Eyuwan Soviet
It was famously led by Zhang Guotao, a rival of Mao Zedong, who attempted to consolidate his control over Eyuwan with a series of purges.
Despite several extermination campaigns intended to flush them out, the region remained a hotbed of Communist guerrilla activity until a truce was established in the Chinese Civil War.
Nonetheless, the Soviet's association with Zhang Guotao—who left the Communist Party in 1938 and joined the Kuomintang—has damaged its historical reputation in China.
These mass organizations gave the Northern Expedition strong popular support, but antagonized conservatives within the KMT who were often landowners and capital owners themselves.
[5] The highlands of Eyuwan had been plagued by roaming bandits for centuries, leading local communities to develop strong self-defense organizations known as Red Spear Societies.
They had to recruit most of their party members locally, unlike the Jiangxi-Fujian Soviet that received numerous Communist refugees from the cities.
[12] Local Communists were instead instructed to start trying to govern territory and stockpile food in preparation for a future assault on the cities.
[15][16] The Communist Party's factional disputes increasingly involved Eyuwan as the soviet grew larger and more important.
The first high-level party member appointed to lead Eyuwan, Zeng Zhongsheng [zh], arrived in September.
Wang Ming and the 28 Bolsheviks, the new faction in power, sent Zhang Guotao, Shen Zemin, and Chen Changhao to Eyuwan to take over.
[15] Xu Jishen and the other commanders wanted to seize the breadbasket counties in eastern Hubei to fix Eyuwan's chronic food shortages.
Zhang compared the plan to Li Lisan's "adventurism", and when they disobeyed his orders and took the land anyways, he got permission from the Central Committee to make Chen Changhao political commissar of the Fourth Red Army.
[21][19] Zhang and Chen accused the Fourth Red Army was acting like a "warlord-bandit" force, pillaging the countryside and rejecting proper discipline.
[26] Zhang appointed a Red Army officer named Gao Jingting [zh] to chairman of the Eyuwan Soviet.
[33] One of the most potent symbols of the women's revolution was bobbed hair, which contrasted strongly with traditional ponytails and buns.
A female resident of Anhui later recalled that "women unbound their feet, cut their hair short, studied, and took part in public life.
[39] When the Fourth Red Army had to abandon the Soviet in 1932, female Communist leader Zhang Qinqiu stayed behind to care for her dying husband.
Even before they began to take and hold territory, Communist guerrillas encouraged peasants to protest against taxes, rent, and debt payments.
As they gained experience and strengthened their military position, more villages were included and the campaign began to target rich peasants and landholding institutions as well.
[46] Many gentry joined the local institutions set up to implement land reform and deliberately slowed down the process.
[48] The public campaigns and struggle sessions that targeted reactionaries and local power-holders caused major strife in close-knit peasant communities.
[52] From July to September 1932, Chiang Kai-shek ordered 300,000 troops of the National Revolutionary Army to surround and suppress the Eyuwan Soviet in the Fourth Encirclement Campaign.
[53] Xia Douyin led a scorched earth campaign, killing all men found in the Soviet areas, burning all buildings, and seizing or destroying all crops.
[54] Historians such as Marc Opper and Chen Yao-huang argue that a major factor in the Fourth Red Army's defeat was its decision to adopt more conventional tactics.
[55] The Fourth Red Army retreated to border region between Shaanxi and Sichuan, leaving behind a small force to carry out guerilla warfare.
They hid in the mountains and eked out a living by foraging and organizing poor peasants to seize grain kept by landlords and public granaries.
[57] Gao Jingting and Xu Haidong became the de facto leaders of the largest force left behind, the Twenty-fifth Red Army.
[58][59] Nationalist extermination campaigns began to indiscriminately target the peasantry in areas where Communist influence was strong.
[58] Nationalist commander Liang Guanying (梁冠英) was given 170,000 men to exterminate the remaining guerilla forces in Eyuwan.
Huang'an was also the home of Dong Biwu and Li Xiannian, both of whom would serve as President of the People's Republic of China.
