Eternal Night Sparks: Tribute to the Victim Seniors in the "Landa Rightist Counter-Revolutionary Group Case"

From 1995 to 2005, I worked in Lanzhou University for 10 years. During those 10 years, I read books and prepared lessons every day. The vice-principal once died in the Jiabiangou labor reform farm. Of course, he did not know that more than 50 years ago, in the era of starvation and death, a group of Lanzhou college students who were labeled as rightists and sent to Tianshui labor reform decided to compile and print the underground publication "Xinghuo". Awaken the people to rise up against tyranny. After the incident, forty people were arrested, and Lin Zhao, Zhang Chunyuan, and Du Yinghua, secretary of the Wushan County Party Committee, were brutally killed...

A group of mentally undisarmed people

Yuebin Building, located in Jiuquan Road, Lanzhou City, has carved beams and painted buildings and is antique. It is one of the few time-honored catering companies in Lanzhou. After reading Tan Chanxue's "Quest", I learned that about 60 years ago, the senior Landa, who was involved in the "Xinghuo" counter-revolutionary group case, had a very proud parting feast here:

Each person handed over the hard-earned money earned at the construction site for more than a month in austerity and food. We can’t afford to go to restaurants that are too high-end, and restaurants that are too small do not want to go. It’s too embarrassing to be such a useless living person, and it is time to get together in an upright manner. In the end, we chose Yuebin Building, which has just moved from Shanghai. Going to a restaurant in Lanzhou, the unique flavor attracts visitors, and it is not very far from Lanzhou, so everyone walked to the Yuebin Building. The dishes I ordered were relatively affordable. The male compatriots drank. I used tea instead of wine to symbolically invite each other for a drink. Everyone was chatting and laughing during the banquet, which left me with an unforgettable impression of eating silver silk rolls...

These are a few Lanzhou students who were labeled as rightists in the past. They are about to be expelled from the school, but when they are in exile, they can still not lose interest. When I read this, I was inexplicably moved. Behind this high-spiritedness and unyielding, there is a kind of adherence to dignity and nobility. The anti-rightist movement in 1957, first led snakes out of holes, then thunderbolts. Intellectuals who were instantly stunned woke up and found themselves trapped in the quagmire under the abyss. At this time, the first reaction of most people was to try their best to protect themselves. Flapping, stamping on each other. The previous beliefs, values, responsibilities, and morals have long been forgotten, and the dignity has been lost. But in contrast, this group of college students, who were also beaten as pariahs, bravely walked together at this time to express their "compassion". They had been deprived of all scholarships and bursaries before, and had no means of living. Carrying bricks and cement on the construction site in exchange for a little living allowance, but at this time of eating, I still don’t want to feel sorry for myself, thinking about being upright and having a good time, which means that even if they become untouchables, they have not been completely disarmed spiritually. It is conceivable that , how rare this was at the time, and understanding this, it is not difficult to understand why they would have founded "Spark" a few years later to accuse tyranny of tyranny.

A flash of thought in the sky

The first issue of "Spark" magazine was mimeographed and published in January 1960. The second issue of the magazine, which had already prepared manuscripts, was stillborn due to the subsequent mass raid. There are only more than 30 copies. There is no doubt that it should be one of the shortest underground publications after the establishment of the CCP in 1949. Fortunately, the manuscripts of the first and second issues that were printed later were included in the dossier as criminal evidence. , well preserved. Senior Tan Chanxue included all of these articles in her book "Question - The Case of the Rightist Counter-Revolutionary Group of Lanzhou University", so that people today can have a glimpse of the light that flashed across the ideological sky in the darkest days of the Chinese nation.

Gu Yan, a graduate student of the Department of Physics at Lanzhou University, wrote for the publication Xinghuo, emphasizing: "If such a dictatorship is to be called socialism, it should be a kind of national socialism dominated by a political oligopoly, which belongs to the national socialism of the Nazis. of the same type, with nothing in common with true socialism."

Xiang Chengjian, a chemistry student, commented on the people's commune movement in the article "Current Situation and Our Tasks": "The people's commune movement is actually an inevitable product of the rectification and anti-rightist movement. All material and spiritual possessions of the masses will be completely deprived, the world will depend on it, and the peasants will be forced to be organized in the form of military organizations to carry out slave-style collective labor.”

Zhang Chunyuan, a history student, deeply revealed the disastrous consequences of the agricultural policy in the 1950s in "Peasants, Serfs and Slaves - One of the Current Rural Profiles": "One of the great changes in the current rural areas is the poverty and bankruptcy of the peasants. A new class, the rural proletariat, has emerged in the midst of this class. The emergence of this class is the result of various types of rural policies that are thoroughly reactionary by contemporary rulers.”

Today, almost 60 years later, when I read these words of my predecessors, the sharpness and sharpness of it still amazes me and makes me feel infinite emotion.

In September 1960, nearly 200 people were implicated in the "Xinghuo" case, and 40 people were sentenced. Among these seniors, there were two people who were sentenced to death and murdered. One was the secretary of the Wushan County Party Committee, Du Yinghua, and the other One is Zhang Chunyuan, a history student at Lanzhou University. Zhang Chunyuan was born in the military. Before he entered the school, he was born and died for the new regime in the Korean battlefield. He was a key criminal in the "Spark" case and was killed in 1970. According to his inmates' later recollections, he was handcuffed and shackled, and on the eve of going to the execution ground, he recited Mao Zedong's poems and articles aloud to the inmates. The county party secretary Du Yinghua left behind his children a few relics, including a set of "Stalin Selected Works".

Indeed, including Zhang Chunyuan and Du Yinghua, the county party secretary who supported them, these brave pioneers were Marxists with socialist convictions, their education, the era in which they lived, and the limitations of their territories all determined They can't have too many ideological resources, and they are infinitely confused, and they can only seek answers from classic Marxist-Leninist writers, including Mao's works. A copy of the "Program of the Communist League of Yugoslavia (Draft)" copied by Lin Zhao from the Reference Room of the Journalism Department of the National People's Congress was already the most heretical ideological book they could get access to at that time.

However, even so, the suffering of the people at the bottom of China, and the most simple humanitarian sentiment in Marxist writings, still made them see clearly that the rulers at that time had degenerated into a bureaucratic privileged class, and the so-called socialist system had become a kind of National Socialism of Political Oligopoly".

This summer, when I was reading these historical materials of Senior Xinghuo, I chose to listen to a speech given by a well-known New Left scholar. This is a very young and intellectual girl who grew up in Hong Kong and obtained a doctorate in Europe. The theme of her speech was postmodern theoretical analysis of the Chinese revolution. In the course of her speech, she also quoted Marx's works such as "Critique of the Gotha Program", but she painstakingly defended those dark years, saying, "Mao Zedong tried to solve the problem after 1949. In fact, a series of campaigns on social issues in China have been stigmatized later, and everyone has followed suit." This scholar is famous for his research on Chinese labor issues, I have no right to doubt her academic ability, but I am puzzled. Yes, also using Marxism as a theoretical weapon, in the face of that period of Chinese history, why did the senior youth in the Xinghuo case 60 years ago choose to be a thorough critic, but in the Xinghuo case 60 years ago? The New Left, who grew up in the West, chose to spare no effort to defend it? Is there a problem with theory, or is there a problem with reality, or is there a problem with conscience?

egg hitting the wall

In 1956, Lin Zhao, a journalism student at Peking University, was labeled a rightist for her outspokenness, but she was later arrested and even sentenced to death. The direct reason was her involvement in the "Xinghuo" case. A symbol of tyranny. In contrast, these teachers and students of Lan in "The Case of Xinghuo" were mostly submerged for a long time. It was not until Senior Tan Chanxue published the book "Xinghuo" in 2010 that the deeds of Senior Xinghuo became known to more people. , In 2013, the famous independent producer Hu Jie shot the documentary "Spark", which left a precious video record for this event.

However, not to mention other people from all walks of life, even the students of Lanzhou University, as well as previous graduates, who know this period of history, and those who should know the names that should be shining, are still very few.

Xinghuo seniors are all arrogant idealists. When they acted, they declared: "Put your head on your trousers belt, and you will be afraid of life and death" (He Zhiming, a student of Xinghuo incident and a student of the Department of Physics of Lanzhou University). For those who put life and death aside, of course, it doesn't matter whether history leaves a name or not. But people who see this history may still ask, in the dark ages, are those eggs that hit the high walls valuable?

In fact, this question should be asked this way, without hitting a high wall, every egg must hatch a chick intact?

Gu Yan, a physicist with a clear face, is a professor at the University of Science and Technology of China. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison for the Xinghuo case. Fifty years later, he looked back on the past in front of director Hu Jie's camera, and calmly said that a nation, in those times, always had someone to speak out.

Hearing the senior's words, I burst into tears.

In the long night of eternity, isn't it precisely these countless sparks that flashed in an instant, and finally merged into the light of hope for mankind?

The eminent scholar Amartya Sen has said: "Active opposition is as important a force in non-democratic societies as in democracies. For example, it stands to reason that despite the lack of democratic guarantees, those dynamic , persistent opposition in pre-democratization South Korea, or even in Pinochet's Chile (at a great risk), the governance of these countries has been indirectly effective even before democracy is restored. In these countries, many social programs that have worked well have been set up, at least in part, to reduce the appeal of the opposition to the population, and in this way the opposition has played an effective role even before it came to power.”

Amartya Sen said about South Korea and Chile. Does this statement apply to China? Tan Chanxue's "Quest" and Hu Jie's documentary "Spark" help us unravel that dusty history. However, just remembering is not enough. There should be more scholars to study these heroic figures. The ideological heritage of the predecessors, showing their value.

Supplementary note: This is a text written in 2015. It was posted on the Consensus Network blog at that time. It was not abandoned by the Consensus Network WeChat public account. After it was pushed, it was quite repercussions. In 2016, the Consensus Network was blocked. This article is in There is almost no trace of it online.