People of the Revolution and the USSR

People’s Republic of China state institutions Chinese communism 1892–1986 ○ Natural causes

The “one-eyed dragon”, Red Army chief of staff and Deng Xiaoping’s partner who commanded at Huaihai

He lost his right eye at Fengdu in 1916 and became the “One-Eyed Dragon”: a founder of the People’s Liberation Army and one of the strategists who commanded the Huaihai campaign in November 1948.

A Sichuan soldier who lost his right eye in battle in 1916, he joined the party in 1926 and took part in the Nanchang Uprising. Trained at the Frunze Military Academy, he was Red Army chief of staff on the Long March and, as commander of the 129th Division with Deng Xiaoping as political commissar, formed the “Liu–Deng” army in the war with Japan. In the civil war he led the 1947 thrust into the Dabie Mountains and the Huaihai campaign of 1948–1949, the decisive phase of the Communist victory. A marshal after 1949, he founded the Nanjing Military Academy and withdrew after being criticised for “dogmatism” in 1958.

People’s Republic of China state institutions Chinese communism 1896–1969 ○ Died in custody

The Hunanese who rose “with two kitchen knives”, commander of the Nanchang Uprising and the Second Front Army

Born to a poor peasant family in Sangzhi, Hunan, he left the legend of rising “with two kitchen knives”, commanded the Nanchang Uprising in 1927, and led the Second Front Army on the Long March.

From a poor family in western Hunan, he led local armed bands, rose to command a Nationalist army corps, and joined the party days after commanding the Nanchang Uprising of 1 August 1927. He built a base on the Hunan–Hubei border, led the Second Front Army on the Long March and the 120th Division in the war with Japan. After 1949 he was one of the ten marshals, chairman of the state sports commission and a vice-chairman of the Military Commission. Attacked by Lin Biao and Kang Sheng in the Cultural Revolution, he was confined and died in 1969 after being denied treatment; he was rehabilitated in 1974.

People’s Republic of China state institutions Chinese communism 1898–1974 ○ Died in prison

PLA marshal who commanded Chinese forces in Korea, then was purged for criticizing the Great Leap Forward

'I want to be a Hai Rui!' — In his 1962 'Letter of 80,000 Words' to Mao, invoking the Ming-dynasty official famed for his courage in admonishing the emperor

One of the ten marshals of the People's Liberation Army, he commanded the Chinese People's Volunteer Army in the Korean War and, as Minister of National Defense, pursued a Soviet-model professionalization of the military. His 1959 letter to Mao criticizing the famine and failures of the Great Leap Forward led to his purge as head of an 'anti-Party clique'; imprisoned and tortured during the Cultural Revolution, he died in custody in 1974 and was posthumously rehabilitated in 1978.

People’s Republic of China state institutions Chinese communism 1899–1992 ○ Natural causes

Marshal who commanded the Jin-Cha-Ji base and then ran the “two bombs, one satellite” nuclear and missile programme

As head of the National Defense Science and Technology Commission from 1958, Nie directed China's nuclear programme: "…we must develop advanced weapons, missiles and atomic bombs, so that we have the minimum means of reprisal…"

From Sichuan, he studied in France, Belgium and the Soviet Union and was a political instructor at Whampoa. Political commissar of Lin Biao’s First Army Corps on the Long March, he founded and commanded the Jin-Cha-Ji base in north China during the war with Japan and was mayor of Beijing after the civil war. Made a marshal in 1955, from 1956 he was the vice-premier for science and technology and, after the Soviet advisers left, ran the defence-science programme that produced the atomic bomb in 1964, the hydrogen bomb in 1967 and a satellite in 1970. He was the last of the ten marshals to die, in 1992.

Chinese Communist revolutionary forces (before 1949) Chinese communism 1903–1951 ✕ Died of exhaustion

Korean revolutionary military leader who fought alongside Kim Il Sung in the Manchurian anti-Japanese guerrillas

Kim Il Sung kept a small safe in his office throughout his life. When Kim Jong Il opened it after his father's death in 1994, he found only one photograph inside — a faded picture of Kim Il Sung with Kim Chaek.

Beginning with the Korean Communist Party and Chinese Communist Party in 1920s Manchuria, he committed himself to armed anti-Japanese struggle and rose to command guerrilla operations in the Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army alongside Kim Il Sung and Choe Yong-gon, the three known as the 'Manchurian partisan troika.' After returning to Korea in 1945, he became Kim Il Sung's closest comrade, leading the creation of the North Korean branch of the Communist Party and orchestrating the campaign to install Kim as paramount leader. When the DPRK was founded in 1948, he became its first Deputy Premier and Minister of Industry, directing postwar industrial reconstruction. He commanded Korean People's Army forces at the front during the Korean War and died of exhaustion in January 1951; the DPRK posthumously named a city, a university, and a steel complex after him.

Chinese Communist revolutionary forces (before 1949) Chinese communism 1904–1952 ↓ Illness

The only Korean to complete the Long March, Eighth Route Army artillery commander who led the Korean Volunteer Army and the Yan'an faction

Of some thirty Koreans who set out on the Long March, Mu Chong alone survived to reach Yan'an.

He joined the Chinese Communist Party in 1925 and became the only Korean to complete the Long March, rising to artillery commander of the Eighth Route Army. In northern China he organized the Korean Independence Alliance and the Korean Volunteer Army, serving as its commander-in-chief and emerging as the military leader of the Yan'an faction. After liberation he returned to North Korea, serving as KPA artillery commander and II Corps commander during the Korean War, but lost his power struggle with Kim Il Sung and was purged in December 1950 on charges of battlefield failure and murder. His downfall signalled the elimination of the Yan'an faction.

People’s Republic of China state institutions Chinese communism 1906–1985 ○ Natural causes

Shaolin-trained Red Army general who led the Guangzhou military region on the eastern front of the 1979 war with Vietnam

In the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese War, Xu Shiyou commanded Chinese forces as head of the Guangzhou Military Region. Under his command, they advanced on the eastern front toward Cao Bằng and Lạng Sơn in northern Vietnam.

From Xinxian in Henan, he studied martial arts at the Shaolin Temple for eight years and took a name meaning “friend of Buddhism”. Joining the Red Army, he fought the war against Japan and the civil war and long commanded the Nanjing military region. Moved to the Guangzhou region in 1974, he and political commissar Wei Guoqing protected Deng Xiaoping when the Gang of Four purged him after Zhou Enlai’s death in 1976. In the 1979 war with Vietnam he led the Chinese forces and commanded the eastern front towards Cao Bằng and Lạng Sơn. A Politburo member from 1969 to 1982, he died in Nanjing in 1985.

People’s Republic of China state institutions Chinese communism 1910–1980 ○ Natural causes

A field commander who read the course of war

He left for the north after telling his wife, “A general may well die on the battlefield.”

Deng Hua was a People’s Liberation Army general who commanded large formations through the Communist revolution and the Chinese Civil War. In 1950 he organized and trained the Northeast Border Defense Army, preparing the force that would cross the Yalu, then supported the Korean War as Peng Dehuai’s first deputy commander. From 1952 he led the Chinese People’s Volunteers through major operations and the armistice phase. Implicated in Peng Dehuai’s downfall, he was dismissed, persecuted during the Cultural Revolution, and rehabilitated in 1980.