Long March Ends: Mao Rises From Communist Retreat
The Red Army's battered remnants arrived in Shaanxi province in October 1935 after walking roughly 9,000 kilometers from their base in Jiangxi. Of the 86,000 who started the Long March a year earlier, perhaps 7,000 to 8,000 survived. The march had been a catastrophic military retreat, but Mao Zedong transformed it into a founding myth. At the Zunyi Conference in January 1935, Mao took effective control of the party by blaming previous leaders for the defeat that forced the march. The survivors became an elite cadre bound by shared suffering and absolute loyalty. Mao spent the next decade in Yan'an building a guerrilla army, forming a United Front with the Nationalists against Japan, and preparing for the civil war that would resume after World War II ended. He won that war in 1949.
October 16, 1934
92 years ago
Key Figures & Places
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