Since the appearance of Edgar Snow\u27s Red Star Over China, the achievements of Liu Zhidan (劉志丹) in blending revolutionary ideals with the destructive energy of north Shaanxi\u27s bandit tradition have become well known. Through repeated failures and recoveries, Liu Zhidan perceived that 20th-century China\u27s ubiquitous violence left no alternative for the communists but to seek a military solution. The key to revolutionary success in China was an empowered peasantry fighting in the name of a shared ideal, and Liu Zhidan recognized that, in the remote areas in which the communists sought to "rest their buttocks", armed forces such as those of local bandits and brotherhoods could not be ignored. How to win those forces over to the revolutionary cause, or, failing that, how to nullify and eventually eliminate them became a major strategic problem for Liu and for other early communist militants. Regularly condemned for his attention to such irregular fighters, Liu Zhidan saw that, under the circumstances, they were all "Bro\u27s in the \u27Hood", and that the key to creating a successful revolutionary movement in China was to bring people together, not to isolate them. This paper will examine Liu Zhidan\u27s activities in "Shaanbei" from 1928 to 1932, particularly his contacts with bandits and other local power-holders. It will suggest, among other things, that Liu Zhidan\u27s policy of recruiting bandits to the revolutionary movement was anything but plain sailing. While some bandit chiefs were instinctively amenable to the revolutionary call, others became Liu Zhidan\u27s worst enemies. At the same time, the resistance Liu encountered from his fellow-revolutionaries was often fierce, leading to purges and, ultimately, to what deserves to be termed judicial murder
