Who they were
Born in Shaoshan, Hunan, he attended the CPC’s founding First Congress in 1921 and pioneered rural, peasant-based revolution — the Jinggangshan base from 1927, then the Jiangxi Soviet.
What they did
He rose to party military leadership at the Zunyi Conference (1935) during the Long March, led from Yan’an through the war against Japan and the civil war, and proclaimed the People’s Republic in Beijing on October 1, 1949. In power he carried out land reform and socialist transformation in the 1950s. The Great Leap Forward (1958–62) ended in economic collapse and a famine in which tens of millions died; the Cultural Revolution (1966–76), which he launched, brought a decade of persecution and upheaval. He died on September 9, 1976.
Legacy
The party’s own 1981 Resolution judged him a great revolutionary whose later years held grave errors.