TESTING GROUND OF

CHINESE COMMUNISM

Political Change

For more primary source information on Marxism, see the UW-hosted “Eserver” web site,

"Marx and Engels’s Writings " (http://eserver.org/marx/)

Karl Marx (1818-83) & Friedrich Engels (1820-95)

Marxism's “Historical Materialism” vs. Hegel’s “Dialectical Idealism”

“Dictatorship of the Proletariat”

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1870-1924): Russian Communist theoretician and political organizer.

Li Dazhao (1888-1927): chief librarian at Beijing University, cofounder of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and teacher of Mao Zedong.

Chen Duxiu (1879-1942): New Cultural Movement social critic and co-founder of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1920. Chen was expelled from the Communist Party in 1929.

Mao Zedong (1893-1976): Marxist theorist, guerilla tactician, and foremost CCP leader after 1949 founding of the PRC until his own death.

Autumn Harvest Uprising (September 1927): failed but still pivotal uprising led by Mao that caused Mao to develop a new type of revolutionary warfare in the countryside in which the Red Army (without Comintern leadership), rather than unarmed peasants, would play the central role. For Mao's take on rural remobilization, see his earlier treatise " Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan, March 1927"at http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1927mao.html

Jiangxi Soviet (1928-34): the experimental Communist government established by Mao in the southwestern mountain region. The soviet was abandoned when the CCP set out on the Long March.

Long March (October 1934-October 1935): the long 6,000-mile retreat that would eventually become a “trial by fire” for the CCP leadership, marking the rise of Mao..

Conference at Zunyi, Guizhou (January 5, 1935): political meeting at which Mao is recognized as leader of the Chinese Communist Movement.