In Our Time - The Long March

Episode Date: November 29, 2018

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss a foundation story for China as it was reshaped under Mao Zedong. In October 1934, around ninety thousand soldiers of the Red Army broke out of a siege in Jiangxi in the south east of the country, hoping to find a place to regroup and rebuild. They were joined by other armies, and this turned into a very long march to the west and then north, covering thousands of miles of harsh and hostile territory, marshes and mountains, pursued by forces of the ruling Kuomintang for a year. Mao Zedong was among the marchers and emerged at the head of them, and he ensured the officially approved history of the Long March would be an inspiration and education for decades to come.WithRana Mitter Professor of the History and Politics of Modern China and Fellow of St Cross College, University of OxfordSun Shuyun Historian, writer of 'The Long March' and film makerAndJulia Lovell Professor in Modern Chinese History and Literature at Birkbeck, University of LondonProducer: Simon Tillotson

BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. Thanks for downloading this episode of In Our Time. There's a reading list to go with it on our website, and you can get news about our programs if you follow us on Twitter at BBC In Our Time. I hope you enjoyed the programmes. Hello, in October 1934, around 80,000 soldiers of the Chinese Red Army broke out of a siege in the south-east of the country, hoping to find a place to regroup and rebuild.

This turned into the very long march, to the west, and then north for thousands of miles across harsh and hostile territory, marshes and mountains, pursued by forces of the ruling Kumintang for a year. Marzadong was among the marches and emerged at the head of them, and he ensured this long march would become a foundation story for communist China, some of it true, some of it propaganda. When we're to discuss the long march are Rana Mitter, professor of the history and politics of modern China

and fellow of St. Cross College University of Oxford, Sun Xiu Yan, historian, writer and filmmaker, and Julia Lovell, Professor in Modern Chinese History and Literature at Birkbeck University of London. Rana Mitter, how stable was China in the early 1930s? In the early 1930s, China was just about stabilized but on the edge of breaking up. It had been unified essentially in 1928 by the then leader of the Guamindang or Nationalist Party, Changkaishek, with a new capital city set up at Nanjing. But there were basically three things which threatened to undermine it.

The first was other warlords, different military leaders who didn't really accept that Shankajek should be the ruler and tried to undermine him through their own military force. Then there was the threat of invasion from Japan, which grew in the 1930s. And finally, and at the time, probably the smallest of those problems, but growing, was the insurgent Chinese Communist Party, which was out in the countryside of China. So it was a unified, recognised international government, but with a lot of problems.

When you're unified international recognised, it's unified, international recognises, but not all that recognised inside China. That's absolutely right. Essentially, it was unified through military force. Chiang Kai Shek had actually had an alliance with the then quite fledgling Chinese Communist Party and the Soviet Union than the 1920s. And this rather sort of unlikely partnership brought together a rather fitful unification, particularly of the eastern provinces of China, so around places like Shanghai, Nanjing, Beijing and so forth. But there were plenty of people in China, warlords and particularly.

particularly leaders of militarist governments, who after the fall of the last emperor in 1911, felt that essentially their military force should be used to put forward an alternative government. And so during all that time, there was always this sort of feeling of an alternative government bubbling up from under that might be essentially powered by a different military force.

And some of these warlords ran enormous provinces the size of kingdoms and ruled as kings. Yes, someone like, for instance, Zhang Xiu Liang, nicknamed the young Marshal, who actually was alive until, 2001, he had a very long life. He ruled Manchuria, the northeast of China, which is essentially the size of France and Germany combined, and he, of course, had his own army of many tens of thousands of men. So these are people who essentially ruled areas of China that were the size

of large European countries. And how big was the Communist Party, the Chinese Communist Party, in the beginning of the 30s? It had gone up and down in those years. So from only around a few tens of members in the early 1920s, it went up to several tens of thousands. It went up to several tens of thousands, maybe 50,000 or so, in the alliance with the Guamindang and with the Soviets. But then after Changkhechek basically launched a sort of internal coup in 1927 and massacred his former communist partners, the numbers went right down and were into the very small hundreds and thousands in the early 1930s. It was being threatened by the Nationalist Party, Guamundan.

Japan was about to come in, and Russia was trying to control it as far as I can make out. How did they try to do that? At this stage the common term, the international branch of the Soviet Communist Party, was essentially trying to make alliances all around the world, but China was really a prime target in that sense. And a lot of actually quite bad advice was being given by the Soviets to the Chinese communists, such as try and launch a revolution in the cities, when of course later on Mao Zedong would argue that in fact it was the countryside

where the revolution had to happen. But there was a lot of training. So, for instance, many of the young communists went to Moscow and studied there in the rather splendidly name University of the Toilers of the East, which was, you know, at least did what it said on the label. In addition, radio communications became part of the way in which orders were sent from Moscow, often to Shanghai,

and then passed on into the countryside. So there were different modes of communication, as well as Soviet advisors who came in person. Was there more than that? Was there physical, were the guns and supplies and that sort of thing? Yes, one of the things that the Soviet Union did do was to provide not just guns, weapons, but also military training. So one of the things that was crucial in bringing the Chinese Communist

Party from being a small sort of debating society about Marxism to the kind of force that eventually would take over China was Soviet military training. And people who had, of course, been blooded in the Russian Civil War and the Bolshevik Revolution before that came to China and helped to train the young men, mostly men in those cases, but not exclusively, such as Mao, such as Jo Nlai, who would later go on to become the founders of the 1949 communist revolution. Thank you. San Su Yun, what were the conditions in the communist-controlled area of Yangxi? It was really bad, and it couldn't be worse. Where was it exactly?

I think we talk about Jiangxi. This is area the size 250 square kilometer, the size of Edinburgh. This is the headquarters for Mao and the Heist armies when they were purged from the city, as Rana just mentioned, and it came to the countryside to organize the peasants. And this was, by all definition, a government, because it had all the functions of the government and controlled the areas, control the taxations. But the life of that base, this is the biggest, what we call Soviet, the red area, was the biggest. But life was really tough because when Jiang Keshik could deal with the warlords, Then it decided the Communist Party or the Red Armies were becoming a danger to it.

So from the 1930s, it launched very systematic campaigns, which culminated five campaigns, which culminated in 1933, the fifth biggest campaign with a half a million soldiers, with hundreds of planes, flyed by Canadian-American French pilots. And so it's a huge, huge attack on the red area. starting in 1933. But what was happening in that red area that made them seem so dangerous?

What were they doing? How are they getting on the communists? It was a tiny area, really. They had to live off the land or the land that was in front of them, not just land, but still they didn't take stores with them. I think you are right, because that's the crucible for the new China that is going to come in 1948. So there, the people, the land was distributed from the rich to the poor and where the people were organized and the power.

party establishes fundamental control just about every aspect of people's life. But the influence is getting bigger and bigger. So that's why the government decided to control it and attack it. And the attack was so ferocious in 1933 just before the Long March, because with the armies and with the blockade. So basically they build this huge house like the size of the studio, right? And blockhouses, right? Block houses, right?

And there are 14,000 of them. 14,000? Yes, just in the city, the size of Edinburgh, in the size of that. So there's a lot, a lot of control and a lot of attacks. How did the Red Army recruit inside that small area? I think this is something really, really difficult because the peasants supposed to be welcoming the Red Army. After all, they distribute land from the rich to them.

but I think it is getting very, very hard because after three years campaigns and after five campaigns in sustainable way, so the peasants really, every single village, I don't think it's a joke, but it's really bad. Every man, whether it's 15 or 50, or caught up to join the army. Mao did his own sort of investigation

in a village with 407 men, for example, 80% of them were already caught into their army. So let's develop this a bit, Julia, Lovell. How united or divided with the leaders, the Red Army leaders in Jiangxi? Broadly speaking, we can talk about two factions within the CCP Chinese Communist Party leadership in the 1930s. So on the one hand, you have men like Mao. He's an autodidact, farmer's son who's remade himself as a man of the army after the, the Guarmen Dang purge of 1927. He's a co-founder of the communist state in Jiangxi in 1928 and also of the

Red Army, which is the first independent force commanded by the Chinese Communist Party to protect this state in Jiangxi. And he's notable for advocating guerrilla mobile warfare rather than set-piece positional warfare. But there's also a more conventionally-educated. urban faction within the leadership. In the early 1930s, the communist leadership within the cities, especially within Shanghai collapses, mainly because of the growing strength of the nationalist state and the nationalist security state. And a result, several of the leaders based in Shanghai have to flee from Shanghai and take refuge in Jiangxi. Quite a few of them are younger than Mao, but they also have different educational and social backgrounds.

So they're urban intellectuals. They've been educated in China's universities. And some of them have studied in Moscow. So they've got a more conventional communist pedigree. And they're also taken seriously by the Soviet. So it's men like Bōgou, Zhang Wen Tian and Jo and Lai. Of course, there are some leaders from Shanghai who don't end up in Jiangxi, for example, a man called Zhang Gua Tau, who will end up being men.

Mao's main rival for power in the mid-1930s, he heads to central China to concentrate on building a base there. But in this area where they're being choked and where airplanes and people from different nationalities are pouring it to bomb them out of existence, they sense that there was a weakness, they were well-hire warlord, but can you describe exactly how they got out? Yes, indeed. So by April 1934, the leadership, which has really pushed Mao out of disson. decision-making. So the leadership is now dominated by what you might call a Moscow-educated faction or an urban faction. They've decided that this war against Zhang Kishik and his blockade is unwinnable. And they decide that in order to survive, the communist forces are going to need to break out of the Jiangxi state and find a state, found a state elsewhere. And the way

that the forces, there's about 80 to 90,000 of them. So the strongest of the country, communist forces within the Jiangxi state. They break out of the southwest corner of the blockade around Jiangxi, the weakest corner in October 1934. And the way that it is done is precisely due to the instability of China at the time that Rana described. So the warlord, the provincial military governor of the province, which shares a border with Zhangxi on the south. West Guangdong. He's no friend of the communists, but he hates Jankajek even more. He resents his ambitions to unify the country and to take away his own power. And so he decides to turn a blind eye while the communist forces break out in the southwest corner. And they get out.

Ranas, from what I've read, it's not so much a march as a running battle. Yes, in a sense, it's a little bit like Dunkirk in a sense. It's actually a very long retreat, that is later in mythology made an absolute turning point moment. But at the time, it didn't feel that way. What was that? Didn't they have a strategy when they broke out? Well, they're just getting out, or are they going somewhere as well? They did have a strategy, but it developed during the course of the Long March.

So the one thing that they realized was that they were going to have to get out of Jiangxi since the block house strategy that Shuiun and Julia described simply was proving too powerful in terms of letting them stay there. So they were going to make their way, actually not just in one march, but in fact there are several sections. there's a first, second and fourth army that were part of it. The third army, by the way, which existed was merged with the second. And the idea was that these different columns would head out

and, in a sense, find different ways to actually regroup themselves. At some point during that... Sorry to interrupt it. Where were they aiming for? Did they say, we'll meet you in X place a year in a year? So this strategy developed that they were going to make their way west within China past Sichuan and the Tibet borderlands. and find other areas where they could regroup.

Now, they knew that there was a small area up in the northwest where an alternative communist base had already been established and was growing, and therefore, for some of them, that was the idea that they were going to head in that direction. So these battles, did they show, as I read, did they show a flaw, disunity in the leadership, the Chinese leadership between, let's call it the Moscow men, the Moscow trained people, and Mao. They're different tactics, and did this, how did this affect this march, this running battles, these running battles.

The initial battles that were fought to actually make their way through the blockade were only partially successful. And that meant that through most of those first months of late-1934 and into 1935, although the actual tactic of getting large numbers of troops out, I mean, the starting number in the First Army was about 86,000 men, something like that, broadly successful. Very large numbers basically were lost during the course of the march, not necessarily in terms of being killed, but in terms of desertions, people running away and so forth.

So by the time you get to the beginning of 1935, there is this realization that the existing tactics aren't working out very well and that something else will have to be tried. Would you like to come in? Yeah, just to add to what, because we're concentrating on the military, but I think there's a fundamental, I think a fundamental mistake in the way that the government was wrong, the red area was wrong, because there was a red terror. Basically, when I was growing up, we were always told the Communist Party is our savior.

Then the peasants joined, flocked to the party. But what happened in the red area? Because the nationalist governments are bombing, and because there's a penetration of skies. So there's an internal, almost a paranormal, and a huge purge started by Mao, which killed 20,000 men. very, very capable men, soldiers, officers, just in one goal.

And later on, as the campaign intensified, the purge also became. This is long before Starly. What happened was they started target specific people who they suspected being the enemy of the people. This is before they broke out. Yeah, this is before they broke out. So what happened, they targeted the rich peasants, the farmers, the merchants and the traders. and in the end, they targeted 300,000 people who all became the enemy of the people.

And what happened in the Soviet at this time, there was less than 3 million people, and the 10% became the enemy from within, and there's no way they could sustain, so they had to leave. But in terms of the military tactics and why they didn't work, later histories, which were written obviously by people who were very much in favour of Mao,

tried to argue that Mao had sort of been a lone voice of a new tactic against the others. In fact, if you look at the data at the time, that isn't really the case. Yes, there are figures who were very much associated with the Moscow ideas, people like Zhang Wen Tian, who was very high up in the party. And of course, Otto Brown himself, the common turns man. But also Joe Enlai, who would go on to become the Prime Minister of China, was not a Moscow guy, but he also brought into the tactics that were being used at the time.

So in that sense, it was a collective effort and also a collective failure, which Joe and Lai himself actually basically confessed up to when there was a sort of recrimination in early 1935. Julia Lible, what sort of conditions did they meet? Let's start along the way. It was a year's March, and as I said in introduction, it was some extreme conditions. But when did they hit these extreme conditions

and how prepared were they for them? Hugely varied conditions that they encountered. Huge rivers to cross warlord forces encountered from time to time, and of course constant pursuit by Jankajic's own forces. As they, it's possible to imagine the route of the Long March as a huge reverse L shape. There's some zigzagging around within that shape. But they head first of all west and then north, ending up in the far north-west of the country in Shanshi province. and as they head north, that's where the physical conditions become increasingly extreme,

crossing high, snowy peaks on the border with Tibet, crossing the Tibetan plateau, possibly most punishing of all the barren and uninhabited boggy grasslands of Qinghai before they emerge out into northwest China proper. And what happened at Zunyi? in 1935 that might have changed things. Why do we recognise Junie is a changing point? Well, Zun Yi is a staging post in the long march. The communist armies that have left Jiangxi, including Mao.

They... How much reduced by then, by desertion and hunger and so on and so. Yes, so from a starting point of 80 to 90,000, down to around 30 or 40, 30, 40,000 by this stage. By this stage. Six weeks into the month. Six weeks into the march, yeah. So in early January, the remaining communist forces take Zunni,

which is a substantial town in Guajo, a province in southwest China, and it's the first opportunity that the rank and file have had to rest since the march began in October 1934. It also gives the party leadership an opportunity, to review experiences and strategy because as Xu Yun and Rana have described, the situation looks dire. They've lost so much of their strength. They've been defeated in, they've been, they've been defeated in Jiangxi. And it's at this point that Mao very canally mobilises his

own and others' resentments at the way the strategy has been managed to move against the leadership. So he launches an attack on the so-called sort of defensive strategy that men like Borgul and Otto Brown, the common-turn representative, are supposed to have recommended in Jiangxi. And Mao makes two arguments which really seem to stick. First of all, that Zhangxi was lost because of this falling back on a defensive strategy of confronting the Gormandang, rather than using the mobile guerrilla strategy that Mao himself had suggested. And he also argues that in the early stages of the Long March, communist forces had moved too slowly, enabling Jankajic to catch them up.

So there's a change of mood. And is it a complete change of leadership, Brian, then? No, it isn't. But it's one of the things that's worth noting because actually for a long time, if you read standard histories of the Long March, they would argue that this conference in January 1935 at Zunyi was the turning point. That's when Mao's where Mao's. long rise to leadership really began. But that's a retrospective view. At the time, Mao, for exactly the

reasons that Julius mentioned, giving this very sharp critique of military strategy, is promoted within the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party, but he's still one of a group of about 10 or 12. In fact, shortly after that, Bougou leaves the leadership and Jiang Wan Tian becomes the leader. So at the time, it didn't seem that this was the moment Meng Mao was rising up to the top. That was something that was seen later. But the military tactics that he put forward, were clearly important at that stage because, in a sense, by being sidelined before that, his fingers were not stained with the guilt of having been part of this failed strategy. And broadly, his military tactics were not confrontational, but guerrilla.

That's exactly right. He basically helped develop the idea that this tactic of working amongst the people, coming from behind the lines, surprising people when they were least expecting it, was the way to go. He wasn't, of course, alone in that. Major figures who would go on to become the conquerors of China in 1949, Pung De Huai, Lin Biao, and of course one of the founders of the Red Army, Zhudeu were very much involved. But Mao, as the supreme tactician, began to really refine his tactics. Sun Juan, what was the experience of women in these armies? Was it substantial?

For the first army, Mao's army, there was only 30 women in 86,000 people. So very few. Mao's wife and... Mao's wives. Top people's wives. Top people's wives. But in the fourth army, which is based in Sichuan, today's, Sichuan, and this is a huge amount of women, 3,000 women. I think partly because that was a heavily opium-dominated area, a man normally took opium and could even carry a rifle, let alone march. So it was these women who were on the long march.

But coming back to Julia's question, or your early question, about the conditions on the long march, I think we talked about the military again, but the condition on the long march was really beyond belief. When I retraced the communist long march for a whole year, and it was basically... You retraced it for a year, yeah. For a whole year on the journey. And it was basically where birds could not fly, because that high, where the river was so wide, you couldn't think how you can actually got it, especially the boats were burnt. The grassland, which is in western China and eastern...

Tibet stretches for month and month, and it's all death traps because you just walk in, and the army literally spent years in those areas, where the land was so poor. When I took the journey on the 70th anniversary of the Long March, you would think 70 years after Long March, the area was still so poor. Basically, when I got to one of the veterans' home, and the only thing she could give us, give me, is a glass of wood. water with a cuba sugar. And then when they did dishes, they only could use a little tiny

drop of oil in the whole pot. And that's how poor it was. And when the Red Army chose that route, because they knew nobody could really practically follow them. And even the warlords would not even dare to waste their resources to chase the communists. That's how they survived. Was there a common theme in the way the warlords reacted

to the Red Army passing through their children? territories, Julia? Not a common theme, but the role they played was decisive in the destinies of communist forces on the Long March. So as I alluded to in terms of the start of the Long March, sometimes warlords just let communist armies through. They followed the principle of my enemy's enemy is my friend. They felt that Jankajshik was the greater threat. Sometimes they tied Jiangkaishek up, so their conflicts with Jiangkaishek, meant that Zhang could not throw the full weight of his military force against the communists. But where warlord forces did stand and fight against the communists, the communist armies suffered terrible losses. So one example is the Battle of

Tuchung in Guajol. It takes place quite soon after Mao has been promoted to the military leadership. And there a warlord throws some of his best men at Mao's army. And Mao's army is cut to pieces. It's a clear defeat. So what does he do after having an army that's cut to pieces? What happens to a red army then? Well, at that point

he still, well, at that point he blames the defeat on poor intelligence and at that point he is following a rather erratic course zigzagging about but in order also to answer that question you've got to talk about factional struggles within the leadership. Yeah, but I'm also going to talk about factual struggles in what cut to pieces means.

I mean, how many pieces were left? Rana? There are still tens of thousands of troops who are available. And again, as we mentioned before, of course, you have several different armies actually taking different routes as part of the Longmarch. So the second army under Heur-Lung, which actually ends up amongst other things kidnapping a Swiss or German missionary as part of what they do is out there as a sort of safety valve to say that if one army gets cut, up, then others can be brought in. But in a sense, this whole sort of mix between the political and military is really the real story of the Long March.

It's not the inexable rise to power of Chairman Mao. Rather, it's the idea that these different men are desperately trying to find ways both to win and survive, but also to prove points against each other as to which is the best tactic to use. So where was Mao then, before I go to use? Well, where is he in all this? Has his tactical guile and the success of his persuasive success in becoming the man who was the strategist? Had that failed a big test here?

The Battle of Tucheng, which Julia just mentioned, was a big failure on his part. But because it wasn't as if any of the other leaders had done that much better, Borghu, Joen Lai, and Diet Otto Brown, the German Comintern advisor, he was still given leeway in terms of being able to pick up the pieces and start again. During the whole of that period of the early 19th,

you find a variety of different tactics that people are using to try and actually get to that end point of getting to North West China. But at that stage, one of the great dangers to Mao is Zhang Gua Tau, the leader of the fourth army, who essentially, at least in the short term, is much more successful. It's a bigger army, much bigger army. It's a bit well, partly because less of it has been cut to pieces at that stage. And that's why Zhang Gua Tau at one point in 135 becomes potentially a very big rival for Mao. Julia, you want to come back in. What's essential to bear in mind when considering the history of the Communist Party at this stage, it is very much a polycentric phenomenon. No single figure has risen clearly to supreme power.

So there is a lot still to play for in the power politics at the top of the party. I think the battle for two-tong were Mount Lost. I think that is the attack by the warlord. That was the exception on the long march. Because during the long march, I interviewed a wireless operator. it was really interesting because Sichuan is the biggest province even at the time

and the long march was inside that territory for a long time and the Jiang Keshik asked the local warlord to catch the Communist Party you know what he did because there are so many rivers he could easily send his army and catch up and then the wireless operator was following every single Jankas's instruction because these wireless operators were kept

from the Nationalist government and trained and protected by the Red Army. So they said, oh, the Red Army is still three days in front of us. We better wait and not get on their heel. So they let the Red Army go through and they said to Jiang Hecacacac, oh, they are too far. The boat was not enough. We couldn't get over. So this kind of purposeful, basically, a mission so that Jiangxat

would not use a good excuse to come onto their territory and to stay. So the warlord of Sichuan, who contributed so much to the Communist Party, that later he was made, after 1949, he was made a deputy governor and minister. That's the power of the warlord. So they shepherded the Red Army through and kept Kuman Tang out of it? Not only shepherding, because on the long march, in the poor territory, the supply was one of the biggest problems. They basically said, don't linger here, don't try to get food.

Here is the supply. Go and leave. And this is something which we don't really want to review too much because it reduced the heroism of the Red Army. The Rise in Mao's military reputation also comes from a bit of quite successful propaganda management as well because probably the single most famous battle in retrospect of the Long March took place in May 1935, which was at a place called the Lauding Bridge. And if you see Chinese movies made in later years, you can see this account of basically nationalist machine gunners firing at communist soldiers.

going across a bridge where half the planks are missing, while they sort of make their way to the other side. Now, historical investigators, including Shu here, have actually seen that the battle itself was much more of a skirmish. It did happen, and the communists who crossed the bridge and Mao was in charge of them was a genuinely brave attempt. But at the same time, far fewer soldiers were actually firing on them than, you know, the movie version might give the impression of.

But because Mao was there and because he was able to use that as an example of how his tactics were more successful than those of other commanders. In retrospect, it helped to burnish his legend as someone who really had the right military tactics. Do you have any idea what the morale was like of the march, marches, let's call them, at this point, six, seven, eight months in and what the morale was on so on? It fluctuated, partly because some of Mao's decisions at this point in the march look decidedly erratic and it's impossible to understand these decisions without taking note of power struggles within the leadership. So at that point there is talk about Mao's part of the army,

the part of the army that has exited from Zhang Xi in October 1934, joining up with Zhang Guatao's much better fed, better supplied, better disciplined force from Suquan in West China. But Mal for pragmatic, ruthless reasons, is keen to delay this encounter or avoid it altogether because the leadership is at present up for grabs, it's up for fighting over. And he knows that once he encounters Zhang Guatal, Zhang Guatal will be able to make a very, very strong case for his supreme leadership of the party because his forces are that much stronger. I think we are talking about the top level, but don't forget. I think for the long march is the marches at really the grass level.

I think for them, two things I think was a really, really big challenge. They did not know where they were going. Although they were saying we are fighting imperialism, what was imperialism? They said imperialism was on the wall. They painted this propaganda posters. This imperialism was like a guy with a bowler hat. But where was it? So these remote parts, they were called into the army to get their own land to protect their homeland, protect their families.

They are marching thousand miles away. Where's the family? What is the goal? You know, we all know, when you know where you're going, however tough it is, you can go through it. When you don't know where you're going, that's why the desertion happened on such a level. 50,000 in the first six months. When they begin to understand, they can't understand the dialect.

When the mountain began into changing rivers, into the grassland, they said, we're going. This is no way we're going to protecting anybody, not even our own forefathers. So that's one thing. The second thing is the purge. Because on the long march,

being chased, being hurried, you knew you might be exposed or betrayed. So there's a huge purge going on, just like in the red subit area. And Petitnik, just give an example. Rana mentioned there's a second army. The second army had 10,000 people when they're on the road. And of course, the most enlightened were they educated intellectuals or trained in Moscow.

But these were the people least trusted by the party. So they have death scores. Every battle, they put these trained intellectual. into the death trap. If you went through, you're onto the next trap. At the end of the march, there was not even one person who could speak and who could write. You know, they want to promote somebody to the commissar to lead the thing. They said, we can't find anybody who can take notes from instructions from the central government.

So they find a trader who could keep account of his purchase. So they made, Natch is when you have animals chasing you, you have this internal doubt and persecution. I think that's really, really hard. Julia, Julia Lovell, when did they know they come to the end of the march? And what marked the end of the march? If we look at the long march through the lens of Mao's consolidation of power, which is an ongoing process,

it's possible to argue that the march comes to, an end in October 1935 when the forces that have left Jiangxi with Mao decide to take refuge in an existing communist base area in Shanxi in northwest China. And between 1935 and 1936, the two other forces which are also sometimes traveling with, sometimes traveling separately from this Jiangxi force. They also arrive in the northwest. So from the perspective of viewing the long march as a huge migration of communist forces from the south to the north, the period of 1935 through to 1936 can be seen as a kind of terminus. But at the same time, it's crucial to remember there are large parts of communist forces which are still on the march, still on manoeuvres.

throughout 1936 and it's absolutely key here to mention the Western Legion which is an expedition of 20,000 that Mao sends into the deep northwest to get to the Soviet border to pick up Russian supplies and this is an absolute human disaster so of these 20,000 people only 400 return the rest are killed or captured and when Mao learns about this human disaster he decides not to send reinforcements and from that we can only conclude that he is most interested in consolidating his own base rather than bailing out a separate force. Randa, getting a snapshot of this, these are tiny forces really in this massive continental country. We've got Japan having designs on Manchuri,

we've got the Soviets, Russia intervening, we have the wall, some of them bigger than European kings by a long way and there's this force going through. How would it seem, would it seem, are we ever going to get there? Are we a hopeless minority? Would it seem we're bound to get there and then we're going to conquer the world? Well, I think one thing that is really important to remember for an awful lot of these people and not just the top leaders, but also those who are on the march, is that they were believers. They were true believers. They had studied, they had learned about communism, a foreign ideology, but one that had been brought in and discussed

in great detail in China. And that was at least part of the motivation in terms of them getting there. Many people saw the state of China which they thought was impoverished, corrupt, invaded by foreign countries. And that determination for many of them was a reason why, despite all of the obstacles you've mentioned, they still felt they needed to press on. This was turned by Mao into a massive propaganda coup, which still resonates in China, still is very important for them. Can you take us through that, so on so on? I think it's extraordinary. As Rana said, Mao was a very, very clever tactician and propagandist. I think he had such an acumen, a gift of very few people has.

So on the war, on the long march, when there was doubt, and he tried to really prop people up, give them a vision, that vision is the fight against Japan, which suddenly unified this sort of retreat into a goal, and very, very firmly go. But when they got on the long march as well, the propaganda units, every single platoon had won. Because after the end of it, you know, when you're thinking of being chased,

and the whole thing is you have to something to entertain, and the communist message is there. But when he finally got to the end of the long march, immediately, as the Chinese said, hardly before the dust has settled, he started this huge invitation to add a snow. Sorry, that's why he teamed up with the American journalist who was living in China, Edgar Snow, and wrote Red Star, who wrote Red Star over China,

which was very much Mao's version that went not only around the world, but translated back into Chinese and influenced the Chinese themselves. If there is one moment that actually marks really the beginning of the Mao legend, it is probably the publication of the book Red Star Over China in 1936, which was basically the first Western journalist, an American called Edgar Snow, who visited, by that stage, Yanan, that ended up in a town called Bowen in 135, and then moved on to Yanan relatively nearby.

So Mao was basically there in a very arranged moment to receive Snow, who wrote this account of the communists, not as sort of wild, ragged rebels, but actually makers of a new type of world, a new kind of state. And that story went both through the Left Book Club in Britain and through Random House in America and sold millions around the world.

And importantly, went back into China. And it's become a holy thing in Chinese life, hasn't it? I mean, the Cultural Revolution, nobody likes to talk about that now. But the Long March, they refer to again and again. And the veterans of the Long March were heroes, everyone. And we have stories of how they survived beyond that. And that seems to have taken them on this extraordinary, even longer March, extraordinary journey since the 1930s.

That's right. the Long March remains at the heart of the so-called red culture industry in China today. So the memories and the root of the Long March are key to commemorating Chinese communism. But the term Long March has also had a big impact far beyond China as well. So it's played a big role in introducing Mao's ideas further afield. So since the 1950s, politicians have been. and revolutionaries across the world in Asia, Africa and Europe have admired the idea of the long march as it was the kind of romantic propaganda image of the Long March created by Mao

and have used it to inspire their own projects. Final words. It's never been challenged though. It seems to grow in importance year by year. I think when I was growing up, that's the message we got. these young men and women endured anything that is hard for us to imagine. That's why every day it's like a mentor.

If you think life is hard, think of the Long March. If you are tired, think of the revolution forebears. And there's propaganda and the big musical films and dramas, novels. It is drilled into us. And these men and women, you know, going through like the furnace and emerge as men and women of the steel. I think it did lift the nation up and today, we are on the long march of the space,

we are on the long march to modernise China, we're on the long march into 21st century, I think is the emblem of modern China. Thank you very much, Sunshuyan, thank you, Rana Mitter, and Julia Lovell. Next week, it's our listener week. We'll be discussing one of your many ideas for this autumn, and that will be revealed on Thursday. Thank you very much for listening.

And the In Our Time podcast gets some extra time now, with a few minutes of bonus material from Melvin and his guests. When did we miss out? Women. Because following the long marchers, I think the women were so extraordinary. Because the reason why the Red Army did not, the Mous Army did not want women,

because when the soldiers knew they were fighting against women, they were even more fierce, because they knew by the end of the battle, the women would be there as a trophy. They were so hard, and during the long march, these women were extraordinary and they survived more than men. I think it's their story, I think in a way,

quite uplifting because they took the caution and knew the danger they were in and the Wendford and Indian, they were like the Fourth Army, they were captured. 3,000 of them were raped, sold because of the Long March, the impact on their physical condition.

They didn't have period. They couldn't have children in China at that time. If you can't have children, then you are worse than hen. Basically, even hen can lay eggs. So these women were sold sometimes four or five times, and it was really, really hard. But they still didn't regret it because one woman I remember. She joined the long march because there is a vision for a better life.

She was sold as a child bride, and her mother-in-law had the rope along the long. her waist when she worked for 12 hours a day when she said was hungry, they tightened rope so she shouldn't feel the hunger. And when the Red Army came to the village and when she saw other Red Army soldiers and then there are huge pot in the middle of the village with the pink boils from the Landau's family and he said if you join the army, you can have that every day. And she joined. She never regretted. Whatever the suffering. I mean, I think that that's an absolutely compelling story about what motivated so many people to go on the march.

And I think that combination, I think it did come through, but I hope it did, of understanding the ideological commitment. You don't do this sort of thing on a whim. And you have to have really strong self-believe to last, to be one of those few, what, 7 or 8,000 who make it from the 90,000 who start out. But at the same time also, I think we did get it in, but really worth stressing the violence internally. You know, this was not a calm convo of people making their way. in a sort of ordered retreat. These people were fighting with themselves, often more than they were actually fighting with their opponents. And that actually just links to something that you said in passing at the end, Melvin,

which, you know, is a huge topic in itself. That is the cultural revolution. The culture revolution is probably the single most violent time in modern Chinese history. And you can see plenty of the roots in that internal faction fighting that starts in the 20s and 30s and is there on the long march. Julia? The stories that Chiu Yun tells in her book about the experience of women are absolutely heartbreaking and one could also talk about Mao's own very callous treatment of his wife who gives birth

in appalling conditions during the Long March. But I think another issue to explore, which is again absolutely key to the history of the Chinese Communist Party and its legitimacy, is what happens to the party straight after the Long March, because from the ending of the Long March through to 1940. So the long march ends, the CCP's in a terrible state. Mouth forces are absolutely wrecked by this experience. And yet by 1945, that decade has witnessed an extraordinary growth in the CCP. The armies are now at just under a million. And that's the springboard, really, that it's the underpinning of communist victory in the Civil War in 1949. So also to make sense of how that transformation takes place.

It's all sorts of elements. It's political. It's ideological, social, economic, and of course, to do with the Japanese invasion. I think that's what Julie made an absolute beautiful point because we used a metaphor like fanning the sand. When the wave water, the sand gone, the gold is there. And the long march is that process.

That really that doubters, desert us. you know, were out. And these seventh, probably less than 10,000 men and women, went on in the space of a decade, built a new China. And that's, from the long march I interviewed, they said, he suffered so much during the Cultural Revolution. They poured it in the deep winter, a bucket of water on him. He became a stone statue, eye statue. And he said, you think he could, he said to the red guard, you think he could do anything to me? I went through the long march. get it. These are the men and women who made modern China. It's an extraordinary record, but the transformative moment in a sense is that war with Japan,

the thing that happens just two years after the end of the long march. It said, it's a legend, but it may be true, that when Mao met the Japanese Prime Minister in 1972, he said, thank you for invading China, because if you hadn't done that, we would never have come to power. And the transformation of that kind of international war in which the communist became a partner rather than enemy with the nationalist government, does provide a real turning point for military training and for legitimacy. In fact, there is, of course, an episode you did on in our time about that son of Japanese war a few years ago as well,

and it's the important next stage almost after this particular story of the Long March. And was Marr a clear leader then, or did he have to keep fighting to retain his leadership over the decade following, let's say, the end of the Long March? I think that, well, I feel that he doesn't become undisputed leader until 1941, 1942. There is this very interesting moment when Edgar Snow arrives in 1936 and really through Red Star over China creates an international cult of Mao. But it's interesting because it's the creation of a cult of Mao before Mao is the supreme figure. And I think one of the reasons why Mao is so central in that book is because a lot of the rest of the leadership

who are relatively equal to Mao at that point just happen not to be there. Moscow does literally fly in a man called Wang Ming in 1937, and he's actually been out of China since 1931, so not on the Long March at all. And that's one of the big struggles between Wang Ming and Mao in that year, 37, 38, before Mao begins to get back on top again. But it's really, as Julia said, 41 to 43, particularly something called the rectification movement,

where Mao really takes hold of the party and makes it his. You know, it's very much about him. And from that point, you can say that it's Mao's party. And also that something called Maoism exists. It's at that point that's something called Malzodong thought, Melzodong Suss-Yang comes into existence within the party. Well, thank you all very much. That was terrific.

I'm sure everybody thought so. I did. And I've got impeccable taste in these matters. Let's end with that. Thanks very. Offer from the producer. Would anyone want to your coffee? In Our Time with Melvin Bragg is produced by Simon Tillotsam.

A new In Our Time book, marking the programme's 20th birthday, and based on 50 of the most popular programmes, is available now. Hello, it's me, May Martin. you enjoyed the podcast you just listened to. Can I recommend another podcast that you might enjoy? It's called Grown Up Land. And it's a podcast for people who find the adult world a bit much. Every week, me, Bisha K. Ali and Ned Sedgwick and tons of other guests, try to get our heads around stuff that confuses us like sex. Very confused by sex. Fear, food and friendship. I'm running out of time for this ad. Ned, how would you sum up the podcast? So it's like a guidebook for people who don't really know where they're going or where they've been.

Great. Thanks, Ned. That's Grownup Land and you can find it on BBC Sounds.