Mao's Life

Mao Zedong (1893-1976) was a great Marxist, proletarian revolutionary, strategist and theorist, and the main founder and leader of the Communist Party of China (CPC), the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) and the People's Republic of China. He was born into a peasant family on December 26, 1893, in Xiangtan, Hunan Province. First, he served in the insurgent Republican Army for half a year following the outbreak of the Revolution of 1911. Then he studied at Hunan First Teachers College from 1914 to 1918 and established the revolutionary Society of the New Masses in collaboration with Cai Hesen and others shortly before his graduation from the college. He first started studying and believing in Marxism around the May 4th Movement in 1919 and founded a communist organization in Hunan Province in 1920.

In July 1921, Mao Zedong attended the First National Congress of the CPC, which marked its inauguration. Later on, he became Secretary of the CPC Hunan Committee and led the workers' movement in Changsha, Anyuan and other cities. In 1923, he attended the Third CPC National Congress at which he was elected into the Central Executive Committee of the CPC, thus becoming involved in the central leadership. Following the establishment of the Kuomintang-Communist cooperation in 1924, he was elected alternate member of the Central Executive Committee of the Kuomintang at both its first and second national congresses. He was the acting head of the Central Propaganda Department of the Kuomintang in Guangzhou and the chief editor of the Political Weekly. He also directed the Sixth Class at the Peasant Movement Institute. In November 1926, he became Secretary of the CPC Central Committee's Peasant Movement Commission.

In his works "Analysis of the Classes in Chinese Society" and "Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan" published between the winter of 1925 and the spring of 1927, he underlined the important role of the peasant issue in the Chinese revolution and the paramount significance of the leadership of the proletariat over the peasant struggle and criticized the Right deviationist thinking of Chen Duxiu.

At an emergency meeting of the CPC Central Committee in August 1927 following the total breakdown of the Kuomintang-Communist cooperation, Mao Zedong presented the idea that "political power grows out of the barrel of a gun." By this he meant that political power must be seized by the means of the revolutionary armed forces. He was elected alternate member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee at the meeting. After the meeting, he went to the Hunan-Jiangxi border to lead the Autumn Harvest Uprising . Then he led the insurgent troops to the Jinggang Maintains to launch an agrarian