Soviets were founded in China as the result of a series of defeats of the working class and peasantry, resulting from a class collaborationist policy that gave the interests of the bourgeoisie priority in order to maintain a “United Front” with them. Nevertheless, the Soviets introduced a number of vital reforms: abolition of debt to usurers and large landowners; reductions in interest rates, rents, taxes and mortgages. Land re-distribution also improved the lives of most middle and poor peasants, and some landless labourers. These changes ensured peasant support for, and loyalty to, the CCP.
The CCP also introduced progressive legislation regarding women including; marriage reform, abolition of foot binding, and the right to own land and property. Reforms which were essential for improving the lives of women.
These reforms and all other progressive measures taken by the CCP were wholeheartedly supported by Chinese Trotskyists. But who also pointed out that the “Soviets” were not islands of socialism, they were part of a class-collaborationist strategy with the goal of a so-called democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry which would be, in fact, a national bourgeois-democratic, capitalist state. Trotskyists also pointed out that these so-called Soviets lacked an essential pre-requisite, being completely undemocratic. In the Leninist sense they were not Soviets at all.
Despite strong peasant support the armed strength of the KMT armies overwhelmed the early Soviets and forced the Red Army onto the Long March. The defeats suffered allowed Mao Zedong to successfully challenge the existing leaders and, with Stalin’s support, to re-enter the Politburo as its most authoritative figure.
By the time of Mao’s arrival in Shensi province, Third Period Stalinism was dead and had been replaced by the Popular Front strategy which, in China, was interpreted as political subordination of the CCP to the KMT in a way that mirrored the tragedy of 1925-27. Mao welcomed this strategy of right opportunism as his own. Lenin, it should be remembered, had considered such coalitions a betrayal and fought against them the whole of his political life. To him it was the epitome of revisionism and upon his return to Russia in April 1917, he had threatened to split with those Bolsheviks (who, incidentally, included Stalin) who favoured merging with the Mensheviks and supporting the coalition government established after the February Revolution.