War on the Cultural Front
At the Congress of Victors, Stalin had declared that fierce battles lay ahead. As the Short Course explained:
He warned the party that although its enemies, the opportunists and nationalist deviators of all shades and complexions, had been defeated, remnants of their ideology still lingered in the minds of some party members and often asserted themselves. The survivals of capitalism in economic life and particularly in the minds of men provided a favourable soil for the revival of the ideology of the defeated anti-Leninist groups. The development of people’s mentality does not keep pace with their economic position. As a consequence, survivals of bourgeois ideas still remained in men’s minds and would continue to do so even though capitalism had been abolished in economic life
Stalin believed that socialism demanded nothing less than a complete rupture with the attitudes and ideas of the past. In the years following the Congress of Victors, war was declared on traditional culture. Private printing houses were closed down. Religion was stamped out, and intellectuals ‘battered into submission or else discarded’. Those who joined the war on the cultural front were called ‘engineers of human souls’. Stalin became the arbiter of high culture, lauding a few novelists as great proletarian intellectuals, sending countless others to their deaths. Stalin wanted culture for the masses.
As early as 1942, Mao had brushed aside the idea that art could exist simply for art’s sake. After tens of thousands of students, teachers, artists, writers and journalists had poured into Yan’an, a remote and isolated mountain area in Shaanxi where the communist party had established its headquarters, the Chairman launched a campaign to eradicate any lingering influence of free thinking among the young volunteers. They were interrogated in front of crowds, made to confess in indoctrination meetings and forced to denounce each other in a bid to save themselves. Some were incarcerated in caves, others put through mock executions. Mao demanded absolute loyalty from intellectuals. ‘All literature and art belong to definite classes and are geared towards definite political lines,’ he declared.
After 1949, the party spared no effort to crush independent thought. Private newspapers were closed within months of liberation, while thousands of titles were withdrawn from circulation. Entire libraries were burned. The beat of drums and the chant of revolutionary song displaced classical music, decried as bourgeois. Jazz was banned. New plays celebrating class struggle were brought to the villagers by travelling drama troupes. Most foreign films were deemed reactionary and replaced by Russian ones, for instance Lenin in October, one of Stalin’s favourites. Religion, too, came under attack, as monasteries, temples, churches and mosques were converted into barracks or prisons. Religious leaders were persecuted, their congregations forced to renounce their faith at public meetings – after much pressure, not to mention outright threats to themselves and their families. Sacred objects were melted down for their metal.
Millions of teachers, scientists and writers – termed ‘intellectuals’ in communist jargon – found themselves forced to prove their allegiance to the new regime. Like everyone else, they attended indoctrination classes to learn Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy, studying official pamphlets, newspapers and textbooks. The party line was periodically enforced through a witch-hunt, as thousands were denounced for ‘bourgeois idealism’ and packed off to labour camps. This happened in 1955, when under cover of an attack on Hu Feng – a famous writer who had compared the stultifying literary theories of the party to knives thrust into the brains of writers – over a million individuals, from primary school teachers up to leading party theoreticians, were forced to defend themselves against accusations of treason. Many committed suicide; even more ended up in an ever expanding gulag. Two years later, a further 500,000 were labelled ‘rightists’ by Deng Xiaoping, as the Hundred Flowers campaign reached its tragic conclusion.
Although Mao disparaged intellectuals, like Stalin he tried to keep a few of them as occasional companions. Like Stalin, he would break them at the merest hint of disagreement. One example is Liang Shuming, a remarkable thinker hired in 1918 at the age of twenty-four by the philosophy department in Peking University, when Mao was still an obscure school teacher. On a brief visit to Yan’an in 1938, Liang presented the Chairman with copies of his work. Mao was flattered, and after 1949 cultivated the professor, on occasion sending his own car to ferry him to Zhongnanhai, the headquarters of the party. The relationship cooled after Liang wrote a letter in 1952 to defend private entrepreneurs. A year later, at a meeting of the Political Consultative Conference, an advisory body designed to create the appearance of democracy, Liang insisted that, in the wake of land reform, villagers lived ‘in the ninth ring of hell’. The delegates shouted him down and a stern Mao remonstrated with him, publishing a lengthy ‘Criticism of Liang Shuming’s Reactionary Ideas’, in which he came down hard on the philosopher: ‘There are two ways of killing people: one is to kill with the gun and the other with the pen. The way which is most artfully disguised and draws no blood is to kill with the pen. That is the kind of murderer you are.’ Liang was neither the first nor the last intellectual whom Mao courted and then discarded as unworthy of his trust...
Kang alleged that a historical novel about a fallen party leader named Liu Zhidan was in fact an attempt to exonerate Peng Dehuai. Kang slipped a note to Mao: ‘Using novels to carry out anti-party activities is a great invention.’ Mao read out the note, which Kang interpreted as licence to accuse several leaders of being part of a plot. Its mastermind, he contended, was Xi Zhongxun, a party elder who sometimes acted as premier in the absence of Zhou Enlai and had sided with Peng Dehuai at the Lushan plenum. Under Mao’s watchful eye, Xi was purged.
Mao now talked about the importance of class struggle in the realm of ideology. ‘Writing novels is popular these days, isn’t it? The use of novels for anti-party activity is a great invention. Anyone wanting to overthrow a political regime must create public opinion and do some preparatory ideological work. This applies to counter-revolutionary as well as to revolutionary classes.
The sheer scale of the ideological rot was highlighted during the Socialist Education Campaign. In June 1963, the leadership warned that ‘right now there is a serious, acute class struggle taking place inside the country relating to ideology, education, theory, science, arts, newspapers, periodicals, broadcasting, publishing, health, physical education and other fields, and all of these merit close attention.’...
The Socialist Education Campaign was meant to teach people to appreciate the benefits of socialism. It was also used to stamp out corruption in the party ranks and ferret out counter-revolutionary plots, real or imagined. As we have seen, more than 5 million party members were punished in one way or another. But repression alone would not suffice to counteract the pervasive effects of a counter-revolutionary ideology that had taken hold in the wake of the Great Leap Forward. The Chairman was particularly concerned with educating the young, who were the heirs to the revolution. Lei Feng was part of the answer.
On 5 March 1963, Mao exhorted the nation to learn from Lei Feng, a young soldier who had dedicated his life to serving the people. Lei Feng had died the previous year at the age of twenty-one, struck by a falling telephone pole. His posthumous diary, a record of his ideological progress, was published and studied across the country. There had been other models for emulation in the past, but most had been war heroes and heroines who had died before 1949 fighting the Japanese or the nationalists. Lei Feng was different: he had joined the army after liberation, and he was designed to appeal to a generation of young readers raised in an era of peace. Lei Feng turned Mao into an everyman’s philosopher, as his diary showed how the Chairman’s political aphorisms could be used to solve everyday problems. Lei Feng was an invention of the propaganda department.
In his diary, Lei Feng explained how ‘the blood given by the party and Chairman Mao has penetrated every single cell of my body’. Mao even appeared in a vision: ‘Yesterday I had a dream. I dreamt of seeing Chairman Mao. Like a compassionate father, he stroked my head. With a smile, he spoke to me: “Do a good job in study; be forever loyal to the party, loyal to the people!” My joy was overwhelming; I tried to speak but could not.’
Glowing testimonials from factory workers and farm labourers were published in letters to newspapers all over China. For the benefit of the younger generation, tens of thousands of meetings extolling Lei Feng as the ideal communist were held. Plays and movies were produced. Songs were composed, some of them running into dozens of verses. Storytellers roamed the villages to enthral illiterate villagers with his exploits and his love of the Chairman. A Lei Feng exhibition opened at the Beijing Army Museum, where a huge screen at the entrance inscribed with Mao Zedong’s calligraphy exhorted visitors to ‘Learn from Comrade Lei Feng!’ On display under glass was Lei Feng’s only uniform, his hat, bag and handkerchief. Slogans culled from his diary adorned the walls. Everywhere were huge, life-size photographs of Lei Feng, a chubby, eternally smiling young soldier among groups of smiling workers, peasants and children. As one shrewd observer noted, Lei Feng was the poor man’s Mao, a simplified Mao for the masses. Most of all, he was the young man’s Mao, ‘a rejuvenated Mao, speaking the language of enthusiastic adolescents’. He was meant to rouse people from the apathy caused by Mao’s Great Famine and heighten their hatred for class enemies.
Other heroes were promoted for emulation. Ouyang Hai appeared in 1963. He, too, had been an army hero who had left a diary revealing his devotion to the Chairman. Yet another incarnation of Lei Feng turned up in November 1965, this one called Wang Jie. Wang, who also kept a diary, had thrown himself on a land mine that had been accidentally triggered by local militia, saving twelve bystanders. In 1963 the slogan was ‘Learn from Lei Feng’, now it became ‘Learn from Wang Jie’. Identical posters were produced, identical articles were published. Other young role models succeeded one another rapidly, including Mai Xiande, a sailor critically wounded in 1965; Wang Jinsi, a pioneer worker at the Daqing oilfields, nicknamed ‘Man of Iron’; and Liu Yingjun, a soldier who died aged twenty-one by saving children from runaway horses. All of them were resurrected briefly from death to flit across the stage and help the younger generation feel closer to the Chairman. But only Mao was to be remembered eternally...
The motto of the Socialist Education Campaign, after all, was ‘Never Forget Class Struggle’. To instil class hatred in them, regular sessions of ‘Recalling Bitterness’ were organised, where elderly workers and peasants came to tell of the harsh and miserable days before liberation. ‘We heard of childhoods dominated by starvation, freezing winters with no shoes, and premature, painful deaths. They told us how boundlessly grateful they were to Chairman Mao for saving their lives and giving them food and clothing.’ Jung Chang came out of those sessions feeling devastated by the atrocities committed by the nationalist regime and passionately devoted to Mao. In cities like Nanjing, some retired workers evoked their personal memories of torture and rape by evil capitalists to tens of thousands of people. The packed theatres were so shaken by sobs that the workers’ accounts were barely audible.
Students were also taken to ‘museums of class education’ where capitalist exploitation was on full display, showing how class enemies had wallowed in luxury while the masses lived in poverty. There were sculptures of starving peasants forced to pay exorbitant rents. There were torture chambers and dungeons with iron cages, all recreated to convey the dread of the feudal past. Now, the students were told, class enemies threatened to undermine the dictatorship of the proletariat and return the country to the old days of feudal exploitation, snatching their winter shoes, stealing their food, turning them into slaves...
Mao had always been scathing of intellectuals, but he now began to express doubts about the entire education system. On 13 February 1963, on the occasion of the Spring Festival, when the country welcomed the Chinese New Year, he compared tests in high schools and universities to the old eight-legged essay, a written form of argumentation that candidates for the imperial examinations had been required to master under the Qing dynasty. ‘I do not approve of this. It should be changed completely. I am in favour of publishing the questions in advance and letting the students study them and answer them with the aid of books.’ He struck an even more rebellious note when he suggested that there were benefits to cheating. ‘If your answer is good and I copy it, then mine too should be counted as good.’ He praised students who dozed off when teachers rambled on with their tedious lectures. ‘You don’t have to listen to nonsense, you can rest your brain instead.
Mao went further, accusing the education system of favouring students from bad class backgrounds – capitalists, landlords – as they were better equipped to succeed in education than the proletariat and the peasants. Worst of all, schools were run by bourgeois intellectuals who were failing in their mission of training ‘revolutionary successors’...
As another future Red Guard put it, ‘Classes are wasting my time and teachers are wasting my time.’ Many were awaiting the Chairman’s call.
Mao also took aim at literature and the arts. In November 1963, he attacked the Ministry of Culture for failing to curb the spread of feudal, superstitious and revisionist ideas. He suggested that it should change its name to the ‘Ministry of Gifted Scholars and Beautiful Ladies’. An even more appropriate name was the ‘Ministry of Foreign Dead People’. A month later he complained again that ‘dead people are still in control’. He also accused the All-China Federation of Literature and Art of tottering on the edge of revisionism: ‘For the last fifteen years, they have not been carrying out the party’s policy.
Spurred on by the Chairman, a national campaign was launched in the summer of 1964, aimed initially at traditional opera, one of the most popular art forms in the countryside. Five thousand leading cadres and artists were invited to attend the Peking Opera Festival under the auspices of Zhou Enlai. Peng Zhen, mayor of Beijing, condemned revisionism in ringing tones and exhorted his audience to ask whether opera served socialism or capitalism. ‘Does it take the road of Marxism-Leninism or the road of revisionism?'...
Mao had an enormous appetite for sex, and after liberation a string of young women were recruited to service his needs. ‘Women were served to order like food.’ As Mao’s infidelities became more blatant, Jiang Qing became increasingly ill and lonely, suffering from a string of real and imaginary diseases. She was heavily medicated, suspected plots around her and complained all day long about noise, wind and glaring light. Pink and brown colours hurt her eyes, and she insisted that everything in her residence be painted light green – including the furniture. She demanded constant attention, but quarrelled incessantly with those around her. She had huge political ambitions, craving an active political role, but had become a helpless appendage to Mao...
Mao allowed Jiang Qing to try her hand at culture and the arts. As Mao’s doctor noticed, ‘the more involved in politics she became, the more her hypochondria and neurasthenia eased’...
Jiang Qing, now spurred into action, started investigating the extent of feudal and foreign plays staged by drama troupes across the country. Before long, as self-appointed overseer of culture, she started issuing instructions on the production of drama, music and film.
But she was not acting on her own. Liu Shaoqi, who had rallied behind Mao’s battle cry of ‘Never Forget Class Struggle’, also threw his weight behind the war on culture. In January 1964, he condemned Tian Han, author of the play that had offended Mao, saying that his work was ‘aimed at the communist party’. He, too, wanted a cleansing fire to burn through the very foundations of culture. Just as Liu claimed that over a third of all power in the countryside was in the hands of the enemy, he suggested that over a third of all art and culture, from universities down to village schools, was revisionist and ought to be overthrown in a revolution."
--- The Cultural Revolution: A People's History, 1962—1976 / Frank Dikötter
Unsurprisingly, there're many parallels with the current post-Marxist madness.
