Chapter 40 Grasp the future (2)

At each stage of the Long March, the main problem was to escape the Kuomintang encirclement and survive down.What the Long Marchers had to do every day were four closely linked tasks: get rid of the desperate situation of being surrounded on three sides in Jiangxi; connect with one or more other Soviet regimes far to the west; rebuild Jiangxi in other parts of China Such a base area, and represent the whole of China to resist Japan in this new base area. The leaders of the Communist Party were not divided only on the first task ahead.In fact, splits within the party were so corrosive that the Long March should have had a fifth task—impossible but crucial—to establish a new party leadership.The Long March distinguished the mature Communist from the childlike Bolshevik.

Mao's First Front Army had 30,000 officers and soldiers, accounting for a quarter of the participants in the Long March.The first big battle they fought was on the banks of the Xiangjiang River, the river that Mao had dreamed of when he was a boy.The campaign made the political struggle within the party almost clear. Chiang Kai-shek accurately judged that the Red Army would flee to the northwest.In the face of Chiang's powerful and powerful military machine, the Communist Party lost 50,000 people.In excruciating pain, the wounded bit their own clothes to stifle their uncontrollable cries.

．The Kuomintang wiped out nearly half of the Red Army.Faced with such a huge price, Mao decided to launch a new challenge to the leadership of Bo Gu and Otto Braun. The harsh reality was that the Red Army could not join up with Helong's Soviet area in northern Hunan as originally planned, because Chiang had deployed six times the Red Army's strength to wait for them.In this situation, Mao decided to change the plan and launched a fierce attack on 28 Bolsheviks at the same time. The Red Army should turn around and head southwest into Guizhou, a province with weaker enemy forces, and then make contact with the Communist forces in northern Sichuan.This view of Mao prevailed, and Otto Braun's plan to advance north fell through.

At the same time, at the December 1934 meeting, Mao boldly accused two strategic mistakes that led to the Xiangjiang fiasco.The route set by Bogu and Braun was a straight line, which allowed Chiang Kai-shek to wait for the arrival of the Red Army. At the same time, Mao complained that the communists did not use the weapon of feint attack, which should be used reasonably in the march, and did not pay attention to the mood of the people and did not realize the complexity of the terrain. Mao also believed that the Red Army was overburdened, with troops traveling from city to city with all the equipment of the government.Mules and donkeys moved slowly, laden with heavy office equipment, printing presses, and files.

Mao’s struggle with the 28 Bolsheviks on this issue touched on the fundamental question: Will the CCP continue to be a floating provisional government (the 28 Bolsheviks’ point of view)? Lay the foundation, and when the time is right, gradually seize the national power (Mao's point of view)? One detail can fully explain the style of the 28 Bolsheviks: when the Long March began, the Red Army actually did not have an accurate map.Bogut and Braun insisted on bringing all the office supplies and documents, but they just didn’t think of bringing the most important things for the march (after a young Swiss missionary was arrested, he was accused of helping the Kuomintang officers. But after he promised to help the Red Army command After reading a map of Jiangxi Province in French, the officials reduced his punishment ④).

The 28 Bolsheviks did not have any military experience, while Mao and Zhu had extensive experience in almost a decade of war.Bogu hadn't seen a war when he became leader of the Communist Party in 1932, and he was only 26 when the Long March began.Braun—even though he was the military adviser sent by the Comintern to the CCP—had no military training or fought in a single campaign.Moreover, Braun does not speak Chinese at all. About 54% of the long marchers are young people under the age of 24, compared with them, the 42-year-old Mao is older.Only 4% of them are over 40 years old, and there are even 11-12-year-old teenagers who serve as buglers, servants, water deliverymen, messengers, or just as gods of good fortune.Dr. Fu Lianzhang declared that, according to his judgment, among these innocent, vigorous, peasant-born Long Marchers, 90% had never had sex.

The 28 Bolsheviks were to blame for the initial defeat, and Mao was not to blame for it.In fact, Mao's influence within the party was rising rapidly.He could not have won the leadership overnight, but his prestige steadily increased in the weeks following the Xiangjiang campaign. He began to formulate policy in his own way.Documents were burned, and office equipment was thrown into deep mountains and valleys; surplus guns and ammunition were given to local reliable farmers;