Word: soviet
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Once in a while, when a Soviet Russian finds enough distance between himself and the Kremlin, he has an idea all his own. Last week, the commandant of the small eastern German town of Döberitz brought forth a dandy...
When Mao succeeded Li as head of the Chinese Communist Party, he retreated with Communism's badly beaten bands to Kiangsi, in South China, where he managed to establish a Chinese Soviet. For three years, his headquarters were on Chingkan Shan, a nearly impregnable mountain stronghold which had been shared, uneasily, by bandits and Buddhist monks. Mao chased away the monks, welcomed most of the bandits into the party, and settled down to organizing the nucleus of the army which was to conquer China...
...Meanwhile, conditions on Chingkan Shan were becoming uncomfortable. Food was scarce and the Red army was forced for months to live on squash. The soldiers adopted a slogan: "Down with capitalism and squash-eating!" Chiang Kaishek, by then China's dominant figure, sent his armies against the southern Soviet "republics" and all but finished them in a series of "extermination campaigns." Once, when Mao went to the front to assume personal command, he exclaimed: "Aiya, how daring these bullets are! Don't they know that Chairman Mao is here...
March with Mr. Soviet. The Reds marched 6,000 miles. They passed through twelve provinces, crossed 18 mountain ranges, and 24 rivers. Intermittently they fought with Nationalists, but they got away each time, with heavy losses. The marchers had started out with a huge train of supplies, but they had to abandon most of it on the way. It is said that Mao Tse-tung, then married to his third wife (Ho Tse-chun, a schoolteacher), abandoned their five children on the way, leaving them in the care of peasants...
...marchers lived off the land, though the Communists never mentioned plunder, spoke only of "confiscation committees." Provincial populations fled in terror before "Mr. Soviet," as the Red army became known. The Reds' first great obstacle was the Yangtze, where Chiang hoped to stop them. A Red detachment in captured Nationalist uniforms managed to take a small river port which permitted the whole army to cross. But the most famous incident on the Long March was the crossing of the Tatu River, where a detachment of Communists swung across hand over hand on the bare iron chains of a half...