in the 1980s I met an old Chinese woman (in Hong Kong) who was a young, urban Shanghai radical/intellectual in the 1930s.
They believed all the propaganda and went to Yan An - the communist base in NW China
She said it opened her eyes - Some of the top people (like Mao) were intellectuals, but the most trusted communist cadres were illiterate and brutal men. If they took over a village, the people either signed up for the Red Army, or they were shot. The young women, like her, who showed up were divided up into their harems to be cleaners, cooks for the revolutionaries, and the best looking ones were taken as mistresses and sex-slaves.
She managed to escape - and became an ardent anti-communist