It was as a student in Changsha and Beijing that Mao became intrigued by the philosophies of Marx and Lenin and made friends of nascent revolutionaries like himself who saw socialism as an answer to China's problems. By Mao was principal of a grammar school in Changsha. In his spare time he organized students, merchants and workers to oppose Japan's takeover of Germany's concession in Shandong Province, a condition of the Treaty of Versailles following World War I.
The provision was an insult to Chinese sovereignty and helped crystallize anti-imperialist sentiments and thus support for both the socialist and republican causes. The Comintern had promised Sun that if he would ally with the Communists, the Soviet Union would give him military advisers and arms to build a viable army that could reunify the country by overthrowing the warlords, who had seized upon the chaos and taken control of large areas.
In Mao moved to Shanghai with his wife and young sons as a Kuomintang executive. Within a year he was back in Hunan organizing peasant protests, but when he angered the military governor, he fled to Canton, Sun Yat-sen's headquarters. In March Sun Yat-sen died unexpectedly and the Kuomintang was taken over by Chiang Kai-shek, who solidified his position by marrying Sun's sister-in-law, Soong Mei-ling.
One of Chiang's first moves was to expel Communists from leadership posts; by early the tenuous alliance was broken, and the Communists were retreating to the countryside, where there was growing peasant unrest and thus a potential base of support. In October Mao led a small group of Hunan peasants to the mountains of Jiangxi Province, where he and other party members created a soviet-style government and began to build a guerrilla army.
They gained peasant support in part by redistributing land. It was in Jiangxi the fledgling Red Army developed the tactics that would defeat the Nationalists 22 years later -- establish a peasant base of support in the countryside, encircle the cities and choke off the Nationalist garrisons one by one.
In three years the Jiangxi soviet controlled several million people in the countryside, and the Red Army had grown to , men. It took Chiang's troops three years to defeat the warlords and reunify the country.
Then, in the early s, the Kuomintang launched several extermination campaigns against the Communists. It was during this period that the Kuomintang killed Mao's first wife and he married Ho Zizhen. For awhile the Red Army held its own, but in Chiang unleashed his best-trained units against the Jiangxi enclave, and the Communists were forced to flee.
So began the legendary Long March, a 6,mile fighting retreat from Jiangxi to the mountain town of Yan'an in remote northern Shaanxi Province. Only a tenth of the 80, guerrilla fighters who began the march survived. From this point forward Mao was the undisputed Chinese Communist leader, even through military setbacks and internal political purges.
Yan'an was the Communists' stronghold for the next decade. Some true believers cut caves into the cliffs around the town to make primitive living quarters. Following a visit, American journalist Edgar Snow described them as egalitarian social reformers living simply with peasants.
Throughout Mao's life the Chinese government promoted his image and that of his comrades at Yan'an as warm-hearted revolutionaries. Historians now believe Mao conducted brutal power struggles against his rivals during this period. Mao also had the time to write poetry, collect his thoughts and mold Marxist-Leninist theories to fit China's peasant masses -- a brand of socialism that would become known as Maoism. This "Thought of Mao Tse-tung" became required Communist reading.
Any deviation from Mao's line was branded as a personal defect, due to that individual's petty bourgeois background. Public confessions followed and potential party leaders were disgraced. While in Yan'an in Mao divorced his second wife and married Jiang Qing, a well-known movie actress.
Jiang would play a central role in the Cultural Revolution of the mids. His aggressive methods targeting Live TV. This Day In History. History Vault. Recommended for you. How the Troubles Began in Northern Ireland. Mao Zedong. Ping-Pong Diplomacy in China.
Cultural Revolution The Cultural Revolution was launched in China in by Communist leader Mao Zedong in order to reassert his authority over the Chinese government. The Communists and KMT were again temporarily allied during eight years of war with Japan , but shortly after the end of World War Two, civil war broke out between them. Chiang Kai-shek fled to the island of Taiwan.
Mao and other Communist leaders set out to reshape Chinese society. Industry came under state ownership and China's farmers began to be organised into collectives. All opposition was ruthlessly suppressed. The Chinese initially received significant help from the Soviet Union, but relations soon began to cool. In , in an attempt to introduce a more 'Chinese' form of communism, Mao launched the 'Great Leap Forward'. This aimed at mass mobilisation of labour to improve agricultural and industrial production.
The result, instead, was a massive decline in agricultural output, which, together with poor harvests, led to famine and the deaths of millions.
The policy was abandoned and Mao's position weakened.
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