Chapter 56 Zhongcun, Ling County

The Central Committee of the Communist Party of China clearly stated in a letter in June: "The Chinese revolution is still the nature of a bourgeois civil rights revolution... During this stage, our policies are: confiscating land, overthrowing the landlord system and feudal relations, and establishing a dictatorship of workers and peasants. Soviet power." According to this nature, the tasks of the Jinggangshan base area: "It is to use your military strength to mobilize the broad masses of workers and peasants on the Hunan-Kiangsi or Hunan-Guangdong border to carry out the agrarian revolution, causing the situation of separate regimes to spread around and promote the riots in the four provinces of Hunan, Hubei, Jiangxi and Guangdong." development of the situation."

Using "military power" to mobilize the masses and carry out the agrarian revolution is a requirement of the central government for the Jinggangshan base area, and it is also an inevitable development of the situation. Confiscating land and overthrowing the landlord system and feudal relations were originally the tasks of the bourgeois-democratic revolution.Doesn't the "people's livelihood principle", one of Sun Yat-sen's "Three Principles of the People", contain the content of "equal land rights"?However, due to the betrayal of the revolution by the Chinese bourgeoisie, what should have been done by the leadership of the bourgeoisie has never been done.

Then, it has to be borne by the proletariat. However, in the face of the combined forces of imperialism, the bourgeoisie, and the landlord class, and the deep-rooted feudal land system and feudal production relations, what does the proletariat rely on to promote the agrarian revolution? Rely on publicity and education?In China, where there are powerful enemies and backward peasants, this method is difficult to work for a while. The failure of the Great Revolution is an example; relying on coercive means?Burning and killing peasants to turn them into proletarians and forcing them to revolution, this kind of "Left" putschist approach, has even worse effect, as we have learned from the southern Shonan uprising.

On the last day of 1927, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China wrote a letter to the Hunan Provincial Party Committee regarding the reasons why the Changsha uprising failed to materialize and Hunan Province’s current tasks, criticizing the Hunan Provincial Party Committee’s “important shortcoming in its work, which is its concern for land in the countryside. The revolution has not been able to go deep"; "Although there is a good environment and the revolutionary sentiment of the peasant masses, we have not openly deepened the struggle of the agrarian revolution."

How can there be an "open and in-depth agrarian revolution struggle"?At this time, the Party Central Committee still believed in armed riots centered on the cities, and that the cities would drive the revolution in the countryside. However, without military power and without a red political power, wouldn't the agrarian revolution be empty talk? The Hunan Provincial Party Committee once planned the Changsha riot on December 10. What happened? "On the night of the 10th, although the rickshaw driver and the dock worker ran to the street with their things, they were just mechanically waiting for the signal, not knowing what to do. As a result, the signal was not announced, and the crowd dispersed silently"; "During the riots in Changsha, the peasants in the suburbs could mobilize three teams of 500 peasants to the edge of the city under the order of the leader of the peasant association. However, because the riots in the city did not arise, they camped out overnight and dispersed quietly."

The use of armed riots centered in the cities to realize the agrarian revolution has been proved by the practice of many armed uprisings led by the party after the failure of the Great Revolution: this way is not feasible! Relying on "military power", that is, adopting the method of "armed separatism", establishing a workers' and peasants' regime, mobilizing the masses deeply, and carrying out the Agrarian Revolution is indeed a unique new path based on the characteristics of the Chinese revolution. Mao Zedong was a brave explorer of this new path. Before the Central Committee's letter in June, Mao Zedong had tried to combine the agrarian revolution with the armed separatism of workers and peasants.

The earliest attempt was in Zhongcun, Ling County, Hunan. In mid-March 1928, Mao Zedong led the first and second regiments of the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army from Long City, Ninggang, according to the instructions of the Hunan Special Committee, and went to southern Hunan to respond to the riots in southern Hunan. On the 18th, the troops arrived in Zhongcun, Ling County, Hunan Province, on standby. Zhongcun is located in the south of Ling County, surrounded by mountains, with a small river passing by the village. It is a typical southern mountain town. Taking advantage of the opportunity for the troops to rest and stand by here, Mao Zedong and He Tingying arranged the troops to use the company as a unit to go deep into the masses to propagate and mobilize the masses.

Mao Zedong gave political lectures to the troops during the day, and visited the poor and asked the poor to do mass work at night. One night, Mao Zedong brought several soldiers to the home of an old man named Ye. Mao Zedong asked the soldiers to give the food and clothes they brought to Old Man Ye, and said to him: "My fellow, I heard that your family can't open the pot again. We sent some food and some clothes and quilts, which are all from the landlord. If it is confiscated, I will give your family an emergency first." Old man Ye looked suspicious and his eyes were full of worry.

Mao Zedong saw what he was thinking, and went on to say: "Don't be afraid, fellow. The food is grown by the poor, and the clothes are also made of the blood and sweat of the poor. Now we take it back from the landlords and bullies and distribute it to the poor. It’s called return to the original owner!” Old man Ye was still afraid of picking up. Obviously, he was worried that once the revolutionary army left, the local tyrants and evil gentry would be beheaded when they returned. Mao Zedong gave the example of the chopsticks. He said: "A bamboo chopstick will break if broken, but a pair of chopsticks will be hard to break. There are still many poor people in the world. As long as the poor hug each other, what are you afraid of?"

At this time, some farmers who lived around slowly gathered in Old Man Ye's house. Seeing this, Mao Zedong chatted with everyone about the daily life and the truth of the revolution.Finally, Mao Zedong said: "A small stone can break a big water tank. As long as we organize ourselves, it will be like a hard stone. It can not only smash the small water tanks of local tyrants and evil gentry in your village, but also smash the big water tank of Chiang Kai-shek. " Mao Zedong once said to the officers and soldiers of the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army that "a small stone can break a big water tank", which was both novel and enjoyable to the poor peasants in Zhongcun.The sad look on Old Man Ye's face unfolded, and the mood of the crowd was mobilized.

Liu Yinsheng, who had just led the "March Riot" in Ling County, and others also rushed to Zhongcun at this time, and changed the special district committee into a county committee according to the instructions of the superiors, and Liu Yinsheng served as the secretary of the county committee. Mao Zedong and He Tingying immediately discussed with Liu Yinsheng and decided to hold a grievance meeting with the participation of soldiers and civilians to further mobilize the masses. More than 300 people participated in the military and civilian complaint meeting held in Weitou, Zhongcun. At the meeting, Mao Zedong explained in popular language why the poor are poor and why the rich are rich, and called on poor peasants to unite, beat local tyrants, and divide their land. Mao Zedong's words touched the hearts of the participants. Some poor peasants couldn't hold back their anger, and immediately went to the stage to tell the bloody and tearful history of their ancestors being exploited and oppressed for generations.All of a sudden, the crowd was excited, and the slogans of "repay the blood debt from the landlord class" and "down with the local tyrants and evil gentry" came and went. According to the demands of the masses, the meeting executed two big local tyrants who committed the most crimes on the spot. The prestige of the local tyrants and evil gentry was suppressed, and the emotions of the poor people were raised. It became the demand of the poor peasants to beat the local tyrants and divide their land. Zhou Li, who was working in the county party committee of Ling County at that time, recalled: "At that time, the method of dividing the land was very simple. The slogan was 'strike the local tyrants, divide the land'. The banner was clear and the slogan was loud. The peasants were soon mobilized to go to the local tyrants to pick millet. At the beginning, some people did not dare to go, fearing that the local tyrants and evil gentry would retaliate, so we publicized that there are few local tyrants, there are many workers and peasants, and we have troops. As long as we unite, we will surely defeat them. If you do not defeat them, they will exploit them. If we oppress the working people, we will never be able to stand up. The millet of the local tyrants is planted by us hard, and they are the fruits of our labor. They are parasites who do not work. After our propaganda, the peasant masses rose up to pick on the local tyrants and landlords Then, we propagated that the land owned by local tyrants does not belong to them, but was reclaimed by our ancestors with hard work. The land should be returned to the working people, and at the same time criticized the destiny theory of "wealth depends on heaven" and "life and death depend on fate", and superstitions were broken, so farmers rose up to divide the land again." At that time, there was no experience in how to divide the land, and only one basic policy was determined, which was to distribute the land equally according to the population, and the masses called it "Pingtian". In order to make the land distribution go smoothly, Mao Zedong, He Tingying, Liu Yinsheng and other comrades of the county party committee made a special study together, and decided to send a group of military cadres to organize and implement the land distribution. The division of land adopts the method of inserting cards. After the land in the village is evenly distributed according to the population, it is measured in the field, and then a wooden or bamboo card with a person's name is inserted on the measured land, and the division of the field is counted. Finish. It is for "inserting cards to divide the fields". When inserting cards to divide the fields, Mao Zedong was like an ordinary soldier, measuring the land for the peasants, and writing and inserting the signs for the allocation of the land for those who got the land. At the end of March, Mao Zedong led the first regiment of the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army to Shatian Village in Guidong County, Hunan Province.Here, also engaged in a "insert cards to divide the field". The distribution of fields in Nakamura and Shatian was Mao Zedong's initial attempt to carry out the land revolution when he established the revolutionary base area. Since there was no stable political power and strong local armed forces at that time, only when the troops came, the red regime would last for a while; Let's go, the reactionary army is here again, implementing white terror, and the red regime is gone, so the division of land is considered in vain.It can be seen that the agrarian revolution is inseparable from armed struggle and political power construction. Even so, the division of land in Nakamura and Shatian dealt a severe blow to the landlords and gentry and feudal forces, demonstrating the power of the revolution, and at the same time accumulated valuable experience for the future development of the agrarian revolution in the base areas.