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As a member of the proletariat, he learned something else: communism, the doctrine spreading among French industrial laborers and the Chinese students among them. In 1922 Deng joined the Communist Youth League set up by his expatriate countrymen. With a practical mind for detail, Deng helped duplicate and distribute the party newsletter, a job that earned him the mock degree of "doctor of mimeography." He earned his true credentials, however, in Moscow, where he studied Marxist-Leninist thought in 1926. Then it was back to a strife-torn China to propagate the faith. Deng's first assignment, as ideological watchdog to a Soviet-supported warlord, fell through when his patron defected to the Nationalists. Deng's next mission was even less promising: the young communist was ordered to the backcountry of Guangxi province in the far south, where he was to organize ragtag rebels to seize huge cities. Deng went loyally, even though he knew the task was impossible. The journey, however, proved to be momentous. On it he met up with Mao Zedong.
The two hit it off almost at once. Though Mao's guerrilla strategy was in strong disfavor with the Moscow-influenced "internationalists" at Communist Party headquarters in Shanghai, Deng, who had become exasperated with Soviet-style conventional warfare, was convinced that Mao's tactics were right. From 1931 to 1935, as the two worked to establish a Red Army base in the south-central province of Jiangxi, a mutual affection ripened that was almost brotherly. When Mao was denounced and demoted by pro-Russian elements of the party as an "escapist" for advocating a hit-and-run campaign of attrition, Deng was ousted along with him.
Amid this purge, Jin Weiying, Deng's second wife (little is known of his first), divorced him and married his chief ideological accuser. Subjected to psychologically brutal criticism sessions, Deng recanted--but only to an extent. He refused to give up his support of Mao. "I cannot say more," he told his tormentors. "What I say is true." He said enough, however, to preserve his life. Soon he was able to rejoin Mao.
Their fortunes changed after October 1934. Harassed by superior Nationalist forces, the Red Army of Jiangxi joined the arduous Long March, threading in roundabout ways through the hinterland until it straggled to the caves of Yan'an in northwestern Shaanxi province a year and 7,500 miles later. The retreat cost the lives of more than 90,000 troops, but sheer survival, along with the self-sacrifice the soldiers displayed toward civilians en route, made heroes of the communists. Mao's guerrilla strategy had by then made him the movement's unchallenged leader.