Chapter 46 Red horror drama directed by Kang Sheng

On July 15, 1943, Kang Sheng made a report at the cadre meeting of the central government organs held in the Central Auditorium.He said sharply: "Now is the period of urgent military mobilization", "Whether you are young or middle-aged, whether you are a man or a woman, whether you are serving the enemy consciously or unconsciously, our Communist Party calls on you to hurry up Wake up! I call on you to stop serving the enemy’s fifth column!... The Communist Party welcomes all those who have made mistakes to become Chinese who resist Japan and save the country, and every person who has made mistakes will become a reformer.

"If a child stumbles into the river, he can be rescued calmly in normal times, but he must be rescued when the water is flooded. This is a simple truth that can be understood without saying anything. However, when a child stumbles in nature, it is mainly rescued by outsiders. , but those who have lost politically, when encountering an opportunity to be rescued, mainly rely on themselves.” Therefore, "we call on those who come to confess to confess as soon as possible, and don't relax for a second. If you lose this precious opportunity, you will always be in a situation of eternal doom."

In the end, he said: "We warn those secret agents who are obsessed with obsession, quickly wake up and change! In order to save young people who have lost their way, we have the heart of a Bodhisattva, but in order to suppress spies, we have a will of steel. If they persist, they will not repent. If you are willing to serve the enemy's fifth column, then we must resolutely suppress it with severe measures." This is the infamous "Saving the Stumbled" report.The sun was shining brightly outside the window, but those who listened to the report realized that this was a "new signal of terror", and felt chills in their hearts.

After Kang Sheng's speech, the "Movement to Rescue the Stumbled" swept across Yan'an and the entire border area.The city of Yan'an, which has always been full of vitality and an atmosphere of solidarity and mutual assistance, is shrouded in a cloud of chaos and uneasiness.All agencies, schools, and groups lost their normal working order. "Confession meeting", "complaint meeting", "rescue meeting", "persuasion meeting" and other meetings day and night, there was a "rescue" climax. "Society", "traitor", "traitor", "red flag party", "bad guys" and so on are numerous, and all units and agencies have them.For a time, more than 15,000 "secret agents" were cleared out of the model anti-Japanese democratic base areas across the country.In some units, except for a few people, almost all of them have become "rescue" targets.There were more than 200 people from the Telecommunications School of the Third Bureau of the Central Military Commission of the Communist Party of China, and 170 "secret agents" were arrested.Among the 88 people from Guanzhong Normal University who participated in the rectification movement, 62 "secret agents" were dug out.Suide Normal University recruited 230 "secret agents", accounting for 73% of the school's total population.The Yan'an Guard Corps has more than 80% "KMT agents".

What is particularly puzzling is that the "origins" and "criminal activities" confessed by these "secret agents" are bizarre and unbelievable, and some of them are similar to stories in novels. A 16-year-old boy from Suide Normal University, named Ma Fengchen, came to the stage at the "confession" meeting with a bag of stones in his hand, and confessed that he was a spy trained by the secret service, and that he was the captain of the stone team, who specialized in killing people with stones. Another girl named Liu Jinmei, who was only 14 years old, "was only a little higher than the table when she walked on the stage", "confessed" that she joined the "Fuxing Society" and was instigated by secret agents to win over and corrupt party members and cadres.

... Who is Kang Sheng?He actually directed a red horror drama in Yan'an, turning a vibrant red city into a place where everyone is in danger. Kang Sheng, formerly known as Zhang Zongke, courtesy name Shaoqing, was born in Jiaonan, Shandong Province. He joined the Party in 1925 and was elected as a review member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China at the Third Plenary Session of the Sixth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China in 1930. In 1931, he went to the Soviet Union to participate in the work of the Communist International, and returned to China with Wang Ming in November 1937.When he was in the Soviet Union, Kang Sheng originally followed Wang Ming's footsteps, but after arriving in Yan'an, he played double-faced at first, and then played against the wind, pretending to be loyal to Mao Zedong and fighting Wang Ming.In Yan'an, Kang Sheng served as the principal of the Central Party School and the head of the Central Social Department, and he held part of the power to educate and review cadres.Therefore, during the rectification movement, he became the deputy director of the General Study Committee of the CPC Central Committee (the director is Mao Zedong).

After becoming the head of the General Academic Committee, Kang was determined to make some achievements and take the opportunity to earn some political capital so as to squeeze into the upper echelon of power.The only thing Kang Sheng has is the wrong experience of suppressing counter-revolutionaries and expanding the scope he learned in the Soviet Union. When he went to the Soviet Union, it was the era when the expansion of the Soviet Union's suppression of counter-revolutionaries was rampant.Under the guidance of Stalin's erroneous theory that "the closer you get to socialism, the more enemies you have", a large number of cadres, including the Political Bureau of the CPSU Central Committee, were detained as "anti-Party elements", "secret agents", "foreign spies", and accepted He was brutally murdered for crimes such as "foreign subsidy".In the end, even many "Cheka" personnel who carried out anti-revolutionary missions were not spared.

Kang Sheng, who was in Moscow, accepted all these as positive experiences.After returning to Yan'an, Kang Sheng followed suit. From January to February of 1938, he published an article in which he falsely stated that Chen Duxiu and others were "Japanese spies", and that Chen Duxiu received a monthly allowance of 300 yuan from Japan. After the rectification movement began, Kang Sheng made a fuss about the Wang Shiwei incident. Everyone knows that the main goal of the Yan'an rectification movement is to criticize dogmatism and empiricism, rectify the three styles, and unify the understanding of the whole party by studying Marxism, party history, and rectification documents.At the Politburo meeting in September 1941, Mao Zedong clearly stated: "Down with the two doctrines and keep the people."

After the rectification movement began, democracy was promoted in the party and everyone was mobilized to raise opinions. At that time, young intellectuals and cadres had a lot of opinions.Before Wang Shiwei wrote it, he wrote a letter to Mao Zedong, criticizing Yan'an for "clothes are divided into five colors, food is divided into three classes, rich and poor are not evenly distributed, high and low are different" and so on.A poster called "Light Cavalry" appeared on the streets of Yan'an. It was posted on the main road, and the content also criticized issues such as hierarchy and undemocracy.

At that time, Yan'an was short of supplies, so it was reasonable to give appropriate material care to leading cadres, which should be understood as intellectual cadres; and in some unreasonable places, the majority of young cadres were also allowed to raise opinions.However, the cadres in Yan'an came from all over the world. At that time, there were some contradictions between the new and old cadres in Yan'an, between the party organizations in the base areas and the underground party organizations from the Kuomintang-controlled areas behind the enemy, between the workers and peasants and the intellectuals, and between the local cadres and the outside cadres. .When young intellectuals and cadres raised their opinions, some old cadres became suspicious, thinking that they were directed at the Communist Party and opposed the party's leadership.Hu Qiaomu, who was Mao Zedong’s secretary at the time, wrote to Wang Shiwei, criticizing him for “the article is full of hostility to the leader, and provokes the general comrades to beat the drums and attack. Whether it is a politician, an artist, or a party member, It's absolutely not allowed."Remind him to pay attention to the position and method of putting forward opinions, and not to go astray.

Another example is the Liberation Daily's literature and art column once published a novel "Interval" written by the writer Ma Jia.The novel describes a veteran cadre and guerrilla leader who likes a female student from the city.But his simple, unadulterated, rude love frightened the schoolgirl, and there was a great distance between them.This novel aroused the dissatisfaction of veteran cadres, the editorial department checked it, and was criticized repeatedly during the rectification movement. And so on have created contradictions. The extreme democratization and liberalism among young intellectuals attracted great attention from the central government, and overestimated this tendency, thinking that "the petty-bourgeois crooked trend has a wide-ranging influence. If it is not corrected first , it is impossible to bring the rectification movement into the right path. Therefore, for a period of time, the rectification movement first aimed at this unhealthy trend among young intellectuals.” Wang Shiwei's writing, "Politics, Artists" and other essays took the lead in opposing the president and advocating democratic elections for the general assembly of the whole court, which became the target of criticism. From June to July 1942, the Academia Sinica and other units held a meeting to expose and criticize Wang Shiwei.At the meeting, it was exposed that Wang Shiwei had said that "Stalin's human nature is not lovable", "Radek is a lovable person", "The Communist International should be responsible for the failure of the Chinese Revolution", "The Soviet Union's trial of Zinoviev's treason case is a can be doubted", "the Trotskyist theory is correct in some places" and other words that were considered outrageous at the time.In addition, Wang Shiwei had contacts with Trotskyists in the past. Under Kang Sheng's intervention, without any real evidence, Wang Shiwei was labeled with three big hats: "counter-revolutionary Trotskyist spy", "hidden Kuomintang spy and spy" , "Member of the Anti-Party Group of Five", was expelled from the party, arrested and imprisoned. This is a typical example of raising an ideological issue to a political issue. The most innocent ones are Cheng Quan, Wang Li and his wife, Pan Fang and Zong Zheng.Wang Li and Zong Zheng were alumni of Fudan University and had contacts in Yan'an. Wang Li met Wang Shiwei when he was in Nanjing in early 1936. Wang Shiwei and Zong Zheng and his wife were close neighbors. Anti-Party Group of Five". The occurrence of the Wang Shiwei incident further affected the changes in the guiding ideology of the Party Central Committee on rectification. In April 1942, Kang Sheng reported to Mao Zedong that intelligence showed that Chiang Kai-shek was taking advantage of the opportunity to bring down the CCP through both military offensive and internal sabotage; Liberalism took the opportunity to carry out espionage activities. In the 1940s, the Kuomintang repeatedly created anti-communist incidents.The Central Committee of the Communist Party of China advocated: "Anything supported by the enemy, we must oppose." After listening to the report, Mao Zedong said: In the study and inspection work, cadre appraisal is carried out, and the cadre's thoughts and organizational concepts are reviewed; in the review work, Find counter-revolutionaries and eliminate them to consolidate the organization. On June 19, Mao Zedong said at a meeting: The current study movement has discovered Wang Shiwei’s Trotskyist problem in the Academia Sinica. , more than half of the intellectuals, we have to find the bad guys and save the good guys. Indeed, before and during the rectification movement, villains were discovered in the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region—the security departments of the border region cracked some spy cases. The famous spy case at that time was the case of "Hanzhong Secret Service Reconnaissance Training Class of the Military Control Bureau".Dai Li opened a spy training class in Chenjiaying Village, Hanzhong County, Shaanxi Province at the end of 1939. He trained hundreds of spies in about two years, and more than 40 of them were sent to the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region.Its main task is to penetrate into our vital departments, spy on intelligence, and carry out sabotage.Soon, most of them were found out by our side, or made secret confessions. At the same time, the Japanese secret service in the enemy-occupied area also dispatched spies to the border area. Kang Sheng, who was in charge of counter-insurgency and security work, used this to make a big publicity, saying that the border area was "a lot of spies." This untrue situation affected Mao Zedong's understanding and judgment. In November 1942, Mao Zedong announced at a meeting of high-level cadres of the Northwest Bureau that the rectification movement must not only clarify proletarian and non-proletarian ideology (half-mindedness), but also understand revolution and counter-revolution (two-heartedness), and pay attention to anti-specialism. struggle.As a result, the central authorities and schools in Yan'an began to review the work of cadres and fight against spies in December.Each unit mobilizes each cadre to write an autobiography, reflect on thoughts, reflect on history, and investigate social relations. On April 3, 1943, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China issued the "Decision on Continuing the Rectification Movement" (the well-known "April 3 Decision"). On the basis of miscalculation of the enemy's situation, the goal of the rectification movement was revised. The "Decision" stipulates: "The main goal of the rectification movement is to correct the non-proletarian ideology (feudal class ideology, bourgeois ideology, petty bourgeois ideology) among the cadres and eliminate hidden counter-revolutionaries in the party." In order to examine cadres and eliminate counter-revolutionaries, the ideological baptism has become an organizational cleansing. Now that Kang Sheng has caught one Wang Shiwei, of course he wants to catch a large number of Zhang Shiwei and Li Shiwei. In November 1942, Kang Sheng created a Zhang Keqin case at the Northwest Public School affiliated to the Ministry of Social Affairs. 2 Zhang Keqin, joined the National Liberation Vanguard in Xi'an on 10th, 1936. After the Anti-Japanese War broke out, he was sent by the Eighth Route Army's Xi'an office to do underground work in Lanzhou, Gansu, and joined the party in Lanzhou. In June 1939, due to being suspected by the enemy, he was transferred to Yan'an with the consent of the Gansu Working Committee of the Communist Party of China and Lin Boqu.After Zhang arrived in Yan'an, Kuomintang agents arrested his father and wife, both members of the Communist Party, who rebelled against the Party after being arrested.Then the newspaper of the Xi'an Three Youth League once published a list of a group of surrendered persons, the first name being Zhang Keqin.Just during the rectification period, a secret agent in Chongqing sent Zhang a copy of the Kuomintang publication - "Central Weekly".Based on this, Kang Sheng sent someone to arrest Zhang Keqin and interrogate him, asking him how he became a spy.And how was it sent to the border area to carry out sabotage? Zhang Keqin initially refused to admit that he was a spy, so the interrogators issued "extorted confessions".After several days of physical torture and wheel tactics, 19-year-old Zhang Keqin admitted that he was a spy, and explained the so-called spy organization system and the list of other spies. Kang Sheng, as if he had found a treasure, came to the conclusion: "The Gansu Party is the Red Banner Party" (that is, holding the red flag to oppose the red flag).He also said that this case "gave us a new understanding of the Kuomintang's spy policy, we had to re-evaluate the party organization in the rear area, we got an answer to the number of spies in Yan'an, and it gave us a new understanding of the Rightist thinking." touch." As a result, not only the Gansu Party has become a "Red Banner Party", but also the underground parties in Shaanxi, Sichuan, Henan, Zhejiang, Hubei and other provinces are all "Red Banner Parties."Underground party members from these provinces are suspected of being spies and are all subject to censorship. Under Kang Sheng's instructions, many comrades who had done underground party work were taken to Yan'an for review. On December 6, 1942, Kang Sheng gave a report on the struggle against spies at the senior cadre meeting in the border area. Then, he pointed out: "The rectification movement must be transferred to the trial of cadres, and the trial of cadres must be transferred to the eradication of counterrevolutionaries." "There is an inevitable connection between the three, an iron law." At the beginning of April 1943, Hu Zongnan sent a delegation headed by his senior staff officer Hu Gongmian to Yan'an to negotiate with us, and sent a special agent Hou Sheng (Hu Zongnan's deputy division commander) to accompany him.Kang Sheng personally circled a list of so-called "traitors", "secret agents", and "counter-revolutionary" suspects on the grounds of "preventing the secret agents in the border region from interacting with Hu Zongnan's delegation", and ordered the security department of the border region to arrest them on the evening of April 1.Later, he proudly said: "On the night of April 1, a sudden change occurred, and more than 200 people were arrested overnight." Before the incident, the cadres of the security department pointed out that the evidence was insufficient, but Kang Sheng said: "First arrest and then talk about it. It is because they don't know clearly that they are locked up for interrogation. The interrogation is to clarify the problem." After the "April 3 Decision" was released, the trial cadres changed from internal to public, and a mass confession campaign was launched. First of all, Kang Sheng used the Zhang Keqin case he made to make Zhang a "model of confession". Suide Normal University and other units went to make a "confessional mobilization report" and speak out from their own experience. How did a large number of "secret agents" confess? According to Zhang Keqin's later recollection: "At the meeting called for confession held by Northwest Public School, one by one stared at each other, and whoever looked like was called to admit that he was a 'secret agent'. If he admitted to being a 'secret agent', he was asked to go on stage and 'confess'." , As a result, more than half of the people sitting in the auditorium have become 'secret agents'." At that time, a glorious atmosphere of "confession" was formed.In order to encourage "confession", many units have decided that those who confess will be given snacks and biscuits, and will be commended by wearing big red flowers at the meeting. Don't underestimate the role of snacks and biscuits. In Yan'an in the 1940s, the economy was extremely difficult, and sometimes they could only drink gruel, and biscuits were a luxury. In this atmosphere, a lot of farce occurred: There is a group of comrades in the ninth class of the School of Administration, all "confessed" as "traitors", "secret agents", and "counter-revolutionaries".Immediately after the meeting, a celebration party was held. Everyone donated money to buy peanuts and red dates, and invited other people who did not "confess" to participate. The director of the General Affairs Department of the Border Region Government is an old cadre. He is usually diligent and hard-working, and he is very popular with the masses. There is no problem "confessing" for office workers with low levels of education.Because of this, he couldn't eat and couldn't sleep soundly.The comrades in the General Affairs Office saw it, and discussed in private: In order to relieve the distress of the old director, and to eat biscuits and wear red flowers after "confessing", everyone went to "confess" and forget it.Therefore, everyone "confessed" to being a "secret agent" together, and everyone was happy. In this way, from security agencies to general agencies, more and more false confessions were made, and there was a figure of 450 people who confessed to the party in Kang Sheng's report on July 15.The seeds of unjust, false and wrongly decided cases have been planted in this "confession". However, Kang Sheng was still not satisfied. He urgently needed to expand his achievements and demonstrate his work achievements and abilities.He said sensationally: "Three shaved heads in Yangjialing, the central station, turned themselves in. Our heads are rolling around under the knives of the secret agents." On July 15, he made another report on "Rescue the Stumbled", which made the situation more aggressive. Not enough people "confessed", so they forced, confessed, believed, and even relied on subjective assumptions to arbitrarily refer to a deer as a horse. Kang Sheng said that 70% to 80% of the young people and cadres who came to Yan'an were politically unreliable.Therefore, at that time, the Ministry of Social Affairs "subjectively affirmed all suspects, and even many new intellectual cadres, as spies, thinking that if there were suspicions, they must be spies; if they were spies, there must be organizations in our region; if there were organizations, There must be a leader; as long as there is a leader, there must be a leadership organization; if there is a leadership organization, there must be middle-level and lower-level organizations. Therefore, for each suspect or spy, a huge spy system must be forced out, and many spy connections must be revealed. That’s why I think it’s frank and thorough.” Kang Sheng often patted his chest and said: "Looking at ××× looks like a spy."Under his precepts and deeds, many bizarre cases appeared: Some lesbians like to dress up, so they are said: "You are so beautiful, if you don't become a spy, who will be a spy!" One of the relatives of a progressive young woman was a traitor, so she was suspected of being a "Japanese spy." An old comrade from the Organization Department of the Central Committee learned foreign languages ​​from a priest when he was studying in Peking, and was labeled an "Italian spy". What's more, some young intellectuals like to chat and walk, talk about clouds, talk about the moon.So he was falsely accused of organizing counter-revolutionary organizations "Moon Society" and "Wuyun Society"... There was another incident that later became a "laughing stock", reflecting the degree of people's mental tension: a newly married comrade went home one day because of work. It was late, and when I got home in the middle of the night, the new daughter-in-law was still waiting for him by the lonely lamp.Not only was he not moved by it, but he thought she had a problem, and forced her to explain the problem to a responsible comrade. In order to obtain a confession, during the rescue campaign, the interrogated were subjected to torture, such as "wheel fighting, sitting on a small stool, tying up with five flowers, fake shooting, etc." Therefore, during the rescue campaign, some people came to the stage to "confess" and went off the stage to cry.There are also some who "confess" today and retract the confession tomorrow. Others became mentally disturbed because they could not stand the injustice, and hanged themselves or committed suicide by throwing themselves into a well. The whole of Yan'an fell into chaos and uneasiness for a while.