Chapter 39 Why is it identified as May 15th?

The sign of the "turn" in the political wind in China is that Mao Zedong wrote an extremely important instruction document within the party.The document has never been released to the public.It was not until a full twenty years later—when the fifth volume of "Selected Works of Mao Zedong" was published in April 1977, that this article was published for the first time because it was included in the book. This extremely important document is "Things Are Changing". The fifth volume of "Selected Works of Mao Zedong" is marked "May 15, 1957" under the title of the article "Things Are Changing".Therefore, May 15th was identified as the time when the wind direction "turned".

The article "Things Are Changing" made a series of extremely important conclusions: "For months, people have been criticizing dogmatism and letting go of revisionism." "The right wing of the Communist Party - the revisionists." "The characteristic of the right is that their political attitude is right." "The rightists inside and outside the party do not understand dialectics: extremes lead to opposites. We will let them run rampant for a while. Let them reach the peak. The more rampant they are, the more beneficial they are to us. People say they are afraid of fishing, or they say: lure the enemy Go deep, gather and annihilate them. Now a large number of fish have floated to the surface by themselves, so don’t catch them. This fish is not an ordinary fish, it is probably a shark, it has sharp teeth, and it likes to eat people.”

"There are two ways out for the rightists. One is to tighten their tails and correct the evil and return to the right. The other is to continue to make trouble and bring their own destruction." This document first proposed the concept of "anti-rightists".The "anti-rightist movement" launched shortly thereafter was based on this programmatic document.Nine years later—on May 16, 1966, the "Notice" issued by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (also known as the "May 16th Notice") became a programmatic document for the "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution" .

In fact, the fifth volume of "Selected Works of Mao Zedong" marked "May 15, 1957".Therefore, "May 15, 1957" was set as the time when China's political wind direction "turned". According to the archives, on the manuscript of "Things Are Changing", the handwriting is recognizable at a glance as "Mao Style", the original title is "Towards the Negative", and the signature is "Reporter of this newspaper".This article was originally a commentary written by Mao Zedong for the People's Daily. After releasing the proof, Mao Zedong changed the title to "Things Are Changing" and changed the signature to "Central Political Research Office" on the proof.

This change shows that Mao Zedong did not want to publish this article in the "People's Daily", but wanted to publish it in a party publication.Therefore, he added a statement under the title: "(This article can be published in the party magazine, but it is not published publicly. This article was written in mid-May)." Mao Zedong also added eight characters above the proof: "Internal files, pay attention to save" Mao Zedong made some revisions to the proof. However, Mao Zedong did not submit this article to the party journal for publication. On the proof, you can also see two comments written by Mao Zedong.

The first comment reads: "Liu, Zhou, Zhu, Chen, and Peng Zhenyue. If you think it is useful, please Shang Kun print a few copies and send them to responsible comrades at the central level and provincial and municipal levels. Return to Shang Kun for office." It's just that this batch of words did not indicate the time. The "Liu, Zhou, Zhu, and Chen" here refers to Liu Shaoqi, Zhou Enlai, Zhu De, and Chen Yun, because they are the vice-chairmen of the Eighth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. "Shangkun" refers to Yang Shangkun, who was then the director of the General Office of the CPC Central Committee.

Another comment was written by Mao Zedong after "Liu, Zhou, Zhu, Chen" circled it: In accordance with Mao Zedong's instructions, Yang Shangkun published this document on June 12 within the scope designated by Mao Zedong. A copy of this printed document was sent to Mao Zedong.Mao Zedong also deleted the explanation under the original title on this printed document, and changed the signature to "Mao Zedong".In addition, change the time to "May 15, 1957". In the upper right corner of the printed document, Mao Zedong once again added the eight characters that had been written on the proof:

"Internal documents, please save them." Mao Zedong also added the following line: "Don't publish it in newspapers, don't let journalists know about it, and don't give it to unreliable people in the party. It may take half a year or a year before you consider publishing it in Chinese newspapers." From Mao Zedong’s three changes of signature—from “newspaper commentator” to “Central Political Research Office” to “Mao Zedong”, from Mao Zedong’s original intention to submit it to the “People’s Daily” for publication to his emphasis on “not letting journalists know, not letting people in the party know Reliable people", which shows that Mao Zedong attached great importance to this article.

This article clearly stated: Mao Zedong decided to launch the "Anti-Rightist Movement"! As for Mao Zedong's date of this article as "May 15, 1957", this date was added later, and it is not known whether it is completely accurate or not. However, the author noticed that around May 15th, that is, on the 14th and 16th, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China issued an important document each.These two documents were sent by telegram, which shows that they have a strong timeliness.