The
Long March (October 1934 – October 1935) was a military retreat undertaken by the
Red Army of the
Communist Party of China, the forerunner of the
People's Liberation Army, to evade the pursuit of the
Kuomintang (KMT or Chinese Nationalist Party) army. There was not one Long March, but a series of marches, as various Communist armies in the south escaped to the north and west. The best known is the march from
Jiangxi province which began in October 1934. The First Front Army of the
Chinese Soviet Republic, led by an inexperienced military commission, was on the brink of annihilation by
Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek's troops in their stronghold in Jiangxi province. The Communists, under the eventual command of
Mao Zedong and
Zhou Enlai, escaped in a circling retreat to the west and north, which reportedly traversed over 9,000 kilometers (6,000 miles) over 370 days. The route passed through some of the most difficult terrain of western China by traveling west, then north, to
Shaanxi.