Cultural revolution of China 1966 1976. Cultural revolution in China - Mao Zedong. The struggle for sole leadership in the party

Great Flying Cultural Revolution (Chinese tr. 無產階級文化大革命, ​​exc. 无产阶级文化大革命, ​​pinyin Wúchǎn Jiējí Wénhuà Dà Gémìng, pal. Wuchang Tsz yeji Wenhua Da Geming, abbreviated as 文化大革命 Wenhua Da Geming, or 文革 Wenge ) is a term denoting political events from November 1965 to October 1976 in the history of the People's Republic of China. This period was characterized by extreme politicization of all areas of urban life, marked by disorderly protests by students and workers at the lower levels of the social ladder and chaos in the country's party leadership. Its beginning was decisively influenced by the Chairman of the CPC, Mao Zedong, to establish the views of his group in the leadership of the CPC (Maoism) as a state ideology and as part of the fight against the views of the political opposition.

Periodization of the "Cultural Revolution"

The first stage - violent protests by students and workers

The first stage is considered to be the period from May 1966 to April 1969. Mao Zedong himself believed that the Cultural Revolution began with the publication of an article by Yao Wenyuan on November 10, 1965. On August 8, 1966, the 11th Plenum of the CPC Central Committee adopted the “Resolution on the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution”

Although the bourgeoisie has already been overthrown, it is nevertheless trying, with the help of the exploitative old ideology, old culture, old morals and old customs, to corrupt the masses, to win the hearts of the people, and is strenuously striving for its goal - the implementation of restoration. In contrast to the bourgeoisie, the proletariat must respond to any of its challenges in the field of ideology with a crushing blow and, with the help of the proletarian new ideology, new culture, new morals and new customs, change the spiritual appearance of the entire society. Today we set ourselves the goal of defeating those in power who follow the capitalist path, criticizing the reactionary bourgeois “authorities” in science, criticizing the ideology of the bourgeoisie and all other exploiting classes, transforming education, transforming literature and art, transforming all areas of the superstructure that do not correspond to the economic the basis of socialism in order to contribute to the strengthening and development of the socialist system

The second stage of the Cultural Revolution began in May 1969 and ended in September 1971. Some researchers place the second stage beyond the Cultural Revolution itself and date its beginning to mid-1968.

Personnel schools May 7. The first May 7 personnel schools appeared towards the end of 1968. They received this name from Mao Zedong, made on May 7, 1966, in which he proposed the creation of schools in which cadres and intellectuals would undergo labor training with practical training in useful physical labor. 106 cadre schools were built for senior officials on May 7 in 18 provinces. 100 thousand central government officials, including Deng Xiaoping, and 30 thousand members of their families were sent to these schools. For officials of lower rank, there were thousands of cadre schools, in which an unknown number of medium and minor officials were trained. For example, by January 10, 1969, almost 300 cadre schools had been built in Guangdong Province on May 7, and more than one hundred thousand cadres were sent to the lower classes for labor.

The main system that was practiced in personnel schools was the "three-thirds" system. It consisted in the fact that a third of the working time of the former cadres was engaged in physical labor, a third in theory and a third in organizing production, management and written work.

In 1970-71, there was a serious struggle between the masses and cadres, which was expressed, among other things, in criticism of the idea of ​​cadre schools by the cadres themselves. In the course of polemics with the “ultra-left” (Lin Biao, Lin Biao’s supporters in the army, as well as some of the former Zaofan), Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai and his supporters emphasized central economic priorities, including the need to adhere to central planning, adhere to cost accounting procedures and introduce comprehensive rationality . The Zhouenlais criticized ultra-left decentralization, advocating state planning and regulation that could not cope with the abundance of production facilities such as cadre schools.

After Zhou Enlai’s victory over the “ultra-left,” which was expressed, in particular, in the death of Lin Biao and some of his supporters in September 1971, the Cultural Revolution focused on cultural problems, avoiding new initiatives in the economy.

Campaign “Up to the mountains, down to the villages.” A campaign to send some students, workers, and military personnel from cities to rural areas of China.

The third stage - pragmatic measures and political struggle

The third stage of the Cultural Revolution lasted from September 1971 to October 1976, until the death of Mao Zedong. The third stage is characterized by the dominance of Zhou Enlai and the “group of four”: Jiang Qing, Yao Wenyuan, Zhang Chunqiao and Wang Hongwen in economics and politics.

Causes of the Cultural Revolution

International background

At the end of the 1950s, a diplomatic conflict occurred between the PRC and the USSR. The conflict peaked in 1969. The end of the conflict is considered to be the end of the 1980s. The conflict was accompanied by a split in the international communist movement.

The revelations of Stalinism at the 20th Congress of the CPSU, Khrushchev’s course of gradual liberalization in the economy under the policy of “Peaceful Coexistence” displeased Mao Zedong, as being contrary to the entire communist ideology. Khrushchev's policy was called revisionist, and its supporters (Liu Shaoqi and others) were subjected to devastating criticism during the Cultural Revolution.

On the part of the USSR, a sign of dissatisfaction with Maoist policies was the sudden withdrawal of the entire corps of Soviet specialists who worked in the PRC under the international cooperation program.

The conflict culminated in border clashes around Damansky Island on the Ussuri River.

In October 1964, the People's Republic of China successfully tested nuclear weapons.

Chinese anti-imperialist and anti-Soviet propaganda poster, 1969, “People of the whole world, unite to overthrow American imperialism! Down with Soviet revisionism! Down with the reactionaries of all countries!”

Chinese anti-Soviet poster, based on one of the posters of the beginning of the Cultural Revolution of 1967, reading “Down with Soviet revisionism!” Signature below: “Let’s smash the dog heads of Brezhnev and Kosygin”

The struggle for sole leadership in the party

Most researchers of the “cultural revolution” [who?] agree that one of the main reasons for the “cultural revolution” that unfolded in China was the struggle for leadership in the party.

After the failure of the Great Leap Forward, Mao's position in the country was greatly shaken. Therefore, during the “cultural revolution”, Mao Zedong set himself two main tasks, both of which boiled down to strengthening his leading place in the political arena of the PRC: to destroy the opposition, which began to have thoughts about economic reforms with the partial introduction of market mechanisms into it, and , at the same time, to occupy the poor masses with something. By placing all the blame for the failure of the Great Leap Forward on the internal opposition (Liu Shaoqi) and external enemies (the revisionist USSR led by Khrushchev), Mao killed two birds with one stone: he removed competitors and gave vent to popular discontent.

After Mao's decision to open fire on headquarters, merciless criticism of Mao's main opponents began. Among them, the most prominent place was occupied by the Chairman of the People's Republic of China, Liu Shaoqi. Together with him, his closest associates were subjected to repression during the “cultural revolution”: Peng Zhen, Luo Ruiqing, Lu Dingyi, Yang Shangkun and Deng Xiaoping. The charges brought against them were mainly based on the fact that they were all “right-wing deviationists”, “revisionists” and “agents of capitalism”.

With the beginning of the “cultural revolution” in China, another campaign of “self-criticism” began: party members and other Chinese had to “repent of their sins” and mistakes to the party in writing. Liu Shaoqi was also forced to write such “self-criticism.” On July 24, 1966, Mao personally criticized Liu Shaoqi's position. Mao's wife, Jiang Qing, literally shouted: “Liu Shaoqi! You directed work groups that brutally dealt with the young generals of the Cultural Revolution! This is the greatest crime that has caused untold harm!” At the XI Plenum of the CPC Central Committee, Liu Shaoqi lost his position as number two. In fact, he was suspended from work for a time “while the Chinese Communist Party determines the nature of his mistakes.” Liu Shaoqi was subjected to the usual procedure of “stepping aside” in the party at that time. This meant that a party member was not officially deprived of his post, but was actually suspended from work and was under house arrest. The suspended person could be kept in such a suspended state for years. As a result, Liu Shaoqi, who found himself in isolation, along with his wife and children, was subjected to numerous humiliations and bullying, which resulted not only in demagogic interrogations, but also in “spontaneous demonstrations” that gathered near his house in “defense of Chairman Mao.” Even his young daughter was bullied and beaten at school. As a result of this persecution, Liu Shaoqi died of pneumonia, and his wife Wang Guangmei died 10 years later in a mental hospital.

Purges in the CCP

Mao, sensing danger, could not limit himself to purges in the upper echelons of power. “Renewal of the ranks in the party” has become widespread. The peculiarity of the CCP purges was that they were all carried out within the framework of various ideological campaigns. The purges became widespread starting in the 1940s, when the “style correction movement” began. During this period, several hundred thousand party members disappeared without a trace. The same method was revived by Mao when he launched an offensive against the opposition forces in the CPC, taking up the revision of the decisions of the Eighth Congress, which advocated the gradual development of the economy within the framework of planning and cooperation with the USSR. Mao declared it a "bad" congress and called on the entire country to "criticize the Party."

9th Congress of the CPC

At the 9th Party Congress, which took place from April 1 to April 24, 1969 in Beijing, Maoist ideology was finally consolidated at the official level. The policies of Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping were finally condemned. The section of the general provisions of the Party Charter included the thesis that Lin Biao is the “successor” of Mao Zedong. The congress, which helped legitimize the theory and practice of the “cultural revolution,” strengthened the positions of Lin Biao, Jiang Qing and their supporters in the Central Committee.

Results of party purges

The charter still lacked the rights of party members. The party was even deprived of the right to choose delegates to the congress; they were appointed by the Maoists from above. The main theses of the IX Congress were also repeated. During the “cultural revolution,” about 5 million party members were repressed, and by the 9th Congress of the CPC there were about 17 million people in the party. During the Tenth Congress of 1973, the number of CPC members was already 28 million people, that is, in 1970-1973, about 10-12 million people were accepted into the CPC. Thus, Mao replaced the “old” party members, who were capable of any disagreement, with “new” ones - fanatical followers of the cult of personality. The version of the struggle for power in the state can be summarized as follows: by the mid-60s, dissatisfaction with the policies of Mao Zedong had formed in the party. Moreover, this discontent was based on the general disappointment from the “Great Leap Forward” policy that had accumulated among the popular masses. The opposition also had its own unspoken leaders: Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping. These leaders proposed their own approaches to China's development, which were in many ways more moderate than the Maoist ones. Their approaches were based on returning the element of private property to economic relations and in many ways they are similar to those that, after 1978, led China along the path of rapid capitalist development. Realizing that he may not be able to retain power, Mao organizes purges in the party, in fact, mass terror, replacing the “old” party, which consisted of people capable of disagreement, with a “new” one, from which only one name remains, the CPC and which consists of people from the Red Guards personally loyal to Mao [neutrality?].

Anarchy in the Cultural Revolution

The application of Mao's class theory in practice led to a real "war of all against all." Demagogic in nature, vague definitions of the class enemies of the proletariat that came from Mao could fall under any person: from an ordinary peasant to a senior party worker. Power, given to the hands of the masses, turned into elementary anarchy. It was captured by those who were simply stronger: groups of young “rebels” who were eventually allowed to act with virtual impunity. In this regard, Lin Biao’s statement, published in one of the Red Guard newspapers in 1967, is indicative: “... well, they killed people in Xinjiang: whether they killed for the cause or by mistake - still not so much. They also killed in Nanjing and other places, but still, overall, fewer people died than die in one battle... So the losses are minimal, so the successes achieved are maximum, maximum... This is a great plan that guarantees our future for a hundred years to come. The Red Guards are heavenly warriors who seize the leaders of the bourgeoisie from power.”

Cultural and scientific activities were practically paralyzed and stopped. All bookstores were closed, with a ban on the sale of any books except one: Mao's quotation book. The quotation book was produced in many design options: in one of them, the cover of the quotation book was made of hard plastic, on which no traces of blood remained. Many prominent party figures were stuffed with such quotation books when the bourgeois poison was “knocked out of their lips.”

During the "village surrounds the cities" campaign, between 10 and 20 million young people with or in college education were forcibly uprooted from their homes and deported to remote villages, regions and mountains. They were not equipped with practically anything and were sent with their bare hands. The fate of most of them is unknown.

The system of state control over society has virtually eliminated itself. The law enforcement and judicial systems were inactive, so the Red Guards and Zaofans were given complete freedom of action, which resulted in chaos. Initially, the Red Guards operated under the control of Mao and his associates. There were many careerists among them, and many of them managed to make a quick career for themselves on the wave of revolutionary demagoguery and terror. They climbed over other people's heads, accusing their university teachers of “counter-revolutionary revisionism” and their “comrades in arms” of not being revolutionary enough. Thanks to Kang Sheng's courier detachments, Beijing communicated with the leaders of the Red Guards. Many Red Guards were children from disadvantaged families. Poorly educated and accustomed to cruelty from childhood, they became an excellent tool in Mao’s hand. But something else is striking: for example, 45% of the rebels in the city of Canton were children of the intelligentsia. Even Liu Shaoqi’s children once told their father, who was already under house arrest, about what interesting things they had managed to expropriate from the family of bourgeois elements.

Soon, stratification began among the Red Guards based on origin. They were divided into “reds” and “blacks” - the former came from families of the intelligentsia and party workers, the latter were children of the poor and workers. Their gangs began an irreconcilable struggle. Both of them had the same quotation books with them, but everyone interpreted them in their own way. The killer, after a gang clash, could say that it was “mutual assistance”; the thief who stole bricks from the factory justified himself by saying that “the revolutionary class must stick to its line.” Gradually, Mao ceased to control the bulk of the “generals of the cultural revolution.” But when the Red Guards felt a cold wind blowing their way, they unleashed even more violence and factional fighting, resulting in rampant anarchy. Even in the small village of Long Ravine, under the guise of revolutionary struggle, there was a struggle between the clans that controlled the south and north of the village. In Canton in July-August 1967, 900 people were killed in armed clashes between detachments of the Red Banner organization, on the one hand, and the Wind of Communism, on the other, with artillery involved in the skirmishes. In Gansu province, people were tied to 50 cars with wires or wires and stabbed with knives until they turned into a bloody mess.

In the second half of 1968, the army took control of the situation in the country. Many cities had to be taken by storm. The city of Guilin was stormed by 30 thousand soldiers and bombed with napalm, after which all the Red Guards were massacred. The campaign to destroy the rebellious Red Guards continued until 1976. It was accompanied by mass executions and cleansing of cities and villages. Mao himself believed that during the Cultural Revolution, “there were 30% mistakes and 70% done right.” Most sources put the figure at 100 million affected. This figure first appeared in the People's Daily on October 26, 1979. J.-L. Margolen writes that there were a million dead. In Guanxi province alone, more than 67 thousand people died during the Cultural Revolution, and in Guangdong province - 40 thousand.

Kong Kao

SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS DURING
CULTURAL REVOLUTION IN CHINA:
1966-1976

Kong Kao

Doctor of Sociological Sciences, Researcher
Center for Asian and Pacific Studies, University of Oregon, USA,
Email: [email protected] University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403, USA

The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in 1966-1976. was one of the most dramatic periods in the history of modern China. Contrary to its name, the Cultural Revolution was a political campaign launched by Mao Zedong, then head of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), to regain power. He lost it to his rivals (the so-called “people in power following the capitalist path” - zuzipai), who were accused of wanting to introduce capitalism (see [, pp. 1-7]). The task was also set to crush the “reactionary” academic leadership, allegedly infected with capitalist ideas (see [, Chapter 4]). The Cultural Revolution, which traumatized and embittered all Chinese, became a real disaster for the Chinese intelligentsia and had a devastating impact on Chinese science.

Background

As one Chinese proverb says, it takes more than one cold day for a river to freeze three feet. The misfortunes that befell Chinese scientists during the Cultural Revolution were a long time in the making. When considering the interaction between the party and the intelligentsia, four problems stand out that predetermined the nature of this political campaign.

Chinese scientists, like other intellectuals, have experienced pressure from the Party from time to time. The party needed intellectuals to solve specific technical problems. Utilitarianism towards scientists can be traced throughout the history of the People's Republic of China. When the Communists seized power in 1949, they were faced with the need to quickly rebuild the national economy and therefore needed the knowledge and skills of the intelligentsia. In the mid-1950s. The party leadership, concerned about the economic backwardness of the country, proclaimed a policy of “flourishing and struggle,” which called on the intelligentsia to help the party destroy bureaucracy, factionalism and subjectivism *.

* This policy was carried out under the slogan: “Let a hundred flowers bloom, let hundreds of schools fight in ideology.” The first part of the slogan was used by Mao Zedong in 1951 to characterize the party's policy in the field of theoretical and literary reforms, and the second half of the slogan described the situation of philosophical freedom during the "warring states" of the Zhanguo era (475-221 BC). .

When the economic crisis broke out after the "anti-right" and "Great Leap Forward" campaigns, the party changed its policy towards the intelligentsia, calling them back to key positions in science and education and allowing the former "right" to return to their old positions. At the conference convened in Guangzhou, a thesis was put forward to revise the anti-intelligentsia tendencies that had dominated since 1957 [, p. 723] *.

* The “against the right” campaign in 1957 was launched by the party against intellectuals for their provocative “right-wing” criticism. For a discussion about this campaign, see [, p. 63-65; , R. 167-203]. "Great Leap Forward" in 1958-1960. was an attempt to quickly raise industry through the labor mobilization of the masses, combined with the politicization of economic and social life, designed to ensure a rapid transition to communism. However, due to its unrealistic goals, the “Great Leap Forward” caused serious harm to China’s national economy. For more details, see [, p. 204-226; , R. 87-147].

From 1962 to 1965 specialists in the field of natural sciences enjoyed the maximum respect * the scientific environment was less politicized, and the time that scientists spent attending political rallies was limited to one day of the week [, p. 722-723]. To regain the trust of the intellectual community, the party abandoned rigid leadership, guaranteeing scientists greater freedom within the limits of their professional competence. During the period of “heyday and struggle” and after the Cultural Revolution, the party even made efforts to attract scientists into its ranks, which testified to the pragmatism of its policies in these years.

* Writers and humanities scholars, on the contrary, during this period were often the subject of attacks by the party [, p. 219-254].

For a long time, the intelligentsia was considered a social group with an uncertain class status: they belonged not to the working class, but rather to the bourgeoisie. This was the case until January 1956, when the CPC Central Committee convened a special conference dedicated to the intelligentsia. In his speech, Premier of the State Council Zhou Enlai explained the party's attitude to this problem, according to which the vast majority of the intelligentsia became state workers working in the name of socialism, and were henceforth part of the working class [, p. 128-144]. In the early 1960s. Zhou Enlai reiterated at the Guangzhou Conference that the vast majority of the intelligentsia, enthusiastically working for socialism, accepting the leading role of the Party and ready for self-reform, now belonged to the working class and should not be considered as the bourgeoisie. Vice Premier Chen Yi boldly said, "China needs intellectuals, it needs scientists. They have been treated unfairly for all these years. They should be returned to the positions they deserve." He called on scientists to take off the hat of the “bourgeois intelligentsia” and put on the crown of the “working class intelligentsia” [, p. 722-723] *.

* The speeches of Zhou Enlai and Chen Yi were approved by the CPC Central Committee and Mao Zedong. But after reading the transcript of the conference, Mao was dissatisfied with the prevailing mood there and the words of Zhou and Chen, which were a direct challenge to Mao. A few years later, when the Cultural Revolution began, the Guangzhou conference was designated as a “shameful conference” (see [, pp. 389-390]).

However, during the Cultural Revolution, the intelligentsia was ranked among social outcasts along with landowners, kulaks, counter-revolutionaries, socially harmful elements, right-wingers, traitors, spies and "following the capitalist path"[ , R. 126-127]. In addition, the party perceived the scientific community's requests for greater independence in scientific work as a bourgeois challenge that was directed against its leadership role. That is why the period of “flourishing and struggle” gave way to a return to the suppression of the intelligentsia, especially after the sharp statement of its representatives that only specialists are capable of truly leading scientific institutions and only professors can competently manage educational institutions [, p. 184]. Even during the reforms of the 1980s, when intellectuals believed that they should make their own decisions about their work, such views were seen as a threat to the party's monopoly in science and technology policy. Since 1983, the party has again organized campaigns “against spiritual corruption”, “against bourgeois liberalization” (1987) and the suppression of the democratic movement (1989) [, p. 256-360; , p. 349-467].

Utilitarian values ​​and classism suggested that Chinese intellectuals should be "united, educated and reformed"- this is exactly how the Central Committee of the CPC formulated “14 tasks in the field of science” in 1961 [, p. 719]. “Uniting with intellectuals” meant that the party was interested in using their knowledge, but considered it necessary to “educate” them by involving them in the study of communist ideology, especially the ideas of Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong. Thus, Chinese scientists became the main targets of political campaigns, ranging from the “thought reform” movement in late 1951, the “anti-right” campaign of 1957, and the cultural revolution of 1966-1976. and ending with various political events in the 1980s that “reformed” their bourgeois ideology. Since the thesis of “unification, education and reform” remained unchanged until recently, most of the intelligentsia adhered to the principle of “keeping a low profile” *.

* Ni Rongzheng pointed out: “Now that the intelligentsia has become part of the working class, we should not continue to use the slogan of “unifying, educating and reforming” the intelligentsia.”[ , R. 719]

The party expected the intelligentsia to become “both red and qualified.” In this case, the word "red" meant that she would adhere to the revolutionary line and carry out party policies, while the term "white" was used to denote bourgeois, counter-revolutionary ideology [, p. 293]. The political demand to become "red and qualified" demoralized the intelligentsia from the late 1950s until the 1980s. In order to overcome “whiteness” and become “red specialists,” intellectuals had to undergo a long and arduous “political re-education” and “ideological reform,” participating in endless political training sessions, often enduring “criticism” and “self-criticism,” performing hard physical labor in factories and in the countryside. The party assigned the names “red” and “white” depending on what seemed more important at the moment: the efficiency of the work of scientists or ideological values ​​[, p. 237-240].

In the atmosphere of anti-intellectual sentiment after the "anti-right" campaign in 1957, Ni Rongzhen, then Deputy Prime Minister and at the same time the head of the State Science and Technology Commission (SCST), as well as the National Defense Science and Technology Commission (NDSCT), proposed in 1961 "14 tasks in the field of science" - a document designed to dispel prejudices against the intelligentsia [, p. 720; , R. 181-186]. It put forward two criteria for a “red” scientist: support for the Communist Party and the ideas of socialism, as well as the use of one’s knowledge for their benefit. A scientist who fulfilled these two requirements was to be considered as having become essentially "red"; As for the scientists who were engaged in science even before 1949, the party demanded that they be patriots and willingly collaborate with it.

The document proposed to get rid of the term "white specialist", since the ambiguous association of "qualified" and "white" dampened the enthusiasm of those scientists who worked diligently in their fields. At the first national science conference after the Cultural Revolution, Deng Xiaoping, then China's top leader, clarified the "red and white" problem, pointing out that dedicated work in a socialist enterprise and contribution to its development is a sign that a scientist is both a specialist and " red" [, p. 46].

The development of relations between the party and the intelligentsia (the priority of utilitarian values, class characteristics, the call for “unification with the intelligentsia, its education and reform”, the requirement for the intellectual to be “red and specialist”) fluctuated between two poles: on the one hand, the effective use of knowledge and qualifications of the Chinese intelligentsia, and on the other hand, attacks on it and rude treatment of its representatives [, p. 83]. The regime either began to fight against individualism, egoism and the bourgeois views of the intelligentsia, or allowed the scientific community to follow accepted international norms and values ​​in scientific research and independently choose their direction, introducing a system of expert assessments, choosing an elite from among scientists, etc. Fluctuations, uncertainty and variability reflected the tossing between the two extremes of party control over the economy, politics, and society, revealing the incompatibility of actions to tighten, limit ( show) and relaxation, liberalization ( fan) (cm. ). In other words, the party's fluctuations between "show" And "fen" tragically affected the fate of the intelligentsia and science. While "fen" stimulated scientists to engage in scientific research, "show" negated this incentive.

Torment

The problems discussed in the previous section became more acute during the Cultural Revolution. Along with other intellectuals, scholars who worked before 1949 (during Nationalist rule) and were educated in the first 17 years of the People's Republic of China were denounced as "white specialists." Therefore their services were rejected and they had to be "purified" and "reformed."

Two CCP documents, the May 16 Circular and the 16 Points, which proclaimed the Cultural Revolution, attacked "bourgeois positions of the so-called "authoritative scientists" and criticism of reactionary views on the theoretical front of natural science"[-]. At the same time, the “16 Points” argued that the cultural revolution should not affect science and technology. As a result, in the spring and summer of 1966, scientists were relatively free from persecution, and research centers were temporarily protected from brutal intrusions. However, the Gang of Four, a radical group within the party, concluded: "The more you have studied, the more reactionary you are"* Naturally, scientists were classified as part of this “reactionary” group. She was accused of lacking faith in the party, unwillingness to devote herself to the cause of socialism, and also of the fact that many of its representatives were educated in Western countries and in the “revisionist” USSR [ , p. 444].

* Mao Zedong's wife Jiang Qing, Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wanyuan, Wang Hongwen formed a faction within the party leadership and sought to seize supreme power during the Cultural Revolution. Their arrest in 1976 signaled the end of the Cultural Revolution.

At the height of the Cultural Revolution, many scientists and other intellectuals were attacked in dazibao for their withdrawal from politics, production and the masses, as well as for the inability attributed to them to connect theory with practice *. Intellectuals were humiliated at public meetings, interrogated and held under arrest by Red Guards and other radical activists, their homes were searched and their property was confiscated; they were exiled to Newpengs***, insulted, tortured physically and psychologically. University professors were accused of "poisoning young student minds" while teaching, and those who studied abroad were labeled American or Soviet spies.

* Dazibao were large posters with statements written in large hieroglyphs on wide strips of paper, and placed on walls or stands so that everyone could read them. They were supposed to be short and to the point, but many dazibao resembled rambling wall newspapers rather than a concentrated statement of position.

** The Red Guards were formed from university students between 1966-1968, they believed that they were Mao Zedong's guard and the pillar of socialism. For a study of the origins of the Red Guards and their role in the Cultural Revolution, see.

*** Premises used to punish class enemies. The term is derived from "niu" (to intimidate, pacify), combined with the word "gui" (monster, monster) and "she" (snake, evil person) and "shen" (devil, demon).

A special group was created within the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) to investigate the backgrounds of Zhu Kezheng and Wu Yusong, two vice-presidents of the CAS who received doctorates and worked in the United States [, p. 464]. Zhu and Wu were interrogated at least 200 times about the backgrounds of their official students and scientific followers [, p. 500]. Of the 170 senior scientists at CAS in Beijing, 131 were attacked; In Shanghai, 40% of the employees of the Institute of Plant Physiology of the KAS were accused of being enemy agents and were held responsible for an anti-communist plot during the Nationalist rule. 106 scientists, including 27 senior researchers, or 0.41% of the total number of scientific personnel at CAS, were tortured to death [, p. 337-341; , R. 154-156]. Almost none of the members of CAS academic departments (i.e. scientists participating in major government scientific programs) escaped persecution, of whom at least nine were tortured to death or forced to commit suicide, including mycologist Deng Shukwen, an architect Liang Sichen, civil engineer Liu Danzhen, biologist Liu Chongli, physicist Rao Yutai, mathematicians Xu Biaolu and Zheng Zongxiu, metallurgists Ye Dupei and Zhou Ren, meteorologist Zhao Yuzheng and geologist Sai Chairong. Some CAN members, such as Ye Quisam, died after the Cultural Revolution as a result of the suffering they endured during political repression [ , p. 321-328; , R. 155-189; , p. 499, 529; , p. 5-6, 37-39; 28].

With the increasing frequency of political campaigns, even scholars who were members of the CCP could not escape persecution. For example, nuclear physicist Kwuan Sanquan was one of the first Chinese scientists accepted into the party and monitored the implementation of the atomic project. However, due to the fact that he was an adviser to the government delegation of the “nationalists” at the first UNESCO conference, which took place in Paris in 1946, he was deprived of the right to access secret information on the creation of the atomic bomb. Three days after China's first atomic bomb exploded, Kwuan was sent to the countryside to participate in the so-called "socialist education movement." When the Cultural Revolution began, he was declared a “capitalist fellow traveler,” a secret agent, and imprisoned in Nyupeng [ , b. 495-496; , R. 190-191] *. Sai Said, a physicist at Fudan University, and her husband Kao Tiankwin of the Institute of Biochemistry of the CAS in Shanghai became party members in 1956. Sai was diagnosed with a serious illness in October 1956, but was nevertheless detained in her own laboratory for a period of time. years, and Kao at that time was detained in his laboratory for a year and a half - because they received education in America and England **.

* The so-called "socialist education movement" began throughout rural China in the early 1960s. in order to restore and develop collective agriculture after the failure of the Great Leap Forward.

** Later, Sai was forced to clean toilets at the university and was eventually exiled to the countryside (interview with Sai Side in Shanghai, November 16, 1995).

Ordinary scientists, if they did not become objects of malicious attacks, were criticized for continuing research into highly specialized problems, for the fact that in their research they were more guided by the “tips” of world science than by the practical problems of China’s development. Later, more than 300 thousand scientific workers, along with other intellectuals and specialists, were exiled to farms called the “May 7th cadre school” or they were exiled to the countryside to undergo “ideological revolutionization.” "May 7th Personnel School" KAN was located in the Gwangyang region of Hubei Province [, p. 156-157; , R. 42] *. At the Institute of Zoology of the KAS, almost a third of the staff was exiled to the “personnel school on May 7” [, p. 150]. Researchers were also required to work in factories. In a word, they were offered to undergo re-education from workers and peasants in order to transform their “bourgeois ideology.”

* "May 7th Cadre Schools" were established in rural areas in accordance with Mao Zedong's May 7, 1966 directive to eliminate the distinction between mental and physical labor.

In this harsh political climate, few scientists, although not formally dismissed, had the fortitude to continue their research. For many of them, the Cultural Revolution occurred during the most productive period of their scientific careers. Thus, neuropharmacologist Zu Genom in the early 1960s. with his supervisor, Zheng Shaocheng, established that the actual site of localization of morphine analgesia is the third ventricle and the gray matter surrounding the central canals. This discovery is considered a milestone in the study of the mechanism of morphinization. Their 1964 article in Scientia Sinica (at that time the only journal in China on basic science published in English), according to the Institute of Scientific Information in Philadelphia, was one of the cited classics in 1993. Zu soon made another discovery, establishing that bicuculline was an antagonist of gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), which was a major inhibitor of neurotransmitters. An article devoted to this problem was accepted for publication in the journal Chinese Physiology in 1966, which was not published due to the Cultural Revolution. In fact, Tzu was forced to abandon his promising scientific research. In 1970, Tzu read in Nature that a group of scientists in Australia had identified bicuculline as a gamma-aminobutyric acid antagonist, a discovery almost identical to his own, building on what he had made five years earlier. He was depressed and took it hard.

The failure to publish Tzu's work was more than just a personal tragedy and a loss for Chinese science: according to the Australian scientist, the development of the entire field of neuropharmacological research was thereby suspended [, p. 18-19]. Many Chinese scientists have gone through similar trials. Ye Duzhen, a renowned expert on atmospheric physics and global change, lost ten years of data to looters. Red Guards(politically engaged youth who committed pogroms). After surviving a house search, criticism at rallies, and public condemnation, mathematician Hua Luozhen abandoned the continuation of his research in number theory; instead, he spent many years popularizing and implementing master planning techniques and best prospecting techniques in factories and rural areas. Although this was a way to avoid further political repression, he still experienced difficulties from time to time [, p. 291-306; ; , R. 41-43] Their joint plan with economist Yu Guanjuyuan to introduce a mathematics program for economics graduate students failed [, p. 25-27]. Metallurgy specialist Ye Dupei has been given a label "bourgeois, reactionary academic authority" and imprisoned in Nyupeng. Before his death, he wrote a letter to Mao Zedong, hoping that he would understand the pain of a man who, at the age of almost seventy, was wasting the last years of his life [, p. 911].

Destruction

The Cultural Revolution caused even greater damage to Chinese science by destroying scientific institutions that had existed since the beginning of the 20th century. The leaders of science were the first to be attacked. On July 30, 1966, a meeting was held in the Great Palace of the People, at which 10 accusations were made against the leadership of the State Committee for Science and Technology of revisionism. In subsequent months, the sharpest criticism was directed against Ni Rongzheng for organizing a conference on the problems of the intelligentsia in Guangzhou in 1962 and putting forward the “Fourteen Problems in the Field of Science.” In order to contain and protect attacks against Ni and his collaborators during the Cultural Revolution

Zhou Enlai accepted responsibility for the SCST and rejected the radicals' demands to remove the main members of the SCST bureau from their posts. Nevertheless, the radicals seized power in the State Committee for Science and Technology. Wu Heng, who was then deputy chairman of the State Committee for Science and Technology, was searched (all his property was taken away, including items with the autograph of Mao Zedong), tortured, imprisoned in Nyupeng for 11 months, and then exiled to the “May 7 Cadre School” [ , p. 331-345]. The scientific administration could no longer serve as a buffer between scientists and the raging Red Guards.

The academic departments of the CAS, which united the leaders of the scientific community, were perceived by the Red Guards as a hindrance. In January 1967, the radicals in the State Committee for Science and Technology issued their first circular, demanding the “crush” of academic departments, which, in their opinion, provided power to reactionary circles. The activities of the CAS branches completely ceased for more than ten years due to the suffering of its members [, p. 311-312].

Both the research institutes and CAS were turned upside down. Under these conditions, institutional changes were apparently inevitable. In 1967, due to the need to protect research related to the country's defense capabilities, 47 institutes were placed under military control and a year later became part of the military structure; two years later, a further 743 institutes were run by CAS jointly with local authorities to decentralize research and encourage local government initiative. In 1972, seven institutes in Beijing adopted a dual management model, several institutes were liquidated, and finally the unified China University of Science and Technology (UCST) was moved to Hefei, the capital of Anhui Province.

However, provincial governments were not interested in managing research institutes whose scientific projects were not directly related to regional problems. For example, nine institutes in Guangzhou Province were reorganized into agricultural products, forestry, livestock, industrial harvesting, and seafood groups to serve peasants.

By 1973, as a result of a catastrophic reduction, only 13 institutes out of 7016 (in 1965) remained under the direct jurisdiction of the CAS. Basic research was curtailed. Later, CAS had to restore almost all the institutes engaged in fundamental research, which were given over to the military and provincial governments [, p. 146-154].

To change the situation, radical leaders ordered that the CAN "turn its face" to the practice. In 1971, CAS was required to focus its research on preparations for war, the needs of workers, peasants and soldiers, and the problems of agriculture and industry, which ultimately turned into an “open door” policy: sending scientists to work in rural areas and factories and inviting workers and peasants to work with scientists in the CAS laboratories. For example, the Institute of Chemical Physics of the CAS in Dalian sent every employee to factories, farms and military camps more than 400 times and invited more than 100 non-scientists to its institute [, p. 145]. At the same time, representatives from any plant could come to the Institute of Chemistry every week to discuss technical issues [, p. 121]. When research resumed in the later period of the Cultural Revolution, institutes and universities paid special attention to applied problems and focused on the urgent needs of practice. Despite policy changes, the main goal was not the development of research, but the re-education of scientists.

Although efforts were made to protect scientists working on military projects from persecution, they were not completely safe either, as the Cultural Revolution soon spread to the military sphere, where scientific research and production stopped due to the atrocities of the Red Guards. Although Ni Ronzhen retained control over the NKONT, under pressure from the Red Guards, the central departments of the NKONT had to move from the besieged Ministry of Defense to the Institute of Aviation in December 1966 [, p. 48]. The vice chairman of the NKONT, Zhao Erlu, was tortured to death. The party leadership tried to stop the arbitrariness of the Red Guards in defense institutions [, p. 123], but this failed. As a result, on August 9, 1969, Zhou Enlai was forced to approve a list of scientists and engineers engaged in national defense research who needed to be protected [ , p. 313-314]. Fierce factional fighting affected the fate of many military research and training institutes, as well as the VII Ministry of Mechanical Engineering, which managed missile and aerospace programs [, p. 49-55]. Even the nuclear weapons program, which Mao Zedong vigorously defended, suffered from the Cultural Revolution.

* Writer Feng Yikai describes the events of the Cultural Revolution in the field of nuclear weapons development: mass mobilization, political training sessions, dazibao and executions [, p. 57-58, 128-129, 165, 183, 186; , p. 224-243; , p. 201-206].

Meanwhile, the Chinese Association of Science and Technology and its member scientific societies ceased their activities: more than 100 professional journals ceased to be published, and international exchange, which was quite difficult even before the Cultural Revolution, ceased completely [, p. 42; , R. 42]. When magazines began to appear again in 1971, most of their publications were devoted exclusively to applied problems and the ideas of Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong. The quotes often cited by scientists were nothing more than obligatory cliches [, p. 223]. Articles were signed by a group of scientists to avoid accusations of individualism [, p. 137]. However, even after R. Nixon's visit to China in 1972, when the world scientific community gradually began to resume scientific exchange with Chinese scientists, not many of them were allowed to travel abroad. Thus, in 1974, the mathematician Hua Luozheng was invited to give a report on his research and the work of his students at the International Conference of Mathematicians in Canada, but he was not allowed (Hua’s invitations in 1954 and 1958 were also rejected [, p. 253]), as and mathematicians Yang Li and Zhang Guangzhou, when they were invited by Imperial College, University of London [, p. 237].

The Cultural Revolution paralyzed China's education system. In 1966, the country abandoned formal higher education, which was declared a "revisionist seedling cultivation system." Undergraduate and graduate students were forcibly sent to factories, the countryside, and army camps for “re-education,” and research work was sharply curtailed. When universities reopened their doors at the end of 1970 (graduate courses were only reinstated in 1978), destructive policies continued to prevail. Since Mao Zedong declared that the period of study should be shortened, the standard course of study lasted three years; the longest education was reduced from six to four years.

In accordance with Mao's instructions to admit students from workers, peasants and soldiers with practical experience, all high school students were expected to work for two to three years on farms and factories, after which their admission to universities could be considered, the decision of which was to be based on recommendations from the community or factory, and not on the results of any entrance exams. And when students from workers, peasants and soldiers arrived at the university, they needed some time to update their elementary knowledge. For example, a peasant student who studied automation at Quinhua University told American visitors in 1973 that she had only spent one year in high school when she entered university [ , p. 185].

Since Mao put forward the thesis that education would serve the politics of the proletariat and would be integrated with productive labor, scientific orientations were more pragmatic and less professional. For example, at Quinhua University, which became not so much a center of learning as a center of labor training [, p. 14], students spent 80% of their time studying scientific disciplines and technology, 15% on memorizing the ideas of Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong, and 5% on agricultural work and studying the experience of the People's Liberation Army [, p. 182]. In addition, professors and students intensively visited factories and communities to study practical problems and solve applied problems. Such an organization did not provide conditions for training the next generation of scientists. It is believed that due to the Cultural Revolution, China lost at least one million graduates and 100 thousand graduate students [, р. 648]. Chinese scientific institutions were not replenished with qualified personnel at this time, which will continue to influence the development of science in China for a long time.

Survival

During the decade of chaos caused by the Cultural Revolution, most fields of scientific research stagnated or even regressed due to disruption, isolation from global science, and the closure of universities. Nevertheless, China achieved several significant achievements during this period, such as the synthesis of biologically active insulin, transport ribonucleic acid (tRNA), testing a hydrogen bomb, launching artificial satellites and their successful return to Earth, etc.

Insulin synthesis began in 1963, when biochemistry was chosen as one of the priorities of scientific research. The Institute of Biochemistry of the CAS, Peking University and the Institute of Organic Chemistry played a leading role here, and all the main participants, with the exception of Gong Yueting - New Jinai, Zu Chengli, Xing Qiyi, Wen Yu, Wen Yinglai - were educated in the USA and England. Two years later, they successfully synthesized insulin and performed its structural analysis, which was recognized as a major scientific achievement. During the Cultural Revolution, X-ray crystallography of insulin, the study of the active structure of insulin analogues, and the synthesis of other polypeptide hormones continued.

Meanwhile, biochemist Wang Dibao, educated in America, and his group at the Institute of Biochemistry of the CAS began the synthesis of nucleic acid - alanine t-RNA in yeast in 1968 and completed it in 1981 [, p. 18-20]. The work on insulin and nucleic acid was completely completed, and the fact that these projects were carried out without interference from the authorities in Shanghai (the stronghold of the so-called Gang of Four) can be explained in two ways. Firstly, scientists managed to convince political leaders of the practical importance of this research, and the so-called “gang of four” supported the project, since its results could be interpreted as confirmation of the famous hypothesis of F. Engels, expressed in “Dialectics of Nature”, that protein is form of existence of life *. Secondly, insulin could be used to treat diabetes, which Jiang Qing suffered from. In other words, the study represented a fortuitous convergence of the interests of scientists and radical leaders.

* Articles on insulin and nucleic acid cited paragraph after paragraph the work of F. Engels. One researcher at the Institute of Biochemistry of the Russian Academy of Sciences told a visiting American delegation: “Our great leader Engels said that protein is a form of existence of life. By synthesizing it from chemical elements, we proved the truth of materialism and refuted idealism, which believes that biological substance can only be obtained from living matter.”(see [, p. 32-133]).

** Shen Shaowen, then deputy of the Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry, pointed this out in 1983, see [, p. 42, note 82].

High-energy physics, which does not promise immediate practical use, received an impetus for development only in the last period of the Cultural Revolution. In the early 1970s. Premier Zhou Enlai also demanded that Zhou Peiyuan, then deputy director of the Revolutionary Committee of Peking University, defend the teaching of basic sciences and natural science research (see). The publication of Zhou Peiyuan's article reflected the intense struggle between ZhouEnlai and the "Gang of Four" [, p. 412-413; , R. 157; , R. 369; , p. 413-419; , p. 14-15; , p. 7-9]. Nevertheless, encouraged by Chou En-lai, Zhang Wanyu, Zhu Guangrua and other scientists involved in high-energy physics turned to the Party and government with a request to build an accelerator. The following year, part of the research institute, taken away from the CAS in 1967 to implement the nuclear weapons program, was transformed into the Institute of High Energy Physics, and Chen Wingyu led a delegation of physicists who visited foreign universities and research centers on high energy physics. The development of this area of ​​physics and the construction of an accelerator became one of the important tasks for CAS *. The revival of theoretical studies of elementary particles was significant, since the Cultural Revolution was still ongoing. However, it was explained by Mao Zedong’s interest in the problem of the infinite divisibility of matter [, p. 367-373; , p.414].

* The deputy director of the revolutionary committee of Peking University was equal in status to the vice president of Peking University before and after the Cultural Revolution. The Revolutionary Committee was a politically oriented administrative structure established throughout China after the overthrow of the previous party-state apparatus. On the scientific front it consisted of representatives of scientists, "old" party and government officials, younger "revolutionary" scientists, technical personnel and workers.

Some scientists tried to carry out research in such difficult conditions. One example of this can be the fate of the mathematician Chen Yinran, who achieved outstanding success in developing the “Holbach problem”. In 1966, Chen, then an assistant at the Institute of Mathematics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, proved that any sufficiently large even number can be written as the sum of a prime number and a second number that is either a prime or the product of two primes, but a detailed proof of this conclusion has been published only in 1973 due to the cessation of scientific publications during the Cultural Revolution. His work was a discovery for the world mathematical community, which appreciated this "result on the still elusive Goldbach problem"[ , R. 59].

Chen Yinran worked on the Holbach problem in an unimaginably difficult political and everyday situation. As one of the consistent supporters of the “white flag” at the Institute of Mathematics of the CAS, he did not escape “criticism” in 1958 and was exiled to New Peng. After attempting suicide, Chen Yinran feigned mental illness for safety reasons, but continued to work on the “Holbach problem.” When his detailed proof, obtained through manual calculations, was finally published and well received around the world, it attracted the attention of the party leadership, including Mao Zedong himself [ , p. 374-376; , R. 240, 308-312; , R. 89-118] *. In 1973-1974 Cheng's colleagues Yang Li and Zheng Guanghou made a remarkable discovery in value distribution theory: every meaningful set of directions can be the set of Borel directions for an appropriately chosen meromorphic function. It has been recognized as one of the important achievements in this field. Yang and Zheng explained their conclusion by using the philosophical ideas of Mao Zedong in his work On Opposites, a common practice of scientists during the Cultural Revolution [, p. 67].

* Cheng Yinran died of Parkinson's disease in 1994. It is now difficult to say whether there was any connection between his illness and the suffering he suffered during the Cultural Revolution.

Consequences of the Cultural Revolution

The Cultural Revolution left a lot of destruction in its wake. Scientists really wanted science to quickly free itself from the influence of the Cultural Revolution, which helped in the late 1970s. determine the damage it caused to science. Zhou Peiyuan's advocacy of basic research in 1972 was such an attempt; the same goal was pursued by the national conference on education in 1971 and the national conference on scientific work in 1972 [, p. 349-352, 377-386; , p. 157-163].In 1975, Vice Premier Deng Xiaoping, rehabilitated two years earlier, began work to stabilize the situation and improve the economy. Deng appointed Hu Yaobang, Li Cheng and Wen Guangwei to be responsible for the restoration of the scientific sphere at the CAS [, b. 57, r. 54-60; , R. 397-402; , p. 161-167; , p. 214-231].

After visiting research institutes, convening informal discussion sessions, and seeking the opinions of scientists and others within and outside CAS, they observed that the morale of scientists and technical staff was very low and they did not dare to carry out their professional activities. The few CAS institutes that were still functioning were focused on applied problems of science and engineering, and highly educated scientists were either engaged in manual labor or were forced to work on narrowly applied problems. In order to change the situation, the project “Some Problems of Organization of Work in the Field of Science and Technology” was developed, which later became the “Report on the Basic Principles of Action in the Chinese Academy of Sciences” and became a guide to correcting the situation.

The report covered six main aspects.

Firstly, noted the achievements in science and technology after 1949 and indicated that most scientists supported the Party and the construction of socialism and contributed to the development of production and national security.

Secondly, The question of science management was raised. Since the State Committee for Science and Technology became part of the CAS, it had to solve problems that were not characteristic of the Academy as a research center. The report proposed taking away the functions of science management from the Academy.

Third, discussed seven pairs of controversies that confuse scientists and need to be resolved: politics and academia; production and scientific experiment; professionals and masses; self-sufficiency and borrowing advanced technology abroad; theory and practice; fundamental and applied research; subordination to party leadership and encouragement of academic debate.

Fourthly, Zhou Enlai's theses of 1956 and 1962 were re-declared. about party policy towards the intelligentsia working in the field of science and technology.

Fifthly, laid out a preliminary plan for the next ten years of science and technology development, including guarantees for important research projects in the national economy and defense, the development of new fields of technology, and the strengthening of basic research.

Finally, it was proposed to reorganize the central institutions of the CAS and its branches, strengthen the leadership, pursue party policy in the field of science, take care of the living conditions of scientists and other employees [,p. 163-165].

In other words, the report, written as a reaction to the virtual destruction of scientific institutions by the Gang of Four during the Cultural Revolution, focused on eliminating the difficulties that were hindering scientists. The report called on scientific institutions, their scientific, political and administrative personnel to ensure the development of science and technology and the achievement of new scientific results. It also mentioned that in order to strengthen KUNT, a branch of KAS, the university had to distribute senior students after three years of study, sending them to research institutes or to study abroad.

Upon hearing the report's findings, Deng Xiaoping expressed outrage at the decline of science and the damage caused to Chinese scientists and professors by the Gang of Four. But, given that this party group still had enormous power, Deng proposed to correct harsh passages in the report and quote the statements of Mao Zedui [, p. 59].

Meanwhile, Hu Yaobang carried out a series of measures to strengthen the Academy: directors were allowed to perform their functions, more than 800 cases of “purges” of scientists were reviewed, and researchers were returned to positions corresponding to their qualifications. Oi also made enormous efforts to solve such pressing life problems of scientists as housing, family separation, and education of children [, p. 56].

When Deng Xiaoping was expelled for the second time in 1976, the Gang of Four cursed the “three poisonous seeds”: the “Report on the Basic Principles of Action of the CAS”, as well as two other documents, “On the General Program of Action of the Whole Party and the Whole People.” " and "Some problems of industrial development". They circulated the draft, uncorrected by Deng Xiaoping, ordering the country's main newspapers to publish critical articles and organize attacks on those who prepared the reports.

Most scientists were reluctant to participate in this campaign. Once the Cultural Revolution was over, the report in question became the basis for action to correct the situation in science and technology. Many issues raised in it, such as: "science and technology are productive forces", "red and expert", stimulation of scientific research by directors of institutes, depoliticization of the natural sciences - were decided immediately after the Cultural Revolution.

The far-reaching consequence of the Cultural Revolution was that it destroyed political illusions and gave rise to cynicism and apathy among the Chinese, including among scientists [, p. 135] and greatly influenced many generations of the intelligentsia [, p. 58]. Physicist Feng Lizhi in the late 1980s. openly defended democratization and subjected unprecedented criticism to the leadership role of the party in China, the suppression of human rights, and government corruption. As a member of the CAS branch and in his official position as vice president of the University of Science and Technology of China, Feng Lizhi influenced the students who took to the streets in late 1986 and became the driving force behind the democratic protest movement in 1989.

Feng Lizhi, who graduated from Peking University, at the age of 20 was an example of a “red specialist”: he was a party member, specialized in nuclear physics, and participated in the nuclear weapons program at the Institute of Modern Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences. During the period of “heyday and struggle” he was labeled a “quasi-rightist”, subsequently expelled from the party and sent to the countryside for re-education. After the amnesty in 1959 * he was hired at the newly created KUNT to teach general physics; In the meantime, he unofficially joined a group at the Institute of Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences that was conducting research on solid state physics and lasers.

* In September 1959, on the eve of the tenth anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China, Mao Zedong proposed the first amnesty since the Communists came to power, including the removal of "rightist" labels, as a noble gesture towards the intelligentsia during the national economic crisis (see [, p. 265]).

After the Cultural Revolution, Feng Lizhi was rehabilitated politically and professionally: he, a lecturer, was immediately made a professor in 1978, and in 1980 he was elected a member of the academic department of the CAS (he was 44 years old and he turned out to be one of the youngest academicians) and was reinstated in the party . His active participation after 1978 in academic exchanges with Western scientists led to an involuntary comparison of their situation with his own. He did not see any improvement in the social status of Chinese intellectuals under communist rule. Feng argued that the intelligentsia represented the most progressive productive force in society, so the Chinese intelligentsia should become the new ruling class in China, rather than a social stratum or part of the working class. Feng argued that the role of the intelligentsia cannot be reduced only to solving technical problems, but, on the contrary, it is necessary to involve it in the progressive development of the entire society. An intellectual must be a public figure [, p. 8]. Ultimately he became a dissident. Nevertheless, his ideas and activities, his challenge to party leadership and "guiding" theory, his burning longing for democracy can be considered unforeseen consequences of the Cultural Revolution.

Conclusion

The Cultural Revolution plunged China into chaos for ten years and affected several generations of Chinese people. In the field of science and education, the cultural revolution was directed against elite forms of specialization and expertise and demanded a return to reliance on the initiative of the masses (for a discussion of the mobilization model of the development of Chinese science, see). The damage that the Cultural Revolution caused to Chinese science cannot be underestimated.

Chinese science experienced a boom until the mid-1960s. and was close to catching up with scientifically advanced countries. For example, according to Japanese estimates, China was 10-15 years behind Japan in most areas of technology [, p. 228], at the same time, work on insulin showed that Chinese scientific efforts were beginning to lead to "advances in more and more industries"[ , R. 281-283]. However, during the Cultural Revolution, scientific institutes were destroyed, scientists were purged, and talents were wasted. With the exception of some theoretical work in biochemistry and high energy physics, little fundamental research has been carried out. China's goal in science, proclaimed in January 1966, to catch up with advanced countries within 20-30 years, was hardly feasible on a broad scientific front [, p. 228].

After a devastating period, the gap between China and scientifically advanced countries in the field of science and technology has widened. Making a breakthrough has become more difficult because the natural course of training the next generation of scientists has been disrupted, resulting in a serious shortage of well-educated and well-trained scientists under the age of 50 who could strategically determine the development of Chinese science and would be recognized by the world scientific community. China has paid a high price for the ignorant policies of the party leadership, for its incompetence and distrust of scientists.

Translation by E.I. Kolchinsky

The work was carried out with the financial support of the Russian Humanitarian Fund (grant No. 99-03-19623)

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Riot is a right thing! (c) Mao Zedong.

I was surprised to learn that in Russia there is a (most likely unregistered) Russian Maoist Party - and this is their slogan. While searching for materials, I came across the website of one of their cells

Well, what can I say - just another stubborn leftists who don’t feed them bread, but let me find a “light of thought” over the hill - after all, “there are no prophets in their own country.”

And this material is dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the process that would later be called the “Chinese Cultural Revolution”.

Having proclaimed the “Great Leap Forward” economic policy in 1958, Mao Zedong almost returned China to the Stone Age. But the Chairman of the PRC did not calm down. In an effort to strengthen his shaky positions, he (it is believed, at the instigation of his fourth wife Jiang Qing) decided to strike a blow at the “bourgeois culture”, and in fact, at the centuries-old traditions of the country, which has always treated the past with deep respect and worshiped ancestors. The dictator’s true goal was to instill a cult of his own personality, and this was easiest to do in an environment of collapse of all other authorities and values. The events that took place in China in 1966-1969 are most appropriately compared to a mud stream sweeping away everything in its path. This was another unforgivable mistake by Mao, disastrous for the country’s economy, its cultural heritage, education and upbringing of youth. The world watched with bewilderment and fear the excesses of a militant politician who had long ago cut himself off from his historical roots and was now rapidly turning into a living legend. The Cultural Revolution destroyed the lives of millions of Chinese. During it, about 729 thousand people suffered from brutal persecution, many of whom were beaten, tortured and executed. Thousands of the most gifted and educated citizens committed suicide to avoid repression.

The failure of the Great Leap Forward shook Mao's political position, but he continued to remain the chairman of the PC of the Communist Party of China (CCP), the idol of the masses and the founding father of the people's China. In addition, one of his most loyal supporters, Lin Biao, served as Minister of Defense, so there was no fear of opposition from the military. Nevertheless, after 1960, Mao chose to go into the shadows for a while.

China was ruled on his behalf with the full support of CPC General Secretary Deng Xiaoping by the pragmatic chairman of the country, Liu Shaoqi. Not allowing the great man to interfere in the economy, they began to restore the economy destroyed by the Great Leap Forward, although, according to Liu's critics, only a privileged minority enjoyed the fruits of the emerging prosperity. The hopes of the vast masses of Chinese peasants for an improved life were clearly in no hurry to come true. Liu never sought to return the country to a market system, but it was his successful economic policies that later gave Mao reason to accuse his protege of “following the capitalist path of development.” Indeed, for some time the right-wing group gained the upper hand in the CCP, which was guided not by abstract dogmas, but by common sense. According to Liu and his supporters, increasing labor productivity by all means was more important than ensuring equalization in the distribution of wealth: the growth of a country's wealth ultimately improved the standard of living of all its citizens. Bonuses were generously distributed to advanced workers, and qualified personnel - managers, engineers, craftsmen - could earn significantly more than ordinary workers. In the countryside, personal plot farming was encouraged, which by 1965 provided peasants with a third of all income. In the villages there has even been a revival of the layer of middle peasants and kulaks, destroyed in the early 1950s. after the land reform. Unfortunately for China, Mao Zedong was not content to languish in the background for long. Liu Shaoqi's popularity grew every year, and it was time to do something about it.

Mao may have been seriously concerned about the resurgence of economic inequality, but he was much more concerned about the state of mind of his compatriots. In truth, he was not at all pleased with their intelligence. Mao was afraid that public secondary and higher education would lead to the emergence of an intellectual elite in the country that would question the correctness of the ideas of the revolution and begin to neglect them, as happened in the Soviet Union in the 1960s. A new social layer of technocrats was formed there - brilliantly educated scientists, engineers, and managers who were provided with prestigious, highly paid jobs. They believed that they had the right to their own opinion on any issue, and looked down on ordinary workers. On the other hand, the party leadership, which enjoyed great material privileges, became a ruling class that demanded unquestioning obedience from the people. These social groups lived in large cities, regional and republican centers, where their children had much better prospects of receiving an excellent education, good work and enviable positions than the inhabitants of the provincial outback. In the USSR, a layer of hereditary nomenklatura elite was emerging - without private property, but with a high social status, solid incomes and access to the best educational institutions. The same process threatened China. Mao understood: there was no time to hesitate - the country needed a radical change in political course.

Liu Shaoqi with his wife Wang Guangmei in 1949. During the Cultural Revolution, both of them, at the instigation of Mao Zedong, became the main targets of the rampaging Red Guards. Wang managed to survive, but Liu died in custody due to lack of medical care.

However, he could no longer count on the CCP to unanimously support his plan. In fact, Mao was going to destroy the “old guard”, because he was going to criticize precisely the line of his former closest associates. He said: “It is important to destroy, but construction will go by itself.” In the fight against the old party members, he needed allies, and these could only be the Chinese least affected by the “bourgeois influence” - poor peasants, soldiers and, above all, young people. The time factor was also very important for Mao: the 70-year-old leader’s health was failing. He had long suffered from Parkinsonism, and in 1964 he suffered a mild stroke. Liu Shaoqi should have been dealt with as soon as possible. But first, Mao decided to demonstrate to the whole world that he was full of strength, and staged an unprecedented propaganda campaign: surrounded by enthusiastic youth, he made a 14-kilometer swim along the Yangtze River. This event was widely covered by all media and returned him to his former popularity.

By launching the “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution,” Mao hoped to protect China from the “mistakes” that led to the collapse of Soviet communism. Mao called the First Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR N. S. Khrushchev the main revisionist. The Chinese leader accused him of abandoning Marxist-Leninist principles, primarily of abandoning the idea of ​​class struggle, and of reviving capitalism. This shouldn't happen in China. The country will be led by a new, truly revolutionary class - youth, whose consciousness is free from the remnants of the past. The previous generation of Chinese leaders has been “reborn”, so they must be “re-educated”, and all those who do not yield will be destroyed.

In June 1966, the main organ of the CPC, People's Daily, began bombarding the country with editorials repeating in every possible way a single idea: the absolute power of CPC Chairman Mao should be established in China and a “cultural revolution” should be undertaken. Lin Biao was actively involved in inculcating the cult of Mao's personality among the soldiers, mostly semi-literate peasant boys. Army printing houses were hastily printing a textbook of sorts, “The Thoughts of Chairman Mao,” better known simply as the “quotation book” or the “little red book.” Memorizing the sayings of the great man has proven to be a great way to brainwash the younger generation. The quotation book soon became the bible of the “cultural revolution.” A billion of its copies were printed and distributed even in the West. Mao's growing cult of personality forced the masses to unconditionally believe his every word. The chairman of the CPC himself proclaimed that the country’s problems could only be solved by a brilliant leader - naturally, himself, the “great helmsman,” the father of all Chinese.

The first targets of the “cultural revolution” were educational institutions where the consciousness of young Chinese was formed. It was necessary to establish complete control over this still “blank sheet” and fill it with the same text – the thoughts of the “great helmsman”. Mao told young people that the abundance of knowledge threatens inequality and counter-revolution. Classes in Chinese schools have practically stopped. The children read mostly quote books, and most of the time they simply sat at their desks, listening to the texts of newspaper articles broadcast on the radio and the brilliant statements of Chairman Mao. Newsletters were published with photographs of foreign, including European, leaders carefully studying the “little red books”: the Chinese should have seen that their “great helmsman” was showing the way to all progressive humanity. Every day, students and military personnel in chorus, like a prayer, quoted his sayings. The newspapers were full of touching articles about the love of ordinary people for Chairman Mao. For example, one peasant covered the walls of his bedroom with 32 portraits of the leader - as soon as he opened his eyes, he wanted to see the most dear face in front of him. True, this fanatic was later reported that he used free images instead of wallpaper, which he could not afford. The portraits were taken away, and the sly man was publicly “re-educated” with blows from a stick.

Mao understood perfectly well that the bulk of the Chinese, that is, the middle and older generation, react poorly to propaganda hype, and found a more effective means. He announced the creation of shock troops of the “cultural revolution” - Red Guards (“red guards”) from schoolchildren and students and zaofan (“rebels”) from young workers. These unconditionally devoted youths had to carry out explanatory work with the broad masses of the people, or, more simply, to identify and on their own “re-educate” the irresponsible. In fact, ultra-revolutionary youth terrorized the population, including their own parents, convicting confused people of “bourgeois” thoughts and actions. One woman, for example, was beaten by the Red Guards on the denunciation of her son, who heard his mother complaining about the high cost of tomatoes.

Mao demanded that the Red Guards take a particularly close look at teachers. They traditionally had a greater influence on young people than parents and remained the main source of “bourgeois culture.” To win the minds of Chinese youth, Mao had to put an end to the authority of teachers. In every Chinese school, show trials were held against “counter-revolutionaries” identified among teachers, who were humiliated, beaten, and even killed. In some schools, children even set up makeshift prisons where teachers were tortured. Teachers were forced to wear caps and collars with inscriptions like “I am a monster”, were sent to clean latrines, and were literally smeared with black paint. Teachers found to be overly strict, formal, or traditional in their teaching would spend hours on their knees in front of their students, apologizing for their “crimes.”

A large-scale action was held at Peking University. After beatings, more than 60 professors and associate professors, including the rector, were forced to wear paper caps with various absurd inscriptions. Their faces were painted with black ink - the color of evil and counter-revolution. All victims, including elderly men and women, were ordered to stand hunched over with their hands tied behind their backs. This torture was called "jet plane". Teachers who criticized students' work were accused of degeneracy and could be publicly beaten to death.

However, having stirred up the uneducated youth, Mao released the genie from the bottle, which, as he himself later admitted, he could not keep in a knot. Between 11 and 13 million Red Guards poured into Beijing, where they were allowed free use of public transport and meals in revolutionary canteens. In the capital, their main occupation was holding mass rallies at which quotes from the “little red book” were chanted and toasts were proclaimed to Mao, who was almost acquiring the status of a living god. Rumors spread about miracles happening to people who, in difficult times, remembered the wise words of the CPC chairman. The drowning were suddenly saved, the blind regained their sight, the dying were revived to life. One had only to invoke the name of Mao, and incredible things happened. One pilot said that his plane caught fire and began to fall. Already losing consciousness, he thought about the words of Chairman Mao and suddenly seemed to wake up - the flight was normal, everything was in order with the car.

During another rally in Beijing's central Tiananmen Square, Mao's deputy in the party and Defense Minister Lin Biao called on the more than a million Red Guards listening to him to launch an offensive against four relics of the past - old ideas, old culture, old customs and old habits. This became a signal for a destructive bacchanalia, compared to which the atrocities of the Vandals, Huns and Goths during the fall of the Roman Empire pale in comparison. All over China, millions of Red Guards poured into the streets, who, like locusts on crops, attacked everything that was valued by older generations. Houses were turned upside down - antiques, paintings, examples of calligraphic art, simply beautiful things were destroyed as relics of the past. Bonfires of books blazed - Chinese classics and foreign literature. Public libraries were cleared of publications that did not quote Mao’s brilliant thoughts. An exception was made only for the works of the classics of Marxism-Leninism and Stalin. Beijing bookstores had changed beyond recognition: now all the shelves were filled with quotation books and other works of the “great helmsman.” Recordings of ancient and Western music were destroyed. Goldfish were on the verge of extinction - they were exterminated as a symbol of bourgeois decadence. Nobody, of course, counted how many goldfish became victims of the class struggle.

Within a few weeks, fanatical Red Guards destroyed almost all valuables from private collections. Chinese writers, artists, scientists committed suicide, not wanting to live in an era of barbarism, to endure torture and beatings from rabid young vandals. The Manchu novelist Lao She, beaten by the Red Guards, drowned himself in a pond. After suffering bullying, the historian Jian Bozan and his wife and the parents of the famous pianist Fu Cong committed suicide (he himself managed to escape to England). In one day, 60 teachers from Shanghai University committed suicide. One English teacher was seized by the Red Guards after they found her with a typewriter with English font. They declared that it was a radio transmitter whose owner was a secret agent of imperialism. After torture, she was locked in a cowshed, where she hanged herself out of despair. All Chinese museums, palaces, temples and ancient burial places were plundered. The rioting crowds destroyed statues and pagodas with glee. Even the Forbidden City in the center of Beijing - with the imperial palace full of priceless treasures - could not resist the onslaught of excited thugs. He was saved by Premier Zhou Enlai, who ordered the soldiers not to let the Red Guards through the gates.

The Chinese police did not interfere in what was happening. She received clear instructions: not to interfere with youth in manifestations of “class hatred,” even if this involves causing grievous bodily harm or murder. Chinese intellectuals and their loved ones were forced to kneel, forced to bow at the feet of the Red Guards, and flogged with belts with metal buckles. Many victims had half their heads shaved so that everyone could recognize the “criminals” from afar.

If you look at it, a significant part of the Red Guards were no more interested in Mao’s ideas than he was in their problems. Unemployed. impoverished, bored youth have found the simplest outlet for their energy and dissatisfaction with life. The best revolutionaries were youths with criminal inclinations and unhealthy psyches, or even former juvenile delinquents, of whom, as it later turned out, there were many among the leaders of the Red Guards. It is not surprising that the “counter-revolutionaries” were persecuted with sophisticated cruelty. For example, the Minister of Coal Industry Zhang Linzhi was interrogated 52 times over 33 days and tortured to extract a confession of anti-people plans. He was also forced to wear a cast iron helmet weighing 30 kg on his head until he was finally taken to the square where he was publicly tortured to death. Overly scrupulous students who participated in such bullying without due enthusiasm were sent from cities to remote villages for “re-education.”

Meanwhile, Mao's wife Jiang Qing, a former artist, set about transforming Chinese art. Its traditional forms had to give way to new ones, imbued with the revolutionary spirit of Maoism. Performances that had been going on for decades were banned, only “politically correct” ones remained, such as “The Red Detachment of Women” - one of only eight exemplary plays that Chinese theaters were now allowed to stage. The “cultural revolution” that took place behind the scenes was a fitting reflection of the street pogroms. One of the make-up artists was severely beaten because she brightly painted the face of a negative character, making him “implausible.” Ballet dancers were harshly criticized if they danced “too well,” “too traditional,” or “too individual.” They had to exchange their usual tutus and suits for military uniforms, slightly altered for greater freedom of movement. Every word Jiang Qing spoke about Chinese culture became law.

Bookstores were closed, it was forbidden to sell any books except Mao’s quotation book, which became a means of not only ideological, but also physical struggle. There have been many recorded cases of prominent party figures being beaten to death with a hardcover book, thus knocking out the “bourgeois poison” from them.

The theater produced only “revolutionary operas from modern life” written by Mao’s wife Jiang Qing. In this way the campaign for “socialist re-education” was carried out.

Mao Zedong andJiang Qing

All the scenery and costumes of the Peking Opera performances were burned. Monasteries and temples were burned, part of the Great Wall of China was demolished. The latter was explained by a shortage of bricks for the "more necessary" pigsties. Owners of shops and shops were also subject to pressure and were forced to change their name. Searches were carried out in many houses in order to prove the unreliability of the owners. At the same time, the Red Guards often engaged in looting.

In cities, old street names were replaced with more revolutionary ones. Thus, the Street of Green Willows and Poplars became the Street of the Red East. However, most of the renamings were much less poetic - for example, the streets of the Destruction of the Old and numerous streets of the Revolution appeared. And the restaurant “The Aroma of Fresh Wind” turned into “The Smell of Gunpowder”. Beijing's street traffic has descended into chaos. The color red was a symbol of the new China, so using it as a stop signal was considered reactionary. You were now supposed to move at a red light and stand at a green light. Moreover, the fight against the “right deviation” led to the replacement of right-hand traffic with left-hand traffic, but soon someone remembered that this was the tradition of the British imperialists, and the question of which side to drive on caused heated debate for some time. Drivers preferred not to think about the rules at all; the number of accidents jumped sharply, but this did not seem to bother anyone. However, walking the streets on foot was no less dangerous. Red Guard patrols stopped those who were suspicious, cut those who wore their hair too long, cut tight trousers, tore elegant skirts, and broke high heels. Mao cleverly took advantage of the atmosphere of general hysteria and widespread “revelations” and declared the country’s leaders Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping to be servants of capitalism. Liu Shaoqi became the most prominent victim of the Cultural Revolution. Mao triumphed in complete victory over his rivals. Liu and his supporters were removed from power, deprived of all positions and subjected to severe persecution. This reprisal against the “old guard” clearly demonstrates the situation prevailing in China at that time. Even such a powerful person as Liu Shaoqi could not stop the storm that the “great helmsman” raised in the country. Liu spoke before the CPC Central Committee with derogatory self-criticism, which earned him the praise of the “father of the Chinese people” himself, but this was not enough. Liu hoped for the leniency of Mao, whose ally he had been since the founding of the Communist Party, but, unfortunately, the former chairman of the PRC and his wife Wang Guangmei were fiercely hated by the all-powerful Jiang Qing. The disgraced couple's younger children were expelled from school, their son was sent to prison, and their eldest daughter was sent to a border village. Liu's health deteriorated greatly. The Red Guards continued to persecute his children and wife, who soon also ended up behind bars. Only the intervention of Premier Zhou Enlai saved her from death.

However, the Red Guards did not calm down. They broke into Liu's house and covered the walls of the rooms with incriminating posters. An elderly man was dragged out onto the street, forced to recite Mao by heart, and beaten for inaccurate language. Upon learning of this, on January 13, 1967, Mao summoned Liu to the Great Hall of the People, where he advised him to “read a few books” to better understand communist ideas. Liu was dragged to crowded meetings, where during the “criticism” he was hit on the cheeks with a “little red book.” And when he tried to make excuses, they ordered him to shut his mouth and “not spread poisonous ideas.” Wang Guangmei was taken to Tsinghua University, where she was accused of bourgeois views, beaten and humiliated in front of 300 thousand people: a necklace of ping pong balls was placed around her neck. And on August 5, 1967, the long-suffering spouses were finally separated. Liu realized that he did not have long to live. When the Red Guards hung a poster with a noose and clenched fists around his neck, he tried for the last time to ask Mao for mercy, but received no answer. Liu never saw his wife and children again. For some time he remained under house arrest, and the security around his house was doubled, forbidding her to show the slightest leniency towards the prisoner. Liu was very weak, could barely walk and had difficulty eating. The moldy bread and uncooked rice given as rations gave him a terrible stomach ache. The whole body was shaking continuously. The doctors did not miss an opportunity to once again insult the patient. Security stopped giving him vitamins and even the medicine he was taking for diabetes. Soon he could no longer eat on his own - he was moved to the basement and force-fed through a tube inserted through his nose. In 1969, the former chairman of the People's Republic of China, Liu Shaoqi, who played a role in the creation of communist China, perhaps no less than Mao himself, died in captivity, becoming another martyr of the “cultural revolution.”

Most of the Red Guards were children from disadvantaged families. From childhood they were accustomed to cruelty and happily followed the instructions of Mao and his supporters. However, soon there was a stratification among them based on origin. The gangs were divided into “reds” (from families of the intelligentsia and party workers) and “blacks” (children from disadvantaged families). Soon they began to quarrel with each other.

Meanwhile, it became increasingly difficult to control its progress. Mao ordered the Red Guards to go to the villages and shake up the rural party leadership in search of revisionists. Needless to say, the revolutionaries behaved like gangs of robbers, terrifying ordinary Chinese. One of the Red Guards proudly said: “We were afraid that people would hide prohibited things, so we searched their houses very carefully. Some of us peeled the wallpaper off the walls and looked to see if there was anything underneath. Others, taking picks and shovels, dug up the cellars. Two or three guys in my group were squeezing toothpaste out of tubes in search of jewelry. Our goal was to humiliate the suspects."

All this, naturally, did not contribute to the economic recovery, and murmurs of discontent began to be heard among the population. In large cities, workers united into independent trade unions and demanded participation in the government of the country. The center of such a movement was Shanghai, with its largest industrial enterprises in China and the most “politically conscious” proletariat. From there, the loudest complaints were heard about unfair wages and the inaction of official, state-controlled trade unions.

Excerpt from a propaganda newspaper, June 1, 1966: “We will decisively, radically, completely and completely eradicate the dominance and evil plans of the revisionists! Let’s destroy the monsters - the Khrushchev-type revisionists!”

In 1967, the Shanghai Commune was proclaimed, modeled on the Paris Commune of 1871, which refused to submit to Beijing. Having verbally welcomed this initiative of the workers, Mao did not at all want it to spread to other industrial centers of China, which could lead to a complete loss of control over the country. He feared a real civil war, since supporters of Liu Shaoqi remained in power in some provinces. The time has come to consolidate the party and restore its lasting power, and therefore end anarchy. The “moderate” Premier Zhou Enlai called for an end to the violence, and the Chinese army began to disperse the Red Guard gangs, establishing relative order.

Ultimately, Mao was forced to use the army against the Red Guards, who had become uncontrollable. They were deemed "incompetent" and "politically immature". The gangs entered into a fight with the army, for which they were threatened with complete destruction. In September 1967, the Red Guard detachments and organizations were disbanded. The leaders were sent to agricultural work in the provinces (in the fall of 1967 - about 1 million people, in 1970 - 5.4 million), some were publicly shot.

However, by 1968, the education system in China was practically destroyed. Qualified teachers who survived the attacks of the Red Guards were prohibited from professional activity. There are almost no textbooks left; they were destroyed as a source of “bourgeois poison.” Studying in schools was limited to memorizing and chanting the sayings of the “great helmsman” by heart and performing revolutionary dances. Things weren't much better in universities. In the end, the government decided to issue diplomas without exams to all students and to distribute them away from large cities, where the concentration of relatively literate youth could lead to a revival of “revisionism.” Graduates were sent to the most difficult work, for example, in the mines, where there was a catastrophic lack of equipment and almost everything had to be done by hand. Men and women crawled along narrow drifts, dragging baskets of coal behind them. Barefoot doctors with the qualifications of, at best, paramedics, traveled around the villages, replacing experienced doctors who, if they survived, ended up in prisons or undergoing “re-education through labor.”

Mao was afraid that party bureaucrats, especially the younger generation, not tempered by the revolutionary struggle of the 1930s and 1940s, would hasten to forget their worker-peasant origins and turn into “inaccessible chief executives” and “arrogant gentlemen.” Only a return to their roots could remind them of communist principles. As a result, a dense network of “May 7 personnel schools” was created in rural areas. It is believed that by 1970, 95% of party functionaries managed to “improve their health.” The fate of senior managers was even more difficult. They were taught to value the work of ordinary people. These specialists were not suitable for working in the fields or in mines, so they were given brooms, mops and buckets. One of the responsible workers began cleaning public toilets in his area, where every child knew him. One can only guess what moral torment this cost him. Mao moved from repression to insane social engineering. The bosses were obliged to change places with their subordinates. Administrators swept floors, engineers painted walls,
surgeons emptied chamber pots. Who cared about the death of the patient if the operation was performed by a politically competent orderly. Even urban workers were “re-educated” - millions of them were sent to the countryside to learn agricultural professions. The results of this policy were disastrous. Rural residents were once again convinced of a truth they may already know: all city dwellers are white-knuckled people who can only eat up the village. And they, in turn, learned that sleeping on straw is cold, and removing manure is like moving mountains with your bare hands.

The “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution” lasted for a whole decade, although in recent years the seriously ill Mao Zedong was increasingly retiring. But the harmful influence of his wife Jiang Qing increased in the country. As part of the so-called “Gang of Four”, after 1973 she actually led the CCP, declaring many of her rivals, including the loyal but too popular Lin Biao, enemies of the people. Mao died in 1976. Fortunately, pragmatists again prevailed in the Communist Party, and none of the leaders of the “cultural revolution” managed to take the place of the “great helmsman.” The country breathed a sigh of relief. Informally, but in fact, power passed into the hands of the miraculously surviving Deng Xiaoping. In 1978, the elderly Wang Guangmei, who had heroically endured all her ordeals, was released from prison, and in 1980, her husband, Liu Shaoqi, was posthumously rehabilitated, admitting that the charges against him were “not confirmed.”

In addition, the “rebels” destroyed a significant part of the cultural heritage of the Chinese and other peoples of the PRC: thousands of ancient Chinese historical monuments, books, paintings, temples, monasteries and temples in Tibet.

From the decision of the CPC Central Committee, 1981: “The Cultural Revolution was not and cannot be a revolution or social progress in any sense. It was a turmoil caused from above through the fault of the leader and used by counter-revolutionary groups, a turmoil that brought serious disasters to the party, the state and the entire multinational people.”

It seems to me that Mao Zedong wanted to resolve the growing conflict between the ruling class and the people through the Cultural Revolution. Mao tried to overthrow the ruling class and form a new one - he believed that the goals of the cultural revolution were identical to those that the communists set for themselves in the twenties. He was afraid that the communists would become an elite that would sit on the neck of the people: new revolutionaries very quickly become the ruling class, and after that everything repeats itself. The revolutionaries said that the main thing was equality, but when they came to power, they changed, and Mao Zedong wanted to overcome this cyclical nature of history through the cultural revolution. As you know, modern Chinese also oppose corrupt officials - they can certainly understand the logic that guided Mao Zedong. The problem is that high ideals led to great tragedy...

2006 marks the 40th anniversary of the Cultural Revolution. Under the banner of the fight against “Soviet revisionism and American imperialism,” millions of young people quit production and joined the militia.

The Red Guards (Red Guards) were preparing to repel the attacks of class enemies. Many Chinese, including party members, were accused of betraying the cause of the revolution. The economic and social life of the country was seriously undermined.

The Cultural Revolution ended only 10 years later - after the death of Mao Zedong, in the fall of 1976. Today, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) calls those events a mistake, but detailed discussion of them is not encouraged.

What are these “mistakes”? The Chinese Communist Party later called this period the “10-year disaster.” In an interview with a Yugoslav journalist, former party secretary Hu Yaobang said: "At that time, about 100 million people were affected, which is 1/10 of China's population." Official sources reported that over 10 years, 4 million 200 thousand people were arrested; more than 7,730,000 people died unnaturally. more than 135,000 people were executed as counter-revolutionaries; more than 237,000 people were killed; more than 7,030,000 people were maimed in armed attacks; more than 71,200 families have completely disintegrated.”

With the advent of communism in China in 1949, the destruction of traditional Chinese culture began, culminating in the “decade of the Cultural Revolution.” The destruction of surviving moral values ​​continues today. Culture is the soul of a nation. The complete destruction of traditional cultural values ​​will lead to the disappearance of the nation. Destroying traditional culture is an unforgivable crime, destroying China's ancient 5,000-year-old culture is a grave sin. Despite the fact that the Chinese state was repeatedly attacked and destroyed, Chinese culture showed great resilience and vitality, and its essence was consistently passed down from generation to generation. The unity of Heaven and man personifies the knowledge of our ancestors. It is a widely held belief that good will be rewarded and evil will be punished.

Chinese culture embodied honesty, kindness, harmony and tolerance. Traditional Chinese culture strived for harmony between man and the Universe, and paid special attention to the morality of the individual. Unlike the law, which sets rigid boundaries, culture plays the role of a soft constraint. The law provides for punishment after the commission of a crime, and culture, nourishing morality, prevents the very occurrence of a crime. A society's moral standards are often embodied in its culture.

Since gaining power in 1949, the CCP has devoted state resources to destroying China's rich traditional culture. This intention did not come from the CCP's commitment to development. This largely stemmed from the CCP's innate ideological opposition to traditional Chinese culture. Since its inception, the CCP has not stopped carrying out a “revolution”, a radical change in the culture of China, seeking to completely destroy its spirit. Even lower is the deliberate distortion and hidden substitution of traditional culture. The CCP promotes baseness rather than virtue, promoting power struggles, conspiracy and dictatorship - all things that have happened in Chinese history when people deviated from traditional values.

The CCP has created its own moral code, way of thinking, and way of speaking, creating the false impression that this “Party culture” is actually a continuation of China's traditional culture. The destruction of traditional culture by the Communist Party led to disastrous consequences for China. People have not only lost their moral principles, they have also become saturated with the destructive ideas of the CCP. The Cultural Revolution began in May 1966.

Viewed as objects of “feudalism, capitalism and revisionism,” Buddhist and Taoist temples, Buddha statues, calligraphy, paintings, books and antiquities became, as relics of the past, the main objects of destruction by the “Red Guards” (Red Guards). These Chinese cultural monuments were destroyed and damaged throughout the country. Violence was carried out against Taoist monks: they were forced to shave their hair, take off Taoist robes and become members of people's communes, marry, participate in military operations, etc. It got to the point where it was proposed to abolish Buddhist precepts and declare “freedom of religion.” People who did not agree with such “transformations” were severely punished. The establishment of party organizations allowed the CCP to control almost every person in every corner of the country. The CCP kills people and justifies "killing a counter-revolutionary by showing greater compassion."

The Cultural Revolution affected both Christianity and Catholicism. 8,840 priests were killed and 39,200 were sent to labor camps. All property of those objectionable to the CCP was confiscated, and the clergy were forced to study Marxism-Leninism for the purpose of re-education (“brainwashing”). Before 1949, the intelligentsia in China numbered 2 million. 550,000 members of the intelligentsia were repressed. The CCP carried out the greatest humiliation of intellectuals, depriving them of the right to survive until they accepted this humiliation. Their families were also involved. The traditional “class of scientists”, which is a model of public morality, was destroyed. Mao Zedong didn't just kill intellectuals. He destroyed her spirit and heart.

The CCP has used traditional culture to embellish its true colors to hide its essence of deceit, malice and violence. The CCP has restored the outward form of culture, which serves as entertainment, to hide its goal of destroying morality. Through exhibitions of paintings and calligraphy, festivals with dragons and lion dances, culinary exhibitions and architectural buildings, the party simply restored the appearance, not the essence, of culture. The monasteries have been turned into popular tourist attractions.

While the CCP was destroying the traditional semi-divine culture, it was quietly creating its own culture by combining everything bad that had been in Chinese culture for several thousand years with the brutality of the revolution and the philosophy of struggle. Its characteristic features of “deceit, malice and violence” intensified, sharpened and developed. All media outlets sang the praises and collectively supported the party. Leaders at all levels of the party, government, and all organizations had to express their support for the CCP. The party supported violence. Mao Zedong said: “Is it possible for 800 million people to exist without struggle?”

The CCP constantly deceives, as with the 1989 Tiananmen Square killings of students, and the 2003 “SARS control,” by saying that “human rights are at their best in China today.” The culture of the CCP is self-praise, flattery, envy, denunciation, slander, humiliation of personality and turning people into willing slaves. It distorts traditional moral values. So, in the Civil War, members of the same family fought with each other, children denounced their parents. Music was turned into a way of praising the CCP, with songs praising the Party being sung from kindergarten to university. As these songs were sung, people gradually absorbed the meaning of these words.

The CCP denigrated and rejected what people considered most beautiful and sacred. The destruction of the spiritual principle is even more destructive, and its consequences last even longer than with physical destruction alone. Today, many Chinese people have very little knowledge of traditional culture. Some even confuse 50 years of “Party culture” with 5,000 years of Chinese culture. The destruction of traditional culture brought unimaginable material destruction to society. The "fight against Heaven and Earth" has left 75% of China's 50,000 kilometers of rivers unsuitable for fish; 33% of groundwater is more polluted than even ten years ago, and the situation continues to worsen. People's morality has fallen so much that manufacturers add toxic, carcinogenic substances to food products. The production of poisonous food is widespread in China and is not a private or isolated phenomenon.

Genuine traditional culture evaluates human life from the perspective of inner happiness, and not external material comfort. Tao Yuanming (365-427), China's greatest poet, lived in poverty but maintained a joyful mood. Culture provides moral guidance and moral constraints. The revival of traditional culture is the restoration of respect for Heaven, Earth and Nature, respect for human life and the return of reverence for God. This will allow humanity to live in harmony with Heaven and Earth, and calmly meet the old age granted by Heaven.

Based on materials from the historical chronicle “Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party.”

In 1966, Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China Mao Zedong announced the beginning of a “cultural revolution” designed to “restorate capitalism” in the PRC and “fight internal and external revisionism.” As historians note, this series of ideological and political campaigns was aimed at eliminating from the leading bodies of the party all those who disagreed with his policies.

Source: wikipedia.org
Source: wikipedia.org

At the end of the 50s, there was discord in relations between the USSR and China, which led to a split in the international communist movement. Mao Zedong saw a threat to his own power in the Communist Party of China in the exposure of Stalin’s personality cult at the 20th Congress of the CPSU, and Khrushchev’s course towards gradual liberalization in the economy.

Source: wikipedia.org

In turn, the USSR was also dissatisfied with Mao’s policies and recalled all Soviet specialists working in the PRC. The climax of the conflict between the two countries was clashes on the border around Damansky Island on the Ussuri River.

Source: wikipedia.org

Another reason for the “cultural revolution” was the failure of the “Great Leap Forward” policy. In 1958, China announced a policy of building a “new China.” Initially aimed at strengthening the industrial base and sharply boosting the economy, it turned into one of the greatest tragedies of the Chinese people.

Source: wikipedia.org

The chosen course cost China almost $70 billion, and approximately 45 million people died from starvation. Those dissatisfied with this political course began to form an opposition, which also included Chinese President Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping. Mao, realizing that it was increasingly difficult to maintain power, began a policy of mass terror.

Source: wikipedia.org

The beginning of the “cultural revolution” in China coincided with another campaign of “self-criticism”, which consisted in the fact that the Chinese (including party members) had to present their mistakes in writing to the party. This unique tradition was to be followed by the Chairman of the People's Republic of China, Liu Shaoqi, as well as his associates, which Mao used to his advantage.

Communist Party of China. Power struggle

Mao Zedong and Liu Shaoqi, 1966. (wikipedia.org)

At the XI Plenum of the CPC Central Committee, Liu Shaoqi’s letter was examined, after which he was suspended from work until “until the Communist Party of China determines the nature of his mistakes.” This was a common practice in China at that time. In this situation, a party member, not officially deprived of his post, but actually suspended from work and under house arrest, could remain indefinitely.

Liu Shaoqi with his family. (wikipedia.org)

As a result, the suspended Liu Shaoqi and his family were subjected to numerous interrogations, and demonstrations in support of Mao gathered near their home. Liu Shaoqi was eventually imprisoned and died there in 1968.

Source: wikipedia.org

“Resolution on the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution,” August 8, 1966: “Now we set ourselves the goal of crushing those in power who follow the capitalist path, criticizing the reactionary bourgeois “authorities” in science, criticizing the ideology of the bourgeoisie and all other exploiting classes, transforming education, to transform literature and art, to transform all areas of the superstructure that do not correspond to the economic basis of socialism, in order to contribute to the strengthening and development of the socialist system.”

Dismantled statues from a Buddhist temple. (wikipedia.org)

Excerpt from a propaganda newspaper, June 1, 1966: “We will decisively, radically, completely and completely eradicate the dominance and evil plans of the revisionists! Let’s destroy the monsters—the Khrushchevite revisionists!”

Source: wikipedia.org

The unclear definition of the class enemies of the proletariat led to a “war of all against all.” The greatest pressure was felt by the former feudal lords, the clergy and the intelligentsia. Young “rebels” - Red Guards (schoolchildren and students) and Zaofani (young workers) - began to fight the enemies.

"Dance of Loyalty" (wikipedia.org)

They formed gangs and looked for “revisionists,” who often became their teachers, weak local authorities, and so on. The caught "rebels" were dressed up in jester's caps, their faces were painted and they were subjected to all sorts of abuse.

Source: wikipedia.org

Marshal of the People's Republic of China, considered Mao Zedong's right hand and heir, Lin Biao: “Well, they killed people in Xinjiang: whether they killed for a cause or by mistake - still not so much. They also killed in Nanjing and other places, but still, overall, fewer died than die in one battle. So the losses are minimal, so the gains achieved are maximum, maximum. This is a great plan that guarantees our future for a hundred years to come. The Red Guards are heavenly warriors who seize the leaders of the bourgeoisie from power.”

Source: wikipedia.org

Already in August 1967, all Beijing newspapers began to call those who opposed Mao’s policies “rats scurrying through the streets” and openly called for their murder. At the same time, it was prohibited to arrest Red Guards (anti-Maoist fighters).

Agitation. (wikipedia.org)

An excerpt from a letter from one of the students at the University of Xiamen in Fujian Province: “Some (teachers) cannot stand the meetings of criticism and struggle, begin to feel unwell and die, frankly, in our presence. I don’t feel an ounce of pity for them or for those who throw themselves out of windows or jump into hot springs and die by being boiled alive.”

Source: wikipedia.org

Not only did they not interfere with the excesses of the Red Guards, but rather they contributed to them. Thus, the Ministry of Transport of the People's Republic of China allocated free trains to “fighters against the enemies of the proletariat” to travel around the country for the purpose of “exchanging experience.” The cultural life of the country virtually stopped.

Source: wikipedia.org

Bookstores were closed, it was forbidden to sell any books except Mao’s quotation book, which became a means of not only ideological, but also physical struggle. There have been many recorded cases of prominent party figures being beaten to death with a hardcover book, thus knocking out the “bourgeois poison” from them.

The theater produced only “revolutionary operas from modern life” written by Mao’s wife Jiang Qing. In this way the campaign for “socialist re-education” was carried out.

Mao Zedong and Jiang Qing. (wikipedia.org)

All the scenery and costumes of the Peking Opera performances were burned. Monasteries and temples were burned, part of the Great Wall of China was demolished. The latter was explained by a shortage of bricks for the "more necessary" pigsties.