Chapter 30 Chapter Twelve

"...Yes, it has begun, a great start. For this great start, I have waited for a full seventeen years - if it is counted from the day when the Chinese Communist Party seized power in the country. And if I joined the Chinese Communist Party in 1924 Counting from that day, it has been a full forty-two years. Life, my old and young life, suddenly burst into splendor when this great beginning came..." In "A Man Faithful to the Faith", Ji Boshun wrote: "... At that time, I decided that this was the real proletarian revolution. Comrade Mao Zedong finally completed his transformation to revolutionary Marxism after experiencing populism and the growing historical reaction within the party. The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution It is bound to create a shining example for the international communist movement, that is, to hand over the ideological weapon of Marxism-Leninism to the masses at the grassroots level and to the broad masses of the people, and carry out a sweeping sweep of the revolutionary ruling party from bottom to top to eliminate reaction. It is another revolution that should have been completed in the Soviet Union in 1928, but was not completed due to the limitations of history and the times. What this revolution wants to eliminate is not the workers’ state under the dictatorship of the proletariat, nor the crushing of the state machine in operation, but the elimination of the state Dissidents in the machine remove the reactionaries who manipulate the state machine, degenerate elements, and bureaucrats who oppress the people in the name of the people from the ranks of the leadership of the ruling party. This is a magnificence of Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution in China practice……"

However, the hope was once again dashed.When this great revolution in the name of the proletariat was in full swing, when Ji Boshun wrote his long essay titled "Thoughts on the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and the International Communist Movement" At that time, he was arrested again, and without any legal procedures, he was taken to Qingpu Prison, where he was locked up for three years.Three years later, as a historical counter-revolutionary prisoner, he was escorted by Qing Pu to a reform-through-labor farm in Anhui for labor reform. This is sad.Revolutions always devour their own children.But in another sense, Ji Boshun was very lucky.If Ji Boshun hadn't stayed in prison and labor camps, the revolution for which he applauded would most likely be the first to destroy him physically.This is what Ji Boshun realized after he was released by amnesty.

When he arrived at the labor reform farm in Anhui, Ji Boshun had entered his sixty-seventh year of life.His temples and hair are all white, his body is as thin as a shadow, not straight, bent all day long, like a big question mark.It is said that the Anhui labor reform farm was originally unwilling to accept him. They were afraid that the old prisoner would fall to his death in the farm cell or on the working field.Out of this concern, the farm did not allow Ji Boshun to participate in slave-like labor with the young and strong prisoners. Instead, they sent Ji Boshun as a handyman, specializing in cleaning corridors and toilets.I lived in a small room with cleaning tools at the corner of the stairs, and my movements were basically free within the scope of the labor camp.

The small room was less than five square meters, with brooms and mops behind the door, and a bed made of broken boards and two stacks of blue bricks by the window.There is a cleaning bucket stuffed under the bed, and a dusty light bulb hangs over your head.During the day, after Ji Boshun finished his work, he sat cross-legged on the edge of the bed and looked at the clouds in the sky through a small ventilation window.At night, Ji Boshun lay on the bed with his head resting on his arm, watching the stars in the night sky through the small window. Ji Boshun was very satisfied and thought it was a kind of happiness.In this narrow world of less than five square meters, his body and soul have been relaxed to the maximum.Sometimes Ji Boshun even felt that he was not in a labor camp, but on vacation and recuperating.

The idea of ​​writing "A Man of Faith" was born at that time. At that time, there were several occasions when outsiders went to the reform-through-labor farm to find Ji Boshun, and asked Ji Boshun to write materials for those who had been in prison with him before liberation.These foreign transferees brought back Ji Boshun's memories of the past time and time again, and gradually made him unable to restrain his urge to write. What surprised Ji Boshun the most was the investigation of his old acquaintance Gao Ming.According to the outsiders, Gao Ming was a big traitor, and he had defected when he was arrested in Shanghai in 1936. They asked Ji Boshun to confirm that the defection was true.Ji Boshun didn't know whether Gao Ming had rebelled, and his political integrity did not allow him to tell lies.Ji Boshun told the dispatcher in a matter-of-fact manner that if Gao Ming defected when he was arrested and interrogated, relevant evidence could be found in the enemy files.Without such evidence, he personally cannot prove that Gao Ming is a traitor.The transferees could not get the exposing materials written by Ji Boshun, so they asked Ji Boshun to sign a false testimony written by them in advance.Ji Boshun refused.

This matter gave Ji Boshun a strong stimulus.Ji Boshun suddenly realized that the history written by later generations is often very unreliable.The ever-changing political reality constantly oppresses the wordless history, which will eventually turn history into a man-made labyrinth.As a forerunner of the Chinese revolution, he has the responsibility and the obligation to write down the true thought process of the Trotskyites of the Chinese revolution truthfully and unabashedly during his life of hard struggle. Ji Boshun began to secretly leave the paper that he was asked to write materials in a planned way, collected the corners and corners of waste paper picked up during cleaning, and cut off the blank edge of the newspaper, preparing for his final life on the road to the end. A great project.

From then on, Ji Boshun knew that he had no tomorrow, no future.He stopped before the sixty-seven-year-old life milestone, turned around resolutely, and faced the ups and downs of the past and the dark history. Only the past and history belonged to him. It was an asset, an experience. One person cannot bear the suffering of all mankind on his shoulders. When human beings are crawling and looking around in a daze, it is lonely and even ridiculous to be a struggler and explorer of human liberation.However, when human beings stand up and are liberated, the loneliness that those pioneers once had will become a glory that all human beings can be proud of.People will point to the forerunners they once laughed at, who were crushed into the soil by suffering, and say: Look, they all have unyielding shoulders and souls!It is because of them that we are entitled to be called human beings.Their souls have entered immortality in their lonely struggle, and they have become the eternal lamps for human beings to move forward...

Ji Boshun thought so proudly. So, let's get started and let history tell the future.Ji Boshun held the pen, leaned on the plank and began to write quickly, and the dual and even multiple personalities were unified again.The humility in his body disappeared, and the cowardice in his eyes disappeared.Like a great sage, he is having a soul dialogue with those lost sages—Maenreto. The "Communist Manifesto" is like a heroic symphony, with great melodies played endlessly in Chinese, Russian, French, German, Italian, and Flemish. Ji Boshun's body floated in mid-air along with the great melody.

He had a bird's-eye view of the world from mid-air. The world has become so small, but he has become so huge. Ji Boshun was reminiscing, reminiscing... In remembrance, to greatness, to eternity. For so many sleepless nights, Ji Boshun fell asleep holding a pen while writing.Many imaginary scenes turned into strange dreams, flew into his remaining years, and supplemented his remaining life. He dreamed that he and a group of people were going to a beautiful paradise, but the place where he and the group stood was a muddy wilderness.There are many roads in the wilderness, and it is not known which road leads to heaven.He stood alone at the intersection of many roads, finding the way for everyone.It was raining hard, and he was cold.The road to heaven has finally been found, and the sign of the road is Trotsky's tall and stalwart body!But at this moment, another group of people came over noisy, saying that they also wanted to go to heaven.He was very happy and told them to go with him, holding high the banner of Trotsky.The crowd did not listen to him, and did not believe in the path he and his comrades had found.They lifted him up, threw him into the muddy water, and ran away laughing.He climbed up numbly, stood stubbornly in place, and greeted the second group of people.He told them again that he knew the most successful way, which would lead them all to the most wonderful heaven.They still wouldn't listen to him and kicked him in the ass, kicked him down, and the gang left again.He had no choice but to crawl in the muddy water, to the road he knew could lead to heaven.Crawling, crawling, the rain stopped, the clouds cleared, and the sun came out.He saw Trotsky in the blinding sunlight.

Trotsky asked him sharply at the door of a tall church: "Comrade Rashevich, what's wrong with you? Why did you mess up things in China? Do you suspect that my Marxist views are incorrect?" He stood up covered in muddy water and said to Trotsky: "No, no, Comrade Trotsky! I and the Chinese Trotskyists never doubted you! Our failure in China was not because of your Marxism The proposition is not correct, but because we have no chance to practice your proposition, the quality of our Chinese comrades is too poor! There are many theorists, but few doers. .” Trotsky asked him again: "After suffering so much, do you still believe in revolutionary Marxism?"

He said: "Faith! It is the power of this belief that has enabled me to overcome hardships and come to where I am today!" Trotsky waved his hand: "Well said! Life is short, but faith is eternal! If a forerunner falls, thousands of latecomers will continue to take over the banner of faith and pass it on from generation to generation until the communism of the world is realized..." He listened with great emotion, and walked on. At this time, a bullet flew out of nowhere and knocked him down. He fell down on William Street in Qingpu, seeing An Zhongliang, Miss Qian Er, Gao Ming, Zheng Shaobai, Li Weimin, Zhang Xiaohan and many others carrying smoking guns, walking towards him with a bang, with a pair of powerful feet trampled on his body.He was in great pain, but he shouted without fear: "Faith and thought are indestructible..." He dreamed that he was lying on a hospital bed, not in Qingpu or Shanghai in China, but in Moscow in the Soviet Union. The people guarding him were not nurses, but a group of Soviet GPUs. Abandon the opposition position.what is he doingWell, he's reciting a poem, a poem by Mayakovsky: The roar of the GPU personnel interrupted his reciting, and he heard a cold voice saying: "... Rashevich, this is your last chance, otherwise, you will be expelled!" He dreamed that he was driven out, sitting in a bullock cart.The bullock cart was not in Turkey, but was driving slowly on the fields of my hometown in western Henan. Every turn of the wheels made a heavy and piercing sound like steel breaking.He couldn't take it anymore, jumped out of the cart, squeezed to the side of the cow and pulled up the cart. Pulling, pulling, he turned into an ox, with a heavy yoke on his back, struggling forward, and the whip raised by the driver fell hard on his face, neck, and naked back from time to time... Until he was released by amnesty, and until he died, the uncle could not get rid of the continuous stubborn and bitter dreams.This point, I only knew after reading all the manuscripts of my uncle after his death.Only then did I understand why he would silently look at Dongping Lake outside the attic window and weep quietly alone.Why did he remember the "Yamato Maru" that left Qingpu Harbor in 1925 when he was dying.Uncle's life was a continuous nightmare, and the starting point of the nightmare was the deck of the Yamato Maru. My uncle told me that what I wrote in the labor camp in Anhui has never been discovered by the supervisors.In the eyes of the supervisors, he was a dead tiger. Squatting in the small room less than five square meters was equivalent to entering the grave early.They never imagined that the vitality of this old prisoner would be so tenacious that he would survive until the day of amnesty.Moreover, under their noses, under the cover of writing materials, they successively wrote memoirs of nearly 200,000 words in Russian, and lived for another nine years after being released, and finally completed this posthumous work "" Faithful to the Faith". I think, if there is anything in his life that he should be proud of, this is the biggest one: the uncle created a miracle of life with his firm belief, and showed people the amazing endurance of life in the face of suffering. My uncle passed away in 1985 at the age of eighty-two.Same birthday as his mother, my maternal grandmother.He died before midnight at night.My mother said that if it was after midnight, it would be the next day, and the next day would be the twentieth anniversary of my grandmother's death. I don't know how to evaluate my uncle's unique and complicated life.I don't know whether he is a tough and unyielding fighter, or a stubborn lunatic?I don't know, as a person, should I pursue and live like this? The uncle said that we should pursue and live like this.This is an important difference between human beings who are masters of all spirits and other animals, and even more important differences between being a revolutionist and mediocre philistines. The uncle said that if he wanted to, he could change his way of life.The suffering of his life was not predestined, but chosen by himself. In Moscow in 1928, he chose to be deported; in Shanghai in 1933, he chose to go to prison; in 1938, he was not tempted by the Japanese temptation... It’s not that he didn’t have the opportunity to choose, but he was unwilling to serve his own interests To be a philistine, to be a living inferior animal. The uncle said that a hero cannot be judged by success or failure, and that "the victor is the prince and the loser is the thief" is the logic of robbers.In the history of human progress, successful heroes are great, and unsuccessful heroes are equally great.Future generations have no right to laugh at those unsuccessful heroes.Even if the pursuit of those unsuccessful heroes is absurd, they also provide a valuable experience for human progress, so that later generations will not repeat their mistakes. The uncle said that he is a warrior who pursues the light, not a lunatic who is insane.He knew everything well, and he was destined to take his thoughts and beliefs to meet the revolutionary gods Marx, Lenin, and Trotsky.He will never admit to all the crimes imposed on him by any political opponents.He asserted that the revolutionary Marxist movement will never die because of the demise of their older generation, it will gradually rise in various parts of the world, and its influence will also expand day by day.He thought that what he saw at the finish line of his life was not the sunset of the revolutionary Marxist movement, but the dawn of new hope, the hope that was about to jump out of the horizon. The uncle said that the latecomers of our revolution should remember them with a revolutionary conscience, evaluate them objectively and fairly, without prejudice, and not be influenced by the factions of the older generation.Never forget: under the red flag of communism, there are their figures fighting tenaciously, and on the road leading to the liberation of mankind, there are their fallen bodies. The uncle said: "...if... if I can live again, I... I will... I still want to live like this... like this..." When I said this, my uncle was leaning on crutches, and with my support, he walked down slowly from the steps of the church at No. 12 William Street—the current No. 265 Renmin Road.He said this while standing by the flowerbed at the bottom of the steps, panting.It was very laborious and painful to speak, and a sentence was cut into several pieces before it was finally spit out from his big shriveled mouth. I felt the pain of my uncle, and a thought suddenly flashed in my mind: Maybe what he said was not all the truth?Maybe he knew that if he denied the spiritual idol of Trotsky and the revolutionary Marxist movement he called, his life's struggle would be equal to zero?Was he afraid of falling into this terrible zero, so he stubbornly used faith as an excuse to cover up the huge contradiction and emptiness in his heart? I don't think so without reason.The dual personality caused by his lifelong prison life has not disappeared because of his freedom in the last ten years, and it will always manifest unconsciously in many cases.In my opinion, this is no longer a matter of political integrity and spiritual character, but a double distortion of thinking and expression.Of course, I never dared to express this idea.It borders on cruelty.I was afraid that if I said this, my uncle would hit me on the head with the crutch in his hand.He was even more afraid that the old man would fall down in rage and die suddenly under the steps of the church. This was the last time that my uncle walked on William Street—he always said it was William Street instead of Renmin Road.The setting sun hangs low over the distant sea and sky, making the street blood red.The salty sea breeze blew over in gusts, blowing the doors and windows of the old French-style and German-style bungalows on both sides of the street. In the setting sun, in the sea breeze, and in the sound of "cracking", the uncle walked on crutches "cracking".He stopped and walked, pointing his trembling fingers to the western-style buildings on both sides of the road from time to time and told me: At that time, who lived in this building, and what kind of institution was that building. In front of the famous 125 William Street, today's Municipal Women's Federation, my uncle raised his crutches, pointed to the leaden gray heavy wall and said to me: The General League strike in 1925 was in the room on the east side of the second floor. It was decided in a room with a balcony.Only a week after the decision was made, 30,000 demonstrators took to this street holding red banners that read "Long Live Labor". When I left the gate of No. 125 William Street, my uncle told me with emotion that this exotic and colonial-style street built by foreigners is still the same as it used to be, with little change.And a whole generation is old, dead, and lost in this noisy world. Therefore, the uncle came to the conclusion: If there is sorrow in life, then in fact everyone's life is sorrow.Gao Ming, who has become a high-ranking official in Beijing, shares the sorrow of his lifelong prisoner.The difference is only the different forms of bearing sorrow, but death eventually erases the difference of this form. That day, the eldest uncle went back very late. After returning, he lay down and never got up again. In the last three months, on the sick bed, my uncle read "A Man Faithful to the Faith" written in Chinese again.He said that he will live on with this posthumous manuscript.A few days before his death, he was quite irritable, stroking the manuscript, and kept muttering, not sure if he was talking to himself or reciting something.The words are intermittent, the logic is confusing, and some are in Russian, which is very puzzling. I don't understand Russian, but I vaguely remember these Chinese sentences: "...a court without judges is called a court... No one can judge beliefs and ideas. Where there is poverty, there is revolution. Revolution devours children, and revolution is naturally reasonable... Arise, revolution, revolution, continue the revolution. Arise, people who will not be slaves... Turn the world upside down again... The sinner holds in his hands all the proofs of his innocence. Where are the innocent? The innocent People have no documents to prove innocence... What if everyone is innocent? What if all efforts are to create crimes?" It's such a mess, do you know what it all means? After the uncle passed away, the Beijing Central Party History Department knew that there was still such an old man in China who had met Trotsky.They didn't know that their uncle had passed away, so they flew all the way from Beijing with a tape recorder, trying to rescue some materials about the Chinese Trotskyist movement from his mouth.As a result, needless to say, the tape recorder was useless.I mobilized my mother to hand over my uncle's posthumous book "A Man of Faith" to them, hoping that they could arrange for publication and preserve a piece of history for future generations.I think this may be what my uncle expected when he was alive. Unexpectedly, things got a little worse.The comrades in the party history department carefully studied this posthumous work of the uncle and found that many of the historical facts in it are illusory and unfaithful, and can only be understood as a kind of crazy conjecture.For example, when Trotsky attended Joffe's funeral in 1927, there was no scene of Red Army soldiers shouting long live for Trotsky at all.And in the New Virgin Cemetery, the conversation between the uncle and Trotsky was almost nonsensical. Historical data prove that Trotsky did not bring up the slogan of the National Assembly at that time.The scene at the military judge's trial in 1933 is also suspicious.If my uncle dared to speak to the military judge of the Kuomintang in such a ruthless manner, he would not only be sentenced to seven years in prison, but would be executed by shooting, and it would be useless if someone spent money to campaign. Of course, the comrades in the party history department did not deny the value of this posthumous work because of this, nor did they believe that the uncle was deliberately distorting historical facts because of his imagination.Some confusion between fantasy and reality was understandable, they said, given that he spent most of his life in prison.They are going to publish it internally after verifying and annotating its important historical facts. This was not so long ago. It's really miserable to think about it. An old Communist Party member who devoted himself to the banner of Marxism in 1924, because of Trotsky and because of an accidental ship, spent his life like this! I always thought it was that ship that ruined him.If there hadn't been that boat, if the uncle had stayed in Qingpu with his classmate comrade Gao Ming on the morning of the evacuation in 1925, then he would never have had so many hardships in his life, and his status today would never have been worse than Gao Ming is low.On that long morning, Uncle Gao and Gao Ming were standing on the same starting line on William Street.The eldest uncle was twenty-two years old at the time, and Gao Ming was also twenty-two years old.My uncle joined the party in 1924, and Gao Ming also joined the party in 1924.But running away from William Street, running away from that morning, everything went wrong...