ABSTRACT
The policy choices that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had made in the 1920s had left it dying on the side of the revolutionary road. The bloc within, which had originally seemed like a Trojan horse from which to destroy the Guomindang, had stirred up rightist Guomindang fears that grew into an unimagined tidal wave. Despite the slowly growing base areas in rural and mostly mountainous areas, the Comintern and the CCP central leadership, still located in Shanghai, continued to stress the necessity of party leadership by the urban proletariat. A purpose of the CCP government, as specified in the “Outline of the Constitution of the Chinese Soviet Republic” in November 1931, was “to guarantee the thorough emancipation of women.” In the accounts of party history, the Long March is hailed as a victory; until the late 1990s, the political leadership of the CCP and the government of the People’s Republic was dominated by veterans of this extraordinary military trek.
