741 Shaping "New People": CCP Propaganda and Soviet Experience | Yu Minling

Beast Press: An article in Yu Jiefeng's media column yesterday , "Wearing a kimono is a crime, wearing an iron chain is fine-what can I wear? The party has the final say" , I read that he recommended a book.

"Public opinion has reacted strongly to this matter, because the state power even cares about what the people wear, young people don't know the history of the Mao era, and the older people find that the nightmare of the Cultural Revolution has come again. Now, the Xi Jinping regime wants Mao to die. After the fall of the Communist Party of China, the freedom to dress and dress that the party-state rewarded the people has been withdrawn. At this moment, it is time to read the book "Shaping "New People" written by Taiwan historian Yu Minling, which focuses on political, diplomatic, social and cultural issues. From multiple perspectives, it analyzes how the CCP learns from the experience of the Soviet Union, uses novels, textbooks, songs, movies and other media, as well as model workers and female tractor drivers, to shape "new people" and spread the necessary conditions for "new people", including class stance, practice the party-state The concepts of supremacy, the importance of the collective, the glory of labor, and equality between men and women.”

So I searched for information about the book and found a book review. Share with your book friends.

Originally published: Bulletin of the Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica, No. 103 (March 108), 127-134

Yu Minling, "Shaping "New Talents": CCP Propaganda and Soviet Experience, Taipei: Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica, 2015. 405.

Author: Mao Sheng

Yu Minling's book "Shaping "New Talents": CCP Propaganda and Soviet Experience, mainly discusses how to conduct propaganda and mobilization aimed at shaping new talents among the people after the establishment of the CCP in 1949 and the influence of the Soviet experience on them.

The motivation for the writing of "Shaping "New People" is mainly based on Yu Minling's own upbringing experience. Born in Taiwan and raised in an atmosphere of "anti-communist and anti-Russian", the author has been trying to explore: Where did China's communist revolution come from? Learning Russian, choosing Soviet history as a major, and dedicating to Sino-Soviet comparative studies are all driven by this motivation. During the Mao Zedong era, there were constant political movements in mainland China, and the people were enthusiastically participating in them. The most extreme example was the Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution. How to explain this phenomenon? Yu Minling attempts to think about this issue from the perspective of "the CCP has vigorously promoted the ideas and models of newcomers since the founding of the People's Republic of China" (page 4). This book is intended to address three major issues. The first is the specific theme of the CCP's shaping of the new concept of human beings and its changes with the political environment. Second, how does the CCP use various art forms such as literature, films, textbooks, and music to achieve this goal? Third, what are the influences of the Soviet experience and the elements of the CCP itself?

The first chapter discusses the translation process of the Soviet novel How Steel Was Tempered into China. The author Pavel Korchagin's highest ideal in his life is to devote himself to the party and the revolutionary cause, so the novel has become an important text for shaping new people not only in the Soviet Union but also in China. However, the CCP’s emphasis on Paul’s spirit changes with the needs of political reality. This chapter outlines the focus of the CCP’s adjustment of Paul’s spirit in response to the current situation during the Korean War and the first five-year plan. After the Sino-Soviet relations became hostile, the CCP competed with the Soviet Union for the right to interpret the Paul spirit to emphasize its own socialist orthodoxy, and at the same time launched a number of self-produced "Paul" for Chinese people to learn.

An important means of instilling ideology is textbooks. Chapter 2 examines how the "international outlook" instilled by the CCP has changed by analyzing the content of the 20th century world events in the textbooks for primary and secondary schools: since the establishment of the government, the world was viewed as the confrontation between the two camps of the United States and the Soviet Union, while China should "take the Soviet Union as the After the Sino-Soviet split, he turned to the theory of "three worlds". The author points out that although textbooks are constantly being rewritten according to the political situation, the so-called international outlook of "the combination of anti-imperialist, anti-colonialism and nationalism" remains unchanged.

The third chapter discusses how the CCP uses mass songs to promote the patriotism of the supremacy of the party and the state. In the early days of the founding of the Communist Party of China, in addition to Yangko, the mass songs mainly came from the Soviet Union. The Soviet songs that entered China mainly expressed patriotism, internationalism and Sino-Soviet friendship. After the tension between China and the Soviet Union, the number of Soviet songs decreased, the songs praising Sino-Soviet friendship cooled, and the songs praising China, the party and its leaders increased sharply, and their tunes became higher and higher with the radicalization of the political atmosphere. Soviet songs often have the theme of eulogizing love, while the CCP's mass songs usually only express the great love of the party and the state, and rarely the small love of the party. At the time of the Cultural Revolution, the so-called "music" also shouted Mao's quotations when dealing with class struggle.

Movies were considered by Lenin to be the most important propaganda medium for the party because of their easy access. Chapters 4 and 5 respectively analyze how the CCP uses movies to instill in newcomers the concept of enemy and self and love. After the establishment of the Communist Party of China, American films were banned and a large number of Soviet films were imported, which naturally brought enemy types from Soviet films into China, such as Trotskyites. The local Chinese enemies in the film are mainly American imperialists, Kuomintang spies and landlords. In 1955, the big and small "Hu Feng Group" was caught, followed by "anti-rightist", these two types became the main enemies in the film at that time. In 1958, the second Taiwan Strait crisis occurred, and the Kuomintang once again jumped onto the screen and became the main enemy. The Sino-Soviet Union broke down, and the "revisionists" began to become enemies, and they were criticized by thousands of people on the screen. The Great Leap Forward, the people's communes, and the social and educational movement have found new enemies, and the "land-rich anti-bad right" and "degenerate elements" that have not been reformed are important types of enemies. The revolution continues to deepen, and new enemies are constantly created and displayed on the screen.

In 1950, the CCP promulgated the "Marriage Law", which was intended to liberate women and encourage freedom of love and autonomy in marriage. However, the films made by the CCP emphasize that the revolutionary cause is the most important thing. Young people should not indulge in personal affairs, but only focus on love. Soviet films seem to be bolder in their depiction of love. During the period when the CCP advocated the Double Hundred Principles, it was the spring of literary and artistic creators. Although the main theme of the film was work, the handling of the relationship between men and women was more lively. However, after the anti-rightist movement began, the film became conservative in dealing with the theme of love, and the expression of private emotions became taboo.

Chapter 6 of this book deals with the issue of model workers. The model labor movement began in the Soviet Union, and the CCP also began to introduce its own "labor heroes" during the Yan'an period. After 1949, the CCP declared that the exploitative society had been overthrown, workers were the masters of the country, and labor was no longer about creating surplus value for capitalists, but for itself, for the working class, and for the ultimate liberation of mankind. To encourage labor, instill collectivism, select model workers, and hold model worker conferences have become an important mobilization method for the CCP. The model workers admired by the CCP are often extreme, and they must give up any consideration of personal interests. The CCP also encourages equality between men and women. What men can do can also be done by women. But what kind of equality is this? Chapter 7 tells the story of a female tractor driver named Liang Jun. The author points out that the CCP hopes to instill in women a gender perspective, that they want to work like men, that is, the new socialist women are still male-centered.

The "new man" is not just a communist social phenomenon. Academic circles generally trace its origin back to the Age of Enlightenment and the French Revolution. Inspired by ideas such as "popular sovereignty" preached by the Great Revolution, some radical thinkers have begun to envision the creation of new human beings that are not limited by the past. Affected by this trend, Russia began to reflect on the serf system from the nineteenth century, and gave birth to the concept of new people. According to Yu Minling's research, the CCP's new-person concept is not only influenced by the Soviet Union, but also has its own creation. There has been some research on this transnational character of the concept and practice of socialist "new man". 1 However, relying on the author's proficient Russian language and familiarity with Sino-Soviet history, "Shaping "New Man" should be a topic on this topic. The most in-depth book.

Although this book can be classified as a study of modern Chinese history, it seems to be more influenced by the study of Soviet history in English-speaking circles. The "cultural turn" in the field of historiography emphasizes not only the "facts" but also how they are expressed. This trend is reflected in recent studies of Soviet history, which again begin to emphasize the importance of ideology. The most influential "totalitarian school" in the Cold War era attributed the differences between the Soviet Union and the "free world" to ideological differences, while today's political and cultural historians, in order to separate them from the Cold War perspective, have abandoned the concept of English in English. The negative term "propaganda" was replaced by neutral terms such as "political culture" or "mass culture". However, this does not mean that a new generation of scholars believe that the Soviet Union has "public opinion" in the Western sense. It means that the Soviet government, by monopolizing propaganda tools, integrated literature, art, journalism and even science, and used symbols, rituals, rhetoric, and visual images to form This set of politicized performances became the only form of expressing the Soviet Union. 2 Through this, the Soviet government was able to shape the attitudes, concepts, expectations, and behaviors of the people, and to control the people's daily life. Unlike the "totalitarian school" that emphasizes the one-way control of the government, today's scholars tend to think that there is an interaction between the government and society. Although the government is the active party, society also has a certain degree of independence. The process of shaping society is not unilaterally determined by the government. No matter how strong the government is, it must constantly adjust its tactics based on the response, and sometimes resistance, of the population. As such, the process is a never-ending negotiation that is uncontrollable, although the government usually has the upper hand.

The rest inspires us to further discuss related issues. First of all, how relevant is the shaping of "newcomers" to publicity? Chen Yongfa believes that the "combination of coercion and voluntary" is the reason why some people become the "activists" or "newcomers" needed by the party, no matter in the Yan'an period or after the founding of the People's Republic of China, 3 the obvious coercivity cannot be ignored. Ying Xing found that to shape new people among farmers, the CCP often has to discipline and punish their bodies in daily life, such as eating men and women, marriage and childbirth, etc., to touch their souls, and propaganda alone is not effective. 4 Can reading Soviet novels, textbooks, singing mass songs, watching movies, etc. mentioned in the last book, can transform the soul? Does the CCP expect people's beliefs to be updated at any time according to propaganda issues? The common people really know how they are represented. Can reading Soviet novels and textbooks, singing mass songs, watching movies, etc. mentioned by Yu Zhu, can transform the soul? Does the CCP expect people's beliefs to be updated at any time according to propaganda issues? Do people really know what they believe in? Scholars often cite Mao Zedong's 1958 poem "Send the God of Plague" in the poem "Sending the God of Plague" to prove the enormous social project of the CCP to shape new people and the high moral expectations. However, if you put the poem back in the historical context at that time and interpret it, you can find that it was only Mao Zedong who learned that Yujiang County in Jiangxi Province, through large-scale mass mobilization, used the "earth-buried ditch method" to conquer even the genius doctor Hua Tuo. After the "helpless" "bug" was infected with schistosomiasis japonica, he only wrote poems to praise the effect of mass mobilization, 5 and did not involve the issue of "newcomers". So, is the CCP’s propaganda aimed at shaping ordinary people into new people, or is it aimed at setting a red line for their words and deeds, and making it easier to mobilize society? What kind of "new people" is the CCP trying to shape? Ask everyone to become Paul and Wu Yunduo and "dedicate everything to the party", or just be obedient to the people? In Stalin's Soviet Union and Mao Zedong's China, any rhetoric different from official propaganda is not allowed to be expressed, otherwise it will be suppressed. In a society where there is no freedom of speech, as long as ordinary people dare not openly express heresy thoughts, how much difference can it make?

In addition to the Soviet Union factor, Yu Minling emphasized the CCP's own "contribution" on the issue of "newcomers". She pointed out that due to differences in customs, national development stages, and leaders' preferences, the CCP's concept of newcomers emphasizes the supremacy of the party and the state more than the Soviet Union, and has less space for individuals. The image of the CCP's newcomers is also more flat, facial, without personality, inauthentic, and lacking in taste. This criticism actually raises a question worthy of discussion, that is, what criteria should be used to evaluate the mass culture of socialist countries? Yu Minling obviously adopts the cultural standards of humanism and elitism, but is it appropriate? Scholar Katerina Clark believes that when we evaluate Soviet "Socialist Realism" novels, we cannot hope that they have the artistic level of Henry James, because the target audience is not elite, and the purpose is not to improve the artistic taste of the Soviet people. Through the stylized plot, structure and characters, Soviet novels are intended to ritualize the ideology of the Soviet Union and make the people form a religious worship of the party-state. 6 As we all know, the CCP’s propaganda is mainly aimed at the common people, and the purpose is only to implement the official intentions and mobilize the people. During the long-term struggle between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, the CCP discovered that the public has a low level of education and a high rate of illiteracy. To achieve a good propaganda effect, official information must be simplified and popularized. If we judge by the propaganda goals set by the CCP itself, rather than the “bourgeois aesthetics” that the CCP is trying to eliminate, can we evaluate the CCP’s propaganda experience differently?

The effect of publicity is an unavoidable problem of research publicity. For example, do the media and art forms mentioned in the book have the same promotional effect on everyone? How is the official message interpreted? Yu Zu seems to have contradictory attitudes on this issue. On the one hand, she believes that the CCP's propaganda is powerful. For example, after Stalin's death, "most Chinese people were deeply mourned, as if the sky were falling" (p. 38). Since the founding of the People's Republic of China, the campaign to promote new talents became the "education" of the Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution, which led to their frenzied behavior during the Cultural Revolution. The CCP's propaganda seems to be as claimed in the "magic bullet theory" in communication studies, that once the audience is hit by the message, they will collapse. But at the same time, the author spends a considerable amount of time explaining that folk interpretations are often diverse, and even interpretations that are antagonistic to the official are not uncommon. ". Yu Zu's self-contradiction on this question shows the complexity of the question, and it is not even possible to answer it at all.

In the field of Soviet history, there are at least two different views on how Stalin's Soviet Union viewed official propaganda. One thinks the effect is limited. Sarah Davies used the secret police report declassified after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, as well as the public's complaints against the government and even anti-government remarks on various issues recorded in the interrogation materials, arguing that even in the Stalin period of the highest pressure, there were still people among the people. A fairly common "dissent". 7 Scholars who criticize the theory of limited effects believe that the ideological monitoring reports they use may reflect the focus of the Soviet government's monitoring of people's thoughts in various periods and the writers' own perspectives, but they cannot systematically reflect real public opinion. 8 Yu Minling also tried to discover the true thoughts of the Chinese people in Mao Zedong’s era through the “Internal Reference”, which was only read by senior cadres, but had to admit that the “Internal Reference” was not a public opinion survey after all (p. 44).

The "modernity school", deeply influenced by postmodernism such as Michel Foucault, no longer struggles with whether the Soviet people as a whole accepted the government's propaganda, but instead examines individual responses to propaganda by reading diaries and autobiographies. After turning to analyzing individuals, some scholars tend to believe that some people have not only internalized the official ideology, but even actively catered to them, forming the consciousness of the so-called "socialist subject", that is, they have become "newcomers". The "totalitarian school" believes that based on fear, the Soviet people just pretended to believe in propaganda and that their true "self" was hidden. The "revisionist school" believes that the Soviet people are "subjective", and the people adopt a utilitarian attitude towards propaganda, and whether they support it depends on whether it is beneficial. The "modernity school" emphasizes that power in the Soviet Union not only suppresses individuals, but also creates individuals, making them not only objects examined and shaped by power, but also subjects with the ability to act and move. The subjectivity of the Soviet people is not the space of the individual as emphasized by Western liberalism, but the pursuit of a sense of belonging and pride to be part of the so-called trend of human history. For example, Jochen Hellbeck's research no longer focuses on the violence and ideological control of the Soviet government, but from the perspective of popular psychology to analyze how people try to internalize Soviet ideology based on fear, utilitarian considerations, and a sense of honor. He pointed out that by keeping a diary, the Soviet people were able to transform themselves according to the government's ideological requirements and strive to integrate themselves into the socialist cause. This study combines the ideological indoctrination emphasized by the "totalitarian school" with the individual activism advocated by the "revisionist school", presenting a system that has a certain degree of autonomy but also internalizes the ideology of the government to a considerable extent. The "self" of the Soviets. 9

How effective was the Soviet Union in shaping the "new man"? Each research paradigm has different emphasis. To make a systematic generalization, there seems to be no effective materials available. For example, when discussing individual cases, it is not difficult to find examples that prove the effect is obvious. Yu Zu is no exception. The case studies are quite brilliant, but readers are still unable to make an overall judgment on the effect of the Communist Party's shaping of "new people". Because of the inability to systematically understand the public's response, the complicated process of propaganda has become a one-way official manipulation in Yu Minling's pen. It seems that the CCP only needs to conduct propaganda according to the political situation and its own needs, without considering the response of the people, let alone how the response of the people can in turn force the government to adjust its propaganda strategy. The "newcomers" are just puppets at the mercy of others, without agency, and they don't even know how to use official policies for their own benefit in the circle defined by the CCP. Therefore, the greatest contribution of the book "Shaping the "New People" is not to reveal how the CCP shapes the "new people", which experiences come from the Soviet Union and which are originals of the CCP, but to use rich historical materials to compare the methods of historiography , presents the mass culture of the Mao era from multiple perspectives, and points out what kind of orthodoxy the CCP wants to rebuild, and where the boundaries of speech in each period lie.

Notes

1 Yinghong Cheng, Creating the “New Man”: From Enlightenment Ideals to Socialist Realities (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2009).

2 Jeffrey Brooks, Thank You, Comrade Stalin!: Soviet Public Culture from Revolution to Cold War (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2000), pp. xii-xviii.

3 Chen Yongfa, "The Shadow of Yan'an" (Taipei: Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica, 1990); "The Combination of Force and Volunteering: Commentary on Yang Kuisong's "Unstoppable "Caring": Scholars and Politics Around 1949", vol. Twenty-First Century, No. 148 (April 2015), pp. 134-151.

4 Ying Xing, Morality and Politics in the History of Village Trials: The Story of a Mountain Village in Southwest China, 1951-1976 (Beijing: Intellectual Property Press, 2009), p. 3.

5 Shibu Iijima, "Infectious Diseases as Historical Indicators", edited by Yu Xinzhong, Income, "Diseases, Medical Care and Hygiene since the Qing Dynasty" (Beijing: Sanlian Press, 2009), p. 40.

6 Katerina Clark, The Soviet Novel: History as Ritual (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1981).

7 Sarah Davies, Popular Opinion in Stalin's Russia: Terror, Propaganda and Dissent, 1934-1941 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997).

8 Peter Holquist, “Information Is the Alpha and Omega of Our Work: Bolshevik Surveillance in Its Pan-European Context,” Journal of Modern History, Vol. 69, No.3 (Sep. 1997), pp. 415-450.

9 Choi Chatterjee and Karen Petrone, “Models of Selfhood and Subjectivity: The Soviet Case in Historical Perspective,” Slavic Review, Vol. 67, No. 4 (Winter, 2008), pp. 967-986; Jochen Hellbeck, Revolution on My Mind: Writing a Diary under Stalin (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006).

From the perspectives of politics, diplomacy, society and culture, this book analyzes how the CCP borrowed from the experience of the Soviet Union, used novels, textbooks, songs, movies and other media, as well as model workers and female tractor drivers, to shape "new people"; it is necessary to spread "new people". The necessary conditions include taking a firm proletarian stand and practicing the concepts of the supremacy of the party and the state, the importance of the collective, the glory of labor, and equality between men and women. The Soviet experience was an important reference for the CCP’s governance in the Mao Zedong era; however, as Sino-Soviet relations turned from honeymoon to anti-goal, the focus of the CCP’s propaganda for “new people” also changed. By comparing and contrasting Chinese and Soviet customs, national development, and leadership concepts and value preferences, the book analyzes the reasons behind the changes in the Soviet experience in China, and then discusses the applicability of the Stalin model in China. Mao Zedong's view and policy of constantly strengthening the class struggle was a major revision of the Stalinist model. In addition, studying the concept of new people promoted by the CCP will also help to understand the training and education of the Red Guards in the seventeen years before the Cultural Revolution, as well as the nature of Mao Zedong's regime. The CCP's propaganda of "new people" during the Mao era created a binary opposition of values, the impact of which is still visible to this day.

Yu Minling is an associate researcher at the Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica, a Ph.D. in the Department of History at New York University, and an associate professor at the Department of Russian Language at National Chengchi University. Areas of expertise: Sino-Russian relations, Russian cultural history, current research projects: Sun Yat-sen University in Moscow, learning from the Soviet Union.

introduction

1. Literature review and main topics

2. The origin and development of the new concept

3. Propaganda Operation and Sino-Soviet Relations

4. Chapter Arrangement

Chapter 1 Soviet Newcomer Paul Korchagin and Typical Sinicization

1. The birth and introduction of Paul into China

2. Paul's ethos and propaganda in China

3. Paul's typical sinicization and the defense of his "orthodox" spirit

Fourth, the interpretation of the people

V. Summary

Chapter 2 Nationality/Patriotism First - International Views in Textbooks

1. From adaptation, rewriting to setting a statue

2. The confrontation between the two camps of the Soviet Union and the United States

3. The Gradual Formation of the Three Worlds

4. Summary

Chapter 3 The supremacy of the party and the state - the concept of patriotism in mass songs

1. The origin and introduction of Soviet mass songs into China

2. Sing the Party and the National Congress

3. Lyric songs express patriotism

4. Sino-Soviet Mass Songs and Folk Responses

V. Summary

Chapter 4: Class Struggle as the Key Link - The View of the Enemy and Self in Movies

1. Enter enemy types in Soviet movies

2. US imperialists, Kuomintang agents and landlords: 1949-1954

3. Big and small "Hu Feng Group" and Rightists: 1955-1957

4. The land that has not been transformed is rich and bad, and degenerates: 1958-1965

V. Summary

Chapter 5: The Collective Matters - The View of Love in Movies

1. The individual moves to the collective: from the May Fourth to the Yan'an period

2. Public before private: the founding of the CCP to the anti-rightist movement

3. Towards Selflessness: The Great Leap Forward to the Cultural Revolution

4. Summary

Chapter 6 "The Glory of Labor" - Model Workers and the Concept of Labor

1. The Stakhanov Movement in the Soviet Union and its introduction to China

2. Selection and shaping of model workers in the 1950s

3. Problems arising from the propaganda of model workers and the model worker movement

4. Differences in propaganda between China and the Soviet Union and discussion of model workers after the Cultural Revolution

V. Summary

Chapter 7 "Men and Women Are Alike" ─ Female Tractor Drivers and Gender Concepts

1. The propaganda and typicality of female tractor drivers in the early days of the founding of the People’s Republic of China

2. Women's labor practice and the development of mechanized farming

3. The work and practical life of female tractor drivers

4. Summary

in conclusion

1. Differences between Chinese and Soviet newcomers and discussions on the Stalin model

2. The effectiveness of publicizing newcomers and the interpretation of the people

3. The role of newcomers and the party

bibliography

index