ABSTRACT
A new mode of thinking can be seen in the policies and work style implemented by Mao and the Party Center even in the first year of the sojourn in Shaanxi. The break with the Fourth Front Armies in September 1935 constituted one of the most severe tests for Mao as a Communist politician and the Central Red Army as a Communist group. The 21 people attending the conference at Ejie included all Politburo members, all Central Committee members, all Military Council leaders, and the four leaders of the 1st and 3rd Army Corps. Called an enlarged Politiburo conference, the Ejie Conference might have been overly wellattended. The Party Center insists on the previous policy, that is, the policy of continuously going north. The task of capturing the pass was assigned to the 4th Regiment of the 2nd Division of the First Army Corps, famous for its death-defying spirit as a spearhead detachment on the Long March.
