacerbating the conflict, and he decided to defer till a more auspicious time any explanation.

For now he suggested dividing the army into two columns and advancing into southern Gansu. One column would proceed along the left flank of the swamp that lay before them and the other along the right. There, in Gansu, about ninety miles from the border with Sichuan, they would reunite. Around August 10, the left column, headed by Zhang Guotao and Zhu De, set off in the lead. The right column, including Mao and most of the Politburo members, waited. Zhou Enlai had contracted malaria in July and was in very bad shape. The doctors did all they could, but still it took several days for the crisis to pass.

Finally, at the end of August, the right column set out. Before them stretched an endless, surprisingly beautiful green steppe, but this beauty concealed mortal danger. Otto Braun recalled:

A deceptive green cover hid a black viscous swamp, which sucked in anyone who broke through the thin crust or strayed from the narrow path. I myself witnessed the wretched death of a mule in this fashion. We drove native cattle or horses before us which instinctively found the least dangerous way. Grey clouds almost always hung just over the ground. Cold rain fell several times a day, at night it turned to wet snow or sleet. There was not a dwelling, tree, or shrub as far as the eye could see. We slept in squatting positions on the small hills which rose over the moor. Thin blankets and large straw hats, oil-paper umbrellas or, in some cases, stolen capes, were our only protection. Some did not awaken in the morning, victims of cold and exhaustion …… Our sole nourishment came from the grain kernels we had hoarded or, as a rare and special treat, a morsel of stone-hard dried meat. The swamp water was not fit to drink. Still it was drunk, for there was no wood to purify it by boiling. Outbreaks of bloody dysentery and typhus, which had subsided somewhat in Sikang, again won the upper hand …… We were fortunate that the enemy could attack us neither from the air nor on land.³⁸

This most difficult crossing took several days. When the utterly exhausted fighters finally stepped onto terra firma, an order arrived from Zhang Guotao, Zhu De, and their chief of staff, Liu Bocheng, to turn back! Their column had gotten stuck in the swamp and was unable to cross one of the mountain streams that was flooding across their path; therefore, Zhang, Zhu, and Liu decided to head back south, and they demanded that Mao's troops do the same. But this was not to be. On September 8, they received a reply from Zhou Enlai, Luo Fu, Mao Zedong, and several other commanders and commissars of the right column, saying “we sincerely hope that you, our elder brothers, will think closely and carefully, and firmly resolve to …… change your course and move northward.”³⁹ In other words, the Politburo informed Zhang that it did not intend to bow to his orders.

Then Zhang Guotao took a fatal step. He sent a secret telegram to his former fellow officers in the Fourth Front Army, who were now in command positions in the right column, requesting that they “initiate a struggle” against the Politburo.⁴⁰ Mao learned of this telegram at once, however, and summoned an emergency meeting of the Standing Committee. They decided to continue the march north to Gansu, after which they issued an “Appeal to All Comrades” in which Mao, Luo Fu, Zhou Enlai, Bo Gu, and Wang Jiaxiang, speaking in the name of the Central Committee, called upon the officers and men of both the right and left columns not to obey any orders to move south, but to march only north in order “to establish a new Soviet Area in Shaanxi-Gansu-Sichuan.” Neither side wanted to yield. Enraged, Zhang Guotao turned south while Mao's column entered southern Gansu. The split in the Red Army and in the leadership of the CCP had become a fact.

In mid-September, on the Gansu border, the troops of the right column were reorganized into the so-called Shaanxi-Gansu Brigade, numbering some six thousand men, with Peng Dehuai their commander and Lin Biao his deputy. Mao served as political commissar. A new objective was now defined for the march: to advance not into northeastern Gansu, but farther, to the Soviet border in order to receive essential assistance. Mao asserted that “Zhang Guotao has gone south, thus causing rather heavy losses to the Chinese revolution. Nevertheless, we are definitely not going to be downhearted, but are moving forward in a big way …… Northern Shaanxi and northwestern Gansu are the places where we should go.”⁴¹

Thus far there had been no link with Moscow; therefore, on September 20 it was decided to dispatch two party representatives to distant Xinjiang to try to establish a link with the ECCI and to inform the Comintern of the upheavals that had occurred during the Long March. Mao's brother Zemin, who was in the transport column, was chosen as one of these emissaries.⁴²

Soon, however, the plans changed sharply and the journey to Xinjiang was put on hold. Mao and his comrades learned to their surprise that a rather substantial soviet area existed in northern Shaanxi, close to the northeast border of Gansu, and that Red Army detachments under the command of a communist named Liu Zhidan were active there.⁴³ It was no more than 250 miles to this base.

This news was a gift of fate. Mao calculated that the entire Long March could now be presented as an action planned in advance and aimed at bringing the communist bases into areas that were potentially facing the threat of Japanese invasion. By the fall of 1935, the Japanese had greatly increased their pressure on north China. Following their occupation of Manchuria, the Japanese Army had seized Rehe, the province south of Manchuria, and two years later they moved into eastern Hebei. The Imperial Army approached within striking distance of Beiping (Beijing) and Tianjin, another large city in north China. The Japanese plan was perfectly clear: to annex all of north China and convert it into a purportedly “independent” state, as the Japanese had already done in Manchuria. By this time the upsurge of anti-Japanese feeling in China was greater than ever before. By skillfully playing on this sentiment, Mao could kill two birds with one stone. The “Anti-Japanese March” to north China would enable him not only to strengthen the communists' position in their struggle for power against the “corrupt” Nanjing government, but also to crush Zhang Guotao once and for all. After all, the “splitter” had not wanted to go north.

At a leadership conference of the Shaanxi-Gansu Brigade on September 22, Mao declared, “We intended to march north, but Zhang Guotao wanted to go south …… The Japanese imperialists were invading China, and we were going north to resist Japanese invasion. We would first go to northern Shaanxi, the home of the Red Army under Liu Zhidan.”⁴⁴

This final objective was reached in a month. In mid-October, Mao's troops crossed the border of the north Shaanxi soviet area and entered the village of Wuqizhen, located in a narrow mountain valley. From the local residents they learned that the Red headquarters was located in the district capital Baoan, fifty miles to the east. A detachment was sent out to contact Liu Zhidan.⁴⁵ Meanwhile, a meeting of the Politburo was convened on October 22 at which Mao announced that the Long March was over.

Exactly a year had passed since eighty-six thousand officers and men of the Red Army had left the Central Soviet Area. They had traversed eleven provinces, covered more than six thousand miles, crossed over five mountain ranges, forced their way across twenty-four large rivers, and passed through dangerous swamps. The price paid for this success was colossal. No more than five thousand persons made it all the way to northern Shaanxi.

Still, this was a truly heroic “Iron Stream.” Proud of what had been accomplished, Mao expressed his sense of triumph:

The Red Army does not fear

红军不怕远征难，万水千山只等闲。

the Long March toughness.

Thousands of rivers, hundreds of mountains, easy.

The Five Ridges

五岭逶迤腾细浪，乌蒙磅礴走泥丸。

merely little ripples.

Immense Wu Meng [Wumeng]ⁿ³⁹ Mountain—

七律·长征

merely a mound of earth.

金沙水拍云崖暖，大渡桥横铁索寒。

Warm are the cloudy cliffs

beaten by Gold Sand River.

Cold are the iron chains

更喜岷山千里雪，三军过后尽开颜。

bridging Tatu [Dadu] River.

Joy over Min Mountain,ⁿ⁴⁰

thousand miles of snow:

when the army crossed,

every face smiled.⁴⁶

¹ Braun, A Comintern Agent in China 1932–1939, 83.

² See Pang, Mao Zedong nianpu, 1893–1949 (Chronological Biography of Mao Zedong, 1893–1949), vol. 1, 435–36; Braun, A Comintern Agent in China 1932–1939, 81–82; Li, Huiyi yu yanjiu (Reminiscences and Studies), vol. 1, 344–45; A. A. Martynov et al., eds., Velikii pokhod 1-go fronta Kitaiskoi raboche-krest'ianskoi krasnoi armii: Vospominaniia (The Long March of the First Front Chinese Worker-Peasant Red Army: Reminiscences), trans. A. A. Klyshko et al. (Moscow: Izd-vo inostrannoi literatury, 1959), 43.

³ See “Dokladnaia zapiska o provalakh i provokatsiiakh v tsentral'nykh organizatsiiakh KP Kitaia v Shanghae za poslednie tri goda i o dele ‘Osobogo otdela' ” (Report on the Failures and Provocations Within the Central Organizations of the CP of China in Shanghai over the Past Three Years and on the Matter of the “Special Department”), 30–32.

⁴ Braun, A Comintern Agent in China 1932–1939, 90.

⁵ See Erbaugh, “The Secret History of the Hakkas,” 937–68.

⁶ See Pantsov and Levine, Chinese Comintern Activists: An Analytic Biographic Dictionary (manuscript), 533–35; Snow (Wales), Inside Red China, 227–29.

⁷ Braun, A Comintern Agent in China 1932–1939, 71; see also Zunyi huiyi wenxian (Documents of the Zunyi Conference) (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1985), 37.

⁸ See Jin, Mao Zedong zhuan (1893–1949) (Biography of Mao Zedong [1893–1949]), 342–43; Pang, Mao Zedong nianpu, 1893–1949 (Chronological Biography of Mao Zedong, 1893–1949), vol. 1, 434–35.

⁹ Braun, A Comintern Agent in China 1932–1939, 98.

¹⁰ Nie, Inside the Red Star, 210; See also Zunyi huiyi wenxian (Documents of the Zunyi Conference), 41, 111–14.

¹¹ See Nie, Inside the Red Star, 211–12.

¹² Quoted from ibid., 210.

¹³ See Braun, A Comintern Agent in China 1932–1939, 98–103; Zunyi huiyi wenxian (Documents of the Zunyi Conference), 116–17; Jin, Mao Zedong zhuan (1893–1949) (Biography of Mao Zedong [1893–1949]), 353–54; Yang Shangkun, Yang Shangkun huiyilu (The Memoirs of Yang Shangkun) (Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe, 2001), 117–21.

¹⁴ “Pis'mo Li Tina [Lin Biao] v Otdel kadrov IKKI i IKK ot 29 ianvaria 1940 g.” (Letter from Li Ting [Lin Biao] to the Department of Personnel of the ECCI and the ICC, January 29, 1940), RGASPI, collection 495, inventory 225, file 53, vol. 1, sheet 180.

¹⁵ Jin, Mao Zedong zhuan (1893–1949) (Biography of Mao Zedong [1893–1949]), 354; see also Nie, Inside the Red Star, 211.

¹⁶ See Zunyi huiyi wenxian (Documents of the Zunyi Conference), 117.

¹⁷ Braun, A Comintern Agent in China 1932–1939, 104.

¹⁸ See Zhang Wentian, Zhang Wentian xuanji (Selected Works of Zhang Wentian) (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1985), 37–59.

¹⁹ Zunyi huiyi wenxian (Documents of the Zunyi Conference), 42–43, 132–36.

²⁰ Quoted from Li, Moi otets Mao Tszedun (My Father Mao Zedong), 171.

²¹ Quoted from Kong Dongmei, Mao Zedong, He Zizhen fufu: Wei geming tongshi wu ge zinü (A Couple Mao Zedong and He Zizhen: They Painfully Sacrificed Five Sons and Daughters for the Revolution), Jiefang ribao (Liberation daily), March 7, 2005.

²² See ibid.

²³ See Zunyi huiyi wenxian (Documents of the Zunyi Conference), 134.

²⁴ Quoted from Zhou Enlai nianpu (1898–1949) (Chronological Biography of Zhou Enlai [1898–1949]), 280.

²⁵ See Zunyi huiyi wenxian (Documents of the Zunyi Conference), 134–35; Jin, Mao Zedong zhuan (1893–1949) (Biography of Mao Zedong [1893–1949]), 361.

²⁶ Mao, Poems of Mao Tse-tung, 63.

²⁷ Braun, A Comintern Agent in China 1932–1939, 111.

²⁸ See Li, Moi otets Mao Tszedun (My Father Mao Zedong), 173.

²⁹ Braun, A Comintern Agent in China 1932–1939, 113–14.

³⁰ Ibid., 120.

³¹ Chang, The Rise of the Chinese Communist Party, vol. 2, 378.

³² See Lichnoe delo Liu Tina (Personal File of Liu Ting), RGASPI, collection 495, inventory 225, file 3078, n.p.

³³ See Schram, Mao's Road to Power, vol. 5, xlii; Braun, A Comintern Agent in China 1932–1939, 123; A. S. Titov, Iz istorii bor'by i raskola v rukovodstve KPK 1935–1936 gg. (From the History of Struggle and Split in the Leadership of the CCP, 1935–1936) (Moscow: Nauka, 1979), 39–40.

³⁴ See K. O. Wagner [Otto Braun], “Spravka o Chzhan Gotao i sobytiiakh 1935–1936 gg.” (Information About Zhang Guotao and the Events of 1935–1936), RGASPI, collection 495, inventory 4, file 298, sheet 75; Braun, A Comintern Agent in China 1932–1939, 125–26.

³⁵ See Pang, Mao Zedong nianpu, 1893–1949 (Chronological Biography of Mao Zedong, 1893–1949), vol. 1, 462–63.

³⁶ Braun, A Comintern Agent in China 1932–1939, 126.

³⁷ Pang, Mao Zedong nianpu, 1893–1949 (Chronological Biography of Mao Zedong, 1893–1949), vol. 1, 463–66; Schram, Mao's Road to Power, vol. 5, xliv.

³⁸ Braun, A Comintern Agent in China 1932–1939, 136–37.

³⁹ Schram, Mao's Road to Power, vol. 5, 24.

⁴⁰ See Pang, Mao Zedong nianpu, 1893–1949 (Chronological Biography of Mao Zedong, 1893–1949), vol. 1, 471; Wagner, “Spravka o Chzhan Gotao i sobytiiakh 1935–1936 gg.” (Information About Zhang Guotao and the Events of 1935–1936), 77.

⁴¹ Schram, Mao's Road to Power, vol. 5, xlvii.

⁴² See Pang, Mao Zedong nianpu, 1893–1949 (Chronological Biography of Mao Zedong, 1893–1949), vol. 1, 475–76.

⁴³ Chang and Halliday write that “Mao and the core leaders had known about this base before the Long March,” but they cite no evidence for this statement. At the same time, they assert that the entire march of the communists to northern Shaanxi was planned by Chiang Kai-shek. Chang and Halliday, Mao, 140, 171.

⁴⁴ Quoted from Nie, Inside the Red Star, 248.

⁴⁵ See Schram, Mao's Road to Power, vol. 5, 36; Pang, Mao Zedong nianpu, 1893–1949, (Chronological Biography of Mao Zedong, 1893–1949), vol. 1, 482.

⁴⁶ Mao, Poems of Mao Tse-tung, 70.

ⁿ³⁸ This was Dong Biwu, secretary of the Control Commission and deputy rector of the Higher Party School. In the past, he had stood up for He Zizhen’s sister, He Yi.

ⁿ³⁹ The Wumeng Mountains straddle Guizhou and Yunnan.

ⁿ⁴⁰ The Min Mountains range along the Sichuan-Qinghai-Gansu border.