ABSTRACT
The Yenan model constituted a rejection of alien models of development and prepacked strategies from which China had suffered all too much. In this sense, the model was implicitly critical of the Soviet Union. The Yenan reforms took place during a period of United Front, so the social, political and economic reforms that resulted from victory in the Civil War were also seen in a United Front context. By mid-1946, the Civil War was on in earnest and the initial struggle centred on control over the north-east in the wake of the withdrawing Soviet troops. The best policy of the Soviet Union was to conclude an alliance with Chiang K'ai-shek and attempt to prevent the Chinese Civil War. The revolution which the communist party led was seen not as a socialist revolution in the Marxian sense but as a New Democratic Revolution.
