Gutian Congress
The Gutian Congress or Gutian Conference was the 9th meeting of the 4th Red Army and the first after the Nanchang Uprising and the subsequent southward flight of the rebel troops. It was convened in December 1929 in the town of Gutian in Shanghang County, Fujian Province.
Most of the delegates to this congress were army men. Mao Zedong, voted out six months earlier but moving from his success at the little-known Jiaoyang Congress, addressed the Zhu-Mao 4th Army as its Comintern-anointed political commissar and chaired the congress.
The Gutian Congress Resolution, also titled On Correcting Mistaken Ideas in the Party , has its ostensible source at the Gutian Congress. One of the selections from this significant text later included in Lin Biao's Little Red Book is as follows:
Mistaken Ideas also defined the Red Army as a "mass propaganda" organ in addition to being a military fighting force. It entrenched the absolute leadership position of the Communist Party over the Red Army. The purpose of the Red Army, the resolution stated, "was chiefly for the service of political ends." The resolution further called for the criticism of what was seen as excessive democratic deliberation and discussion in the fighting force, preferring democratic centralism whereby the minority agreed to abide by the decisions of the majority, lower levels unquestioningly implemented decisions made by the leadership, and that mistaken ideas must be "corrected through ideological criticism."Citations
