Chapter 34 12. Materials provided by Xu Guangyao

After the review of Ding Ling's historical issues was completed, the focus of the review work turned to the issue of "anti-Party cliques". On the afternoon of November 17, the Propaganda Department of the Central Committee held a meeting in Zhongnanhai Xifutang, and decided to form a three-person team consisting of Liu Baiyu, Yang Yumin, and Zhang Hai. Outline the survey, issue a survey letter, and continue to conduct surveys with the participants of the enlarged party group meeting of the Writers Association, the students of the original literature workshop, and relevant personnel.Below the three-person group was a specific work group, headed by Ding Ning, Director of the Administrative Office of the Writers Association, and members including Tang Dacheng from the Literature and Art Newspaper, Lin Shaogang, Secretary of the General Party Branch of the Writers Association, and several comrades from the Central Propaganda Department.A total of 63 people were surveyed about Chen Qixia's question, and more than 70 people were surveyed about Ding Ling's question, and the investigation materials written by 57 people were obtained.Ding Ning said: "In that re-examination, from the leader to our team, there was no framework. It was not that they first thought that they had made a mistake, so they had to reverse the case. At that time, they emphasized that there was no framework, and they were seeking truth from facts. Decide what."

On the evening of December 8, Xu Guangyao, who was working in the Creative Office of the Ministry of Political Affairs and Culture at the time, received a strange large envelope with a very conspicuous "Top Secret" red stamp and a triple single receipt stuck to the back.Opening the envelope, there was a letter from the party group of the Chinese Writers Association, and three printed documents were attached, namely "My Review" written by Ding Ling, "Letter to the Party Committee of the Propaganda Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China: Rectification of Major Facts" , "Supplement to Debate Materials".

The letter from the party group of the Chinese Writers Association stated: "Last year, the enlarged meeting of the Party group of the Writers Association revealed the problems and facts about Ding Ling and Chen Qixia's small anti-Party group activities. According to the instructions of the Party Committee of the Propaganda Department of the Central Committee, investigation and verification are currently underway. About Ding Ling Comrade’s historical issues have been examined clearly, and no new issues have been found except for the issues she explained in the past. There are several issues related to Comrade Ding Ling, please help provide materials.”The letter raised six questions and asked Xu Guangyao to "please submit written materials to us before December 7th." The date of signing the letter was November 30th.

Xu Guangyao is a student of the first batch of the Central Institute of Literature. Before he entered school, he published the novel "Plain Fire". And asked him to go home and had dinner with some visiting foreign guests. In December 1955, Xu Guangyao was forced to make a speech against his will at the Central Propaganda Department's conference on Ding and Chen issues, but he always sympathized with Ding Ling's situation and cared about Ding Ling's fate in his heart.After reading the letter, he got the impression that the party group of the Chinese Writers Association investigated materials from a party member in a "top secret" manner, indicating that the matter was of great importance; The characterization of the "party" may have changed; the question is very specific, which shows that the "checking" work is serious and careful.He was secretly happy, and spent two days making full preparations. Then, on December 12, he wrote a long reply letter to the party group of the Writers Association, and sent a Communist Party member directly to the party group of the Writers Association, asking him to return the receipt.

Xu Guangyao replied to several questions raised by the leading party group of the Chinese Writers Association: (1) Regarding the issue of "in the past, there was a saying among the students of the Institute of Literature that 'the Institute of Literature was founded by Ding Ling'". It is completely inconsistent with the facts to say that the students "only know that there is Ding Ling in their minds, but they don't know that there is a party."First, Ding Ling does have a high prestige among the students.Second, Ding Ling didn't intervene much in the daily work of the Institute of Literature and Literature. Most of it was directly done by Tian Jian and Kang Zhuo. The activities of the branch have never stopped, and these tasks have been carried out quite successfully.Third, more than half of the students are party members, and most of them are very old party members. To say that these people "don't know the party" is to underestimate our level of consciousness.Fourth, we have all heard that major issues such as the teaching policy, plan, and staff composition of the Institute of Literature and Literature were approved after discussion and research by the Central Propaganda Department, and we never felt that Ding Ling wanted to cover up the influence of the party.

Ding Ling's influence among the students, I think, is great, and she has almost won universal love.People's impression of her is that she knows creations well, understands people very well, and is very enthusiastic and caring about young people.She has repeatedly defended the literature and art of the Liberated Areas—the literature and art of workers, peasants, and soldiers, especially when they were attacked. (2) Issues concerning "one book doctrine" and advocating pride. 1. Ding Ling has repeatedly opposed pride.At the beginning of the school year, she criticized the tendency of some students to look down on new literature since the May Fourth Movement.Later, some people looked down on the works in the Liberated Areas and ignored the newly published articles. She was associated with pride and criticized them.At the end of the Literary Research Institute, she severely criticized my pride twice, which was the reason why I was afraid to see her for a period of time.Opposing pride and advocating learning with humility is one of the outstanding impressions she gave me.

2. I don't think it's appropriate to put the term "one book doctrine" on Ding Ling's head.She said something like this: when a book is written, it should be memorable to the readers for a long time.I thought she was advocating quality over shoddy manufacturing.The letter mentioned that she said to me that "it is necessary to write a work", which may refer to the fact that Ding Ling and Cao Yu were going to the Soviet Union to participate in the commemoration of Gogol. The day before the departure, they called me I went to buy some gifts for her. She said something like this to me at home: "Going abroad alone is not a big honor. It's just a matter of time. They let you go. In fact, when a writer goes abroad, only a few Every writer pays attention to it; when students go abroad, only a few students pay attention to it, and others don't pay attention. Therefore, to truly be admired by the people and always be remembered in the heart, there must be a few works left to the people and future generations. This passage was said to me three months after I returned from the Soviet Union, and I thought she was implying to me that going abroad was nothing special and nothing to be proud of.

3. On November 9, 1950, the Institute of Literature held a plenary meeting and announced the study plan for the first quarter of 1951. Ding Ling said: "We always feel that there are too few Chinese works, but are they really few? There are dozens of literature and art magazines. No one can read all of them. However, there is no work like this, like when we read "Water Margin", we want to tell people what about Li Kui and Wu Song; after reading it, everyone quarrels, you love Daiyu , I love Xiangyun. But after reading our works, I often say that life is rich and the language is very good, but soon I forgot. A few days ago I gave a speech at Renmin University of China, bragging that "Plain Fire" is better than There is only a little difference from "Day, Night and Night", that is the characters, Zhou Tiehan is still a bit conceptual. We say that there are few works, mainly the concept of characters. However, each of us has come up with a few good books, but this is Don't worry, you are still very young, how can you be so fast?" If you extract the sentence ""Plain Fire" is only a little bit worse than "Day and Night"", there is a problem, but the upper and lower links It seems far-fetched to say she was encouraging my pride.

(3) I don't think that Ding Ling promoted and cultivated a cult of personality in the Institute of Literature.I have admired her, but not because of her upbringing, the problem is my own.I have admired many people, including company commanders, regimental commanders, corps commanders, and many leaders of our party. But it cannot be said that they cultivated my personality cult. (4) I don't have the feeling that "under the control of Ding Ling, the party's leadership is not needed, and the atmosphere of the party and revolution cannot enter".Kang Zhuo, Tian Jian and other comrades have done a lot of work. At that time, I felt that Ding Ling had too little interference with the Institute of Literature and Literature, and I often hoped that she would come to the Institute to do more work.

(5) Ding Ling’s bad influences on me include: (1) She won "Plain Fire"; (2) She favored me (let me buy her gifts for going abroad, let me go to her home to accompany Ehrenburg, Neruda, Liu Ba and others had dinner, etc.).These make me proud.But what resounded more in my heart was her words of "don't be proud, don't be proud". Finally, Xu Guangyao talked about some of his own thoughts and opinions since the Ding and Chen incidents: If Ding Ling had no other political problems, only errors in thinking and style, she would still be an excellent writer in our party, and I asked the party to do its best to save her. She: When carrying out ideological struggles, try to avoid using pressure. Many young, naive, and inexperienced comrades often say something that is not serious enough in this atmosphere, which is likely to make the problem more complicated and confusing; Even if Ding Ling is wrong in many places, her enthusiasm and efforts in cultivating young writers alone are worth learning from the party's writers and predecessors; there should be a proper evaluation of the merits and demerits of the Literary Research Institute in the past few years.

In the second year of the anti-rightist struggle, Xu Guangyao could not escape bad luck. One of the crimes was this "very serious" letter. Li Zhilian said: The result of investigation and verification is that Ding Ling's anti-Party facts revealed in the report of the Writers Association's party group do not match the main issues, and most of them are false.For example, it was originally said that Ding Ling rejected the Party’s leadership and supervision; the Party group of the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles originally decided to choose Ding Ling as the editor-in-chief and Chen Qixia and Xiao Yin as the deputy editor-in-chiefs for the leadership of the “Literary and Art Newspaper”. It was decided to include Chen Qixia and Xiao Yin as editor-in-chiefs.The result of the investigation was: Ding Ling discussed this promotion with Zhou Yang, and Zhou Yang announced it only after Zhou Yang agreed (Zhou Yang also admitted this fact).Originally said: Ding Ling often said in front of some comrades that a certain leader did not like you or that a certain leader would fuck you sooner or later, in order to provoke the relationship between these comrades and the leader (referring to the relationship between Zhou Yang and Hu Qiaomu).After investigating with Comrade Hu Qiaomu, he said that he "doesn't have such a feeling".A few people who criticized Ding and Chen at the meeting in 1955 took out the note that the leader instructed him to speak, pressed it under the glass plate of the desk, and said: "No matter what the leader is, I admit that I was wrong."