People of the Revolution and the USSR

Activity(set)
Any Political and party leadership 13 Military command 9 Security, intelligence and policing 3 Diplomacy and international organization 2 Economy, finance and planning 2 Agriculture and land policy 1 Ideology and propaganda 5 Scholarship and theory 1
Affiliation

Most people

Any People’s Republic of Chinastate 2

All 1 affiliations

China

People’s Republic of Chinastate 2
Position
Any Marxism and communism 2
Citizenship
Any China 2
Background
Any China 2
Era(set)
Any

People of the Soviet Union

The old regime and its challengers1905–1917 3 The revolutionary generation1917–1940 29 People of the Stalin era1929–1953 24 People of the thaw and the stagnation1953–1985 38 The last generation1985–1991 22

People of the Chinese revolution and the People’s Republic

The old regime and the Nationalists1894–1949 1 People of the Mao era1949–1976 2 The reform generation1976–현재 2

People of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic era

The Revolution and the Napoleonic era1774–1830 1

People of the wider world

The revolutionary wave and the world war1917–1945 8 The Cold War and decolonization1945–현재 17
Economy, finance and planning People of the Mao era 1949–1976 Clear all

Gao Gang

高岗
People’s Republic of China Chinese communism China China 1905–1954 ✕ Suicide under house arrest

The second-most powerful man in the CCP who wielded virtually autonomous power in Manchuria, then walked into Mao's trap and fell

'This medal should go to old pockmarked Gao Gang': Peng Dehuai, receiving the DPRK's highest award in Pyongyang, July 1953, crediting Gao's logistics and rear-base work

A CCP leader who rose from Shaanxi guerrilla bases to become the party, state and military boss of Manchuria (Dongbei), the PRC's most industrialized region, and a vice-chairman of the Central People's Government in 1949. During the Korean War, as commander and commissar of the Northeast Military Region, he organized the entire rear base and logistical network for the Chinese People's Volunteer Army; Peng Dehuai later said the medal he received 'should have gone to old pockmarked Gao Gang' for his home-front work. Summoned to Beijing in 1952 as chairman of the State Planning Commission to lead the First Five-Year Plan, he attempted to displace Liu Shaoqi and Zhou Enlai from the Party hierarchy, a power play that Mao first encouraged then turned into the Gao-Rao Anti-Party Alliance purge. Placed under house arrest, he killed himself with sleeping pills in August 1954.

Career timeline
  • 1926Joined the Chinese Communist Party
  • 1932–1935Co-founded the Shaanxi-Gansu Soviet base; provided terminus for the Long March
  • 1941Member, Central Rectification Campaign Leading Group
  • 1945–1952Deputy Secretary then Secretary, CCP Northeast Bureau; Chairman, Northeast People's Government; Commander and Commissar, Northeast Military Region
  • 1949Vice-Chairman, Central People's Government
  • 1950–1953Commander, Northern Frontier Guards; overall responsibility for CPVA rear bases and logistics
  • 1952–1954Chairman, State Planning Commission; led the First Five-Year Plan
  • 1954Purged in the Gao-Rao Anti-Party Alliance affair; suicide in August

Li Xiannian

李先念
People’s Republic of China Chinese communism China China 1909–1992 ○ Natural causes

The finance chief who survived the Cultural Revolution, helped arrest the Gang of Four and became president; one of the “eight elders”

An orthodox, Soviet-style communist and firm believer in central planning, he blocked marketization and enthusiastically advocated military suppression of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.

A carpenter from Hubei, he was a political commissar of the Fourth Front Army and survived the destruction of the Western Route Army. He founded the New Fourth Army’s Fifth Division in Hubei during the war with Japan and led the breakout from the Central Plains at the start of the civil war. Finance minister for twenty-two years from 1954, he ran the economy and survived the Cultural Revolution at Zhou Enlai’s side. He joined the arrest of the Gang of Four in 1976 and, between Hua Guofeng’s “two whatevers” and Deng Xiaoping, argued with Chen Yun for the primacy of planning. President from 1983 to 1988, he backed the crackdown of 1989.

Career timeline
  • 1954–1975Minister of Finance
  • 1983–1988President of the People’s Republic of China