Jiangxi Soviet
The Jiangxi Soviet, sometimes referred to as the Jiangxi-Fujian Soviet, was a soviet area that existed between 1931 and 1934, governed by the Chinese Communist Party. It was the largest component of the Chinese Soviet Republic and home to its capital, Ruijin. At the time, the CCP was engaged in a rural insurgency against the Kuomintang-controlled Nationalist Government as part of the Chinese Civil War. CCP leaders Mao Zedong and Zhu De chose to create the soviet in the rugged Jinggang Mountains on the border of Jiangxi and Fujian because of its remote location and defensible terrain. The First Red Front Army successfully repulsed a series of encirclement campaigns by the Kuomintang's National Revolutionary Army during the first few years of the Soviet's existence, but they were eventually defeated by the NRA's fifth attempt between 1933 and 1934. After the Jiangxi Soviet was defeated militarily, the CCP began the Long March towards a new base area in the northwest.
Beginning
On November 7, 1931, on the anniversary of the 1917 Russian Bolshevik Revolution, the Soviet Union helped organize a National Soviet People's Delegates Conference in Ruijin, Jiangxi province. Ruijin was the county seat and was selected as the capital of the new Soviet republic. The "Chinese Soviet Republic" was born, though the majority of China was still under the control of the Nationalist-led Government of the Republic of China. On that day, they had an open ceremony for the new country, and Mao Zedong and other communists attended a military parade. Claiming its own bank, printing its own money, and collecting tax through its own tax bureau, the modern Chinese Communist Party considers this the beginning of Two Chinas.With Mao Zedong as both head of state and head of government, the CSR expanded, especially within Jiangxi-Fujian border region, reaching a peak territory claim of more than and a population that numbered more than three million, covering considerable parts of two provinces. Its economy was doing better than most other areas that were under the control of the Chinese warlords, though still suffered by comparison to non-warlord-controlled China. In addition to militia, its regular army numbered more than 140,000 by the early 1930s -- larger than the armies of most contemporary Chinese warlords, though still smaller than the Nationalist forces. The Chinese Red Army also possessed modern communications equipment, such as telephones, telegraphs, and radios, which most Chinese warlords' armies still lacked, and was regularly transmitting and receiving wireless coded messages.
Policy
By 1930, Deng Zihui's experiments with land reform in Minxi had been widely disseminated in CCP publications and became an important point of reference for the Jiangxi Soviet's land policies from 1931 to 1934.The constitution of the Jiangxi Soviet endorsed separation of church and state.
In opposition to traditional arranged marriage customs, the laws of the Jiangxi Soviet protected freely chosen marriage. These laws became a model for marriage laws in other CCP-controlled areas.
Purges and massacres
As Marc Opper wrote,According to Li Weihan, a high-ranking CCP member in Jiangxi at the time, "The reaction from local authorities, he noted, was usually to send armed squads after those attempting to flee and kill them on the spot, producing numerous mass graves throughout the CSR that would later be uncovered by the KMT and its allies." According to censuses, Jiangxi's population declined by 3.16 million from 1931 to January 1936 due to the Chinese Civil War, among which there was a drop of 700,000 in the fifteen counties under the Jiangxi Soviet. Jon Halliday and Jung Chang in the book Mao: The Unknown Story estimated all these 700,000 deaths were attributable to the regime of the Jiangxi Soviet. Causes of death included being murdered as class enemies, worked to death, or suicide.
In 1983, the Ministry of Civil Affairs ordered local governments to politically rehabilitate the dead who were wrongfully purged during this period. As a result, around 250,000 Jiangxi people were posthumously recognized as "revolutionary martyrs", including both the purged and civilian war casualties. Among these 250,000, 160,000 were from Ganzhou and Ji'an, the base of the Jiangxi Soviet.
Encirclement
The government of China, the Kuomintang, led by Chiang Kai-shek, moved against the Soviet republic, consolidating many former Chinese warlords in the creation of the National Revolutionary Army to repeatedly besiege the various enclaves of the Soviet Republic, launching what Chiang and his fellow Nationalists called encirclement campaigns. While the first, second and third military encirclements were defeated by the First Front Red Army, they suffered massive losses: the Red Army was nearly halved, with most of its equipment lost during Chiang and von Seeckt's fifth encirclement campaign, utilizing fortified blockhouses.In an effort to break the blockade, the Red Army under the orders of the three-man committee besieged the forts many times but continued to suffer heavy casualties with little success at the hands of untrained, untested, and uncaring leadership. The Jiangxi Soviet shrank significantly in size due to the disastrous leadership, manpower, and material losses. By the fall of 1934, the Communists faced near-total annihilation. This situation had already convinced Mao Zedong and his supporters to believe that the Communists should abandon their bases in the Jiangxi Soviet republic. However, the Communist leadership refused to accept the failure, continuing to plot the defeat of the Nationalist forces. The three-man committee devised a plan of diversions, and then a regroup after a temporary retreat. Once the regroup was complete, a counterattack would be launched in conjunction with the earlier diversion forces, driving the enemy out of the Jiangxi Soviet.
The first movements of the retreating diversion were undertaken by Fang Zhimin. Fang Zhimin and his deputy, Xun Weizhou, were first to break through Kuomintang lines in June, followed by Xiao Ke in August. Though these movements were unexpected, as the Kuomintang were numerically superior to the Communists at the time and did not expect an attack on their fortified perimeter, things did not turn out as the Communists had hoped: Fang Zhimin's force was crushed after its initial success, and with Xun Weizhou killed in action, nearly every commander in this force was wounded and captured alive, including Fang Zhimin himself, and all were executed. The only exception was Su Yu, who managed to escape. Xiao Ke fared no better: although his force initially managed to break through and then reached He Long's Communist base in Hubei, but even with their combined forces, they were entirely defeated and unable to challenge the far superior Nationalist force besieging the Jiangxi Soviet, never to return until the establishment of the People's Republic of China 15 years later.
The failure of the diversion forces resulted in their loss of contacts with the Jiangxi Soviet, and the Communist leadership failed to coordinate its next proper move in a timely fashion, still believing that a temporary retreat near or within the Jiangxi Soviet would allow them to recover and counterattack, eventually driving out the Nationalist force.
Collapse
In late September 1934, Chiang distributed his top-secret "Iron Bucket Plan" to his general headquarters at Lushan, which detailed the final push to totally annihilate all Communist forces. The plan was to build 30 blockade lines supported by 30 barbed wire fences, most of them electric, in the region around Ruijin, to starve the Communists. In addition, more than 1,000 trucks were to be mobilized to form a rapid reaction force in order to prevent any Communist breakout. Realizing the certain annihilation of the Communists, Mo Xiong handed a copy of the document weighing several kilograms to his Communist handler Xiang Yunian the same night he received it, risking not only his own life but that of his entire family.With the help of Liu Yafo and Lu Zhiying, the Communist agents copied the important intelligence onto four dictionaries and Xiang Yunian was tasked to take the intelligence personally to the Jiangxi Soviet. The trip was hazardous, as the Nationalist force would arrest and often execute anyone who attempted to cross the blockade. Xiang Yunian was forced to hide in the mountains for a while, and then used rocks to knock out 4 of his own teeth, resulting in swollen face. Disguised as a beggar, he tore off the covers of the four dictionaries and hid them at the bottom of his bag with rotten food, then successfully crossed several lines of the blockade and reached Ruijin on October 7, 1934. The valuable intelligence provided by Mo Xiong finally convinced the Communists in the Jiangxi Soviet to abandon its base and started a general retreat before Chiang could complete the building of his blockade lines with supporting barbed wire fences and mobilizing trucks and troops, thus saving themselves from total annihilation.
As the result of their catastrophic defeat, Xiang Ying was removed from his post of the chairman of the communist central military committee, and replaced by Zhou Enlai. Xiang Ying was put in charge of 20,000 soldiers that were assigned to stay behind in the Jiangxi Soviet to continue the fight against the Nationalists after the communist main force consisted of more than 80,000 had broken out. Xiang Ying was assisted by other top-ranking communist cadres assigned to stay behind with him, including Chen Yi, Zeng Shan,, and, but Xiang had not learned from his previous disastrous blunder and continued his early practice when conducting battles, against the strong objection of Chen Yi. As a result of another huge blunder committed by Xiang Ying, the Chinese Red Army stayed behind was soon annihilated by the superior Nationalist force, Xiang was barely able to escape with his own life, while many of his comrades were killed, including He Chang and Ruan Xiaoxian. So insignificant was the communist threat left had become that the Nationalist reward for capturing Chen Yi was once dropped to 500 dollars in silver, a tiny.25% of its earlier peak of 200,000 dollars in silver.
On October 10, 1934, the three-man committee Communist leadership formally issued the order of the general retreat, and on October 16, 1934, the Chinese Red Army begun what was later known as the Long March, fully abandoning the Jiangxi Soviet. 17 days after the main Communist force had already left its base, the Nationalists were finally aware that the enemy had escaped after reaching the empty city of Ruijin on November 5, 1934. Contrary to the common erroneous belief, the original destination was He Long's Communist base in Hubei, and the final destination Yan'an was not decided on until much later during the Long March, after Mao Zedong had assumed command. To avoid panic, the goal was kept a secret from most people, including Mao Zedong, and the public was told that only a portion of the Chinese Red Army would be engaged in mobile warfare to defeat Nationalist forces, and thus this part of the army would be renamed as the Field Army.