Blackwell Reference Online

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Zhu De, whose real name was Zhu Daizhen, was one of the principal military leaders of the Chinese Revolution of 1949 . He is commonly credited with having founded the Red Army (precursor of the People's Liberation Army) in the prerevolutionary period. Zhu was born in Yilong County, Sichuan Province, on December 1, 1886 and was a graduate of the Yunnan Infantry School. As a young man in 1909 he joined Sun Yat-Sen's Revolutionary Alliance. He participated in both the anti-monarchy Xinhai Revolution of 1911–12 and the movement to oppose Yuan Shikai's imperial aspirations in 1915. After the October Revolution of 1917 in Russia, Zhu went to study in Germany. In 1922 he joined the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). In July 1925 he was expelled from Germany and went to Moscow to study at the Communist University of the Toilers of the East (KUTV). Subsequently, he transferred to a secret military training school. He returned to China in the summer of 1926 and participated in the Northern Expedition of the Guomindang National Revolutionary Army (NRA). Following the Communist defeat by Chiang Kai-Shek's Guomindang forces in the late spring and early summer of 1927, he participated in the anti-Guomindang August 1 uprising in the NRA in Nanchang. After the uprising was suppressed, in early 1928 he led his troops to the mountainous region of Jingganshan where he joined up with Mao Zedong's ... log in or subscribe to read full text