Chapter 4 Xiaoyin

1957 was a heavy page in contemporary Chinese history. When Li Weihan looked back on the earth-shattering anti-rightist struggle in 1957, his heart was heavy.The pen in the hand is also heavy.In 1984, when he was about to leave this world, he wrote the book "Memories and Research", in which he talked about 1957: I was the head of the United Front Work Department of the Central Committee at the time, and I was active in anti-rightism. No matter how many mistakes I made, I had an important responsibility.To all comrades and friends who were accidentally injured, I still feel deeply sorry.

The consequences of this anti-rightist movement were very serious. A large number of intellectuals, patriots and party cadres were mistakenly classified as rightists, causing them and their families to suffer grievances and blows for a long time, and unable to use their intelligence and wisdom for the cause of socialist construction in the country. .This is not only their own misfortune, but also the misfortune of the country and the nation.According to statistics, there are more than 550,000 rightists nationwide.Among them, quite a few are intellectuals with expertise and industrialists and businessmen with management experience.More than half of the more than 550,000 people in the country who were classified as rightists lost their public positions.Quite a few were sent to reeducation through labor or supervised labor. Some were displaced and their families were destroyed.A few of them stayed in the original unit, and most of them were employed by non-directors...

Li Weihan, a veteran Chinese Communist.He was born in Changsha, Hunan Province in 1896. His original name was Li Hesheng, also known as Luo Mai.As early as 1918, together with Mao Zedong and Cai Hesen, he organized the Xinmin Society in Changsha.When he joined the Communist Party of China in 1922, Mao Zedong and Cai Hesen were his referees.Since then, he has served as a member of the Political Bureau of the Fourth and Fifth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.In 1927, he presided over the famous "August 7th" meeting, served as the chairman of the meeting, and formed the Provisional Central Bureau of the Communist Party of China with Qu Qiubai and Su Zhaozheng.Since then, he has served as minister of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, secretary of the Shaanxi-Gansu Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China, and principal of the Yan'an Central Party School.From the end of 1948, he served as the head of the United Front Work Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China until 1964, which lasted for 16 years, and then served as an adviser to the United Front Work Department.He can be said to be a "veteran of the United Front".

In 1957, Li Weihan not only served as the head of the United Front Work Department, but also served as the vice chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, the vice chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, and a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. In the book "Memories and Research", Li Weihan once frankly wrote about his state of mind in 1957: I had no ideological doubts about the Central Committee and Comrade Mao Zedong's estimation of the class struggle situation and the policies and deployments of the anti-Rightist struggle. I was afraid that I would not be able to keep up.Therefore, among the democratic parties, the Federation of Industry and Commerce, and people outside the party, these instructions are resolutely implemented...

Although Li Weihan resolutely implemented a series of "Left" instructions "for fear of not being able to keep up", in October 1962, after the Tenth Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China issued the call "Never forget class struggle", Li Weihan was still criticized as "revisionism" and "capitulationism".In half a year, the United Front Work Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China held more than forty ministerial meetings to criticize Li Weihan. In May 1963, Li Weihan wrote "Political Thought Inspection", which mentioned "elimination of the bourgeoisie" within "a few decades". ".The report was sent to Chairman Mao Zedong.Mao Zedong himself added a sentence: "Even hundreds of years." This means that the "class struggle" in China will last for "hundreds of years"!

Li Weihan finally "couldn't keep up".In August 1964, he was again criticized at the ministerial meeting of the United Front Work Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.In December of this year, he was dismissed from the position of Minister of the United Front Work of the CPC Central Committee. Immediately afterwards, a storm of "class struggle" that was ten times and a hundred times more violent than the anti-rightist struggle swept across China.Ten years of catastrophe has begun!Li Weihan became a prisoner and was imprisoned in the country for more than eight years. He was sent to Xianning, Hubei, where he contracted tuberculous peritonitis.He personally tasted the taste of "class struggle"...

Ten years of catastrophic disasters existed in Mongolia, which made Li Weihan calm and sober.The eighty-year-old man began to reflect and meditate in his octogenarian years, and wrote "Memories and Research" with more than one million words. He rereads his speeches in 1957, filled with emotion: "Some of the articles and speeches I published during this period lacked a comprehensive and historical analysis. For the democratic parties that have long cooperated with our party and have long declared their class alliance, they simply declared that 'they were and are bourgeois political party';

"The intellectuals who had already been declared part of the working class at the beginning of 1956 were put back on the label of bourgeois intellectuals." "As for industrial and commercial workers who have handed over their means of production and are in the process of transforming from exploiters to laborers, it is asserted that 'they basically have not abandoned the reactionary stand of capitalism'. My personal correct assessment of the great progress and profound changes they have made in accepting socialist transformation is the manifestation of 'Left' thinking..."

On August 11, 1984, Li Weihan died of illness in Beijing at the age of 88.What is valuable is that before his death, this senior United Front Work Minister left a very enlightened message.It should be noted that in 1957, he was one of the important organizers and leaders of the anti-rightist struggle. It was not easy for him to deny himself so frankly.In addition, in his later years, he received more than a hundred letters requesting the redress of unjust cases almost every month, and most of these letters were originally targets of the United Front.Regardless of his old age and sickness, Li Weihan dealt with them one by one very seriously, trying to save those who have been wronged and wronged because of his mistakes in work...

The "Cultural Revolution" that started on May 16, 1966 was actually the continuation and development of the anti-rightist movement that started on June 8, 1957, raising and expanding the "Left" trend of thought to a new To such an extent, it caused a ten-year civil strife and pushed the good-for-nothing People's Republic of China to the brink of collapse. Seismology points out that there are always small earthquakes and pre-shocks before major earthquakes.If the "Cultural Revolution" was a major earthquake, the pre-shock was in 1957.Although there were several small earthquakes before 1957:

On May 20, 1951, the "People's Daily" published an editorial "We Should Pay Attention to the Discussion of the Movie "The Story of Wu Xun"", which began "the first large-scale campaign against bourgeois reactionary thinking after the founding of New China". criticism"; On October 23, 1954, "People's Daily" published an article signed by Zhong Luo, "Attention should be paid to the criticism of wrong views in the study of "Dream of Red Mansions". Criticism of positions, viewpoints, and methods”; On May 13, 1955, the "People's Daily" published "Some Materials About Hu Feng's Anti-Party Clique" and published an "Editor's Note", thus launching an "anti-Hu Feng movement." The "magnitude" of these three small earthquakes was higher and higher each time, just like "backgammon".By 1957, the breadth and depth of the anti-rightist movement greatly surpassed the previous three small earthquakes. Afterwards, after the Great Leap Forward in 1958, the Anti-Rightist Movement in 1959, and the "Four Clean-ups" Movement (that is, the Socialist Education Movement) that began in 1963, "Left" ideas continued to heat up. , finally led to criticism of "Peng (Zhen), Luo (Ruiqing), Lu (Dingyi), Yang (Shangkun)", triggering the "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution". Regarding the "Cultural Revolution", the author wrote four novels by Wang, Zhang, Jiang, and Yao under the general title "The Rise and Fall of the Gang of Four".In addition, works discussing and describing the "Cultural Revolution" from various angles are also being published continuously.However, as far as the heavy year of 1957 is concerned, there has not been a single monograph to analyze it. The author studied at Peking University in 1957 and witnessed the "vigorous" anti-rightist struggle.Peking University is one of the "rightist centers" in the country, and there are more than 500 teachers and students classified as rightists!The deafening slogans and the singing of "Repel the Attack of the Bourgeois Rightists", and the criticism conferences again and again, left an indelible impression on me.My young heart was baptized by the storm of "class struggle" for the first time... The years fly by.In an instant, I also "knew the destiny".In these years, in addition to writing novels about the "Cultural Revolution", I set my sights on the unforgettable year of 1957.I interviewed many "big rightists" and "famous rightists" in Beijing, Shanghai and all over the country, and asked them to look back and talk about the past.In 1985, I wrote "Leaving People's Tears--The Biography of Ge Peiqi". After the sixth issue of "Wenhui Monthly" was published, I received many letters from readers about the rough experience of the "big rightist" Ge Peiqi My heartfelt sympathy for the suffering of my family.Immediately afterwards, I published the novella "The Man Alone Haggard", in which I wrote with tearful pen the ups and downs of Wang Zaoshi, one of the "Seven Gentlemen", the "Great Rightist" Wang Zaoshi; The tragic fate of "Fu Lei's Death"... In 1986, I interviewed in Beijing, Zhengzhou, and Shanghai, and wrote "Removing the Fog of the "Zhang Luo Alliance"" with more than 60,000 words.From Zhang Bojun's relatives, Mr. Chen Xingui, Mr. Ye Duyi, Mr. Chen Renbing and other core figures who experienced the storm in 1957, they learned first-hand the situation.Afterwards, I got to know first-hand the situation for Mr. Pang Xunqin, Mr. Ye Duyi, Mr. Chen Renbing and other core figures who experienced the storm in 1957.After that, I wrote "A Paintbrush with Tears" for Mr. Pang Xunqin, and "Admonishment Friends" for Mr. Peng Wenying, which truthfully reflected what happened to them in 1957.Among them, "Zhengyou" in particular, Mr. Peng's "rightist" problem had not been corrected when it was published. After the publication of "Baihuazhou", it attracted the attention of the United Front Work Department, and specially sent someone to me to learn more about Mr. Peng's situation and implement policies for him. I went to Ya'an, Sichuan, interviewed Li Tiande, a "rightist" back then, and wrote "Nine Deaths to Contribute to National Policy" for him, which was published in the magazine "Democracy and the Legal System".Although Li Tiande was only a "little rightist" back then, his sincere heart moved many readers, and a large number of letters from readers flew to him. In parallel with this series of interviews, I have scrutinized a large amount of archival material.Gradually, I gained a comprehensive understanding of the whole process of the 1957 Anti-Rightist Movement. I finally came up with the idea of ​​writing a long book systematically describing the Anti-Rightists in 1957 to fill this gap.I did many additional interviews to write this book. As early as 1979, I wrote the reportage "Lei Luo" for my teacher, Professor Fu Ying, vice president of Peking University.He was saved from disaster only in 1957 by Mao Zedong, who called him a "model of the center right".Mr. Fu said something like this: "Science can only give us knowledge, but history can give us wisdom." More than 30 years have passed since 1957, and the storm has long since solidified into history.Although there are still different opinions on how to evaluate this period of history, the criterion of history is to seek truth from facts.I think that re-examining that period of historical facts with a stern look will give people enlightenment, teaching and wisdom.