China

The Chinese Communist Party was founded in Shanghai in July 1921 with fifty-odd delegates. Within twenty-eight years it governed the most populous nation on earth. The path ran through the labour movement, warlord wars, the Nanchang Uprising, Jinggangshan, the Jiangxi Soviet, the Long March, Yan'an, the Anti-Japanese War, and the three great campaigns of 1948–1949 that destroyed Nationalist military power in less than four months.

In September 1955 the People's Republic conferred the rank of Marshal on ten commanders — Zhu De, Peng Dehuai, Liu Bocheng, Chen Yi, Ye Jianying, He Long, Luo Ronghuan, Xu Xiangqian, Nie Rongzhen, and Lin Biao. It was the highest honour the new state could confer. Of these ten, six would be persecuted, imprisoned, or killed by the Cultural Revolution launched by the same party that had elevated them.

The founding generation of the People's Republic paid an extraordinary personal price. Liu Shaoqi died in prison under a false name. Peng Dehuai was beaten to death after eight years in custody. He Long was denied insulin. The revolution that had survived the Long March, the Japanese invasion, and the Civil War was nearly consumed by itself between 1966 and 1976 — saved, in the end, by the same generation that the Cultural Revolution was trying to destroy.