MAPS OF HISTORY · ON THIS DAY · January 17 · 1935
ON THIS DAY · 17 JANUARY 1935
The Zunyi conference
15–17 Jan 1935 — In a merchant’s house in occupied Zunyi, the surviving leadership turns on its Comintern-backed commanders; Mao Zedong, sidelined for two years, joins the military triumvirate. The march changes style at once — feint, double-back, split. The party has found the commander it will keep for forty years.
THE MOMENT IN CONTEXT
The three red arrows crossing your map are one continuous line 9,000 kilometers long, and the tide chart under the timeline explains why this chapter exists: between October 1934 and October 1935 the Communist revolution has no territory at all. Follow the arrows west first. The column that breaks out of Jiangxi is a state in motion — 86,000 people hauling archives, treasury and machine tools — and it moves like one, in a slow box that the pursuit catches at the Xiang River (the ✕): four days of crossing under fire, and perhaps half the column is dead, drowned or deserted. The disaster does what disasters do in Leninist parties: it discredits the incumbents. At Zunyi in January 1935 (the ●), in a merchant’s upstairs room, the surviving leadership turns on the Comintern-backed commanders, and Mao Zedong — sidelined for two years — joins the military leadership. The march changes character at once: feints, doubling-back, split columns, the crossing of the Wu and the fourfold crossing of the Chishui that leaves the pursuit maps a mess of contradictory arrows.
From Chapter 7 — The Long March of China in Revolution, 1911–1949 (1935).
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TEACH THIS IN 5 MINUTES
- Why it happened — Breakout was forced, direction was chosen. Leaving Jiangxi was arithmetic (Chapter 6), but everything after was decision: west along the watersheds because the pursuit and the warlord armies…
- The turn — Zunyi, 15–17 January 1935. The march’s military escapes — Luding, the Grasslands — saved bodies; Zunyi decided what the bodies would be for. It ended imported strategy as the…
- What it changed — Yan’an becomes the laboratory. In the loess country the party builds the model it will scale after 1945: rent reduction rather than terror, village elections it can steer, army…
Then ask the room: How much of the Long March’s significance is myth-making — and does the myth-making diminish or constitute its importance? The argued answer is on the chapter page →
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