This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the Central Work Conference that made full preparations for the plenum.As a witness of this historical turning point, I have not forgotten my social responsibility. I think I should write down what I have personally experienced and my thoughts at that time and now.So since April and May to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the publication of "Practice Is the Only Criteria for Testing Truth", I have successively written commemorative articles about this turning point.Most of these articles were rushed out by the editors of the newspapers and periodicals who asked me to write them, and they had to be published in the newspapers and periodicals after they were written.After nearly half a year of writing, "The Historical Turning Point I Experienced" was written. "Turning Turn" is very long, about 200,000 words. I didn't plan to publish a book at first, but later I thought that since I had written so much, I wanted to see which publishing house was willing to publish it. As a result, I got the support of Central Compilation and Translation Publishing House. You can meet with readers.

In the process of writing this book, I have deepened the realization that people forget history very quickly these days.This is probably a law of social and historical development: the faster history progresses, the wider people in the world have contact with, and the more they are exposed to new things, the faster they will forget history.From this, I also feel that we should strengthen historical research and historical education.Because historical experience and lessons are wealth created by human beings, and some are even precious wealth acquired at the cost of heavy losses. It is a great loss to forget the repeated historical experience and lessons.I have seen a Soviet drama, the title of which is probably "Dawn Shines on Moscow", which quoted a sentence from Lenin: "Never forget the past, forgetting the past means betrayal." This sentence is not found in "The Complete Works of Lenin", Maybe it was made up by the creator.Anyway, it's a good quote.However, I still made a modification to it and changed it to "Never forget the past, if you forget the past, you will not be able to grasp the future".I think that Lenin's sentence (let's assume that Lenin really said that) both sentences only talk about the past, not the future.I added the word "future" in order to make this point: if the past is forgotten, people will repeat the mistakes made in the past, and damage the future world that could have progressed more smoothly.

From this point of view, I also feel that I should take some time to "look backward" - look back at history.But we ourselves should also "look forward" to learn about new situations and study new problems.In the three-page outline that Deng Xiaoping gave me during the Central Work Conference, there were the words "looking backward is to look forward".Later, although these words were not used as they were in the "Speeches", they were concretely used in the words "to deal with the remaining problems in order to look forward".But I remember these words in the outline very firmly, because it is the meaning of all historical research and historical education.

Taking the current incident as an example, I think people know too little about the specific plot and ideological background of the historical turning point in 1978, and it is really necessary to improve their knowledge in this area.For example, people only know about the Third Plenary Session, but they don’t know that the Third Plenary Session lasted only 5 days, and they understand why the 5-day meeting can solve so many problems, but they don’t understand why the Third Plenary Session has no keynote report.I think that since we want to commemorate, we should tell more about the truth of history.As long as the situation at that time is clearly explained, it can be understood that a 36-day, large-scale and high-standard central working conference was held before the Third Plenary Session, which fully prepared for the Third Plenary Session.The Third Plenary Session did not have a special theme report, and the Third Plenary Session was a meeting without a theme report.Hua Guofeng presided over the Third Plenary Session and made a speech at the opening, but this speech was delivered on the night of the first day of the Third Plenary Session.The meeting arranged for members of the Central Committee who did not attend the Central Working Conference but attended the plenary session to spend the whole day watching the speeches of Hua Guofeng, Ye Jianying, and Deng Xiaoping at the closing meeting of the Central Working Conference.Because Deng Xiaoping's speech was the most comprehensive and profound, it was later said that this speech actually became the theme report of the Third Plenary Session.

Another example is that many people think that since the conference has also achieved success in opposing the "two whatevers", it can correct the mistake of "one big and two public" in the countryside in a practical way, so that rural reform can be carried out quickly and smoothly. conduct.People don't know that the success of opposing the "Two Whatevers" at that time was only to solve the "Tiananmen Incident" nature rehabilitated and to solve some major problems left over from the "Cultural Revolution". At that time, there were still many problems, including the wrong guidance of rural work It is still impossible to achieve a relatively thorough correction of thinking.People think that the measures to develop our country's agriculture and improve the lives of farmers can be implemented since then, but this is not the case in fact.Because Mao Zedong insisted on opposing the household contract of production many times, the people who drafted the agricultural documents not only did not dare to include the idea of ​​household contracted production in the documents, but also wrote in the agricultural documents issued at the Third Plenary Session There is a regulation that "it is not allowed to contract production to households, and it is not allowed to divide the land and do it alone".It took two or three years after the Third Plenary Session to gradually correct it.

For another example, at the Central Work Conference, several central leaders Ye Jianying, Deng Xiaoping and even Hua Guofeng emphasized the full promotion of democracy. Deng Xiaoping and Ye Jianying’s speeches contained many incisive remarks on the full promotion of democracy. Now we should introduce them to everyone. Look, be educated. I was fortunate to experience the historical turning point in 1978.And even though I have reached the age of the "Zhang Dynasty", my health is still good, and I can still write at my desk. If I don't write down what I know, what is useful and even valuable for today and the future, it is indeed unreasonable.So I wrote so many articles.But it was too late for me to start doing this kind of thing. Although I tried to be accurate, I was too hasty after all, and it was inevitable that there were some points that were not deep and thorough, or even not accurate enough.As for the missing things, there will be more. Fortunately, many old comrades are writing commemorative articles of the Third Plenary Session. These articles will help me recall and clarify more things, and make corrections to these things.