Intellectuals in Revolutionary China: Leaders, Heroes and Sophisticates (Chinese Worlds)

Intellectuals in Revolutionary China, 1921–1949 In Intellectuals in Revolutionary China, 1921–1949 Hung-yok Ip examines how Part IV intellectuals in China during the revolutionary period (1921–1949) constructed and presented identities for themselves. She looks at how they narrated their place in the revolution and how these identities later allowed them to claim to be the deserving elite of a revolution that sought to liberate the oppressed and bring about a better society. Not only does this book make a contribution to the history of the Chinese revolution, it also contributes to an understanding of the culture that was to be built in China after 1949. Using memoirs, recollections and literary works that have only recently become available, Ip analyses Communist intellectuals’ self-construction from the functional, emotional and aesthetic perspectives, and expands on how these historical agents fashioned the themes of Communist intellectuals as leaders, heroes and sophisticates. Hung-yok Ip is Associate Professor in the Department of History at Oregon State University.

Chinese Worlds Chinese Worlds publishes high-quality scholarship, research monographs, and source collections on Chinese history and society. “Worlds” signals the diversity of China, the cycles of unity and division through which China’s modern history has passed, and recent research trends toward regional studies and local issues. It also signals that Chineseness is not contained within borders—ethnic migrant communities overseas are also “Chinese worlds.” The series editors are Gregor Benton, Flemming Christiansen, Delia Davin, Terence Gomez and Frank Pieke. The Literary Fields of Twentieth-Century China Edited by Michel Hockx Chinese Business in Malaysia Accumulation, ascendance, accommodation Edmund Terence Gomez Internal and International Migration Chinese perspectives Edited by Frank N.Pieke and Hein Mallee Village Inc. Chinese rural society in the 1990s Edited by Flemming Christiansen and Zhang Junzuo Chen Duxiu’s Last Articles and Letters, 1937–1942 Edited and translated by Gregor Benton Encyclopedia of the Chinese Overseas Edited by Lynn Pan New Fourth Army Communist resistance along the Yangtze and the Huai, 1938–1941 Gregor Benton A Road is Made Communism in Shanghai 1920–1927 Steve Smith

The Bolsheviks and the Chinese Revolution 1919–1927 Alexander Pantsov Chinas Unlimited Gregory Lee Friend of China—The Myth of Rewi Alley Anne-Marie Brady Birth Control in China 1949–2000 Population policy and demographic development Thomas Scharping Chinatown, Europe An exploration of overseas Chinese identity in the 1990s Flemming Christiansen Financing China’s Rural Enterprises Jun Li Confucian Capitalism Souchou Yao Chinese Business in the Making of a Malay State, 1882–1941 Kedah and Penang Wu Xiao An Chinese Enterprise, Transnationalism and Identity Edited by Edmund Terence Gomez and Hsin-Huang Michael Hsiao Diasporic Chinese Ventures The life and work of Wang Gungwu Gregor Benton and Hong Liu Intellectuals in Revolutionary China, 1921–1949 Leaders, heroes and sophisticates Hung-yok Ip

Intellectuals in Revolutionary China, 1921–1949 Leaders, heroes and sophisticates

Hung-yok Ip

LONDON AND NEW YORK

First published 2005 by RoutledgeCurzon 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by RoutledgeCurzon 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 RoutledgeCurzon is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to http://www.ebookstore.tandf.co.uk/.” © 2005 Hung-yok Ip All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN 0-203-00993-2 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-415-35165-0 (Print Edition)

To the protagonists of this study

Contents Acknowledgments List of abbreviations

PART I Introduction

1 Perspectives

PART II Leaders: self-construction from the functional perspective

xi xiii

1

3

20

2 Radical intellectuals as the guiding force of change: the beginning of the political odyssey 3 Manufacturing political leadership I: the Yaqian intellectuals and Peng Pai

22

4 Manufacturing political leadership II: Mao Zedong

63

PART III Heroes: self-construction from the emotional perspective

5 Narrating politicized subjectivity 6 The nobility of ambivalence and devotion

PART IV Sophisticates: self-construction from the aesthetic perspective

7 Clinging to refinement in the revolution

40

82

84 104

137

139

PART V Epilogue

175

8 Self-construction, politics and culture: some general reflections

177

9 Conclusion

205

Notes

208

Bibliography

244

Biographical notes

283

Index of Chinese names and phrases

304

Subject and name index

314

Acknowledgments The seeds for this study were germinated when I was researching for my thesis at the University of California, Davis. I thank my professors at Davis, including Gary Hamilton (now at the University of Washington), K.C.Liu and Susan Mann. Although I have changed drastically many of the arguments I made years ago as an immature researcher, the seminars that I attended and the materials I read under their guidance have nevertheless helped to shape the framework of my book. I have, in addition, benefited from others’ insights and/or moral support. Tze-ki Hon and Chiu-chun Lee always showed their sincere concern for my progress. Po-shek Fu was so generous as to offer to help in the revision process of this manuscript. Xiong Yuezhi and his family shared with me their intimate knowledge of the 1950s. Their help is deeply appreciated. I must also thank a veteran revolutionary, who chose to remain anonymous, for drawing upon personal experiences to discuss with me revolutionaries’ emotional make-up. Vera Schwarcz and Edward Friedman kindly read my entire dissertation, which can be regarded as the earliest version of the manuscript. Not only did I learn from their suggestions and criticisms, but I also felt encouraged by their kind words. I should express my deep gratitude to Arif Dirlik, who agreed to serve on my committee, pressed me to reshape the first half of the dissertation, and probably read the dissertation more than once. I also wish to acknowledge the help of Richard Gunde. To a certain degree, this book bears the imprint of his superb editing. As the editor of Modern China, he edited a couple of my articles, which, upon further revision, are now parts of this book. I would like to take this opportunity to tell him how much I learned from him, and how grateful I have been for the kindness he showed to a graduate student who unsurely and timidly submitted to him her articles. I thank Stephanie Rogers, my extremely competent and kind editor at RoutledgeCurzon, who made things much easier for me at the final stage of revision. The anonymous readers deserve special thanks. Their comments were critical, perceptive and thoughtful. Their constructive criticisms helped me to improve the book greatly. Deep gratitude must be expressed to Terence Gomez and Greg Benton, for their enthusiastic and unfailing support for this project. The help that I obtained from them, I must admit, far exceeded my expectations. I feel truly honored that my book is being published as part of the Chinese World series. At my home institution, I have enjoyed support from the Department of History, the College of Liberal Arts, the Valley Library, the Research Office, and the Center for the Humanities. Throughout all the years of revision, they provided me with various forms of resources—travel grants, course releases, fellowships, research funding, etc.—that were crucial in sustaining my scholarly activities. In particular, I should thank the Center for the Humanities, which gave me its residential fellowship twice during the extensive period of revision. Although the fellowship was intended for research topics quite different from Communist intellectuals in China, I did take advantage of it to further

revise the manuscript. Heartfelt thanks go to my colleagues in the Department of History: Gary Ferngren read the first research proposal that I submitted to the Center for the Humanities; Bill Robbins volunteered to help with the publication of this manuscript; and Paul Farber, the chair of the department, went through various versions of the book manuscript. I feel especially indebted to a few individuals. Both Kai-wing Chow and Chikong Lai have played the role of my “academic big brother” since I met them in graduate school. Kai-wing Chow has offered me much help, ranging from advice to collaboration. Chikong Lai has done the same. I also thank him and his wife, Pui-ching, for prolonged discussions on research and, perhaps more importantly, for their uncountable invitations to dinner. I practically survived on Pui-ching’s unforgettable culinary skills! And Chikong’s contribution to this manuscript has been indispensable. But the person to whom I must express my most profound gratitude is Don Price, my major professor at the University of California, Davis. While it is sometimes considered a formality that firsttime academic authors express their gratitude to major professors, I think Don deserves mine to the fullest extent. He spent innumerable hours debating issues with me, and with great care went over most of the materials I wrote. I owed to him the support that I obtained from the University of California, Davis. His commitment to my research was so strong that he always went beyond his professional mandate in order to help. His support for my academic pursuit was—and still is—essential, in the truest sense of the word. I would like to express my gratitude towards my friends and family. I thank Yu-Yin Cheng, Cindy Chu, Judy Jin, Lijie Jia, Kelly Mills, Becky Ong, Tongyan Tian, and others for their friendship. Sally Shao deserves special thanks: a mathematician, she insists, and does so with much confidence, that she sees a historian in me. I thank my two sisters for their love and respect, and for entertaining me when I stayed with them on my research trips. My parents’ support for me has been unconditional and crucial. They practically turned themselves into my research assistants, locating and going over materials for me. They empathized with my frustrations and shared my joy. It has truly been a remarkable scholarly journey to venture into the intellectualemotional universes of revolutionary intellectuals. Their fascinating lives pressed me to rethink the question of how historical actors shaped themselves and history. They in a sense, were the ones who forged the framework of this book. To them I dedicate this book.

Abbreviations CCP

The Chinese Communist Party

CCUP

The Chinese Communist Underground Party

GMD

The Nationalist Party (Guomindang)

PMTI

The Peasant Movement Training Institute

SYC

Socialist Youth Corps

Part I Introduction

1 Perspectives Historians have long studied Communist intellectuals’ roles as historical actors who helped shape the course of twentieth-century Chinese history through their revolutionary activities. How did they, influenced by and reacting to the complex context of modern China, launch a revolution that culminated in the victory of the Chinese Communist Party and thus the founding of the Communist regime? This is the fundamental question that underlies many scholarly works on the history of the CCP, although they focus on different but interconnected aspects pertaining to the rise of Chinese Communism—such as the thought of major ideologues, peasant-based revolution taking place in rural areas close to or remote from urban centers, military maneuvers and strategies, and underground activities. Instead of examining how Communist intellectuals struggled for survival and power, I concentrate on their self-construction—that is, the themes they invoked to narrate their lives and to describe the experiences of those they identified as belonging to the category of revolutionary intellectuals in the revolution.1 In so doing, I intend to tackle an issue related to their political struggle and one that is important for the understanding of Communist culture: how did their self-construction permit them to claim to be the deserving elite of the revolution, the goals of which were to liberate the oppressed and build an egalitarian society?2 I examine this question in order to better understand the intellectual and emotional universe of the Chinese revolutionary elite, and the legacy they built for modern and contemporary China.

Why the question? At first glance, an attempt to dwell on the Communist intellectuals’ emphasis on their own leadership looks far from original. The leadership of radical intellectuals in the context of revolution has for decades been expounded upon by insiders and outsiders alike, who observe social-political movements unfolding in different times and places. Alvin Gouldner points up the authority of intellectuals over the Vanguard Party and revolutionary theory in the Marxist revolution (Gouldner 1979:75–6). Gramsci broadens the definition of intellectuals in his concept of organic intellectuals. In his view, organic intellectuals are those who serve as the thinking and leading elements of a social group, and give their own class an awareness of its function in all economic, social and political fields. In the case of a subaltern class, its organic intellectuals strive to “inspire its selfconfidence as an historical actor and to provide it with social, cultural and political leadership.” But Gramsci also states that “traditional intellectuals”—the well-educated who choose to believe that they themselves form an independent group vis-à-vis any

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class—are likely to occupy the leadership of a subordinate group until it is mature enough to assert its power politically (Adamson 1980:143–4).3 In the field of Chinese studies, a great many scholars regularly investigate or refer to what is usually called the CCP’s elitism—that is, its idea of Party leadership in the revolution. Some specialists see Communist elitism mainly as the CCP’s democratic centralism, inspired by the Confucian philosophy of benevolent moral leadership, which in fact helped nurture “the modern concern for the broad masses” (Brandt et al. 1953:22). More recently, scholars have become consciously interested in the “Bolshevization” of the CCP. They characterize the CCP’s elitism as “Bolshevik elitism”—with its emphases on the Party as the “vanguard” of the proletariat and on the importance of a tightly disciplined organization consisting of highly motivated and professionally trained revolutionaries (Luk 1990:206; Van de Ven 1991:147–239).4 Needless to say, it is believed that Communist intellectuals were critical in shaping Party elitism. As a matter of fact, current research to some extent examines how Communist intellectuals transformed their traditional elitism, which stressed the socio-political leadership of the educated, into Bolshevik-style elitism (Luk 1990:204–13). Charting the Communist Party’s mobilization campaigns, historical research suggests that the Communist Party’s elitist confidence in its leadership was reinforced as Party cadres, especially intellectual cadres, approached the Chinese peasants (and sometimes the workers). These cadres conflicted with and adjusted to the needs of “the masses,” whose actions and motivations show that they did not share the Party’s vision of transformation (Chen Yung-fa 1986; Wou 1994; Bianco 2001; Keating 1997; Kwan 1997:226; Dirlik 1997a:377). Scholars have also noted that, despite their creation of Party elitism, revolutionary intellectuals generated ideas and practices that subverted their own historical importance, weakening, limiting or directly contradicting their self-appointed duty to design, lead and determine the fate of the revolution. Although Edward Shils remarks that Marxist intellectuals do not think highly of the “actual state” of the lower classes, he also points out that Marxist intellectuals view the exploited as agents destined by history to become “the salvationary nucleus of their own society” (Shils 1969:46). Experts always believe, in fact, that Marxism, to begin with, celebrated the creativity of the oppressed majority, and regarded their political action as essential for history. Karl Marx flamboyantly envisioned the self-emancipation of the oppressed. And according to Gouldner, the invention of the Vanguard Party was used not only to coordinate the elite’s control over the revolution but also to conceal the intellectuals’ directive role in the process. In the revolution, intellectuals were distrusted and forced to undertake self-transformation (Gouldner 1979:74–6). In a strict sense, these ideas and practices did not amount to an explicit rejection of Party leadership. But they did constitute a trend that can be called anti-elitism in the sense that it posed challenges to the intellectuals’ own elitism—their belief that they created history, and their confidence in directing the course of the revolution and guiding the vanguard organization. In fact, according to existing research, the trend of anti-elitism was prominent in the history of Chinese Communism. Heirs to the May Fourth movement, leading Communists started as a group that, according to historians, deliberately rejected both old-style and Westernized elites’ elitist traditions but still believed that they were tied to these elitisms. In the Chinese Communist revolution, while by no means intending to reject the Party’s pivotal status, top Party leadership, ever dominated by intellectuals, was

Perspectives

5

ironically inclined to chastise intellectuals’ sense of superiority, and to criticize revolutionary intellectuals’ control over Party leadership. Let us bear in mind the leadership’s harsh criticism of the intellectuals in the 1920s, the program of proletarianization from the 1920s to the mid-1930s (Luk 1990:207–13; Stranahan 1998:64–5) and Yan’an’s onslaught on revolutionary intellectuals’ petit bourgeois or bourgeois tendencies on the political, psychological and artistic fronts. The CCP’s persistent and strident distrust of intellectuals was always accompanied by revolutionary intellectuals’ tradition of anti-intellectual self-criticism.5 Therefore, with its attention to the Chinese Communist intellectuals’ elitism and antielitism, existing scholarship has established an important paradox of the Chinese revolution, one marked by the fact that, although consciously anti-elitist, revolutionary intellectuals remained highly elitist after all. But is the widely known fact that the Chinese revolutionary intellectuals’ elitism prevailed despite their anti-elitism sufficient to explain their confidence in representing themselves as the revolutionary elite? I find it far from sufficient for a couple of reasons. First, although numerous works have examined in detail or cursorily how important Communists theorized about the CCP’s revolutionary leadership, and how relatively educated cadres confirmed it, not much has been said about how revolutionary intellectuals as individuals viewed their elite status. To be sure, Communist intellectuals were human agents who created Party elitism. But Party elitism is at most part of the selfconstruction of a group of individuals. And second, although current scholarship does not fail to highlight the paradoxical coexistence of elitism and anti-elitism, we need to think about how the two sides which constituted the paradox co-existed. It is important to note the possibility that in people’s minds divergent ideas compete and interact. If it is true that revolutionary intellectuals invented so powerful an anti-elitist “tradition” directed against themselves, we need to think about the question of how they maneuvered to build themselves as worthy engineers of the revolution by dealing with anti-elitism—i.e. by invoking anti-elitism but reducing its power through the invention of information about themselves and the peasantry, by drawing on sources to evade the negative labeling rooted in anti-elitist ideology, and/or by wielding anti-elitism to support their positive self-construction.

To construct with various positions in life: multiple dimensions of elitism To examine how the Chinese revolutionary intellectuals carved out the elite status for themselves in the revolution, I attempt to move beyond accepted wisdom about Party elitism. This endeavor is based on the simple premise that Communist intellectuals were individuals who lived their lives with different positions or identities—as political radicals embracing a particular ideological stand, and working for and leading a revolutionary organization; as persons retaining their non-political concerns, needs and preferences; and as members of the relatively educated echelon of their own society.6 They therefore did not discuss their place in the revolution simply by sticking to their role as political radicals. Neither did they narrate themselves or other social groups by

Intellectuals in revolutionary China, 1921–1949

6

adopting only the voice of the Party. Building themselves as the meritorious elite, they interwove into their self-construction points related to their various positions in life. By using these presumptions, I propose to view Communist intellectuals’ selfconfidence as a broader kind of elitism, including but encompassing much more than Party elitism. Delving into the Chinese Communist intellectuals’ self-construction, I would define elitism as these individuals’ sense of superiority in multiple dimensions, which emerged when they described intellectuals’ or the Party’s leadership in the revolution, and when they evaluated their qualities from their various positions in life. It should be noted, in addition, that one’s sense of superiority connotes one’s views about other people, whoever they may be. Taking into account the fact that the Chinese Communist revolution was based heavily in rural areas, I shall explore how Communist intellectuals constructed themselves in relation to the peasantry. Knowing well that the peasants were their important ally in their revolutionary enterprise, Communist intellectuals seriously evaluated the majority of the Chinese masses, their merits and problems included. The functional dimension Movement organizers introduce to society new cosmological knowledge—values, assumptions, perspectives, theories and philosophy—that challenge existing assumptions about human life, society and the status quo, and help define the mission of their movement. To accomplish their mission, they also develop knowledge about the organizational and technical dimensions of their movement—about the kind of associations and principles that help people to get organized and act powerfully, and about techniques, policies, practices and attempts that allow activists to confront reality All this, I would venture to say, constitutes a complex ideological system of knowledge which interprets history and society, points out the ideal state they can attain, introduces the path humans can/should choose to actualize the ideal, and develops measures that they can employ in order to be successful (Eyerman and Jamison 1991:61–93 and 165– 6).7 In a historical context in which the gap between the intellectuals and the masses was huge, the former had the privilege of deciding what was relevant for discussion and who was competent to participate (Eyerman and Jamison 1991:113). Undoubtedly, early twentieth-century China was such a context. In this study, I shall analyze how, as radicals and educated members of their own society, the Chinese Communist intellectuals, positioning themselves as holders of knowledge about social change and revolution, constructed themselves in relation to the peasants from a functional perspective. In their individual capacity as revolutionary intellectuals or in their official capacity as Party agents, they dissected the question of how they and the peasant other appeared useful or harmful for the revolution. The emotional dimension Communist intellectuals constructed themselves as the deserving guiding force of the revolution from an emotional perspective as well. The choice of radical politics is always imbued with emotion, which I would define as a variety of feelings that accompany the individual’s intellectual activities, behaviors and actions. Discussing various generations

Perspectives

7

of Chinese radicals, historians have noted the role of emotion in revolutionaries’ political lives.8 Regarding Communism, when Schumpeter points out that “impassioned accusations” and “wrathful gesticulations” to some extent lay behind Karl Marx’s historical influence, he assumes that political emotions—hatred for the status quo, the anger with exploitation, and the restlessness stirred up by the language of discontent— instigated, if not inspired, political actions (Schumpeter [1942] 1975:5). On the basis of his own experience, Djilas writes about the involvement of emotions in political activities by expanding on the Communists’ willingness to make “heroic sacrifices” for the revolution (Djilas 1957:155). Recent scholarship on the Chinese Communist revolution also evinces an interest in the emotions of revolutionaries, and especially the persistence of revolutionaries’ dedication to the revolutionary cause (Esherick 1995:47; Stranahan 1998:16). If revolutionaries are indeed so devoted to the revolutionary cause, their selfconfidence in claiming their place as the deserving revolutionary elite must also rest on how they imagine their commitment to their beloved mission. Narrating one’s emotions is a literary practice that marks and influences many radical movements. Scholars have for some time noted the prominent presence of self-expression during the revolutionary age (Clark 1989:1 and 7–8). The popularity of self-expression in the revolution makes much sense. It seems unlikely that one portrays oneself as part of a group fighting for drastic changes but does not have the certitude to narrate oneself as being passionate about the revolution. Therefore, in this study, I analyze the ways in which Communist intellectuals, assisted by their education, constructed themselves from what I would venture to call an emotional perspective—that is, how they expressed their loyalty to the revolution and thus ennobled themselves. In so doing, I plan to rethink scholars’ interpretation of the personal and the political regarding Communist culture. Research on the relationship between the personal and the political in Chinese or nonChinese radicals’ lives has indeed come a long way. Earlier scholarship highlights the conflicts between radicals’ allegiance to political movements and their personal lives. In his sociological study of ideological groups, Vladimir Nahirny represented the suppression of the personal as derived from the ideologue’s own inner needs,9 whereas, writing about some ill-fated Communist intellectuals, Hsia Tsi-an and Leo Lee describe how these people’s personal sentiments and inclinations tragically clashed with Communism, which emphasized collectivism, Party discipline, duty and dictatorship (Hsia Tsi-an 1968:3; Leo Lee 1973:201–44). Since the 1990s, experts on the Chinese revolution have begun to look at the impact of the revolution on the individual in a more complex way In Revolutionary Discourse in Mao’s Republic, Apter and Saich introduce what they find in the Communist movement as “collective individualism,” which made people believe that by contributing to the fighting collective, they could draw from it “a deepening of the sense of persona, the sense indeed of overcoming, of becoming educated” (Apter and Saich 1994:178). In short, they could gain from “collective individualism” a tremendous feeling of fulfillment, which was savory for their own psyche. In Chinese Modern, Tang Xiaobing assumes, quoting Foucault, that it would be a fallacy to think of the revolutionary commitment that absorbs revolutionaries as merely repressive (Tang Xiaobing 2000:118). Analyzing Wangwei, a character created by the famous woman author Ding Ling in the

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1930s, he shows how, by forsaking his sensual desire, this character incorporates the body into the political (Tang Xiaobing 2000:119). But while heeding the integration of the individual’s subjectivity and political activities, scholars basically still hold that there is tension between the personal and the political. They still assume, in addition, that in the Communist revolution the political always suppresses the personal, which could take various forms, including romantic love and other concerns unrelated to the revolution. Stressing the essentiality of the individual’s own political conviction for revolutionaries’ successful performances, Apter and Saich (1994:244) argue nevertheless that in the Communist revolution, individual self-interest “was broken down in favor of ‘collective individualism’” (1994:71). Thus, Apter and Saich, too, stress the suppression of the personal—which is regarded as quintessential for the individual—through the revolutionary process, although interestingly they reach their conclusion by analyzing how, in a revolutionary community, people lost their individuality and individualism but still relished the expansion of their selves. And as he examines the incorporation of the body into the political, Tang points up that Wangwei achieved such incorporation at the expense of his romantic/sexual desire. While Wangwei chooses to concentrate on his revolutionary vocation, he still misses his bourgeois-style ex-lover, Mary (Tang Xiaobing 2000:125).10 What I propose to do here is to move beyond the suppression theme. I would contend that by focusing on the level of the individual, we can conceptualize some political experiences as highly personal. These experiences can be the activities in which one participates, one’s encounter with various revolutionary constituencies, one’s feelings about the revolution and revolutionary life, and one’s view on oneself or one’s group. They were personal in the sense that individuals who worked for the revolutionary party, but were not the revolutionary party itself, intimately dwelled in and perceived what came across to them. Adopting the view that political experience should be considered personal, I depart from the prevailing assumption that the personal suffers for the political and look into different directions as I sketch Communist intellectuals’ emotional self-construction. First, I delve into how Communist intellectuals described their feelings about the revolution and politicized lives, and, through these literary acts of describing, built up their self-confidence as worthy revolutionaries. While their self-confidence can be regarded as an important political phenomenon, at the individual level, to feel good about or to be so proud of oneself undoubtedly is a personal (though politicized) experience. And second, I intend to demonstrate that revolutionaries’ “personal suffering” for the political actually contributed to their politicized but personal self-construction. The established view could be quite accurate in stating that in revolutionaries’ lives the political (including the political dimension of the personal) suppresses the personal (the non-political aspect of the personal). As a matter of fact, revolutionary intellectuals’ selfconstruction always attests to the suppression. They appeared sensitive to how their interpersonal relationships, material life and the like suffered because of their political dedication and activities. However, I shall examine the ways in which revolutionary intellectuals exploited the point of “personal suffering.” In other words, I shall focus on how they invoked their identity as people who had non-political concerns to create themselves as committed warriors. Again and again, they demonstrated how they gave up

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non-political concerns to which they were entitled for the sake of the revolution. Through this display of suffering, they highlighted their political commitment. The aesthetic dimension Revolutionary intellectuals were also inclined to represent themselves as superior in the realm of aesthetics and culture. But why? As Bourdieu points out, cultural and aesthetic practices—preference in literature and the arts, and in other details in life, including dress, food, and decor—are determined by upbringing and education (Bourdieu 1984:1– 6). One non-political preference many revolutionary intellectuals shared was the interest in cultural-aesthetic refinement. They knew how to appreciate and enjoy sophisticated works because, through their social and cultural conditioning, they had acquired a kind of “cultural competence”—the code allowing them to recognize the styles that defined a period, a trend or an author, and the internal logic of the products (Bourdieu 1984:2–3). The cases of eminent revolutionaries prompt us to accept the fact that aesthetic activities formed an integral part of revolutionary intellectuals’ lives. In his analysis of Karl Marx’s and Friedrich Engel’s scattered but influential comments on art and literature, Terry Eagleton responds to Leon Trotsky’s remark that “there are many people in this world who think as revolutionists and feel as philistines” by saying: “Marx and Engels were not of this number” (Eagleton 1976:1). Marx indeed is well known for his passion for art. Believing that artistic works were “among those elements which distinguish man as a species” (Laing 1978:5), he enjoyed going through Shakespeare’s original expressions (Eagleton 1976:1). And even Lenin, the arch-Communist, seems torn between his appreciation of fine art—especially his fascination with Beethoven’s “amazing, superhuman music” (Gorky [1967] 1978:270)—and his revolutionary commitment.11 Enjoying fine art, radical intellectuals also longed to develop a revolutionary movement, or to found a revolutionary regime, as a polished cultural setting. In The Alternative Culture, describing the birth of a new culture in the Social Democratic movement, Vernon Lidtke stresses how radical intellectuals—be they radical or orthodox Marxists, or reformists—“found theoretical reasons for disseminating much of inherited German culture among organized workers” (Lidtke 1985:196–8). In this respect, the Communist movement and regime in Russia echoed the Social Democratic movement in Germany. Always intent on curbing “individual undertakings independent of the common cause of the proletariat” (Laing 1978:22), Lenin, criticizing the prolekult movement after the October revolution, still believed that “on the cultural sphere the Communist revolution was…to select the best from previous epochs,…and build upon it” (Laing 1978:26). In a strict sense, the “socialist realism” of the Stalin era did not amount to a total ideological rejection of aesthetic commitment and value. Let us look at the “icons” of socialist realism: the model of painting was Repin, the democratic artist of the Tsarist era, and in literature the heroes were Tolstoy and Gorky’ (Laing 1978:42). Obvious here was an admiration for pre-revolutionary artistic talents that not only appeared to be relatively “politically correct” but also contributed to the creation of powerful products. This is not to deny that socialist realism stifled spontaneity and creativity. It is also clear, however, that the ideal of aesthetic distinction survived in a culture that paid homage to politics and ideology.

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Witnessing the famous ideologues’ aesthetic taste and the survival of aesthetic commitment in their political movements, I plan to outline the Chinese Communist intellectuals’ attempts to preserve their fondness for, and to display their familiarity with, refinement in a highly politicized culture. These cultural and aesthetic acts, I argue, contributed greatly to their elitism. Taking into account European revolutionary intellectuals’ commitment to building the revolutionary regime as a polished cultural setting, I explore how the Chinese Communist intellectuals’ sense of self-distinction was incorporated into their efforts to build a cultured revolutionary milieu—i.e., how they constructed themselves as people capable of attaining this goal.12

Ambivalence and self-construction I also examine how Communist intellectuals’ elitist side negotiated with their anti-elitism when they were constructing themselves from the functional, emotional and aesthetic perspectives. Studying the negotiation between these two sides, I respond to current scholarship’s analyses related to the paradoxical coexistence of elitism with anti-elitism. But existing research varies regarding how and how much it reflects on the presence of this ambivalence in the functional, emotional and aesthetic dimensions of Communist intellectuals’ self-representations. In view of this fact, I develop different sets of questions for these dimensions in exploring the interaction between elitism and antielitism. The functional dimension Scholars have long heeded the fact that after the May Fourth era, there was an ironic coexistence of elitism and anti-elitism when socialist or Communist intellectuals evaluated the masses’ roles in the revolution. They point out that although Communist intellectuals always identified with the masses, peasants and workers included, as indispensable for the revolution, they could not but remain elitist, reflecting on the masses’ deficiencies as political agents, and theorizing about their or the Party’s leadership (for instance, Meisner 1967; Dirlik 1989; Luk 1990). Wanting are deliberate scholarly attempts to analyze the dialogue between the two opposite trends which constituted this widely known coexistence. In my analysis of the functional dimension of revolutionary intellectuals’ selfconstruction, I shall examine the dialogue between Communist intellectuals’ elitism and anti-elitism in order to better understand the presence of their elitist thinking. In this respect, research on the CCP’s mobilization efforts in rural communities is inspiring. Studying Communist mobilization in rural society with or without attention to spatial and temporal specificity, some historians highlight Party authoritarianism (for instance, Bianco 1995; Chen Yung-fa 1986; Kataoka 1974; Keating 1997). And some of them also indicate that, as a forceful manifestation of elitism, the CCP’s authoritarianism was accompanied by its cadres’ and leaders’ elitist critical stance on the peasants, whose performances, in these revolutionary agents’ eyes, were far from satisfactory (e.g., Chen Yung-fa 1986; Keating 1997).

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But historians also recognize the agency of the peasantry in the revolutionary process. Scholars argue that the peasants’ agenda, expectations, and notions of organization had significant impact on revolutionary leaders and the CCP, and even that it was the peasantry who chose to link their own project with the revolutionary elite (Thaxton 1983 and 1997; Sheel 1989; Marks 1984; Le Mons Walker 1999). While others may not share such a strong emphasis on peasant input, they also talk about the “flexibility, fluidity, and volatility” of the pre-1949 Communist movement. In their view, while basically authoritarian, the revolution still retained some space for peasant-Party interaction (Keating 1997:9; Esherick 1995 and 1998; Selden 1995). And even though his attempt to highlight authoritarianism is most solid, containing numerous geographically and temporally specific details, Chen Yung-fa does not fail to discuss how the CCP refrained from imposing its will on the peasants (Chen Yung-fa 1986). Despite their various positions on Party intrusion, these studies converge on the point that in action the CCP responded to the voice of the peasantry as an important contingent whose support for the revolutionary regime was essential, and thus whose needs and wishes commanded its attention. This consensus presses me to investigate how, by launching the revolution in an unofficial capacity during the early revolutionary years, and by leading the CCP, Communist intellectuals developed the functional dimension of their elitism in response to their anti-elitist recognition that the rural masses were crucial for their cause. The emotional dimension Not much has been said about how Communist intellectuals expanded on their superiority from the emotional perspective, let alone how elitism and antielitism co-existed ambivalently in the emotion-oriented dimension of their self-construction. Chinese scholars and some veteran revolutionaries note that anti-elitism—a distrust of intellectuals’ political commitment to the revolution—existed in the earlier (pre-Yan’an) stage of the revolution (Bo Yibo 1996; He Bozhuan 1989:509). And scholars in the West have also expanded on how the CCP leadership criticized and even condemned revolutionary intellectuals’ problematic political commitment, marked by their petit bourgeois egotism and quest for their own interests. In order to explain Communist intellectuals’ emotional self-construction, I find it important to reckon with the CCP’s unflattering view on revolutionary intellectuals’ commitment. I look into how Communist intellectuals overrode these views, which ironically were introduced by some of their own kind. They did not directly confront the Party’s anti-intellectual rhetoric. To establish themselves as devoted revolutionaries they retreated from the ideological space that was occupied by anti-intellectual thinking and settled in the non-ideological space. From the non-ideological angle, they narrated themselves by drawing on their inner feelings about the revolution, and by describing their performance rooted in their loyalty to the revolutionary cause. In this way, they dodged the Party’s determinist view of intellectuals’ impure commitment as tied to their petit bourgeois/ bourgeois background, and thus contended for their sincere and even superior political commitment. However, I shall also discuss cursorily how, still accepting and even contributing actively to the Party’s anti-elitism, they exploited this ideological policy to show their devotion to the revolutionary cause.

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The aesthetic dimension How, then, does current scholarship shed light on the co-existence of elitism and antielitism in the aesthetic dimension of Communist intellectuals’ self-construction? To anatomize aesthetic elitism in the context of the Communist revolution, we must first address the familiar theme of the tension between revolutionary intellectuals’ elitist love for refined culture on the one hand, and the Party’s policies, particularly its project of politicizing and popularizing art and literature for the revolution, on the other. More than three decades ago, in Literary Dissent in Communist China, Merle Goldman successfully drew our attention to the unhappy relationships between the Party’s policy on art and the writers’ commitment to artistic standards since the Rectification Campaign (Goldman 1967:5–6). Throughout her book, we find records of the miserable fates of those who refused to bow to a Party policy that denied the artist’s freedom to create. In other words, this kind of research shows that the ideological knowledge about revolution—in this case, the Party leadership’s attempts to develop policies on literature and the arts for political purposes—clashed violently with revolutionary intellectuals’ aesthetic sensibilities. Although relatively recent works do not refute the thesis of tension between the artist/writer who aspired to higher standards and Party policies, they have made valiant attempts to transcend it. Kraus, for instance, analyzes musicians’ willingness and initiative to cooperate with the Party (Kraus 1989:32). His view is readily echoed by Hung Chang-tai, who stresses the political effectiveness of Communist popular culture (Hung Chang-tai 1994:221–69). And in Art and Ideology in Revolutionary China, David Holm recognizes the aforementioned tension between artists and the Party’s political demands. However, he refuses to treat the literary Rectification merely as a power play in which “Mao’s objective was to subject writers and artists…to take away their artistic freedom” (Holm 1991:336–7). Instead he is more interested in contending that, as Mao did not use the authority of Party Central to implement the program, and did allow people to “study” his populist policy in cultural institutions, the mass movements in the arts after Rectification was only “a partial success” (Holm 1991:337). Therefore, even the transformation of Yangge, a most important genre in Communist popularization of literature and the arts, displayed intellectuals’ interpretation of the policy, and the collisions between different social groups participating in the process (Holm 1991:337). While adding subtlety and complexity to the story about the relationship between the Party’s policies and the Communist intellectuals’ pursuit of the arts, these scholars simultaneously move beyond but incorporate the tension thesis into their works. Examining the life of Xian Xinghai, Kraus sees clearly the clash between a musician loyal to his own higher (cosmopolitan) criteria and the arts the Communist Party attempted to create in Yan’an (Kraus 1989:60–1). When he discusses the fate of drama in Communist areas during the Sino-Japanese war, Hung does not fail to point up intellectuals’ preference for “big plays” (daxi) and Mao’s preference for popularization (Hung Chang-tai 1994:223–5). As for Holm, who should be credited with showing convincingly the “incompleteness” of Mao’s populist policy, he is attentive to Mao’s dislike of revolutionary intellectuals’ cultured artistic pursuits (Holm 1991:79). To put it in a nutshell, very much like Goldman, they all emphasize the tension between Party policies and intellectuals’ aesthetic commitment. In addition, current scholarship also somehow “internalizes” the issue of tension, viewing the conflict between politicized—and especially populist—practices and the

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pursuit of artistic-cultural refinement as a kind of intellectual— emotional ambivalence experienced by individuals. In Brushes with Power, Kraus represents a Mao Zedong who indulged himself in traditional poetry as a form of refined art but insisted that folk poetry was to provide the foundation for future Chinese verse (Kraus 1991:73). While Kraus shows the self-contradiction of a revolutionary leader well known for his politicized/populist policies on art, Kirk Denton analyzes a very different case, Hu Feng, and reveals the same internalized tension. Denton conceptualizes Hu Feng as an intellectual caught in what he calls the problematic of self—that is, the tension between his belief in the importance of subjectivity for the writer’s creative process and his faith in the essentiality of the outside world for the subject’s work. One manifestation of this tension was that Hu Feng praised the writer’s “genius,” “imagination” and “passion” as central for the creation of “true literature,” but at the same time considered the writer’s immersion with the masses to be the source of the writer’s power to transform society (Denton 1998:73–116). All these works have demonstrated not only the uncomfortable co-existence of the individual’s interest in fine art with Party policies, but also the uneasy coexistence of one’s artistic passion with one’s embrace of/support for such policies. In my research, I would examine how Communist intellectuals sustained them-selves as or molded themselves into a group of cultural nobility, even when they showed their support for the popularization policy. Also significant is revolutionary intellectuals’ political use of their aesthetic training and cultural refinement. Analyzing Deng Tuo, Cheek shows how this celebrated revolutionary served the revolution by combining his role of a Chinese-style literatus (wenren) with that of a senior Party cadre (Cheek 1997:2–3 and 18–20). Although other revolutionary intellectuals’ cultural preferences might not have been as traditional, many of them were comparable to Deng in the sense that they blended their identity of culture-bearing individuals with that of revolutionaries to work for the revolution. I shall, therefore, also examine how they built themselves as sophisticates whose sophistication contributed to their cause.

Analyzing historical sources Studying Communist intellectuals’ self-construction, I do not treat their self-narratives as accurate and honest descriptions of facts. To explain why, I would like to borrow a fundamental point of autobiographical criticism—that is, the distinction between the individual’s real life and the expressions that the individual, as an autobiographer, wants to represent as real. Since the early twentieth century much has been said about this distinction, although critics and theorists explain it in different ways. Dilthey, who is regarded as the founder of the scholarly approach to autobiography, believed that “autobiography is merely the literary expression of a man’s reflection on his life” (Marcus 1994:137). In his article entitled “Conditions and Limits of Autobiography,” which was published in English in the 1980s and set the terms for debates about autobiography in that decade, Gusdorf says, “the narrative of a life cannot be simply the image-double of that life” (Marcus 1994:156). Discussing the nature of autobiography, Eakin characterizes autobiographers as artists and historians, “negotiating a narrative passage between the freedoms of imaginative creation on the one hand and the

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constraints of biographical facts on the other” (Eakin 1985:3).13 To be sure, many sources I use—including official documents, theoretical writings, poetry, letters, and memoirs which focus on histories that the authors observe—should not be regarded as autobiographical in a strict sense. But I find the emphasis on distinction between life and its expression essential for my research. Reflecting on their place in the revolution, and narrating such reflections, revolutionary intellectuals arranged, interpreted, embellished, and even distorted what they experienced in their writings.14 In addition, to study how revolutionary intellectuals constructed themselves in relation to the peasantry in the functional, emotional and aesthetic dimensions, I concentrate on the parts of their self-construction that they did not mind revealing to various kinds of audience—Party authorities, comrades, good friends, loved ones and, of course, themselves. In other words, I refrain from probing revolutionary intellectuals’ private and unclear musings about “who I really am,” especially those reticent parts of selfconstruction such as their unspoken doubt about their transformative power, their conscious or subconscious awareness of their less than idealistic motivations for joining the revolution, and their occasional distrust of the peasantry’s historical agency. All this may have existed—or did indeed exist—and is useful for us to understand the Communist intellectuals and their revolution. And, notwithstanding some contemporary scholars’ assumption that “public” self-construction should not be regarded as less real than private musings (McAdams 1997:64), I recognize that sometimes there is a gap between the two. Nevertheless, my intention here is not to compare the authenticity of any individual’s public and private self-construction, but rather to study the parts of selfconstruction which Communist intellectuals revealed. By focusing on their elitism, which enjoyed different degrees of visibility in the revolutionary culture, I analyze their selfconstruction as an openly seen historical dynamic, forging important characteristics of both pre-1949 and post-1949 Communist politics, culture and society, and molding Chinese behaviors and beliefs. A brief note on historical materials To tackle Communist intellectuals’ multi-dimensional self-construction is a project that requires me to integrate diverse types of materials that pertain respectively to the functional, emotional and aesthetic aspects. These materials are diverse also because they were produced at different times and places in the revolution, and because they differ in the degree of elaborateness with which the authors expressed their ideas. It is important for me to use them, since it is virtually impossible to find a few revolutionaries who wrote about themselves substantively in the functional, emotional and aesthetic dimensions at all stages in the revolution. I unite these diverse types of materials in my characterization of Communist intellectuals as individuals whose lives were marked by various positions. To study the Communist intellectuals’ self-construction in the functional dimension, I focus on the sources related to a few well-researched cases: the Communist-led peasant movement in Yaqian; Peng Pai’s activities in the Hailufeng area; and Mao Zedong, who is famous for his emphasis on the peasantry’s importance for the Chinese revolution. By analyzing these cases in depth, I endeavor to show that functional elitism occupied a significant place in these revolutionary intellectuals’ subjectivity.15 These sources mainly

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include the revolutionary intellectuals’ theoretical writings on the revolution, speeches delivered to others (revolutionaries, radical intellectuals or the masses) and experiential reports on the peasants’ performances. I also sketch the general picture of the basic characteristics involved in emotional elitism, a relatively unexplored issue, by attending to many revolutionary intellectuals’ writings. I rely particularly upon the unofficial writings of revolutionary intellectuals and especially of intellectual martyrs, including their poetry, correspondence with families, letters to friends and comrades, and memoirs. I sometimes make use of Party leaders’ official writings and speeches as well, if they appear relevant to revolutionary intellectuals’ self-construction. In the emotional dimension, it is almost impossible to concentrate on a few individuals’ emotion-based self-construction. Communist intellectuals did not write about their political passion all the time, and when they did write about it, their revelations, with some exceptions, are brief. I therefore analyze many Communist intellectuals in order to capture the fleeting moments at which they narrated how they felt about their politicized lives. How, then, do I analyze revolutionary intellectuals’ aesthetic elitism? Because information about famous individuals’ cultural-aesthetic lives is usually quite scattered, and because most of these figures had more important tasks on their minds than their own cultural refinement, I also find it necessary to investigate the cultural and aesthetic preferences of many Communist intellectuals16—their artistic creations, their theoretical writings on aesthetics, and their recollections about the lives of themselves and their intellectual comrades in the revolution. I also make use of many post-1949 and post-1976 publications that focus upon Communist cultural activities and policies from the Soviet to the Yan’an period. Analyzing this huge pool of sources, I use them, including those materials scholars have usually used in investigating the CCP’s ideological-political formulation of aesthetic thinking, to tell the story about how Communist intellectuals constructed themselves as people of sophisticated taste. The analysis of the main pool of materials for functional elitism is relatively straightforward, because these materials are “conventional” in the sense that scholars have long used them to gain valuable insights into Communist ideology revolutionary strategies, etc. However, sources such as memoirs and recollections are challenging. They are occasionally relevant to the examination of Communist intellectuals’ functional elitism, and important in uncovering their emotional and aesthetic elitism. They do not always tell us what really happened.17 And the emotions and cultural habits revealed in these accounts—especially those small and specific details—cannot easily be verified. Because the appraisal of sources for emotions and aesthetics involves different concerns and problems, I shall, for the sake of clarity and organization, explain how I use them in those respective chapters dealing with the emotional and aesthetic facets of revolutionary intellectuals’ self-construction. In this general introduction to the comprehensive framework of the book, I discuss how I use memoirs and recollections that are relevant to more than one dimension of revolutionary intellectuals’ elitism. I follow a basic principle—I usually limit myself to analyzing historical phenomena on which different sources converge (e.g. the phenomenon of revolutionary intellectuals expressing their anger against the establishment). Of course, this does not always demonstrate that the “specific details” related to the individuals’ lives, as revealed in memoirs, are accurate (for example, the fact that a certain revolutionary intellectual conflicted most violently

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with his father in defiance of the status quo). However, what I strive to accomplish here is to collect and interpret sources that point to comparable historical occurrences gravitating toward and related to elitism.18 Such are the materials I use for examining Communist intellectuals’ construction of their selves and the peasant masses. Analyzing them, I adopt the following position on the issue of spatial and temporal differences. A few words about time and space In their explorations of the political, military and intellectual-ideological dimensions of the Communist revolution, scholars have stressed the significance of a place-based approach to understand the localized diversity of revolutionary experiences (e.g., Chen Yung-fa 1986; Schoppa 1992; Wou 1994; Averill 1995:69–115; Hartford 1995:144–74; Yeh Wen-hsin 1996; Keating 1997). They also believe, in addition, that periodization is always useful in understanding any revolutionary process, since factors ranging from revolutionaries’ strategies to ideology change at different stages in the revolution. I agree that a place-based approach can reveal localized versions of multi-dimensional elitism, produced by the conditions of the areas in which the revolution was launched, the geocultural backgrounds of the revolutionaries, etc. I also believe that the chronological approach can cast light on how elitism evolved over the course of the revolution. My intent, however, is to show the intellectual-emotional cohesion of the revolutionary process as a whole. In other words, my goal is to demonstrate that multi-dimensional elitism was a general and pervading presence in the Communist revolution, although in some cases I address the relevance of geography and time frame to the general presence of Communist intellectuals’ multi-dimensional elitism. I pay attention to those chronological changes and local factors that are significant for us to understand how Communist elitism was sustained across time and space. For instance, examining the Communist elite’s functional assessments of themselves and the peasantry, I analyze different cases that reveal how revolutionary intellectuals’ perspectives on themselves and the peasantry evolved at different stages of the revolution from the 1920s to the 1940s. When I explore the aesthetic dimension of Communist elitism, I point to how different political considerations, which emerged at different stages of the Communist revolution (from the 1920s to the Civil War), helped sustain intellectuals’ pursuit of fine art. Moreover, in response to the scholarly emphasis on Yan’an’s impact on Communist intellectuals’ interest in fine art, I shall show how artistic elitism survived as the implementations of the Rectification Campaign and popularization policy varied in different geographical regions. When I depict the emotion-based self-construction of revolutionary intellectuals, I discuss how they narrated their political passion when they faced the failure of a local revolution, or when they participated in political campaigns aimed at intellectuals’ self-criticism at a certain stage in the revolution.19 I conceptualize Communist intellectuals’ self-construction in cultural terms—as a conglomerate of ideas, verbalized sentiments and attitudes—to depict the presence of the leitmotif of elitism in the Communist milieu (see note 2). This study, I must admit, has a strange, if not ironic, twist: while starting with the premise that revolutionary intellectuals were individuals whose lives were shaped by various positions, I focus on the fact that their self-narratives took on historical significance beyond the level of any individual

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undertaking. I strive to refrain from generalizations about how elitism existed in the revolution, because I do not intend to argue that each piece of writing I analyze is typical and thus tells us a great deal about revolutionary intellectuals as a group. It must be noted that people do not feel and think in exactly the same way. Sometimes they differed in how they expanded on and expressed elitism, and sometimes they echoed each other. I do want to contend, however, that the materials analyzed in this study are typical, in the sense that, by showing these authors’ sense of superiority, they all helped orchestrate the leitmotif of elitism.20

Format of the book and conclusion This is a study of revolutionary intellectuals’ elitist self-construction. By moving beyond the repository of scholarly knowledge which focuses on Party elitism, I look into how Communist intellectuals shaped their elitism as individuals with multiple positions—as radicals, persons harboring non-political concerns, desires and preferences, and educated members of Chinese society. To probe the complexity of their elitism, which according to a great many experts, co-existed with their anti-elitism, I delve into how the radical intellectuals fashioned their elite status by engaging with their anti-elitist thinking and attitudes. The materials I include in my analysis are diverse, ranging from revolutionary intellectuals’ theoretical writings, speeches and reports to their memoirs, poetry and letters to others. Aiming to delineate the leitmotif of elitism in Communist culture, I draw a picture in which revolutionary intellectuals’ molded their elitism from functional, emotional and aesthetic perspectives by reckoning with their own elitism, and by letting their various identities leave unmistakable imprints on their self-construction. After this introductory chapter (Part I), I begin to traverse the lives of revolutionary intellectuals. In Part II I first concentrate on how, at the earliest movements or even the embryonic state of the revolution, radical intellectuals positioned themselves as historical actors knowledgeable about and qualified to determine the transformative course of modern China (Chapter 2). I then examine how they evaluated themselves in relation to the peasantry from the functional perspective, assessing the capacity of themselves and the peasant other for carrying out the revolution (Chapters 3 and 4). In Parts III and IV, I analyze Chinese Communist intellectuals’ self-construction from the emotion-based and aesthetic-cultural angles (Chapters 5, 6 and 7). In Part V, I reflect on how Communist intellectuals’ multi-dimensional elitism worked as a historical dynamic, operating actively during the revolutionary decades and after the founding of the Communist regime. As I shall show, this historical dynamic contributed to the CCP’s effort to legitimize its revolution and post-1949 regime, shaped people’s cultural-aesthetic sensibilities, and created inequality in Chinese society (Chapter 8). I then summarize the main threads of the book (Chapter 9). Thus, by treating Chinese Communist intellectuals as individuals whose lives were marked by various identities, and whose minds allowed the interaction between the contesting trends of elitism and anti-elitism, I journey across an important area of their intellectual-emotional universe—their self-construction. I show that, by developing

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revolutionary theories, strategies and policies, by evaluating themselves and the peasantry, by describing their feelings and life, and by reflecting on their artistic-cultural preferences and pursuits, revolutionary intellectuals fashioned the themes of Communist intellectuals as leaders, heroes and sophisticates for their identity formation.

Part II Leaders Self-construction from the functional perspective

2 Radical intellectuals as the guiding force of change The beginning of the political odyssey As they were gradually drawn to the Communist ideology, how did the Chinese radicals define their historical mission in terms of the course that China should take? How did they explain their commitments to their mission? How did their perception of the status quo contribute to their determination to change the Chinese society and nation? To understand the Communist intellectuals’ elitist self-construction in relation to the peasantry from the functional perspective, I find it important to reflect on these questions. An examination of these issues is essential for an analysis of revolutionary intellectuals’ self-narratives. By defining their historical mission, by explaining their commitments, and by expounding on their attitude toward the status quo, radical intellectuals established themselves as historical agents who, because of their special knowledge about how reality should be changed and about where China should go, were entitled to guide China’s transformation. In addition, their understanding of their historical mission, the ways in which they explained their commitments, and their response to the reality that, in their view, needed fundamental re-shaping—all this supplied them with the principles, ideas and criteria to judge their own and the peasantry’s capacity for change. To delve into these questions, I focus on what is usually called the May Fourth period—the late 1910s and the early 1920s. It was a time when radical intellectuals imagined the use of drastic measures to improve China. In the process, some of them dedicated themselves to Communism for the betterment of their country.

To change China with democracy and socialism Historians always acknowledge the importance of the May Fourth tradition for the birth of Chinese Communism. Writing more than thirty years ago, Benjamin Schwartz stressed that the May Fourth radicals were drawn to Marxism as an ideology “of Western origin and yet critical of the contemporary West” (Schwartz 1951:12–23; Dirlik 1989:5). Maurice Meisner, nearly a decade later (Meisner 1967; Dirlik 1989:5), took the same view. More recently, Arif Dirlik has suggested a different scheme, conceptualizing the successive steps that radical intellectuals took to create Chinese Communism: their interest in socialism that gave birth to social activism, their receptivity to the Bolshevik model caused by their frustrations with the failures of peaceful transformation, and the

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drawing of a boundary between Communism and other kinds of socialism through debates initiated by the Communists (Dirlik 1989). In this chapter, I also reflect on why Chinese radical intellectuals championed the Marxist approach to transformation. In so doing, I focus on a question that others have not discussed in detail: how did Chinese radicals express their commitments to socialism—commitments that took them a crucial step toward the Communist ideology? Treasuring democracy To understand the May Fourth radicals’ commitments to socialism, we must begin by examining their commitments to democratic values. In his classic work on the May Fourth movement, Chow Tse-tsung assumes that democracy was one of the main principles underlying the radical intellectuals’ views on change, ranging from their opposition to political privileges for the few to their call for equality between individuals (Chow Tse-tsung 1960:58–9).1 In the May Fourth period, the socialist tradition existed in a milieu in which, in restructuring Chinese culture, society and politics, many radicals considered promoting what they defined as democratic values—liberty and equality— their mission. Their yearning for democratic values was so pervasive and ardent that, according to Dirlik, the prevalent mood at the time “was not reflective discrimination but a euphoric revolutionary eclecticism that had the power to imagine a basic unity in diverse ideas so long as they appeared progressive, democratic and scientific” (Dirlik 1985:253).2 Indeed, Chen Duxiu, on behalf of his comrades, had proudly proclaimed: Some people charge us with the crime of destruction: the destruction of Confucianism, ritual, national essence, chastity…and finally, the existing political system. We admit the charge but still insist that we are innocent. It is our love for Mr. Democracy and Mr. Science that leads to these towering crimes. (Chen Duxiu [1919] 1922b:1/361–2) If democracy was so essential for the radical intellectuals, how, then, did the intellectualemotional commitments which led the May Fourth radicals to embrace democracy also enhance their enthusiasm for socialism? It is possible that some people became socialists because of the direct influence of the earlier socialist tradition. But taking into account the importance of the intellectuals’ belief in democracy, together with the observation that in the May Fourth period “not many people actually became full converts to anarchism,” the most popular form of socialism of the day (Luk 1990:18), we cannot ignore the above question. To analyze how, in the May Fourth period, the commitments to democracy contributed to the commitments to socialism, I first concentrate on the cases of Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao. The May Fourth intellectuals treated the pursuit of democratic values as the basic way to realize democracy—an indispensable part of the cultural transformation they sought. They were attracted to democratic values because they thought such values led to national well-being, particularly wealth and power (this might be called a “nation-oriented utilitarian” commitment to democracy). Moreover, they also believed that democracy contributed to the happiness and fulfillment of humans as

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individuals (an “individual-oriented utilitarian” commitment), that it was valuable in its own right (an “autonomous value” commitment), and that democratic values should be realized in the international arena in order to create a brotherhood of humankind (an “international-cosmopolitan” commitment). The mission of democracy: Chen Duxiu’s and Li Dazhao’s multiple commitments to democratic values In the New Culture movement (1915–1919), radical intellectuals drew much attention with their strident call for anti-traditionalism. While the founding of the Youth magazine (which was to be renamed as the New Youth magazine) is always regarded as the event which ushered in the whole movement, leading radicals like Li and Chen also founded and/or published in other journals such as Weekly Review (Meizhou pinglun) to promote new ideas (Peng Ming 1998:211–21).3 In this context, Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao to a significant extent advocated democracy from a nation-oriented utilitarian perspective. In their view, democratic values, which originated in the West, were what the Chinese needed to strengthen their nation. In no uncertain terms Chen Duxiu recommended the adoption of a democratic political system to remedy the unsatisfactory situation in China. But for him, China required nothing less than a holistic cultural-moral revolution, and such a transformation would be the precondition for a successful political revolution. Identifying traditional anti-democratic morality as the target of his attack (Chen Duxiu [1916] 1922b:1/53–6), he traced the cause-effect relationships between traditional anti-democratic morality and China’s plight that he witnessed, on the one hand, and between democratic principles and a nation’s well-being on the other. In his view, the traditional moral concepts and practice of three bonds and five ethical relationships had fostered a submissive character in the Chinese—a lack of will to resist. “How can we tolerate the Japanese view that the Chinese only tend to succumb to the ‘powerful and authoritative’?” he asked. But he added, “we cannot deny its validity.” This deficiency, he said, was endangering China’s survival: “Alas! If we give up [totally] our will to resist, succumbing to the powerful and authoritative, what will happen to us with so many powerful and authoritative elements in the world?” (Chen Duxiu [1915] 1922c:1/31). Citing the white race as an example, Chen pointed out that the refusal to be submissive, linked to a fighting spirit, led to conquest (Chen Duxiu [1916] 1922a:1/44). Arguing from his observation of the dichotomy between the submissive conquered and the independent conqueror, Chen then stressed that a country’s sovereignty and dignity rested on individual rights and independence (Chen Duxiu [1916] 1922a:1/45). While Li Dazhao is best known for his interest in socialist revolution, his call for democracy was also by no means muted.4 Beginning with the assumption that China ought to adopt the Western democratic political system, Li, much like Chen, thought that traditional Chinese culture was by nature anti-democratic (Li Dazhao [1918] 1984a:1/559). He believed that Chinese people’s dependence on leaders—a trait he considered to be anti-democratic—jeopardized the nation by “paving the way for outside invaders” (Li Dazhao [1916] 1984a:1/167). He assumed that struggle and resolve— elements of the civic spirit that had led to other countries’ success—could and would vitalize China:

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As the spirit of the modern citizen embraces courage and intrepidity, we can adopt it to strengthen our will to struggle for China.… Henri Bergson’s notion of creative evolution encourages us to employ the theory of free will—a theory that unfailingly supports our struggle to change the unfavorable environment and help realize our beloved hopes. (Li Dazhao [1915] 1984:1/148–9). In addition to their nation-oriented utilitarianism, Chen and Li had other commitments to democracy, including a devotion to an individual-oriented utilitarianism—to democracy as a means to the end of the individual. Their individual-oriented utilitarianism came from a general, universalist concern for happiness of individuals as humans. Surveying individuals’ experiences across cultures, to the Chinese they commended democratic values for their contribution to the individual’s existence. Chen Duxiu observed that “the Western races, from ancient times onwards, have been races of individualism.... Their ethics, morality, politics, laws, societies, and nations are all constructed as ways of supporting individual liberty, rights and happiness” (Chen Duxiu [1915] 1922d:1/36). Sharply criticizing the “feudal clan system” as an agent of the suppression of the individual, he contended: “we have to replace familism with individualism” (Chen Duxiu [1915] 1922d:1/37). Li Dazhao shared with Chen Duxiu an individual-oriented utilitarian commitment to democracy. Discussing the concept of liberty embodied in England’s Magna Carta, Li took the opportunity to admire the contribution of liberty to people’s individual happiness in the republic: “A constitution is drawn up [to affirm] the citizens’ liberty, not for the emperor’s or the sages’ authority; a constitution is drawn up for the happiness of human beings, not for the dignity of the idols” (Li Dazhao [1917] 1984a:1/245). Not only did Chen and Li appreciate the universal significance of democracy from the perspective of the individual, they also embraced democracy from the perspective of autonomous value. In other words, liberty and equality should be rights enjoyed by the individual—hence the conditions upon which humans lived. Chen’s reaction to Lafayette’s “Declaration des droits de I’homme” indicates this commitment. Declaiming his admiration for this historic document, Chen asked, “Who gave human beings the status of being real humans? Who but the French were responsible for this great achievement?” (Chen Duxiu [1915] 1922b:1/12). Li believed that people had the natural right to develop and to express their will. But in his view, “people” was not necessarily a collective entity, for he regarded the individual’s freedom of thought as part of natural rights and emphasized people’s respect for others’ liberty (Li Dazhao [1916] 1984a:1/159). Moreover, both Chen and Li appreciated democracy from a cosmopolitaninternationalist perspective. They longed for a kind of fraternal alliance, a union transcending national boundaries in pursuit of harmony, equal justice and liberty worldwide.5 During the First World War, reflecting on the interaction between nations, Chen defined right and might: “liberty and equality constitute right; the use of one’s strength to suppress the liberty and equality possessed by others is might” (Chen Duxiu [1918] 1922a:1/583). He saw the war as a struggle of humanitarianism and democracy against monarchism and expansionism (Chen Duxiu [1918] 1922a:1/583–4). Hence, at the end of

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the war, he regarded the victory of the Allies as the victory of right over might (Chen Duxiu [1918] 1922a:1/583). Aroused by the victory of right, Chen was full of praise for two of Wilson’s ideas on post-war arrangements: protest against oppression of the weak nations by the strong, and condemnation of governments that suppressed their own peoples’ calls for liberty and equality (Chen Duxiu [1918] 1922b:1/585). Chen seemed to assume that the victory of the humanitarian, democratic nations—the victory of right— would bring forth a more democratic and humanitarian relationship not only between nations but also between different peoples and their governments. Before Chen Duxiu welcomed the prospect of a democratic international order in 1918, Li Dazhao had, as early as 1917, expressed his thought that Western democratic nations were not democratic enough when dealing with other nations. He suggested the dichotomy between “Pan-ism” and democracy. “Pan-ism,” which provided a basis for relationships among different nations, areas, warlords and parties, was the reliance on might to suppress others and gratify one’s desires; whereas democracy, composed of equality, liberty and rationality, was its opposite. In his view, the inevitable result of the confrontation between “Pan-ism” and democracy would be the latter’s victory in both international and national arenas. The longing for democratic principles here was more or less involved with the discontent with powerful nations’ treatment of the weak (Li Dazhao [1917] 1984e:1/450–1). Considering China’s experience in the modern world, one might speculate that the cosmopolitan-internationalist commitment to democracy was derived significantly from the nationalistic discontent with the advanced nations’ racial discrimination and the nationalistic desire to remove it. I want to emphasize, however, that such a commitment was also linked to the aspiration to build—to construct a better international relationship characterized by different races’ fraternal regard for one another. Chen emphasized that the new Chinese intellectuals should love and help different races of the world (Chen Duxiu [1919] 1922c:1/366). Although Li called for cooperation among Asian countries on the basis of equality, what he hoped for was not a confrontation between the Asian and white peoples but close relationships among different races (Li Dazhao [1917] 1984e:17451). To be sure, a nationalistic commitment underlay their wish to construct a “democratic” international relationship, since such a relationship would promote the independence and dignity of weak nations. Even so, the nationalistic commitment at least did not narrow these two eminent intellectuals’ cosmopolitan-internationalist democratic vision to an exclusive concern for the removal of oppression, but inspired them further to appreciate the more positive elements—love, mutual respect, and mutual aid—at an international level.6 It is not too much to say that the commitment to worldwide brotherhood led to a concern for the well-being and dignity of the peoples of other nations. In the May Fourth period, this cosmopolitan-internationalist commitment to democracy was obviously related to democracy’s individualist utilitarian and autonomous values. But it cannot simply be equated with the expounding of these individual-oriented utilitarian and autonomous values of democracy at a theoretically universal level. The abstract, theoretical universalization of these values is not necessarily connected to a lively concern for their realization throughout the world. What we detect in Li’s and Chen’s thinking is their concern for the contribution of democracy’s individual-oriented

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utilitarian and autonomous values to other peoples, not just to humankind in an abstract sense. As we have mentioned, Chen was committed to democracy as an autonomous value, crediting the French Revolution with the “great achievement” of “giv[ing] human beings the status of being real humans” (Chen Duxiu [1915] 1922b:1/12). Proclaiming the significance of France’s contribution to all of humankind in terms of autonomous value, Chen clearly evinced his cosmopolitan-internationalist impulse. Nor did Li hesitate to applaud whenever he found the triumph of what he understood as democracy in other nations. He wrote passionately about the February Revolution: “the Russian people used their precious blood to write these words on their flag: ‘Liberty and victory’” And then he expressed his imagining of an ideal world: “We long for the victory of the common people of the world, not that of any particular race; we pray for the liberty of the common people throughout the world, not that of any specific national group” (Li Dazhao [1917] 1984f:1/491–2). Obvious here was Li’s internationalist concern for the common people’s liberty, a concern that was probably supported by his commitment both to democracy’s individual—utilitarian value and to its autonomous value, or both. In sum, Chen’s and Li’s pursuit of democracy was grounded in commitments to different values—nationoriented utilitarianism, individual-oriented utilitarianism, the appreciation of the autonomous value of democracy, and internationalism. These commitments worked in concert with one another to bring about Chen’s and Li’s conversion to socialism.7 From democracy to socialism Chen and Li lamented the deficiencies of Western democracy in terms of the realization of the principles—liberty and equality—they so highly treasured. Democratic values were from the West—that they recognized. However, they also believed, after learning democracy, that they had the rights to uphold democratic principles and apply them to judge the West. They lived in a milieu in which, before the New Culture movement, Chinese radicals had for quite a while revealed “a strong desire to avoid repeating the mistake that the industrialized Western countries had made” (Luk 1990:14). Sun Yat-sen, Liang Qichao and the anarchists all explored socialism as a possible option for China’s social-economic transformation, although their understandings of what should constitute a socialist program varied (Dirlik 1989:60–73; Luk 1990:14–15; Krebs 1998:77–97). The anarchists played an important role in making the plight of the working people, among other issues, a living concern for the New Culture radicals (Krebs 1998:160–1). In addition, in the second half of the 1910s, the rapid economic growth in urban China, the Russian Revolution, the New Culture movement’s interest in new ideas and reflections on international relationships at the end of the War, and the May Fourth protest all prompted the intellectuals to pay attention to socialism (Dirlik 1989:60–73). In 1919, influential periodicals all began to devote more space to the discussion on socialism, considering it a rising socio-political trend in the world (Luk 1990:21). It is not so surprising, therefore, that under the circumstances, committed to the values of liberty and equality, Chen and Li appreciated socialism as a better version of democracy. As early as 1915, Chen Duxiu had already formed a favorable opinion of socialism. He pointed out that in the modern age, inequality stemmed from the capitalists’ oppression. Socialism, said Chen, was designed “to create a new society in which

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everyone can have work that can match and actualize his unique ability and everyone can reap the reward he deserves” (Chen Duxiu [1915] 1922b:1/14). Chen praised socialism because it was a set of doctrines that aspired to the development of individuality, and called for the removal of practices that curbed the individual’s free development. While Chen praised the ideal of socialism, Li was keenly aware of the deficiency of Western democracy, an intellectual and political system from which he drew his inspiration. Perceiving what he called “the victory of Bolshevism” as “the victory of democracy,” and also as “the victory of the working people,” he believed that socialism was a more “democratic” type of democracy: “as the bourgeoisie has already obtained their democratic rights, we should strive for socialism. Socialism does not deviate from democracy. Instead, it is a step forward in democratic development” (Li Dazhao [1918] 1984c:1/603). Evident in this statement were his reluctance to accept Western democracy—which he conceptualized as bourgeois democracy—as the apotheosis of democracy, and his inclination to consider socialism something which could and would bring democratic rights to the laboring people, the majority. In light of Chen’s and Li’s appreciation of socialism as eminently democratic, we are tempted to inquire into how they were converted to socialism. Historians have already paid attention to the timing of their shift to socialism. It seems that by December 1919, though aware of the absence of social and economic democracy in the world, Chen Duxiu was still impressed by the British and American political models (Chow Tse-tsung 1960:231). According to Feigon, Chen’s conversion to Marxism began in February 1920 (Feigon 1983:144). Dirlik also observes that “by spring 1920 he [Chen] had embraced Marxist ideas enthusiastically” (Dirlik 1989:201). In May, in response to many criticisms of a Shanghai textile factory as well as the factory owner’s behavior, Chen expressed the opinion that “the workers’ meager salary” created a problem for their “individual survival” (Chen Duxiu [1920] 1922a:1/534). Conceptualizing the working people’s individual problem of survival as a class-based issue, he criticized journalists’ appeal to the owner to act benevolently: The labor movement of the twentieth century is at the stage of fighting for the right of management, and no longer asking for the owner’s benevolent treatment. No matter how much the treatment is improved, it has nothing to do with the workers’ dignity as independent persons and their own masters. (Chen Duxiu [1920] 1922a:1/531) Moreover, in a derisive jab both at the factory owner—Mu Ouzhu—and at Chinese personality traits, Chen wrote that “the Chinese people tend to reject one another’s dignity as human [renge]…. If we put all the blame on Mr. Mu because of [his harsh treatment of the workers], we do him too much honor” (Chen Duxiu [1920] 1922a:1/532). The concept of class dignity may have been involved in Chen’s deprecation of any appeal for good treatment. However, as Chen regarded harsh treatment as an issue of renge, this class-oriented concept, if at all present, must have coexisted with or been linked to an appreciation of the autonomous value of human independence and dignity (Chen Duxiu [1920] 1922a:1/531–2).

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This suggests that Chen embraced socialism in general, or, to a certain extent, Communism in particular, on the grounds of individual-oriented utilitarianism and its inherent moral value. In this respect Li Dazhao, regarded by Dirlik as less ready than Chen Duxiu for the coming of the Bolshevik model (Dirlik 1989:201), seemed rather similar to Chen. Hailing both the transformation of the mode of production and the call for international peace as signs of the dawn, Li anticipated that they would eliminate the suppression of individuality and people’s suffering (Li Dazhao [1919] 1984a:1/608). On another occasion Li lamented the “undemocratic” privation of working-class education in the capitalist system: The true meaning of democracy is the equal distribution of benefits and happiness among all human beings…. In a problematic social system,… some people must work extremely hard in earning their living. Toiling like oxen and horses, they do not have the opportunity to learn about this world. This situation, as a humiliation and restriction of individuality, must not be tolerated in a truly democratic era. (Li Dazhao [1919] 1984b:1/633) Thus, like Chen, Li adopted socialism more or less on the grounds of his own individualoriented utilitarian commitment to democracy and his appreciation of democracy’s autonomous value. Their thinking certainly confirms John Plamenatz’s generalization that: “The anarchists and Marxists want the individual to have the liberty that the liberal and the democrat claim for him. The illusion, as the anarchist or Marxist sees it, is the belief that these ideas can be realized in bourgeois societies” (Plamenatz 1973:40). Did the nationalistic commitment to democracy also contribute to their conversion to socialism? In 1920, Chen began to condemn the harm done to the Chinese race by the capitalists’ exploitation of workers. It was the capitalists’ undemocratic, exploitative treatment of the workers that deprived the workers of opportunities to receive education and thus led to the decline of the race (Chen Duxiu [1920] 1922a:1/534). Advocating socialism, Chen pointed out its value in the quest for national wealth and power by explaining the advantages of the socialist program of cooperative societies for economic development. But while the concern for national strength, common to modern Chinese intellectuals, was present in Chen’s advocacy of socialism, it was far from dominant in his embrace of the socialist cause. Moreover, devoted to the ideas of individual happiness, independence and the rights of the oppressed majority, Chen rejected the capitalist democratic West as a model for China. He emphasized that the nationalization of capital could bring about happiness and equal opportunity of development to every individual, and that China should not follow in the footsteps of the West, whose wealth had been created at the expense of the workers (Chen Duxiu [1920] 1922a:1/538).8 Undoubtedly, Chen shared with the pre-May Fourth intellectuals the nationalistic impulse to find an appropriate model for China. But in rejecting the model of the democratic West out of an explicit concern for the Chinese people’s individual wellbeing and their opportunities to actualize their own potential as humans, Chen sought the right model in terms of individual-oriented utilitarian and autonomous value rather than the utilitarian consideration of national wealth and power.

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Like Chen, Li Dazhao noted the relationship between socialism and the fate of a people. Discussing the problem of working-class education, he believed that the improvement of working-class conditions—a new stage of democracy—would definitely contribute to the progress of a nation or a people. He observed: “After the life of the European workers is improved, there will arise a new culture [in Europe].” He then reflected on China: “As our educational system is backward, and our people are weak and ignorant, we must establish some institutions which serve the purpose of working class education” (Li Dazhao [1919] 1984b:1/634). Obviously, Li saw a connection between socialism, which he thought was genuine democracy, and the creation of a nation’s new culture. It should be noted, however, that Li treated the establishment of an educational system as the first step in creating a decent existence for the working people as humans, and stressed the importance of education in developing the working people’s individuality (Li Dazhao [1919] 1984b:1/633). Thus, his aspiration to create a new culture through the improvement of the laborers’ lives was simply not reducible to a quest for national wealth and power. In addition, when he asked the Chinese to accept what he named Bolshevization, a trend which he defined as being represented by the Russian Revolution and as most progressive, he was thinking about the survival of the Chinese people in a new, egalitarian and free world through their adoption of a common people’s ethics that valued hard work (Li Dazhao [1918] 1984c:1/598). Therefore, Li’s nation-oriented utilitarian concern was not merely imbued with the pursuit of wealth and power. By insisting that the Chinese people would play an appropriate role in the emerging better world where people’s individual happiness and dignity as humans would prevail, Li expressed his hope that China would select a morally right model for herself. Likewise, when Chen was urging Chinese workers to fight for their individual happiness and dignity, he certainly believed that their struggle was an integral part of the working people’s developing struggle in the international arena: “The laborers of the world embrace two different levels of awareness: They first demand better treatment from the capitalists, and then they ask for the right of management.... I hope that Chinese workers can aspire to attain the second level of awareness” (Chen Duxiu [1920] 1984:1/521). Moreover, his response to the journalists’ criticism of Mu Ouzhu and his article on “the awareness of laborers,” which embodied the perception that working people in the world formed a unit, were both published on May 1, 1920. It is clear that Chen’s devotion to the individual-oriented utilitarian and the inherent moral values of democracy, so manifest in the former article, was more or less intertwined with the internationalist concern for the working people’s happiness and dignity voiced in the latter essay. Li Dazhao also evinced a cosmopolitan-internationalist commitment to socialism as a genuine or better kind of democracy. Pondering the influence of the proletarian revolution on the future of human history, in January 1920 he stated with a dreamy, idealistic tone: “Now, the working people, the proletarians are uniting…to revolt against the rich people, the bourgeoisie.” “The trend of the world,” he envisioned, “is the egalitarian union of different groups.… This trend will finally lead to the grand union of all nations, a union in which all individuals will obtain their liberty, and egalitarianism will prevail” (Li Dazhao [1920] 1984a:1/202–3). Insisting that democracy was “the rejection of the relationship between the ruling and the ruled,” and asserting that socialism was a part of democratic development (Li Dazhao [1921] 1984:2/501–7), Li

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provides direct testimony to the process by which his cosmopolitan-internationalist commitment to democracy was transmuted into socialism. To illuminate the process of the intellectuals’ transition to socialism, I have analyzed the cases of Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao, two of the most influential May Fourth intellectuals. Chen and Li concluded that established Western liberal democracies failed to act according to the values they proclaimed, and in fact operated in such a way that the values they proclaimed could not be attained. Still committed to democratic values, they became receptive to socialism, which seemed to offer the promise of “real democracy.” Therefore, they recast their duty of fighting for democracy into a mission of struggling for socialism. Further research is necessary to show how or whether other intellectuals took the same path as Chen and Li. It is obvious, however, that devotion to democratic values was a critical factor in many intellectuals’ conversion to socialism.

Democracy and socialism in the minds of the May Fourth intellectuals With the news of the Russian Revolution, the “communications explosion” around the May Fourth period, and the mounting intensity of student movement across China (Dirlik 1989:61), many radicals, including students, showed tremendous interest in discussing socialism. Such an interest existed across various regions, ranging from Beijing to Changsha. These radicals viewed socialism as a more progressive form of democracy. In November 1919, a group of students, among them Qu Qiubai, founded the Journal of the New Society. They explained their goals in the founding speech: “our aim is to build a new, democratic society This is a society in which there is no class division nor threat of war; in short, this is a society in which liberty, equality, happiness and peace prevail” (Chen Tiejian 1986:73). Qu and his friends, it should be noted, were not alone. “Democracy in the twentieth century,” one writer said, “is destined to change the existing political conditions. Its content is people-oriented policies, and the spirit underlying these policies is people’s self-rule.” The same author believed that the victory of the Bolshevik Party helped generate socialist movements across nations, in which the momentum of the idea of people’s self-rule prevailed (Zhu Zhimin 1989:51). As radical intellectuals represented socialism as an advanced model of socialism which was well worth pursuing, they expanded on their various commitments to it. Some intellectuals wished to eliminate the oppression that weak nations were suffering in the international arena. In 1919, Mao Zedong, identifying “the doctrine of the common people” (pingmin zhuyi)—a term with socialist overtones—with democracy, vehemently proclaimed: “We should use the doctrines of the people to overthrow all kinds of power [i.e., oppression], including…power in the international realm” (Mao Zedong [1919] 1975a:1/54). Nationalism was embedded in the call for rejecting this type of might, as Mao was reflecting on the Sino-Japanese relationship of his own age: “Power in the international arena, namely [in the form of] Japan, is pressing us hard.” “We should,” he concluded, “use every kind of social movement…to cope with Japan’s oppression” (Mao Zedong [1919] 1975a:1/54). Mao’s rejection of the international power responsible for China’s suffering also led him to embrace Kropotkin’s ideal envisioning of international relations: “There is a group of people who hope to merge all the nations on earth into a

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single whole, to unite all humans and form a big family. …The leader of this group is Kropotkin, a Russian” (Mao Zedong [1919] 1975b: 1/59–60). Here, Mao’s enthusiasm for a democratic international relationship, in which nationalism and cosmopolitanisminternationalism were intertwined, led him to appreciate Kropotkin’s ideal. As some intellectuals saw it, democracy was to “make all individuals in society become real humans and obtain happiness” (Zhu Zhimin 1989:46). The doctrine of the common people, in its widest sense, “means respect for the dignity every human deserves as human, and the creation of an environment which enables every individual, relying upon his or her human integrity, to benefit humankind and contribute to the progress of the world culture” (Zhu Zhimin 1989:44). Another author, Tan Mingqian, thought that democracy as a kind of Lebens-form could and would facilitate the development of rationality (Tan Mingqian 1919:814). Despite the drawing of utilitarian linkages between democracy with socialist overtones on the one hand, and the well-being and happiness of humankind and the progress of world culture on the other, some May Fourth intellectuals appreciated socialism because of their commitment to the autonomous value of equality and liberty. Praising Marx’s contribution to the social and economic aspects of democracy (Tan Mingqian 1919:811– 2), Tan Mingqian emphasized, “We humans should all be equals. We should enjoy the freedom of individual development and of thinking.... We should cooperate with one another to build a life of fairness, uprightness, autonomy and independence” (Tan Mingqian 1919:808). Viewing the doctrine of the common people as true democracy, as “the most progressive characteristic of twentieth-century politics” (Zhu Zhimin 1989:4 9), some activists paid attention to the people’s education. Under the slogan “make sacred education available to the sacred people” (Zhu Zhimin 1989:48), the radicals sought to make this “true element” of democracy serve national purposes. Shi Yang, later a martyr to the Communist cause, organized an association for popular education in Hubei (Liu Xinchu 1980:88). In explaining the importance of this organization for the building of a strong China, he said, “We attempt to develop people’s education to ensure that the ordinary people obtain some kind of essential knowledge and information.” “When the people are educated,” he sounded optimistic: they will understand the meaning of the nation and their relationship to it. By that time, they will know how to love their nation and fulfill their responsibility as citizens. By that time, they will recognize the importance of industrial development and will be equipped to choose any kind of profession…. In this way, our nation can be wealthy and powerful. (Liu Xinchu 1980:89) Here we can see a nation-oriented utilitarian commitment to people’s education—a kind of equality under the influence of the socialist emphasis on the people. As early as the 1960s, Chow Tse-tsung noted that the May Fourth intellectuals envisioned the co-existence of democracy and socialism (Chow Tse-tsung 1960:61). I would contend that in fact democracy became their road to socialism. The May Fourth intellectuals’ discussion of democracy and socialism shows that they possessed multiple commitments to democratic values, and that these commitments pressed them to choose

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the socialist road. But as existing scholarship points out, they preferred a non-violent approach to social transformation (Dirlik 1989:90–3 and 145; Luk 1990:29). Why, then, did a significant number of them eventually choose Communism in defining their transformative cause?

The attitude toward the status quo: the formation of militant hostility I In considering this question I propose to look into the attitude of the Chinese radical intellectuals toward the status quo. Obviously, their aspiration for change was driven by discontent with the status quo. However, the question here is how much discontent was sufficient to turn the intellectuals into Communists and arm them with the willingness to use drastic and violent approaches in their rejection of the status quo. Measuring discontent While scholars have debated the formation of a Bolshevik-style Communist Party i in China, they have not discussed the question of how discontent pressed the Chinese radicals to choose the Communist approach to change. Dirlik contends that in 1919 and 1920, the emergence of labor as a political force and as an indicator of the relevance of Marxist ideology to China, along with brutal oppression by the authorities and the bleak prospect of peaceful transformation, helped draw radicals’ attention to the Bolshevik model of revolution, introduced by the Comintern. Some radicals, disillusioned but unyielding, were thus tempted to try the Bolshevik road (Dirlik 1989:156–216). Others argue, however, that these radicals did not immediately transform their new-born Communist Party into a strictly Leninist organization (Luk 1990; Van de Ven 1991).9 I do not intend to side with any interpretation. However, even if the experts are right that the CCP was not yet a Leninist organization, the factor of attitude was crucial for Chinese radicals’ acceptance of, or interest in, a Bolshevik-style Communism in the early 1920s. In the summer of 1920, the May Fourth radicals still had reservations about Russian Communism, which in their view represented “[an] uncompromising…school” of Marxism. Without a deep-seated hatred for many aspects of the status quo, the radicals, though disillusioned and desperate, could not have shown an interest in working with the Comintern, which they knew offered an “uncompromising” model of revolution.10I therefore propose to focus on the degree—the intensity—of the May Fourth radicals’ hostility toward the status quo. I shall show how intense discontent with reality was conducive to an appreciation of Marxism, which the May Fourth radicals had once regarded as too confrontational an ideology. But how can we measure “intense discontent with reality”? For a concrete indication of that intensity, I rely upon a qualitative approach, looking for the intellectual-emotional characteristics of the radicals’ hatred. I find, first, that intellectuals were determined to fight against the status quo, and, second, that they emphasized an irreconcilable antagonism between the existing state of affairs, on the one hand, and the brilliant future and the force that was needed to create it, on the other. My approach echoes Edward Shils’s argument that the creation of the ideological perspective of European Marxist and Bolshevik intellectuals was facilitated by their belief in the absolute character of good

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and evil, and in the necessity of refusing to compromise with evil forces (Shils 1969:45). Whereas Shils focused on the roots of these beliefs, I analyze the beliefs themselves as expressions of intense discontent. Militant hostility I: after the May Fourth protest(s) Radical intellectuals had good reason to be angry with the status quo in the second half of the 1910s, as they confronted the still-powerful influence of Chinese tradition, the problems of the political system, and the oppression experienced by intellectuals. The widespread, negative intellectual-emotional reaction to the status quo among the radicals, I contend, fostered a militant hostility that facilitated the conversion of many to Communism. The oppressive government response to waves of student protest since the May Fourth protest particularly inflamed the radicals. The January 29 incident in Tianjin was an example. On January 29, 1920, boycotting Japanese goods, more than a thousand students went to the provincial government office to submit a petition. The government received them with gunfire and brutal beatings. The experience of oppression was important for some radicals’ choice of approach in transforming society. “The January 29 tragedy in Tianjin,” Liu Qingyang recalled, “revealed to all the hideous visage of the reactionary government, and helped them recognize that patriotic freedom and democratic sovereignty could not be achieved without the shedding of blood.” Dirlik uses this recollection to exemplify the radicals’ reaction to the oppression and regards it as part of the prelude to the turn to Communism (Dirlik 1989:184). Here, I probe the militant hostility toward reality that helped the shift to the Bolshevik model of revolution. As we will see, this kind of hostility prevailed after the May Fourth incident. Qu Qiubai is a case in point. He was incarcerated twice between June and August 1919, and the second incarceration severely damaged his health (Chen Tiejian, 1986:57– 61). Despite the oppression he suffered, when he participated in the founding of the Journal of the New Society (Xin Shehui) in November 1919, he still supported the idea of peaceful reform (Chen Tiejian 1986:72–3). However, his belligerence manifested itself in his call for the overthrow of the dark old society. In response to the suicide of a youth disillusioned with reform, he wrote passionately: “Young men!… Don’t let society suffocate you…. You must furiously fight against the religion, institutions, and thoughts of this old society.” He cried out: “You should use your and your enemies’ blood to decorate the path of your struggle; you should serve as the light and fire for this dark, gloomy world” (Chen Tiejian 1986:79–81). As he aimed at breaking the intellectual and physical restrictions imposed on the individual by the old religion, institution, customs and conventions (Chen Tiejian 1986:49), his cry for the use of blood was metaphorical rather than literal. But his hatred for the status quo was intense enough to provoke this fiery call for struggle against the existing system, highlighting the antagonism between the hopeless present and the force of the youth that could dispel the hopelessness. Like Qu, Yun Daiying, an activist in Wuhan, also experienced governmental oppression in the same period. In June 1919, the Hubei authorities forced him to leave the school in which he taught (Tian Ziyu et al. 1984:36). Nevertheless, in 1920, even facing the breakdown of the new village movement and the work—study movement, which represented intellectuals’ experiments with a peaceful approach to socialism (Dirlik

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1989:145), he still insisted on using peaceful means to transform society and criticized the reliance on revolution—too drastic and violent a method for him. His criticism was twofold. He was first not confident in the future of social revolution, led either by the non-laboring elite or the masses, in China. According to him, while the non-laboring revolutionary elite launched a social revolution because of “the seduction of the outside environment or their ambition,” the laboring people, “who let various kinds of vices, selfishness and vanity” occupy their minds, were unqualified to initiate social revolution (Yun Daiying [1920] 1984:1/259). He ascribed the inadequacy of both the elite and the laboring masses to the problems of the Chinese as a people, their tendency to “spoil every good thing” (Yun Daiying [1920] 1984:1/259). Second, Yun disliked the character of the revolutionary approach; he thought that revolution could only change society in a limited way, stirring people’s emotions without improving their minds. However, Yun did not totally reject the use of revolution. Insisting that his project of rural and urban communal enterprises was not “a kind of unrealistic dream,” he said, “if they are indeed unrealistic, we are pressed to choose the road of revolution, encouraging our unreserved endeavor for society” (Yun Daiying [1920] 1984:1/262). This unwillingness to rule out a drastic alternative, by a person who was willing to test the feasibility of peaceful transformation regardless of the collapse of peaceful communal experiments, could not have emerged without a deep discontent with the evil world and a persistent determination to conquer it. In September 1919, Yun lamented the prevalence of the evil forces (e shili) in China, bewailing the fate of “the good members of the Revolutionary Alliance (Tongmenghui) and the socialist party [who] were overwhelmed and swallowed by evil forces” (Yun Daiying [1919] 1984:1/107). For him, there was a stark confrontation between good and evil. While believing in the merit of peaceful transformation in 1920, he nevertheless viewed the struggle for sociopolitical change as one requiring the defeat of an evil society (Yun Daiying [1920] 1984:1/262). Although he preferred peaceful change, his attitude toward the target of change—the evil world—was militant. So widespread was the militant hostility that some who did not personally and directly suffer from the government’s policy of repression also deeply detested the prevailing state of affairs. At the end of June 1919, Li Dazhao expressed his animosity not only toward the political situation but also toward different kinds of fetters that chained individuals: “Contemporary life is a life in prison. Our world, our nation, our society, our family are different levels of a prison which confine us, are locks that deprive us of freedom” (Li Dazhao [1919] 1984d:2/10). In Li’s view, struggle against the existing darkness was the appropriate way to attain true liberation: “We must depend on ourselves to destroy the dark prison, and then to venture onto the road to a bright future” (Li Dazhao [1919] 1984e:2/26). This was a view that rejected any compromise, stemming from Li’s conviction of a sharp opposition between good and evil. Mao’s early articles, “The Great Union of the Masses” and “The Manifesto of the Xiang River Review,” both of which were written around July 1919, reflect a similar attitude. The manifesto definitely was written before the crackdown on the Xiang River Review, which was initiated by the governor of Hunan, Zhang Jingyao, in early August 1919. In a Hunan that witnessed the suppression of the patriotic movement by the government, and in a national context which gave testimony to the authorities’ anti-

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nationalistic attitude, Mao did not need direct experience of oppression to become militant. In “The Great Union of the Masses,” he expressed his rancor over the situation of China and the world: At present, the condition of our nation is extremely unsatisfactory, the bitterness of human existence is intolerable, and society is in its darkest state. We can use different approaches to the remedy of such a situation…. But the basis of all these methods is the grand union of the masses. (Mao Zedong [1919] 1975b:1/57) Here we see an insistent summons to struggle against the brutal and depressing world. And for the masses’ union, according to Mao, there were two routes, one radical, the other moderate: Marx’s proposal to overwhelm the aristocrats and capitalists, and Kropotkin’s plan of peaceful transformation of these people (Mao Zedong [1919] 1975b:1/59-60). Mao emphasized the superiority and far-sightedness of the latter route. However, this did not mean that he disliked the drastic struggle against the status quo and the establishment. He celebrated the French Revolution: “The French grand union of the masses led to a successful political revolution through its confrontation with the union of the monarch and conservatives. Many nations followed suit and launched their own political revolutions.” He then praised the Russians: “Last year, the Russian grand union of the masses, having struggled against the union of the capitalists, gained its success in the realm of social revolution.” He noted and projected the international influence of the Russian Revolution: “Afterward, many countries…emulated the Russian model of social revolution. They have not yet won, but are destined to obtain, a total victory. I can imagine that this victory can spread to the rest of the world” (Mao Zedong [1919] 1975b:1/58). Mao’s eulogy to the Russian Revolution did not necessarily contradict his belief in peaceful revolution. We know too little of Mao’s attitude toward the French and Russian Revolutions, and cannot be sure how he viewed the bloody side of these revolutions. But what is clear is that even though Mao did not advocate violence to eliminate the oppressing classes, he obviously admired the attempt to remove them, and insisted that people must confront the oppressors in order to obtain the rights and benefits they deserve (Mao Zedong [1919] 1975b: 1/60). In fact, for him, the masses’ struggle against the oppressors was one of broader significance, a battle against an evil reality. He regarded the masses’ grand union as the basic way to remove the darkness of the present, “emancipating [human beings from] all kinds of oppression and restriction,” and opening the path to a “golden, bright world” (Mao Zedong [1919] 1975b:1/69). His whole struggle thus rested on a sharp polarization between an oppressive reality and a beautiful future. One week before he published the first part of “The Grand Union of the Masses,” Mao had published “The Manifesto of the Xiang River Review” In the latter he called for a reliance on the masses’ union to peacefully confront the powerful—to initiate “a bloodless revolution.” Pinpointing the antagonism between various kinds of coercion and democracy, and revealing Mao’s eagerness to overthrow oppressive forces (Mao Zedong

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[1919] 1975a:1/54), this manifesto foreshadowed “The Grand Union of the Masses” with an emphasis on the incompatibility of good and evil and an insistence on struggling against evil. Examining the writings by these individuals, we find that after the May Fourth protest, the thinking of such radical intellectuals became permeated with a militant attitude toward the status quo, characterized by the polarization between a bright future and the evil present, and the determination to strive against the evil world. Militant hostility II: before the May Fourth protest(s) Some of this hostility must have existed before the high tide of protests. Logically, such militancy, even as a response to outside stimuli, could not emerge without a substantial amount of pre-existent hostility. Historically, militancy had already formed even before the restless late spring or turbulent summer of 1919. By 1918, Yun Daiying had already declared that “in the contemporary world, our ultimate task is to cultivate forces of good which can fight against and finally overwhelm forces of evil. These good forces are urgently needed by society” (Yun Daiying [1918] 1984:1/67). The hatred of the status quo, the determination to struggle against it, and the emphasis on the uncompromising opposition between good and evil were all embedded in this brief statement. When Mao was taking a course on ethics from 1917 to 1918 in Hunan, he read and wrote marginal notes to Friedrich Paulsen’s A System of Ethics. According to him, Paulsen formulated the following interpretation of the fate of all nations: “As the fixed habits of thought and action...increase with time, tradition acts as an obstacle to the forces of renewal.” Mao then commented: “This is precisely the position of the Republic of China.” Attempting to echo Paulsen, he posited in a philosophical manner the antagonism between new and old: “the formation of this necessarily means the destruction of that, and the destruction of that necessarily means the formation of this.” Striving to be philosophical, however, he betrayed his intolerance toward the old: “I very much look forward to its [the universe’s] destruction, because from the demise of the old universe will come a new universe, and will it not be better than the old universe!” (Mao Zedong [1917–1918] 1992:1/249–50). Li Dazhao, well known for his call for the reform of Eastern culture through the absorption of the Western essence, was less militant about old culture. Nevertheless, as early as 1917, he had advocated revolution in order to improve the political situation of China. Meisner summarizes Li’s position as follows: Political power, he maintained, was characterized by a degree of violence that exceeded even that of the Sultans of Turkey or the czars of Russia at the height of their autocratic powers. In such a situation the “will of the people” must be realized by force if it cannot be realized by reason. (Meisner 1967:34) He finds proof in Li’s writing: “Opposition to revolution has the result of promoting revolution…. Those who employ violence will themselves be destroyed by violence and be extinguished in a continuous revolution” (Li Dazhao [1917] 1984g:1/524–7). If Li’s

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views on Chinese culture did not embody a deep-seated hatred for tradition, his political activism, combined with the contemplation of using a revolutionary, radical approach, contained an undeniable animosity toward an important segment of the existing system— the contemporary political situation—as well as a will to struggle against it. By contrast, Chen Duxiu’s intense iconoclasm was very straightforward. He emphasized the confrontation between the admirable modern culture and the rotten tradition, on which he blamed the darkness of China. Typical of his stance was his call for the overthrow of Confucianism, which he regarded as an essential part of Chinese tradition: “Confucianism…, particularly its ethical and political theories, is incompatible with modern culture…. If we do not attack these theories, we cannot improve our politics, law, society and morality and our nation cannot leave darkness for brightness” (Chen Duxiu [1917] 1922b: 3/30). Thus, the militant attitude toward the status quo—the intense hatred of reality, marked by the radicals’ juxtaposition of a bright future and a dark and evil present, and their determination to struggle against the deplorable world—was there before May 1919. Because of the influence of this attitude, frustrated radicals were quick to abandon a peaceful approach to change, which had proved useless, and to see the relevance of the Bolshevik alternative to China. Conclusion From the late 1910s to the early 1920s, when radical intellectuals took on the responsibility to define China’s path to change, some of them chose Communism. Their acceptance of Communism emerged through several stages: the appreciation of socialism; the attraction to, although not necessarily the complete adoption of, the Bolshevik model after the failure of peaceful reform; and the erection of a barrier between Communism and other kinds of socialism through the Communists’ debate with others on the left.11However, it should be noted that their acceptance of Communism began with their confidence in democracy as the route that China’s modernization project should take. Examining further the first two stages of the emergence of Chinese Communism, we find that their multiple commitments to the democratic values of liberty and equality contributed to many radicals’ enthusiasm for, and even conversion to, socialism. Radical intellectuals cherished democracy: they assumed that democratic values were beneficial for China’s national well-being (a “nation-oriented utilitarian” commitment to democracy), for the individual (an “individual-oriented utilitarian” commitment), and for humankind (an “international-cosmopolitan” commitment), and that liberty and equality were possessed of autonomous values (an “autonomous value” commitment). Soon these assumptions led them to identify socialism as the right path to modern China’s transformation, as for them socialism was much more democratic than Western liberal democracies. Moreover, intellectuals’ hatred of the status quo, which was de rigueur during the May Fourth era, played an important role in the radicals’ adoption of the Bolshevik model. Their intense discontent with reality—their determination to combat the status quo, and their stress on the confrontation between the evil present and the bright future—drew them to Communism.12 Further research is needed to discover how revolutionary intellectuals of the later generations dedicated themselves to the Communist cause, or how the commitments to

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democracy and the discontent with the status quo were involved in their conversion. However, it is clear that, during the May Fourth era, the activists molded themselves into leaders of China’s struggle for change through their explanation of the importance of socialism for liberty and equality, their expansion on their commitments to socialism, and their representation of the status quo. By pushing aggressively for socialism and Communism, they showed that they knew what socio-political path China should take. By explaining elaborately their commitments to their cause, they demonstrated that they understood the goals—the strength of the Chinese nation, human happiness in China and on earth, international harmony and fraternity, and the implementation of those values which were autonomously correct—that could be and should be accomplished in the transformative course. By displaying their uncompromisingly critical stance on the status quo, they manufactured the view that drastic measures were essential for effective transformation. In short, from the earliest movements of the Communist revolution, the educated Communists secured for themselves—and the category of revolutionary intellectuals—the prestigious role of historical actors possessing special knowledge about the revolution. In the decades that followed the May Fourth era, the multiple commitments to socialism and militant hostility continued to exist: they became parts of the revolutionary ideology, which employed idealistic values to point up the injustice of the establishment, identified the goals of transformation, developed strategies and measures for the revolution, analyzed the dynamics essential for society and change, and thus provided revolutionary intellectuals with ideas and criteria in their appraisal of themselves and the peasantry. How, from the functional perspective, did the Communist intellectuals invoke their ideological system to narrate themselves in relation to the peasantry? This is the question I shall examine in the following chapters.

3 Manufacturing political leadership I The Yaqian intellectuals and Peng Pai By making themselves into historical agents who possessed knowledge about change, revolutionary intellectuals occupied a privileged position from which to critique those who knew less and thought less about the unacceptable reality of the status quo and China’s historical destiny. On the surface it would seem that the intellectuals’ appropriation of this position virtually guaranteed their elitism. However, their advantageous position co-existed with a strain of anti-elitism that was conspicuous in their intellectual-emotional universe. To understand the elitist self-construction of the revolutionary intellectuals, it is important to learn more about the dialogue of elitism with anti-elitism. In so doing, I focus on the Yaqian intellectuals, Peng Pai, and Mao. I examine the dialogue between these two seemingly contesting trends, by looking into how it was shaped by Communism as a complex system of ideological knowledge which included concepts and theories that explained society, and the organizational/technical practices developed for the advancement of the revolutionary struggle. I begin by examining the late 191 Os and early 1920s, the final years of the May Fourth period, to identify the conditions that created the intellectual-emotional space for this dialogue. I will concentrate on a fundamental theme of the May Fourth intellectuals’ self-construction—that they were political leaders who fervently celebrated the historical agency of the laboring people in general and that of the peasant masses in particular. By focusing on this theme, I highlight the radical intellectuals’ “anti-elitist” invention of the laboring class as subjects of historical transformation against the backdrop of their confidence in themselves as leaders of the same transformative process. This sense of themselves as leaders of a historical process in which the laboring masses acted as active agents for change served as an absolute prerequisite for elitism’s dialogue with antielitism. After all, if radical intellectuals refused to acknowledge the importance of the masses as historical actors, there would be no co-existence of anti-elitism with elitism, and thus no dialogue.

Elitist leaders creating the masses as historical subjects The anti-elitist trend of celebrating the masses as subjects that shape history was bound to germinate in the May Fourth period. 1 The new cosmological knowledge of the radicals helped produce—and also harbored—the anti-elitist questioning of existing hierarchies and their elites, and respect for the lowly and the oppressed. In its democratic version, and particularly in its socialist variant, the radical intellectuals’ envisioning of transformation created and entailed anti-elitism.

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Their envisioning led to merciless criticism of various forms of existing elitism and elitist social structures. People of different intellectual orientations—ranging from folklorists such as Gu Jiegang to socialists like Li Dazhao and Chen Duxiu—all saw the traditional ruling elites as parasites (Meisner 1967:85). For the socialists of the early 1920s, both modern and traditional elites were not only idle but also evil. When Chen Duxiu argued with the anarchists over the importance of the state, he did not forget to accuse capitalists of “utilizing such institutions as the state, and its political and legal systems to oppress the majority,…dehumanizing them” (Chen Duxiu [1920] 1922b:1/541–6). By denouncing the indolent and oppressive classes, radical intellectuals showed compassion for those who suffered in the unjust system. Li Dazhao observed workers’ suffering at the mine in Tangshan: “workers’ existence is even worse than that of donkeys and mules; their lives are even cheaper than those of donkeys and mules” (Li Dazhao [1919] 1984c:1/659). Lamenting the masses’ suffering and criticizing the phenomenon of oppression seemed not to be much different from some traditional Confucian scholars’ sympathy for the suffering commoners. However, through the use of May Fourth-style socialist terminology, radical intellectuals added a kind of revolutionary flavor to their representation of the people’s suffering.2 While such terms as “capitalist(s)” or “parasites” were used to categorize the oppressors’ class identity and characteristics, concepts like “exploitation” served as useful expressions accentuating the experiences of the oppressed. In addition to condemning the exploiters and sympathizing with the exploited, the May Fourth radicals also glorified the laboring people. They stressed the economic creativity of the labor majority. The traditionally disdained “laboring class” was called “sacred” and deified as the nurturing dynamic of the whole universe: “A worker is the same as God,…ungrudging, generous,…and making bread for the people…he is like the sun, possessing mammoth power and generating heat to the earth” (H.M. 1920:540). Writing for the special issue on the labor question in New Youth in 1920, Chen Duxiu celebrated the laboring people in a more down-to-earth manner: “Without laborers we do not have anything to wear, any dwelling place to stay, any food to eat, and any vehicle to travel. How can we survive without them? How can human society function without them?” (Chen Duxiu [1920] 1984:1/521). To locate the context in which the radical intellectuals created the masses as a revolutionary force, Dirlik analyzes how the June Third movement changed intellectuals’ conceptualization of “the laborers.” As Chinese radicals witnessed that laborers in Shanghai struck out against foreign enterprises in support of the May Fourth protest in early June 1919, in their minds the laborers underwent a metamorphosis from objects of sympathy to subjects of their own destiny and history (Dirlik 1989:66). But the elaboration of the masses’ pains, and the emphasis that they were creators of the world, laid important parts of the intellectual-emotional foundation for radical intellectuals’ invention of the laborers as historical actors. The May Fourth radicals stated, or rather hoped, that the Chinese laboring people would, like the laborers of other countries, become a force of change, one which transformed the existing system that subjugated them. When Li Dazhao wrote to celebrate May 1 in the aforementioned special issue, he uttered his wish, “we …will rejoice if our Chinese laborers can identify the May First of this year as a date of their awakening” (Li Dazhao [1920] 1984b:2/230). Writing a report

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on the Shanghai working class amid radical intellectuals’ interest in labor and the laborer, Li Chishan, the editor of New Youth, invoked the voice of workers themselves to express the same wish. In the report, for instance, a worker who supposedly spoke on behalf of those working for the printing industry stated: “the laborers are still slaves. I share our experience with you [the intellectuals] in the hope that we, together with you, can remove all kinds of inequality” (Li Chishan 1920). But how would the masses as a historical force contribute to history? For their own nationalist and internationalist sentiments, the Chinese radicals expressed their grand expectations for the historical role that the masses, the peasants included, were about to play. They expanded on the importance of the laboring majority for the national and world revolution. The Chinese laborers’ struggle for liberation would be essential to China—so they argued. In Li Chishan’s report, a worker told the readers: “when we become dignified [educated and ethical] laborers, [China’s] industrial development will be straightforward” (Li Chishan 1920:641). They also integrated the masses into their grand scheme of world revolution. In explaining why he and his comrades—the members of the Communist study group in Beijing—published the magazine Voice of Labor (Laodong yin), Deng Zhongxia said: “We hope that we can contribute to the Chinese laboring people’s solidarity, and their union with the laborers in other nations. On the basis of this union, the working people can change the world” (Deng Zhongxia [1920] 1983:2). Their celebration of the downtrodden notwithstanding, the May Fourth radicals had, regarding the issue of how the transformative project should be organized, reserved leadership for themselves. Not only did they occupy the advantageous position of judging others, but they also declared that their own leadership was crucial for the mission— democratic or socialist—they had invented. Ironically, despite their anti-Confucian stance, radical intellectuals were, from the onset of their movement, inspired by the image of a Confucian gentleman. Exhorting his comrades to reshape culture and society, Yi Baisha in 1916 quoted a celebrated Confucian phrase: “intellectuals must be bold and intrepid, because their ‘responsibility is heavy and their way is long’” (Yi Baisha 1916:470). The appropriation of this statement revealed his perception of parallels between the traditional “true gentleman” (junzi) and the modern radical intellectuals. Confucian-style elitism persisted as radicals turned to socialism as the vehicle for China’s transformation. Their belief in their political leadership was shaped by what Michael Luk calls traditional “intellectual elitism” (Luk 1990:206–8). But the conviction that they—or their educated com-rades—should be revolutionary leaders was not necessarily couched in Confucian language. While Deng Zhongxia emphasized, as a member of the Communist study group in Beijing, that he and his peers were eager to contribute to the Chinese workers’ solidarity and union with the laborers in other nations, he certainly regarded the revolutionary intellectuals as the force responsible for the awakening of the laboring masses (Deng Zhongxia [1920] 1983:2). By establishing the theme that they were leaders who consecrated the historical agency of the masses, the May Fourth intellectuals opened up an intellectual-emotional space for elitism’s exchange with anti-elitism. Writing in this space, Communist intellectuals built their functional elitism. To unravel the process of their selfconstruction, I focus on the following questions: how, as self-appointed leaders of the project of changing China, did revolutionary intellectuals evaluate their own efficacy in

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working with the revolutionary masses? Did they appear to be critical of their own leadership and thus sound anti-elitist? If yes, what specifically did they criticize? Moreover, I would also like to examine how, as holders of knowledge about the revolution, elitist revolutionary intellectuals evaluated the peasants as a political force upon inventing the peasant masses as historical agents. Evaluation of the peasants—or for that matter, any social contingent—entailed the use of criteria. Communist criteria were derived from different but interrelated sources, including the multiple commitments which drew them to Communism, and the Communist ideology itself. Class-based political struggle is, as we all know, a crucial dimension not only of the worldview but of the organizational/technical dynamics of Communism. For revolutionary intellectuals, the question was how to use the praxis of class revolution dexterously. From the 1920s to the 1940s, to win the peasants’ hearts, to minimize the number of their enemies, or to unite different classes while undertaking the tasks of national unification and anti-Japanese resistance, the Communist intellectuals, not without disagreements among themselves, learned to use flexibly the approach of class struggle as an instrument of non-socialist change. The vicissitudes of historical context, as much research demonstrates, often forced them to adjust their use of this approach. For instance, it is a widely recognized fact that, in the period of the Sino-Japanese War, the Party continued to use an approach of class struggle while allowing the old elite their place, a policy much more moderate than the one in the 1930s (Chen Yung-fa 1986; Esherick 1998). While educated Communists considered an adequate understanding of Marxism—or a mentality congruent with the revolutionary ideology—essential for any revolutionary, the flexible use of class struggle sensitized them to the importance of strategy for the success of revolution. Revolution necessitated strategic and practical know-how and talents, of which the ingenious application of class struggle was only a part. And the struggle against the enemies, complex and hazardous, inevitably demanded moral strength—that is, a deep commitment to the revolutionary cause. Finally, as revolutionary intellectuals appreciated the correct understanding of ideology and, more importantly, the practicalstrategic ability to struggle for the revolution, they emphasized the desirability of intellectual resources and education. Working in the rural area, they faced a peasantry whose miserable condition has been a dominant theme for historians of modern China. The depth of the peasants’ suffering, the nature of their oppression, and their responses to suffering varied according to differences in local conditions (Philip Huang 1990:43; Bernhardt 1992:1–3 and 8–11). But numerous works also show the plight of the Chinese peasants. It is shown that in north China they were trapped in the process of semiproletarianization, struggling for the subsistence of their families and for retaining their small private holdings (Philip Huang 1985:309–10; Ralph Thaxton 1983:109 and 203–7). In other places like Jiangnan, where the Communist mobilization was less effective, the peasants’ discontent with the status quo is also detected (Bernhardt 1992:8–11; Schoppa 1995:91–5). How, believing in the historical agency of the peasantry, did revolutionary intellectuals judge the rural masses against their revolution-oriented—ideological, moral, educational and strategicpractical—criteria?3 And how did they display their anti-elitist appreciation of the peasants when that anti-elitism was never powerful enough actually to challenge elitism? I shall examine these questions in this and subsequent chapters by analyzing in depth the

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Yaqian intellectuals, Peng Pai, and Mao Zedong.4 I will discuss these cases separately, and highlight the ways in which these people indeed appeared comparable in their functional self-construction.

The Yaqian intellectuals Now identified by the Communist Party as the first spark of “Communist-led” peasant defiance against the old socio-economic system, the Yaqian movement was in fact initiated by Shen Dingyi and his young followers. Born into a gentry family in Yaqian in 1883, Shen Dingyi abandoned his official post in Yunan, purchased for him by his father after he had earned a first-level degree in the government examination, and went to Japan in 1907. He joined the Revolutionary Alliance (Tomenghui) in Tokyo. In the earliest years of the Republican period, he became an established member of the Zhejiang provincial assembly, but was forced to move to Shanghai after challenging the military governor of Zhejiang, Yang Shande, who declared independence from the Beijing government in May 1917. In Shanghai, Shen played an active role in arousing the public in the May Fourth protest. He edited the Weekly Review, the office of which, according to Yang Zhihua, operated as a forum for discussion and debates on change (Schoppa 1995:61–4). During this period Shen became increasingly concerned with the issue of class, condemning economic inequity and praising the laborers whose “hands and brains” were instrumental in creating food and clothing as basic elements of culture (Schoppa 1995:76–7). In the spring or summer of 1920, he became a member of the Communist cell in Shanghai. In fall the same year, he returned to his native village, Yaqian, on the border between the areas called “Within the Dike” and “Southern Sands” in Xiaoshan county of Zhejiang province. Southern Sands had, by the end of the 1910s, been suffering from severe land erosion; and to make matters worse, Yaqian was situated in the region of China with the highest concentration of landlords. The landlords demanded various forms of rents, and the harshest one was the requirement of payments before planting (Schoppa 1995:91–6). Upon returning to Yaqian, to implement his ideal of social justice, Shen built the Yaqian elementary school, donating parts of his land to develop the project. His project of rural transformation was undertaken without Party guidance and support. Theoretically, the Communist group in Shanghai, where Shen had come from, recognized the importance of the rural revolution. In The Communist, the official magazine of the Shanghai Communist group, we find the following passage: peasants form the absolute majority of China’s population, and are, thus, destined to occupy an important place in both the preparatory and active stages of the revolution. If they can become class conscious and rise up against class oppression, it is highly probable that our social revolution will succeed, and Communism will become a reality. (Zhonggong Zhejiang shengwei…1987:2)

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But the CCP’s involvement in any localized campaign was insignificant (Luk 1990:168). Shen invited to Yaqian Liu Dabai, a teacher of the First Normal College in Hangzhou, and Xuan Zhonghua, Xu Baiming, Tang Gongxian and Yang Zhihua, who were students there at that time. All were young activists attracted to socialism, and later, except for Liu, became Party members (Zhonggong Zhejiang shengwei ...1987:111–15). Gradually the momentum of a political movement was building. Shen Dingyi offered help to two peasant brothers, Li Chenghu and Li Chengjiao, giving them the monies they needed for the planting season. He then supported the peasants when they became bitter about local merchants’ raising of the price of rice. Beginning in August 1921, Shen and the young school teachers delivered speeches in the area. The Yaqian Peasant Association, founded on September 27, 1921, actually consisted not only of peasants in Yaqian village but also of people from adjacent areas (Zhonggong Zhejiang shengwei…1987:5). As the organization of the peasants swiftly spread to many other villages in Xiaoshan, Xiaoxing and Shangyu, a group of local associations instituted an alliance in November. Their movement focused on achieving a 70 percent rent reduction. Other goals included eliminating the requirement to pay rent before planting, and adopting instead a harvest-based rent system (Schoppa 1995:108). Shen spoke to the provincial assembly about rent reduction for the peasants, and in some villages peasants effectively activated the rent-reduction program. But the landlords successfully solicited the support of the provincial government, and the movement was suppressed in winter 1921 (Zhonggong Zhejiang shengwei…1987:7–8). The Yaqian movement took place before Bolshevization had made any substantial impact on revolutionary intellectuals’ patterns of activism. Therefore, transitory as it was, the Yaqian experience provides a valuable window into the formation of elitism, unfolding at a moment when revolutionary intellectuals had more latitude in imagining the nature of their leadership and the power of the peasantry’s historical agency. The imperfect elite capable of self-criticism and/or self-reform In Yaqian, Shen Dingyi embraced elitism as the organizational principle of the movement, and unabashedly represented himself as the leader. Talking to the peasants in August, he told them: “I want to plan, to endeavor, for you, in order that you can be free from all kinds of suffering” (Shen Dingyi [1921] 1987a:13). But he also emphasized the importance of the peasants as historical actors, contending that their activism was essential for the revolution. In his August speech, he encouraged them to become international, “to unite with the laborers …on earth” (Shen Dingyi [1921] 1987a:16). In the founding speech of the Yaqian Peasant Association, he expressed his nationalist expectation for the masses. “Their awakening,” he said, “is to determine the fate of China” (Shen Dingyi [1921] 1987d:23). How, then, did Shen and his young comrades represent their own leadership vis-à-vis the peasantry, as they were eager to discover and celebrate the rural masses’ historical agency? Shen adopted an anti-elitist posture in his own leadership, in the sense that he tried to de-emphasize his intellectual identity in interacting with the rural people. After he returned to Yaqian in April 1921, he changed his appearance and his rhetorical style when he communicated with the peasant masses. In speeches delivered to the peasants, he spoke in the local dialect (Schoppa 1995:103; Shen Dingyi [1921] 1987a:13).

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Moreover, according to Schoppa, “whenever he spoke to farm groups, he wore the black felt cap popular in the area and the clothes of the farmers” (Schoppa 1995:103). These acts reveal his ability to reflect on the problems his intellectual status could cause, and his use of self-reform as a strategy to tackle them. Others echoed Shen’s interest in self-examination and self-reform. More than a hundred students attended the elementary school built by Shen and the young activist intellectuals, according to Yang Zhihua (Schoppa 1995:97). Not only did Shen’s and his comrades’ role of teachers suggest a keen sense of distinction between those who educated and those to be educated, they also highlighted the difference. While in Shanghai, Shen had written: “We have a population of four hundred million; at least 99 percent of the wasteland and mineral resources in their minds has not been touched.” Education, he stressed, was the tool to cultivate the wasteland and dig out the mineral resources (Schoppa 1995:97). The goal of the Yaqian project, as he and his young comrades put it, was to “eliminate the poverty and ignorance of the majority” (Shen Dingyi [1921] 1987d:23). However, despite their confidence in their commanding role in fighting what they called rural ignorance, these radical intellectuals soon examined themselves critically in an attempt to understand the distance between themselves and the masses. One day, in order to establish an intimate relationship with the village people, two teachers of the elementary school, Wang Guansan and Yang Zhihua, visited several peasant families. Wang Guansan found deplorable his and Yang’s lack of understanding of village life, and he derided his own poetic but inaccurate notion of the countryside, which he had inherited from the literary and philosophical tradition of Chinese literati: “walking in the village, strangely enough we did not hear ‘cocks crowing and dogs barking.’” He observed: “Peasants only raise chickens because they can lay eggs. They did not keep dogs, since dogs have a huge appetite…. Feeding a dog costs a peasant family even more than a burglary does.” He then mocked the traditional literati’s poetic imagining of rural life: “The pastoral scene of ‘cocks crowing and dogs barking’ can exist only in [Tao Qian’s] Peach-blossom spring’” (Wang Guansan [1922] 1987:47). Even more problematic was the intellectuals’ inability to attract the masses to their project of removing “ignorance.” When they were urging the peasants to send their children to school, one old woman told them: “Our boy has to chop wood these days.” Another said that the child of her family had not attended school recently: “The school is far away from our home…. Moreover, whenever I ask him what he has learned from the school, he replies: ‘Here is one cat, and there are two cats’” (Wang Guansan [1922] 1987:46). Wang Guansan emphasized in his report on the visit: “we became embarrassed by listening to this.” Thus, to make their teaching more acceptable to the peasants, the young teachers decided to reorganize the curriculum and teach what the peasants found useful (Wang Guansan [1922] 1987:46). The Yaqian intellectuals sounded anti-elitist by reflecting on their imperfection as intellectuals. But they were, I would argue, anti-elitist in order to be elitist—in order to be effective leaders who were able to communicate with the peasant masses and to institute change that would be appreciated by them. Anti-elitism enabled them to realize and fight their own shortcomings.

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The peasant masses whose defects were discerned by the elite If the Yaqian group established themselves as imperfect leaders capable of self-criticism and self-improvement, they also showed their anti-elitist recognition of the peasants’ historical agency, but at the same time represented the rural masses as a group whose defects were detected by the discerning elite. The intellectuals applied their own criteria in judging the peasants, found the rural people deficient as a historical force for the mission chosen by the intellectuals, and thus confirmed their own leadership. The Yaqian intellectuals elaborated on the peasants’ ideological inadequacy. Although in 1921 Shen Dingyi did not (or rather could not) explain clearly the difference between the proletariat in the Marxist sense and the peasants (Shen Dingyi [1921] 1987c:21–2), and always subsumed the peasants under the generic category of “laborers” (laodongzhe), he did not refrain from criticizing the rural people’s lack of class consciousness. Mobilizing them to join the revolution in August, he told them: “most of the people want to make friends with the capitalists and treat the laborers as enemies. You (the peasants) treat your fellows (other peasants) with disdain, considering them your enemies. This attitude is totally wrong” (Shen Dingyi [1921] 1987a:14–5). And their effort to eliminate “poverty and ignorance” by building a village school certainly reflected their discontent with, and determination to enhance, the peasants’ educational level. In addition, educated organizers of the movement also doubted the peasants’ organizational abilities. In the speech Shen Dingyi gave on September 23, 1921, a few months after the careful preparation and four days before the formal founding of the Yaqian Peasant Association, he advised the peasants against the use of violence, out of the fear that they would lose self-control in the movement: “Please do not rely upon spontaneous violence. This approach will damage our well-organized movement and bring you disorder” (Shen Dingyi [1921] 1987b:20). The founding speech of the Yaqian Peasant Association, written by the radical intellectuals, indicates that they did not expect the uneducated, inferior majority to organize the movement by themselves (Shen Dingyi [1921] 1987d:23). The peasants’ moral fiber, in terms of their loyalty to the movement, was also insufficient—so revolutionary intellectuals found, as they observed the peasants’ responses to the government’s suppression of the peasant association in the winter of 1921. Decades after the movement, Yang Zhihua said: “After [the government suppression], the peasants were frightened, and thus we could only perform our duty as village teachers” (Yang Zhihua [1956] 1987:81). Her recollection is corroborated by another leading organizer, Xuan Zhonghua, who wrote in 1922: “facing tremendous outside pressure or powerful suppression, they [the peasants] will give up their resistance and their own cause” (Xuan Zhonghua [1922] 1987:48). Leaving the radical ranks once they sensed threat and danger, the peasants revealed to educated activists their inadequate resolution and devotion to the just cause. The “weak” image of an outstanding peasant However, while using their ideological, educational, practical and moral criteria to critique the peasants, the Yaqian intellectuals, zealously inventing the peasantry’s

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historical agency, also showed their anti-elitist willingness to pay tribute to the outstanding performance of some peasants. During the movement, the Yaqian intellectuals worked with a few active peasants, including Chen Jinsheng, Shan Xialan and Li Chenghu. All three demonstrated great enthusiasm and suffered for the movement. After the government’s crackdown, Chen was imprisoned by the police, became sick, and died soon after his release. Shan spent three and a half years in prison and died sometime later (Schoppa 1995:113; “Chen Jinsheng” 1987:120; “Shan Xialan” 1987:121). Li Chenghu was, however, recognized by the Yaqian group and its supporters as the most outstanding martyr. Let us explore how the radicals at the time constructed an awe-inspiring image of an outstanding peasant. The first biographies of Li Chenghu were written at the end of January 1922 (“Li Chenghu zhuanlue” [1922] 1987:40; “Li Chenfu xiaozhuan” [1922] 1987:116–19). On February 7, another more elaborate account of his life was published in Awakening (Juewu), the supplement of the Republican Daily News (Minguo ribao), which was then regarded as the Communists’ “guerilla base” within this non-Communist publication (Chen Wangdao [1980] 1987:77). An article, presented as an echo of the second biographical sketch, appeared in this newspaper on February 13 (Lao Mei [1922] 1987:41). Afterwards, radicals continued for years writing articles expressing their respect for him (Deng Zhongxia [1924] 1987:54; Wang Guansan [1924] 1987:55). Representing Li Chenghu, radical intellectuals used their revolutionary criteria to praise this peasant activist (Lao Mei [1922] 1987:41–2; Mao Shoucheng [1929] 1987:59– 61; “Li Chenghu xiaozhuan” [1922] 1987:117). They pointed up his willingness to resist oppression, and his emphasis on the peasants’ initiative as a group, which indicated that he possessed something resembling class consciousness. Their composite accounts of Chenghu go as follows: In 1921, when Shen Dingyi decided to launch the peasant movement in Yaqian, Li was already sixty-eight years old. However, as he was extremely devoted to the movement, he urged everyone to attend the meetings of the peasant association. Moreover, he realized that the peasants should depend upon themselves to rise up. Many peasants from other areas went to Yaqian, expressing their hopes of obtaining a copy of the association program and of meeting Shen Dingyi. Li explained to them the nature of peasant association: “You want to talk to Mr. Shen, assuming that he is the person who initiates the whole event. But actually, this event belongs to us…. You should try to enhance the peasants’ solidarity in your own villages” (Lao Mei [1922] 1987:41–2; “Li Chenghu xiaozhuan” [1922] 1987:117). Furthermore, the revolutionary intellectuals also respected Li’s moral courage—that is, his unshakable loyalty to the movement. According to their account(s), when the landlords and the government decided to suppress the peasant association, most of the peasant members fled to avoid danger. However, Li Chenghu refused to leave. He was arrested. Interrogated by the county magistrate, he bluntly responded: “I am the representative of the peasant association. I fully support the peasant association. And I suggested the 70 percent rent reduction. So now how do you want to deal with me?” He was jailed, and became very sick. But his passion for the movement never faded. On January 24, 1922, his son went to the prison to pay him a visit. After remaining silent for a while, he asked, “Isn’t there anyone else?” (“Li Chenghu xiaozhuan” [1922] 1987:118). He passed away on the same day. They decoded his final question in this way: “He…asked, ‘Isn’t there anyone else?’ After having said this, he passed on the peasants’

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mission to organize themselves to other peasants in the world!” (Lao Mei [1922] 1987:41–2; Mao Shoucheng [1929] 1987:60; “Li Chenghu xiaozhuan” [1922] 1987:118) However, revolutionary intellectuals not only praised but also appraised, wittingly or unwittingly, this outstanding peasant. They were disinclined to portray Li as an intelligent man who was capable of dealing with practical and strategic matters. According to some peasants’ recollections, illiterate and inarticulate, Li could only handle the “internal affairs” of the peasant association (Chen Boren and Xiang Aquan [1983] 1987:92). The radicals’ ideological and moral orientation in celebrating Li was probably related to the fact that Li’s practical contribution to the movement was impaired by his illiteracy and inarticulateness. Moreover, the Yaqian educated radicals observed, comparing Li and others, that possessing ideological correctness and admirable moral quality, Li Chenghu was by no means the norm for the peasants. The revolutionary intellectuals could hardly neglect the contrast between the peasants who fled and the outstanding peasant who, according to them, fought until the last minute of his life. Eulogizing Li Chenghu as an exceptional peasant after his death, a writer could not help emotionally responding to his deathbed question: “Alas! How indignant and sad he is! Is there no one else who is still concerned about the movement?… Is it true that no one else is worried about the peasant movement? So bitter am I that I cannot even cry!” (Lao Mei [1922] 1987:42). Therefore, the image of Li Chenghu, however idealized and indomitable, was far from sufficient to shake their faith that they, but not any peasant activist, were the leading apostles of the revolution. Not yet Leninist: the transitory nature of the revolutionary elite Shen Dingyi and other Yaqian intellectuals appeared elitist, pointing out the defects of the peasantry and the imperfection of even an outstanding peasant. But the fact that they worked at a stage when the authority of Party leadership had not yet made massive inroads into their revolutionary project helped to create their anti-elitist imagining of the distinction between the elite and the masses. While assuming leadership and imploring the peasants to avoid the use of violence on September 23, Shen Dingyi also expressed the view that the peasants should and could save themselves from class oppression. “Self-determination,” he communicated to them, “is the only method you can use in order to survive” (Shen Dingyi [1921] 1987b:20). Shen’s stress on the peasantry’s independence was echoed by Li Dazhao in the 1920s. Meisner points up how, reflecting on the relationship between the Party and the rural masses, Li Dazhao envisioned that the peasant revolution was characterized by a typical “Populist contradiction” (Meisner 1967:251). In Meisner’s analysis, this contradiction lies in the fact that “Li asserted that the peasants must liberate themselves by their own efforts, but he also believed that Communists must perform the vital function of directing and guiding their energies into the proper channels” (Meisner 1967:251). Aside from calling it a “contradiction,” we can also conceptualize what Shen or Li said as rhetoric, used to instigate the rural people or to display the elitist revolutionaries’ modesty—after all, Shen did not plan to give up his role as the leader of the Yaqian movement nor did Li intend to eliminate Party leadership. In this respect, these radicals did not suffer from genuine intellectual self-contradiction: they just appeared to be insincere, if not hypocritical.

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However, even if the intellectuals’ emphasis on the self-determination of the peasantry was only rhetorical, it was an intellectually and emotionally fitting choice of rhetoric in view of the ethos of the time. In the 1920s, still at the very beginning of the Communist movement, when political idealists praised fervently the peasants as subjects of historical transformation, it was not so surprising that they supposed, thinking clearly or hazily, that they could integrate the concept of peasant self-emancipation into their rhetoric. In addition, I would argue that while Li and Shen assumed that revolutionary intellectuals should, for rhetorical or other purposes, introduce to the peasants the idea of peasant independence, they incorporated into the idea a certain “forward-looking” flavor, which indeed demonstrated their understanding that the peasants had yet to learn how to be selfreliant. I would like to conceptualize this emphasis on peasants’ independence— rhetorical or not—as elitist revolutionary intellectuals’ futuristic and anti-elitist idea of self-dethronement. But what was the historical destiny of Chinese Communist intellectuals’ anti-elitist denial of their leadership? It can certainly be argued that the tendency of dethronement seemed to be a possibility doomed to failure. How could the peasantry appear to be capable of independence when Communist intellectuals thought that they themselves possessed superior knowledge about the revolution? First, they judged the peasantry by using their own criteria. Second, the Communist movement was a fluid process. Situated in an ever-changing historical context, Party leadership, dominated by different individuals as time passed, favored dissimilar strategies and policies. In response to these variations, the revolutionary intellectuals’ expectations of the peasantry changed, and so did the demands they made on it. It was, in other words, virtually impossible for the peasants to look adequate by revolutionary intellectuals’ elastic standards. Third, what in particular made future-oriented anti-elitism unpromising was the ultimate goal of the CCP’s revolution. From the beginning of the Communist movement, realizing that their revolution could not directly advance toward the socialist stage, the Communist intellectuals divided the revolution into the present and future phases. The CCP’s manifesto, produced in 1922, specified the so-called minimum and ultimate programs (danggang): the former was considered to be the democratic revolution, and the ultimate program was about the construction of a Communist society (Zhonggong zhongyang dangshi yanjiushi 1987:17). Very much like other Communist leaders, the Yaqian intellectuals clearly distinguished between the short-term goals of the movement and the ultimate goal of the revolution. Treating rent resistance and rent reduction as preliminary targets in the Communist revolution, Shen Dingyi told the peasant unequivocally that the primary aims of the revolution were “to eliminate private ownership of property and to establish a new system of public ownership” (Shen Dingyi [1921] 1987b:20). In light of these fundamental goals, it was hard for the leading radicals in Yaqian or elsewhere to trust that the peasants supportive of rent reduction and resistance were ideologically correct and committed to socialism. However, it is a real and important fact that some revolutionary intellectuals had once been willing to state that their leadership was only temporary. Leninism, as existing scholarship demonstrates, showed “a basic distrust in the ability of any man to outgrow his ‘spontaneous’ elemental impulses, and to act in accord with the dictates of his ‘consciousness’ without the guidance, and the restraint, of the Party and its organizations” (Meisner 1967:206). In his famous pamphlet, What is to be Done?, Lenin

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argued that a socialist consciousness had to be brought to the workers from outside. In other words, the intervention of intellectuals was essential (White 2001:58–61).5 However, Yaqian elitism obviously did not treat the presence of the elite as an “eternally unavoidable” principle in the revolution. To understand how Leninist-style elitism took roots in the revolution, we must think about how the Communist intellectuals forsook their non-elitist version of elitism. This I intend to do in my analysis of Peng Pai.

Peng Pai (1922–1929) Peng Pai was born in 1896 into one of the wealthiest families in Haifeng country of Guangdong province. As a student in the local Luan Normal School, he became rebellious. In 1916 he protested against the local gentry’s plan to placate a hostile official by building a statue of him. He left China for Japan and was admitted to Waseda University, where he was further radicalized in both national and international terms. He was active in the “May Fourth” protest, which took place on May 7, 1919, in Tokyo. He joined and then founded socialist organizations on campus, working with Korean and Japanese radicals and demonstrating with Japanese workers. Upon graduation in 1921, he returned to China and became a member of the Guangdong Socialist Youth Corps, organized by Chen Duxiu. Keenly interested in using education to transform China, he accepted the position of county education commissioner of Haifeng. He was, however, dismissed in spring 1922 for his interest in mass mobilization (Marks 1984:171–2). Peng wasted no time in founding the Red Heart Weekly (Chixin zhoukan). More importantly, he initiated the peasant movement in his native place. What Peng Pai encountered was a Haifeng where peasants struggled to survive with no written tenancy contract, and thus were subjected to the landlords’ unscrupulous practice of raising rents (Marks 1984:149; Galbiati 1985:105). In collecting rents, the landlords maximized their gains by using devices called “wind machines” (fengche), “wind boxes” (fenggui) and “big fans” (dashan), which “winnowed the good kernel from the light or empty husk” (Galbiati 1985:106). They also increased their measure of grain by compressing the rice, pounding it with the squared, short stick employed to level the rice in the large measure (Galbiati 1985:106). With the support of a few young peasants, Peng founded a Poor Peasant Party (pinnong dang). By October 1922, “more than ten regions had set up regional unions” (Galbiati 1985:118), and Peng organized the Haifeng County General Peasant Association on January 1, 1923, which became the basis for the Guangdong Province General Peasant Association in the summer of the same year (Peng Pai [1926] 1981a:136–7). Guangzhou was, in the early part of the 1920s, an important political center. Here the Communists held their Third Congress, approved the United Front, and agreed that the CCP members join the Guomindang. After the formation of the United Front, Peng Pai also entered another interesting stage of his political life. In April 1924, he joined the Communist Party. The CCP arranged for him to become Secretary of the Agriculture Department of the GMD. In addition, the GMD appointed him director of the Peasant Movement Training Institute (PMTI) (Cai Luo et al. 1986:237 and 245). In the same year, he began to write his famous report on the Haifeng Peasant Movement, which would be published in The Chinese Peasants (Zhongguo nongmin) in 1926 and used by

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Mao as a textbook in the PMTI in Wuhan. The next year, as Chiang Kai-shek openly suppressed the Communists, and the White Terror swept Guangdong, he told his older brother Hanyuan to prepare a military uprising in Haifeng on the basis of the CCP-led Self-defense Corps, which was regarded as the strongest military force in the area (Marks 1984:235). He was away from Guangdong at the time, attending the Fifth Congress of the CCP in Wuchang, where he was elected a member of the CCP’s Central Committee. After participating in the Nanchang uprising, Peng returned to Haifeng, and then coordinated with the Red Army, which went to Hailufeng after its retreat from Nanchang. The peasants took Haifeng city on November 1, 1927, and their leaders instituted a Provincial Revolutionary Government, a step leading to the formal proclamation of the Haifeng Soviet of Workers, Peasants and Soldiers three weeks later (Marks 1984:249). Representing the CCP’s Central Committee in that area, and serving as the head of the Party’s East River Regional Committee (Marks 1984:253), Peng, despite not occupying any official post in the formal government structure of the soviet, was in control. The revolutionary government intended to go beyond the goal of rent reduction, destroying the landlords and undertaking land revolution. The Hailufeng area was reoccupied by the GMD in March 1928 (Cai Luo et al. 1986:202–3), and Peng was forced to flee to Shanghai in November of that year. After working underground for a while, he was arrested by the government and executed in 1929 at 33. A revolutionary intellectual who “de-intellectualized” himself Going to the rural areas to mobilize the masses was obviously an act that revealed Peng’s belief in the peasantry’s historical agency. In his early writings, he implored the oppressed of China to rise up against the capitalists, the bureaucrats, and the warlords, stressing that their defiance would not only change China but also contribute to the betterment of the whole world (Peng Pai [1921] 1981b:3–7; [1923] 1981c:27). He also argued, however, that the advocacy of socialism was the mission of the intellectuals. In June 1922, he encountered the attack that, coming from a wealthy family, he was not the right person to promote socialism. “Honestly,” he retorted, “we need those who eat white rice and live in foreign-style buildings to speak for socialism.” It was because, according to him: “they have the chance to receive a better education, and are more knowledgeable…. They should be awakened to truth and principles in a quicker and more thorough manner!” (Peng Pai [1922] 1981a:9). But Peng, like the Yaqian intellectuals, was a self-appointed leader who, in an antielitist manner, was critical of his own intellectual identity. He, too, believed that the renunciation of one’s intellectual style was indeed a good thing. This was shown in a letter he wrote to his good friend Li Chuntao in June 1923, a few months after launching the peasant movement. In the letter he described briefly his plan to build peasant organizations beyond Haifeng, and proudly declared: “I find myself becoming more and more ‘de-intellectualized’!” (wu zhishi jieji hua) (Peng Pai [1923] 1981d:32). A couple of years later, in the Haifeng report, he expanded on what he meant. A socialist intellectual who wanted to help the masses, he was frustrated that his revolutionary magazine, Red Heart Weekly, seemed unable to excite them (Peng Pai [1926] 1981a:111). When he approached the peasants in a village in the Chishan area, his effort to communicate with them was not received with enthusiasm. Dressed in his clean,

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white student uniform, his overtures only elicited distrust from the rural people. To this man who expressed an intention of “making friends and chatting with the peasants,” one peasant said, “I am too busy to chat,” and another responded, “I am too lowly to be your friend” (Peng Pai [1926] 1981a:112). He was, like his Yaqian predecessors, determined to be anti-elitist so as to lead more successfully. To gain acceptance in the peasant community, Peng dissected himself critically and decided to reshape his image, putting on attire which was “less flashy” and abandoning his “cultivated” (wenya) linguistic style (Peng Pai [1926] 1981a:114). He also realized that he should familiarize himself with the rhythm of the peasants’ everyday life in order to be a good mobilizer (Peng Pai [1926] 1981a:112–16). In addition, Peng Pai stressed in his report, just as Wang Guansan did, that revolutionary intellectuals should be attuned to peasant life and give what the peasants wanted in ensuring the success of their movement. Attacking the Westernized educational system as “expensive” and “useless,” he set up a peasant school tailored to the peasants’ needs, teaching them such skills as bookkeeping and letter writing, and excitedly found that peasants were all for his idea of “peasant education’” (Peng Pai [1926] 1981a:124). A “de-intellectualized” leader’s appraisal of the revolutionary peasantry Aside from criticizing himself for self-improvement, Peng also scrutinized the peasants to pinpoint problems that needed to be corrected. Upon returning from Japan to Haifeng, Peng, like Sheng Dingyi and many other radicals, failed to define clearly who the peasants or proletarians were (Peng Pai [1921] 1981a:1). But radicals’ ideological knowledge of classes did evolve quickly. Only one year after the tragic Yaqian campaign, Xuan Zhonghua, one of the chief organizers of the Yaqian movement, explicitly favored the proletariat for its superior capacity for collective action without denying the peasantry’s political capacity (Xuan Zhonghua [1922] 1987:48). And Peng in the same year also agreed to the Marxist notion of proletarian solidarity. But he also emphasized the merits of the peasantry as a force of change: “unlike factory workers, the peasants do not have any training as a collective entity. However, they are loyal and upright; they can be committed to their own class” (Peng Pai [1922] 1981b:11). He discovered the special contribution the peasant could make to the Marxist movement: while the landlords could not be alert to the movement of the peasants because of physical distance, the capitalists could easily detect the workers’ activities. Whereas the workers found it difficult to take over the machines in the capitalists’ factories, the peasants were in a more convenient position to gain control of the land (Peng Pai [1922] 1981b:11). Nevertheless, throughout his political career, Peng wrote persistently about the deficiencies of the peasants. He was always aware of the peasants’ problematic moral qualities. At first glace it would seem that he was not unhappy with all peasants. Sometimes he explicitly refused to treat the peasantry as a homogeneous group, instead criticizing one segment of it. For instance, when he pointed up the absence of revolutionary zeal among landed peasants in a letter to Li Chuntao, written on February 9, 1923, eleven days before the founding of the Haifeng Peasant Association, he observed: “Everywhere [in Haifeng] those who have agreed to join are tenants. Landed peasants hardly join” (Peng Pai [1923] 1981b: 24). But he also tended to criticize the peasants as a collective. In his Report on the Haifeng Peasant Movement, written a few

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years later, Peng interpreted what he saw in the rural world and in his earliest encounters with the peasants. He did not deny that the peasants had a will to resist, acknowledging that unemployed and impoverished peasants had revolted in 1895 by relying on the Triad Society, the underground organization that had been influential in the area in the nineteenth century. However, while lamenting that these secret groups were first used and then stamped out by the 1911 “bourgeois revolutionaries,” he basically regarded the rural people themselves as timid and obedient. In his report he characterized their culture as “the culture of the slave.” “The peasants,” he said, “regard resistance…as a crime, obedience…a virtue. They dislike the new education that destroys the explanatory power of geomancy and urges them to reject their fate” (Peng Pai [1926] 1981a:109–10). Peng Pai kept this distrust of the peasants’ rebelliousness virtually until the end of his life. In 1926, the CCP identified the “poor peasants,” referring mainly to tenants but sometimes to hired farmers as well, as the main force of the land revolution. This emphasis on the pivotal role of poor peasants remained a permanent feature of the Party’s peasant strategy (Luk 1990:172). Echoing the Party’s official declaration of the political trustworthiness of the poor peasants, and probably still embracing his own long-existing tendency to evaluate different categories of the peasantry, Peng wrote in 1929, after the collapse of the soviet: “As people of no private property, [farm laborers’] devotion to revolution is particularly firm” (Peng Pai [1929] 1981b:319). Although this positive view on hired farm laborers seemed to stress the distinction between the landless and others, Peng’s remark on the people’s response to the downfall of the soviet suggested that he was disappointed in the peasants as a group. He observed that “after failure the masses usually become inert and pessimistic” (Peng Pai [1929] 1981a:295).6 Peng seemed to suppose, though he did not explicitly declare, that insufficient courage and determination were intertwined with ideological flaws. The peasants, according to Peng Pai, were inadequate in terms of ideology. He had, as early as 1923, evinced his dissatisfaction with their ideological faultiness in a manifesto, written by him to assert rural society’s right to survival amid the power struggles among established leaders, warlords included, in Guangdong. In the manifesto, the “peasants” criticized themselves as follows: “The warlords’ and the bureaucrats’ exploitation and corruption are caused by us the ordinary folks in general and the peasants in particular.” It was because, Peng spoke for them, they failed to see injustice for what it was (Peng Pai [1923] 1981c:27). In February 1926, reading a report to peasant representatives in a meeting in Shantou, Guangdong, Peng reflected on the peasants’ performance in various counties located in eastern Guangdong, including Haifeng, Lufeng, Puning and Chao’an, and emphatically deplored the fact that the peasants were still influenced by localism and familism (Peng Pai [1927] 1981a:273). During his stay in Shanghai after the fall of the soviet, contemplating how the rural revolution could have been developed, he wrote “Outline of our Work with the Rural Hired Laborers” (gunong). Praising this group, which he called “the rural proletariat,” as the leading force in the rural revolution, he contrasted them with “other” peasants: they were less problematic ideologically, he believed, while the others lacked class consciousness, were deeply attached to the notion of private property and entrenched in localism and feudalism (Peng Pai [1929] 1981b:319). Peng elaborated on the peasants’ lack of education as well. At the earlier stage of the movement, possibly still under the influence of his preference for using education as a tool of transformation, he sounded painfully aware of the peasants’ ignorance. In his

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view, the lack of education caused incompetence. Introducing the agenda of the Haifeng association in January 1923, he looked down upon Chinese peasants’ intellect so much so that he even assumed that memorizing the term “soviet” was too much for them. He said: Originally, I wanted to take the organizational method of the Soviet as a model. However, I did not have a thorough understanding of the nature of the Soviet. In addition, taking into account the fact that most of the peasants are uneducated and simple-minded, I was anxious about whether they could memorize this difficult, unfamiliar term. (Peng Pai [1923] 1981a:17) In addition, he imagined how the peasants’ lack of education created ideological deficiency. In the Haifeng report, representing his memories about his interaction with the peasants at the earlier stages of the movement, he insisted that as long as they remained uneducated, the peasants could not understand the language of the revolutionary intellectuals: When we mentioned to them how imperialism and warlordism do serious damage to China and asked for their view of this issue, they responded in this traditional manner: “There will not be peace and stability under heaven if the true king does not come along.”…When we tried to explain such problems as poverty, suffering and exploitation, most of them said, “it is because of our fate.” (Peng Pai [1926] 1981a:109) While it seems that Peng gradually became less explicit about the peasants’ ignorance, the way in which he spoke to the peasants still betrayed clearly his assumption that peasants could not understand complicated concepts. When the soviet was founded, the Haifeng Representative Assembly met from November 18 to November 20, 1927. Among the 311 representatives, about 200 were peasants and the others were workers and soldiers. Reading a report to them, Peng also attempted to explain the internationalist message of Marxism. His explanation, however, took the form of story-telling: “Mr. Marx used his telescope, clearly observing [the capitalists’ exploitation of the workers].” “Therefore,” Peng continued, “he organized a Communist Party which leads the workers and the peasants all over the world to struggle with the rich. He did not pay attention to national boundaries” (Peng Pai [1927] 1981c:284). Assessing outstanding peasants and envisioning peasant independence An elitist radical who was eager to represent the peasants as agents of change, Peng Pai was, however, also apt to extol peasant power. It is likely that his enthusiasm for depicting peasant activists as impressive historical actors was reinforced by his less-thanfavorable situation as a young revolutionary. Attempting to develop the project of rural transformation, he encountered greater difficulty than Shen did. Although Shen Dingyi’s aggressive actions, such as his support for Li Chenghu’s destruction of his brother-inlaw’s rice shop (Zhonggong Zhejiang shengwei...1987:3), were destined to arouse anger

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among his relatives, he still had enough authority to “revolutionize” his own family, distributing money among the Shen family’s tenants (Zhonggong Zhejiang shengwei...1987:8). As a junior member of his own family, Peng was, compared with Shen, forced to face much greater opposition from his family members and relatives. “Knowing that I was determined to initiate a peasant movement,” Peng recounted in 1926, writing his celebrated report, “all my family members except my third and fifth brothers hated me. My eldest brother felt that he could hardly appease his wrath without killing me. The people of my lineage and in my native village also detested me” (Peng Pai [1926] 1981a:112). Unfortunately, family disapproval co-existed with Peng’s relative solitude among his peers. Unlike Shen Dingyi, who successfully rallied young radicals’ support, Peng was only an unestablished young man whose idea of a peasant movement failed to draw support from other intellectual activists. According to Peng, his local friends were all opposed to his plans, telling him that “you are wasting your time attempting to organize the peasants who are so disorderly, uneducated, ignorant, and indifferent to your messages” (Peng Pai [1926] 1981a: 111). It is true that he enjoyed some support from the friends he made in Japan. And he was, later, assisted by a very effective young intellectual called Li Laogong. But his subjectivity was marked by a deep sense of loneliness. Consequently, he expressed his anxiety about the lack of comrades time after time. He wrote to Li Chuntao, pouring out his feelings: “I am most worried about the problem that I have so few comrades. Even in my dreams I try to search for comrades” (Peng Pai [1923] 1981d:32). He wrote to Liu Renjing, a leading member of the Socialist Youth Corps, asking the Socialist Youth Corps and the Communist Party to send more comrades to the villages (Peng Pai [1924] 1981a:54). This plea revealed Peng’s craving for help from outside the villages and his hope for the cooperation of the relatively welleducated activists connected to the SYC and the CCP.7 The scarcity of support probably conditioned Peng Pai to be more sensitive to the good qualities possessed by those sincerely willing to help. Hence, whenever he found some peasants’ actions and suggestions useful or admirable, he did not hesitate to praise them. “In the summer of 1922,” Peng Pai told Li Chuntao, “as a solitary individual, I went to the village to struggle single-handedly.” The first group of comrades he found were all peasants (Peng Pai [1923] 1981b:22). His Report on the Hailufeng Movement offers us much information on his view of the peasants he considered outstanding. In the fifth section of the report, Peng tells how his first peasant comrade, Zhang Ma’an, impressed him. For two weeks in the late spring of 1922, Peng Pai kept delivering speeches to the peasants in front of the Longshan temple, which faced the main thoroughfare in the area. And on one of those days, he was, as usual, explaining to the peasants the connection between solidarity and the development of the rent reduction movement. He recalled: a middle-aged peasant shouted to me in a rough, hostile manner: “You are lying!... I will not believe you unless your family’s Minghe Estate does not press us to pay rent.” Just when I intended to answer his question, a young peasant beside me stood up and argued with this angry man: “You are wrong. If the Minghe Estate will reduce its rent, you are the only person who benefits. What about me? I do not rent the land of Minghe.

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Here, we are not discussing the question how to beg for rent reduction; we are talking about the principle of solidarity.... Today we are not coping with personal problems, but the problems of the majority.” (Peng Pai [1926] 1981a:115) Excited at hearing this argument from the young peasant, whose name was Zhang Ma’an, Peng immediately said to himself, “here comes a comrade.” Calling Zhang his comrade, Peng was struck by this peasant’s clear differentiation of personal problems and issues of the majority. Through this first comrade, he came to know other young peasants who, according to Peng, believed in his messages and argued with “the villagers still asleep” (Peng Pai [1926] 1981a:115). Talking to Zhang Ma’an’s awakened friends, Peng garnered many good suggestions, which made him realize how intelligent some peasants could be (Peng Pai [1923] 1981b:22). One of them, Li Laosi, even proposed founding a union. He asked: “do you people agree not to dissolve the union if other people do not want to join?” (Peng Pai [1926] 1981a:116). Thus, these few peasants, together with Peng Pai, formed a union of six people (liuren nonghui).8 It is unclear whether Peng regarded their initiative to found the peasant association as a sign of courage. However, Peng obviously appreciated Zhang’s (and perhaps other active peasants’) aptitude for transcending personal considerations and his awakening to the need for solidarity. In addition, he was also rather impressed by his peasant comrades’ practical abilities. He found them “improving so rapidly that they could even make speeches by themselves” (Peng Pai [1926] 1981a:117). In comparison with the Yaqian intellectuals’ eulogy to Li Chenghu, Peng’s praise of the outstanding peasants’ qualities was more comprehensive. But recognizing their laudable traits in various respects, he still remembered well the problems he detected in his admirable comrades. In 1926, writing the Haifeng report, he described vividly that Zhang Ma’an and Li Pei, because of the opposition of their families to their support for the peasant movement, became frustrated and quite passive not long after their participation in propaganda work. Only after Peng had solved this problem “with” them could they concentrate on their work (Peng Pai [1926] 1981a:117). Moreover, the contrast between the outstanding minority and the ordinary majority was sharp for Peng, just as it was clear for the Yaqian group. How could he forget his first five comrades’ eagerness to found a union, as he described, just two paragraphs later in the same report, most of the peasants’ hesitation to join? Peng even added to the disparity the dimension of intelligence. At the beginning of his revolutionary career, he had realized that there were “a few intelligent individuals among the peasants” (Peng Pai [1922] 1981b:11). This view demonstrates both a revolutionary’s openmindedness in appreciating the talent of the peasants and his understanding that smart peasants were unusual indeed. It seems safe to say, therefore, that although in Peng Pai’s writings outstanding peasants looked more versatile as historical actors, their images were not yet sufficient to challenge the elitism of revolutionary intellectuals. However, as a young elitist radical who relied heavily upon the support of peasant activists despite his awareness of the defects shown by his impressive peasant comrades, Peng was eager to show his confidence in the peasants’ political potential. A few months after the founding of the first peasant association, the Chishan Peasant Association, in the Hailufeng area, Peng wrote to Li Chuntao expressing his non-Leninist confidence that the

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peasants could gradually evolve into a class with sophisticated class consciousness: “There are some intelligent people among them (the peasants). The peasants are devoted to the peasant association. Their class consciousness is developing. Gradually, they can consolidate their own class” (Peng Pai [1922] 1981b:11). Peng also explained to the peasants that they formed a self-determined revolutionary force. A self-proclaimed and powerful leader of the movement, he did not emphasize his own authority but rather strenuously concentrated on the importance of the peasants’ united struggle for self-emancipation. In August 1923, the Haifeng Peasant Association was disbanded and some peasant activists were arrested by the county magistrate, Wang Zuoxin. When the peasants were, under Peng’s leadership, able to save these people from the county prison, he pointed out for them the reason for the victory: “This success has nothing to do with Peng Pai’s and others’ abilities as individuals…. Our comrades’ release from prison is the result of your struggle to help, to save yourselves” (Peng Pai [1926] 1981a:174–5). Therefore, like Shen Dingyi, Peng also expressed the futureoriented idea of self-dethronement.9 As a revolutionary desperately in need of help, Peng, although aware of the peasants’ defects, was inclined to appreciate the peasants’ merits. However, in the last few years of his revolutionary life (from 1927 to 1929), his elitist self-image was changing, and his stress on peasant independence waning. Becoming a Bolshevik? This is not to suggest that Peng’s change was sudden and absolute. In 1926, speaking to the CCP’s Central Committee, which was reluctant to lead the peasants in their radical demand for land, Peng passionately represented the peasantry not only as a class capable of overcoming its own weakness but also as one essential for the Chinese revolution (Marks 1984:217). In addition, in the mid-1920s, Peng apparently had not yet given up on the practice of emphasizing to the peasants the importance of self-salvation. In fact, he implored his comrades to do the same (Marks 1984:226). It is also clear, however, that in this stage of his career, he became gradually accustomed to the promotion of CCP leadership. But why? We can pay some attention to his experiences in the peasant movement. In 1928, writing a report on the Peasant Congress held in the Dongjiang area, the special committee of that region, a team led by Peng, described the behavior of the peasant representatives in the congress with a considerable degree of discontent. “As representatives,” the committee was dismayed at what it saw, “they did not have any spirit.” The report then continued: “They were late for the meeting every day…. They only enjoyed chatting at the places where they stayed or looking around in the streets…. When they attended the meeting, their behavior was not good either. Some were chatting; some were sleeping” (Peng committee believed that “the representatives could not represent the majority Pai et al. [1928] 1981:30–1). Perhaps consoling themselves, the members of the of peasants” (Peng Pai et al. [1928] 1981:31). Continuously noting peasant deficiency amid his burgeoning consciousness of the Party’s authority, he let his ideal of peasant autonomy languish. However, to explain his change, we must look at Peng’s relationship with the CCP, which went through critical development in the 1920s. As a revolutionary concerned

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about the lack of comrades, Peng, after having joined the CCP in 1924, may have sensed the bountiful talent the Party possessed. He also enjoyed opportunities to communicate with other eminent Party members such as Deng Zhongxia (Wu Ming [1937] 1981:354). In 1927, when he became a member of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, in Wuchang, he inter-acted with other leading Party members. In the summer of that year, together with Li Lisan, Yun Daiying, Zhou Enlai and others, he organized the Nanchang uprising. It must be noted that his interaction with them took place from the mid-to the late 1920s, a time when leading Communists were building a Bolshevik Party characterized by the authority of the Party as an organization greater than the sum of its members.10 It is not so surprising, therefore, that working amid the Bolshevization process, Peng’s elitist self-image evolved into one emphasizing Party leadership vis-à-vis the masses. Two days before the founding of the soviet, on behalf of the Party’s central leadership, Peng delivered a speech in the inauguration ceremony of the Haifeng Congress of Workers, Peasants and Soldiers (Cai Luo et al. 1986:247). He told the masses: If we (the masses) want to eliminate all kinds of suffering, we should rise up and support the Chinese Communist Party. At present, we should support the CCP’s important task—land revolution…. The Party leads us to rise up and overthrow the reactionary government, and the reactionary army. The Party also guides us to kill all the bad landlords and gentry members, to burn all the title deeds, and to remove all the boundaries [which indicate the ownership of land]! (Peng Pai [1927] 1981b:281) Intended to excite the masses, this speech was one in which the pronouncement of peasant independence was curiously wanting. Peng was now an elitist revolutionary in the sense that he upheld the Party’s authority. The masses should, of course, rise up against old practices and systems, but they should also subordinate themselves to the leadership of the Party in order to save themselves. Even if Peng’s previous point of the rural people’s self-salvation was purely rhetorical, the unwillingness to exploit an old rhetoric involved more than a rhetorical change. In addition to spotlighting the CCP leadership facing the masses, he also showed his acceptance of Party leadership in his more serious reflection on political issues. In “Outline of our Work with the Rural Hired Laborers,” written in 1929, Peng clearly revealed the Party-centered elitism’s grip on his mind. In the article, he praised hired laborers’ revolutionary characteristics. However, it was the Party’s responsibility to “use the hired laborers’ proletarian consciousness to overcome the peasants’ petit bourgeois consciousness,…parochialism, and familism,” to “help the rural hired laborers to organize, to further educate them, train them, and to enhance their proletarian consciousness” (Peng Pai [1929] 1981b:321–2). Not only did Peng now refuse to mention the peasants’ self-salvation; he also was inclined to judge them by socialist standards. Whereas Shen Diyi organized a rent reduction and resistance movement in Yaqian in 1921, dreaming of the ultimate goal of abolishing private property, Peng Pai from late 1927 basically agreed with the central Party leadership’s enthusiasm for the Leninist idea of nationalization (Shi Shunjin

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1981:3/44), thereby foreseeing an imminent transition from democratic revolution to socialist revolution. To be sure, his willingness to cater to the peasants’ demand for land has been well documented. In the Hailufeng Soviet, the revolutionary government distributed land among the peasants, and gave them certificates validating their right to work on the land (Tong Yumin 1980:2/63). According to Marks and Galbiati, the land revolution unfolding in the Haifeng Soviet was far from socialist, and the land certification “did represent a real right of possession” (Marks 1984:253–8; Galbiati 1985:291). But Peng talked about land nationalization as an imminent goal (Peng Pai [1927] 1981b:281). When he discussed the historical role of hired hands in 1929, he showed the same preoccupation with a forthcoming socialist revolution (Peng Pai [1929] 1981b:316–22). After founding a soviet in which peasants were unwilling to burn title deeds, destroy the demarcation of their holdings, and accept land redistribution (Galbiati 1985:291–2), he did not hesitate to label critically ordinary peasants’ commitment to the concept of private property as “petit bourgeois” (Peng Pai [1929] 1981b:319). Not even “the rural proletariat” could be self-reliant—in the stage of the democratic revolution, they operated under the leadership of the Party. And in Peng’s writing, their “leadership” vis-à-vis the peasants in the socialist revolution hardly deserved the name of independence: the hired laborers should follow the examples of the urban—and thus authentic—proletarians, who contributed to the socialist revolution. And the revolution was identified, or rather “scheduled,” by the Communist intellectuals as an essential step that both “rural” and “urban” proletariat were destined to take after the democratic revolution (Peng Pai [1929] 1981b: 320). In addition to accentuating Party leadership over the peasants, Peng also tended to give prominence to the CCP’s reign over revolutionary intellectuals. This sounds surprising if we take into account Peng’s own independence from the CCP leadership. Not only did he initiate the peasant movement in the early 1920s by himself, but he had also intended to retain his autonomy after joining the Party. Attending the Second Plenum of the Central Committee of the CCP in summer 1926, Peng was disappointed in the central leadership’s intention of upholding Northern Expedition, which required rural harmony and de-emphasized revolutionary struggle as the primary goal.11 Believing that this policy brushed aside the peasants’ economic interests in drastic rent reduction and land ownership, he did not hesitate to criticize the CCP openly (Marks 1984:194–229; Galbiati 1985:266–7). Moreover, although the CCP had the authority to plan the goals and structure of the soviet, both internal and external sources point out that Peng’s activities in Guangdong were beyond Party control (Marks 1984:227 and 253). At the same time, however, Peng deferred to Party leadership. In 1926, when he lectured in front of a group of young educated activists on how they should behave in the rural areas at the Guangzhou Peasant Movement Training Institute, he set off, according to the notes taken by a student called Feng Wenjian, by laying stress on revolutionary intellectuals’ obedience to the CCP. He then advised that they must use colloquial language, and be modest, understanding and patient dealing with their rural followers (xiabu) (Peng Pai [1926] 1981b:196). Peng, therefore, transmuted the educated radicals’ praxis of self-criticism/self-reform—his own and that of earlier intellectuals—into the particular responsibilities of intellectuals as defined by the Party. In so doing, he externalized and institutionalized a theme originating in revolutionary intellectuals’ own concern for their communion with the masses.

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Conclusion The May Fourth radicals created a space for elitism’s dialogue with anti-elitism: they attacked existing elitisms and elitist social structures; they empathized with the oppressed masses; they glamorized the laboring people; they imagined the masses as a revolutionary force; and they represented themselves as leaders who embraced the masses’ historical agency Both the Yaqian intellectuals and Peng Pai wrote in that space. Shen Dingyi and his young comrades launched a peasant movement in Yaqian in 1921. Treating elitism as the organizational principle of their campaign, they examined and transformed themselves in order to be good leaders. Endorsing the peasant masses’ historical agency, they evaluated the peasantry as a revolutionary force. While they were impressed with Li Chenghu, they did not let the image of an outstanding peasant challenge their own leadership status. But they were not yet Leninists, as they expressed the view that the peasants should and could become an independent revolutionary force. Peng Pai launched the peasant movement in his native area, in Haifeng, in 1922. Like the Yaqian intellectuals, he was an elitist radical critical of himself in order to work with the masses more effectively. A young radical yearning for support, he applauded the performances of peasant activists with enthusiasm. However, not only did he write substantially on the peasants’ defects as revolutionaries, but he was also well aware of active peasants’ inadequacies. Although at the early stage of his career he stressed the peasantry’s future independence in the revolution, he gradually sounded increasingly like a Bolshevik, stressing the authority of the Party What the Yaqian intellectuals and Peng Pai created was a form of elitism engaging with anti-elitism. This type of elitism did not boast of revolutionary intellectuals’ faultlessness. Instead, it represented them as imperfect leaders who nevertheless were able to confront and correct their problems—namely, their alienation from the rural people and their ignorance of rural reality. This type of elitism acknowledged the peasantry as a force shaping history, but molded them into deficient historical subjects whose defects were keenly sensed by the educated elite. In this form of elitism, although outstanding peasants were allowed to become historical actors of heroic proportion, they were denied that capacity for challenging the radical intellectuals’ leadership. However much they celebrated the peasantry’s historical agency, and endorsed the centrality of intellectuals’ leadership for the revolution, the Yaqian intellectuals’ and Peng’s elitism emphasized the temporary nature of educated radicals’ leadership. Chinese radical intellectuals’ notion of self-dethronement parallels but at the same time differs from Gramsci’s theory on the elite. A theorist drawn to the utopian leanings of Marxism, Gramsci, while employing the elitist principle in his historical interpretations of movements and revolutions, idealistically but unsurely aspired to the withering of the elite in the post-revolution state (Finocchiaro 1999:99–105). His elitism was, in Finocchiaro’s words, “limited to the past” (Finocchiaro 1999:99). He believed that the revolutionary Party that fought for true equality should also strive for the vanishing of its own leadership. He stated: “a revolutionary party will only achieve selffulfillment when it ceases to exist because classes, and therefore their expressions, no long exist” (Adamson 1980:209). In a sense, the Yaqian intellectuals and Peng Pai were also theorists when they wrote about the ongoing revolution—about what the masses

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should and should not do, and about the role of the educated revolutionary elite. In their brief and practical theorization, they, too, imagined the withering of the elite. But they did not discuss it in a Party-oriented framework. In addition, while Gramsci was interested in dissecting elitism as a perennial phenomenon, the Chinese radicals recognized and reflected on elitism in relation to their immediate concern for the Chinese revolution. They limited the elite’s elitism—in this case, revolutionary intellectuals’ elitism—to the present. Moreover, in much more certain tones, they anticipated the disappearance of the distinction between the leaders and the led, not in the remotesounding, post-revolution state, but in the nearer revolutionary future. The fate of Peng Pai’s future-oriented anti-elitism deserves attention. With his more extensive involvement with the peasants, and his transformation from a radicalized individual going to the rural people on his own to a Bolshevik revolutionary awaiting socialism, Peng suppressed his futuristic idea of self-dethronement, though possibly not without ambivalence, in the final years of his revolutionary career. In addition, obedience to Party leadership had crucial implications for a Communist intellectual’s envisioning of the role of educated revolutionaries in the revolution. While institutionalizing revolutionary intellectuals’ self-criticism and self-reform, Peng still recognized them as leading organizers in the rural revolution. In this sense he supported the Party’s recognition of revolutionary intellectuals’ elitism in relation to the masses. But he subjected educated Communists to the CCP’s control, channeling their determination to reform society into service to the Party-defined revolutionary cause. In his case, we see how revolutionary intellectuals’ elitism vis-à-vis the rural people was transplanted onto the Party’s organizational and intellectual frameworks. To study further elitism in the Party’s frameworks, let us turn to Mao.

4 Manufacturing political leadership II Mao Zedong

Soon after the collapse of the Qing dynasty, Mao Zedong, son of a rich peasant in Shaoshan, Hunan, left his native village to broaden his horizons. Upon graduating from the Hunan Normal School, he moved to Beijing, but later returned to Hunan and became the leading activist of that province around the time of the May Fourth protest. Like many other radical intellectuals, he took on the mission of designing the course of China. He represented the masses as historical subjects, imagining that their action would save their country and become part of that worldwide upheaval destined to improve the world (see Chapter 2). This view he never abandoned throughout the course of the revolution.1 After helping to establish a Communist group in Hunan, he was invited in May 1921 to attend the formal organizational meeting of the CCP in Shanghai. When the CCP decided to collaborate with the GMD in June 1923, Mao was elected to be a member of the Party’s Central Committee. Though a man of peasant origins, Mao, unlike Shen Dingyi and Peng Pai, did not show much enthusiasm for the peasants’ participation in China’s struggle for modernization in the early 1920s. In June 1923, he wrote the resolution on the peasant issue for the CCP after the Third Congress, articulating the CCP’s view that “we should unite with the small peasants, the tenants and the hired laborers in order to overthrow the imperialists, the warlords and corrupt officials” (Luk 1990:168). However, the CCP as a collective did not appear too devoted to the peasantry, as it largely comprised urban intellectuals primarily interested in a proletarian revolution, and as its limited resources had already been absorbed by labor work and United Front activities (Luk 1990:168). As for Mao, he admitted, delivering a speech at the Resistance University (Kangdd) in Yan’an in 1938, that when Yun Daiying suggested at that time that the CCP should work with the peasants, he did not respond with enthusiasm (Jin Chongji and Zhonggong zhongyang wenxian yanjiushi 1996:107). He also indicated that he did not think much of the peasants’ revolutionary potential until 1925. Anti-foreign protests broke out in China when the British police killed thirteen labor demonstrators in Shanghai on May 30, 1925. Mao took advantage of the situation to mobilize the peasants in Shaoshan, pressing the landlords to distribute their grain among the peasants. Impressed with the peasants’ militancy, he realized the degree of class struggle among the peasantry (Snow 1961:159– 60; Jin Chongji and Zhonggong zhongyang wenxian yanjiushi 1996:112). Forced to leave Hunan in October 1925 because of his radical activities, Mao went to Guangdong and was given the important responsibility of editing the official publication of the Guomindang, the Political Weekly (Zhengzhi zhoubao). As the First United Front was put to an end by Wang Jingwei’s decision to side with Chiang Kai-shek, who had been hostile to the Communists, the CCP learned the importance of military power. Mao, too, was one of those who realized this, and, in the

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August Seventh conference, made his famous statement, “Political power is obtained from the barrel of a gun” (Feigon 2002:43). Ordered by the central leadership to coordinate a rural uprising in Hunan in the fall of 1927, Mao suffered a total defeat. He led the survivors of his army to the Jinggang Mountains on the Hunan-Jiangxi border and organized the Fourth Red Army with Zhu De, who arrived in the area after the Nanchang uprising. The two soon founded the Jiangxi Soviet, situated near Ruijin on the borders of Fujian and Jiangxi. There he first clashed with Li Lisan, and, after Li was ousted, had the misfortune of conflicting with the new leadership, headed by Wang Ming (see the analysis below). From the end of 1932 until 1934 he served as the chair of the Jiangxi Soviet government, but felt marginalized by the Party center. However, the Long March, prompted by Chiang Kaishek’s extermination campaign, marked a change in Mao’s fortune. Because the German Comintern officer, Otto Braun, appeared incapable of developing a feasible military strategy, Mao, owing to his lobbying and Stalin’s appreciation of his talent, gained control of military affairs. He led the army north and settled in Sha’anxi in fall 1935. While for a few years he had to share political power with others, including his arch-rival Wing Ming, Mao began to command the Secretariat in 1938 and became the Chair of the Politburo and the Secretariat in March 1943 (Feigon 2002:67–81). In early 1943, the term “Mao Zedong Thought” was coined. Not only did it create for him the stature of an outstanding Marxist theorist, but it also carved out his image as an independent revolutionary thinker with locally grounded, Chinese leanings. It seems safe to assert, therefore, that except in the earliest days of his political career, Mao always acted as a Party agent in working with the people. This role had crucial implications for his elitism, for when he wrote about himself and revolutionary intellectuals, he always tended to link them with Party leadership vis-à-vis the masses.

Struggle for survival In this section, examining Mao’s writings from the 1920s to the mid-1930s, I shall focus on how Mao thought about the peasantry in the early years of the revolution. This was a time when the CCP was wrestling with the question of how to address the peasantry’s political potential in the National Revolution, when it was pressed to make the transition from the urban struggle to the rural revolution after the destruction of the United Front, and when Party leaders were gradually becoming aware of the importance of military power in advancing the revolution. Revolutionary intellectuals as leaders: the responsibilities of selfcriticism and self-reform Mao began to reflect seriously on the peasantry as a historical force when peasant upheaval appeared to be an unmistakable phenomenon in central China in the mid-1920s. As the momentum of the peasants’ struggle against the landlords mounted, Party leaders became more and more attuned to the “differences between the various strata of the peasantry” (Luk 1990:171). Drawing on his Hunan experience, in Guangdong Mao produced one of his key texts, entitled “An Analysis of the Different Classes of Chinese

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Society,” in which he divided the peasantry into different strata and analyzed the support of the semi-landed peasants, the half-rewarded peasants (banyi nong), the poor peasants and the hired workers for the revolution (Mao Zedong [1926] 1975b:1/160–74; Luk 1990:172). This article, together with other peasant organizers’ reflections, helped determine the CCP’s theoretical emphasis on the revolutionary role of the poor peasants, a group consisting of both tenant farmers and hired hands.2 Not only did Mao stress the revolutionary potential of the poor peasants in 1926; he also stated that the liberation of the Chinese peasants should be viewed as the foundation for the Chinese revolution (Jin Chongji and Zhonggong zhongyang wenxian yanjiushi 1996:114–5). He even averred that the peasants could be, if they were not already, more revolutionary than the proletariat. In his analysis, while the Chinese workers were not yet ideologically mature to rebel against the bourgeoisie, the peasants were, for the perennial and tremendous hardships imposed on them by the landowning class, determined to fight oppression to the very end (Schram 1994:2/xlvii). In those days, Mao seemed to find it hard not to be captivated by peasant power. Amid their support for the National Revolution—the joint project of the CCP and GMD, the peasants became radicalized and demanded land under the slogan, “All Power to the Peasant Union.” Seeing the momentum of the peasant movement from Jiangxu to Zhejiang to Hunan in 1926 and 1927, Mao Zedong, in his Hunan report, still wrote in a non-Marxist-Leninist fashion in praise of the peasants’ revolutionary power: “In a very short time, several hundred million peasants…will rise like a tornado or tempest—a force so extraordinarily swift and violent that no power, however great, will be able to suppress it.” “They will,” he asserted, “break through all the trammels that now bind them and push forward along the road to liberation” (Mao Zedong [1927] 1963:180).3 Much has been said about how much Mao departed from Leninist thought in his Hunan report, in assigning such high importance to the peasantry’s role in the revolution.4 Historians have already noted that Mao eliminated this concrete statement on the peasants’ contribution to revolution while he was revising his text in 1951. In explaining why Mao did so, Schram, contrary to Wittfogel, thought that Mao deleted this observation, and made ten other changes which attenuated the importance of peasants for the revolution, in order to conceal “the inordinate enthusiasm for the peasantry that had gripped him in 1927” (Schram 1969:53). McDonald has stressed the propaganda purposes for which Mao produced this famous report, and explained how ill-informed it was, but declined to suggest that Mao was exaggerating what he saw or was less than genuinely enthusiastic about its potential (McDonald 1978:181). But allowing for the polemical purposes of passages like these, Mao must have assumed, correctly or naively, clearly or vaguely, that they corresponded closely enough with reality to sound persuasive to his audience. The same passage, let me argue, is very revealing regarding Mao’s elitism amid his recognition of the peasants as historical subjects. After representing the peasant power in flamboyant language, Mao implored his “revolutionary comrades,” as opposed to the revolutionary peasantry, to transform themselves into deserving political leaders: “all revolutionary parties and all revolutionary comrades will be subjected to their [the peasants’] scrutiny and be accepted or rejected by them. Shall we stand in the vanguard and lead them, lag behind and criticize them, or simply oppose them?” (Mao Zedong [1927] 1975a:1/208). His revolutionary comrades’ willingness to take on the leadership

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vis-à-vis the peasantry was urgent, for the peasantry was much more important than the city dwellers for the success of the ongoing “democratic” revolution (Schram 1994:2/xlix–l). For Mao, to lead successfully, revolutionary intellectuals and their revolutionary parties must strive to avoid what Gramsci has called the “crisis of authority”—that is, the historical condition in which a social class outgrows the party that represents it in radicalism, and therefore refuses to recognize the Party as its representative (Gramsci 1971:210–11). What Mao revealed here was a kind of elitism that was somewhat anti-elitist. While endorsing the leadership of revolutionary intellectuals and their parties, Mao held the relatively anti-elitist assumption that leadership could not survive if leaders failed to listen to the masses, those who possessed the amazing power to create history Therefore, revolutionary intellectuals must reflect on their ability to communicate with the revolutionary masses. Mao was, like the Yaqian intellectuals and Peng Pai, well aware of revolutionary intellectuals’ ignorance of peasant life, although he implied that he himself could communicate with the peasants successfully (Mao Zedong [1927] 1975a:1/247). Probably because of his peasant origins, compared with Shen Dingyi or Peng Pai, he reacted more strongly and emotionally to intellectuals’ snobbishness. In the Hunan report, in a manner which foreshadowed his Yan’an stance on intellectuals, he ridiculed his own previous failure to respect the peasants: “when I was at school, I breathed out with those ‘foreign’ students (yang xuesheng) and foreign’ teachers (yang jiaoxi) through the same nostril (tong yi bikong chuqi), condemning the peasants’ opposition to foreign-style school as ‘ignorant’ and ‘abhorrent’” But the good news was that the revolutionary intellectuals could redress their incorrectness. “After living in the countryside for half a year in 1925,” he said, he began to realize the impracticality of foreign-style education, which only “taught urban things irrelevant to the rural area” (Mao Zedong [1927] 1975a:1/246–7). Just as Mao believed that revolutionary intellectuals must be committed to and were capable of self-reform, he assumed that the CCP must dedicate itself to the goal of selfimprovement and was able to achieve this goal. As early as 1926, Mao had unequivocally expressed his view that the Party should undertake self-assessment in order to be a good leader. In his 1926 article on the different classes within the Chinese peasantry he stressed the practical importance of the revolutionary party’s effective identification of friends and enemies; he wrote: “The revolutionary party is the guide of the masses…. We must ask ourselves, are we equipped to be leaders?” (Mao Zedong [1926] 1975b:1/161). Surviving the calamity suffered by the CCP in 1927, and struggling to make the revolution work in the rural areas, he seemed to be all the more concerned about the Party’s performance precisely for its pivotal role in the revolution. After explaining the emergence of the rural Chinese soviets in the light of historical factors, Mao went on to point out that “the survival and development of the Soviet areas…need the organizational work of the Communist Party and its flawless policy” (Mao Zedong [1928] 1975a:2/19). To emphasize the necessity of the Party’s flawless policy for the revolution was to believe in the Party’s capacity for perfection. But the question was how the Party could become flawless. In his student days, Mao had already shown an interest in social survey. This practice conditioned him to believe that in the formulation of the Party’s “flawless” policies, revolutionary intellectuals’ accurate assessment of reality (shiji qingkuan) played a crucial role. To some extent, the emphasis on accuracy was also a tactic Mao

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employed to compete with his rivals inside the Party. In spring 1930, at a delicate stage of his political career marked by his complex relationship with Li Lisan, he wrote one of his most famous texts, “Oppose Bookism” (Benben zhuyi). Bearing in mind his conflict with Li, he attacked intellectuals’ “bookism,” defined by him as these people’s eloquent but uncritical citations of Marxist-Leninist classics (Mao Zedong [1930] 1995a: 3/419–26). In addition, Mao made himself an avid practitioner of “social studies” (shehui diaocha) (Mao Zedong [1931] 1975b:2/255–6).5 In developing policies and sending directives that would work, he said, revolutionary intellectuals must not just “imagine” reality but must “investigate” it (diaocha yanjiu). He himself undertook local research, based on interviews with peasants, in such places as Xunwu (May 1930) and Xingguo (September 30) (Schram 1995b: 3/liii-liv). This is not to say that Mao did not use a Marxist-Leninist framework to dissect—or to “imagine”—reality and justify his own actions. But what he emphasized was that one’s knowledge of and sensitivity to concrete conditions in peasant society should provide the foundations for one to project the efficacy of particular policies.6 Thus, in the spring of 1931, instructing revolutionary cadres to gather concrete information on behalf of Party Central’s revolutionary and military committee (Zhongyang geming junshi weiyuanhui zong zhengzhibu), he ordered that local governments at different levels and the Red Army’s political departments (zhengzhibu) should fill out forms for population and land survey (Mao Zedong [1931] 1975b:2/255–6). In Mao’s envisioning of revolutionary leadership, revolutionary intellectuals were indeed important. He pressed them to become knowledgeable about the peasant masses, and believed that they could, through self-reform, rise to the challenge. In addition, by abandoning their arrogant preoccupation with Marxist—Leninist classics, they could deepen their understanding of the reality of the masses. In this sense, they not only improved themselves but also helped the Party, the institutional mechanism of the revolution, to strive for flawlessness. Limiting peasant independence Mao’s elitism was further strengthened by his limited imagining of peasant independence. Like all others who celebrated the peasants as historical actors, Mao noted and reflected on their historical agency In 1926 and 1927, he wrote and published a series of articles introducing the impetus of the peasant movement in the CCP’s or GMD’s official magazines (e.g., Mao Zedong [1926] 1975a: 1/153–9; [1926] 1975b 160–74; [1926] 1975c:1/175–80; [1927] 1975a:1/ 207–49). As a matter of fact, his Hunan report, considered by researchers “an utter fancy” (Hofheinz 1977:35), was marked by a flamboyant and fervent representation of peasant power.7 And it was in this “textual context” of his writings that Mao talked about how the peasantry would become an independent revolutionary force. Writing in impassioned language, Mao pointed up the emergence of the peasants’ “self-led” revolution: These four types of authority—political authority, clan authority, religious authority, and the authority of the husband—represent the ideology and institutions of feudalism and patriarchy…. As the revolution enters a certain stage, the peasants, the ones who established the idols, will throw

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off these idols themselves. They do not need others to reject these images for them. … The peasants should, on their own, overthrow the gods they created, should smash their ancestors’ tablets in fragments, and should demolish the temples for martyred virgins, together with the arches for chaste widows and filial daughters. (Mao Zedong [1927] 1975a:1/237–8; [1927] 1963:186–7) He even emphasized that the peasants had already shown their defiance of the traditional, repressive ideology and institutions: “We have already seen how the peasants overthrew the political authority of the landlords in the countryside” (Mao Zedong [1927] 1975a:1/237). Since Mao’s Hunan report was intended for open publication and addressed an audience interested in revolutionary issues, Mao may have emphasized rhetorically peasants’ upcoming independent actions to move his readers.8 However, his discussion demonstrated a kind of specificity unseen in Peng’s or in Shen’s writing as he qualified peasant independence. The inflammatory passage I have just cited is far from a casual listing of the peasants’ independent actions. He assumed that what they could manage on their own was only secondary: “our victory in political and economic struggles will naturally lead to the decline of all familism, superstition, and the concept of chastity” (Mao Zedong [1927] 1975a: 1/237). More importantly, Mao assigned the revolutionary parties and/or the revolutionary intellectuals the leading role in the struggle of primary importance: “Our task at present is to guide the peasants to wage political struggle with their utmost strength so that the authority of the landlords will be thoroughly uprooted. We should also start economic struggle immediately” (Mao Zedong [1927] 1975a:1/237). Thus, what the peasants could achieve on their own was, in Mao’s view, limited in scope: they could independently launch revolution only in the socio-cultural domain of family, religion and gender relationships. In fact, not only would the peasants’ foreseeable self-led revolution naturally come after successful economic and political struggle led by the Party and its intellectual agents, it also might have to be inspired significantly by the leading elements’ propaganda. Mao told his comrades: “our propaganda policy is to be provocative and allow the peasants to act by themselves” (Mao Zedong [1927] 1975a:1/238). Mao used himself as an example to demonstrate how provocative the revolutionary leaders could be: [I posed this question for the peasants:] “Gods? Of course, they are powerful. But can we put aside our association and depend upon gods to overthrow the tyrants and bad landlords? Those deities are poor things themselves; they are not strong enough to defeat even one tyrant for you, the people who have worshipped them for thousand of years.” “Now, you want rent reduction. What kind of method will you use—worshipping gods, or trusting the peasant association?” I made all the peasants laugh…. In their amusement all the deities were gone. (Mao Zedong [1927] 1975a:1/238–9)

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Confining the peasantry’s self-led revolution within the boundary of a secondary struggle, pointing to the leadership’s propaganda work preparatory to the peasants’ autonomy, and boasting about his own efficacious propaganda, Mao showed that his trust in the prospects of peasant autonomy was indeed weak. Conceptualizing peasant inadequacy: defects as ideological and nonideological problems Mao’s elitism was also made more secure as he evaluated the rural masses upon acknowledging their historical agency. Discussing the peasant movement in Zhejiang in 1926, he noted, though without much explanation, that their uprisings, lacking organization and leadership, could only be “primitive” (Mao Zedong [1926] 1975d:1/185). Staying in Jinggangshan, Mao had more opportunities to observe peasants from more intimate and long-term angles. Writing to the Party Central (Zhongyang) on November 25, 1928, he lamented the peasants’ ideological inadequacy—that is, their community-oriented thinking: “They do not quite understand that the Communist Party transcends the boundaries of xiang…and county, much less the saying that the Party transcends provincial and national boundaries” (Mao Zedong [1928] 1975b:2/54). Mao explained this kind of parochialism in the light of the family-based structure of rural society: “The basic unit of social organization is family and lineage. The village branch of our Party usually consists of members who have the same last name. The branch meeting is no different from a family meeting” (Mao Zedong [1928] 1975b:2/54). For him, it was under such circumstances that the peasants failed to grasp the true nature of the Party—its transcendence of geographical boundary (Mao Zedong [1928] 1975b:2/54). Gradually Mao developed a kind of conceptual scheme to categorize different kinds of defects of the peasants. He directly categorized many of these defects, which could in fact be classified as practical and moral issues, as ideological.9 His ideological approach to the peasants’ flaws manifested itself most clearly in the “Draft Resolution of the Ninth Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in the Fourth Red Army,” written in 1929 after the Gutian Conference, in which he unreservedly discussed the shortcomings of the Communist army. Committed to the task of building up the military strength of the Communists, Mao in the resolution stressed the importance of redressing various types of non-proletarian ideology within the Party organization tied to the military. Such nonproletarian ideology, as Mao saw it, was rooted in the socio-economic composition of the army, which unfortunately consisted mainly of peasants and other petit bourgeois elements. He then listed the ideological weaknesses of the Party members in the army: 1 The purely military viewpoint—a tendency to regard fighting as an army’s only task. 2 Extreme democracy—aversion to discipline. 3 Non-organizational ideology—unwillingness to follow the decisions passed by the majority. 4 Absolute egalitarianism—a demand that everyone be treated alike regardless of circumstances. 5 Subjectivism—holding opinions and voicing criticism without a realistic examination of the facts and without regard for political principle.

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6 Individualism—vindictiveness…holding oneself responsible to individual leaders rather than to the revolution as a whole;…onism—a desire for personal comfort and pleasure. 7 The idea of roving insurgents—military opportunism. 8 Adventurism—acting blindly regardless of conditions. (Mao Zedong [1929] 1975b:2/78–92; [1929] 1995:195–207) While it is obvious that Mao theorized these defects as ideological in nature, some of these defects certainly could be represented in different terms: stubborn adherence to one’s opinion could be understood as incompetence, and hedonism as moral failing. By the time of the Gutian Conference, Mao already had developed the Leninist stance ascribing false ideas and practices to the operation of non-proletarian ideology. But though Mao identified many defects of the peasants as ideological deficiencies, he also intended to tackle the problems of the peasants’ inferior intellect and practical incompetence as separate issues. Intent on improving the quality of both rank-and-file Party members of the army and ordinary soldiers (Mao Zedong [1929] 1975b:2/100), he recommended two respective lists of specific topics for them to study. Party members should explore Marxism-Leninism, techniques and tactics of mass mobilization, and so forth, whereas soldiers were told to learn reading and writing, discipline, the right approach to the masses, the history of the Red Army, and basic political concepts such as the CCP, GMD and imperialism (Mao Zedong [1929] 1975b:2/100–1 and 110–11). Ideally, Party members and soldiers had books to read, classes to attend, and small-group discussions to participate in. Notwithstanding his stress on the encompassing nature of ideology, Mao assumed that an intellectualized approach could be used to redress ideological inadequacy. Non-socialist ideology as a useful political dynamic Yet Mao also argued that ideological inadequacy, in the form of the peasants’ nonsocialist envisioning of how they wrested a living from the land, could be useful for the revolution. In the Yaqian movement, Sheng Dingyi employed the measure of rent reduction, but bore in mind the socialist goal of the abolition of private property In the Haifeng Soviet, Peng catered to the peasants’ demand for land but regarded it as “petit bourgeois.” As for Mao, he explicitly stressed the value of what he consciously conceptualized as the peasants’ non-socialist ideology for the land revolution. Mao’s attitude toward land revolution in fact went through many changes. In December 1926, Mao mentioned Sun Yat-sen’s ideal of land distribution in the “Manifesto of the First Workers’ and Peasants’ Congress of Hunan.” Delivering a speech at the welcome meeting held by the congress, he sounded even more conservative, clearly rejecting any attempt to remove the landlords and suggesting that concessions must be made to them (Mao Zedong [1926] 1994c:2/420–2). In the resolution of the Third Plenum of the Second Central Executive Committee of the Nationalist Party, he still referred to the Three People’s principles and asked for more humane rental practices and a fairer system of taxation (Mao Zedong [1927] 1994b:2/467–71). A couple of months after Chiang Kai-shek’s open attack on the Communists, in June 1927, writing to the organizers of peasant movements in different provinces, Mao still advised them not to be radical, and not to use the slogan of equal distribution of land or property. Revolution, he

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stated, was a developmental process in which the confiscation, equal distribution, and nationalization of land could take place only step by step (Mao Zedong [1927] 1994c:2/510–13; [1927] 1994d:514–17). However, amid the further deterioration of the relationship between the GMD and the CCP, he became so imprudent later in the summer of the same year that he endorsed the confiscation and nationalization of land, and presented it as the peasantry’s demand (Mao Zedong [1927] 1975b:2/11–12). To some extent, Mao retained this radicalism after he had gone to Jinggangshan, where in December 1928 he framed the Jinggangshan land law specifying that all land would be confiscated and would go to the soviet government. The peasants possessed only the right to use it (Mao Zedong [1928] 1975c: 2/67). According to Hsiao Tso-liang, this was “practically equivalent to land nationalization” (Hsiao Tso-liang 1969:20). But not too long after his departure from Jinggangshan in November 1928, he issued another land law in Xingguo, which was more moderate than the first one for its provisions that the soviet would confiscate the public land and the landlords’ land, and would distribute it among the peasants (Mao Zedong [1929] 1975a:2/73). In this way, the Xingguo land law recognized the peasants’ ownership of land that they originally possessed. In the second half of 1930 and 1931, Mao even went one step further by stating that the CCP should recognize the peasants’ ownership of land (Hsiao Tso-liang 1969:35; Tong Yumin 1980:67; Shi Shunjin 1981:45–6). To explain Mao’s changes, Hsiao Tso-liang emphasizes his endeavor to follow the suggestions of the Comintern. For instance, the Xingguo land law “harmonized with the land program of the CCP Sixth National Congress held in Moscow in July 1928” (Hsiao Tso-liang 1969:20). And his recognition of the private ownership of the land, Hsiao notes, also corresponded to the Comintern view on the issue of land (Hsiao Tso-liang 1969:6). However, Mao had another reason for making these changes. He attempted to justify his changes with reference to his judgment of the peasants’ aspirations and needs. On February 27, 1931, he wrote to the Jiangxi Soviet government to explain from a pragmatic perspective why he now favored the system of private ownership: “The peasants feel that the land was not their own…. onsequently, they did not settle down to plowing the fields. The situation is very bad” (Shi Shunjin 1981:45–6; Mao Zedong [1931] 1997:19). Mao thus was aware of the peasants’ non-socialist preference for private ownership, and the importance of meeting it to win their support. On the basis of such complex awareness, he created his own rhetoric to reply to the accusations made against him by his rivals inside the CCP. In 1931, the Li Lisan group denounced equal land distribution as reinforcement of the peasants’ concept of private property. But Mao insisted that the Party should distribute the land in order to gratify the poor peasants’ and even hired laborers’ desire for land. He particularly countered the Li Lisan group’s use of a Marxist-Leninist mode of communication, which produced the “ideologized” accusation that his demand betrayed “peasant ideology” or “peasant consciousness” (nongmin yishi). To declare his intention of satisfying the rural masses’ demand and his preference for land distribution, he endorsed the practice of private ownership as ideologically acceptable and theorized on the internal diversity of “peasant ideology”: In fact, there are at least two kinds of so-called peasant consciousness: rich peasant consciousness and poor peasant consciousness. Rich peasant

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consciousness advocates not dividing, while the poor peasants demand dividing equally. To say that dividing the land equally corresponds to peasant consciousness, and that if you want to oppose peasant consciousness, just don’t divide the land, is precisely to oppose poor peasant consciousness and to represent rich peasant consciousness. (Mao Zedong [1930] 1995c:3/564) He admitted that “dividing the land equally is, of course, not socialist ideology.” But for him, following the flow of “poor peasant ideology”—that is, distributing land equally— was crucial in “shattering the feudal system and in moving towards socialism” (Mao Zedong [1930] 1995c:564; Schram 1995b:3/liii–v). In other words, non-socialist ideology could be used for the socialist cause. Thus, while Peng Pai was willing to respond to the peasants’ non-socialist yearning for land ownership but viewed it critically, Mao deliberately theorized about this yearning as a useful political dynamic. After Wang Ming’s and the Returned Student Group’s rise to power, Mao was criticized for not being thorough enough in his radicalism, because he allowed peasants and landlords to receive redistributed land. This criticism, together with other conflicts, hurt Mao a great deal. Still, in 1933, when the Party’s Central Committee decided to undertake social investigation to seek out landlords and rich peasants identified as ordinary peasants, Mao was put in charge of the campaign (Schram 1997:4/xxvii). While it may be hard to determine his attitude toward the central leadership’s harsh policy toward the well-off (Schram 1997:4/xxvii), Mao saw to the development of meticulous methods of investigation, and he discussed in detail how peasants should be categorized. Not only was his emphasis on the close examination of reality instrumental in strengthening his authority in his debate with Li Lisan, it also helped him to retain his status as an expert on the local conditions under the leadership of Wang Ming. But Mao later spoke on behalf of a CCP that from the second half of the 1930s gradually evolved into a contender vis-à-vis the GMD for national domination. What, then, happened to his emphasis on revolutionary intellectuals’ self-criticism/self-reform, his view on peasant independence, his critical evaluation of the revolutionary peasantry, and his resolution to use its non-socialist ideology?

Contending for national leadership Mao’s ascendancy in the Party in the late 1930s and early 1940s was steady, but the challenges he faced were immense. He had two major outside enemies to confront—the aggressive Japanese, whose movements placed much pressure on the CCP to the east in 1942 (Gregor Benton and Alan Hunter 1995:10), and the Guomindang, which, after the end of the Second United Front in 1941, imposed economic blockades against the Communists in the north (Feigon 2002:79). Mao faced problems inside the Party as well. Party membership swelled in those years, expanding from around 40,000 in 1937 to more than 800,000 by 1940 (Feigon 2002:80). The new Party members came from incredibly diverse backgrounds. While Yan’an, the revolutionary headquarters, attracted hundreds of thousands of students to the

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northwest, many soldiers and peasants joined the Party too. Some were illiterate and abusive; some were educated but undisciplined, critical of what they saw and knowing nothing about the rural area. Most lacked revolutionary experience and adequate training (Van Slyke 1986:688–9). Some, of course, came from suspicious backgrounds. Party officials, as existing scholarship points out, “acted more like mandarins than like revolutionaries…. [They] put their interests first and showed scant concern for the welfare of the people under them” (Benton and Hunter 1995:10). In Mao’s view, intellectuals and students were probably more problematic, because they supported Wang Ming, whose Russian training lent him glamour. An ambitious leader feeling acutely the need to consolidate his control over the Party amid external pressures, Mao decided to launch the Rectification Campaign to screen the cadres, to redress their undesirable performances, to curb the influence of Wang Ming, and to assert his theory on Sinicized Marxism (Schram 1966:220; Wylie 1980:162–9; Yang Zhongmei 1989:81–8; Apter and Cheek 1994:xvii–viii; Schram 1995a:3/xix; Chen Yung-fa 1996; Zhu Hongzhao 2002:111–15). Intellectuals’ self-criticism and self-reform: duties ordained by the Party leader in the name of the Party In the Rectification Campaign, radical intellectuals were the main objects of transformation. While Peng Pai institutionalized revolutionary intellectuals’self-criticism and self-reform, Mao emphasized officially and forcefully that these institutionalized responsibilities were essential challenges that educated Communists had to meet. Before the Rectification Campaign, while hailing intellectuals as the “vanguards [xianfeng]…at the present stage of revolution,” Mao also insisted, keeping to his antielitist analysis of the educated radicals, that they could transform China only by being united with the masses (Mao Zedong [1939] 1975:7/121–2). One should also learn from the masses, Mao stressed. In 1941, Mao decided to publish and circulate internally a volume entitled Investigating the Rural Area, consisting of reports he had written in the early 1930s. He stated clearly in the preface, which was later to be included in a booklet entitled Documents for the Rectification Campaign (Zhengfeng wenxian), that by publishing his old writings, he intended to introduce research methods that could help Party intellectuals, especially those “whose eyes only gaze up at the sky,” or those “who only know how to mouth theory” (lilun), or those who failed to understand the situation of “the lower strata” (Mao Zedong [1941] 1975a:7/290–1). To investigate reality, he said, one must put aside one’s “stinking arrogance” (choujiazi), recognize one’s naivety, regard the masses, who knew much about real life, as one’s teacher, and accept the truth that the masses were the heroes (Mao Zedong [1941] 1975a: 7/290). Mao’s disparagement of those he categorized as intellectuals indeed sounded severe and insulting in the Rectification Campaign. Delivering the speech which officially launched the Rectification Campaign, at the Central Party Institute (Zhongyang dangxiao) on February 1, 1942, Mao derided intellectuals for their bookish knowledge, and ridiculed them for their lack of “experiential knowledge”: “the so-called intellectuals are most ignorant…. To be sure they have acquired knowledge through book-learning…. Reading a book, however, is not so hard anyway.” To illustrate his point, he was deliberately outrageous: “Book-learning is easier than butchering a pig. A pig will run

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away when you want to grab it; it will scream when you want to kill it. But a book cannot run nor scream” (Mao Zedong [1942] 1975b:8/70–1). Confronting those conceited Party intellectuals who “exploited their knowledge of Marxism-Leninism to overawe the ‘country bumpkins’” (tubaozi), Mao castigated them crudely: “what is the use of your dogma?… It is even less useful than shit: dogs can be fed on our sewage, and land can be fertilized by dogshit…. But where is the contribution of your dogma?” (Mao Zedong [1942] 1975b:8/75). He then told intellectuals to be more modest, learn from reality (shiji), and combine “Marxist theory” with “reality” (Mao Zedong [1942] 1975b:8/70–5). Taking into account that the Rectification Campaign caused intellectuals much suffering (Chen Yung-fa 1990), and that Communist leaders represented the CCP as an organ to which every Communist owed obedience (Van de Ven 1991:200; Chen Yun [1939] 1950:72–89), we can certainly highlight the cleavage, or even the conflict, between the Party and the intellectuals serving the Party during the Yan’an period. It should be noted, however, that before the Rectification Campaign, revolutionary intellectuals had been well disposed to the strategies of self-criticism and self-reform when it came to the issue of interaction between intellectuals and the masses. Yi-tsi Mei Feuerwerker discusses how the May Fourth literary tradition prepared Yan’an intellectuals’ “acceptance of the downgrading of their own status as intellectuals” (Yi-tsi Mei Feuerwerker 1998:111), whereas this study shows how radical intellectuals’ selfdeprecation was in fact an established feature of May Fourth socialist and Communist cultures. Notwithstanding their ignorance of or contempt for the rural masses, many revolutionary intellectuals below the top leadership level, “swept by the revolution” (Yitsi Mei Feuerwerker 1998:276), did not find the anti-intellectual emphasis on intellectuals’ self-criticism and self-reform unreasonable. In this sense, the conflict between the Party and its intellectuals co-existed with a certain degree of consensus among them. Alvin Gouldner has pointed out that, by taking away revolutionary intellectuals’ autonomy and insisting on their disciplined obedience, the Leninist vanguard subjected junior Communist intellectuals to the control of the senior ones (Gouldner 1979:79). In a sense, when Mao and the central leadership demanded that revolutionary intellectuals give up their arrogance and undertake self-criticism, they were imposing regulations on other educated cadres. Such impositions, however, should not be regarded as the attempt of high-level intellectuals to deny revolutionary intellectuals’ elitist status relative to the masses. In fact, interweaving mockery with suggestions for intellectual activists’ selfreform, Mao still regarded the intellectuals as the leading segment of the CCP. Mao told them that the educated revolutionaries could, through self-transformation which led to their successful communication with the masses, represent the Party better. They were told to emulate Lenin’s achievements. By familiarizing himself with the workers’ conditions, Lenin powerfully conveyed to them his sincere concern for the laborers (Mao Zedong [1942] 1975c:8/104). To succumb to the Party policy of intellectuals’ self-reform was to become deserving of leading status inside the Party that represented the masses.

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Encouraging peasant cadres’ pursuit of education The official recognition of revolutionary intellectuals’ leading status was in fact bolstered by the Party’s and Mao’s critical views on the peasant cadres during the Rectification Campaign. When the CCP and Mao defined successful leadership as Party officials’ union with the people (Mao Zedong [1943] 1975b:9/91), in addition to censuring intellectuals’ problems, they also intended to fight the undesirable intellectual and behavioral patterns shown by the poorly educated Party cadres. Though called workerpeasant (or peasant-worker) cadres (gonggnong ganbu), these people were always rural in origin.10 While the CCP officially differentiated peasant-worker cadres from the peasant masses, its complaints about their performances revealed its own view that they shared with ordinary peasants some very similar problems. The Party was well aware of the political inadequacy of these peasant-worker cadres. As Chen Yung-fa points out, the Party concentrated on political indoctrination as well as leadership coaching (Chen Yung-fa 1986:324–64). In addition, peasant-worker cadres were pressed to admit their own alienation from the masses in meetings. At the Central Party Institute, Dou Shangchu, a military officer who joined the Communist army in 1929, served as the political instructor (zhengwei) in a regiment for the Fourth Red Army, and always hated his intellec tual superiors, leveled the following charge at himself: “I refuse to listen to my subordinate officers’ opinions, especially their criticisms directed against me…. I only enjoy instructing and ordering the others, seeing this as my dignity.” He then concluded: “These examples demonstrate that I do not adopt the masses’ viewpoint (qunzhong guandian), distrust the masses’ ability, and fail to appreciate the masses’ ingenious creativity” (Dou Shangchu [1944] 1988:1/232–3). Moreover, for Mao, an essential defect that peasant cadres needed to struggle against was their inferior intellectual level. In the Zhengfeng speech that he delivered at the Central Party Institute, aside from bombarding the intellectuals, he also pointed out: “our worker-peasant cadres must enhance their cultural level. …A better education will enable them to master various disciplines, including politics, military affairs and economics” (Mao Zedong [1942] 1975b:8/72–3). While he concentrated on attacking the intellectuals for their divorce from reality, he also frowned upon peasant cadres who lacked the intellectual resources to theorize on their empirical understanding of reality (Mao Zedong [1942] 1975b: 8/72; Van Slyke 1986:689). In fact, worker-peasant cadres’ education became a significant item on Mao’s agenda of cadre training. In order to encourage these less educated cadres, he himself wrote a preface for the textbook they used: “The person who cannot write and read, and who fails to expand his intellectual horizon, may still contribute to the revolution, but it is impossible for him to perform well.” “He may,” Mao pointed out, “learn something about revolutionary theory. However, he cannot study it in depth” (Mao Zedong [1942] 1985:7/67). This call for worker-peasant cadres’ education did not transform the nonintellectuals into intellectuals who could, by Party standards, articulate theory with ease and sophistication. But prominent in Mao’s thought was a respect for intellectual-theoretical power, which coexisted with his determination to humble those who possessed it without knowledge of, or the intention of combining it with, “reality”

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The demise of the futuristic idea of self-dethronement Working on the intellectual and non-intellectual cadres’ improvement, Mao emphasized that their defects constituted an important problem for the CCP. However, Mao also sounded confident enough to assume that the Party could become a good leader. In the Politburo resolution of June 1, 1943, “The Method of Leadership,” he highlighted the mass line, defined by him as the linking of the leadership with the masses: “the basic method of leadership is to sum up the views of the masses, take the results back to the masses so that the masses can give them their firm support and so work out sound ideas for leading the work on hand” (Selden 1995:212). That, for him, ensured correct leadership. To revisit the Yan’an way, Selden draws attention to the tension within the mass line. Though asserting that, at its best, the mass line was a leadership praxis responsive to popular needs, interests and values, Selden also notes how this approach to mobilization politics enabled the Party to exercise a monopoly on morality and truth (Selden 1995:213). I would argue that by representing the Party as an institution so effective in communicating with the people, articulating their needs, and helping them to improve their lot, the mass line—whether it was at its best or at its worst—suppressed the idea of peasant independence. It was the fact the peasants’ own struggle was rendered insignificant by the Party that emphasized its own amazing ability to understand their needs and serve them. If Mao’s imagining of peasant independence in the Hunan report was weak and limited, focusing only on their rejection of feudal culture, the conceptualization of the mass line left virtually no room for the revolutionary peasantry’s independent action in the transformation of rural cultural values. In fact, in 1944, so self-assured was Mao, and so impatient was he with the backwardness of rural areas that he did not care to mention peasants’ potential for independent action. He urged the cadres, especially the relatively educated ones, to take the initiative. In a conference on culture and education (wenjiao), Mao said: In the Sha’an-Gan-Ning base area, more than one million people are illiterate. There are two thousand witches and wizards in this region; feudal, superstitious thought still haunts the people. Fighting against the people’s backwardness is even more difficult than resisting the Japanese invasion. The committee of culture and education (Wenjiaohui) has a mission…. to mobilize the one and half million people in this base area; to tell them to fight against their feudal thought, superstition, illiteracy and dirtiness…. We should emphasize rigorous training in primary and high schools; we should organize informal village schools everywhere. (Mao Zedong [1944] 1975:9/134) What, then, should the cadres do if they found the masses not ready for cultural transformation? Mao told them “to be patient,…not to undertake any changes until the masses are willing to do so.” But patience, as Mao defined it, was different from waiting for the masses’ spontaneous awakening: “[the leaders and cadres] should not do anything until their efforts to educate the people successfully awaken the masses” (Mao Zedong [1944] 1975:9/136). Thus, his definition of patience ironically entailed the Party’s attempts at facilitating the masses’ enthusiasm for cultural changes.

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Envisioning a socialist nation Amid fighting the peasantry’s backwardness, Mao still found its non-socialist longing for land a factor to be reckoned with in the Party’s formulation of land policies. In the period of the Sino-Japanese War, when the Party stopped the confiscation of landlords’ land, Mao represented the non-socialist urge to possess land as an ideological defect, calling its bearers leftist and unpatriotic, and also conceptualized it as strategic short-sightedness: The Party’s land policy requires the peasants to pay rent and interest to landlords. Moreover the Party has decided to protect the landlords’ rights. … Some base areas have committed leftist mistakes, which are derived from the peasants’ and some Party members’ failure to understand our land policy … We should explain to them our policy…. We should ask them to go beyond the concern for immediate benefits, and to consider the relationship between immediate and future benefits, the relationship between their own profit and the well-being of the Chinese race as a whole. We should tell the peasants…to respect the rights of landlords. (Mao Zedong [1942] 1975a:8/53) And in the Civil War period, when George Marshall failed in his attempts at mediation, the Party changed its land policy in response to peasants’ interest in land, deciding to reassert the policy of land distribution (Schram 1995a:3/xix). This policy first deprived landlords of their right to land, and assigned land to the peasants. However, beginning in the latter part of 1946, the Party called for the expropriation and redistribution of the 70– 80 percent of land owned by the “rich.” With the Party’s insistence on class struggle, the new policy led to local cadres’ hunt for the rich in “a Party-led society of small tillers” (Friedman et al. 1991:97; Bo Yibo 1996:1/407–15), and resulted in negative popular reaction. The Party was then forced to revise its law. Although Mao stressed that “the demands of the poor and farm laborers must be satisfied” (Friedman et al. 1991:100), the Party decided to abandon the policy of leveling landholding in retaining the support of the Communist soldiers, who so often came from independent-cultivator households (Friedman et al. 1991:97–100). In order to use the yearning of the peasants for land ownership to expand Communist power, Mao once again emphasized the progressive nature of this non-socialist yearning in ideological terms. In 1948, in his letter to Su Yu, which examined the issue of dividing land in the newly liberated areas, he asserted: “equal land distribution is the highest goal of our anti-feudal struggle.” For him the peasants’ lack of motivation to struggle against landlords and for land was even more backward. The job of the Party was to guide tactfully the backward peasants to abandon their politically incorrect view that land distribution was wrong (Mao Zedong [1948] 1985:8/174–5). However, while acknowledging the progressive essence of the peasants’ hope for equal land distribution, Mao continued to regard land distribution as an essential part of China’s “democratic revolution,” not the “socialist revolution” (Mao Zedong [1945] 1975:9/244–5; Mao Zedong [1947] 1975:10/109). As the Civil War unfolded and the CCP was gaining the upper hand, Mao began to contemplate China’s transition from “new democracy” to socialism in the not so remote future (Zhonggong zhongyang dangshi yanjiushi 1987:201). Depicting a rosy picture of

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China’s socialist future in “On the People’s Democratic Dictatorship” (Lun renmin minzhu zhuangzheng), which was first published in the People’s Daily on July 1, 1949, Mao spoke in Marxist internationalist language: “the proletariat, the laboring people, and the Communists…will eliminate such things as state and political Party, and help humankind enter the stage of world-wide union” (Mao Zedong [1949] 1975:10/291). He continued the Communist tradition of integrating the Chinese people, most of them peasants, into the CCP’s self-appointed mission of world revolution (Mao Zedong [1949] 1975:10/299). Discoursing on China’s national construction and contribution to the world, as expected, he gave prominence to the CCP and proletariat, which he always hailed as the leading revolutionary force: We need the state machine to strengthen our people…. nder the leadership of the proletariat and the Communist Party, China will gradually transform itself into an industrial country, leave the stage of new democracy, proceed to socialism and Communism, eliminate the class system, and finally help realize worldwide harmony. (Mao Zedong [1949] 1975:10/300) What deserves attention, however, is that imagining and delineating for his readers a socialist China, Mao hastened to point up the peasants’ non-socialist ideology: “the education of the peasantry is a serious problem.” He observed: “The peasant economy is scattered.” “On the basis of the Soviet Union’s experience,” he said, “[we can predict] that the socialization of agriculture, which is essential for the consolidation of socialism, will require a long time and painstaking work” (Mao Zedong [1949] 1975:10/302). The peasants’ non-socialist craving for landholding, having fulfilled its historical mission, could now only look disturbing. In the late 1920s Peng Pai showed his discontent with the peasant’s interest while imagining prematurely the coming of socialism, whereas at the end of the revolutionary stage Mao shed his own ideological justification of the peasantry’s non-socialist concern, envisioning the construction of a socialist nation. And, as, in Mao’s view, the new China working toward socialism was also about to gallop through the path of industrialization, he showed his grave concern for nonintellectual cadres’ intellectual quality. This concern was clearly revealed when he communicated with other high-ranking cadres. From 1948 onwards, time and again, he wrote to them about the importance of the city. For instance, on February 8, 1949, he sent a telegram on behalf of the Central Military Committee (Zhonggong zhongyang junwei) to major army leaders in various areas telling them to prepare their armies for the challenging tasks of administering the cities (Mao Zedong [1949] 1993a:5/495–6). And in March 1949, facing the members and standing members of the Central Committee (Zhongyang weiyuanhui) he stated that the Party’s most important mission was to administer, develop and affirm the leading role of the urban area (Mao Zedong [1949] 1993c:515–16). Under the circumstances, he commanded top military leaders, including Lin Biao, Deng Xiaoping, Chen Yi and Liu Bocheng, to take immediate action to eliminate non-intellectual military cadres’ ignorance. He said: it is discovered that military cadres’ intellectual level is very low. Some military officers of the rank of battalion fancy that every Chinese will

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become a Party member in a Communist republic, and that they have yet to cross the Yellow River after crossing the Yangtze River. He then urged these people to print and distribute copies of a map of southern China among their subordinates, and explain some basic geographical knowledge to their officers and soldiers (Mao Zedong [1949] 1993b:5/498–9). On the eve of Communist victory, looking forward to occupying the urban area and to building a socialist and industrialized China, Mao became all the more acutely conscious of rank-and-file cadres’ intellectual flaws.

Conclusion Mao reflected on revolutionary intellectuals and the peasantry as a Party agent whose political career spanned the whole revolutionary process. He expressed views which were not expressed by the Yaqian intellectuals and Peng Pai. Amid the CCP’s struggle for survival, he emphasized that revolutionary intellectuals must criticize and improve themselves so as to invent a Party blessed with the possibility of attaining, if not the actual quality of, perfection. In other words, he used anti-elitism to buttress the elitist leadership of a revolutionary organization led by the intellectuals. He defined in a very specific way what the peasants could accomplish independently: he confined the peasantry’s self-led action within the boundary of socio-cultural struggle, which was to be facilitated by the Party-led victory in political and economic struggles. A shrewd Party leader, he defended stridently the value of what he considered to be the peasants’ nonsocialist ideology for the revolution. When the CCP became a serious contender for power at the national level, he asserted even more forcefully that as the leading group of the Party, revolutionary intellectuals must undertake self-reform so as to ensure effective Party leadership. But confident about the Party leadership, he abandoned his view on the peasants’ independent revolution. And envisioning a socialist nation on the event of the Communist victory, he labeled the peasantry’s non-socialist ideology problematic. It must be noted, however, that although the Yaqian intellectuals, Peng Pai, and Mao Zedong served as revolutionaries in different times and places, the elitism of each, emerging amid its interaction with anti-elitism, paralleled that of the other in visible ways. By incorporating anti-elitist criticism into their elitist self-construction, revolutionary intellectuals made themselves into imperfect leaders who were both willing and able to master the task of self-reform. By working on the anti-elitist premise that the rural masses were the agents of their own transformation, revolutionary intellectuals, occupying a privileged position as historical actors knowing more about the revolution, moved on to evaluate the revolutionary masses, proved the masses’ deficiencies, and thus strengthened their own leadership. Celebrating the masses’ historical agency, revolutionary intellectuals championed for a while the futuristic notion of peasant independence, which connoted the theme of revolutionary intellectuals’ transitory leadership. But in a sense, revolutionary intellectuals were, as shown in the cases of Peng Pai and Mao, responsible for the destruction of this future-oriented idea. They retained their privileged positions as those knowing more about the revolution; they constantly applied and changed their own criteria in judging the peasantry; and, in the

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Bolshevization process, they elevated the Party to the status of revolutionary vanguard. The Party as the vanguard was, according to the revolutionary intellectuals, capable of self-correction. But they were the ones creating the Party’s self-grounded ability to improve itself by defining the problems of both its non-intellectual and intellectual members, and by pressing them to change. Demonstrating their intellectual-emotional comparability, I do not mean to suggest that a Shen Dingyi would have responded to Bolshevization in the same way as Peng Pai did if he had not left the Communist ranks; nor do I intend to argue that if Peng Pai had become the highest Party leader, he would have been like Mao. It is also not my belief that such phenomena as Mao’s unreserved ridicule of intellectuals were inevitable “revolutionary products.” My analysis is only an endeavor to show something more simple. The self-image of revolutionary intellectuals as imperfect leaders enthusiastic about and capable of improving themselves, their unflattering evaluation of the peasants originating in their acknowledgment of the peasantry’s status as makers of history, and their historically transient stress on the peasants’ transitory dependence on the revolutionary intellectuals and/or their Party—these were themes whose roots could be traced back to revolutionary intellectuals’ intellectual-emotional worlds. In addition, the developments of these themes are explainable: the ways in which these themes evolved or vanished were shaped by “historical factors” transcending any individual idiosyncrasy. These factors included revolutionary intellectuals’ intellectual-emotional backgrounds, the CCP’s Leninist effort of Party building and the Party’s perception of its needs in different historical environments. To deepen their understanding of the revolutionary process, historians are now interested in addressing the interaction between the Party represented by various levels of cadres and the peasantry’s historical agency. As I have mentioned in Chapter 1, analyzing the Party’s responses to peasants’ needs and spontaneity, current scholarship on localized Communist movements points to the elitist Party’s anti-elitist recognition of the peasantry’s importance for the revolution. But although that is the case, it should be noted that the leading Communists’ practical acceptance of the peasants’ spontaneity—for instance, their request for land—was different from their genuine appreciation of peasant desires and actions. For instance, when Mao in 1949 sharply and publicly reproved the peasantry for its non-socialist preoccupation with land ownership after having used it for decades, he demonstrated how, to some extent, it was through his adaptation to the rural people that he ironically became well aware of peasant inadequacy.11 Talking about Communist intellectuals’ critical evaluation of peasants as historical actors, we should note that their discontent with working-class performance was also pronounced. The point is, however, that the Communist intellectuals always suggested that peasants, including peasant radicals, suffered from intrinsic and stubborn weaknesses. While Communist intellectuals had never ceased to enshrine “proletarian consciousness,” their contempt for “peasant ideology” was more than evident. For instance, in inner Party struggles of the 1930s, as the conflict between Mao and Li Lisan shows, when one revolutionary leader used terms like “peasant ideology” (nongmin yishi) as a political weapon to criticize the other, the person under attack was compelled to clarify the political nature of his own policies.12 Throughout the revolutionary process, revolutionary intellectuals always represented the peasants’ defects as inborn flaws pertaining to their “peasantness.”

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In fact, not only did Communist intellectuals build a functional elitism vis-à-vis the revolutionary peasantry’s problems, but they also stressed their superiority in relation to the rural masses from an emotional perspective. This I shall explore in Part III.

Part III Heroes Self-construction from the emotional perspective

5 Narrating politicized subjectivity Having considered revolutionary intellectuals’ self-construction as leaders, in Part III I examine the presence of Communist intellectuals’ emotional elitism by exploring the fact that they narrated their feelings and lives as revolutionaries to ennoble themselves as heroes. In this chapter, I delineate how revolutionary intellectuals retreated from an ideological to a non-ideological space to focus on the politicized dimension of their inner world and to highlight their political passion. They articulated their feelings about the status quo, the revolution, and themselves and their comrades as revolutionaries in ways intended to highlight their heroism. In Chapter 6, I shall discuss their elaboration on the trials they and their comrades endured for the revolution. In the non-ideological space, they displayed the trials and tribulations of their revolutionary lives to demonstrate their political devotion and to represent their commitment as stronger than that of the others. But I shall also devote some attention to how they engaged with ideology, transforming their self-criticisms and anti-elitist criticisms of intellectuals’ petit bourgeois deficiencies into testimony to their political devotion. To be sure, revolutionary intellectuals may well have exaggerated their feelings for their mission. It is certain, moreover, that representations of emotions, however detailed, colorful and sincere, can never fully express a person’s feelings. Therefore, I can hardly claim that my analysis of revolutionary intellectuals’ representation of political commitment reveals how strong and deep their political commitment was. However, my research does show that revolutionaries were committed to the revolution to the extent that they invoked revolution and revolution-related factors for building their sense of heroism.

Analyzing sources What sources are available for my analysis? And how should we characterize them? To investigate how Communist intellectuals idealized themselves, I dissect their personal testimony, including poems, letters, autobiographies, stories, and other literary pieces. I shall view all these self-representations or self-expressions as parts of their selfconstruction. As we note, when revolutionary intellectuals constructed themselves as imperfect leaders from the functional perspective, they narrated not only themselves but also others who they believed shared their educational background and thus their defects. The same can be said about their emotion-based self-construction. While constructing themselves from the emotional angle, they also reflected on those that they identified as brave revolutionaries in general and good revolutionary intellectuals in particular.

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Many, though not all, of my authors were what the Party officially recognized as martyrs. Their words, collected and published by the Communist publishers, constitute the essential source for my analysis.1 Political sentiments and their expression are always personal—so I contend in the introduction. In addition, concerning the audience the authors wrote for and the purposes for which they wrote, in some of the writings, the boundary between the personal and the institutional is also unclear. It is hard to characterize a poem written by a revolutionary for a revolutionary magazine both to express himself and to praise the Communist cause. Neither is it a simple matter to explain the nature of the letter a martyr wrote to the Party on the eve of his execution in reflecting on himself and the revolution but with no assurance that his writings could reach any Party authority. Although addressed to a non-personal or institutional audience, such letters might also have been used as self-expression. Moreover, we know very little about the specific circumstances under which the martyrs wrote, except for the fact that they wrote many of their pieces when they were imprisoned, a hazardous setting quite likely to provoke outbursts of intense emotion. As I use materials that were mostly published in or released by the mainland, I am confronted with the task of determining how to evaluate the dependability of these sources. The problem lies not so much in how the martyrs’ writings were drastically changed, although I do not deny the possibility of alteration. Passionate selfrepresentations seem natural literary products for revolutionaries who were devoted enough to accept danger and the shadow of death as parts of their lives. The major problem is the bias in terms of the content of the materials accessible to us. These materials may only disclose the information the Communist government was, or is, willing to release. In the 1970s and 1980s, as the Party was eager to re-establish a positive image for itself, and struggled to maintain the Chinese people’s political idealism, which was presumably useful for national development, official publishers made a deliberate effort to publish quite a number of expressive writings by Communist martyrs, which were used by the CCP to demonstrate their ideological devotion. But it is also evident that since the Cultural Revolution, the Party has become more liberal with regard to information on and interpretations of its history. Regarding our scholarly attempt to interpret the martyrs’ expressive writings, we may refer, say, to the publications related to Qu Qiubai which reveal and discuss his complex personality (Ip Hung-yok 1997:59–62). And in the 1990s, official publishers and magazines published things which point to, if not highlight, the complexity of revolutionary intellectuals’ political commitment (Bo Yibo 1996:118–96). The bias, at any rate, is there. All in all, we have access to only those self-representations through which an officially select best—that is, the martyrs and well-known revolutionaries—paraded their political devotion. However, it is because of its select nature that this pool of materials is useful—and indeed, essential—for my analysis of Communist intellectuals’ self-construction. Written by the “cream” of the Communist revolutionary elite, these self-expressions should be regarded as the core of the kind of emotional self-construction which granted much support for Communist intellectuals’ confidence in themselves as revolutionary guides. And to explain how I use these sources, I think I should first reiterate what has been said in the introductory chapter. This book is aimed at proving that Communist intellectuals’ elitism was an important and persistent motif of their self-construction throughout the

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revolutionary process. Moreover, Communist intellectuals’ self-expressions are also brief. Therefore, I content myself with adopting a thematic approach in analyzing the features contained in many of their self-representations. Having introduced the sources and my approach to them, we can now traverse revolutionary intellectuals’ self-representations, the terrain where political emotions met the literary impulse to express, and thus were displayed, embellished and made known to various kinds of audiences.

Awakening to the inner world: the historical milieu Romanticism as a concept covers diverse literary, philosophical and ideological trends, and a broad range of personality traits. But scholars agree that sensitivity to and expression of one’s inner world—feelings, values, wishes, desires and spontaneity— define being romantic, and that romanticism entails rebelliousness vis-à-vis rules and the establishment (Leo Lee 1973:292–6; Luo Chengyan 1992:1–5; Nichols 1998:x–xi). If this conceptualization of romanticism is followed, it seems safe to assert that Communist intellectuals were born into a milieu that can be called romantic. In the latter half of the nineteenth century, famous reformers like Kang Youwei and Tan Sitong had already pointed up how some traditional social-political institutions suppressed the individual’s feelings and preferences. And Tan’s self-expressions, always focusing on his commitment to China’s transformation and written in poetic forms, were popular among politicized Chinese in the earliest years of the twentieth century. The 1911 revolutionaries are known for their fascination with political passion (Hsueh Chuntu 1961; Price 1974; Rankin 1971). It is noted, in addition, that they were captivated by the idea of romantic love. Late Qing culture, as an unhappy turn-of-the-century critic observed, was “a culture of fiction,” in which “people fancy themselves as Armand…their romantic liaisons,…affect ‘civilized’ conventions,…hail free marriage, worship the nihilists with their bombs and guns, and marvel at the tactics of assassins” (Price 1974:194). Scholars observe, as a matter of fact, that political passion and romantic love became two major preoccupations for many intellectuals in the late Qing period (Price 1974:196; David Wang 1997:2; Liu Jianmei 2003:211). Those who came of age in the first two decades of the twentieth century, including many of the earliest Communists, were exposed to the earlier reformers’ and revolutionaries’ influence. Born into a gentry-official family in Huaian, Jiangsu, adopted by his uncle, and then relocating in Manchuria in 1908, Zhou Enlai enrolled in a school where he was encouraged to study Zhang Taiyan’s critique of Chinese tradition. As Zhang Guotao recalled, although he was raised in a gentry-official family in Pingxiang, Jiangxi, the authorities of which looked down upon Sun Yat-sen as a “rogue” doctor (jianghu yisheng), he and his schoolmates raved about the inflammatory writings they obtained from Shanghai and Changsha (Zhang Guotao 1971:1/23). Long after 1911, memories of the 1911 revolutionaries always remained accessible to educated Chinese. While Sun Yat-sen’s Three Principles of the People became a regular text of school education in different regions of China in the pre-1949 period, 1911 revolutionaries’ writings, their emotion-laden self-expressions included, continued to be available long after 1911 (Bo Yibo 1996:129). Revolutionaries’ poetry was found in such books as

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Famous People of the Republic of China, while veteran revolutionaries like Liu Yazi edited their comrades’ poetry (Xiao Ping [1962] 1981:2, note 1; 199, note 1; 255–6, note 1). As expressions of the non-political side of the individual’s inner world, writings by such authors as Su Manshu had never ceased to fascinate Republican readers. Not only were a significant number of Communist intellectuals nurtured by early radicals’ romanticism, but they were also active participants in the New Culture movement, which was launched by the editors and authors of magazines such as New Youth. 2 By glorifying human feelings, rights and freedom, and by attacking traditional Chinese social institutions, which were shown to be repressive of the individual and to undermine the Chinese nation, the May Fourth generation earned a reputation for romanticism (Leo Lee 1973; Luo Chengyan 1992). 3 Analyzing the Communist revolution, however, scholars always believe that it was hostile to the individual—to the person’s own feelings, dreams, aspirations, etc. It is believed that although the “Romantic Left” were fervent in their expressions of emotions (political emotions, that is), the CCP eventually put an end to the subjectivist-romanticist trend with Mao’s famous Talks (Leo Lee 1973:273). And as some scholars in mainland China attempt to describe in a positive light the familiar view of Communist suppression of the individual, they argue that the Chinese romantics finally “went to the masses” by overcoming the individual. This, it is stressed, was a “healthy” development (Luo Chengyan 1992:83–98 and 288–9). I would contend, however, that romanticism remained an important part of Communist revolutionary culture. As Edward Shils has noted, romanticism and radicalism were united in their vehement rejection of the established order (Shils 1969:44). I would add that the rebellion against the established order—whether for the individual or larger entities like society or the nation—requires historical actors’ wills to be against it. The operation of this will includes assertions and expressions of subjective feelings such as discontent with the status quo and the desire to create a better future. In this chapter, I examine the themes of the Communist intellectuals’ narratives on their own political subjectivity. These intellectuals sometimes expressed themselves in a very straightforward manner. But they also integrated into their writings particular intellectualcultural resources— icons, images, and symbols of their own world. Their writings were influenced by traditional literary sources in which Chinese historical figures expressed their own politicized subjectivity and heroism, and they were also influenced by foreign literary works that reinforced the reader’s sensitivity to the individual. However, I will concentrate more on describing how Communist intellectuals appropriated or echoed the self-narratives of modern activists, and how they allowed their ideological leanings to enter their self-expressions, which were not intended to be ideological writings. Such an attempt may not be easy, since most, though not all, of Communist intellectuals’ expressive writings are brief. But it will show the historicized specificity of these historical actors’ self-construction, since modern political activism and the Communist ideology were the two factors most directly relevant for their political activities—hence, for their imagining of heroism.

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Unveiling the emotion of discontent The restless and vehement rejection of the status quo, a trait of romantic personality (Duff 1994:1), always marked a great many Chinese radicals. The 1911 revolutionaries were determined to overthrow the Qing dynasty, called for the reshaping of Chinese social, political and economic structures, or even imagined the restructuring of the whole world. 4 In the May Fourth period, as Chapter 2 has shown, strong rejection of the status quo worked as a most momentous factor in radical intellectuals’ lives, leading some of them onto the road of Communism. The militant attitude toward the status quo was also essential for the emotion-based self-construction of the radical intellectuals as heroes, for it was by imagining one’s rebellion against things immense and deplorable that one envisioned one’s own greatness. Late Qing political radicals already invoked the dark, the dusty and the shadowy when they described the reality they confronted. In 1904, promoting revolutionary ideas with Zhang Binglin and Zou Rong, Liu Yazi wrote about his feelings after reading the collected works of Zhang Huangyan, a late Ming loyalist. He sighed at the status quo: “In the wind a dark, rainy night makes me sad, I rise and read Wen Tianxiang’s Song of Noble Spirit [Zhengqi ge]” (Liu Yazi [1904] 1963a:436). In describing women’s life, Qiu Jin, the celebrated woman warrior, lamented China’s situation in general and women’s in particular: “How dark is China? How dark is China’s future? And how dark is Chinese women’s world? When I think [of these questions] I cannot but rise up to promote women’s liberation” (Qiu Jin [1907] 1981a:150). Around the time of the May Fourth protest, as Chapter 2 shows, “darkness” became a popular concept May Fourth radicals used to describe the disappointing reality. However, this term was not only employed in these articles written to expose China’s miserable conditions; it was also used in many radicals’ self-expressions. In the late 1910s and early 1920s, “darkness” became a frequently employed term for radicals who wanted to express their discontent with the status quo. When Guo Moruo wrote as a budding poet in 1920, he invoked the legend of the rebirth of the phoenix to show the despair of his generation. In his poem, the male phoenix, approaching its nirvana, sang: “Cruel as iron is the boundless universe!/Dark as black lacquer is the boundless universe!” (Guo Moruo [1920] 2000:33). As expected, discontent was manifested in anger, directed against the unhappy situation of China, or of the world. Traveling with his mother on a boat cruising the Yangtze River, Xia Minghan, who later joined the CCP in the early 1920s as a student radical in Hunan, reacted to foreigners’ privileged status: “Impossible to dispel is my shame and indignation” (Xia Minghan [1920] 1987:7). But the texture of his discontent is richer than anger alone; it also contains a deep sense of sadness. Yun Daiying, a leader of the student movement in Wuhan around the time of the May Fourth movement, wrote in 1919: “As I write to express my sadness,/My brush runs, wild and unrestrained./The cuckoo cries in vain;/The wild goose has lost its home” (Yun Daiying [1919] 1982:108). While the style of wild calligraphy may suggest his wish to break with convention, or the uncontrollable intensity of his feelings, the motif is one of deep melancholy, underlined by the images of a wailing cuckoo and a lonely goose.5

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Did revolutionary intellectuals’ melancholy diminish after they joined the Communist Party, becoming members of an ideological collective? To be sure, after 1949 mainland publications always praised Communist intellectuals for their “revolutionary optimism,” which, according to the CCP, set them apart from late Qing radicals who, like Chen Tianhua, were overcome by their own sadness and discontent (Beijing daxue zhongwenxi…1963:23). It is obvious, however, that Communists still expressed deep sorrow seeing the misery which, in their view, was so overwhelming and prevalent in the world. Taking on the responsibility to organize the labor movement in Yueyang only one year after joining the CCP, Guo Liang lamented:

The Xiao and Xiang rivers flow, Merging into the Yangzi river, And will never return. The dragon king of Lake Dongting lends me the water of his domain. When can I purge all the sorrows in the world? (Guo Liang [1922] 1987:11) Both anger and sadness were evident in the author’s wish to use the water from Lake Dongting to sweep away human sufferings. Radicals were intensely disgusted with the existing state of affairs, which they considered to be unbearable. Wu Yue, who tried to kill the Qing officials sent to observe other countries’ constitutional systems, celebrated “extremity” (jilie) (Wu Yue [1907] 1981:74–5). The May Fourth radicals’ writings also resonated with the voice of militancy. Guo Moruo’s poem, simple as it is, shows how strong the revolutionaries’ emotion of discontent could be. The status quo, he stressed, was intolerable; it must be removed. Guo Liang set forth a confrontational and uncompromising mood, which was echoed by another revolutionary who vowed to use an axe to chop away the thorns infesting the earth (Yao Boxuan 1982:98). For Communist intellectuals, the abominable status quo meant many things, from the presence of imperialism and warlordism to class exploitation and the GMD government.6 Refusing to tolerate intolerable reality, how did Communist intellectuals describe— that is, idealize—their rebellion and themselves as rebels?

Representing one’s heroism As revolutionary intellectuals perceived the world as hateful, they believed that rebellious action was an individual’s inevitable choice. A few days before the Huanghuagang uprising in Guangzhou in 1911, Lin Juemin wrote one of the best-known letters in modern Chinese history. Explaining his cause to his beloved wife, Lin compared himself to a famous Tang poet, describing his political choice as natural: “Just as Bai Juyi could not help weeping at the song of an aging courtesan, I cannot help my anxiety about the suffering of this world” (Lin Juemin [1911] 1981:171). A 1911 radical’s assumption that

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radical action was a natural choice was readily echoed by Fang Zhimin. The leader of the Jiangxi Soviet who was arrested by the Guomindang government in 1935, Fang wrote a series of essays during his imprisonment. In one of these pieces, “My Beloved China,” after depicting China’s humiliating conditions, he also represented his political vocation as unavoidable: My friends, look at us! We encounter all these problems day after day. Unless you are a dead man or a coward who can go along with our nation’s subjugation, who can, otherwise, bear the idea of remaining docile, of not struggling for our country? And I was such a proud, hotblooded youth. (Fang Zhimin [1935] 1985d:126) Fang’s emphasis on one’s natural instinct to act seemed a most logical result of their rebellious approach to hateful reality. But the collections of radical intellectuals’ poetry also reveal the fact that it was heroism—the stress on one’s courage, sensitivity, highmindedness and historical significance—that prevailed in revolutionaries’ selfrepresentation. And Communist intellectuals expressed their pride in themselves as heroes in various ways. Spotlighting courage Revolutionary intellectuals always highlighted their courage. Some quoted historical figures in illustrating themselves as fearless agents for change. When Ye Ting was incarcerated after the destruction of the Second United Front in 1941, he quoted Mencius to highlight his determination to stay loyal to the revolutionary cause: “I shall not be bent by any oppressive force” (weiwu buneng qu) (Ye Ting [1941] 1982:249). Some appropriated the 1911 revolutionary poetry. Wang Xiaoxi, who was an activist during his college days and one of the earliest Communist members in northwest China, was arrested by the government in Gansu in 1928. He sent from prison his final words to his parents, which included a poem: “The violent man depends upon his knife to obtain gratification [baodao cheng yikuai];/But I regret not, losing my head as a youth [hexi shaonian tou]” (Zhongguo qingnian chubanshe 1983:29). Those who have some knowledge of the literature of the 1911 revolutionaries must see the correspondence between it and the famous poem allegedly composed by Wang Jingwei as he bravely confronted the Empress Dowager. Many expressed their courage by showing how much they treasured the Marxist ideology, which, in their view, represented the ultimate truth of human society. Xia Minghan confronted his execution only two days after his arrest in Hankou in February 1928, but he still had time to write a poem declaring his courage: “What does not deserve my worry is the punishment of decapitation;/ For what matters to me is the truth of my ideology” (Xia Minghan [1928] 1987:7). When captured, Fang Zhimin made it clear that he would not betray Communism: “The enemy can behead us,/but can never challenge our faith!/The ideology we have chosen/is the truth that prevails in this universe!” (Fang Zhimin [1935] 1985e:144) Edward Shils has noted that scientism—the emphasis on objective, precise investigations of reality, and the rigorous testing of established views—

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found a kindred spirit in romanticism, since they share a rebellious aversion to rules and traditions that impede individuals’ self-discovery and discovery of the true nature of life (Shils 1969:44). That the Chinese Communist intellectuals were proud of the scientific nature of their ideology is a well-known fact (Kwok 1965:191–200). As these revolutionary intellectuals’ writings show, scientism, in the form of their perception of their ideology as the ultimate theory explaining society and human existence, reinforced their devotion to the Communist cause and buttressed their boldness. 7 In addition, revolutionary intellectuals frequently invoked the concept of masculinity to assert their courage. A good example is the following poem, which was written by Zhou Wenyong, a radical intellectual who was imprisoned after the Guangzhou uprising in 1927, on his cell wall:

You can behead me; You can bend and break my limbs; But what you cannot eliminate is my revolutionary spirit. For the Party a brave man [zhuangshi] can give up his head; Committed to the collective a heroic man [haohan] can let his body be torn apart. (Zhou Wenyong [1928] 1962:23) Many years later, Jin Fangchang, an intellectual youth captured by the Japanese in a village in Shanxi, wrote in response to the torture inflicted on him: “a true man [zhangfu] does not bow his head and weep!” (Jin Fangchang [1940] 1962:208). People like Zhou and Jin associated maleness with bravery, though they did not necessarily equate the two. Others before them had made the same association. Ning Diaoyuan, who joined the Revolutionary Alliance in Tokyo in 1905, described the revolutionary mission thus: “This is what a true man [zhangfu] should do” (Ning Diaoyuan [1906] 1981:246). However, there were those who attempted to. political courage. Undoubtedly Qiu Jin was one of them. Trapped in an unhappy marriage and becoming interested in politics, she wrote in Beijing in 1902: “I am not a man by birth,/but my heart is more valiant than any man’s” (Qiu Jin [1902] 1985:43). A few decades later, Zhao Yiman, a prominent woman trained in Moscow who was ultimately martyred, also deliberately did the same in her self-expression. Working in Harbin in the early 1930s, she declared:

Casting aside my family I vow to struggle for other people; Crossing rivers and oceans I travel to world’s end [tianya]. Not all men are outstanding; for what reasons should women be regarded as inferior? For the rebirth of my nation I do not mind decapitation. May I shed my blood to fertilize the soil of China? (Zhao Yiman [1932–1935] 1997:161)

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Some male revolutionaries, too, refused to see political courage as a male privilege. Qiu Jin earned many male comrades’ compliments. Liu Yazi compared her to such famous “patriotic heroes” as Yue Fei and Yu Qian (Liu Yazi [1907] 1963:439–40). Moreover, in the 1911 revolution, when Chinese radicals appropriated foreign images to define a committed Chinese revolutionary, they found themselves drawn to Russian nihilists in general, and Sophia Perovskaya in particular (Price 1974:204). In fact, the heroic deeds of Sophia Perovskaya continued to impress the Chinese radicals after the 1911 revolution. In the late 1940s, He Xuesong, a high school teacher whose Party membership was awarded posthumously after his execution, borrowed her image to sing the praise of Jiang Zhujun, a woman Communist in Sichuan who allegedly went through unbearable torture in a prison in Chongqing. He told Jiang: “You are the soul of Sophia Perovskaya.” But her nobility was then immediately “Sinicized”: “Oh no! You are yourself, the very epitome of the Chinese race’s sons and daughters” (He Xuesong [1949] 1997:245). This less than prominent Communist thus affirmed, just as the famous 1911 radical Liu Yazi had, that women could be firm when they acted in the political domain. Expanding on politicized sensitivity Heroism, however, is much richer than boldness alone. Showing their own discontent with the status quo, radical intellectuals were strongly disposed to display their unusual sensitivity to the problems of the dark world. Displays of this kind were certainly not a Communist invention. Interweaving her sense of loneliness into her concern for a highly disappointing reality, Qiu Jin narrated her uncommon sensibility: “How can I be understood by all these vulgar and ignorant people?/[…]/Where can I find a true friend in the world of mortals?” (Qiu Jin [1902] 1985:43). The tendency of earlier radicals to accentuate their unmatched sensitivity was inherited by Communist intellectuals. The emphasis on one’s unique sensitivity is prominent in the case of Zhang Wentian, who was very active in support of the New Culture movement in Nanjing. When he joined the Party in 1925, he wrote a novelette expressing his devotion to the revolutionary cause. Entitled A Fallen Leaf, it was in the form of a letter from a son to his mother. This letter evinces clearly a Communist intellectual’s sense of uniqueness in relation to a highly agonizing reality. This is how the letter begins: Dear Mother, It is around midnight. Such a cold winter night. The world is surrounded by darkness. Amid such darkness, I hear nothing, except for the roaring of the wind and the dropping of the rain on the banana leaves. Everyone is asleep: in their beds they find consolation and warmth. No one keeps me company—my companions are a dimly lit oil lamp and a few old foreign books. The cold wind enters my room through the cracks of the door and window, piercing my heart like a sharp knife. Thus I shudder, in a way which I cannot express by words. (Zhang Wentian [1925] 1983:158)

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Who could be more sensitive to the cold, dark world than a revolutionary wide awake while others were enjoying their deep slumber? The image of a solitary revolutionary on a cold, dark night reveals, most explicitly and powerfully, Zhang’s faith in his own uniqueness. Sometimes radicals represented their sensitivity by highlighting their compassionate reactions to those who suffered. To show his admiration for the French anarchist Louis Michel (1830–1905), Su Manshu, the famous revolutionary monk of the late Qing, sighed: “Alas! Looking around this world, we see the suffering of all kinds of sentient beings.” He asked: “Who would, in emulating Ms. Michel, rise to the challenge by becoming the helmsman leading the suffering beings to the other shore?” But then, with much admiration, he introduced a poem he said was written by a friend: “As long as there is one sentient being who has not yet attained Buddhahood, I shall weep in my dreams” (Su Manshu [1907] 1991:1/290–1). Communists did not necessarily negate the metaphorical use of Buddhist-related images and notions in the representation of themselves and the world. 8 But when Fang Zhimin highlighted their compassion in their self-representations as sensitive beings, he as a young socialist invoked the essential theme of his ideological system—class oppression. Studying at William Nast College in the early 1920s, Fang, plagued by his own financial problems, became sensitive to the issues of social justice. Drawn to socialism, he strove in a modern-style poem to represent the oppressed majority’s desperate plea for help. In his poem, the peasants exploited by the landlords, the workers earning meager salaries, and the prostitutes treated as playthings by the rich cried out: “How painful! […] The pain!/ Young man, fair young man, who can we count on but you?” Fang responded:

I could not but be heartbroken, And tears were in my eyes. I answered, resolutely and bravely: “Yes, I must come and save you. Let me follow you.” (Fang Zhimin [1922] 1962:188) Fang might not literally have thought of himself as the only soul who could understand and help the masses. Nevertheless, he wrote as if he were the only one in whom the downtrodden could trust. Sometimes the stress on one’s unusual sensitivity was translated into a disclosure of one’s outstanding qualities as an individual. In A Fallen Leaf, through the mouth of Changhong, Zhang Wentian exclaimed: “I have to blame God [Shangdi]…. He molded me into a sensitive person who hates banality” (Zhang Wentian [1925] 1983:160). Lin Jilu, who joined the Party in 1935 and was well known for his leading role in the Chinese students’ political movement in Japan, once wrote to his father to address the family’s disapproval of his radicalism. In so doing, he boasted of his own unusual character: “Heavens above! Why did you not send me to earth as a stupid pig?… Why did you not shape me into a mediocre individual? And why was I endowed with noble ambitions and hot blood?” (Zhongguo qingnian chubanshe 1983:138). For individuals like Zhang and

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Lin, their political choice—that is, to be revolutionaries—was fated by their superb and distinctive personalities. Celebrating transformative power Images and metaphors abounded in both late Qing radicals’ and Communist intellectuals’ imagining of their heroic existence. Just as European romantics dichotomized the world they hated and the one they aspired to (Duff 1994:1), modern Chinese radicals polarized what they loathed on the one hand and what they wanted on the other. Despite their display of a deep sense of sadness, they contrasted the “dark” reality with the “bright” future they struggled for. To celebrate the anniversary of China Daily (Shenzhou ribao), which was founded by his comrades in Shanghai in 1907, Ning Diaoyuan wrote: “a beam of light is rising in China” (Ning Diaoyuan [1907] 1981:250). For Communist intellectuals, their revolution was “light” and “fire” destined to destroy the dark world (Yu Changhuai [1926] 1982:72; Gao Wenhua [1931] 1982:125; Tian Weidong [1931] 1962:124; Yu Zusheng 1982:300–1). In fact, mindful of the bitterness they tasted by living through a most deplorable time, and conscious of their determination to confront their abominable age, Communist intellectuals described themselves as light seekers dedicated to the removal of a world which was depressingly dark. After representing China as “a place where darkness…prevailed” (Qu Qiubai [1921] 1954:1/2), in 1921 the young Qu Qiubai, excited about visiting Russia as the correspondent of The Morning Post (Chen bao), found himself suddenly seeing “a beam of light which is as red as blood, a beam of light that brightens up the dissolute world.” This beam of red light, Qu said, was brightness. And he did not hesitate to identify it as “the beacon” of his own heart, guiding his solitary sampan to the land of brightness (Qu Qiubai [1921] 1953:1/5, 88 and 92). Others paralleled Qu’s attempt to represent himself as a light seeker. Zhang Wentian’s fictional hero, Changhong, decided to leave his family and devote himself to “the mission of searching for brightness” (Zhang Wentian [1925] 1983:164). On the eve of his execution, describing all the unsatisfactory conditions he lived through in his own life, Fang Zhimin stated: “I was born in 1899…. In such dark surroundings, I survived, but in an oppressive, humiliating way. I gradually grew up, dissatisfied with this environment. I thirsted for brightness and began to fight for it” (Fang Zhimin [1935] 1985b:10). Also recurrent in Communist intellectuals’ poems and closely related to the metaphors of fire and light was the image of Prometheus. Like the European romantics, the Communists interpreted Prometheus as a symbol of endurance, compassion, self-sacrifice and defiance of despotism. In order to distance himself from his brother, who rose rapidly in the hierarchy in the Guomindang army, Yin Fu, a revolutionary poet, wrote a poem in 1929, proclaiming his revolutionary stand:

Therefore the moans of machines disturb him in his sweet dream; And the cries of the toiling masses shake his spirit. He is aggrieved day and night, Wishing to bring light to humanity like Prometheus. (Yin Fu 1929, translation taken from Hsia Tsi-an 1968:203)

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Yin was inspired by Prometheus’s spirit of rebellion and sacrifice: “Never again will he [Yin Fu himself] fear the wrath of God./He is ready to sacrifice his life” (Hsia Tsi-an 1968:203). Xiao Cizhan, who was active in the labor movement in Guizhou and who was executed by the Guomindang in 1940, seemed to treat Prometheus as his spiritual mentor:

I am confident of my victory; Private concerns I choose to neglect. A giant beckons to me; He is Prometheus. (Xiao Cizhan [1940] 1962:213) Communist intellectuals, we should note, represented Prometheus as an immensely powerful figure: his goal was to reform the world; his will to endure appeared unbending; and his defiance was certainly most gigantic, for he rebelled against none other than the highest god. Modeling themselves upon Prometheus, they harbored a certain enthusiasm, conscious or unconscious, for the pursuit of greatness. In fact, Communist intellectuals revealed a longing for a transcendental existence, an existence that moved beyond its individual bearer and virtually reached the state of infinitude. To portray their power as radicals, some invoked the imagery of the sword, which had been employed by numerous late Qing activists. Tan Sitong’s use of sword imagery is widely known. When he was in prison, he expressed his unsurpassed love for his cause: “I laugh, carrying my sword and facing the sky” (Tan Sitong [1898] 1963:353). Other 1911 radicals, including Qiu Jin and Liu Yazi, did the same.9 Chen Chang, one of the earliest members of the Communist Party, wrote on New Year’s Eve of the year 1928: “When the cock crows I will rise,/dress myself, and greet the new year;/I shall use my sword to pierce the sky!” (Chen Chang [1928] 1982:83) The following poem is a joint creation by two close comrades, Xia Minghan and Guo Liang, when they were both leading revolutionaries in Hunan:

I hang a sword on the curtain, This is the best way to drive away a devil, be it little or big [Guo Liang]. I will use the sword to kill all the evil spirits; Only when the world is pacified can we rearrange the sun, the moon, the mountains, and the rivers. (Guo Liang and Xia Minghan [1923] 1987:11) Carrying and rearranging the celestial bodies, relocating geographical sites and smiting the sky—what did these metaphorical images mean? Taking into consideration the authors’ radical political identities, it is safe to say that they must have represented the revolutionaries’ grand ambition of restructuring society, and their faith that their activities

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were destined to have a tremendous impact on society. As early as the 1940s, Schumpeter had argued that the capacity to be original was tied to opposition to the establishment (Lipset 1991:367). Communist intellectuals could not have agreed more, when they imagined themselves to be historical agents whose rebellion was about to reshape society and the world and celebrated their creative power in their poetry. Moreover, the choice of images also deserves some attention. When people like Xia and Guo drew an analogy between the socio-political transformation brought by their radicalism and the reconfiguration of natural phenomena, and when they described themselves as the ones generating all these changes, they indulged in a kind of wild and unbound fantasy—that they would initiate a titanic upheaval, and thus themselves transcend the limitations of the human condition. The revolutionaries, it seems, wove together their radicalism and their longings, however vague, for expanding their selves into the infinite. While some Communists indulged themselves in the fantasy of moving beyond the finite, others shared with many European writings the paradoxical notion that they could expand their existence by merging themselves into an entity more immense than themselves as individuals. Sometimes the belief in self-expansion through immersion in a larger-than-self unit was based on the historical actor’s conscious reflections on the Party and the revolution. In 1935, Fang Zhimin poured out his feeling as a revolutionary: “In March 1924,… I joined the Party in Nanchang. This is the most memorable event in my life!” For him, the organization he joined was the revolutionary vanguard. ‘The Communist Party,” he said, “represented the most advanced class of human beings—the proletariat.” He continued expounding on the admirable features of the vanguard: “It has a most sophisticated theory and agenda on the revolution, and the noblest ideals. Its organization is most effective…. It is one with the proletariat and all other suffering masses, leading them with intimacy.” It was, he then concluded, truly an honor to be a member of the Communist Party: “A Communist—what an honorable, lofty word! I joined the Communist Party, became its member—How glorious I felt about my membership!” (Fang Zhimin [1935] 1985b:19–20). Whether this is an accurate account of how he felt in 1924 is not the issue here. Unequivocal is the fact that one of the bestknown Communist martyrs built his pride and sense of glory upon his own fusion with a larger collective—the Communist Party fighting for a noble cause. Some expressed their pride as part of the fighting collective without any conscious attempt to depict and glamorize the specific features of the vanguard. In 1949, Li Qia, much less prominent as a martyr, wrote to his wife and friends, taking measure of himself as he awaited execution by the Nationalist government. “I am an ordinary person who lives in a great, extraordinary era.” He then emphasized once again, “I am really plain” (Zhongguo qingnian chubanshe 1983:236). But he was not devoid of confidence and pride: “[The happiness of the coming generations]—this is what we sacrifice our lives for…. For this mission many heroes, many bold fighters, shed their blood and lost their heads. I am only a drop of water in the ocean, a small plant on the plain” (Zhongguo qingnian chubanshe 1983:245). His self-deprecation may have come from his modesty, or from the Party’s effective suppression of intellectuals’ egotism during the 1940s, or from a combination of both. At any rate, highlighting his sub-mersion into the admirable collective of martyrs, he was, despite his confession of plainness, obviously interested in pointing up his heroism.

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By delineating their own and their Party’s capacity for change, revolutionary intellectuals also expressed the view that the revolution was destined to create a promising future. Many romantics, experts have noted, enjoyed imagining. When it came to politics, they “turned their minds from the existing order to vast prospects of a reformed humanity” (Bowra 1957:2). Likewise, devoted Communists were good dreamers. In his poem commemorating the May Thirtieth protest, Yin Fu in 1930 envisioned the new world thus: “By trampling underfoot your [the capitalists’] heads, we shall build our new capital;/on the site of your worthless smelting furnace, we shall pave our new road” (Yin Fu [1930] 1962:89). In fact, Communist intellectuals’ envisioning of the new world could appear religious. Marxist believers were religious, according to Schumpeter, for they believed that their revolution would, with the application of its ideological system of knowledge, create a perfect society, a paradise on earth (Schumpeter [1942] 1975:5). In the epilogue to his My Beloved China, Fang Zhimin declaimed: China, we believe, is destined to have a bright, admirable future…. My friends, I am sure that [in the future] we will see all kinds of inventions; monthly or even daily improvements. [In the future], joyous singing will replace sighing; smiles will replace weeping; prosperity will replace poverty; health will replace sickness; wisdom will replace ignorance, harmonious friendship will replace vengeance; the happiness of life will replace the sadness of death; bright, beautiful gardens will replace destitute, barren land. (Fang Zhimin [1935] 1985d:141–2) In short, while emphasizing that to be a revolutionary was a natural choice, Communist intellectuals narrated themselves as heroes by elaborating on their boldness and unique sensitivity; by expanding their being either through extravagant fantasies or through the imagined fusion of themselves with a noble collective; and by envisioning that they would bring forth an ideal world.

Aesthetic sensitivity and heroism But in addition to using such symbols as the sword and light, Communist intellectuals also used the imagery of the flower to glorify their admirable quality and heroism. It is obvious that they were affected by the Chinese literary tradition, within which there was an allegorical association between certain flora on the one hand and purity and uprightness on the other. Educated Communists identified with the plum blossom for its purity, persistence and opposition to the mundane world (Xia Minghan 1982:38; Cheng Xiaocun 1982a:207; Qu Qiubai [1935] 1981a:194), and showed their appreciation of the chrysanthemum as well (Ouyang Meisheng [1918] 1987:5; Qu Qiubai 1981:1–2). 10 Rather than dwelling on the Communist intellectuals’ conventional use of specific floral imagery, I explore the symbolism of the flower itself as a highly important image in revolutionaries’ self-portrayal.

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Pursuing beauty in the socio-political domain As I have already shown, “darkness” was a term many late Qing activists, May Fourth radicals and Communist intellectuals used to describe the world that had aroused their animosity. But I want to emphasize here that in radicals’ usage, what accompanied the term “darkness” was a cluster of expressions—nouns, adjeo tives, phrases and sentences—that they exploited to evoke unpleasant mental images, pictures and feelings. The term “darkness,” therefore, operated in conjunction with words and phrases conveying an essence of ugliness. When Qiu Jin bade farewell to one of her good friends in 1907, she declared: “I do not want to be placed in any burial site,/for China does not have one inch of territory which is clean and unpolluted” (Qiu Jin [1907] 1981b:156). We may also refer to Guo Moruo’s poem in which he gave vent to his distress through the phoenix’s song.11 In addition to lamenting that the universe was as “dark as black paint,” the male phoenix also cried: “Noisome and dirty as blood is the boundless universe!” (Guo Moruo [1920] 2000:33). What besmirched her, said the female phoenix, were “stains and filth which cannot be cleansed!” (Guo Moruo [1920] 2000:35). In Qu Qiubai’s view, Chinese society was not only a place where “darkness” prevailed; it was also a location marked by “fetid stench, dirt, and muddy water” (Qu Qiubai [1921] 1954:3). Standing side by side with Fang Zhimin’s comments on China’s “darkness” was his portrayal of the unpleasant scene of rural China: “The roads are bumpy, and along them you see dirt, dregs, and refuse…. In summer, flies dominate the world by day, and mosquitoes reign by night” (Fang Zhimin [1935] 1985b:11–12). Applying the concept of “ugliness” to describe what they rejected, radical intellectuals—late Qing, May Fourth and Communist activists—tended to represent their rebellion against the status quo, their ideals and/or themselves as beautiful. This I shall discuss in one of the coming sections. But here let me point out, first of all, that this tendency was much facilitated by the immense interest in aesthetics in modern China. Committed to beauty in the aesthetic realm Communist radicals pursued the beauty of the political, as many of them grew up in or helped shape an era marked by a keen interest in aesthetic beauty. In this section, I intend to show how the historical environment heightened Communist intellectuals’ attention to aesthetics, including the relationship between politics and aesthetics, and thus encouraged them to use artistic imagery to exhibit and imagine beauty in politics. The modern conscious attention to aesthetics began in the late nineteenth century, as politically conscious Chinese critiqued traditional aesthetics. How could the Chinese reshape literature and the arts so as to make them effective weapons, conveying political messages in a powerful and convincing manner? This was a question pondered by intellectuals including Huang Zunxian, Liang Qichao, Cai Yuanpei, Chen Duxiu and Lu Xun (Nie Zhenbin 1991:64–72, 147–9, 193 and 240–52). Amid their efforts to reshape art, they created new standards of beauty. The late 1910s and the 1920s not only witnessed a great interest in re-evaluating traditional aesthetics but also evolved into a time of unprecedented consciousness of aesthetics. Radicals sensitized themselves to the issue of aesthetics by contemplating the relationship between aesthetics on the one hand, and their goal of transforming China—hence, politics—on the other. In those years, many

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thinkers and writers were intent on re-examining the aesthetic meanings of beauty from their new socio-political perspectives. Modern Chinese intellectuals as a collective redefined beauty by defying the formalism and classicism of traditional art, by rejecting the didactic and moralistic Chinese use of art, and by identifying—albeit with individual variations—with populism, egalitarianism and individualism. Huang Zunxian, Wang Guowei, and some iconoclastic activists emphasized the importance of the individual’s “true sentiments” as an essential criterion for literary creations (Nie Zhenbin 1991:63–4, 111 and 212); Wang Guowei, Cai Yuanpei, and Lu Xun and others talked about the transcendental nature of aesthetics (Nie Zhenbin 1991:77, 126, 211 and 248); and Chen Duxiu and his followers praised popular literature in aesthetically admiring terms, describing it as “fresh” and “emotionally genuine” (Nie Zhenbin 1991:118).12 Modern Chinese intellectuals also contemplated the aesthetic effect of aesthetics on China’s cultural, social and political transformation. For instance, during the early 1920s, Cai Yuanpei’s idea of “aesthetic education” was extremely popular among Westernized intellectuals. Lu Xun thought that because of its cathartic effect, aesthetics was important for deepening human emotions and developing a good personality (Nie Zhenbin 1991:32, 147 and 248). “How to live an artistic life” (meihua rensheng) became a popular topic of lectures and conferences at that time. There was even a book titled An Aesthetic Approach to the Organization of Society. Aesthetics, some intellectuals assumed, was a powerful prescription for China, whose ugliness was present in its sociopolitical structure, its people’s souls and even the dirty urban areas (Nie Zhenbin 1991:214–20). In this connection, the utilitarian use of aesthetics was based on its non-utilitarian, artistic nature. Many of those who joined the Communist Party in the 1920s were nurtured by the aesthetic sensibility of the era. An interesting example is Ye Tiandi, a Communist martyr, who had once worked closely with the famous artist Li Shutong at the Zhejiang First Normal College (Huang Renke 1993:72–3). But was the commitment to aesthetics inherited by the younger Communists, who were born too late to participate in the May Fourth movement, and joined the revolution just in time to receive the Communist training (and particularly the Yan’an training), which has been known for stressing the political use of aesthetics? While a systematic and detailed inquiry into this question exceeds the scope of this study, I would argue for the survival of aesthetic sensitivity in the Communist revolution even during the 1940s. What deserves our attention is the impact of aesthetic education on the modern Chinese educational structure and intellectual atmosphere. In 1921, the University of Beijing took the lead in offering the first course in aesthetics. The professor was none other than Cai Yuanpei, then the president of the university. By the mid-1920s courses on the arts and aesthetics had become an integral part of the curriculum in many higher education institutions. At the same time, aesthetics was an issue widely discussed among scholars, educators, writers and artists. Numerous writings on aesthetics and aesthetics education were published; some magazines even dedicated a particular section to the issue of aesthetics. Growing up in the decades following the iconoclastic cultural movement of the late 1910s, “younger” Communist radicals who we examine in this study may well have been exposed, albeit sometimes indirectly, to the vogue for aesthetics awareness.

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It should be noted that while the Communist Party did not hesitate to use art and literature for political ends, the notion of aesthetics education and the belief in the crucial contribution of aesthetic beauty to China’s transformation were too metaphysical for any Communist. But revolutionary politics, particularly its pragmatic use of literature and the arts, did not overwhelm totally revolutionary intellectuals’ interest in aesthetics. This I shall explore in Chapter 7. Here I would simply point up that from the mid-1920s to the 1940s, educated Communists remained aesthetically conscious by continuing the May Fourth habit of pondering the aesthetically beautiful. For instance, they quoted European socialists from Engels to Plekhanov and Lunacharsky to Chernyshevsky in redefining the aesthetic nature of beauty from what they believed to be the Marxist perspective (Nie Zhenbin 1991:368–70).13 More importantly, revolutionary intellectuals retained considerable aesthetic sensitivity in continuing the praxis of using artistic images to represent beauty in politics until the late 1940s. The beauty of politics, the beauty of aesthetics and the flower symbol in self-idealizations Idealizing themselves and their political dream during a time when intellectuals thought seriously about aesthetics, modern Chinese radicals highlighted the beauty of their politics—their revolutionary identities, goals and activities—by invoking attractive images. Imagining the future success of Chinese women’s struggle for liberation, Qiu Jin represented such success as “a beam of glorious and elegantly colorful light” (Qiu Jin [1907] 1981a:153). After their rebirths, rising from the ashes, Guo Moruo’s phoenixes were exhilarated by their own breathtaking images: “We are clean and bright!/[…] We are fresh!/[…] We are gorgeously beautiful!/[...] We are fragrant!” (Guo Moruo [1920] 2000:42–9). On the eve of joining the Communist Party, Zhang Wentian favored the color purple in evoking the beauty of the radical youths’ struggle. In A Fallen Leaf, Changhong, Zhang Wentian’s beloved hero, described his own struggle as “running toward the purple cloud” (Zhang Wentian [1925] 1983:161). In a short essay written by Zhang around the same time, he pointed to the beautiful future: “Look! The purple light of dawn is announcing the sunrise. Progress, my friends!” (Zhang Wentian [1925] 1983:260). As Communist intellectuals consciously or involuntarily attempted to render the beauty of the political into pleasing images, the flower symbol loomed large in their selfnarratives. In their expressive writings, the flower image was a metaphor representing various dimensions of the revolutionary process. Cheng Xiaocun, a revolutionary poet executed by the GMD in 1941, used the image of the flower to signify his violent struggle against class enemies for the liberation of the oppressed: “I fought on the battle field for the liberation of slaves./[…]/A flower blooms at the muzzle of my weapon” (Cheng Xiaocun 1982c:211). The flower also symbolized the revolutionary’s sacrifice for the cause. Imprisoned, Wang Daqiang, a leading revolutionary in Hubei, wrote when he was imprisoned and suffered from physical torture in 1927: “As…my singing stops, the earth will witness the blooming of the flower of blood” (Wang Daqiang [1927] 1982:35).14 Moreover, the flower functioned as a symbol of the revolution itself: Bai Shenfu, a student movement organizer in Sichuan, called his beloved revolution “our idealistic, noble flower” (Bai Shenfu 1962:353). The flower could certainly represent a

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revolutionary’s unshakable spirit. In Fang Zhimin’s final writings, we find this poetic passage: If I die, a little flower perhaps will grow at the place where I shed my blood, or where my bones are buried. It will be the manifestation of my spirit. Nodding in the breeze, this little flower—that is, myself—will be saluting those who fight for the nation. And if it sways, this will be me singing revolutionary songs to encourage the comrades. (Fang Zhimin [1935] 1985d:142–3) In fact, educated Communists did not stop at using the flower as a metaphor for revolution-related factors. They sometimes endowed revolutionary elements with a kind of floral nature. We may regard the flower in Fang Zhimin’s poem as a metaphor for a revolutionary’s undaunted revolutionary spirit. But so explicitly stated was the linkage between the flower and himself that Fang seemed to point to the “floral” essence in himself as a devoted revolutionary. Bai Shenfu praised revolutionaries and the revolution: “The most beautiful flower blossoms in winter, at night./It is fearless of darkness and severe cold” (Bai Shenfu 1962:352–4). As admirable revolutionary qualities were incorporated into the flower imagery, the line between the flower and what it symbolized—revolution, revolutionary spirit, etc.— was blurred. During his imprisonment in Sichuan from 1948 to 1949, Cai Mengwei wrote a poem to commemorate two of his comrades executed by the GMD, using the flower as a metaphor but at the same time something more: “The flower of victory/blossoms in the blood shed by revolutionary fighters” (Cai Mengwei [1949] 1982:290). The blooming of the flower symbolized the victory of the revolution. However, victory was also the flower itself. Revolutionaries, it is evident, imbued political beauty with aesthetic essence. What remains unresolved is the question why the flower became so prominent in Communist intellectuals’ self-representations. The fact that most Communist intellectuals were busy professional revolutionaries and mediocre poets may have been behind their uncreative choice of aesthetic symbols. They probably selected the images conveniently available in their own literary repertoire without too much thought. After all, not only did the flower symbol remain an established metaphor in traditional literature, but it also occupied a very visible place in late Qing activists’ poetry. In response to his comrade’s request, for instance, Zhou Shi, a 1911 radical, wrote a poem to commemorate the founding of The Citizens (Minli bao), in which he pictured this encouraging scene: “Million years after the victory of the revolution,/people will still toast the flower of freedom (ziyouhua)” (Zhou Shi [1910] 1963:462). Consider also Huang Zhimeng, who was arrested as his attempt to kill Yuan Shikai did not work out. He wrote the following lines to show his revolutionary spirit: “My blood drops will transform into flowers,/and invite the later generations to behold” (Huang Zhimeng [1912] 1981:233). But a careful textual analysis of the Communists’ writings suggests that their preoccupation with the flower was possibly rooted in revolutionaries’ understanding of their role in the revolution. In Communist intellectuals’ poetry, the organic development of the flower—the blossoming as well as the fruiting that follows—depended upon the cultivation by revolutionaries:

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The flower of the revolution Can only be cultivated by our unfailing, unconditional intrepidity. (Li Ce [1941] 1982:201)

If blood is indispensable for the blooming of the flower [...] I shall step forward, Bravely and resolutely. (Gu Chengshuo [1947] 1962:360)

The martyrs’ blood flowers, will transform into beautiful fruit. (Cheng Xiaocun 1982b:209) These quotations reveal something extremely important—these individuals’ perceptions that the results of the revolution were not ready-made objects for which the revolutionaries attempted to reach, and that revolution itself was created by the revolutionaries through their efforts and sacrifice. Such an understanding also manifested itself in other imagery related to the flower symbol. Facing execution, Lan Diyu, who joined the Communist Party when he was a student at a normal college in Sichuan (Zhonggong zhongyang dangshi yanjiushi keyanbu 1997:233–4), wrote to his child: “I hope you will develop the spirit of transforming autumn into spring;/! hope you will turn the barren land of our country into beautiful gardens and forests” (Lan Diyu [1949] 1962:358). Expressing his wish “to pursue a grand ideal,” an Uighur revolutionary poet wrote after his release from prison, “A diligent gardener does not allow the withering of his flowers;/Neither does he let his garden become a piece of barren land” (Lutefula Mutalifu [1945] 1982:245). Revolutionaries were gardeners; the development and success of the revolution were gardens; gardens relied upon the gardener’s diligence. These images were simply elegant versions of what revolutionaries sometimes expressed in less fancy terms. In substance they are similar, for instance, to the comparison drawn by Qian Yi, a revolutionary journalist working in central China, between the New Fourth Army and the horticulturist: “One man plants the tree,/and thousands will enjoy the shade” (Qian Yi 1982:269). These images of gardens and Li Qia’s statement are very much alike: “Ours is a generation responsible for the fertilization. We use our blood to water the plants in the coming paradise” (Zhongguo qingnian chubanshe 1983:245). These representations, fancy or relatively plain, point to the revolutionaries’ feeling that revolution was their creation. No wonder flower imagery was so popular in Communist intellectuals’ poetry. Its propensity to blossom and fruit, its dependence on external cultivation, and its essential role in a garden—all these qualities, for the Communist poets and authors, made the flower a most fitting symbol to signify the revolution. And its elegant beauty undoubtedly captured the imagination of those who grew up in the May Fourth and post-May Fourth

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milieus, in which the modern Chinese quest for beauty was earnest. If Communist intellectuals did borrow the flower symbol from earlier radicals’ poems, they did not borrow blindly, as the symbol itself helped them to express their vision of their revolutionary mission.15 By utilizing beautiful images to symbolize the revolution and themselves as revolutionaries, Communist intellectuals added artistically pleasant ingredients to their emotion-based self-construction.

Conclusion When, in the non-ideological space, Communist intellectuals narrated their emotions in relation to the status quo, themselves (and to some extent their comrades) as revolutionaries, and the revolution, their narratives were so expressive that they were worthy of the name of romantic. They showed their hatred of the status quo, portraying reality as dark and evil. They represented themselves as heroes, courageous, uniquely sensitive and blessed with transformative power. Through the revolution, they imagined, they would create a paradise on earth: they augmented their heroic proportion by envisioning that the world they were to create was to be just, ideal and thus beautiful. They treasured the revolution and the revolutionary vocation so much that they saw beauty in themselves, their political acts and the revolutionary process: in their writings, they were gorgeous, uncompromisingly fighting against the ugly reality Not only did they echo late Qing radicals and reformers, but they also drew upon their ideological knowledge to express their personalized subjectivity.16 Communist intellectuals’ ability to ennoble themselves as heroes contributed to their sense of exaltation. In their self-idealization, they highlighted their superiority as they compared themselves with the “insensitive” majority The titanism in their selfexpressions—for instance, their emulation of Prometheus—reflects revolutionaries’ intoxication with the image of themselves towering above the suffering majority awaiting their rescue. The employment of aesthetically pleasing symbols helped them further to imagine the glory of their revolutionary activities. Moreover, some of them imagined the expansion and integration of their existence not only into a powerful fighting collective but also into infinity. What could be more elitist than these literary endeavors to represent oneself and one’s comrades as a group transcending the human condition? Writing in the non-ideological space, they expressed themselves, and, with success, ennobled their being. But aside from asserting their political passion, revolutionary intellectuals also provided, intentionally or inadvertently, testimony to their commitment to the revolutionary cause. They did so by reflecting on their non-political lives.

6 The nobility of ambivalence and devotion In expressing romantically their politicized subjectivity and molding themselves into heroes, Communist intellectuals were not content with merely declaring their feelings about the status quo, the revolution, and themselves and their comrades as revolutionaries. They also sought to demonstrate their commitment to the revolution by describing how, for their cause, they conducted their non-political lives. To analyze their acts of describing, I begin with the well-established theme that Communist revolutionaries were torn between their political obligations and passion on the one hand and their non-political inclinations on the other. I shall look into the ways in which Communist intellectuals disclosed and made use of the conflict between the political and non-political in their lives to display their political commitment. In my analysis, by representing and dramatizing the conflict between the political and the nonpolitical as an important part of their subjective experience, Communist intellectuals indulged themselves in the imagination that they had let their political lives—their political passion, duties and disciplines—intrude into the non-political domain. What emerged from such imaginings was the theme of self-sacrifice and suffering, which was unmistakably prominent in revolutionary intellectuals’ self-representations. Anatomizing the theme of self-sacrifice/suffering as revolutionaries’ own favorite subject in self-idealization, scholars are tempted quite easily to dwell on the phenomenon of hypocrisy—namely that these people were not as self-sacrificing as they represented themselves to be. 1 While this phenomenon is virtually undisputable, I would insist that self-sacrifice did appear to be an important part of many revolutionaries’ lives. In their writings, authors like Zheng Chaolin and Wang Ruowang have shown the complexity of revolutionaries’ inner worlds, where the willingness to sacrifice co-existed with the instinct for selfpreservation and the urge to enjoy life (Zheng Chaolin 1998:2/20–1; Wang Ruowang 1991:1/378–9). In addition, while hypocrisy is relevant to the issue of revolutionary intellectuals’ self-construction, I admit, for my research interest in heroism, that I choose to focus on how Communist intellectuals used the sacrifice motif in their elitist selfconstruction. In this chapter, I shall discuss how Communist intellectuals demonstrated their political commitment and thus their heroism, as they described those plots in which they sacrificed for the revolution some important concerns of their nonpolitical lives— worldly comfort and possessions, emotional ties, and their survival and security. To be sure, they may have exaggerated or even made things up when they wrote about all those plots of—and the feelings accompanying—their self-sacrificing behaviors. But even so, as they chose to highlight self-sacrifice as evidence of devotion, their selfrepresentations bespoke the fact that they believed they were entitled to assert how much they suffered for the revolution. Such an assertion could not but suggest their ambivalence about their revolutionary lives. In fact, ambivalence was intrinsic to the motif of sacrifice, for the invocation of the notion of sacrifice connotes one’s view that

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for a certain purpose, one forsakes what one finds valuable, what can bring one joy and comfort, and what is conventionally defined as enticing. How, then, did Communist intellectuals use this ambivalence to build themselves as self-sacrificing heroes? By reminding themselves of their own sacrifice and endeavor for the revolution, how did Communist intellectuals compare themselves with the “masses” from the emotional perspective? And as they emphasized so much their struggle to become good revolutionaries, how did they deal with the CCP’s anti-elitist thinking, which stressed intellectuals’ impure political commitment? These questions I shall attempt to explore in this chapter.

Forsaking comfort and possessions Communist intellectuals always emphasized that they abandoned worldly comfort in order to develop the revolution. They translated this emphasis into testimony to their sacrifice for the Communist revolution, and to their nobleness. Reflecting on their everyday routines, Communist intellectuals echoed 1911 radicals like Xu Xilin, who sighed that a revolutionary life was an unsettled and materially uncomfortable life.2 For instance, traveling back and forth between Changsha and Hankou to develop revolutionary work around 1921, Deng Zhongxia described his busy life: “boundless is Lake Dongting,/which I cross twice within five days.” Even at such an early stage of his revolutionary career, he was proud of his ideological choice but at the same time pointed up the fact that his life was devoid of comfort and ease: “What will our world become?/ Communism is its future./Lonely and strenuously I struggle for my ideal,/ following my own heart (Deng Zhongxia [1921] 1962:123). But while both pre-Communist radicals and Communist revolutionaries expanded on how they gave up physical comfort for the revolution, the late Qing radicals were inclined to use real or imagined indulgent acts of consuming food, wine and money to show themselves (and their comrades) as unconventional rebels, and to celebrate comradeship. Commemorating his good friend, Zhao Boxian, who died a few months after the failure of the Huanghuagang uprising in 1911, Su Manshu recalled with deep feeling how they had bonded in Nanjing by sharing a meal of seasoned duck (banya), a local delicacy (Su Manshu [1912] 1991:2/396).3 It is, however, hard to find poems by Communist intellectuals in which they elaborated on such pleasure. Since the 1920s they had operated within a Party structure that, through the process of Bolshevization, emphasized iron discipline and celebrated the individual’s hard work for the vanguard and for the revolution (Benton and Hunter 1995:5). While leading Communists were not unequivocally ascetic (see note 1), in the Communist revolutionary milieu the pleasures of material life looked awkward in Communist intellectuals’ self-representations as heroes. In addition, the fact that many revolutionaries had to work among the poor in general and the peasants in particular argued for a lifestyle in which material interests were better suppressed. Therefore, it seems safe to say that Communist intellectuals were more inclined to display their detachment from pleasure and possessions. The pride in what one did for the revolution was accompanied by the understanding that a revolutionary’s life was rough. Li Linguang, who participated in Party work in the Jiangsu area in the late 1920s, was jailed after joining the CCP in late 1927 and lost his

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health in prison. Upon his release, he went home, where he faced pressure from his mother to leave the revolutionary ranks. Refusing to comply, he left home with his wife. And although he chose the revolutionary cause, in his farewell letter he juxtaposed the satisfaction he derived from his willing relinquishment of personal comfort with his consciousness of revolutionaries’ harsh lives: After our departure, we will resume our hard and difficult (qingku) lives as revolutionaries. Our lives certainly will not be comfortable and peaceful, but we shall feel most gratified spiritually. Our food is simple and coarse, but for us it tastes a lot better than the delicacies at home. (Zhongguo qingnian chubanshe 1979:81) Fang Zhimin even hailed poverty as an indispensable virtue for the revolutionaries. In his article titled “Poverty” (qingpku), also written at the end of his life, he recounted that when he was searched after his capture in 1935, the Nationalist soldiers were irritated by what they found—only a watch and a fountain pen. He then declared: “leading a simple and poor life helps us overcome many obstacles we come across” (Fang Zhimin [1935] 1985f:166–7). Promoting the greatness of poverty, Fang however introduced his revolutionary choice as a sacrifice of the possibility of a better life: “For class and national liberation, and for our Party’s success… I put behind me the issue of personal prosperity and comfort! I fear neither hunger nor cold” (Fang Zhimin [1935] 1985e:163). Through their self-expressions, Communist intellectuals elevated the relinquishment of worldly comfort and possessions to a status of importance in the revolutionary context. Not only did it serve as an indicator of a revolutionary’s political commitment, but it was also upheld as a useful virtue. However, as revolutionary intellectuals praised their decision to give up comfort as “sacrifice” and injected the notion of hardship into their self-representations, they betrayed how they felt—that is, the fact that they still treasured what they believed they had forsaken.

Forsaking families and romances Although Communist intellectuals revealed unintentionally their longing, however weak, for comfort and possessions, they profusely put on show the pains they felt when they sacrificed non-political emotional ties. Families Given the intellectual-cultural milieu into which their radicalism was born, it seems reasonable to infer that Communist intellectuals were far from devoted to the family, and that they were thus less than likely to regard forsaking family ties as a sacrifice. While radical reformers like Tan Sitong and Kang Youwei had already formed critical views on the Chinese family in the latter half of the nine-teenth century, it was in the late 191 Os that the family as a social institution was under siege. Writing before the family as an institution was mercilessly bombarded, late Qing radicals always showed how much they were concerned about their families in their narratives on their lives. After the failures of

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the uprisings in Hunan in 1904, Song Jiaoren went to Japan, and, planning to stay there for a while, wrote one day: “Three years ago I left my country;/Autumn arrives again amid my longing for my family./[…] the most remote corner of the earth, I could not but find the passage to home long” (Song Jiaoren [1908] 1981:243). In 1911, before the Huanghuagang uprising, Fang Shengdong finished preparing two letters to his family, in which he apologized for hiding his revolutionary identity from his father, explained why he had forsaken his family responsibilities, and asked his father and nephew to take care of his wife and son (Huang Jilu 1969:1/215–16). Communist intellectuals were quite different in their attitudes towards their own families. Under the influence of the May Fourth tradition, a considerable number of May Fourth and Communist intellectuals felt alienated from their paternal families and were eager to leave. Gilmartin’s research shows that some of the earliest Communist intellectuals held grievances against their families, and especially against marriage arrangements imposed on them by their parents (Gilmartin 1995). In addition, there are materials indicating that the individual’s estrangement from the family continued to be a problem for many radicals. The correspondence between Yun Daiying and one of his admirers shows clearly Communist intellectuals’ and young aspiring radicals’ indifferent and even manipulative approach to the kind of families they disliked. In 1924, a student named Cui Su wrote to Yun, expressing his unhappiness and his intention to leave his family. Yun’s reply was published in Chinese Youth (Zhongguo qingnian). To help his agonized fan, Yun told him: “If you do not need the family’s financial and material support, there is no reason for you to ask your wife. Let her find another husband…. [However], when your friends cannot help you anymore, you can pretend to compromise with your family. Cheat them out of their money” (Yun Daiying 1981:191). The fact that in the Yan’an period many young people referred to Ba Jin’s Family as an inspirational source for their revolutionary fervor also to some extent reveals how dissatisfaction with one’s family continued to be a significant part of radical Chinese youths’ psychology (Chen Danchen 1981:310). But not all Communist intellectuals were eager to leave their families. As a matter of fact, famous leaders like Liu Shaoqi and Wang Ruofei had affectionate relationships with their families or the relatives who had raised them.4 Moreover, in the May Fourth and post-May Fourth periods, radicals, Communists or not, assumed that radical young men’s and women’s hatred for “feudalistic” family should not be equated with a total absence of feelings for the family, and that escape from an unwanted familial arrangement did not necessarily mean a total break from the family. The heroes and heroines of Ba Jin’s celebrated novel Family were certainly cast on the basis of these premises. In Zhang Wentian’s A Fallen Leaf, the hero, Changhong, wrote to his mother years after leaving his family in defiance of his mother’s attempt to arrange his marriage. More importantly, Communist intellectuals always represented family ties as something valuable and regarded giving them up as sacrifice.5 But this chapter is not intended to explore how revolutionary intellectuals represented their struggle against family relations they disliked as their own “sacrifice” of precious family ties. To highlight the ambivalence of the concept of self-sacrifice, I focus on how they described their relationships with those they emphasized that they loved. In their expressive writings, they created the family as a place and as people to be missed. Some of them described the sacrifice of family ties as a drain on their

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psychological peace, elaborating on their own sense of rootlessness caused by their separation from families. A May Fourth activist and returned student from Japan, Xiong Henghan joined the CCP in 1926 and immediately plunged into his work. But soon he became lonely. “Wandering for one thousand miles,” he said, “I am far away from my parents, wife and children” (Xiong Henghan [1927 or 1928] 1962:50). In a poem written on the fifteenth of the first lunar month (yuanxiao) in the same period, he proudly associated his political commitment with the notion of masculine virility: “The waves of spring surge on earth;/A man should treat the country as his family.” But he continued, constructing for himself an image of a solitary and wandering revolutionary against the backdrop of a festive occasion: “On a night when people celebrate by hanging the ‘dragon-lanterns’ and beating the ‘flower-drums,’/I head for the world’s end [tianya], accompanied by my long sword” (Xiong Henghan [1927 or 1928] 1962:50). He Shuheng, one of the oldest and earliest Party members, stressed strongly his unwillingness to leave his family. In 1928, he was sent to Moscow by the Party Central. Already 52 years old and unused to going abroad (Yi Fengkui et al. 1997:277), he could not help feeling some degree of anxiety. When the boat stopped en route at Harbin, he wrote a poem styled on a famous piece by the Song poet, Lu You: “Wearing a traveler’s suit stamped with wine stains;/I embark on my long journey with a sentimental heart [xiaohun]./Am I a man destined to leave behind his family?/In rains and wind I depart from the gate of my motherland” (He Shuheng [1928] 1962:154). Aside from showing how they longed for the family, Communist intellectuals paraded their psychological turmoil, which was, according to them, caused by the fact that they recognized their failure to take care of their beloved. For political duties, many revolutionary intellectuals did not fulfill their essential responsibilities as fathers, mothers, sons or daughters. Well-known Com-munist intellectuals such as Yuan Guoping, Ruan Xiaoxian and Xiang Jingyu left their children to their families (Zhongguo qingnian chubanshe 1983:110 and 128; Ruan Xiaoxian [1933] 1984:356). But some of them still wanted to show that they retained feelings for their children. Ruan Xiaoxian, a graduate of the First Provincial Industrial School of Guangdong, who had invested much effort in the peasant movement in Guangdong in the second half of the 1920s, had so long put aside his paternal responsibilities that he was not aware that his son was thirteen years old when he received a letter from the boy. However, his long-term failure to attend to his son does not imply a total neglect of his child. In 1933, after receiving his son’s letter, he replied with unreserved joy: “When you sent me your first letter, I was at a stage of perplexity and depression. Your letter brought me tremendous happiness:… When I looked at myself in the mirror, I found the smiles that had not appeared on my face for the past few years” (Ruan Xiaoxian [1933] 1984:356). Another good example is Leng Xiaonong, a graduate of the Guizhou Provincial Law School, who worked for the Party in Nanjing. Far away from home, he was eager to communicate with his family. In March 1930, after waiting for his mother’s letter for a long time, he wrote to his younger brother to inquire about what happened. Verbalizing their attachment to families, however, Communist intellectuals also invoked their political duty to justify their neglect of familial obligations. Although Ruan admitted he had not cared much about his son, he also emphasized that he had good reasons not to behave like a typical father. “My beloved son!” he wrote, “Please do not hate and condemn your thoughtless father. Why? You may ask your fourth uncle to

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explain everything to you” (Ruan Xiaoxian [1933] 1984:356). Leng was more explicit in using the revolution to legitimize his failings in familial responsibilities. Upon his anxious inquiry, he finally received a letter from his mother, in which she poured scorn on him, calling him an unfilial, disloyal and ungrateful “thing” (dongxi). Writing back, an anxious son became a defensive revolutionary: “I know that I should fulfill my roles as son, brother, husband and father…. But how can I come home and abandon my important mission? How can I enjoy peace and comfort while seeing the suffering of the majority?” For him, his dedication to the masses was “an extension of filial piety.” In the end, he introduced bluntly his definition of good parents: “parents should not incessantly demand their children’s loyalty to the family” (Nanjing yuhuatai lieshi lingyuan guanlichu shiliaoshi 1983:67–70). Interestingly enough, the strident attempts to legitimize their conduct went hand in hand with their confession of guilty feelings, or at least, admission of blameworthiness. In his letter to his son, in addition to explaining his situation, Ruan Xiaoxian reproached himself for not being a nurturing father: “What have I done? I can only hope that you do not resent and blame me” (Ruan Xiaoxian [1933] 1984:356). His loud justification notwithstanding, Leng said to his mother, “I realize my attitude toward my family is wrong.” He even pleaded: “I know what I just said may offend my mother. But may I express my dearest wish to be forgiven by her and others in the family?” (Nanjing yuhuatai lieshi lingyuan guanlichu shiliaoshi 1983:70–1). Such expressions of remorse can certainly be interpreted as revolutionaries’ efforts to placate their family members. But was it not true that by professing their love for their families, by acknowledging but justifying their neglect for their families, and by refusing to acquit themselves of the charge of negligence, that they powerfully dramatized their sacrifice of family ties? In addition to displaying their troubled hearts in relation to the family issue, Communist intellectuals also lavishly exhibited the emotional conflict derived from the contest between romantic love and political commitment. Romance A great many Chinese radicals came of age in a milieu where the pursuit of personal happiness, always symbolized by romantic love, was celebrated as a major theme of modernity. In this milieu, recent scholarship notes, revolution plus love was an unmistakable theme in literature (Liu Jianmei 2003:210–14). It is warranted to say that to a visible degree Chinese radicals’ self-expressions echoed this theme. From the late Qing period, many Chinese radicals were always inclined to integrate plots of romantic love into their accounts of or discussion on self-sacrifice. In his famous letter, Lin Juemin laid bare the emotional turmoil he had to confront as he decided to leave his wife and join the Huanghuagang uprising: “How can I forget you!… I really intended to tell you my plan when I came home about ten days ago. But it was just that afraid of affecting your pregnancy and hurting your feelings, I could not utter any word…. How much I want to grow old and die with you” (Lin Juemin [1911] 1981:170–5). If a 1911 radical expressed the conflict between his revolutionary passion and love when he was about to risk his love for his cause, others sometimes imagined love to be in conflict with the political pursuit. Translating Hugo’s Les Misérables, Su Manshu and Chen Duxiu invented a plot about the French hero who, with a heavy heart, left a beautiful young woman about

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whom he cared deeply in order to pursue his mission (Su Manshu and Chen Duxiu [1903] 1991:2/726–7). It should be noted, however, that late Qing radicals were responsible for the emergence of a new culture that basically favored the display of individual feelings and desires. This interest in romantic love was to some extent nurtured by the traditional lifestyle of the literati, characterized by educated men’s pursuit of courtesans—a tradition that late Qing activists undoubtedly shared. In fact, talented and sympathetic courtesans kept company with the radicals when the latter planned their political activities. While inventing the revolution as a “vocation” which supposedly consumed the radicals’ energy (Price 1974:193–212), late Qing historical actors imagined romantic love as part of their revolutionary lives. As late Qing activists’ fiction, poetry and letters show, radicals savored creating images of heroes who were always, though not invariably, accompanied by loving beauties. Heroes dedicating themselves to the salvation of China easily won the appreciation and love of beautiful women (Price 1974:196; Su Manshu [1912] 1991:2/534). Like the late Qing actors, Communists fell in love and married all the time. But their observers, dissecting the relationship between love and politics in revolutionary life, focus on the theme of conflict. According to these people, the power of romantic love after the May Fourth period was so immense and irresistible that its conflict with Communist intellectuals’ revolutionary life definitely deserves attention (Leo Lee 1973:231; Luo Chengyan 1992:96; Tang Xiaobing 2000:97–130). Their observation seems to be confirmed by Ding Ling, one of the most famous woman authors in modern China, who, as an insider of the revolutionary circle, also found a similar kind of conflict in Qu Qiubai, a person she knew well.6 Furthermore, scholars also believe that when love competed with revolution (or the individual’s revolutionary fervor), the former succumbed to the latter. Leo Lee assumes, citing Ding Ling, that the revolutionary sentiment—the temper of the age—made romantic love obsolete and embarrassed those still intoxicated by this anachronistic emotion (Leo Lee 1973:273). Tang Xiaobing also cites Ding Ling. He analyzes how her favorite characters, Meilin and Wangwei, left love for the revolution, and how Wangwei trained his body for political purposes and incorporated it into politics (Tang Xiaobing 2000:97–130). For Tang, Wangwei’s change was a “metaphor,” which shows the creation of a “politicized” body in revolutionary China, a body “semiotically charged” and evolving into one “identical with the public realm” (Tang Xiaobing 2000:127–8). Although he intends to show that giving up love was the revolutionaries’ choice, he does not disagree with the view that love yielded to the revolution. And while Tang analyzes stories in which revolutionaries sublimated their romantic (and sexual) passion for ideologically incompatible partners to remain good revolutionaries, Lee seems to assume, giving the hero of Ba Jin’s Lightning as an example, that a revolutionary could resolve the conflict by finding a woman who was herself a revolutionary (Leo Lee 1973:273). If we put aside famous writers’ fictional representations of love and revolution for a while and examine the writings by revolutionaries who were not professional writers, we shall see that Communist intellectuals’ portrayals of their own experiences with love and revolution were far more complex.7 It is clear that, unlike the late Qing radicals, Communist intellectuals seldom represented themselves and their comrades as heroes whose glamour was enhanced by the admiration of beautiful womcn.8 Moreover, rejecting as decadent the traditional

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literary men’s custom of seeking the company of courtesans. Communist intellectuals did not set out to glamorize themselves by noting how they were flattered by courtesans. In addition, it was a tenet of Party discipline that love should not be pursued in ways that damaged the revolution.9 But Party discipline did not overcome love. Many Communist intellectuals, like the late Qing activists, always represented their romantic sentiment in their writings. Chen Jue, who was sent to Moscow for training and got married there, recalled the joys of love while writing his farewell letter to his wife in the prison of Changsha in 1928. He and his wife, Zhao Yunxiao, had been students in Moscow; they “studied together, and encouraged each other.” After class they chatted happily, talking about their families. “Like a body and its shadow,” they “skated in the winter, fled the hot weather of summer, and traveled around sight-seeing” (Zhongguo qingnian chubanshe 1979:45). Love, naturally, led to concern for the well-being of one’s beloved. In 1926, working in Hankou during the Northern Expedition, Wang Yifei, a returned student from Moscow, wrote to his pregnant wife, and, with a sense of humor, reminded her of trivial details she should care about: “please do not eat watermelons…. Dear me! I cannot but laugh while writing all this. When you receive this letter,…all the melons will have already ‘disappeared’!” (Yu Shenyang 1988:96) Communist intellectuals also felt the pain of losing their lovers. Jiang Zhuyun, who joined the CCP in 1939 and was famous for her toughness in facing the enemy in prison in the late 1940s, wrote this letter to a relative to pour out the bitterness caused by her husband’s death. So traumatic was her husband’s tragic death to her that in the letter she insisted on the uniqueness of her pain as a wife: “You other people cannot experience the pain his death has caused me. Many family members, including my beloved mother, passed away. But still I did not experience the feeling I have right now: I am suffocating; I cannot breathe” (Zhongguo qingnian chubanshe 1983:231). The awareness of being in love contributed significantly to the self-construction of the Communist intellectuals. It was by reflecting on their ongoing romantic liaisons that some Communist intellectuals emphasized their struggle to loosen the grip of romantic love on them so as to underscore their political loyalty. Identifying political commitment with the individual’s transcendent quality, Wang Yifei wrote that preoccupation with romantic love, which confined revolutionaries in their own worlds, inevitably would distract them from the chance of struggling for the revolution, and thus the opportunity to move beyond mediocrity. In the spring of 1926, he had been married for only two months to his wife, a young woman to whom he could confide his political ideas and lives. Traveling around to work for the CCP, he wrote a letter to his wife in which he disclosed the tension between his ideological devotion and his non-political sentiment: “We merge so harmoniously and perfectly that I feel unhappy not to see you for even one day.” However, after describing his sorrow at departure, he hastened to add that to give up the attachment to one’s love life was to increase one’s devotion to the revolution: “Our lives are struggles;… I cannot tolerate a way of life that binds us together at home, …requires our compliance with convention and norms, and makes us a mediocre couple (Yu Shenyang 1988:94). Wang declared the preoccupation with romantic love to be a dangerous factor that could potentially plunge him into a state of mediocrity, whereas Chen Yian, a Whampoa graduate who was active in the joint expedition of the CCP and GMD, downplayed the

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value of romantic love by stressing the importance of ideological commitment to being a “genuine human.” During the National Revolution, Chen managed to write some letters to Li Zhiqiang, his fiancée and a woman student who, though not a CCP member, aspired to political radicalism. Like Wang Yifei, Chen displayed how he suffered the conflict between his commitment to revolution and romantic love. He vowed loudly his loyalty to the revolution but also flaunted his reluctance about being away from Li. In those days, aside from lamenting how much he was tortured by love, he said that he was strenuously suppressing his tears lest his comrades teased him about his lack of revolutionary fervor (Chen Yian 1985:78)! But he insisted on the sacrifice of love to show his political dedication: “A man who sacrifices revolution for romantic love cannot be considered a human being” (Chen Yian 1985:45). He emphasized to himself and Li the paramount importance of revolution: “We are youths who harbor class consciousness…. Should we only indulge ourselves in the relationship between man and woman? Should we put aside our revolutionary spirit? No, absolutely not!” (Chen Yian 1985:81). We can say without doubt that Wang’s and Chen’s writings, too, were “fictional.” But “fictionalizing” their own lives, they moved beyond the conventional images of ideologically incompatible couples to dramatize the conflict between love and revolution. They listed “concretely” specific types of conflicts between revolution and love—one between their revolutionary responsibilities that required them to forsake love (for a while) and their wish to embrace it, and another between their own high standards of political devotion and their strong commitment to their lovers. Prioritizing political commitment while still cherishing love in their writings, Wang and Chen showed themselves and their lovers their readiness to sacrifice the non-political. Comparing Communist intellectuals’ writings on sacrificing family ties with those on sacrificing romantic love, we see interesting differences. When they delineated sacrifice of family ties, they always expanded on emotional discomfort in terms of obligations, reproving themselves for their neglect of familial roles and showing feelings of guilt. But revolutionary intellectuals were more inclined to represent the sacrifice of romantic love in the mode of self-pity, uttering how they were emotionally tortured by their departure from their beloved. This is not to suggest that the contrast was absolute. Wang Yifei felt guilty for not letting his wife be united with him, and He Shuheng, poetically bidding farewell to China, showed his “sentimental heart” attached to his family. In fact, there was overlap between family ties and love connection—a wife was a family member and, if the couple were in love, a lover as well. It was also clear, however, that some revolutionaries did not write about their separation from families with the kind of intense misery which marked their description of their sacrifice of romantic love. It may be farfetched to say that Communist intellectuals tended to view giving up romantic attachment as a more powerful testimony to self-sacrifice. But noting the difference between the implied attraction to worldly comforts/possessions and the clearly expressed adherence to emotional ties, and heeding revolutionary intellectuals’ different approaches to families and romances, we certainly should be sensitive to the fact that the theme of self-sacrifice consisted of self-expressions diverse in explicitness and emotional intensity.

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Prison life as sacrifice It was, however, in their depiction of prison life that Communist intellectuals featured most elaborately various types of their sacrifices. From the nineteenth century, government—central or local, Chinese or foreign—always arrested those who wanted to overthrow the establishment. Radicals were constantly put in jail. Prison literature—in the forms of letters, poetry and/or autobiographies—became a prominent feature of modern China’s radical tradition. Many 1911 radicals, famous or not, had tasted prison life, or even spent their last days there. In prison they wrote to express their revolutionary thought, feelings and suffering (see my discussion below; Zhang Taiyan [1903] 1963:402; Ning Diaoyuan [1913] 1963:467). The Communists also contributed to modern China’s prison literature. To explore Communist intellectuals’ self-representations related to prison life, I shall continue to make use of the materials I have been using—their poetry, letters to friends, comrades and families, and so forth. I shall also rely on substantially first-hand accounts of prison life published by official Chinese publishers in the post-1949 period—for instance, Fang Zhimin’s pieces on his own imprisonment written in 1935, and other post1949 mainland recollections of revolutionaries’ ordeals in prison.10 However, I also intend to analyze writings not published by China’s official presses. Writings such as Wang Fanxi’s autobiography and Wang Ruowang’s post-1949 memoirs are extremely useful for my analysis of revolutionary intellectuals’ prison literature. Examining official and unofficial publications, I shall sort out the kinds of experiences the authors of both categories chose to describe or even to expand on colorfully. This is far from the most valid way to learn about the reality of prison life. People who experienced similar ordeals may have developed similar perceptions of reality, despite the fact that they wrote about their prison lives at different times, and that their attitudes toward the CCP varied.11 It is evident, in addition, that government-approved memoirs published at different stages of the post-1949 regime reveal revolutionaries’ experiences differently. For instance, in Chapter 4 of his memoirs, Bo Yibo (1996) describes how some revolutionaries used self-reproach (fansheng) to obtain release from prison. He obviously discusses the phenomenon with a degree of sympathy that cannot be seen in such writings as Wang Ruofei zai yuzhong. But sorting out the experiences that authors of both official and unofficial publications expand on is a very effective method to uncover the scenes which Communist intellectuals identified as important in order to create the impression that they were brave warriors. The scene(s) of hardship(s) According to the Communist intellectuals, in the very context of prison, the relinquishment of worldly comforts and possessions did not just mean rejection of what people, revolutionaries included, found enticing. The act of relinquishment connoted severe forms of afflictions and pain. In their narratives, life in prison was first and foremost characterized by physical suffering.

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Although they were locked up in different prisons, at different times, and in separate localities, revolutionary intellectuals always pointed to the problems of political prisoners’ diet and living conditions. To describe his life in a detention center (kanshou suo) in the summer of 1935, Fang Zhimin elaborated on the inhospitable conditions of prison, such as rotten food, limited use of water and the uninhabitable environment (Fang Zhimin [1935] 1985g:177–80). Because of his own Trotskyist stand, Wang Fanxi was sensitive to the generosity of his comrades. Thus, recalling what he had encountered in the Woosung-Shanghai Garrison Headquarters in the Longhua (lung-hwa) district of Shanghai in the early 1930s, he mentioned how a certain veteran Party leader, abandoned by the Wang Ming leadership, “had to get by with the vegetables and other everyday necessities which we Trotskyists gave him” (Wang Fanxi 1991:166–7). Evident is the intention to highlight the Trotskyists’ benevolence. But equally evident is his emphasis on the difficult conditions in prison, which were also described in other accounts (Wang Fanxi 1991:166; Wang Ruowang 1991:367; Yang Zhilin and Qiao Mingpu 1965:149– 59).12 One category of trials Communist intellectuals always talked about was physical torture. In fact, since the earliest decade of the twentieth century, sympathizers of the late Qing radicals, or these radical themselves, had already helped publicize and dramatize what the individual needed to go through in prison. For instance, a letter allegedly written by Shi Jianru was included in a volume on famous republican figures, which was published in 1937. As Shi’s plan to kill the governor of the Liangguang (Guangdong and Guangxi) region in 1900 failed, he was arrested. In “his” letter to his younger sister, he or the real author graphically detailed the torture he was subjected to—the Qing police applied copper coins, which had just been heated in burning charcoal, to his body (Shi Jianru [1900] 1981:3). In the same vein, some post-1949 Communist recollections offer hair-raising descriptions of physical punishments inflicted on the Communists. For instance, describing prison life in the Sino-American Cooperation Institute in 1948 and 1949, Luo Guangbin elaborated on Jiang Zhuyun’s alleged success in enduring the torture of bamboo slivers inserted under her finger nails (Luo Guangbin 1959:17–18). However, other people’s writings are not as dramatic. From 1931 to 1936, Bo Yibo was kept in the Beijing Military Institute of Self-examination (Beiping junren fansheng fenyuan). In his memoirs, Bo Yibo only notes cursorily that some of his comrades were “brutally tortured” by prison authorities (Bo Yibo 1996:125 and 155). Wang Ruowang was arrested by the GMD in Shanghai in the early 1930s when he was only sixteen. In his autobiographical novel he delineated the torture a seasoned revolutionary received. The physical punishment imposed on this revolutionary was “the tiger’s chair”: his thighs were tied to a bench, and bricks were then inserted to increase the distance between the legs and the bench; a pair of deformed legs was the result of the torture (Wang Ruowang 1991:302–3). Wang Fanxi portrayed the severe beating he underwent when he was arrested again in May 1937 (Wang Fanxi 1991:190–7). Not only did revolutionary intellectuals depict, modestly or sensationally, the kinds of extreme discomfort they or their comrades went through in jail, they also evoked the fact of revolutionaries’ separation, which could sometimes be permanent, from their loved ones. In his memoir, Zheng Chaolin retraced the life of Luo Yinong, a revolutionary who was presumably of peasant origin, received his education in Moscow, and was arrested in

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Shanghai in the late 1920s. Describing the fact of separation, Cheng focused on how Luo’s death caused pains to his lover: “In Shanghai, Luo had stayed with me, and Li Zheshi (Luo’s wife) had lived elsewhere. Upon Luo’s death, Li came to my place, crying violently on Luo’s bed” (Zheng Chaolin 1998:2/62 and 70). Some, however, chose to represent their own experience. Released from jail in 1934 after his first prison term, Wang Fanxi discovered that his wife had found a new partner. Decades later, he reflected on this sad experience with composure: “in the life of a revolutionary incidents of this sort are not uncommon and cannot be considered as tragedies” (Wang Fanxi 1991:171). But he also stated: “[the fact that these incidents are common] does nothing to lessen the impact of the blow on the person immediately concerned” (1991:171). Saddened by his wife’s abandonment, he said, he became sick immediately (1991:171). In 1941, He Bin, a leader of a student movement in Wuhan, was arrested by the Nationalist government. Before his execution in the winter of the same year, he wrote a poem entitled “Prison Song,” and dedicated it to his lover, Xu Yun, whom he would never meet again. The poem begins with these lines: “Darkest night holds back dawn./Alone, I am accompanied only by my shadow.” A prisoner’s loneliness was punctuated only by his observations of prison life. “The roaring buss of the mosquitoes, the hosts of mice, the dim light, and the scorching hot summer air” prompted him to ask: “Who will come and comfort us…in this corner without sunshine?” However, he insisted: “As long as I have breath, I vow,/I will struggle for my truth [zhenli].” After this display of the lonely and suffering revolutionary’s political passion, He Bin’s narrative shifted to a nonpolitical and sentimental tone: “Ah! Sweet girl, I have had not even a glimpse of your beautiful shadow,/since our parting last fall.” And he represented his own feelings: “I am desolate, fighting in the absence of my dear companion!” (He Bin [1941] 1962:228–9). Communist intellectuals also emphasized, in addition, that when imprisoned, they faced the possibility of the ultimate sacrifice—to give up their lives for their ideology According to their memoirs, while they were well aware of strategies the CCP or they themselves could employ in order to obtain release (Bo Yibo 1996:125–7; Wang Fanxi 1991:165–6), they regarded their lives as being on the line. Both Bo Yibo and Wang Fanxi said that they assumed incorrectly that they were to be executed when they were being taken from one prison to another (Bo Yibo 1996:126; Wang Fanxi 1991:195). However, in depicting prison life, revolutionary intellectuals defined self-sacrifice not only as enduring extreme physical suffering, emotional agony, or the need to confront death, but also as a determination to decline opportunities to free themselves from hardships.13 To show how they forswore these opportunities, they add(ed) the episode of the enemy’s attempt at psychological manipulation to the picture of suffering. For instance, they often mention how the government authorities arranged meetings between arrested revolutionaries and their former comrades who had surrendered to the government. According to Wang Fanxi, as he regarded this as a tactic the government employed to cajole revolutionaries into capitulation, he was surprised when one of his old friends, visiting him on behalf of the Nationalist government, only offered him a cigarette and ordered the guards not to maltreat him (Wang Fanxi 1991:1997). Bo Yibo describes how, before he was sent to the Beijing Military Institute of Self-examination, he and his friends had been interrogated by one of Zhang Zuolin’s subordinates in the headquarters of the military police. The ex-Communists they had once worked with, he says, always

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showed up on such occasions, intending to lure or frighten the incarcerated radicals into surrendering (Bo Yibo 1996:124). Communist intellectuals always point to another psychological technique used by the authorities—that is, to stir revolutionaries’ feelings for their families and lovers. In Fang Zhimin’s autobiographical story, a Nationalist officer asked him at a tribunal: “You should not abandon your wife and children. Would you like to write to your wife and ask her to come?” (Fang Zhimin [1935] 1985e:158). According to Wang Fanxi, upon his arrest in 1937, he met an ex-Communist in the Special Service Headquarters in the Chinese area of Shanghai, who, in a most considerate manner, ordered him a meal of fried rice, and told him that he should look after his health, and think of his wife and daughter (Wang Fanxi 1991:191). Discussing revolutionaries’ performances in prison, Communist intellectuals admit that defection, or at least the decision to forgo politics, was not uncommon (Wang Fanxi 1991; Bo Yibo 1996). But they, including those who later left the Communist ranks, chose to embellish their struggle to remain loyal revolutionaries. Detailing revolutionary struggle to remain loyal revolutionaries Communist intellectuals always spotlighted their political passion, which they emphasized gave them the willpower to persevere. In April 1948, while helping the CCUP (Chinese Communist Underground Party) to publish a radical magazine in Chongqing, Chen Ran, who joined the CCP in the early years of the Sino-Japanese War, was arrested by the Nationalist government (Zhonggong zhongyang dangshi yanjiushi keyanbu 1997:236–7). To show that he was a hot-blooded revolutionary, he wrote the following poem in jail: “For me the most vicious torture and beating are nothing;/Even death tries in vain to open my mouth…./Facing my impending death I laugh freely;/The devil’s castle crumbles amidst the roaring of my laughter” (Chen Ran [1949] 1962:337– 8). Although disillusioned with the CCP after 1989, Wang Ruowang as a veteran Communist was still willing to show deep respect for revolutionaries’ willpower to suffer and sacrifice. In his autobiography, published in Hong Kong in the early 1990s, Wang seemed to adopt a deliberately anti-heroic approach in his portrayal of revolutionaries, himself included: according to Wang’s description of his life in prison during the 1930s, he was an inexperienced radical, easily manipulated by his warders, naive enough to think that he would be freed by leaking information to the enemy, and weak enough to cry over an unjust verdict (Wang Ruowang 1991:295–6 and 336–7). But with deep respect, Wang recalled the impassioned words of his comrade who endured “the tiger’s chair”: “as long as we can control our mouth, torture is meaningless!” (Wang Ruowang 1991:304 and 318). Not only did revolutionary intellectuals honor their own determined resistance toward brutality; they also celebrated their nonchalant attitude toward harsh prison conditions. Zheng Chaolin recalls his experience at Longhua: “The political prisoners…joined together with the other prisoners to sing songs, indulge in various sorts of merriment and uproar, play chess and gamble. It was as if we had forgotten where we were. In such an atmosphere, we soon cast off our worries and anxieties” (Zheng Chaolin 1998:1/344–5; Stranahan 1998:140). The mention of such idle amusements as gambling can also be found in other people’s writings. Li Qia, the aforementioned modest revolutionary who

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insisted that he was just “an ordinary person,” was confined in a prison in Shaoguan, Guangdong, from January to April 1949. In his letter to his wife, though calling jail “the hell of hell,” he delineated political prisoners’ attempts at relaxation thus: “In these two months I met a lot of new people. We are good friends now, and my life here has become less stressful. Every day we chit-chat. Sometimes we debate on things; sometimes we play mah-jong” (Zhongguo qingnian chubanshe 1983:243). In Fang Zhimin’s account, he and his comrades also made chit-chat and chess-playing their pastimes and used them as gestures to highlight their composure (Fang Zhimin [1935] 1985e:145–6 and 151–2). In addition to displaying their and their beloved comrades’ fortitude and indifference, Communist intellectuals also introduced how they endeavored to develop strategies that helped sustain their will to suffer and sacrifice. According to their writings, they wittingly or unwittingly developed quite a few specific strategies. Revolutionary intellectuals, together with their less-educated comrades, contrived to redress the conditions in prison (Wang Fanxi 1991:169; Yang Zhilin and Qiao Mingpu 1965:151–9; Wang Ruowang 1991:273–380).14 Moreover, they strove to utilize their time productively. Mimicking Russian Communists, they called prisons their “universities” (Wang Ruowang 1991:340–51; Wang Fanxi 1991:171; Chen Nongfei 1959:199).15 Jailed revolutionaries also coordinated other activities so as to cement comradeship and thus maintain their morale. Singing was, according to some, quite useful for this purpose (Stranahan 1998:140; Yang Mo [1958] 1995:394–5). So was their concerted effort to make things enjoyable and celebratory in prison. In The Red Cliff, the authors reconstruct the scene when, on the eve of the Communist takeover, a baby girl was born in the prison of Chongqing. As indicated by some recent sources, she was born of Trotskyist parents (Zheng Chaolin 1998:2/277–9). Despite her somewhat problematic background, revolutionaries named her “prison flower,” bestowing on her love and support, to celebrate the birth of a new life in a life-stifling environment (Luo Guangbin and Yang Yiyan 1978:220–30 and 237). However, getting organized in prison needed ingenious ways of communication—so Communist intellectuals tell us. Wang Fanxi’s account gives us a very interesting example. After he had finished writing an account of the differences between the Trotskyist and Stalinist Communists, “it was delivered to the next cell by means of the ‘telephone wire,’ a small hole high in the wall through which a single light-bulb illuminated the cells on either side” (Wang Fanxi 1991:169). Chen Nongfei, a young reporter working underground for the CCP in Shanghai, was arrested by the government in the mid-1930s. In his post-1949 recollection, writing about his prison experience in the Central Military Prison (Zhongyang junren jianyu), Chen gave Wang’s “telephone wire” another name: “air mail” (Chen Nongfei 1959:92). He also introduced other methods of communication such as “radio”—to signal comrades in the next cell with different patterns of knocks on the wall (Chen Nongfei 1959:92). In addition, Communist intellectuals highlighted how jailed Communists endeavored to obtain help and information from places beyond prison walls. Wang Fanxi noted: “the Communists had also established contact with the outside world, and even provided some of the comrades with the everyday necessities of life” (Wang Fanxi 1991:169). In their recollections, one of the channels they used to establish connections outside the prison was prison guards (Wang Ruowang 1991:312–13; Bo Yibo 1996:153–5).16

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Strikes, universities, singing and communicating—all these activities press us to ask how the Communists organized themselves in prison. Revolutionary intellectuals’ recollections always mention the significance of prison-based Party organizations for the maintenance of political morale. Wang Fanxi, who was held in the Suzhou Military Prison, still remembered that the “Stalinist Communists” (the members of the CCP, that is) succeeded in organizing the prison “to a limited extent” (Wang Fanxi 1991:169), although his memoirs did not reveal whether a formal Party branch existed. Chen Nongfei remembers that in the Central Military Prison in Nanjing they had a secret leading core but no formal open Party organization (Chen Nongfei 1959:97). And describing what he did in prison in Beijing, Bo Yibo also emphasized the confidentiality of the prison-based Party organization (Bo Yibo 1996:131).17 Narrating prison life, Communist intellectuals represented themselves as selfsacrificing heroes who chose to withstand various types of hardships—physical torture, the severing of emotional ties and death—for the cause. By portraying the specific kinds of hardships that they encountered, they somehow revealed the feeling that revolutionary life was onerous. At the final stage of their lives, some of their self-portraits appeared to be much more complex, as they reflected on such issues as their “martyrdom,” political performances and lives, by thinking and rethinking all kinds of trials that they experienced in their revolutionary struggle.

Last words from prison Some Communist intellectuals emphasized most strenuously their stout pride in their heroism when writing about their own lives, deaths and political caliber. Just think of some of the Communists we have discussed—Xia Minghan, Zhong Wengyong, Jin Fangchang and Chan Ran. However, many others’ last words were not so simple; nor were they so unequivocally determined in tone. Facing death, which was about to rob them of all things in life, Communist intellectuals in their last words became all the more pronounced in narrating their self-sacrificing lives as trying lives. In addition, their last words were sometimes marked by a display of gnawing distress. They thus pushed the ambivalence entailed in the notion of sacrifice to the surface. Expressing both the willingness and unwillingness to sacrifice In one of his prison works, as I have mentioned, Fang Zhimin introduced his revolutionary choice as a sacrifice of the possibility of a better life. But also worthy of attention is how he listed what he went through as he cast aside “the issue of personal prosperity and comfort”: I am not at all fascinated with beautiful mansions but remain content with primitive and humid shelters of thatch; I am not interested in luxurious Western banquet but choose to swallow coarse food…like plant roots; I do not give a damn about the spring mattress and comfortable bed but stay at places as wretched as piggeries; I do not long for leisure but work sixteen hours per day.

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(Fang Zhimin [1935] 1985e:163) To such a long list of sacrifices he added a statement through which he highlighted that his determination to sacrifice was all-encompassing: “I can bear the unbearable!” (Fang Zhimin [1935] 1985e:163). Displaying all the things he had given up to be a good revolutionary, and emphasizing his willingness to sacrifice as total, he betrayed, implicitly but clearly, the tension in himself, created by his preparedness to sacrifice and his involuntary feeling that the life he led was quite exacting after all. Radical intellectuals sometimes used specific types of sacrifice to stress their trying revolutionary lives. Upon creating himself as a lonesome revolutionary, Xiong Henghan, in preparation for his death, emphasized the unsettled side of his life in a funeral couplet he wrote for himself: “Having wandered rootlessly around and worked strenuously for more than a decade (shi yu zai laoku benbo)/ [...]/! remain completely loyal to the Party” (Xiong Henghan [1928] 1987:16).18 It is important to note, in addition, that at the final stage of life the ambivalent essence of the notion of sacrifice dominated their literary writings to such an extent that they showed explicitly both their proud readiness and, at the same time, their reluctance to sacrifice. Liu Yuanan, who worked with Yun Daiying at Southern Sichuan Normal College, was arrested and executed in Chongqing in 1930. In a farewell letter to his wife, after stressing how hard he had struggled for the revolution, he emphasized his willingness to sacrifice: “I am all prepared to follow our martyrs’ path” (Zhongguo qingnian chubanshe 1979:60). He nevertheless also pronounced his unwillingness to die. In his letter, this unwillingness was revealed in his attachment to his wife: “I feel extremely unhappy that during my imprisonment and at the time of execution, I do not have any of your things with me. But my heart is tightly bound to yours.” He promised, “With my last breath, I will be calling your name in my heart—it is because in the whole universe you are the one who loves and understands me most!” (Zhongguo qingnian chubanshe 1979:63). Struggling to portray themselves as firm revolutionaries amid emotional frictions, some intellectual martyrs in their self-representations attempted, as Wang Ban notes, to convert or sublimate their pains and sorrow into higher political goals (Wang Ban 1997:110). In a letter to his wife on the day of his execution, Chen Jue, the young revolutionary who enjoyed skating with his wife in Moscow, wrote to show his affection: “I know you are going to be executed too. I have already asked my father to bury us together.” And talking to his wife about his parents, he appeared very emotional: “I can’t help shedding tears, imagining how sad my parents will be after my death.” He then concluded his life by embarking on the sublimation process, through which he transformed his sorrow into a declaration of sacrifice: “Yun! Who does not have parents? Who does not have children? And who does not have lovers?” Looking back on his short revolutionary life, he, too, felt entitled to regard his self-sacrifice as total: “It is exactly because we strive to save the parents, lovers and children of all the Chinese people that we sacrifice everything [yiqie] of our own!” “I shall,” he continued, after underscoring his confidence in the future of the revolution, “die with no regrets” (Zhongguo qingnian chubanshe 1979:45–7). So he textually cleansed his nonpolitical emotions. But by integrating the motif of self-sacrifice into the sublimation process, did he not also reveal

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that he was quite mindful of, though not necessarily repentant about, how much he had relinquished? In fact, while striving to sublimate their non-political feelings in their texts, some revolutionary intellectuals achieved only partial success. In his Prison Song, aware of his impending death, He Bin also endeavored to convert his statement of desolation into a declaration of political encouragement for Xu Yun: “Sweet girl, you must take my battle station in the fight against our enemy!” But his literary effort to sublimate was incomplete, for he wove together a mood of sadness and exhortation: “Ah, sweet girl, the heavens are dim, and the earth is dark./What can commemorate our love?/Nothing but untiring struggle” (He Bin [1941] 1962:228–9). There were, in addition, intellectual martyrs who cared little about sublimation. Their last words thus ended not in powerful political statements but in utterances of grief and/or confusion. Chen Jue’s wife, Zhao Yunxiao, wrote loving final words for her daughter: “My little baby, although I cannot raise you, I wish you could study hard and remember how your parents die.” But throughout the letter she repeatedly and incoherently alluded to the misery of her child who was born to be an orphan: “your mother will leave you forever when you are only slightly more than one month old…. My Qiming, my dear baby, …you are an unlucky person…. You are a pitiful person, because you do not have any parents!” So intense and uncontrollable was the bitterness of parting that she told her little girl: “I cannot say any more. [My thoughts are] mingled with tears and blood.” She ended her piece by crying: “my poor baby, my little baby!” (Zhongguo qingnian chubanshe 1979:50).19 I hesitate to state, however, that women intellectual martyrs tended to use more emotional language in writing their last words. In fact, women had no monopoly on expressions of deep sadness and confusion. Writing to his young siblings before his execution in Nanjing in 1928, Shi Yanfen, a student activist in Jiangsu, wanted to appear collected: “I die for our society, for China, and for all humankind. My death is both necessary and glorious…. Now my heart is calm.” And yet his facade of composure was coupled with an expression of emotional turbulence: “I do not want to write anymore. Although I have thousands of words and admonitions for you, I simply cannot express anything” (Nanjing yuhuatai lieshi lingyuan guanlichu shiliaoshi 1983:26–7). In their last words, Communist intellectuals both asserted their valor and wailed. They averred that they were proud of their self-sacrifice, but represented sacrifice as stresses and strains, or even as unremitting emotional pain. In a sense, all these expressions of emotion operated as one useful discursive strategy, helping to construct their self-images as sacrificing revolutionary heroes. But in their cases, the discursive strategy reveals quite a bit about their state of mind, although that mental state is far more complex than mere political commitment. In these expressions, as Communist intellectuals linked sacrifice with (physical and emotional) suffering, they indicated that they had a sense of entitlement to the right to portray how hard a life they had led for the revolution. Rethinking Qu Qiubai It should be noted that the ability to explain suffering in terms of sacrifice was crucial for Communist intellectuals’ self-construction as revolutionary heroes. To illustrate this, let me analyze the self-expression of a revolutionary who lacked this ability. He was Qu

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Qiubai, who wore himself out by taking part in the revolution. After joining the Chinese Communist Party during his stay in Russia, he returned to China in 1923 and rose to become Party leader in 1927, but left China for the Soviet Union again after being stripped of his position as the Party secretary in 1928. Upon the removal of Li Lisan from power in 1930, Qu was for a short while in charge of the Party’s central leadership, and soon suffered an attack from Wang Ming. Frustrated, Qu Qiubai turned to literary pursuits, and was sent to the Chinese Soviet Republic in the early 1930s. When the Long March began, he was left behind and arrested by the Nationalist authorities in Fujian in 1935. In prison he wrote his well-known piece, The Superfluous Words, in which he indulged himself in laying bare the bitterness of a disillusioned radical. He was killed in the same year. Qu is by no means an unfamiliar revolutionary for scholars. They always study his self-expressions in order to understand his suffering in the revolution. A few decades ago, with sympathy for his sentimentalist side, and with some recognition of his enthusiasm for the revolution, Hsia Tsi-an pointed to this tragic historical figure’s “split” personality (Hsia Tsi-an 1968:8). In Hsia’s view, Qu’s split personality does not mean he was torn by two inclinations—his political commitment and his non-political sentimentalism—which were equally essential elements of his personality. Instead, Hsia prefers to interpret the split as one between Qu’s fighter persona, as something external, cultivated carefully and strenuously by himself and the Party, and his “original” sentimentalism, his inborn tender-hearted instinct intertwined with his love of literature (Hsia Tsi-an 1968:8, 44–5 and 53). It was the clash between these aspects of his personality that eventually led Qu to loathe politics (Hsia Tsi-an 1968:3, 8 and 51). Hsia assumes, in addition, that Qu’s life brings to light the nature—or more precisely, the suppressive essence—of the Communist revolution vis-à-vis the individual. Obviously regarding Qu as a type or typical case (Hsia Tsi-an 1968:4–5), he concludes that many of those enthusiastic about politics were seduced by the Communist movement and were eventually forced to surrender their personal freedom (Hsia Tsi-an 1968:4). Studies of Qu Qiubai in China share with Hsia’s work the theme of tension between Qu’s temperament as an individual and his experience as a revo lutionary. But while Hsia tackles Qu’s tender-hearted personality as a whole, mainland writers concentrate more on how Qu’s political role steered him away from his ultimate love, literature (Ding Ling [1980] 1984:5/103 and 108). Moreover, using Qu as a case to ponder human experiences in the Communist revolution, mainland scholars have tried to redefine the historical category of “devoted” revolutionaries. They believe that Qu’s verbalized disappointment in politics was only a “minor defect,” caused by his sensitive personality and the Wang Ming clique’s harsh attacks on some veteran Bolsheviks. Thus, in this view, Qu was a determined revolutionary until his last breath (Ding Ling [1980] 1984:108). After all, they emphasize, no one—not even a devoted Bolshevik—could be determined and strong all the time (Ye Nan 1990:238). Whatever the reasons for this interpretation, an insistence on Qu’s robust ideological devotion is unconvincing. In his Superfluous Words, Qu wrote: “To say that I have given up Marxism is not correct. There is no possibility of changing my way of thinking, which, ever since my youth, has been moving toward Marxism” (Qu Qiubai [1935] 1981b: 258; the translation is taken from Hsia Tsi-an 1968:53). This is the very passage that mainland writers quote to show that

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Qu was a “determined” or even a “hot-blooded” revolutionary (Ding Ling [1980] 1984:108; Ye Nan 1990:241)! To some extent, I agree with Hsia that Qu did hate politics. So much did he hate it in his final days that not only did he spill out his loathing of politics as a frustrated revolutionary (Qu Qiubai [1935] 1981b:247–8 and 255), but he also attempted to purge from his conscious self-analysis any historical trace of his earlier commitment to politics. He said: “after my mother’s suicide…, I went to Beijing. My hope was to enter the University of Beijing and major in Chinese literature. Planning to spend my whole life teaching, I did not have the ambition of ‘governing the nation and pacifying the world [zhiguo ping tianxia]” (Qu Qiubai [1935] 1981b:247–8). He reiterated the same theme— his lack of political commitment—elsewhere in Superfluous Words ([1935] 1981b:254– 255). On one page, he wrote: “I gradually lost interest in politics after 1927” ([1935] 1981b:251), and on another he wrote about how much he “felt the permanent presence of pressure” and “longed for a comfortable rest” ([1935] 1981b:252). Considering himself an “actor” on the stage of politics, Qu did not deny that he derived some pleasure from his own “acting.” “However,” he also stated, “acting on stage is not my real life” (Qu Qiubai [1935] 1981b:266–7). What is clear is that he loathed politics enough to write about all this, even if he may have overstated his fatigue, regret, low self-esteem, or dislike of any political title. But while agreeing with Hsia with regard to Qu’s antipathy toward politics, I have to caution against taking for granted what Qu explicitly represented as his true attitude toward politics. I would like to re-examine Qu’s Superfluous Words against the backdrop of his prominent but unstable political career, to show his complex attitude toward politics. On the basis of information published on the mainland in the post-Cultural Revolution period, I find Qu’s thinking marked by self-deception, which lay in his complete denial of his keen interest in politics.20 To be sure, Qu hated politics. But he did not hate politics as much as he said. In reality, a young and less frustrated Qu Qiubai was very different from this self-portrait. Qu was extremely active during the May Fourth movement: from November 1919 to October 1920, in addition to organizing a short-lived magazine, The Journal of New Society (Xin shehui), he published a series of articles, including several focusing on the question of social and political transformation. In the 1920s, Qu Qiubai used “Wei Hu“as an alias. As Qu himself explained to Ding Ling, this was the name of a Bodhisattva who fiercely refused to tolerate injustice and was prepared to descend from heaven to punish evil-doers (Ding Ling [1980] 1984:5/101). May Fourth activist and selfappointed avenging Bodhisattva, Qu could certainly say, were only parts that he performed as if in a play. But his enthusiasm for these roles reflects at least a certain degree of genuine interest in “governing the nation and pacifying the world.” Furthermore, Qu’s commitment to politics also manifested itself in his last words, which were ironically used by him to deny his political passion. Painstakingly disassociating himself from revolutionary ranks, he nevertheless showed an incongruous preoccupation with his failure to become a robust revolutionary. In Superfluous Words, he kept examining the reasons for his failure, thereby pointing to the conflict between Marxism and his own consciousness. “Marxism,” he said, “is the philosophy of the proletariat. It is the opposite of my consciousness. What lurks in my mind is the gentleman consciousness, which belongs to the Chinese scholar-officials, and from which

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the petit bourgeoisie mentality evolved” (Qu Qiubai [1935] 1981b:253). Declaring that he was basically a traditional “literary man (wenren)” he ridiculed himself by quoting a Qing philologist: “once you become a literary man, you are completely worthless” (Qu Qiubai [1935] 1981b:263). A literary man like himself was, he said, characterized by the “ethics of the weak”—patience, escape from reality and difficulty, and fear of conflict— which consigned him to the tragic role of an incompetent and emotionally feeble revolutionary (Qu Qiubai [1935] 1981b:265–6). Examining the history of Chinese Communism, historians cannot but find that Qu Qiubai stands out in the crowd of intellectual martyrs, for his explicitly stated estrangement from politics, his emphatic abandonment of heroism, and his pronounced surrender to psychological turmoil. But the reasoning through which he rebuked himself, and the sentiments he showed, remained quite Communist indeed. Interpreting their difficult lives in terms of sacrifice, revolutionary intellectuals always hastened to ennoble themselves as selflessly devoted heroes. On the surface, Qu was, of course, very different. Strenuously unveiling his lack of political devotion, he desperately rejected the titles of martyr and revolutionary Moreover, he refused to search for testimony to his political devotion. In Superfluous Words he bewailed his hard life—that is, how he consumed himself in politics and forwent his pursuit of literature—but with no intention of using it as evidence for his self-sacrificing spirit. But in so doing, he thrust himself into unreserved self-deprecation. In his tragic way, Qu demonstrated the importance of the perceived linkage between a difficult life and sacrifice for a revolutionary intellectual’s positive self-construction, as long as this individual was still serious about the revolutionary cause he intended to give up.21

Establishing revolutionary intellectuals’ heroic status in the revolution Through their self-expressions, Communist intellectuals provided testimony to their political commitment. In so doing, they developed a few ideas which further secured their status as committed fighters against the backdrop of the Communist anti-intellectual thinking. In the previous chapter, I have discussed how Communist intellectuals glorified themselves as heroes by verbalizing their feelings about the status quo, the revolution and themselves. Amid their self-glorification, they showed a sense of superiority vis-à-vis “the other,” the mediocre nonbelievers in general. And here I propose to tackle their sense of superiority from a different angle. I demonstrate how, by imagining their struggling lives as evidence of their selfless commitment to the revolution, they felt superior to the masses, of whom the peasantry formed the bulk, and thus allowed their sense of superiority to counteract their professed anti-elitism. Moreover, I shall, by gathering examples across time and space, show how Communist intellectuals dealt with the issue of anti-elitism in building themselves as heroes.

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Comparing themselves with the peasant masses: narrating superior commitment Revolutionary intellectuals did not think highly of the peasantry’s political commitment–I have discussed this in Part II. They delineated the peasants’ moral flaws in terms of their insufficient commitment to the revolution. Moreover, people like Mao also represented insufficient commitment as the peasantry’s ideological inadequacy. But on the other hand, as my previous analysis has shown, Communist intellectuals also declared, right from the beginning of the revolution, that, having been born into poverty and oppression, the peasantry were conditioned by their class background to show the potential of becoming revolutionary For them, outstanding peasants who were sensitive to the suffering of their own class and those who went through hardships were or could be passionate about the revolution. From the mid-1920s, leading revolutionaries specifically identified the poor peasants and hired laborers as committed supporters of the revolution. In the August Seventh Conference of 1927, the Party leadership even stressed that, unlike intellectuals, workers and peasants had high political consciousness and were loyal to the revolution. To be sure, the Party leadership and revolutionary intellectuals did not show the same degree of enthusiasm for the masses’ political commitment all the time. But throughout the revolutionary process, the intellectuals’ awareness of the connection between suffering and political commitment did establish the peasants (poor peasants and hired hands) as a relatively reliable revolutionary force in the Communist theorization about mass mobilization. However, despite this “ideologized” recognition of the peasants’ inborn revolutionary inclination, revolutionary intellectuals, by narrating their self-sacrificing struggle for Communism, introduced their own superior political passion. In October 1934, Fang Zhimin received the Party Central’s order that he should go north to resist the Japanese. This was in fact the top leadership’s strategy to distract the Nationalist government from its fifth “extermination campaign,” as the CCP was coordinating the Long March. Fang’s mission, for which he could only mobilize an army consisting of a few thousand soldiers, was a doomed cause. He was captured in January 1935. Not long after his arrest, the local officials organized large-scale celebrations at Shangrao and other places. At the time, a common way for the government to show its victory over the CCP was to present the Communists as captives to the public. In the celebrations, they forced Fang to face an audience composed of rural people. Fang described the psychological process he experienced during these “exhibitions.” First, to build up his confidence, he drew attention to his political life: “I am a professional revolutionary [and a man] of integrity. In my whole life, I have not done anything immoral…. What should I be ashamed of myself that I cannot face other people?” He then looked at the audience: “[The spectators] were surprised when they saw my daring stance. Nevertheless, I do not know, and am not interested in learning, how they talked about me after the exhibition.” “In Geyang and Nanchang,” he said, “they [the officials] did the same thing. And I dealt with such a’display’ in the same manner” (Fang Zhimin [1935] 1985b:101–2). What deserves our attention is his perception of the distance between himself and the masses, who, in his eyes, did not understand his aspirations.

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There was another intellectual martyr who shared Fang’s unflattering perception of the masses. Liu Bojian, who began his political career as a student in the work—study program in France in 1922, was also forced to face the public as a captive. One of the revolutionary leaders who had stayed in the south after the CCP began its Long March, he was captured in 1935 and imprisoned in Dayu county, Guangdong. The local officials decided to insult him in the street (youjie shizhong): one day, he was bound with chains and forced to walk in the main street in a small rural town. In the evening of that day, he wrote a poem that was to be hailed as a classic of “revolutionary poetry”:

With chains I walked in the long street; Stumbling slowly. People in town stared at me, But the sense of shame could never penetrate into my heart. With chains I walked in the long street; Chains clanking on the ground. People were surprised by what they saw, But my heart remained peaceful and calm. With chains I walked in the long street; Becoming more spirited and proud. As a prisoner I will not give up my cause; For the liberation of workers and peasants I shall struggle. (Liu Bojian [1935] 1989:29–30) Styling himself as a radical suffering for the revolution, Liu, too, described the masses as a bunch of people who could not comprehend his cause. Did public exhibition cause the perception of distance? Or had a similar perception been shared by revolutionary intellectuals already? In fact, the emphasis on greater enthusiasm vis-à-vis the peasant masses might not simply be a trait triggered by the occasion of public exhibition; it enjoyed unquestionable visibility in revolutionary intellectuals’ emotion-based self-representations. Communist intellectuals did not hesitate to point out that they were more dedicated to the revolution than the peasant masses. In his autobiography entitled A Brief Account of My Revolutionary Life, talking about his involvement in a training program in Geyang, Jiangxi, Fang Zhimin described how arduously he worked for the revolution, and highlighted the difference between himself and local cadres, mostly of peasant origin, in terms of enthusiasm: “I became more and more excited as I talked. But some peasant and worker comrades [gongnong tongzhi] who attended the class could not bear this kind of intensive training. They told me: ‘You are so spirited that we are no match for you’” (Fang Zhimin [1935] 1985b:55). Looking back on his political career, he identified the political zeal to sacrifice and suffer as any revolutionary’s effective catalyst for the masses’ political conversion:

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we did not succumb to obstacles but struggled to overcome them; we did not bow to hardships in life but fought to endure them; we did not become frustrated dealing with the uneducated masses but strove to educate them—in this spirit we approached and worked with the masses. For our utmost sincerity the masses all rallied around us. (Fang Zhimin [1935] 1985b:55–6) His emphasis on revolutionary intellectuals’ superior commitment was echoed by others. When the CCP was forced to evacuate from the Chinese Soviet Republic and began its Long March in 1935, Chen Yi, who was to become the head of the Department of Foreign Relations in the post-1949 regime, was also among those who stayed behind. In his interview with Song Zhidi in the early 1950s, he recounted his experience in detail. He was assigned the job of leading the guerilla group. The conditions of guerilla warfare were so unfavorable that many soldiers deserted, or intended to do so. Realizing that strict measures and suppression would lead to self-destruction, Chen decided to show his tolerance to the soldiers (Chen Pixian 1989:62; Song Zhidi [1952] 1979:150–2; Benton 1992:100). In a meeting, according to Chen, he expressed his empathy with some soldiers’ inclination to free themselves from this distressing situation: “If your health condition is not good enough, you can leave…death now is part of our daily life. Under these circumstances, your failure to persevere is forgivable” (Song Zhidi [1952] 1979:152). Recollecting his guerilla days, Chen represented himself as a flexible leader responsive to soldiers’ depression. However, when he flaunted his tolerance in the early 1950s by saying that desertion was “forgivable”, he certainly treated the decision to leave—or the wavering attitude toward the revolutionary cause—as far from ideal. Chen Yi was not the only one forced to accept desertion with forbearance. Fang Zhimin, too, was pressed by unfavorable circumstances to show immediate and pragmatic tolerance toward deserters. In 1934, when the soviet area he led was under attack by the government, many people ran away. To maintain people’s loyalty to the soviet, he told the masses about the brutal, corrupt behavior of the government officials, and also promised that for those who deserted, the soviet should welcome them back and would not confiscate their land (Fang Zhimin [1935] 1985h:354–5). But the point is, Fang refused to sound understanding even when he was desperate enough to show leniency. His tolerance was, ironically, accompanied by scorn for those who deserted or were likely to leave: “If you desert and then come back, you should feel ashamed of yourself…. In revolutionary struggle, to desert once will become an ineradicable stain on your life” (Fang Zhimin [1935] 1985h:354). The question of why Fang sounded much more straightforward than Chen in expressing his discontent with desertion is certainly complex. Personality differences, the deserters they faced, the particular difficulties they encountered, and Chen’s attempt to embellish his own image—all these factors may have accounted for their difference. But they shared one common attitude toward desertion: they tolerated it unhappily and did not try to conceal their unhappiness. By conceptualizing desertion as forgivable, they may have, for the pragmatic purpose of maintaining mass support for the CCP, tried to show their understanding of the less devoted other. But at the same time, they also invoked the assumption that lack of political devotion, indicated by one’s reluctance to suffer for the revolution, was fundamentally wrong.22 Thus, the perception of distance

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between themselves as self-sacrificing heroes struggling for the masses, and the ignorant masses who could not understand them, was rooted in Communist intellectuals’ existing feelings about themselves and the peasant other. In their emotion-oriented, elitist selfconstruction, Communist intellectuals brought into prominence their superiority relative not only to the conventional non-believers in general but also to the peasant masses— whom they identified as historical actors—in particular. Redressing intellectuals’ flazws By stating and “substantiating” their political commitment, and by recounting their superiority in emotion-based terms, Communist intellectuals portrayed themselves as heroes living, working and sacrificing passionately for the revolution. Although they may sometimes have written and talked about their heroic deeds for political (propagandist) purposes (e.g. Chen Nongfei’s memoirs), it is still obvious that they focused on feelings rather than ideology to boast about their own commitment, or even their superior commitment. However, writing in the ideological space, in an anti-elitist manner they always sounded critical of intellectuals’ insufficient devotion to the Marxist cause. Therefore, one question left is how Communist intellectuals secured their status as devoted heroes by responding to the CCP’s and their own anti-elitist view on intellectuals. To analyze how Communist intellectuals built themselves as heroes, I think it important to investigate how they managed to maintain such a self-image in the face of the anti-elitist stance adopted by intellectuals in the early years of the revolution and then incorporated into Party ideology in the 1920s. In my analysis, I find that some revolutionary intellectuals did not disregard anti-elitism, but rather engaged with antielitism in order to vindicate their claim to the image of devoted revolutionary. From the embryonic stage of the Communist revolution, while believing in their own leadership in the Communist movement, revolutionary intellectuals already looked at themselves and the category of intellectuals with a critical eye. In addition to blasting their failure to understand and communicate with the masses, they also looked into their own impure political commitment. As early as 1920, when Yun Daiying analyzed the role played by the nonlaboring revolutionary elite in a social revolution, he had already heeded its undesirable “ambition” (Yun Daiying [1920] 1984:1/259). Only a few months after joining the CCP, Ruan Xiaoxian wrote an article to discuss the problems of the Chinese youth. It is obvious, however, that his target audience was educated young radicals. In the article, he talked about the selfishness of young people: “they enjoy doing easy work which can enhance their reputation…. This is vanity.” He then implored: “to create a better environment for our society, we the Chinese youth must free ourselves from our false sense of pride” (Ruan Xiaoxian [1921] 1984:57). In fact, some of them wrote explicitly on revolutionary intellectuals’ insufficient commitment. In his letter to Shi Cuntong, the leader of the Socialist Youth Corps, reflecting on the problems of this Communist organization dominated by students, Deng Zhongxia described young radical intellectuals in no benign tone in 1923: “Students do not share the young workers’ social and economic background.” He observed: “Influenced by the education they received, they talk about various kinds of ‘isms’: democracy-ism, liberalism…. Pschologically, they …hate any kind of restraints, love to

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build their reputation,…and do not have the courage to confront death” (Nanjing yuhuatai lieshi lingyuan guanlichu shiliaoshi 1983:80). While Deng Zhongxia did not wield such terms as “petit bourgeoisie” in this discussion on educated Chinese youths at so early a stage in his political career, the Party around the same time had already called intellectuals bourgeoisie or petit bourgeoisie (Luk 1990:208), and other Party leaders had begun to criticize intellectuals’ performance in the Chinese revolution. Later in the same year, although Chen Duxiu represented the intellectuals as capable of being revolutionary and of serving as a link between various social constituencies in Chinese society, he also declared them to be politically unreliable. Party theorists’ anti-intellectual stance became all the more noticeable after they witnessed the May Thirtieth movement and some students’ anti-Communist activities in the mid-1920s. Soon, Yun Daiying published an article, in which he lavishly “exposed” intellectuals’ inadequate commitment to the revolution: they were undisciplined, emotional, compromising, jealous, power-driven, etc. (Luk 1990:208–9). In the late 1920s and early 1930s, the Party leadership was deeply entrenched in the view that intellectuals were not trustworthy revolutionaries. In the conference that took place in August 1927, in dissecting the CCP’s tragic failure caused by the collapse of the First United Front, the new Party leadership targeted the previous non-proletarian leadership for scorn. Intellectuals and other petit bourgeois elements who had led the Party were considered to be infirm and irresolute. Reportedly, after the conference there was a saying that intellectuals could maintain their revolutionary zeal for only three days (He Bozhuan 1989:509). People who had a pen or wore glasses were considered intellectuals, and they were regarded as “dangerous elements” (He Bozhuan 1989:509). The disdain for intellectuals was accompanied by the Party’s enthusiasm for recruiting workers into the Party and for promoting workers to leadership level. What happened then, after the conference in August 1927, was most ironic. While the CCP acted to ensure that workers took on leading positions, revolutionary intellectuals, such as Qu Qiubai and Li Lisan, remained actual power holders (Luk 1990:212). It was only at the earlier stage of the Yan’an period that the CCP leadership abandoned the proletarianization program (Luk 1990:213). But while the Party leadership recognized the importance of intellectuals for the revolution, it also used thought reform to cultivate revolutionary intellectuals’ correct ideology and sufficient political commitment. And during the Rectification Campaign and after, Mao’s articles focused on how intellectuals’ petit bourgeois tendencies—their arrogance, egotism, etc.—indicated their insufficient political devotion, whereas such leaders as Liu Shaoqi and Chen Yun discussed how intellectuals should eliminate their “individualistic” traits, including egotism, in order to be truly devoted Communists (Chen Yun [1939] 1950:72–89; Liu Shaoqi [1939] 1950:90–130). Surveying the CCP’s history in the 1930s and 1940s, scholars, especially those from the mainland, always point up how the CCP did an injustice to its intellec tual members with its distrust of intellectuals. But the question which concerns me here is how revolutionary intellectuals built themselves as committed fighters by positioning themselves in relation to this highly anti-elitist and anti-intellectual stance, a trend which was created by themselves or people of their own kind, and which was highly visible in their ideological system.

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In a sense, by adopting the Communist anti-elitist stance to critique the intellectuals’ petit bourgeois tendency, revolutionary intellectuals distanced themselves from it. Deng Zhongxia explicitly emphasized that he was not tainted by the “weaknesses” of the intellectual class. While listing college students’ insufficient commitment, which plagued the Socialist Youth Corps, Deng Zhongxia asserted: “their problems contradict totally my ideology and revolutionary spirit” (Nanjing yuhuatai lieshi lingyuan guanlichu shiliaoshi 1983:79–81). This strategy of detachment was not uncommon. It was also used when revolutionary intellectuals reflected on petit bourgeois flaws which may or may not have been directly related to insufficient commitment. Imprisoned, Fang Zhimin rethought his own political performances. He concentrated particularly on what he did in the campaign to eliminate counter-revolutionaries (sufan) in the Communist-occupied territories in the early 1930s. Recounting his interrogation of “counter-revolutionaries” in the campaign, he stated that the campaign went overboard in identifying class enemies and thus undermined the solidarity of revolutionaries. After locating the origins of this problematic campaign in the Party leadership’s sense of insecurity, he labeled the Party’s lack of composure petit bourgeois. And he separated himself from this petit bourgeois tendency by stressing that he attempted to fight the Party leadership’s unjustified zeal for uncovering reactionaries (Fang Zhimin [1935] 1985b:79). But even when revolutionary intellectuals admitted their or their intellectual comrades’ petit bourgeois weaknesses in terms of insufficient commitment, they did not think that they should deprive themselves or people of their own kind of the title of devoted revolutionary. They argued, instead, that how much one endeavored to overcome one’s flaws determined whether one was a dedicated radical. While attacking intellectuals’ unreliable character, the Party emphasized the use of self-criticism (ziwo piping) for intellectuals’ self-improvement.23 The willingness to go through self-criticism—that is, the willingness to expose one’s petit bourgeois, impure commitment by employing an anti-elitist ideological practice—was transformed into a testimony to one’s political devotion. Dissociating himself from what he condemned as petit bourgeois, at the last minute of his life Fang Zhimin entreated his intellectual comrades to actualize the true “Bolshevik spirit” by undertaking self-criticism (ziwo piping)—in this specific case, by confronting their mistakes in the campaign to remove counter-revolutionaries, mistakes rooted in lack of composure. The fear of self-criticism, he said, originated in petit bourgeois egotism (Fang Zhimin [1935] 1985b:80). If, in Fang’s view, the lack of composure did not necessarily suggest insufficient devotion, he regarded reluctance to undertake self-criticism as indicating an insincere attitude toward the revolutionary mission. By fighting one’s petit bourgeois egotism, which did not allow oneself to face one’s flaws, he assumed, one demonstrated one’s endeavor for selfimprovement—hence, one’s commitment to the revolution. To further illustrate how revolutionary intellectuals translated self-criticism an act taking place in the ideological realm—into evidence for their political commitment, I plan to examine somewhat the Rectification Campaign, which is well known for its selfcriticism practice. During the Rectification Campaign, revolutionary intellectuals always anatomized the formation of their class-related personality by looking at their family upbringing. In other words, they dissected how their families conditioned them to be emotionally impure radicals (Liu Baiyu 1988:1/133–6; Zhu Ming [1944] 1988:1/255–81). For instance, born

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into a large gentry-scholar family in Anhui, Zhu Ming, who went to Yan’an in 1938, characterized her original class as even worse than petit bourgeois: “In the past few years, I always told others in Yan’an that I came from a bourgeois family. In fact, my family is part of the landowning class and engages in capitalist activities.” Liu Baiyu, a young writer who had already established himself before going to Yan’an, became a Party member in 1938. He represented himself as an individual who came from a declining feudal family that molded his inner world into a “petit bourgeois kingdom.” To some extent, the content of their self-analyses was gender-specific. Zhu Ming talked about how she was raised by her family as an upper-class woman who could not possibly identify with the Communist goal of class-based liberation. She described how she trained to become a proper lady from a big family (dajia guixiu), and how in the process she learned to differentiate herself from women of lesser background: “young ladies were expected to be tender, gentle and reserved…. We must not laugh aloud…. We must sit and stand in the right way. Otherwise we would be criticized for acting like ‘girls from small families’ [xiaojia biyu]” (Zhu Ming [1944] 1988:1/255–81). But in dissecting their incorrect attitudes toward the revolution, revolutionary intellectuals pointed to gender-neutral problems as well. They, men and women alike, usually blasted their egotism (Liu Baiyu 1988:1/133–6; Zhu Ming [1944] 1988:1/255–81; Yang Li [1943] 1988:1/118). It was the Party that pressed them to confront the “ugliness” of their souls—so revolutionary intellectuals said. However, intellectuals also regarded their exhaustive self-examination as their own willingness to improve themselves. After displaying her improper itch for privilege and importance, Zhu Ming emphasized her eagerness to liberate herself from her original problematic ideology: “I always wanted to stand above the laboring masses [laodong renmin]. But now I want to become a cow working for the masses” (Zhu Ming [1944] 1988:1/281). Liu Baiyu recalls how in the Yan’an period he revised his autobiography quite a few times in order to penetrate into his own impure thought (Liu Baiyu 1988:1/136). While another young intellectual, Yang Li, who enrolled at the CCP’s Central Institute (Zhongyang dangxiao), did not mention how many times he rewrote his autobiography, he, too, attempted to examine his “long petit bourgeois tail” for the sake of self-improvement: “Caring too much about status and power, I intended to use my ability to seek self-expansion in the Party. …I was always longing for attention…. If I felt ignored, I viewed the Party as cruel and indifferent. I was not interested in reforming myself in order to serve the Party better” (Yang Li [1943] 1988:1/118). Whether these revolutionary intellectuals were as sincere as they described themselves to be in self-reform is difficult to know. It is evident, nevertheless, that they represented themselves as imperfect revolutionaries whose passion for the revolution manifested itself in their struggle for self-improvement. In this way, they awarded themselves the title of committed fighter. By critiquing their insufficient commitment and emphasizing their intention of self-reform in the ideological space, revolutionary intellectuals showed their political devotion. Self-construction and Communist ideology By expanding on their emotions to declare their loyalty to the revolution, by displaying their political performance to attest to their political commitment (and even superior

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commitment), and by using the practice of anti-elitist self-criticism to demonstrate their political devotion, revolutionary intellectuals created the situation where their political passion gained entry into the ideological system of knowledge, which, for its anti-elitism, always distrusted the educated radicals’ commitment to the cause. What they did contributed to the importance of Communist intellectuals in the CCP’s project of cultivating “revolutionary ethics”—its attempt to strengthen the revolutionary force by fostering revolutionaries’ consciousness of acting in the interest(s) of the revolution. While the Party leadership always discussed the related issue of the Bolshevik revolutionary spirit in the late 1920s and 1930s, it was in the Yan’an period, and particularly after the Rectification Campaign, that this project made great strides. The CCP under the leadership of Mao and Liu used the term “revolutionary heroism” (geming yingxiong zhuyi), as opposed to individual heroism. Revolutionary heroism was officially defined as one’s willingness to sacrifice one’s self-interest for the revolution (and for Party-defined goals), and individual heroism was understood as people’s egotistic quest for fame, influence and other kinds of self-aggrandizement (Liu Shaoqi [1939] 1950:102– 3). Undoubtedly, the CCP revered peasant or worker martyrs. In fact, Liu Hulan, one of the most renowned icons of political devotion in the history of the CCP, was a peasant girl who died for the Party in the 1940s. The effort to commemorate her was almost immediate. Her life was enacted in an opera entitled Liu Hulan, which premiered in 1948 (Zhong Jingshi and Jin Ziguang 1987:16/1608). But the CCP used substantially revolutionary intellectuals’ self-representations to fashion revolutionary ethics and revolutionary heroism. The images of revolutionary intellectuals loomed large in the Communist celebration of revolutionary heroism, even when the Party emphasized strongly its distrust of intellectuals. Intellectual martyrs’ self-expressions were frequently published in the Party’s magazines. Peng Pai’s final words to his wife appeared in Red Flag (Hongqi) soon after his death (Cai Luo et al. 1986:229). The appropriation of intellectual martyrs’ self-expression continued into the Yan’an period. For instance, He Bin’s beautiful poem for Xu Yun appeared in Liberation Daily (Jiefang ribao) on November 13, 1942 (Xiao San 1962:231, note 1). In addition, in the tradition of revolutionary ethics/heroism, Communist intellectuals’ political devotion represented not only revolutionaries’ heroism but also intellectuals’ heroism. When revolutionary intellectuals sometimes praised themselves and their comrades for their political commitment, they integrated their intellectual identity into their emotional-political self-expressions. I do not mean to suggest that in their selfidealization, revolutionary intellectuals refused to identify with their non-intellectual comrades. As revolutionary intellectuals described their struggle and sacrifice in prison, they also treated themselves, together with their non-intellectual comrades, as belonging to one fighting collective (Cai Mengwei [1949] 1962:367–9; Chen Nongfei 1959:81 and 84). It should be noted, however, that some revolutionary intellectuals clearly identified themselves as intellectuals when they undertook self-idealization. For instance, giving credence to his total sacrifice for the revolution, considering himself a revolutionary of proletarian spirit, and emphasizing his more robust political commitment compared with the peasants, Fang Zhimin categorized himself as an “intellectual” writing his short prison autobiography (Fang Zhimin [1935] 1985a:3). He did so when the central Party leadership had not yet rethought its extremely anti-intellectual stance.

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In fact, reflecting on the issue of Chinese revolution in their official writings or in politicized discussion, Communist authors uttered or underscored intellectuals’ superiority in political commitment in the Yan’an period, a time when the early antiintellectual bias was considered a mistake, and when the CCP was interested in uniting people of various backgrounds and political positions. Mao Zedong is a good example. In the 1940s, he time and again complimented “politically progressive” intellectuals for their contribution to modern China’s transformation. In one of the articles he wrote for the Rectification Campaign, “To Reform Our Study,” aside from criticizing and ridiculing intellectuals’ dogmatism, he also paid tribute to radical intellectuals as a group: “In the past one hundred years, the best representatives of the Chinese people have been struggling and sacrificing to search for the truth that can save their nation and people. Some of them fell, but others followed their path.” He then stated: “Their search deserves our praise and tears.” As expected, he then stated that the outstanding representatives’ historical search eventually yielded incredible results only when some of them found Marxism-Leninism. In On the Democratic Dictatorship of the People, written in 1949, Mao again placed Communist intellectuals within modern Chinese radical tradition: In order to rejuvenate their countries [Russia and China], those who were progressive despised difficulties and struggled, searching for the truth of revolution…. Since 1840,…the progressive Chinese, like Hong Xiuquan, Kang Youwei, Yan Fu, and Sun Yat-sen, searched for truth…. Finally, the Chinese people found the universal truth—Marxism-Leninism. (Mao Zedong [1949] 1975:10/292–4) His praises were, it should be noted, much more than mere rhetorical devices to please the educated Chinese sympathetic toward the Communist Revolution. An activist during the May Fourth movement who attempted to use The Xiang River Review to enlighten the people in Hunan, Mao was certainly sensitive to the young intellectuals’ role of vanguard in the revolution (Mao Zedong [1919] 1975a: 1/54–5). Moreover, we should remember that, despite being born into a peasant family, Mao always tended to identify himself as an intellectual. In the Yan’an Forum on Literature and Art, ridiculing intellectuals’ petit bourgeois tendency, he said, “I come from a student background” (Mao Zedong [1942] 1975d:8/116). Thus, he could not but praise politically progressive intellectuals’ political passion with a certain degree of sincerity. Other leading Party members also voiced their admiration for intellectuals sympathetic or aspiring to the revolution. For example, Luo Ruiqing, the vice-chancellor of the University of Resistance in Yan’an, publicly praised students from other parts of China and from relatively well-off families who had decided to abandon “their original comfortable life-style” (Luo Ruiqing [1938] 1970:52). Once again, I do not deny the possibility that a revolutionary leader said this in courting his targeted audience. However, it is important that such a compliment, given by a relatively educated leader, tied in well with the theme of self-sacrifice, persistent throughout the revolutionary process and shared by a great many revolutionary intellectuals. What was implied in the statement was a difference between revolutionary intellectuals and the masses which pointed to the stronger commitment of the former: radical intellectuals gave up what they

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possessed or could possess for the revolutionary ideal, whereas the masses—the peasantry and proletariat—struggled for the ideal to better themselves. The implied difference was sometimes made explicit. To promote revolutionary ethics, revolutionary writers portrayed their best-known representatives as individuals who had things to sacrifice and the willingness to sacrifice what they owned. In 1947, an author who personally knew Peng Pai used the pen name “Yao Hua” in writing an article commemorating Peng in the Masses’ Weekly (Qunzhong). The article began with an introduction to Peng’s background: “He was born into…a huge land-owning family…. But his privileged environment did not erode his social conscience.” It then expanded on how Peng Pai, “shouldering his political ideal,” refused to use the diploma he obtained in Japan to “seek official appointment.” Meeting Peng Pai in Guangzhou in the late 1920s, the author was impressed with his simple clothing and stated: “Only those who are passionate about their political ideals can put aside worldly comfort. When he [Peng Pai] was working for the revolutionary government in Guangzhou, his position was high. But he still wore his old dark suit.” Peng Pai’s greatness thus lay in his ability to break fetters of secular possessions, which were made readily available for him by his origins. “To transcend the limitations [of one’s class background],” the author stressed, “is one of the characteristics which define a great man” (Yao Hua [1947] 1981:362–7). Therefore, Communist intellectuals themselves helped create a paradox which marked the Party’s tradition of revolutionary ethics/heroism. On behalf of the Party, they chastised themselves and the category of intellectuals for their nonproletarian insincerity, but they also created many revolutionary intellectuals as radicals of outstanding or even superior political passion. This paradox can be conceptualized to some extent as a contradiction between Communist intellectuals’ non-ideological self-expressions and Communist ideology It was because revolutionary intellectuals’ emphases on their political commitment and emotional superiority were most subversive for the ideological perspective on the linkage between class oppression and political allegiance, a perspective crucial for both the Party’s interpretation of historical dynamics for change and the revolutionary strategy of class struggle. But the relationship between revolutionary intellectuals’ non-ideological self-construction and Communist ideology was indeed very complex. Their well-expressed heroism, incorporated into the Party’s campaign of revolutionary ethics, can be considered a part of Communist ideological knowledge as well. By becoming part of that knowledge system, revolutionary intellectuals’ declaration of/testimony to their political devotion to some extent “relocated” its contradiction with the ideological analysis of class origins and political loyalty. It transplanted the contradiction into the ideological space.

Conclusion Communist intellectuals attempted to confirm their political commitment by expanding on their self-sacrifice for the revolution. Writing in the non-ideological space, they highlighted that they gave up worldly comfort, that they forsook family relationships and romantic love, and that they went through all kinds of ordeals in prison. All this, they pointed out, was for the revolution. Portraying how much they suffered for their beloved cause, it should be noted, Communist intellectuals revealed their own ambivalence about

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their revolutionary lives, showing their perception that a life dedicated to the revolution was quite challenging indeed. Such ambivalence appeared particularly conspicuous in many intellectual martyrs’ last words, in which they showed both their pride and sadness in the face of death, a torn psychological state sometimes resulting in emotional disarray. However, the demonstration of one’s arduous or self-sacrificing struggle, together with passionate declarations of revolutionary zeal, helped strengthen revolutionary intellectuals’ status as committed fighters. In fact, when Communist intellectuals described how much they suffered, or how willing they were to sacrifice for the revolutionary ideals, they narrated their superior political commitment vis-à-vis the peasantry, and therefore constructed themselves as heroes. In addition to writing about their feelings and self-sacrifice in the nonideological space, they also engaged with anti-elitism to contend for their political passion. They dissociated themselves from the problematic intellectuals by critiquing the intellectuals’ undesirable—or petit bourgeois—tendencies. And even when they admitted their or their intellectual comrades’ petit bourgeois weaknesses in terms of political devotion, they stated that impure intellectuals’ struggle for self-improvement—in particular their willing participation in self-criticism—showed their ideological dedication. They therefore cleared the hurdle of their own and Party anti-elitism and then seized the right to represent themselves as exemplary revolutionaries. Communist intellectuals expressed their emotions to embrace the revolution; they described their non-political lives to substantiate their political commitment; and they used their acceptance of antielitism to show their love for their cause—in doing so, they established revolutionary intellectuals as devoted radicals in the Communist ideological system of knowledge. Let me conclude Part III and this chapter by reflecting on the relationship between modern China’s earlier radical tradition and Communist intellectuals’ self-construction. As noted, there were differences between the self-construction of the late Qing historical actors and the Communist intellectuals. The ideas and practices of a Marxist-Leninist revolution made their mark on the intellectuals’ heroism. But Chapters 5 and 6 show that, despite these differences, Communist intellectuals borrowed—intentionally or unintentionally—from earlier radicals’ writings to express themselves, and therefore added some sort of historical feel to their own heroism. Communist intellectuals paraphrased earlier radicals’ writings, or what they believed to be these people’s writings, to boast of their valor. More importantly, the CCP under the leadership of Mao consciously highlighted the parallels and connection between Communist intellectuals. and earlier radicals. To be sure, left-wing and Communist intellectuals were not uncritical of earlier radicals. For instance, in 1930, while teasing some left-wingers, Lu Xun also disapproved of some 1911 radicals’ inadequate commitment to the idea of revolution (Lu Xun [1930] 1973:4/238). Time and again, leading Communists told their followers that Communists were the most committed fighters in China or even in the whole world (e.g. Liu Shaoqi [1939] 1950:102–3 and 110). However, revolutionary intellectuals’ invocation of earlier radicals, together with the top leader’s stress on the continuity between the pre-Communist and Communist agents, helped them imagine their connection to the evolving collective of historical actors in quest of modernity, and strengthened their consciousness of being one of those who made history.

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It should be noted, nevertheless, that heroes making history remained individuals whose habits, hobbies, and preferences were forged by their education and upbringing. As I shall show in Chapter 7, they allowed these socially and culturally conditioned factors to shape their self-construction as well.

Part lV Sophisticates Self-construction from the aesthetic perspective

7 Clinging to refinement in the revolution Communist intellectuals were committed to beauty and the arts.1 Their upbringing and education always instilled in them love for cultural refinement (see the Introduction). In addition, they were reared and educated in a historical milieu marked by intellectuals’ interest in the issue of aesthetics (see Chapter 5). After exploring the ways in which Communist intellectuals created themselves as leaders and heroes, I shall in this chapter examine the dimension of aesthetic elitism in their self-construction—their belief that they had better taste in and superior knowledge of art, literature, music and other intellectual and symbolic expressions of human society and life.2 I shall, first of all, highlight revolutionary intellectuals’ aesthetic sensibility, which was fundamental to their view of themselves as sophisticates. To some extent, existing scholarship has already successfully described such interests by elaborating on the tension between Party policy and revolutionary intellectuals’ love for fine art (see the Introduction). Here I shall select and interpret examples to show that the appreciation of artistic beauty was indeed a stable disposition of Communist intellectuals throughout the revolutionary process. After doing so, I venture into the 1940s, focusing mainly on the Yan’an period (not only Yan’an the place), although I recognize that aesthetic elitism as a phenomenon had already existed in the revolutionary context long before Yan’an populism. This choice of focus, I believe, makes much sense. I consider the Yan’an era crucial for us to understand the fate of Communist intellectuals’ aesthetic elitism. They felt most acutely the tension between their interest in good art and the CCP’s ideological system during the Yan’an period with its populist policies of art and literature and well-known attack on intellectuals’ arrogance. Moreover, some revolutionary intellectuals could not but experience intellectual-emotional ambivalence as they advocated or accepted populist policies, which were useful for the revolution but went against their own aesthetic inclination. In other words, my approach is neither purely chronological nor entirely thematic: it is a thematic treatment of aesthetic elitism with a chronological focus. I shall examine how the circumstances of the time made it possible for Communist intellectuals to pursue the fine arts and to build themselves as sophisticates. I shall also analyze the question of how, while representing themselves as sophisticates, Communist intellectuals narrated their involvement in the popularization policy. What also deserves attention is how the revolutionary intellectuals constructed themselves as sophisticates when they employed their own cultural and aesthetic refinement to achieve various political purposes. But from what perspective—traditional or Westernized—did revolutionary intellectuals build themselves as sophisticates before and during their involvement in popularization? Relatively speaking, I focus on these people’s Westernized tastes for two

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reasons. First, until the 1930s and 1940s, many May Fourth veterans and Communist intellectuals were still proud of what they believed to be “modern” Chinese literature and art created in the May Fourth era (see my analysis below). Many of these products were viewed by them as results of the Chinese adoption of Western standards. And second, rejecting what they called China’s aristocratic past, Communist intellectuals always seemed to prefer Westernized standards in evaluating artistic achievements (e.g. their views on folk art in this chapter). However, in showing the presence of aesthetic elitism, I shall also describe Communist intellectuals’ aesthetic commitment, which was sometimes very traditional in nature as many of them were drawn strongly to Chinese high culture. Before exploring Communist intellectuals as sophisticates, let me explain a little more how I use my sources. In this chapter, I shall touch upon materials which many scholars rely on to probe Communist intellectuals’ theoretical views on art and politics—their articles on the urgency of popularization, on the relationship between “raising standards” and popularization, on intellectuals “petit bourgeois” preference for good art, and so forth. But I mainly use them so as to see how revolutionary intellectuals built themselves as sophisticates. In analyzing how Communist intellectuals did this, I also examine many veteran revolutionaries’ and cultural professionals’ non-theoretical writings. Many of these writings were written and published after the Cultural Revolution. It should be noted that these cultural professionals’ reminiscences recall earlier revolutionary art and literature in the contemporary age characterized by the revulsion toward any emphasis on the ultimate importance of politics and ideology, and by a revival of respect for high culture (Kraus 1989:205–11). It seems possible, therefore, that despite their praises of Mao’s populist policy, some veteran cultural professionals over-emphasized their past pursuit of “good” art, as they were somewhat embarrassed by—and thus inclined to downplay—the overly strong political orientation of aesthetic activities in the revolutionary past. At any rate, distorted or “creative” though they may be, these recollections are still useful. The critical question is how I use them. I cite those reminiscences which echo what was written in the revolutionary decades. I pay more attention to the facts the cultural professionals mentioned—i.e., their description of which person did what—than to their own evaluative or even colorful representations of facts. I also make use of those accounts in which evaluative representations are strongly supported by “hard” facts which point to their elitism. For instance, cultural professionals’ description of their enthusiasm for good art is certainly dependable, if they can give concrete examples to show that pursuit. And to demonstrate the presence of a certain phenomenon (but not a specific fact) one of them mentioned, I quote other sources that disclose something comparable. If two individuals’ recollections are combined into one piece, this piece is counted as a single source. I will also introduce specific circumstances or happenings that are contained in only one recollection, if the information adds vivid detail to my discussion, and the fact covered looks reasonable in the context. To show the broad and persistent presence of aesthetic elitism in the Communist revolution and especially the Yan’an period, I cite examples from different geographical areas and from different revolutionary phases. My intention is to show that, despite the unique political and cultural features of different revolutionary stages, and despite regional variations, artistic elitism formed a widespread and lasting presence in the Communist context. It was present all the time, here and there—local contests that

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emphasized the criteria of artistic achievement, many cultural professionals’ praise of what they regarded as masterpieces, and so forth. Going through all these data, I look into the experiences, behaviors and thinking of different types of revolutionary intellectuals—political and military leaders who were relatively educated, artists and writers, cultural bureaucrats, and revolutionary intellectuals who loved art. I shall touch upon the ideas of those non-intellectuals such as He Long whose attitudes were relevant to the issue this chapter addresses. And drawing upon materials related to different types of revolutionary intellectuals, I emphasize that aesthetic elitism was characteristic not only of professional artists and writers, but of revolutionary intellectuals in general. But while studying intellectuals’ experiences with the masses in the aesthetic realm, relatively speaking I concentrate on professional artists and writers, the kind of revolutionary intellectuals who had the most intimate cultural communication with the masses, and whose duties involved them in comparatively substantial negotiations with the popularization policy

The pursuit of aesthetic experience Many Communist intellectuals obviously sought gratification from beauty and art. Interviewed by Edgar Snow, Mao Zedong did not conceal his unhappy memories about his life in Beijing as a poor student from Hunan, ignored by his peers. But his stay in Beijing was not devoid of satisfaction. In 1937 he admitted that during those days his horizons were broadened, and his mind stimulated. Beijing was also the place where he met and fell in love with Yang Kaihui (Snow 1961:150–1). Nevertheless, for Mao, his sources of consolation were not confined to intellectual stimulation and romantic love. “My own living conditions in Peking were quite miserable,” he told Snow, “and in contrast the beauty of the old capital was a vivid and living compensation.” He then described how the white plum blossom and winter-jeweled trees at Beihai aroused his wonder (Snow 1961:150–1). But Mao was not the only one capable of appreciating beauty amid adversity. As a prisoner, Zheng Chaolin still had a good eye for the charm of Suzhou. Arrested by the Nationalist government in 1931, he was sent from Shanghai to Suzhou by ship. “Though chained,” he said in his memoir, “we had a good view of the landscape along the Grand Canal.” During this “trip,” said he, a sense of longing for the historic stirred in him (Zheng Chaolin 1998:2/223). Looking into the lives of revolutionary intellectuals, we find that many of them shared with Mao and Zheng the same kind of aesthetic sensitivity in both their pre-revolutionary and revolutionary stages. It revealed itself not only through the inner appreciation of beauty—which, like that of Mao and Zheng, could remain hidden in the absence of outward expression—but also in other more visible activities. Traditional operas, for instance, captivated many of them. It is said that while Qu Qiubai was extremely busy in the mid-1920s, working at Shanghai University and helping restructure the Nationalist Party for the First United Front, he still taught his lover, Wang Jianhong, to sing the Kun (Kunqu) version of The Peony Pavilion. Qu’s passion for traditional operas was shared by such people as Mao Zedong and Luo Ruiqing.3 Communist intellectuals were fascinated by foreign literature and art as well. According to Deng Yanda, Zhu De said that he was going to hear everything Beethoven

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composed (Smedley [1956] 1972:154). Chen Nongfei recalled that when he was in prison, one of his comrades there insistently studied Shakespeare (Chen Nongfei 1959:72). Poetry, traditional and modern alike, was perhaps the most popular form of artistic creation among the revolutionary intellectuals. As poetry writing required no special instruments, it seemed to be a convenient way for them to represent artistically how they felt and what they saw. In Chapter 5 I have discussed Communist intellectuals’ use of poetry and artistic imagery as self-expressions to ennoble themselves. In this chapter I would like to unveil the aesthetic sensibility in their poetry. Revolutionary intellectuals in their daily life did not forget to praise the aesthetically inspiring components they encountered. Qu Qiubai developed a keen appreciation for the chrysanthemum that persisted throughout his life.4 So much did he identify with the unique beauty of the white chrysanthemum that he took the name “Qiubai,” which meant “being white in the fall.” A versatile literary man, he carved a seal consisting of a fourword phrase—Qiu zhi bai hua—combining his name and that of his wife, Yang Zhihua. This lyric demonstration of romantic love certainly was chosen because of Qu’s fondness for the chrysanthemum: the phrase meant the white flower in autumn. During the Long March, Mao wrote: “Mountain./Piercing the blue without blunting the blades,/The sky will fall,/but for your underpinning as pillars” (Mao Zedong [1934–1935] 2002:63). Qu may have perceived the symbolic essence of the chrysanthemum—purity and courage to withstand difficulties (autumn)—in himself and his relationship with Yang. Mao’s poetic tribute to the mountain may have referred to the role of revolutionaries in history. However, the use of artistically pleasing images for nonpolitical or political purposes did reveal revolutionary intellectuals’ sensitivity to beauty. In fact, revolutionaries depicted “routines” and small details of their revolutionary lives in poetic language. Guan Xiangying, who began his career by joining the Socialist Youth Corps in 1923 and studied in the Soviet Union, represented the aesthetic quality of the Red Army’s march in a modern-style poem (xinshi):

The march of the army raises clouds of dust, Veiling the moonlight. Flying sparks behind the hooves of running horses. To cross the creek, we step into the water. Broken, the image of the moon sparkles in one thousand pieces. Lightning fire accompanies the hooves; Both finally disappear in the dim light. (Guan Xiangying 1962:310) Sometimes, some revolutionary intellectuals seemed to prefer to set aside their political concerns for a short while, and indulged themselves in feeling what was aesthetically inspiring for them. Crossing a lake in Shandong during a march in 1943, Chen Yi, who always prided himself on his own artistic taste, wrote a poem in which the trace of politics was absent: “The setting moon;/A boat light as autumn leaf;/form one picturesque whole” (Chen Yi (1) [1943] 1977a:65). And when he went across the Yellow River in the

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same year, he attempted to create the poetic mood by invoking the melancholy: “Sleepless in the evening, I listen to the rain drizzling;/Staying up all night, I gaze at the snow flakes falling” (Chen Yi (1) [1943] 1977b:66). In the Yan’an period, revolutionary intellectuals were always interested in pursuing refined taste and improving their cultural lives. In the spring of 1940, the Yan’an Cultural Club (Yan’an wenhua julebu) was founded. Xiao San, a celebrated revolutionary poet, was the club’s director. As an official organization supervised by the Border Region Cultural Association, it operated actively for two years, and was aimed at providing writers and “culture lovers” not only with the chance to exchange ideas but also with cultural activities and entertainments. Although many of the activities it organized were political in nature, it was an organization dominated by intellectuals’ cultural taste. Its intellectual—if not petit bourgeois—flavor was evidenced in the interior design of the club. According to the news published in the New China Daily (Xin zhonghua bao), the cave in which the club was located was decorated with items such as a sofa, a carpet and old-styled elegant vases—things regarded as “fastidious” and “exquisite” in Yan’an (Zhong Jingzhi and Jin Ziguang 1987:16/374–80). The popularity of dance in Yan’an in the 1940s is well known. Outsiders who visited Yan’an after the Rectification Campaign often noted how much Communist leaders enjoyed social dance. While many Europeans may hesitate to view social dance as part of high culture, in the eyes of Chinese Communists, seriousness about social dance indeed indicated cultural sophistication. We see clearly their eagerness to improve the quality of their cultural life. After offering a class in dance in the summer of 1941, and seeing its tremendous popularity, the Yan’an Cultural Club planned to build a better dance hall (Zhong Jingzhi and Jin Ziguang 1987:16/386). And in a veteran Party member’s recollection, many Communist intellectuals appeared to be quite passionate about social dance. The Central Academy of the CCP (Zhongyang dangxiao) began to host dance parties in 1941. In 1942, it began to host the so-called big dance parties (daxing wuhui). When the dance parties were first organized, the fans had borrowed Deng Fa’s record players and records. But they found that Deng’s collection was too monotonous, and thus searched for others’ records. Then, dissatisfied with the record players, they requested a band. The Party organizers eventually invited the music group of the Central Academy And sometimes, professional bands, including that from the General Department of the Eighth Route Army (Balujun zongbu), were invited (Yao Tie 1989:193–5). If this recollection is accurate, the development from the use of a record player to the request for a band had nothing to do with politics. The enthusiasts simply wanted better music. And according to the same recollection, like the Yan’an Cultural Club, the Academy also intended to upgrade the hall used for dance parties and other cultural activities. After the remodeling of the hall, finished in the autumn of 1942, it became more suitable for dancing (Yao Tie 1989:195). How, then, did Communist intellectuals preserve their fondness for cultural refinement and view themselves as sophisticates amid popularization, a process which was advanced by some of them, and which many of them followed and supported?

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Advocating popularization but envisioning “raising standards” Long before Mao’s “Talks at the Yan’an Forum on Literature and the Arts” and the Rectification Campaign in which intellectuals were required to examine their relationship with the masses, radical intellectuals had, despite their interest in taste and refinement, already thought about the following questions: how could radical intellectuals create literary products accessible to the masses? And more importantly, how could revolutionary intellectuals use art and literature to serve the revolution—especially to convey political messages to the masses and draw them to the revolutionary camp? May Fourth intellectuals believed that writers should go to the people and produce works that could be understood by the people (Denton 1998:57). In 1928 left-wing critics and theorists initiated a debate on the merits of popularizing revolutionary literature. In 1930, when the League of Left-wing Writers (Zuolian) was established, the popularization issue was brought up again (Chen Tiejian 1995:428). In the early 1930s, withdrawing from the top Party leadership’s task of policy making to work in such areas as translation and literary criticism, Qu Qiubai expressed his concern about whether Europeanized language and revolutionary literature would be useful for the masses. Not only was he interested in exploring the possibility of creating a national language tied to popular aesthetic practices such as storytelling and folklore, but he was committed to the real work of popularization in the soviet area. It is generally believed that his ideas on culture and aesthetics foreshadowed Mao’s (Pickowicz 1981:225; Liu Kang 2000:71). From the early years of the Sino-Japanese War, Chinese writers, including left-wing authors, held the view that popularization of literature was essential for cultivating antiJapanese sentiment (Wen Tianxing 1988:66–76). In the late 1930s, Mao Zedong raised the question of how cultural professionals could create products that “the Chinese masses would enjoy watching and listening to” (xijian lewen). In 1940 he published his article on “new democracy,” and Zhang Wentian’s essay on Chinese new culture came out soon after. Both addressed the issue of the manufacturing of a new national culture, one with “national characteristics.” In both Yan’an and Chongqing, the wartime headquarters of the Nationalist government, left-wing intellectuals participated in a chain of debates which centered on a few interrelated questions: should revolutionary intellectuals make use of folk art loved by the masses for the sake of serving and mobilizing the masses? How should they critique the “feudal dregs” of folk culture? How could they preserve the ideologically progressive and artistically advanced forms of Chinese art? And how could they integrate foreign accomplishments into new Chinese culture? Some believed that revolutionary intellectuals should rely on folk art to create things that appealed to the masses’ taste, and some lamented that the masses’ preference was determined by their low cultural level. While some revolutionary intellectuals showed quite clearly their contempt for folk art, the debates also revealed that Communist leaders and intellectuals did ponder art and literature as important channels of communication with the masses (Mao Dun [1985] 1992:1–25). In fact, some Yan’an veterans point out that before the Yan’an Forum, although most cultural professionals did not do much to reach out to the masses, there had been at least one troupe that had performed things well received by the peasants. Named the People’s

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Troupe (Minzhong jutuan), it was organized in 1938 by Ke Zhongping, one of the Cultural Professionals in charge of cultural activities in the Sha’an-Gan-Ning border region. In response to the popularity of Qin opera (Qinqiang) among the masses in the northwest, Ke and his peers used this traditional art form to entertain and to preach the importance of antiJapanese resistance. Participating in the Yan’an Forum, Ke, whose endeavor had been supported by Mao, did not shy away from boasting about his success: “we perform ‘the cowherd’s air’ which many of you despise…. The masses simply love it…. They send us eggs, peanuts, fruits and the like as gifts” (He Qifang 1992:76; Huang Junyao 1992:230). Mao was determined to tackle more officially the issue of communication between the relatively urbanized radical intellectuals and the peasants. In On New Democracy, written before the destruction of the Second United Front in 1941, he still envisioned the inclusion of various groups, including the bourgeoisie and petit bourgeoisie, in the formation of a new popular culture (Liu Kang 2000:85). It is said that this particular article provided support for a kind of “two-track approach” to the arts, which allowed the co-existence of elite and popular culture and was maintained insistently by people such as Deng Tuo (Cheek 1997:95). But Mao soon sounded more “populist,” emphasizing the inclusion of peasants, workers and soldiers. He gave a speech in February 1942 which can be considered a prelude to the Forum. In the speech, he criticized cultural professionals who, writing anti-Japanese slogans, flaunted their knowledge of archaic Chinese characters. He said: “Communists who really want to do propaganda must consider their audience…; otherwise they are in effect resolving not to be read or listened to by anyone” (Mao Zedong [1942] 1975c:8/96; Kraus 1991:62). And, undoubtedly, it is well known that in the Yan’an Forum Mao attacked the “petitbourgeois kingdom,” which, in his view, resided in and actually presided over many intellectuals’ mental world (Mao Zedong [1942] 1975c:8/123). It must be noted, however, that Mao did more than just endorse popularization, although he did identify it as the most important and urgent challenge that revolutionary intellectuals had to take on at that point. While Timothy Cheek points out that in his “Yan’an Talks” Mao made a retreat from his earlier position on elite culture, I would argue that, his attack on intellectuals’ petit bourgeois or bourgeois cultural taste notwithstanding, he did not reject outright the idea of refinement. Regarding the improvement of techniques, Mao stated in the Forum: Art and literature of all levels have their roots in human beings’ reflection upon the masses’ lives. Books and existing artistic products are only the streams from this source; they were born as our ancestors and foreigners created upon the foundations of the people’s literature and art. We should critically learn from these traditional and foreign elements while we reshape the raw materials we take from people’s present arts and literature…. Such learning determines the difference between naivete and refinement, the distinction between crudeness and elegance. (Mao Zedong [1942] 1975d:8/127) By conceptualizing it as having sprung from “the people’s art,” Mao rendered ideas that buttressed cultural refinement.5

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In addition, after identifying popularization as the major and urgent goal, Mao also expressed the view that popularization was the basis for raising standards. In the speech delivered in the Forum, he declared the inevitability of raising standards, and thus envisioned the evolution of the revolutionary regime into a comparatively cultured milieu: The people demand popularization, and later they will ask for the raising of standards…. Popularization is the people’s request. So is the raising of standards. We cannot raise standards from the air. Neither can we do the job behind closed doors. Our raising of standards is based upon popularization. (Mao Zedong [1942] 1975d:8/129) What he emphasized in the speech seems to make He Qifang’s recollection sound believable. According to He, in the Forum, after Ke Zhongping showed off his impressive accomplishment, Mao commented on Ke’s popularity while discussing the relationship between popularization and raising standards: “If you can only perform ‘cowherd’s air (Xiao Fangniu),’ people will not send you eggs anymore [in the future]” (He Qifang 1992:76). To a certain extent, the policy on the arts and literary-artistic critiques outside the Yan’an area echoed eminent leaders’ and intellectuals’ attention to raising standards. Some cadres expressed concern about how to raise artistic standards while undertaking the work of popularization. In 1943, Chen Yi, the authority in charge of the Rectification Campaign in the artistic and intellectual realm in the area of Jiaozhou in Shandong province, criticized some artists’ and intellectuals’ neglect of the masses’ response to their creations, and their indifference to the question of whether the masses understood their arts (Chen Yi (2) [1943] 1988:3/236). However, Chen was also eager to raise the standards of folk art: “Regarding the use of the form of folk art, we have not paid enough attention to the raising of standards” (Chen Yi (2) [1943] 1988:3/237). In Chen’s conclusion, written for the conference on art and literature organized in the area, a replica of Mao’s notion reappeared: “We should raise artistic standards on the basis of popularization, and let popularization follow the instruction of raising standards” (Chen Yi (2) [1943] 1988:3/242). However, Mao did not invent the notion of raising standards. He had comrades who, committed to aesthetic achievement in the revolutionary milieu, refused to brush aside the issue of raising standards in the course of contemplating popularization. At an early stage of the Sino-Japanese War, Feng Xuefeng, an esteemed left-wing writer, emphasized popularization but did not forget to mention raising standards: “If the raising of standards—the further refinement of art—is possible, the popularization of the arts will be the basis for such development” (Wen Tianxing 1988:32). Writing an article entitled “The Writer and the Masses” in 1940, Ding Ling concretely talked about how popularization could be intertwined with raising standards. Emphasizing that literature “must serve the masses,” and therefore “must be understood by the masses” (Ding Ling [1940] 1984b:6/13–5), she assumed that popularized literature that treated the masses as its audience had artistic value. But how could a writer create products of aesthetic value on the basis of popularization? Ding Ling then introduced what she regarded as a writer’s

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responsibility: “The masses’ language is…most beautiful…. But an ordinary peasant or soldier might not successfully express its beauty. We should search for this kind of beauty among the masses, using and improving the language of hundreds of thousands of people.” She said: “In this way we can grasp the beautiful, vivid and interesting language of the masses. As writers, we should write what others feel but cannot express” (Ding Ling [1940] 1984b: 6/15). Zhang Wentian, who was responsible for the Party Central’s propaganda work and educational policies from the outbreak of the second Sino-Japanese War, integrated the issues of raising standards and popularization into his vision of building a new Chinese culture. In July 1938, Zhang said on the occasion of an art festival: “We should combine Chinese and Western culture, and then develop them” (Cheng Zhongyuan 1987:278). Writing a report on the Party’s cultural policy in 1940, he expressed a kind of longing which showed that his cosmopolitan aspirations after a China merging with the world were intertwined with his nationalistic pride. He hoped that China’s new culture would become an outstanding part of world culture (Zhang Wentian 1938, in Cheng Zhongyuan 1987:281). Discussing the construction of a new culture, he stressed the Chinese people’s absorption of the excellent elements of foreign culture and their own heritage. In defining the excellent elements of the Chinese cultural heritage, he pointed out: “Chinese tradition also includes the cultural ingredients that belong to the rebels, the oppressed, and the supporters of the downtrodden; or which are …progressive,…democratic, scientific and popularized.” He suggested: “We should dig these elements out of tradition, and then appropriate, transform, and develop them.” Zhang defined and identified excellent cultural elements not only by applying political and ideological criteria; in the same report, elaborating on the artistic forms of the new culture, he recommended that artists and intellectuals “should absorb the excellent elements of various forms,” including “the popular and local forms the masses love” (Zhang Wentian 1938, in Cheng Zhongyuan 1987:280–4). Hence, for Zhang, the people’s art, with its artistic and political-ideological values, would have its own place in a new culture—a new, admirable culture that would also belong to the world. It is warranted to speculate, therefore, that Mao’s endorsement of raising standards echoed, and was rooted in his willingness to cater to, the expectations of the educated elite in the revolutionary camp. This willingness undoubtedly reveals his relatively sensible judgment of revolutionary intellectuals’ cultural preference. But his sensibility must have been shaped by his own taste, for, to begin with, he believed that he was not the type of person who liked the “cowherd’s air.” What he proposed in the Forum was a revolution which used popularization not only to communicate with the masses but, ideally speaking, to lay the foundations for the construction of a cultured revolutionary regime—a revolutionary regime possessed of cultural accomplishments. Although Mao was critical of revolutionary intellectuals’ interest in cultural refinement when it undercut the Party’s attempt to educate the masses, he did not reject the interest per se. He obviously did not appreciate the cultural professionals who used ancientstyle writing or other art forms to flaunt their identity as sophisticates. He made it more than clear that one must not be obsessed with one’s cultural sophistication and must humble oneself in dealing with the masses. His discussion on raising standards was brief compared with his exposition of the urgency of popularization. But he recognized the sophisticates’ cultural taste. Moreover, by envisioning the declining popularity of the “cowherd’s air” in the

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revolutionary future, he implied that becoming or being sophisticated is a good thing, and created room for revolutionary intellectuals to narrate themselves as sophisticates amid popularization. In fact, the attack on the intellectuals’ stubborn attachment to complicated artistic expressions, the emphasis on popularization, and the theory that raising standards must be based on popularization—all these elements, if analyzed carefully, show Mao’s conformity to what had been regarded as sophisticated and demanding in the culturalartistic realm. In this respect, Bourdieu’s theory on judgment of taste is illuminating. He points out that all goods, including cultural products, “are converted into distinctive signs, which may be signs of distinction but also of vulgarity” (Bourdieu 1984:482–4). In this view, Mao, who pressed intellectuals to forsake their “refined taste” and talked about the manufacture of “refinement” on the bottom of popularization, was not intending to challenge the standards which the well-educated used to convert cultural products into signs of distinction. How, then, did revolutionary intellectuals construct themselves as sophisticates by following the policy of popularization and by heeding the idea of raising standards in a context where Party leadership emphasized the importance of serving the masses but did not reject sophistication?

Sophisticates remaining sophisticated amid popularization Accepting the Party’s idea that art and literature should be accessible to the masses, revolutionary intellectuals pondered the issue of popularization. They contemplated how they could contribute to the popularization policy, what kinds of adjustments they should make, and how they could and did benefit from their attention to the people’s art. In this thinking process, revolutionary intellectuals criticized their snobbish obsession with cultural refinement. To show their support for popularization, for instance, in a critical tone He Qifang recalled in 1944 what had happened at the Lu Xun Arts Academy before Mao’s formal disapproval of intellectuals’ cultural arrogance: From 1940 to 1941, [intellectuals and artists] paid almost exclusive attention to raising standards. Lu Xun Arts Academy was the most typical example. …Its department of Drama inappropriately stressed artistic techniques and encouraged the performance of foreign dramas and famous dramas…. It organized the performance of… Gogol’s The Wedding. This performance was successful only in the sense that an audience of our kind applauded it. However, I heard that the masses were not interested in it, regarding it as a story about an idiot who wanted to take a wife. At that time, we did not perceive any serious problem in the masses’ response. Instead, we joked about their reaction. (He Qifang [1944] 1959:2/82–3) While He Qifang, in retrospect, ridiculed the intellectuals’ contempt for the masses’ failure to appreciate a celebrated artistic product, Bai Yan, a writer working for the Eighth Route Army in the Shandong area, emphasized that it was necessary for cultural

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professionals to abandon their improper preoccupation with refined art, a preoccupation which severely undermined the impact of literature and the arts on the uneducated majority. He sang the praises of the popularization policy by highlighting the contrast between intellectuals and the masses in cultural taste: [At present], as the army is frequently involved in fighting and the cultural level of its rank and file is low, its ability to appreciate arts and literature is weak. For instance, when [we] performed Thunderstorm and Li Xiucheng’s Death, which are artistically profound, in the past, the soldiers and the low-level cadres could not resist falling asleep. But they enjoy watching The Awakening of an Old Woman. (Bai Yan [1943] 1988:3/247) It is important to note, however, that by cultivating and emphasizing their regard for the masses, radical intellectuals adhered to and even built up their self-image as sophisticates. When they followed the popularization policy to make art and literature available for the masses, intellectuals assumed that they were doing the masses a big favor. In the Yan’an Forum, Mao represented popularization as “sending coal [to the people] in snow” (xuezhong song tan). Such an assumption was shared by other revolutionary intellectuals. In showing enthusiasm for Mao’s call for popularization, Ouyang Shan, an active young writer of the Yan’an period, decided to write populist-style fiction. Years later he recalled, “I had to take into consideration how our liberated peasants and new peasant cadres would respond to my Europeanized language and style, things I loved so much.” He thought that he was pressed to make a decision: As their cultural level could not be raised substantially within a short period of time, I was confronted with two choices: should I adhere to my original style, which barred them from accepting my writings? Or should I appeal to their taste by changing myself? He chose the second option. “To change one’s literary style,” said he, “was indeed a troublesome and emotionally trying endeavor…. But to make sure that my target readers liked my work, I was determined to alter myself” (Ouyang Shan 1992:70). Mao’s explanation of his own policy and Ouyang’s reflection on his personal experience with popularization by no means denied their own (or revolutionary intellectuals’) identities as sophisticates. In fact, they represented themselves as cultured individuals who benevolently bent to the level of the masses for the masses’ sake. More importantly, using literature and the arts to serve the masses, professional artists always interacted with peasants and soldiers. They not only performed but also took on the role of teachers to help the less-educated to become cultural professionals. Assuming a role that was based on their belief in their own superior knowledge about what constituted good art, revolutionary intellectuals reinforced their identity as sophisticates.

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Sophisticates teaching the masses As a matter of fact, the phenomenon of revolutionary intellectuals as teachers visà-vis the less-educated people had existed long before the Yan’an period. In September 1932, inspired by the propaganda teams of the Red Army and other earlier efforts to coordinate theatrical performances and organize troupes, the Communist Party founded the Association of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Drama (Gongnong jushe) in the Central Soviet Republic. Soon the organization had recruited more then three dozen young people and formed the Central Blue Shirt Troupe (Zhongyang lanshantuan), later renamed the Central Troupe (Zhongyang jutuan). By April 1933 the Association had opened training classes, and accepted more than 1,000 students in the first year. Some veteran revolutionaries regarded it as the first organization created by the CCP to lead and develop the art of drama in the Central Soviet area. The organization’s anthem reads as follows: “We are the army of peasants and workers,/fighting, struggling for the Soviet./Art is our weapon,/which we rely upon to reveal the darkness of the old society, and the light of the new one” (Wang Yongde [1983] 1986:1/53–4). Art could not become a good weapon, Communist intellectuals emphasized, if the performers failed to develop their ability to handle it. A good example here is Zhang Qinqiu, a famous woman revolutionary intellectual, and a leading cadre of the Fourth Red Army (Hongsijun). Her story goes as follows: in 1933 the army founded its own troupe in Tongjiang, the capital of the Sichuan-Sha’anxi Soviet. The troupe initially consisted of two teams but expanded rapidly, recruiting more and more members. Most of the new members came from poor families and were thus illiterate. Seeing this, Zhang Qinqiu exhorted them to improve themselves: “You are all uneducated and uncultured…. Acting first depends upon your ability to read the scripts. Moreover, you cannot penetrate into the meaning of the scripts. Under these circumstances how can you express the characters’ thoughts and feelings?” (Lu Ying [1982] 1986:2/396). After his arrival in the Central Soviet Republic in the early 1930s, Qu Qiubai concentrated on the areas of culture and education.6 According to Li Bozhao, an artist who at that time was renowned for her knowledge of Russian politicized art, Qu Qiubai emphasized the importance of self-improvement when he talked to the students enrolled in the Gorky School of Drama, which was founded on the basis of the training classes offered by the Association of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Drama. Many students were illiterate or semi-literate, and were reluctant to accept “captives” as their teachers. These “captives” were GMD military officials who were versed in painting and the performing arts. To dissolve their resistance, Qu criticized and challenged them: At this moment you need the knowledge of visual arts. They have this kind of knowledge, and you don’t. Therefore you should learn from them with a modest heart…. Everyday you sing…: “We are the army of the peasants and workers, struggling for the Soviet. Art is our kind of weapon.” Now I want to ask you this question: “Can you really handle art as a weapon?” (Li Bozhao [1950] 1986:1/71)

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In other soviet areas, the Party also recognized the need for training in art. The Red Sun Troupe was founded in the late 1920s or in 1930 in the soviet area on the Hubei— Henan—Anhui border. According to the recollection of Wu Shush,en, who joined the troupe after finishing a course for village teachers, Party authorities were serious about the members’ basic training: “When the Party asked us to organize a troupe, it anticipated that we were to become a Red Army whose weapons were not guns…. We must practice our skills, just as the soldiers practice using their guns and shooting bullets” (Wu Shushen 1986:1/336–7). During the Long March, veteran cultural professionals indicate, some Red Armies still trained their young soldiers to be cultural workers. While a systematic analysis of their training is beyond the scope of this chapter, I would like to point out that the Fourth Red Army was particularly outstanding in this regard. When it was heading south, Li Bozhao reorganized its troupe, teaching the members the techniques of singing and dancing (Liu Wenquan 1986:2/420; Zhao Mingzhen 1986:2/432).7 Later, the Fourth Red Army’s “cultural achievements” impressed He Long so much that, according to some cultural professionals who worked for him at that time, he asked Li to help train the performers of the Second Red Army, led by himself (Luo Hongbiao 1986:1/308; Liu Wenquan 1986:2/421). In the Yan’an period, a considerable number of professionally trained artists and writers worked for the Communists not only in the northwest but also in other areas. In addition, the CCP decided to produce capable professionals responsible for cultural activities as a political weapon. In 1938, the Party announced that it was going to found a Lu Xun Arts Academy. The official announcement, signed by such eminent Communists as Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, Xu Teli, Cheng Fangwu and Zhou Yang, explained the Party’s decision: The arts—drama, music, painting, and literature—are the weapons we can rely upon to mobilize and organize the masses. Cultural professionals form a force indispensable for our War of Resistance. Therefore, we find this task urgent and important—the cultivation of cadres responsible for artistic activities. (Zhang Tengxiao et al. 1988:186) The Lu Xun Arts Academy began instruction on March 14, 1938. Its founding ceremony, held on April 10, 1938, was an important social event, attended by famous intellectuals and top Party leaders, including Li Fuchun, Cheng Fangwu, Mao Zedong and others. The Academy was first composed of three departments devoted to drama, music and the fine arts (meishu). Later the administration added the department of literature. The Academy became a college of Yan’an University in 1943. The quality of the students of this Academy was much better than that at the Gorky School of Drama; most of the Lu Xun students were so-called intellectual youths, coming to Yan’an from different parts of China (Zhang Tengxiao et al. 1988:187–8). Since the late 1930s, the army also had its own teaching institute of art—The Arts Academy of the Eighth Route Army in the Sha’an-Gan-Ning area (Buyi) (Yan Ke 1988:1/72). Other Communist-occupied areas also founded their own arts academies. In Shandong another Lu Xun Arts Academy was established in 1939 amid guerilla warfare (Li Yu [1939] 1988:3/289–91), and in central China, with the support of Liu Shaoqi and Chen Yi, cadres of the New Fourth Army built

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the Huizhong Branch of the Lu Xun Arts Academy in Yancheng, Jiangsu (Meng Bo 1988:4/214–30). Better-educated artists worked hard to train the masses after the Party’s strenuous advocacy of popularization. For instance, Wei Hong, a young musician who joined the CCP in Wuhan and then later enrolled in the Yan’an Lu Xun Arts Academy, worked for the July Troupe in northeast Shanxi from 1940 to 1945. According to the recollection of one of his students, Wei Hong taught students who had received only an elementary-level education and whose knowledge of music was minimal (Tang He 1988:2/301). Li Yuanqing, a music professor in Huabei, served as teacher of the Front Troupe, which belonged to the Jin-Cha-Ji Field Army (Yezhangjun) for a few months in 1947, and taught students who had never received any training in Western music (Lu Ming 1989:2/772–3). Interacting with or patronizing peasants, soldiers and their own students, Communist cultural professionals did not lack opportunities to see how little the masses knew about what they attempted to teach. Lu Ming, a member of the troupe, recalls that when Li was marching with the army, he played his beloved cello for the soldiers. The soldiers were so interested in his cello that one of them once said after listening to Li’s performance: “How come there is somebody who can play it? How can it make such a loud sound?” Li finally learned of the soldiers’ curiosity from Lu Ming, who worked with him at the time (Lu Ming 1989:2/773). It seems that Li was not alone in his encounter. Another cultural worker recites an anecdote about He Luting. Before going to Yan’an, He worked in the Huazhong area. In 1941, a certain propaganda team of the Eighth Route Army was sent there for the purpose of cultural exchange. He happened to spot the one and only violin the team owned, and found the instrument, made by a low-level cadre, surprisingly impressive in quality. When he asked someone to play this “rustic” violin, a cultural worker of the propaganda team performed for him Xian Xinghai’s “The Praise of the Yellow River” quite well, although with the violin mistakenly placed under his right chin. After He Luting pointed out the cultural worker’s mistake, the performer tried to play the violin in the right position. Unfortunately, he could not even rehearse the scales satisfactorily this time (Wang Rujun 1988:3/427). When revolutionary intellectuals described how they plunged into the mission of popularization, or when they took rank-and-file cultural workers as their protégés, they represented themselves as sophisticates helping the unsophisticated masses. But they also viewed themselves as sophisticates whose commitment to cultural accomplishment was not necessarily compromised by their involvement in popularization. Sophisticates gaining in sophistication Revolutionary intellectuals imagined how their involvement in popularization contributed to their sophistication by expanding on the value of folk culture, the challenge of popularization, and their learning from the masses. First, pondering the nature of folk art, in their highly intellectual-sounding manner they praised folk culture as so artistically valuable or so full of potential that it was worthy of sophisticates’ attention. Born into the May Fourth tradition of iconoclasm and joining a masses-based movement, revolutionary intellectuals had, long before the Yan’an period, enjoyed

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praising the artistic potential of the people’s culture. Qu Qiubai recognized the contribution of people’s language to literature. In 1931, he referred to European history to explain this contribution: “In the course of their literary revolution, European poets— Dante the Italian,… Goethe the German and Pushkin the Russian—utilized vernacular language, the language of ordinary people, to construct new, beautiful languages for their own nations” (Qu Qiubai [1931] 1954a:3/631). And he emphasized his faith in the Chinese proletariat’s future contribution to Chinese literature: the workers, working in the urban area and combining different kinds of dialects through their communication with one another, “will unify the Chinese language.” “The Chinese proletariat,” he said, “has such a confidence: their language will be used to write not only articles but also excellent literary pieces.” He imagined further: “It will be employed to discuss science and to express the power of art; it will improve itself and become the beautiful language of the Chinese people” (Qu Qiubai [1931] 1954b: 3/860–1). In addition to the language issue, theorists and critics also discussed the use of popular art forms. Although Mao Dun, a prominent writer and veteran Party member, regarded as extreme Qu Qiubai’s valorization of the ordinary people’s language, he did not disagree with popularization and once stated, in support of Lu Xun, that if used skillfully, cartoon storybooks could become a powerful art form and even a genuine artistic genre (Shao Bozhou 1987:180– 1). Sometimes, revolutionary intellectuals even recognized the people’s artistic accomplishments. In the early stages of the Sino-Japanese War, they were particularly interested in popularization, envisioning the mobilization of literature and the arts for nationalist resistance. Hu Feng, though critical of the feudal content of folk arts, once admitted that folk arts have their “artistic ‘scales’ which shine with the people’s wisdom” (Hu Feng [1940] 1959:2/789). Ai Siqi thought highly of the capacity of traditional opera (jiuxiju) and the traditional novel (jiuxiaoshuo), noting their techniques of exaggeration, which, in his view, could powerfully and precisely represent reality (Hu Feng [1940] 1999:752–3). Around the same time, Mao Dun stated his belief that certain popular forms, including Xiang opera and storytelling (tanci), were acceptable (Shao Bozhou 1987:270). In the 1940s, helping the Party implement the policy of popularization, Zhou Yang employed Lu Xun’s view on “illiterate writers” to convince others of the aesthetic value of the people’s creation. In a widely read volume that he edited, Marxism, Literature and the Arts (Makesi zhuyi yu wenyi), in 1944, Zhou Yang included the original passage written by the great master: In “Guofeng” of the Books of Odes, we can find many relatively outstanding poems “composed” by the illiterate people, verbally circulated by the masses, and finally recorded by officials as reference for administration.… These illiterate writers do not have a delicate, refined style. But their products were powerful, solid, and fresh…. The anonymous writers’ poems, such as the “mid-night songs”…[in the past] added new strength to old literature. (Lu Xun [1934] 1973:6/99–109) Zhou invoked the voice of foreign authorities as well. He introduced Engels:

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The hand is not only an organ, but also a product, of labor. Because of labor, …the hands of humans have obtained an almost perfect sophistication. Our hands, with their full-fledged development, operate in a magical manner, giving birth to Raphael’s painting…and Paganini’s music. (Zhou Yang [1944] 1984:21–2) He also introduced Gorky’s praise of the great accomplishments of the common people in the arts: “The people’s oral tradition kept influencing literary master-pieces— Faust,…Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound, and so on” (Zhou Yang [1944] 1984:38). Zhou Yang certainly did not shy away from reminding his readers that the great Gorky believed “the most profound, most vivid, and, artistically speaking, most perfected models of heroes” to be “popular products belonging to the laboring people’s oral tradition” (Zhou Yang [1944] 1984:37). With the same appreciative spirit, cultural professionals exclaimed at the fascinating nature of revolutionary cultural products that made use of folk art, as they helped the Party to popularize art and literature. Li Ji, who worked as a cadre at the county level in northern Sha’anxi, recalls many years later how, while only half-heartedly identifying with the content of the Yan’an Forum, he was virtually overawed by the power of folk songs, and especially by the striking artistic beauty of politically correct songs the liberated masses themselves created. Once, a peasant cadre’s wife, one of the newly liberated masses, sang for him a song. He described it as breathtakingly moving: I was totally overwhelmed by such simple but profound verses…. I feasted my eyes on her and remained motionless for quite a while. Under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party, these men and women,…these simple folks, use their own life…to create innumerable beautiful poems. (Li Ji 1992:145–7) Wu Xiaobang, who had been politically active as a college student in Shanghai in the 1930s, went to Yan’an just before the end of the Sino-Japanese War, and found the revolutionary Yangge dance, rooted in traditional popular culture, totally amazing: “So raw, so vibrant and so powerful…. Decades have passed, but my memories of the performance is still fresh” (Wu Xiaobang 1992:334–5). Second, they regarded their own attempt to produce popularized art as, in fact, quite a challenge, even from the artistic perspective. In order to produce works appealing to the masses, revolutionary intellectuals always intended to capture the essence of folk art and the spirit of the masses. That was not easy, according to Li Huanzhi, who was, in the early 1940s, assigned the responsibility to compose the music for one of the first Yangge plays, Brother and Sister Cultivating the Land (Xiongmei kaifang). He integrated folk-style music into the piece. But as he failed to grab the soul of folk music, the final product sounded so awkward and uninteresting that eventually he was forced to give up the project (Li Huanzhi 1992:309–10). Another musician, Anbo, then, took up the challenge. Anbo’s creative process was not smooth either. The producer of, and one of the actors in, the play, Li Bo, describes Anbo’s heroic

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struggle: “Anbo ran into difficulty once he began to write the first song. He revised it again and again…, but still he did not think that what he composed sounded like a true folk song.” He and another person decided to help: “In the daytime, Dahua [another producer and actor] and I designed our movements on the stage. At night we went to Anbo’s place, where he thought strenuously in front of a little oil lamp.” They worked diligently: “Whenever he finished revising something, we tried it out immediately If it did not work out, he would change it again” (Li Bo 1992:207). Living in the Nationalist-controlled area, Mao Dun stressed the idea that to produce successful popularized art was a difficult task. After Mao’s talks at the Forum, from 1943 to 1946, the Communist leadership in Chongqing attempted to promote the idea of popularization (Wen Tianxing 1988:158–9). As the Rectification unfolded, the Party held a series of meetings to discuss Mao’s Talks. Yan’an sent famous writers like He Qifang and Liu Baiyu to Chongqing to reform revolutionary intellectuals there (Denton 1998:88– 9). A veteran revolutionary and famous writer, Mao Dun of course joined the process. He implored writers and artists to empathize with the viewpoint and feelings of the masses. That, however, was not sufficient for anyone to produce powerful representations of the masses: in addition to merging with the masses, one must learn to observe life closely and diversify one’s experience with larger society (Wen Tianxing 1988:162–3). Moreover, to create art loved by the masses, revolutionary intellectuals realized that not only should they capture the quintessence of the arts of the people, but they should also represent the masses well in their performances and works. Successful representation of the people, too, needed effort—so they said. In 1944, the famous journalist Fan Changjiang was entrusted by the Central China Party Bureau (Huazhongju) with the responsibility to develop the line of popularization in southern Anhui. In his report, Fan made quite a few suggestions about how cultural professionals could create products for the masses. Like many other leading cultural professionals, he suggested that musicians compose simple songs of local flavor to represent the life and sentiments of the peasant masses. But that could be challenging, he said. The content of the words must, he emphasized, be vivid, penetrating, and concrete (Fan Changjiang [1944] 1988:4/138–9). Yu Lan, a young actress who was to become quite famous in the post-1949 regime, talked about how hard it was for her to bring the characters of peasant women alive when she performed in Yan’an. One day, she recalled, she attended a memorial service for a martyr, and there saw the hero’s peasant wife, who happened also to be a revolutionary. So moved was she by the widow’s composed sadness that she thought it over again and again. Through her intensive and time-consuming exploration of a revolutionary widow’s facial expression she began to apply what she had discovered in a play entitled The Infamous Bandit Zhou Zishan (Yu Lan [1962] 1992:259). And third, reflecting on their participation in popularization, some educated cultural professionals even contended explicitly that contact with the masses and the masses’ reality made them and their colleagues better artists. A great many revolutionary intellectuals always elaborated on how interaction with the people allowed them to make great strides, at least in the direction that they called “Realism.” Assessing literature and the arts of those anti-Japanese base areas (kangri genjudi) in north China before the Forum, Li Bozhao gave examples to show how much one could gain by listening to the masses. One of them goes as follows: In the early 1940s, artists in these base areas created woodcut products in the form of Spring Festival Pictures. and other popular

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designs to attract peasant buyers. One of these artists, Hu Yichuan, produced a woodcut that won many critics’ admiration. The woodcut was a picture of a peasant and his donkey, which was carrying a big box of bullets for the army. So proud was Hu of his creation that he eagerly invited many people to look at it. But an old peasant was critical of Hu’s product, telling him: “your picture has some problems.” When Hu asked him what went wrong, the old peasant said, “In your picture, the belt used to hold the donkey is too tight.” “What else?” Hu asked. The old peasant then urged Hu to pay more attention to the physical shape of the donkey Hu, as the story went, agreed with the old peasant and modified his picture (Li Bozhao [1941] 1988:3/28). Wang Chaowen, a sculptor in Yan’an, without telling us when it happened, recounts a story about how a local artist (minjian yiren) gave him an invaluable lecture on the features of horses (Wang Chaowen 1992:351). As expected, such stories were shared by other cultural professionals, particularly when they discussed what they had gained from popularization since the Forum. Both Shi Lemeng, a member of the Yangge team at the Lu Xun Arts Academy in Yan’an, and Yu Lan, the aforementioned actress, were involved in the production of The Infamous Bandit Zhou Zishan. A play about the land revolution in northern Sha’anxi (Sha’anbei), it premiered in 1943. They recall respectively how much they learned from the masses, although it is not clear from the recollections whether they worked together. Yu Lan said, “since we knew nothing about the land revolution, our acting was bad. No matter how hard we tried, it still remained dry and wooden.” However, they later found a local cadre who was involved in the process. And he used his experience to help the whole team to elevate the level of its performance. Yu Lan describes this person’s contribution to the cultural professionals’ attempt to represent underground revolutionaries (Yu Lan [1962] 1992:263). Shi Lemeng’s account is more vivid and detailed: In the Yangge opera Zhou Zishan…there was one episode about how a representative sent by the hierarchy and the members of a local guerilla team discussed military tactics in a secret meeting. However, both the author(s) and actors of the play were ignorant about all this.… One night we invited a man who had once been a member of the local militia [chiweidui] to share with us his experience. A good storyteller, Shi recounts dramatically how, upon entering the cave where the performers were rehearsing, this veteran fighter continuously pushed them to add little details to the play. When the person who acted the part of the CCP representative began to talk, this member of the local militia immediately stopped the rehearsal and told the actor that he must identify himself by using signals (anhao), for, this assertive consultant pointed out, underground revolutionaries always did just that. As he kept giving very useful advice, those involved all got excited and discussed the play with much enthusiasm. But then, according to Shi, the old fighter told them to lower their voices, as if he suddenly detected something unusual. Everyone became cautious and quiet, since the place where they rehearsed was only a few hundred meters from the Nationalistcontrolled area. At this nervous moment, however, the experienced revolutionary burst

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out laughing and said: “Good! Now you all look like participants in a secret meeting” (Shi Lemeng 1992:324). The emphasis on the contribution of interaction with the masses to intellectuals’ art was shared by Hu Feng, who reacted to Mao’s Talks with dismay and insisted on the centrality of the subject’s creative process for literature in the Chongqing Rectification (Denton 1998:89). Hu reflected on the contribution in very theoretical language. For him, writers should open themselves to the idea of learning from the reality of the non-elite. Only by doing this could he feel and understand that reality, and represent the “subaltern” successfully (Denton 1998:98–9). Working to serve the oppressed majority, who were recognized to be politically important for the revolution, and endeavoring to abandon their snobbishness, revolutionary intellectuals celebrated the masses from the cultural-aesthetic perspective. In so doing, they described themselves as sophisticates who, though bending to the level of the masses, had the good fortune to polish themselves in the artistically inspiring process of popularization. While their self-image as cultured people lowering themselves to the uncultured masses revealed the tendency to judge folk culture as crude, their selfconstruction as sophisticates improving themselves in the popularization process indicates just the opposite. To some extent, they attempted to undo the conversion process in which folk culture was turned into the distinctive symbol of crudeness. It can even be argued that revolutionary intellectuals reversed this conversion process, transforming folk art and literature, together with their producers, into symbols of admirableness and inspiration (if not yet of distinction). In their self-construction, they produced popularized but impressive works by venturing into the valuable but unfamiliar world of folk culture, by studying non-intellectuals’ everyday life and taking on the challenging task of representing it artistically, and by learning from the aesthetic wisdom of the resourceful masses.

Sophisticates leading the mission of raising standards Notwithstanding their explicitly expressed enthusiasm for popularization as an aesthetically inspiring process, Communist intellectuals perceived themselves to be leading agents of raising standards. Following the popularization policy (wholeheartedly or half-heartedly), Communist intellectuals embraced the idea of raising standards, and constructed themselves as sophisticates working for and contributing indispensably to the emergence of a culturally popularized but accomplished revolutionary regime. They did not shy away from representing themselves as the leading force in the Party-approved task of raising standards, a mission based on popularization. How, then, did they assert this leadership? Asserting leadership I: before the Forum To assert this leadership, they criticized folk art as artistically flawed, despite their vocal appreciation of the artistic value of folk art. Before the Forum, intellectuals had always showed their strong reservations about folk art as a relic of old society—hence, as a

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heritage both politically incorrect and artistically backward. Let me introduce, albeit briefly, their critical views on the artistic side of popular culture. While Lu Xun was lauding the people’s art for its freshness and power in 1934, he also complained about their essential defect—their difference from modern culture (Lu Xun [1934] 1973:6/109). According to Hu Feng, revolutionary intellectuals should not use (yunyong) folk art and should treat it only as a kind of “aid.” These “aids” could, he said in 1939, help intellectuals to learn more about real life and about spoken language, and understand better the masses’ ways of expressing their own emotions and thinking. Treating folk style as China’s special style in 1939, he emphasized that artists and intellectuals should “develop and strengthen this style of China” (Wen Tianxing 1988:75). In 1940, he stressed that folk art was a product of feudal society, and objected to the view that folk style was the source of the new Chinese style (Liu Kang 2000:103). In fact, revolutionary intellectuals’ artistic appreciation of folk culture was limited in scope, referring only to certain forms or traits of popular art. Around the time that Mao announced his interest in the creation of a national popular culture (1940), they doubted the artistic merit of folk art and literature. While Mao Dun said that some aspects of some popular art forms were acceptable, he also insisted that they needed to be critically evaluated and reinvented (Shao Bozhou 1987:270). Hu Feng emphasized that one must not succumb to peasant culture, but should instead “weave into the aesthetic experience of the peasants a non-peasant red line.” For him, that red line was rooted in May Fourth realism, which integrated the best of revolutionary literature and art across the world (Liu Kang 2000:103). As for Ai Siqi, although admiring traditional opera’s power of exaggeration, he criticized severely its reliance on schemas, which dwarfed its ability to represent modern reality (Hu Feng [1940] 1999:752-3). It should be noted that these intellectuals’ reservations about folk art tended to focus on its traditional—hence, “feudal” and “unmodern”—nature. To assert their leadership, after showing their critical stance on folk art, revolutionary intellectuals emphasized their pivotal role in improving the people’s culture. Though praising the beauty of the Chinese people’s language, and stating that from Chinese proletarian culture an aesthetically admirable language comparable to “the beautiful language of Turgenev” would emerge (Qu Qiubai [1931] 1954b:3/861), Qu Qiubai obviously believed that the Chinese proletariat had nothing to do with cultural-aesthetic leadership. He indeed assigned a critical role to intellectuals in constructing a new language: Revolutionary writers should learn from the people…. Our present task is to construct the proletarian culture which belongs to the people. We should challenge the masses’ art and literature. This is the only path we should take—to create a new people’s language, to adjust to the level of the masses, and to raise artistic standards with the people. (Qu Qiubai [1931] 1954b: 3/856) In her assessment of literature and the arts in the anti-Japanese base areas, Li Bozhao heeded the success story of a certain county education department’s program of training local blind artists. Well versed in both music and storytelling, they had earned a living by performing door to door. After they were formed into a team by the Communist

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government, they became wildly popular among villagers. Although Li Bozhao believed that these blind artists were highly accomplished by themselves, she still urged her comrades to give them and other folk artists (minjian yiren) a good artistic education (yishu jiaqyu) (Li Bozhao [1941] 1988:3/17). Asserting artistic leadership II: since the Forum Revolutionary intellectuals did not give up their insistence on their own artistic leadership after the forum, although they showed their support for popularization, and praised the artistic value of both folk art and popularized products which were to a significant extent rooted in the masses’ cultural tradition. In fact such insistence resonated well with what Mao said in “Talks at the Yan’an Forum”. He explicitly stated that artists, as the people’s teachers, should be responsible for raising standards. Actively supporting Mao’s policy on popularization, and advocating similar ideas before Mao’s official attention to popularization and national forms, Zhou Yang time after time emphasized the potential of the masses’ arts and artistic abilities. After the Rectification Campaign, in praise of the artistic potential of revolutionary art based on folk art, Zhou applauded Yangge opera. Observing the performances of Yangge opera during the Chinese New Year, he sounded positive about traditional-style Yangge. “Romantic love,” he said, “is the most prominent theme of old-fashioned Yangge. A lot of flirtations or even pornographic elements are there.” In its defense, however, he added: “All this should be regarded as the people’s rebellion against feudal society, which did not allow them to gratify their romantic desire.” He continued, “I watched an opera entitled ‘Tang Ershe begging around [Tang ershe huayuari], which, in my view, is on a par with Shakespeare’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’” As for the modified Yangge, he emphasized that its artistic potential was high. He also stated, however, that cultural workers must struggle to invent more impressive characters, help cultivate more artists of peasant origins, and systematically analyze the popular tradition. Therefore, for him, cultural professionals were leaders in the job of raising standards (Zhou Yang [1944] 1959:59–73). Zhou Yang kept this view in the years to come. In 1949, in the First National Conference of Cultural Workers, which was coordinated by the CCP after its occupation of Beijing, Zhou as always elaborated on the promise of people’s arts, and particularly on the potential of the liberated peasants’ arts: “The peasants have demonstrated their power of artistic creation not only through operas but also through other art forms.” “In land reform,” he described, “they composed numerous poems that reflect their joy over fanshen, and a considerable number of which are pearls of folk art” (Zhou Yang [1949] 1959:2/114). And as usual he stressed the importance of popularization by telling the artists who attended the conference: “At present, popularization is our most important task…. All the artists and art workers, including the specialists, should…accept this duty—to lead the task of popularization.” But then he once again introduced his point of revolutionary intellectuals’ artistic leadership: “only through the effort [of popularization] can they [cultural professionals] successfully popularize the arts and achieve the goal of raising standards” (Zhou Yang [1949] 1959:2/122–3). Others echoed Zhou’s stress on revolutionary intellectuals’ authority over the task of raising standards. For instance, attending the First Conference of Cultural Workers, Sha Kefu, who had devoted himself to the development of Communist art as early as the

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soviet period, described how intellectuals and folk artists (minjian yiren) contributed to the development of the folk arts in northern China. Talking to cultural workers, he emphasized: “[When the folk artists and intellectuals worked together] to perform local opera, the former knew much more about the techniques of transition.” However, he noticed: “intellectuals were much better at elaborating on the themes and episodes of the stories,…and penetrating into the cores of personalities.” He then stressed that through this kind of cooperation, intellectuals indeed offered substantive help to folk artists. Under the circumstances, he concluded: “they [intellectuals] raised not only folk artists’ level of cultivation but also their own” (Sha Kefu [1949] 1959:2/160). Demonstrating the interdependence between folk artists and intellectuals, Sha Kefu pointed up his own belief that intellectuals played a leading role in the work of refining folk culture. Confident of their artistic guidance, revolutionary intellectuals promoted what they regarded as good art while dealing with less-educated local cultural workers. Evaluating art works, artists and intellectuals did not hesitate to apply their own standards. When competitions in artistic activities were held, they tended to evaluate the products not only from the political but also from the artistic perspective. In the Jiaodong area in Shandong, local cultural leaders held a contest in 1943 to commemorate the May Fourth movement. When the review committee announced the results in the local paper The Masses (Dazhong), it revealed how the criteria of imagination and creativity had affected its judgment. The members of the committee said: “In terms of political content, these writings are good. But writings of similar content share a single form of expression, a single kind of structure…. We suggest that the writers can write in an original manner, destroying the “old approach” [lao yi tao] and thus building a new world of artistic creation” (“Wusi wenxue yishu chuangzuo da jingsai jiexiao” [1943] 1988:3/492). One year later, in the Jin-Sui border region, a certain association, which seemed to have been established by the border region government, organized a similar contest to help implement Mao’s new populist policy. Announcing the results on September 18, the committee of this foundation explained the criteria used to judge the pieces submitted: first, political content; second, the degree or possibility of popularization; and third, the skills of creation (Li Yu [1939] 1988:3/289).8 Endeavoring to be and acting as good leaders Taking on artistic leadership, revolutionary intellectuals constructed themselves as individuals worthy of this important status. They portrayed themselves as a group which performed many commendable feats: they were seriously committed to selfimprovement; they earnestly executed what they regarded as politically and artistically inspiring art; and amid popularization they energetically carried through important projects pertaining to raising standards. Let us begin by examining how they sketched their ardent commitment to selfimprovement. Before the Yan’an Forum, according to many cultural workers’ recollections, their zeal in this regard had been unmistakable. Dan Hui recalls what happened in the Iron Current Troupe, which was organized by him and other students of the Resistance University (Kangdd) in December 1938, in the Jin-Cha-Ji border region. He expanded on his and his comrades’ itch for self-betterment at the early stages of the Sino-Japanese War:

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Whenever we saw a famous novel or a good poem, we thought that we had discovered an invaluable treasure. I copied what I saw— Shakespeare’s Othello, Turgenev’s The Hunter’s Diary,… Gorky’s and Lu Xun’s articles and letters on the arts, and even Yuan Mei’s Discussing Poems in the Sui Garden…. Many comrades did the same…. [We were eager] to absorb knowledge of literature and improve ourselves. (Dan Hui [1942] 1988:2/268) Such enthusiasm was shared by other troupes: for instance, the Roaring Troupe, which was founded in 1938 in Linfen, Shanxi, and served as the propaganda team of the artillery of the Eight Route Army’s Central Administration (Zongbu). On the basis of his co-workers’ recollections, a member of the troupe writes about the yearning of cultural professionals in the late 1930s for better art: “In a certain battle we obtained an unexpected trophy—Mr. Hung Shen’s Skills of Performing in Plays and Movies…. In order to learn more about performance theory, a comrade copied every word of this book.” He does not forget to emphasize: “We undertook this kind of job while the fighting was going on …!”(Sang Fu [1985] 1988:3/57). Famous revolutionary intellectuals built themselves as sophisticates who were highly aware of the importance of self-improvement for themselves and other cultural professionals, even when the Party advocated popularization and attacked intellectuals’ failure to connect with the masses. During the Rectification Campaign, reflecting on what revolutionary intellectuals should do, Ding Ling identified learning from, and communication with, the masses as the major issues, and relegated the polishing of writing skills to secondary status (Ding Ling [1942] 1984:6/22). Her commitment to higher standards persisted, however. “Our present artistic cultivation is not good enough,” she admitted, “and we need to strengthen ourselves in this respect” (Ding Ling [1942] 1984:6/22). Zhou Yang’s view was very much in the same vein. In the Rectification Campaign, serving as “official mouth piece in the literary and intellectual realm” (Goldman 1967: xv), and taking care of the Rectification at the Lu Xun Arts Academy, he criticized the professionalism of the Academy. Condemning the Academy’s eagerness to learn from Western art and literature, he pointed out that intellectuals’ admiration for Western culture was doctrinaire. He therefore urged the members of the Academy to become more realistic and pay more attention to what he called China’s “cultural legacy.” Even so, he regarded Western skills as “more advanced,” and, as the discussion approached its end, said, “skill is a kind of scientific method that has its own history, and its independent nature…. We should respect it, and learn from the experts” (Zhou Yang [1942] 1984:821–8).9 Cultural professionals obviously also supported the view that educated artists and writers should work on themselves, and regarded themselves as the kind of people devoted to the elevation of their own level. The Art Team of the Guangdong-Guangxi Guerilla Forces (wengongtuan) was organized in 1947 on the basis of the propaganda group of the Dongjiang Guerilla Team (Dongjiang zongdui), which had gone through its own Rectification Campaign a year earlier. Years later, some of its members recalled how they always strove to refine their performances by studying Stanislavsky’s writings (Li Zhao [1986] 1989:1/457–8). The belief in one’s commitment to good art was shared by those who did not consider themselves to be well trained but wished to be so. He Fang

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recalls that in 1949, while attending the First National Conference of Cultural Workers as a delegate of the eastern China region (Huadong), he told Zhou Enlai: “We come from villages located in remote mountainous areas. During the war, we did not have sufficient time to improve the skills of our own profession—literature and arts.” He drew his listener’s attention to a new situation: “Now that China is liberated, and the general situation is improving, historical conditions will set higher criteria for the arts.” He then made the following request: “We hope that the Party can found more institutes in the arts and literature, and let us become their students and raise our level” (He Fang 1989:1/468). In addition to emphasizing their intention of self-improvement, revolutionary intellectuals proudly declared that they were capable of staging performances of good art, and admitted that they used their performances to entertain themselves. A great many cultural professionals detailed how delighted and serious they were in performing politicized pieces that they thought had admirable aesthetic qualities. Xian Xinghai might not think that The Yellow River Cantata was his masterpiece. Nevertheless, others certainly regarded this musical piece as a new classic, and were enthusiastic about performing it. Wu Yin, who conducted the singing of the Art Team (wengongtuan) of the Resistance University, recalls how he felt when, in 1940, he was, by order of the university authorities, coordinating with people from a different institution to prepare a performance of the cantata to commemorate the May Fourth protest. He describes: “We performed only two movements of the Cantata—‘The Song of the Yellow River’ [Huangshui yao] and ‘Protect the Yellow River’ [Baowei huanghe]”He stresses the participants’ enthusiasm: “Every one of us wanted to perform the whole work. However, taking into account the limited number of our members and our weak orchestra, we did not have the courage to try” (Wu Yin 1988:3/143). The total number of singers was around ninety, and the orchestra consisted of between thirty and forty players. As Wu points out, such a combination was remarkable at that time. In the course of practice, in order to make the music more impressive, they made their own “cello.” Seeing that the orchestra did not have enough percussion instruments, they invented a combination of percussion instruments, consisting of different traditional instruments (Wu Yin 1988:3/145–6). Such were the arrangements for the performance of The Yellow River Cantata, which the Communists regarded as great music. The excitement over the opportunity to perform the cantata was shared by other people in the post-Forum years. This is what happened, according to one insider, when the art teams in the Central Jiangsu Military Zone worked together to prepare its performance in 1945: “we formed a choir, the members of which were relatively well-trained singers.” But as it was the first time for this group to prepare for the performance of such an outstanding piece, they were very anxious and eager to learn from the veterans: “the leading cadres…mobilized us, introducing how Xian composed the work and what its first performance was like in Yan’an.” The more experienced seemed receptive to teaching, according to this person: “they explained for us the characteristics of all the movements of the Cantata. They insisted on our serious and minute attention to the emotion of each movement…. Rehearsals lasted for several hours every day, but no one complained” (Tang Jingxiong [1987] 1989:1/319–20).

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Concerning revolutionary intellectuals’ self-fashioning as sophisticates, it should also be noted that they elaborated on how they served as active agents who created good art, for which popularization had laid the groundwork. For a couple of years after the Forum, cultural professionals invested much effort in raising standards. In this respect, the development of the new revolutionary opera is a good example.10 In 1943, a great number of revolutionary Yangge operas emerged in the Yan’an area, including Brother and Sister Clear Wasteland and A Red Flower. In the spring of 1944, some medium-scale and large-scale operas (daxing ju) appeared—Liu Hongying, A Formidable Militia, and so forth. Compared with earlier Yangge operas, these operas told complete stories. Their music was also more complicated: not only did the artists attempt to combine Western and Chinese folk music, they also highlighted the differences between personalities through music. These medium- and large-scale operas laid the foundations for the birth of The White-haired Girl, which, in terms of the combination of Western and Chinese music and the expression of personalities’ emotions, was much more sophisticated (Ding Yi and Su Yiping 1988:1/114–116; Holm 1991:320–4; Kraus 1989:62–3). According to Holm, the pursuit of popularized but relatively complicated art was intended to provide proof of Mao’s idea that “little sprouts could grow to become big trees”—in other words, that “the utilization of folk forms could lead eventually to the creation of new, higher forms of art with national character” (Holm 1991:320). He therefore considers the evolution from Yangge opera to large-scale opera “force-paced” (Holm 1991:320). Holm is in fact quite right, when we examine how, in the 1940s and the post-liberation period, cultural professionals took part in the production of this play According to Zhang Geng, a leading member of the Lu Xun Arts Academy, cultural professionals there intended to produce a “large-scale” opera on the foundation of Yangge opera in celebrating the CCP’s upcoming Seventh National Congress. Zhou Yang suggested that they could make use of the story of The White-haired Girl, a story which had been circulated around in the Jin-Cha-Ji area. They wrote the script, discussed and revised it, and rehearsed simultaneously (Zhang Geng [1962] 1992:181). And according to He Jingzhi, who wrote the script, from January to April in 1945 he worked incessantly on writing and revising in response to how things went in rehearsals (He Jingzhi [1946] 1992:224–5). Nevertheless, revolutionary intellectuals were always ready to take on a leading role in the enterprise of raising standards. Zhang Geng recalled that in 1944 cultural professionals who had taken part in the Yangge movement became dissatisfied with the Yangge opera, considering the existing works of this genre to be too commonplace (yibanhua) in music, script, and theatrical presentation (Zhang Geng [1962] 1992:180). In addition, they were inclined to use their “force-paced” production to mold themselves into leaders guiding the creation of good art buttressed by popularization. Describing their participation in the production of The White-haired Girl, cultural professionals talked about the capital role they played in the creation and improvement of this new masterpiece. To be sure, they all said that they learned a lot from folk art, and especially from the masses’ input. In response to the masses’ opinion, they created a new image of Xier, injecting in her a spark of defiance lacking in the original image—this fact was mentioned by Zhang Geng, He Jingzhi, and Shu Qiang, one of the two directors of the piece (Zhang Geng [1962] 1992:182–3; Shu Qiang 1992:199; He Jingzhi [1946]

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1992:225–6). But in their self-portrayals, they still appeared to be leaders, responsible for evaluating, incorporating and modifying what they learned during the process of raising standards. Shu Qiang recounted how cultural professionals borrowed and then critiqued the approaches of traditional theater to the representations of various characters in this piece. He also described how, after each performance, cultural professionals interviewed the audience, listening to people from the army cook to the villagers, and pondered the information they collected (Shu Qiang 1992:197). Talking about his involvement in The White-haired Girl shortly after the premiere, He Jingzhi focused on his own experience. Like Shu Qiang, he noted how the masses had provided the cultural professionals with a lot of useful opinions. He, too, mentioned the cook (He Jingzhi [1946] 1992:224). But he did not forget to point out that it was he who continuously absorbed what the masses offered him (He Jingzhi [1946] 1992:225). As for those cultural professionals who did not take part in the creation of any new revolutionary opera, they in their own way cast themselves as sophisticates through their support for raising standards. They did not hesitate to show their preference for the new opera: for instance, the Resistance Troupe (Kangdi jushe), which was founded in 1939 in the Jin-Cha-Ji border region and entered Beijing in 1949 with the Communist government of the North China Military Zone (Huabei junqu). The troupe’s workers savored the opportunity to watch and learn from the performances of such operas as The White-haired Girl and Wang Xiuluan, which they called large-scale operas. To serve the masses, they always needed to go for simple programs—and this remained unchanged after the end of the SinoJapanese War. Still, scriptwriters of the troupe preferred complexity and sophistication. In the latter half of the 1940s, they produced a series of big plays (daxing huaju) (Hu He 1989:2/714–19). In the late 1940s, the Art Team of the Guangdong-Guangxi Guerilla Forces usually performed simple things. One format the team commonly used was the “newspaper play” (huobao), in which performers improvised a great deal according to their own interpretation of current news.11 The team members, however, craved the opportunity to perform more sophisticated works. This tendency was further reinforced after they were sent to work in northern China, staging relatively serious programs in Yantai, a big city in Shandong. After that, they became attached to the goal of performing works such as The White-haired Girl and Blood, Tears and Deep Hatred, which in their eyes represented genuine artistic activity (Qiao Yi et al. 1989:1/430). Revolutionary intellectuals asserted their artistic leadership and displayed what they did as good leaders. Moreover, they sometimes focused on what they regarded as sophistication alone, and depicted how they used it—elitist or popularized; politicized or apolitical—to help their political cause.

Sophisticates whose sophistication contributed to revolutionary politics According to revolutionary intellectuals, their sophistication advanced the revolutionary course in various ways. It helped improve the CCP’s public image; it was useful in entertaining the CCP’s relatively educated segment; and it contributed to the revolutionary goal of founding a cultured regime by decorating the revolutionary setting with cultural refinement.

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Through what they did and said, to some extent CCP leaders in fact encouraged revolutionary intellectuals to partake in a process of self-construction which allowed them to see themselves as sophisticates whose sophistication (which might or might not manifest itself in popularized art) contributed to revolutionary politics. It can even be said that these leaders themselves were prone to undertake the same kind of self-construction. Some CCP leaders took the lead in using their cultural accomplishments for revolutionary politics. One good example is how they flaunted their literary skills to impress people—ranging from members of the gentry class and the old-fashioned literati to an urban audience. Though far from an outstanding poet, Chen Yi, who had been confident of his cultural accomplishments, was more than ready to display his accomplished side when he considered such an act to be valuable for the revolution. In the early 1940s, a leading member of the New Fourth Army, Chen orchestrated his image as a “poet general” to befriend local leaders. Since his use of poetical exchange to bond with local leaders in northern Jiangsu is documented in Benton’s New Fourth Army (Benton 1999:197–200), my introduction to Chen’s political employment of his literary skills will be brief. Chen Yi often responded to poetry by local gentry members and intellectuals in the newspaper Yanfu (Yanfu bao). He wrote poetry to communicate with the local elite in the area, including some members of the local assembly (Zhu Bulou et al. 1988:4/119–28; Chen Yi (1) [1942] 1977:47). To attract more support from the local leadership, Chen decided to develop literary activities in a more organized manner. He then asked for the assistance of famous Communists—such as Aying and Fan Changjiang—to found the Seas and Lakes Club (Huhai yiwenshe). A magazine named New Knowledge (Xinzhishi) was also founded, and one of its sections was devoted to the publication of club members’ poems. Other leading revolutionaries, including Zhang Aiping, who received his education from Party training, and the famous Communist historian Lu Zhenyu, also participated in this kind of literary activity (Zhu Bulou et al. 1988:4/129). It is believed that Chen’s mastery over one specific literary genre, duilian, was particularly successful. As one story has it, the following event was the catalyst that made Chen aware of the value of literary contacts for his cultural united front with the local elite. Once Chen Yi stayed at the home of a member of the local gentry. Contemptuous of military men, the host intended to expose Chen’s ignorance. He invited Chen to respond to what he presented as the first part of a couplet, which reads as follows: “Reading Dream of the Red Chamber,/I am amused by the subtle relationships between Bao, Dai and Chai in Daguanyuan.” Chen Yi answered: “Scanning The Story of the Western Chamber,/I enjoy seeing the struggle among Zhang, Sun and Du in the Pufa Temple” (Zhu Bulou et al. 1988:4/118–19). Impressed by Chen’s eloquence, it is said, the host developed a deep respect for Chen and the New Fourth Army (Zhu Bulou et al. 1988:4/118–19). While Chen relied on his literary accomplishments to form alliances along the Yangtze and the Huai, the Communist leaders in the Yan’an area did virtually the same. In September 1941, hosting a banquet for the established members of the local literati, Lin Boqu, the chairperson of the Sha’an-Gan-Ning border region government, proposed to organize the Huaian Poetry Club. Supported by others on the occasion, he immediately composed a couple of traditional poems to celebrate the founding of the club. Soon after, many famous Communists, including Ye Jianying, Chen Yi, Dong Biwu and Tao Zhu,

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submitted their poetry to the club (Zhong Jingzhi and Jin Ziguang 1987:16/255–7). If Chen and Lin employed their literary skills to curry favor with the local elite, in the Jin— Cha-Ji border region, Deng Tuo used traditional-style literary activities to entertain the intellectuals, the “much needed people” for the revolution. In January 1943 Deng formed the Yan-Zhao Poetry Society. Traditional literature was the mainstay of the club. Those who joined included Nie Rongzhen and Lu Zhengcao, the top military administrators in the area, and the intellectuals who savored composing traditional-style poetry (Cheek 1997:96–7). The most ardent and forceful champion of popularization, Mao ironically used his beautifully written traditional poetry to advance the Communist cause. Snow, one of his best-known poems, reads as follows:

The northern scene, A thousand Li ice-sealed, And in the myriad-Li air the snow wafts about. Behold [inside] and [beyond] the area surrounded by the Great Wall, Nothing remains save a vastness of white; And up and down the great river, The torrents are suddenly lost. Like silver snakes the mountains dance, And as waxen elephants the lands prance. All want to match the sky in height. Wait until a sunny day, And see the gay attire and white wraps. What an extraordinary sight. So beautiful is China—her rivers and mountains— As to have attracted countless heroes to [bow and compete fiercely to take possession of her]. It is pitiable that Qin Huang and Wu Ti. unable to write with flair. And Tang Zong and Song Zu [lacking literary talent] Genghis Khan, surpassing everyone of his own age knew only how to use his bow to hunt the great eagle. All have passed away. Looking for brilliant characters, I am impressed with those men creating our epoch.

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(Mao Zedong 1936, from Zhang Chunhou and Vaughan 2002:66–7, with modifications) This poem made a deep impression on readers outside Communist-occupied areas. In 1945, after Japan’s surrender, Mao went to Chongqing to negotiate with the GMD. There he met his old acquaintance, Liu Yazi, and presented the poem to Liu as a gift. Liu then wrote his heci, which was published in the newspaper earlier than Mao’s own poem (Wang Jingyao [1980] 1987:99). While Mao said that heroes of history bowed to the beauty of their land, Liu paid tribute to Mao’s poetic talent, telling him, “poets of a thousand generations cannot but bow to you” (Zhang Yijiu 1987:101–2). Liu’s heci contributed to the popularity of Mao’s poem. As Liu elatedly recalled in a letter to Mao in 1951, after the publication of his and Mao’s poems, “those supportive and those hostile both responded in the form of heci” (Wang Jing yao 1987:99, note 2). The form of all the responses reveals the aesthetic impact of Mao’s and Liu’s poems on both enemies and sympathizers. As the Communist Party represented an alternative to the GMD, which had aroused so much discontent from people in Chongqing, Mao’s poem, so warmly received by a 1911 veteran and a famous literary man, helped enhance the image of the Communist Party among the people—including the intellectuals—in the GMD-controlled areas. As cultivated revolutionary leaders used their artistic cultivation to impress people, He Long, who did not have much to display in the artistic realm, shared with his more educated comrades the assumption that revolutionaries could use their knowledge of or skills in fine art to impress the non-revolutionary other. His view on Beijing opera was revealing with regard to the CCP leaders’ intent to use art in swaying people. Chen Bo, the person who listened to He’s opinion, tells his readers that in 1946, while working for He’s Struggle Troupe, he was unhappy about art teams that did not focus upon performing “revolutionary” operas. To counter his discontent, He Long, who invested much effort in developing and reforming Beijing opera, explained the necessity of investing some effort in this artistic genre: I went to Beijing once…. There I watched Mr. Cheng Yanqiu’s performance, which was extremely well attended. I even had a nice conversation with him, in which he expressed his joy over the fact that Yan’an also has an institute of Beijing opera. He also showed respect for our concern about the arts…. You may think about this question: How many people watch traditional operas?… When we occupy the cities, what can we depend upon to establish a good relationship with the people? (Chen Bo 1989:1/17) Whether He Long was, in this very specific context, aware of the unique elegance of Beijing opera, and the urban people’s cultural—aesthetic taste, is difficult to tell. But in the story as told by Chen, he obviously wanted to exploit fine art to attract the urban audience, and hoped Communist cultural achievements could impress people like Cheng Yanqiu.12

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While less eminent revolutionary intellectuals might not have had the privilege of writing “feudal-style” poetry or defending “feudal-style” opera to promote the revolution, through their execution of what they called politically correct but relatively refined art, they considered themselves and their comrades sophisticates who forwarded the revolution by using their cultural achievements. Some of them recalled how they performed serious programs to impress the audience. Two cultural workers of the New Fourth Army remember that in 1944, the Southern Jiangsu Resistance Area hosted the Conference of National Political Participation (Guomin canzhenghui), and the Communist Party decided to create a new troupe to perform in the Conference. The Political Department (Zhengzhibu) chose a play that was actually a Chinese version of a foreign classic—Gogol’s The Inspector General. Such an arrangement was probably aimed at impressing those who supposedly had good taste, as the so-called progressive members of the gentry (kaiming shishen) also attended the Conference (Shen Keding and Chen Weiming 1988:4/357–9). Others have comparable recollections as well, although they are about a different stage of CCP history. After Japan’s surrender, as the Communists endeavored to expand their influence in—and even began to occupy—big cities, the change in the political situation pressed cultural workers to deal with an increasingly diversified audience. Facing an urban audience to which it was eager to send its political message, with which it intended to establish a good relationship, and in front of which it wanted to have a cultivated image, the Party became concerned about the artistic level of its politics-oriented arts. A veteran cultural worker who worked for the National Defense Troupe, which was active in eastern Shandong, recalls how this troupe developed programs when, after the SinoJapanese War, it organized performances in Yantai. The troupe members decided to perform a play entitled The Fog, which appeared to them both politically suitable for the audience and artistically impressive (Wang Xiaoyan [1987] 1989:1/249). Two cultural workers who worked for the troupe founded by Bo Yibo in Shanxi mention that, upon crossing the Yangzi River, they prepared themselves to perform such programs as Li Chuangwang and The Promotion of Officials (Shengguan tu) (Zhang Shaochuan and Wen Zhaoli 1989:1/111) in big cities. While the recollection points out that all the programs they performed were full of political meanings (Zhang Shaochuan and Wen Zhaoli 1989:1/111), we should note that Li Chuangwang and The Promotion of Officials enjoyed a reputation as serious, polished plays in the Communist milieu.13 Their recollection does not mention whether impressing the urban audience with the troupe’s artistic level was on their political agenda. But they think, in retrospect at least, that their performances contributed to the Communist army’s image. “After seeing our performances,” they believe, “many intellectuals felt that the liberation army was versed in both fighting and the arts—in other words, they thought our army was civilized. Therefore, they decided to join us” (Zhang Shaochuan and Wen Zhaoli 1989:1/111). Revolutionary intellectuals also believed that their sophistication could be employed to entertain insiders as well. Mao was keenly aware of the fact that aside from the peasant masses, another kind of audience that the Party should heed was the small group of cadres who were relatively well educated and drawn to refined art. In the famous Forum speech, he admitted:

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Cadres are the progressive elements among the masses. They already have received the education we now attempt to give the ordinary masses. Thus, they have a better ability to understand the arts, and are dissatisfied with simple artistic forms like the ‘cowherd’s air’ [xiaofangniu]. For their aesthetic gratification, the arts of a higher standard are essential. To ignore this point is incorrect. (Mao Zedong [1942] 1975d:8/130) When Mao stated that cultural professionals should not neglect their well-educated comrades’ fondness for good art, he made it clear that sophisticated cultural professionals’ good art was precious in the sense that it could be used to amuse educated revolutionaries and thus sustain morale. If Mao recognized the significance of good art for the sustenance of revolutionary intellectuals’ morale, others seemed enthusiastic about acting upon this recognition: for instance, Nie Rongzhen, the commander of the Jin-Cha-Ji border region government who, according to his propaganda chief Deng Tuo, loved to read (Cheek 1997:89–90). Nie eagerly contended for the value of high culture for educated cadres. Delivering a speech to art workers in the army in August 1942,14 Nie, commander of the Jin-Cha-Ji border region, expressed his attitude about big plays (daxi), which were politically correct in content but well received only by intellectual cadres as a kind of relatively sophisticated art: “We do not unconditionally, blindly object to performing famous plays. Of course, we should support and promote the correct policy of popularizing dramas…. But it is acceptable for us to perform foreign classics once every year.” He insisted: “Even if cultural workers perform only for the cadres, I do not think that it is wrong. In the border area, the cadres work hard throughout the whole year. It that really so unacceptable if they want to appreciate foreign plays such as The Storm once a year?” (Nie Rongzhen [1942] 1988:2/9). What he thought about the ideology embedded in, and the political implication of performing, those “foreign plays” we cannot tell from the above passage.15 But clear is his emphasis that cultural professionals as sophisticates could use their refined art for the sake of the revolution, since they could enrich the cultural life of those sophisticates who did not specialize in the artistic domain. It is clear, in addition, that Communist cultural workers did use relatively refined art to entertain the cadres before and after the Forum. Liu Xiaowu, a cultural worker during the Yan’an period, recalls that on the eve of Chinese New Year in 1941, the leading cadres of different military zones (junqu) gathered to attend a meeting in the Jin-Cha-Ji border region. Nie Rongzhen told his troupe to organize a performance of Cao Yu’s Sunrise for these military cadres and said: “When we have our next meeting, I am not sure whether all of them will be here again. They asked for the opportunity to watch a good drama. And I feel reluctant to refuse them” (Liu Xiaowu 1988:2/181–2). That same year, in the Southern Shandong Resistance Area, during the course of the conference of high-level cadres, the Party helped organize a performance of Cao Yu’s Thunderstorm, which was, for its popularity among educated cadres, called the “cadres’ play” (ganbuxi) (Sun Xiaofeng et al. [1985] 1988:3/419). On the surface, it seems that, although recognizing the political significance of better art, Mao was against the performance of big plays. We should note, in addition, that in November 1943 the Central Propaganda Department (Zhonggong zhongyang

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xuanchuanbu) published its “Decision on the Policy on the Arts” in Liberation Daily. In addition to telling artists and performers to follow the trend of popularization, the Decision also condemned those who perform large-scale plays. Nevertheless, Mao’s “Talks,” which explicitly identified popularization as the most urgent task, together with the Central Propaganda Department’s strong gesture, did not remove big plays from the stage of the revolutionary milieu. In the Yan’an area, even after the Rectification Campaign, cultural professionals produced new shows which definitely belonged to the “big play” category. The Resistance University (Kangdd) in Yan’an staged in the form of huaju Guo Moruo’s Tiger Seal (Hufu), which was written in Chongqing during wartime. Another serious huaju play entitled Battle Front, which was Russian in origin, was performed for the first time in the same year (Zhong Jingzhi and Jin Ziguang 1987:16/1082–3). It is important to note, moreover, that the Rectification took place in other Communist-occupied areas at different times. The Party Central combined the Jinan and Jiluyu war zones (zhanqu) to establish the Ji—Lu—Yu border region in spring 1944, and this border area did not have its Rectification Campaign for cadres, intellectuals, artists and cultural professionals until June of that year. To recognize the union of the two regions, a celebration was held. The Fellow Fighters Troupe and the Plain Troupe were responsible for organizing entertainment for the cadres. They decided to perform Thunderstorm (Jiang Derong 1988:3/193). As a matter of fact, artists and cultural workers still performed famous plays after the Rectification in their own areas. The Fighters’ Troupe in Shandong is an example. According to its members, Gao Li and Xia Tong, the troupe underwent the Rectification with the 115th Division of the Eighth Route Army, to which it belonged in 1942. From the Rectification onward, the troupe and other artists and cultural professionals attempted to follow the line of popularization (Gao Li and Xiao Tong 1988:3/330 and 332). Nevertheless, from May to December 1943, the troupe performed Cao Yu’s Sunrise three times (Gao Li and Xiao Tong 1988:3/331). The August performance was for the celebration of the founding day of the Communist army—August 1—in the Binhai area. It was an occasion on which higher-level cadres must have attended. For its December performance, the audience included the leading cadres of central Shandong. The continued performance of famous or even foreign plays was possibly also due to the fact that the Rectification in Shandong was less intensive than in Yan’an (Gao Li and Xiao Tong 1988:3/330–1). At any rate, such performances demonstrate that the concern about using famous plays to entertain cadres did not vanish after the Rectification. At the same time, not only did revolutionary leaders identify the emergence of a cultured regime as a goal of the revolution in their discussion on raising standards; they also acted to support that goal. The CCP, for instance, granted its support for the Central Philharmonic Orchestra, which was officially founded in Yan’an on July 19, 1946. Top leaders such as Zhu De and Xu Teli attended and delivered their speeches in the meeting, which celebrated the opening of this highly professional musical group in Yan’an (Ai Ke’en 1992:403–4). Under the circumstances, many revolutionary intellectuals felt encouraged to imagine themselves as participants in a historically significant process of culture building, as they pursued the raising of standards on the basis of popularization. To begin with, many of these revolutionary cultural professionals were by no means modest people. Before the

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Yan’an Forum, many of them aspired to become excellent writers or artists. Not only were they committed to self-improvement; they were also interested in keeping abreast of the achievements of the world. For instance, artists coordinated such events as an “international exhibit of wood block prints” in Yan’an in 1939. According to Mu Qing, who studied at the Lu Xun Arts Academy, young intellectuals were excited about the prospect of publishing their articles outside of Communist-controlled areas. When his essays appeared in the New China Daily (Xinhua ribao) and National Resistance (Quanmin kangzhan), he says, he became a prominent figure among his peers (Mu Qing [1988] 1992:139). He Qifang even states that he heard someone who vowed to become the world’s foremost writer in the first meeting of the Forum. The CCP, in his account, wasted no time in fighting such an egotistic desire. On May 23, 1942, in the third meeting of the Forum, Zhe De blasted the person who declared so unabashedly his grandiose goal (He Qifang 1992:74). Motivated, if not driven, by the zeal for success, how could these people resist the temptation of imagining themselves as indispensable for the political ideal of founding a culturally impressive revolutionary milieu? In fact, as they described their efforts to raise standards, their self-portrayals already connoted the images of revolutionary intellectuals contributing to the revolutionary goal of creating a cultured regime. In addition, well disposed toward the idea that they themselves furnished the revolution with cultural refinement, revolutionary intellectuals particularly treasured what they regarded as glorious moments of their artistic activities. They always defined these glorious moments in terms of publicity and appreciation in non-Communist areas: for example, the display of wood block artists’ works in Chongqing (Li Qun [1962] 1992:349; Yan Han 1992:356). When the CCP displayed their popularized prints in Chongqing in October 1942, some of these products won the appreciation of Xu Beihong, one of the foremost artists in modern China. Particularly impressed with Gu Yuan, Xu wrote: “The art of woodcut print only has a short history of around twenty years in China. But I feel so fortunate that we have Gu Yuan as our star, who is destined to be a serious contender at the international level.” “He will,” he asserted, “earn fame and glory for our country. [Envisioning his brilliant future,] I have to sound like an ethnocentric patriot” (Xu Beihong [1942] 1985:514–15). First published in Chongqing in fall 1942 (October 19, 1942 in Xinminbao), Xu’s article soon caught the attention of the Communists. It appeared in Liberation Daily in Yan’an in spring 1943. Other artists in Yan’an treasured the memory that Gu Yuan, one of their own, had received such high praise from a modern Chinese artistic legend (Jiang Feng [1979] 1992:343; Ai Ke’en 1992:416).

Conclusion Communist intellectuals were always fond of beauty and the arts throughout the revolutionary process. In the Yan’an period, they worked in a historical context where the Party leadership emphasized the importance of serving the masses but did not reject sophistication. While Mao surely promoted popularization, he did not reject cultural refinement and, as a matter of fact, talked about raising standards. Other Communist intellectuals emphasized the importance of raising standards or the value of the high culture of the educated segment of the CCP.

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Under the circumstances, revolutionary intellectuals chastened their own snobbishness but did not give up seeing themselves as sophisticates. Instead they imagined themselves as sophisticates amid popularization and/or politicization: they held superior knowledge about good art but kindly lowered themselves to the masses’ level; they helped the masses to become cultural professionals; they gained in sophistication by getting involved in popularization; they contributed to the birth of a culturally popularized but accomplished revolutionary regime; and they were able to use impressive culturalaesthetic performances, which did not need to be popularized, to serve revolutionary politics. It should be noted that they exploited a flexible approach to folk culture as they positioned themselves as sophisticates working in the popularization process. By converting folk art and literature into signs of inspiration, they portrayed themselves as sophisticates who benefited artistically from popularization. And by converting folk art and literature into signs of crudeness, they narrated themselves as sophisticates who bent to the cultural level of the masses and who led the important project of raising standards in the popularized setting. It seems, however, that such self-construction did not resolve the tension revolutionary intellectuals felt—the clash between their preference for good art on the one hand, and their voluntary or coerced support for the popularization policy on the other. Mao himself is a good example. He felt embarrassed about the lack of agreement between his passion for traditional Chinese high culture and his advocacy of popularization. Ding Ling once discussed Mao decades after the Yan’an period: “for his own literary talents and personality…, Chairman Mao was naturally drawn to refined art. He may have appreciated artistic products which did not carry much political content.” She then observed: “However, a political leader and revolutionary, he had, for his own sense of responsibility, to advocate things which were useful for the revolution. Sometimes, he even had to promote what he was not particularly fond of at the personal level” (Ding Ling [1982] 1992:56). Taking into account Mao’s deep interest in traditional high culture, I would regard Ding Ling’s analysis as quite accurate. Is it possible that, in describing Mao, Ding Ling also had in her mind herself and other revolutionary intellectuals? That we shall never know. But the tension refused to fade away even when revolutionary intellectuals worked hard to construct themselves as sophisticates. Revolutionary intellectuals’ embrace of the project of raising standards clearly revealed their perception that popularized art would never be good enough. Why was it, we should also inquire, that they rejoiced in outside recognition and stressed it to prove their accomplishments? To be sure, any Chinese artist in the 1940s would have exulted over Xu Beihong’s fervent praise. However, if we judge such exultation against revolutionary cultural professionals’ loudly proclaimed faith in the artistic value of their popularized pursuit, it cannot but indicate to some extent these people’s uneasiness about the standards of their popularized products, their discomfort at departing from what they regarded as admirable. Insisting on constructing themselves as the aesthetic-cultural elite amid the tension between their support for popularization and their pursuit of refinement, revolutionary intellectuals committed the mistake of being highly ambivalent about class-based revolutionary struggle. To be sure, they employed literature and the arts as weapons in a revolutionary process aimed at removing the oppressive groups and the socioeconomic

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conditions supporting them. They dedicated themselves to a popularization policy that entailed not only the re-shaping of their own subjectivity—that is, the strengthening of their revolutionary consciousness—but also the cultivation of the masses’ political sentiments through effective aesthetic communication. It is true, in addition, that they sometimes celebrated the masses’ cultural achievements, turning them into signs of admirableness and inspiration. But Communist intellectuals did appear ambivalent in the sense that, in judging themselves and others, they made heavy use of the classification schemes they had acquired through their upbringing and education, which were indeed highly Westernized (though not entirely bourgeois), and which tended to reduce the cultural products of the people into the crude and the undemanding. In addition to building themselves as leaders and heroes, revolutionary intellectuals also fashioned themselves into sophisticates. Leaders, heroes, and sophisticates—as shown in the next chapter, these themes of their self-construction made much impact on Chinese culture and politics.

Part V Epilogue

8 Self-construction, politics and culture Some general reflections In the revolutionary process, Communist intellectuals constructed themselves as leaders, heroes and sophisticates. The victory of the CCP in 1949 put them in power, transforming them from marginalized radicals fighting the establishment into actual power holders of the Chinese state (Hao Zhidong 2003:7–8). It should be noted, however, that before 1949, despite their alienated status vis-à-vis the status quo, Communist intellectuals were also “in power,” leading the revolution in various types of geographical and political settings, ranging from the soviet areas of the 1930s to localized student and labor movements under their control. In this chapter, I shall reflect briefly on how revolutionary intellectuals’ elitist self-construction operated as a historical dynamic—that is, how it shaped the politics and culture in the revolutionary milieu and the post-1949 regime, in contexts where the revolutionary intellectuals wielded authority. In my observations of the post-1949 setting, I focus on the earlier phase of the Communist state (from the early 1950s to the mid-1960s), but I shall contend that revolutionary intellectuals’ self-construction is a legacy of the revolution that remains significant for the contemporary age. Using examples from the revolutionary decades and/or the post-revolution period, I point out important phenomena, the emergence of which was facilitated or reinforced by Communist intellectuals’ self-construction. I offer my observations in the hope that it will encourage more scholarly attention to the question of how political activists shaped history in their capacity as individuals whose lives were marked by various identities.

Legitimacy, hegemony and charisma Communist intellectuals’ self-construction contributed much to the CCP’s attempts to legitimize its leadership during the revolution and in the Party-controlled state—in short, to buttress the Party’s endeavors to claim that its leadership was legitimate in the sense that it was effective and just. Highlighting hegemonic leadership Borrowing from Gramsci, I conceptualize as hegemonic the view of the Chinese Communist elite on its own legitimacy. Observing European history, Gramsci defines a hegemonic leadership as one in which a group leads others as kindred and allied groups (Gramsci 1971:57). For instance, he believes that, in the French Revolution, the Jacobins

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successfully earned the support of the masses, who were convinced of the absolute truth of such ideas as liberty, equality and fraternity (Gramsci 1971:78).1 The Communist Party elite declared that, in representing the proletariat, its Party fought together with and for all the oppressed in China (or even on earth), although the Party answered the questions of who were the oppressed, who were their chief enemies, and what must be done to remove oppression in different ways in accordance with historical circumstances, and the change of Party leadership.2 Because the Communist intellectuals believed that true leadership should be—in Gramscian terms—hegemonic, it legitimated itself by highlighting the Party leadership’s alliance with and sensitivity to the people. Since the 1980s, a number of scholars have attended to the issue of legitimacy in the history of the CCP, exploring topics from national identity to the CCP’s quest for legitimacy in the post-Mao regime (Goodman 1987; Tang Tsou 1987; X.L.Ding 1994; Friedman 1994). Their research reveals the strategy (or strategies) of pre-1976 legitimation as well (Goodman 1987:292; Tang Tsou 1987:285–9). In their analyses, one of the most important devices used for legitimation was the celebrated ideological—political message of the Party’s devotion to the people. The dominant theme of this message was the Party’s struggles for the people’s interests, struggles that culminated in the egalitarian-sounding goal of abolishing private property. In history, such devotion manifested itself through specific ideas and practices like the CCP’s long-term determination to address the peasants’ immediate socio-economic interest, its willingness to maintain an adequate equilibrium between the Marxist ideal and this interest, and Mao’s celebrated “mass line.”3 It can be argued that the Communist intellectuals’ self-construction made the ideological theme of the Party’s devotion to the people appealing and intellectually accessible to many others—the Chinese populace in general and the Party’s followers in particular. Party-sponsored media, artists and authors used the stories these intellectuals told about themselves to add colorful and vivid details to this message of the Party’s devotion to its people. While the CCP may or may not have been aware of how these details helped, they did convert abstract concepts and principles into concrete scenes, which were intellectually more congenial to different social categories, divided by such factors as class, education and geo-cultural background. For instance, interesting stories based on revolutionary intellectuals’ self-construction helped sympathizers, including relatively educated sympathizers, to envision the spirit of the CCP’s ideological commitment to the people, though they did not necessarily illustrate any specific Party line. Let us look at some Communist writers’ representations of Peng Pai. In the 1930s and 1940s, many of the articles written in commemoration of Peng were long in content and Westernized in language. They were thus intended for relatively Westernized and educated supporters. Some authors illustrated Peng as a leader capable of self-reform for the masses by using information contained in his widely read report. For example, describing Peng’s earliest attempts to communicate with the masses, an author named Su Su echoed in 1947 what Peng had said in his report in 1926: No one was interested in discussing with Peng Pai. Comrade Peng Pai quickly realized that his condescending approach did not work. He changed immediately, putting aside his student-style clothing…and

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waiting for the peasants at the intersection of the major traffic ways in the area. (Su Su [1947] 1981:358–9) Communist intellectuals’ self-construction helped the CCP legitimize itself to the peasants too. When cultural professionals created popularized products for public consumption, they injected into their creations engaging details inspired by and thus echoing revolutionary intellectuals’ self-construction. Take as an example the famous “new opera” The White-haired Girl, which was performed numerous times for the Chinese public, rural and urban, before and after 1949. In the play, because of the evil landlord’s deception, the masses had at first believed that Xier was a fairy who disapproved of the revolution, and thus hesitated to participate in the land reform. The local Party leader, however, showed the Party’s ideological commitment to the masses’ interest even when the masses themselves did not dare pursue it. He told them: “please think about the issue of land reduction. Our government is determined to fight for the interest of the people.” Moreover, to help the peasants improve their lot, he respected, though he did not identify with, their sentiments. When some peasants were concerned about whether the land reform would offend the “white-haired fairy,” he reassured them: “don’t be anxious. We shall investigate what this fairy incident is about, and then clarify everything.” He then sent Wang Dachun, Xier’s lover, who had joined the Eighth Route Army, to investigate the case. Finally, Dachun discovered Xier, brought her back to the village, destroyed the superstitious story invented by the evil landlord, and punished him severely (He Jingzhi and Ding Yi [1953] 1987:8/459–77). The authors did not represent the local Party leader as an intellectual. Neither did they deal with the theoretical issue of how much initiative local leaders should take to reject the masses’ backward culture. But the image of the local leader reminds us of what Mao said in both his earlier and later writings, which discussed the strategies of guiding the masses to reject superstition. Outstanding revolutionaries, charisma and Party legitimacy In addition to illustrating the ideological theme of the CCP’s dedication to oppressed people, Communist intellectuals’ self-construction also transformed the intellectuals themselves into charismatic personalities. Scholars have been interested in exploring the question of what allowed leading revolutionaries to claim legitimate leadership, not only in the eyes of the people but also in the eyes of their comrades in the pre-1949 era the and post-liberation period (Gill 1982:94–110; Teiwes 1984:62–76). Discussing the issue, experts have focused on charisma as a factor. While debating or modifying established definitions of charisma, they concur that charisma means the faith in a certain individual’s exceptional power and qualities. Much attention has, of course, been paid to Mao. Scholars concur that Mao was a charismatic leader for both his colleagues and the Chinese people, although his charisma failed during the Cultural Revolution (Wang Shaoguang 1995). And as for the question of how Mao built himself as a charismatic personality in the revolutionary decades, they focus on Mao’s effective demonstration of his “exceptional” strategic abilities, and his image as a national and nationalistic leader. More importantly, current scholarship also analyzes the Party-sponsored personality cult in which Mao represented himself, or was

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represented, as the bearer of the Communist ideology and the source of Communist success (Gill 1982:94–110; Schrift 2001). Mao’s charismatic legitimacy is usually regarded as important for, though not equivalent to, the legitimacy of the Party and the Party-controlled state. But although Teiwes recognizes the distinction between the two, he argues that in the Chinese case the legitimacy of the system and that of the leader became “virtually indistinguishable” in both “official claims and actual perceptions” (Teiwes 1984:44). And other scholars likewise believe that the Party—Russian or Chinese—used charismatic leadership, buttressed by the personality cult, to appeal to the populace (Gill 1982:106). Certainly, Mao’s charismatic leadership, which contributed to the Party’s authority, can be understood from the Gramscian perspective of hegemony. A song as simple as “The Sun Rises from the East” (Dongfang hong) was used to spotlight the highest Party leader’s connection to the masses. Mao was portrayed as “the great savior of the Chinese people,” “seeking happiness for the people.” He was represented as a leader sensitive to others’ needs and hopes and capable of helping them obtain what they wanted. A political Party led by such a leader was destined to be hegemonic in its leadership style. However, I would argue that, if it is true that Mao’s charisma contributed to the CCP’s image as a hegemonic leadership and thus to its legitimacy, that legitimacy was enhanced by the Party’s success in representing itself as a revolutionary agency, not only led by a great leader but also composed of many impressive individuals. On the basis of their self-construction, Communist intellectuals in fact created themselves as charismatic agents for change. Their self-representations showed that the Party was guided by effective cadres whose caliber undoubtedly helped ensure the hegemony of Party leadership. More knowledgeable about the revolution than the masses, and aware of the masses’ defects, the educated elite was capable not only of leading the masses but also of criticizing itself in communicating and working with the masses. According to their own self-construction, Communist intellectuals as the leading segments of the Party were fiercely loyal to a revolution, the goal of which was to save the oppressed. Indeed, revolutionary intellectuals were so devoted to this goal that they transcended their intellectual background—which might otherwise have suggested insufficient political commitment—making great sacrifices for the revolution and appearing more devoted to the radical cause than the suffering masses. Not even Communist intellectuals’ self-narratives as sophisticates discredited the Party’s hegemonic leadership. They castigated themselves for their snobbishness, plunged into a popularization process aimed at using literature and the arts to elevate the people, appreciated what they learned from the masses, and, better still, endeavored to create a cultured regime on the basis of popularization. In other words, by constructing themselves in the ways they did, Communist intellectuals furnished the raw material that the Party used to create itself as an authority consisting of admirable individuals. While I do not disagree with the view that Mao’s charisma was significant for Party legitimacy, I would contend that other revolutionary intellectuals’ images counted a great deal as well when the Party strove to increase its legitimacy in the eyes of the public (especially the literate segment of the public). The CCP did not hesitate to use Communist intellectuals’ self-construction to appeal for the public’s and followers’ support in the revolution and the post-1949 regime. By using Communist intellectuals’ self-construction, the Party commanded others’ devotion

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in a very straightforward way For instance, after Peng Pai’s execution in August 1929, Zhou Enlai published an article as a tribute to Peng and a few other martyrs in the Red Flag Daily (Hongqi ribao), the official paper of the Party Central at the time. Delineating these few individuals’ courage in the face of execution, Zhou invoked their words: They…knew that they were to be executed. In the letters they wrote in jail, they asked their comrades not to be saddened by their arrest… In their words to lovers [and families], they encouraged them to struggle for the Party. (Zhou Enlai [1930] 1981:331–2) After introducing these martyrs’ self-expressions to demonstrate their commitment to the revolution, he then pressed for the point that, since such great revolutionaries made sacrifices for the revolution, his readers should continue the revolutionary task bequeathed by them. As he defined the revolutionary endeavor as the Communists’ struggle against the GMD, he cried out: “The spirit of our martyrs will live forever! Let us struggle! Let us march on the revolutionary path paved with our martyrs’ blood!” (Zhou Enlai [1930] 1981:334). Upon the founding of the People’s Republic of China, Communist leaders continued to call upon the Chinese people to inherit the revolutionary enterprise, although in the post-1949 years the CCP authorities identified national construction as the direction of the revolutionary enterprise. When Xiao San edited his anthology of revolutionary martyrs’ poetry, in the preface he described China’s national flag as one colored by the “martyrs’ red blood,” and the Communist regime as a garden, the flowers of which were nurtured by these people’s sacrifice. The Chinese must, he then said, cherish their nation by further constructing it and making it into a Communist paradise on earth (Xiao San 1962:13–14). In fact, by publicizing Communist intellectuals’ self-construction, the CCP unintentionally or intentionally appealed to the Chinese people, living in different places and keeping different memories about who represented the Communist revolution, for respect and admiration. Just think about such famous revolutionaries as Fang Zhimin and Peng Pai. Together with the monuments, tombs or museums built for them, their writings were instrumental in fostering local people’s acceptance of the CCP. Indeed, the localized cult of famous revolutionaries could be so successful that it had the power to shift the locus of admiration away from Mao to other revolutionary leaders. One good example was Peng Pai, who for decades after his death captured the imagination of people who lived in Hailufeng. Moreover, revolutionary intellectuals’ self-construction was important for the Party’s legitimacy in the sense that it proved to be beneficial to the personality cult and charisma of Mao. In Party-approved projects of publicizing revolutionary intellectuals’ selfconstruction, those responsible for introducing their writings to the public always linked these people to Chairman Mao. For instance, when Xiao San invoked Communist intellectuals’ poetry to make the case that the revolutionary cause deserved the Chinese people’s dedication, he did not forget to stress that Chairman Mao was the one who guided this cause, which so many great revolutionaries had joined, and for which so many of them had sacrificed (Xiao San 1962:13–14). There were many possible reasons

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for Xiao to mention Chairman Mao: he may have wanted to contribute to the personality cult of Mao; he may have wanted to use the image of the Chairman to augment the prestige of the revolutionary martyrs; or he may just have written down the name of the Chairman as part of the Communist cliché. It should be noted, however, that the image of Chairman Mao would have looked much less omnipotent had he been painted as a revolutionary leader whose comrades all looked mediocre and uninspiring. Communist intellectuals’ self-construction helped the CCP to legitimate itself as a hegemonic leadership. It should be noted, however, that Communist intellectuals’ selfconstruction also contributed to the presence of different types of inequalities. And these inequalities went against the Marxist egalitarian ideal, and/or the Communist leadership’s pronounced commitment to the people, the very tenet upon which the Party built its legitimacy.

Inequality in respectability Observers—insiders and outsiders alike—have been interested in the issue of inequality in the socialist/Communist revolutions and regimes. In fact, long before the October Revolution, Waclaw Machajski, a Polish socialist intellectual, had already envisioned the sociopolitical inequality in the “future” socialist system within which radical intellectuals used their knowledge as capital and became a new privileged class (Lustig 1989:5). Seeing what had happened in the Stalinist era, Trotsky offered the thesis of a “degenerated workers’ state,” pointing to Stalin’s political trickery and Russia’s social and economic underdevelopment to explain the rise of bureaucracy, the privileged stratum which “appropriate [d] the lion’s share in the sphere of consumption” (Lustig 1989:9). Djilas and Voslenskii also focus upon the nature of the political elite to analyze the problem of socio-political inequality in the socialist state.4 These insiders’ critiques and scholarly works conjure up the picture of a gap between the non-elite on the one hand and the leading group on the other in the Communist world. According to them, the leading group, a tiny minority of individuals, consisted of veteran revolutionaries, rising Party bureaucrats, the administrative professionals, and the technocrats. As this small leading group directed the revolution and/or controlled the means of production, they formed a new privileged class. While they understood the privileges of the new class mainly in terms of the economic and material advantages it enjoyed, they also paid attention to the division between the two classes in such dimensions as political background and education (Djilas 1957; Voslenskii 1984; Wang Shaoguang 1995:25). Moreover, scholars also demonstrate that there were internal inequalities within classes, and that a combination of criteria always caused complexity and ambiguities in the individual’s status. A good example is the intellectuals, who enjoyed higher salaries and better benefits and occupied all kinds of positions of authority, but somehow still suffered from their unreliable family background (Wang Shaoguang 1995:22–53). In this section, I would, on the basis of my analysis of Communist intellectuals’ selfconstruction, venture to move beyond this cluster of interpretations regarding the cleavages between the leading group and the people in the Communist contexts. Existing research always tackle inequalities in terms of distribution of resources such as income

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and education. Here, however, I will consider how Communist intellectuals’ selfconstruction contributed to the presence of a different type of hierarchy—hierarchy in terms of respectability. It emerged as revolutionary intellectuals used an array of criteria—ideological adequacy, education, understanding of revolutionary theory, political commitment, cultural accomplishment, etc.—to represent themselves and other social contingents in Chinese society. Revolutionary intellectuals’ self-construction established for them their superiority vis-à-vis the majority of the Chinese people. And the fact that they to some extent allowed their self-portrayals to be available for public consumption in both the revolutionary context and the Communist regime boosted the prestige of “intellectuals” as a category in the hierarchy of respectability. Through their self-construction they pointed to what intellectuals could achieve, if they chose the right ideological path and successfully overcame their own flaws—that is, they could become the “best representatives” of the Chinese people, individuals who were respectfully committed to the masses but also remained superior to the masses on all political, emotional and cultural-aesthetic fronts. To show how Communist intellectuals continued to reinforce their own superiority and thus intellectuals’ superiority in the post-1949 period, I suggest that it is useful to look into popular Communist literature. I shall concentrate on a few very popular novels, which were written by intellectuals who joined the revolution before 1949 and remained active in the post-1949 (particularly the pre-Cultural Revolution) period. Using a genre which technically allowed them to develop their characters fully, these veteran revolutionaries and writers working for the Communist state drew on their experiences and imagination to celebrate the glorious images of revolutionary intellectuals, and thus placed them on top of the hierarchy of respectability. Revolutionary intellectuals’ images vis-à-vis those of revolutionary peasants In these novels, the positive images of revolutionary intellectuals shone through indeed, as they looked so capable and so knowledgeable about developing the revolution, so selfsacrificing, so aesthetically sensitive (if not talented), and so eager to give up their flaws as intellectuals in dedicating themselves to the masses. In these literary works, revolutionary intellectuals were always well versed in the revolutionary ideology—whether it was Marxism-Leninism or Mao Zedong’s thought. They were also good at analyzing political situations and developing strategies—or rather applying the Party’s strategies—to promote the revolution. In The Song of Youth, when Yang Mo describes how the heroine, Lin Daojing, embarked on her political journey, she creates the image of Lu Jiachuan. A student at Beijing University (Beida), Lu incited Lin’s interest in the revolution for his impressive knowledge of politics and Marxist theory, his perceptive understanding of practical strategies, and his confidence in the revolutionary cause (Yang Mo [1958] 1978).5 Revolutionary intellectuals showed awe-inspiring dedication to the revolutionary cause as well. As Lin Daojing worked and suffered for the revolution, it was a woman intellectual, Lin Hong, who taught her the right way to be a revolutionary. While revolutionaries must be prepared to sacrifice everything, life included, for the revolution, they must also make themselves useful until the last moment of their lives—so she told

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Lin. Lu Jiachuan, who always adored Daojing, exemplified this approach to revolutionary struggle. Arrested and tortured by the GMD, Lu Jiachuan wrote to Daojing: “everyday Communists are shedding their blood and laying down their lives to hasten the hour of victory…. Dear comrade, Dear Daojing, it may be my turn soon.” He continued: “But now I have lived and fought a few months longer, which is a great joy to me.” Proclaiming that he was “waiting with an untroubled conscience for the last hour,” he said, “The most glorious day of my life will be that on which I die for the cause of Communism, for the peace and happiness of my country and humankind” (Yang Mo [1958] 1978:449). Another impressive revolutionary intellectual was Jiang Xueqin, the heroine of The Red Cliff (Hong yan), who showed amazing willpower in the face of danger and torture. She refused to give in when the GMD secret agents inserted bamboo slips beneath her fingernails. And realizing that she was to be executed, she combed her hair and bid farewell to her comrades with composure (Luo Guangbin and Yang Yiyan 1978:276–84 and 522). While expanding on the self-sacrifice of Communist intellectuals, these writers do not fail to remind the readers that some of them gave up class-based privileges to pursue the revolutionary cause. Luo Dafang, a close comrade of Lu Jiachuan at Beida, broke with his powerful father and forsook the opportunity of studying abroad just to work for the Party (Yang Mo [1958] 1978:172–8). In The Red Cliff, Liu Siyang, a young master of a wealthy merchant family, refused the help of his family and insisted on staying in the revolutionary ranks (Luo Guangbin and Yang Yiyan [1961] 1978:346–9). In the literary world created by revolutionary writers, devoted to the revolution and cultural refinement, Communist intellectuals blended revolutionary passion with literary flair. After becoming a Party member, Daojing wrote to commem-orate Lu Jiachuan: “A bright moon shines on your calm sleeping face,/The nightingale is singing in front of your window/Soft and sweet she sings./Rest assured, fallen warrior,/The girl you love has taken up the weapons you laid down” (Yang Mo [1958] 1978:507). To maintain their morale, imprisoned revolutionary intellectuals in The Red Cliff composed impassioned poetry When Liu Siyang was about to be gunned down by the GMD authorities, who massacred all the Communist prisoners before the Communist army entered the city of Chongqing, he recited boldly one of his poems: “The people win!/The people win!/we have defended the honor of the Party!” (Luo Guangbin and Yang Yiyan [1961] 1978:609). Celebrating revolutionary intellectuals, however, Communist literature does not treat them as perfect individuals. While The Red Cliff, concentrating on staunch revolutionaries’ prison struggle, does not dwell on the typical flaws of intellectuals, Yang Mo’s The Song of Youth, portraying the growth of a young women from a naive aspiring radical to a radical heroine, dissects what an intellectual had to overcome in order to become a true revolutionary. To begin with, Lin Daojing appeared to be one of those petit bourgeois intellectuals preoccupied only with herself—her conflict with bad family authorities, her romantic relationship with a college student, her boredom, and so forth. Moreover, she was also a young student who knew nothing about the masses. Yang uses the following episode to expose Lin Daojing’s non-proletarian taste:

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The girl [Lin] halted and gazed at the sea, her eyes sparkling with awe and delight…. The porter was a talkative middle-aged man. “What were you staring at up there?” he asked, unable to restrain his curiosity. “At the sea. It’s so beautiful.” She looked round at him. “How lucky you are to live here! It’s so lovely!” “What’s lovely about it? If we don’t catch any fish and go hungry, scenery doesn’t count for much.” (Yang Mo [1958] 1978:4–5) With all her flaws, Daojing had quite a bit to learn from the masses. In this popular novel, in addition to learning about the masses’ hard life from the porter, Lin the inexperienced radical also found her interaction with an outstanding peasant revolutionary highly beneficial. Xu Mandun, a seasoned peasant revolutionary, most sensibly lectured Lin Daojing on class struggle when she was deceived by an evil landlord’s friendly gesture: “Remember: They [landlords] are all tarred with the same brush. You cannot choose between them” (Yang Mo [1958] 1978:323). This brief talk certainly made a deep impression on Lin Daqjing. She thought: “What a firm stand he takes! He goes right to the core of the matter!” (Yang Mo [1958] 1978:324). It should be noted, however, that adding the episode of peasant revolution to her revised version of The Song of Youth, Yang Mo does not devalue revolutionary intellectuals. The contrast between Lin and Xu, which she uses to praise outstanding revolutionary peasants, was only one between a naive radical intellectual and an experienced peasant revolutionary. How, then, were revolutionary peasants, especially outstanding peasant activists, represented in novels which center on the rural revolution? Communist authors do not fail to spotlight peasant activists’ dedication to the revolution. Coming from a peasant family active in the revolution, Feng Deying naturally focuses on the revolutionary peasantry when he writes. In fact, his Bitter Flower (Ku caihua) is a literary reproduction of the story of his own family in the Sino-Japanese War. Feng’s own mother is the model for the most important character of the novel—Xunzi, a revolutionary peasant woman who worked for the Party and encouraged her children to join the revolution. Feng painstakingly portrays her courage and determination. She refused to reveal information when the enemies tortured her. So brave was she that in the fighting against the Japanese—the final important episode in the story—she fired a gun for the first time in her life to defend the Communist soldiers. In this novel, in addition to fleshing out Xunzi’s loyalty to the Communist revolution, Feng also emphasizes her ability in maintaining the household and nurturing her children. Although he does not represent Xunzi to be a capable revolutionary, he does tell his readers that peasants can become intelligent and capable revolutionaries: in the story Feng highlights the political ability and intellect of Xunzi’s daughter, Juanzi. She made good progress in school and served as a capable local cadre. Juanzi’s husband, Jiang Yongquan, who was the leader of the uprising in Xunzi’s native district, was another outstanding peasant revolutionary in the novel. Liang Bin, too, relies upon his extensive rural experiences to write about the rural revolution. He is best known for his trilogy—Song of the Red Flag (Hongqi pu), Sowing the Seeds of Revolution (Bohuo ji), and Beacon Fire (Fengyan tu). Liang confesses that he created the trilogy out of his love for the Chinese peasants:

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I was born in the countryside…. After the beginning of the Sino-Japanese War, I worked in the rural area…. I am familiar with the peasants’ life. I love them, and feel close to them. I struggle to present their personality; their life. I am eager to construct some noble images of peasants. (Liang Bin 1958:11) In the trilogy, Liang indeed constructed a powerful image of an outstanding peasant, Zhu Laozhong. He deliberately portrays Zhu as a capable, smart and intelligent peasant: When Zhu Laozhong was back to his native village from Guangdong, he met Yan Zhihe (his old friend) at the station…. And Yan mentioned to him the arrogance of Feng Laolan (a landlord who had killed Zhu Laozhong’s father). In my first draft, Zhu Laozhong simply lost control after listening to Yan. But I decided to change his response: he finally became a man who kept his anger from exploding. There is an episode about Zhu Laozhong’s decision to leave home and [visit Yan Zhihe’s son who was in prison]—he had made all kinds of arrangements before he left…. I rely upon these events to highlight his wisdom. (Liang Bin 1958:15) Actually, Liang Bin endeavored to create a model (dianxing), the image of a perfect peasant radical: “I remove this element—the hot and impulsive temper—from the image of Zhu Laozhong. In reality, heroes have their weaknesses. However, it is acceptable if we want to create a perfect hero in literature” (Liang Bin 1958:15). But despite their conspicuous praise of outstanding peasants, these authors, however sympathetic with the revolutionary peasantry, always stress that the peasants must struggle to improve themselves. One thing they certainly need to work on is their ideology—so these authors suggest. Feng Deying’s favorite hero, Jiang Yongquan, contended, in his capacity as an ideologically advanced peasant, that peasants should learn from the working class. The critical stance on “peasant ideology” can still be detected in a novel written during the Cultural Revolution. At that time, Hao Ran wrote The Golden Road (Jinguang dadao) to celebrate class struggle after the liberation and to imitate the achievements of model operas (yangban xi). The main protagonist of the novel, Gao Daquan, was presented as a model hero (dianxing)—a peasant who was intelligent and, more importantly, enthusiastically pursued Communist goals (i.e., as defined by Mao). But Hao Ran also describes Gao as a hero eager to remove his own “weaknesses” as a peasant. With respect and gratitude he listened to the following advice from Luo Xuguang, a veteran revolutionary who had recommended his Party membership: “You are of peasant origin…. If you want to be a resolute revolutionary, you must build up your Communist world view and overcome your backwardness as a peasant” (Hao Ran 1972:1/107). Gao, it is said, “listened to [Luo] carefully,…and tried hard to memorize it” (Hao Ran 1972:1/107). Thus, despite many peasants’ participation in and contribution to the revolutionary process, an officially approved novel—even during the Cultural Revolution—still highlighted the inherent, essential imperfection of peasants: an outstanding peasant needed to struggle against his “natural” backwardness as a peasant if he wanted to become a socialist man.

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Another major defect impressive peasants had to confront was their own ignorance— so these writers also insist. Although Liang Bin is committed to molding Zhu Laozhong into a perfect peasant hero, in his view lack of education would prevent even a perfect peasant hero from becoming an adequate revolutionary. In Beacon Fire (the third volume of the trilogy), Liang Bin tells us about Zhu Laozhong’s suspicion of the Second United Front. And the writer describes Zhu’s failure to comprehend the Party policy by presenting the perspective of Jiangtao, Zhu’s young friend who had been a student in a normal college: “Jiangtao found his old uncle so lovable. But he realized that this old fighter was restricted by his own cultural and theoretical levels” (Liang Bin 1983:312). Because of the Cultural Revolution, Liang Bin did not have the opportunity to complete Beacon Fire until 1981 (Liang Bin 1983:550). When he wrote or formulated the above episode it is difficult to know. But this analysis of Zhu Laozhong’s weakness at any rate reflects that, at the end of his literary career, the writer, who himself was of peasant origin, regarded a perfect peasant hero’s lack of knowledge as a flaw. While Liang Bin highlights the limitations of a peasant hero with a low educational level, Feng Deying creates the image of an outstanding peasant committed to education. In The Bitter Flower, it is through the words of Jiang Yongquan that Feng himself emphasizes the importance of education: Jiang advised Xunzi to send her little son to school because the future construction of the new China would need the contributions of the educated. Feng’s portrayal of a distinguished peasant’s enthusiasm for education is echoed by the image of Xiao Changchun in Hao Ran’s The Bright Sky (Yanyang tian), a socialist peasant who itched to expand his fellows’ intellectual horizons in the 1950s (Hao Ran [1964] 1974:1/368).6 The perception that the peasants lacked education is accompanied by the understanding that the peasants lacked sophistication, although this understanding manifests itself in relatively subtle forms. It manifests itself in the writer’s overt display of sympathy with the suffering and uncultured masses. In showing this sympathy, Yang Mo uses Lin Daojing’s encounter with the porter to stress that the masses in general were deprived of aesthetic sensibility by poverty (Yang Mo [1958] 1978:5). It also manifests itself in another writer’s adoption of a unique approach to the representation of the uneducated peasants’ love for beauty. As Liang Bin cannot portray peasants writing poetry or painting, he focuses on their everyday reactions to things so as to delineate their aesthetic sensibility. In The Song of the Red Flag, he depicts the joy of the young peasant activists when they catch a beautiful, rare bird. One of them, Dagui, is determined to keep the bird and says: “When I look at this red bird, I don’t need to eat for three days!” (Liang Bin 1958:87). In his introduction, Liang explains the significance of this episode: “[The incident of the rare bird] shows that the peasants love the natural beauty of their native area.” But he also transforms aesthetic sensitivity into a site for class struggle: Feng Laolan [an evil landlord] challenged Dagui: “… What is the use for you people to keep such a precious bird?’ Actually, this is my theme: why cannot the peasants keep precious birds? Peasants know more how to appreciate the beauty of nature and fields than landlords do. (Liang Bin 1958:13)

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By highlighting Daigui’s straightforward expression of his love for the little bird, Liang seems to suggest that it is a kind of unpolished simplicity which marks this young peasant’s aesthetic pursuit. Therefore, in pre-1976 Communist literature, the images of revolutionary intellectuals and those of revolutionary peasants were indeed different. In Communist culture, while the images of immature revolutionary intellectuals such as Lin Daojing always suffered from various defects, the images of fully fledged revolutionary intellectuals were blessed with qualities that Communist authorities and cultural media hailed as admirable. Their images were characterized by capable political leadership, strong and even superior commitment to the revolution, and cultural sophistication. All this the images of revolutionary peasants did not share, although in Communist literature and art there were peasant characters who embraced unequivocal class consciousness for the bitterness they tasted in the hell of class oppression, who were yearning and fighting wholeheartedly for drastic change, and who were capable of contributing significantly to the Communist “democratic” and “socialist” revolution. Despite the authors’ concern to make them look compelling, images of revolutionary peasants were always coupled with flaws, or with their recognition of their own flaws. For self-improvement, they needed to rid themselves of class-related defects—peasant ideology and low educational level. And they looked much less versatile than revolutionary intellectuals for their underdeveloped cultural taste. And if Gao Daquan’s success in eliminating his peasant ideology made him into a socialist peasant, a peasant who was well educated and refined in his cultural taste would not look like Zhu Laozhong. Revolutionary intellectuals could, by removing their defects, actualize their potential and become capable leaders, outstanding heroes and refined culture lovers. In their self-transformation, they evolved into better individuals without losing their intellectual identity. But the revolutionary peasants, by casting out their educational flaws, lost theirs. How, then, did the cleavage in respectability, privileging the intellectuals, shape human experience in the Maoist regime? While a comprehensive exploration of this question is beyond the scope of my research, I shall reflect on it by making a few observations. Aspirations of the educated The alluring qualities of the Communist intellectuals, as represented in their selfconstruction and literature, inspired the educated youth in the Communist state. To discuss how, I focus on those “new” intellectuals who were nurtured by the Communist state in its attempt to produce a competent cadre class (Wang Shaoguang 1995:26–27). Whereas revolutionary intellectuals created themselves as superior individuals, young post-1949 intellectuals appropriated the composite of traits—leadership, political commitment and cultural refinement—which marked veteran revolutionaries’ selfconstruction. They used it to create the ideal image of the young Communist intellectual loyally serving the newly born state. For instance, observing the problems of the state he was devoted to, Wang Meng, a young Bolshevik himself, created the character of Lin Zhen in A Young Newcomer in the Organization Department. This intelligent and educated cadre demonstrated his devotion to the CCP through his struggle to perfect his

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fellow Party members’ performance. In addition, he loved classical music. Wang Meng creates the following episode: She [Zhao Huiwen] turned on the radio and a dreamy, gentle melody drifted through the room. Its tempo gradually increasing, the violin’s lyrical theme moved Lin a great deal. He [Lin Zhen] rested his chin in his hand and listened raptly. The melody seemed to contain his youth, all his aspirations and frustrations…. When the music finished she [Zhao] said in a melodious voice: “This is Tchaikovsky’s Capriccio Italien. It makes me think of the south, of the sea.” (Wang Meng [1956] 2002:197) As a matter of fact, Communist intellectuals’ self-construction, which explicitly endorsed cultural sophistication, helped set the tone for educated Chinese individuals’ aesthetic aspirations in the Communist regime. Upon the founding of the new regime and before the Cultural Revolution, the pursuit of high culture, especially Westernized high culture, was the vogue among Chinese students. In My Fathers, Dai Qing, who was raised by the Communist general Ye Jianying, lists her favorite writers before the Cultural Revolution. She only read authors like Pushkin, Dickens, Goethe and Mark Twain (Dai Qing 1995:104). If this shows the cultural life of a young woman from an extremely privileged background, the case of Dai Houying attests to the aspiration toward modernized taste of intellectuals from a rural background. Upon entering the university, she was fascinated with English literature and modern Chinese urban literature. And her readiness to cite famous writers from Shakespeare to Roman Rolland in her controversial novel Ah! Humans shows how deeply her earlier cultural habits were imprinted on her mind. Such enthusiasm for high culture simply could not exist if the political elite of the Communist regime disapproved of it. Marginalizing the peasantry The inequality in respectability, which markedly favored the intellectuals, also led to the marginalization of the peasants in the Communist regime at both its revolutionary and post-revolutionary stages. Let us consider marriage as an example. Peasant women were regarded as members of the social category of peasants, and many rural wives of revolutionary intellectuals and influential revolutionaries suffered a great deal because of their rural—and therefore socially and culturally unattractive—background.7 In the late 1930s, when the CCP settled into Yan’an and many educated women arrived from Shanghai and other urban centers, “business soared at the Divorce office” (Terrill 1992:142). The abandonment of rural wives continued even after the founding of the Communist regime. In 1955, for instance, a woman cadre named Liu Lequn wrote a letter to the magazine New China’s Women (Xinzhongguo funü) to describe her relationship with her husband. In it Liu described how, in the 1940s, her husband, a revolutionary named Luo Baoyi, in the liberated area (jiefangqu), dumped his original girlfriend, whom he called a “peasant-worker cadre” (gongnong ganbu) and dismissed as rustic and uncouth (tu li tu qi), in order to date and marry her. And after the founding of the People’s Republic of China, Liu discovered that her husband had had an affair with a Ms.

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Wong, who was younger and more educated than she herself was (Liu Lequn 1955:11/6). Party authorities fought to confront men who wanted to abandon their rustic wives for pretty, modern women, pressing them to reform themselves (Xie Juezai 1956; Ip Hungyok 2003:351). In fact, the term “peasant-worker” (gongnong) was common in the revolutionary decades and the Communist regime. Luo Baoyi’s case, together with other people’s responses to his wife’s letter, indicates that this term was integrated into everyday Communist usage. Communist leaders and cadres always employed the term in their political texts, including their official criticism of intellectuals’ contempt for the “rustic” and “uncouth” cadres (for instance, Mao’s attacks on intellectual cadres’ arrogance). It seems, therefore, that the working class unfortunately shared those significations placed on the peasantry In what ways this was true is a question that awaits further research. But Communist intellectuals, as I have pointed out in previous discussion, never failed to extol “proletarian consciousness” and the proletariat in the abstract sense. Writers in the Communist regime highlighted significant differences between the “peasantry” and the “working class.” It is clear, therefore, that compared with the peasantry, the “working class” enjoyed some respectability, however superficial, in the Communist context(s). Chinese peasants were placed at the bottom of the hierarchy of respectability Cosmopolitanism and the issue of subservience Communist intellectuals’ self-construction, the hierarchy of respectability, the pursuit by educated individuals’ of Westernized culture in the Communist regime, and the marginalization of the peasantry press us to think about Chinese intellectuals’ attitude toward Westernized culture. Recent scholarship has highlighted cosmopolitanism as an important theme in modern China’s transformative process. Leo Lee conceptualizes it as the abiding Chinese curiosity to “look out” and to experience, interpret and introduce the foreign (Leo Lee 1999:315). Shih Shu-mei also identifies what she calls “cosmopolitan” modernism as an important part of Chinese modernity (Shih Shu-mei 2001). However, talking about cosmopolitanism as the Chinese exploration of, and borrowing from, the West, both regard it as a phenomenon unrelated to, or even suppressed by, Communism. After analyzing how different modes of cosmopolitan modernism emerged in the semicolonial context of China, Shih concludes that all these modes, which showed the potential for pressing the Chinese to think/rethink their relationship with the West, were denounced after 1949, as “history’s pendulum swung to Communist nationalism” (Shih Shu-mei 2001:377). As for Leo Lee, defining cosmopolitanism as an essential ingredient of modernity, he mainly centers on modern Chinese consumption of foreign material culture and aesthetic hedonism. Despite his recognition that underground Communists in Shanghai were involved in some internationalist political activities, he refuses to accept as cosmopolitan the Communist approach to exploring, experiencing and appropriating the foreign. Thus, examining the historical fate of Shanghai, he finds that “the triumph of the rural-based Communist revolution further reduced the city to insignificance, after its glamour had been much taken away by the war” (Leo Lee 1999:323). That the Communist revolution was to a significant extent rural-based is a wellestablished fact. That the Communist Party did not appreciate a Yu Daifu’s or a Shi Zhecun’s appropriation of foreign culture is hardly controversial. And the fact that the

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city of Shanghai did not receive much development from the late 1940s to the late 1970s is widely known. However, by contrasting others’ cosmopolitanism with “Communist nationalism,” and by representing a rural-based revolution as the opposite of cosmopolitanism, these authors fail to grasp an essential characteristic of the Communist revolution. The Communist revolution in fact was an important project of modernity which was, in its essence, highly cosmopolitan. The Communist intellectuals explored the foreign by undertaking what are now called “Occidentalist” acts (Chen Xiaomei 1995:4– 5)—that is, by appropriating and revising a Western ideology in accordance with Chinese conditions. In addition, they wanted to be part of an international brotherhood. The presence of cosmopolitanism was highly visible in their self-construction in relation to the peasantry, as they applied notions of Marxism-Leninism and the idea of world revolution to judge the masses, employed images of foreign revolutionaries to glorify themselves, and pursued Westernized literature and art. Finally, their self-construction helped create a hierarchy in respectability that favored Westernized intellectuals. In fact, the cosmopolitan character of the Communist movement provides us with a window into Chinese intellectuals’ cultural psychology vis-à-vis the foreign. Current scholarship has attempted to differentiate between cosmopolitanism and slavish obedience to the West. Leo Lee notes that there were always “mimic men” in colonial and semi-colonial situations, and that in China, mimic men could certainly have been detected among the compradorial and commercial elite (Leo Lee 1999:310). However, he asserts that the field of cultural production and literature was “qualitatively different” from that of business. The Shanghai writers he portrays in his book never imagined themselves as so “foreignized” as to become slaves to foreigners, or so he argued (Leo Lee 1999:312). Although I am not prepared to question whether Lee’s understanding of various social groups is accurate, I think his observation of the difference between cosmo-politanism and slavishness applies to the Communist case. Like the Shanghai writers that Lee discusses, Communist intellectuals appropriated the foreign but did not regard themselves as subordinate to foreigners and foreign influence. They fought imperialism fiercely, and some of them consciously Sinicized what they learned. However, the Communist case reveals the complexity of the Chinese psychology visà-vis the West. It must be noted that appropriation of Western ways, or even a conscious emphasis on one’s independence from the West, did not always signify freedom from subservience in reality. The cleavage in respectability indicates that educated Chinese influenced by the revolutionary tradition and growing up in the Communist regime looked down upon those who did not have the opportunity to become “cosmopolitan” or “foreignized.” To be sure, they did not go so far as to perceive, or to defer to, foreigners as their “masters.” But it is clear that they assumed that being “foreignized” was better. This attitude, I would argue, should also be considered “subservience.” By subjecting the peasantry, these intellectuals ironically also subjected themselves to the West.8 Regardless of the groups we examine, whether they were Shanghai writers or the radical intellectuals, we should heed not only their cultural/intellectual preference but also how that preference acted out in social relationships and other dimensions of their lives, if we want to learn about how they positioned themselves in relation to the West.

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Justifying privilege in a socialist regime To further explore the issue of inequality in the Communist context(s), I also examine how the leading group developed the logic to justify their own privilege. In doing so, I examine Communist intellectuals’ self-construction, and reflect on Djilas’ anatomy of the “new class.” What does Djilas miss? To be sure, Djilas is not the only insider who anatomizes the privilege of the Communist elite, and whose critique has enjoyed much scholarly attention for its interesting insight. But compared to Voslenskii, another insider internationally known for his analysis of the class issue in the Communist regime, Djilas, reflecting on privilege, dictatorship and the degeneration of the leadership, focuses more on the decay of the originally idealistic revolutionary elite. Although Voslenskii also takes note of the old Bolsheviks’ transformation into a privileged class, he mainly dwells on the replacement of the relatively idealistic old guard by the careerists who were initially employed by the Soviet Union to construct its bureaucracy, and who lacked a genuine commitment to ideology.9 Explaining the origins of the new class, Djilas starts with attention to the Communists’ faith in their understanding of the laws of human society Believing that their own ideology represented the truth of human history, they took on the mission of “building socialism” after the revolution. During the revolution the Party had achieved an unprecedented level of ideological and political centralization. This centralization enabled it to monopolize the power in the country, and to appropriate all its wealth under the slogan of nationalization. By appropriating the means of production, however, the new class became an exploiting class, trampled down all morality, and established its dictatorship by terror and ideological control. The revolutionary elite, those who fought hardest for the revolutionary ideal and the greatest liberties, turned into reactionaries after they had achieved power (Voslenskii 1984:4). Conscious of his own life-long struggle for a better world, Djilas deplores the corruption of the ruling Party, and the behavior of the former revolutionaries who, as the privileged element in the new society, “tend to personal extravagance” (Djilas 1957:81– 2). In Djilas’s view, the corruption of the erstwhile committed revolutionaries was a result of the interaction between the one-party system and human frailty in face of the temptations of power and the things it could deliver—extravagance, heroic image, and so forth (Djilas 1957:81–2). But such” frailty”—the proclivity to pursue power and other power-related benefits—was manifest in the human nature of the revolutionaries even before they became the ruling elite of the new society. According to Djilas, the Party’s international struggle in the revolution had already transformed revolutionary fighters into “a unity of obedient counselors and robot-bureaucrats.” They became a group who were “willing to renounce everything—honor, name, truth and morals—in order to keep their place in the ruling class and the hierarchical circle” (Djilas 1957:155). Obviously, integral to Djilas’ theme of revolutionaries’ degeneration is his view that the spirit of selfless sacrifice had once been an outstanding characteristic of the

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revolutionaries. In fact, though critical of the ideological nature of Communism, Djilas was still moved by the revolutionaries’ idealism when he was writing The New Class, or The Unperfect Society, or Memoir of a Revolutionary. When the movement was in its inception and still in his view “truly Communist,” he recalls nostalgically, the revolutionaries were characterized by “the finding of personal happiness and the building of individuality through complete devotion to the Party and workers’ collective” (Djilas 1957:153). Unquestionably, Djilas’ empirical condemnation of the new class embodies an indispensable insight for anyone who is interested in the socio-political stratification, and the revolutionary elite’s transformation from revolutionaries to a privileged group, in the Communist states. I am, however, moved to ask a specific but important question that Djilas and other people dissecting the Communist “new class” do not systematically address: how did the revolutionary elite legitimize, to themselves and to the less privileged, their own privileged status in a new society supposed to be classless? Certainly, as Voslenskii points out, privileges for the ruling class were officially approved by Lenin, and nomenklatura was an integral part of the Soviet administration (Voslenskii 1984:42–63). In addition, as Djilas and Zhou Dajue suggest, the ruling class enjoyed privileges through their control over the means of production. And undoubtedly, as we all know, revolutionaries accepted—or designed—the system of privilege out of self-interest. But that still does not mean they accepted their privilege by simply disregarding the incongruity between their privilege and their egalitarian ideal, and by handling others’ discontent only with naked power. Djilas discusses how a totalitarian state, along with the process of internal struggle that took place in the Communist Party, debauched the revolutionaries who had once displayed the spirit of selfless sacrifice. But in probing the issue of legitimation, I would like to examine how revolutionary intellectuals’ self-construction, with its presumptions, criteria and content, provided the logic which helped justify privilege. I neither intend to generalize from my observation of Chinese Communism about different “national versions” of Communism nor assume that the Yugoslav and Chinese one-party systems mirrored each other and operated in the same way in granting privilege to the Communists. But it is evident that privilege sanctioned by the Party was a visible phenomenon of Communism. And by analyzing the logic in the Chinese case, we can at least explore one localized version of the Communist elite’s attempt to justify privilege. In defense of privilege I: the logic of political contribution Communist intellectuals’ self-construction from the emotional perspective helped nurture the CCP’s official justifications of privilege. Their self-construction, publicized by the CCP since the revolutionary decades, fashioned two sets of ideas for those who lived in the Communist milieus. First, revolutionaries gave up a great deal for the sake of China, the Chinese people, and even the world. And second, the Chinese people should emulate these devoted revolutionaries—they should treat the victory of Communism (that is, the victory of the revolution and, upon the founding of the Communist regime, the success of Communist national construction) as the most important goal, and bear “everything” for the Communist cause. To be sure, the Party’s propagandist campaigns to promote the images of non-intellectual figures also contain the same ideas. But with its romantically

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expressed passion, which was embellished by rich imagery and metaphors, the elaborate demonstration of suffering, and the display of intimate emotions, revolutionary intellectuals’ self-construction appeared to be a convenient resource the Party used to disseminate the aforementioned ideas. As Lao Gui’s autobiographical novel reveals, to express their own political emotions, the urban Chinese youth often recited revolutionary poetry and sang songs with lyrics that were actually revolutionary intellectuals’ last words. In the story the words of a certain character’s favorite song were indeed based on the last words of Xia Minghan and Liu Bojian: “With chains I walk[ed] in the long street,/bidding farewell to my dear peasant friends./What does not deserve my worry is the punishment of decapitation;/! am only concerned about the truth of my ideology” (“Jiuyige” 1993:144; Lao Gui 1988:37). These ideas were instrumental in the CCP’s and revolutionary leaders’ attempts to justify the privilege of the leading group: they emboldened the Party leadership to demand others’ acceptance or tolerance of the privileges enjoyed by those who had contributed greatly to the revolution. Moreover, this justification did to some extent produce such acceptance. To explain how, let me begin by examining the Communist leaders’ strategy of legitimating stratification in the Party. In 1929, Mao Zedong wrote an essay criticizing the absolute egalitarianism that prevailed in the Red Army: “[Absolute egalitarianism] was popular in the Red Army…. When an official rides a horse, the soldiers interpret it as a manifestation of inequality They do not recognize that riding a horse is necessary for the officers” (Mao Zedong [1929] 1950:240). To redress this “undesirable” mentality, Mao recommended: “we should put forth the theory that absolute egalitarianism is only the fantasy of the peasants and petit bourgeoisie. And in socialist society, the distribution of materials is determined by individuals’ need and work. There is no absolute equality” (Mao Zedong [1929] 1950:244). In the Yan’an era, confronting some intellectuals’ criticism that the high-level cadres enjoyed too many privileges, the Party included the above article by Mao in the Collection of Rectification Documents (Zhengfeng wenxian). It also quoted Stalin, who referred to the authority of Karl Marx and Lenin, to justify its hierarchical system. During and after the Rectification, cadres were urged to study this speech of Stalin’s (translated from the Chinese): Marx and Lenin insist…[that] in a socialist society, human beings’ salaries depend upon their labor rather than their needs…. Marx views equality as the elimination of classes; he by no means defines equality as the equalization of needs and lives…. Marxism assumes that in both socialist and Communist societies, individuals’ needs and tastes remain individual in terms of quantity and quality, and thus the equalization of human beings’ needs and lives is impossible. (Jiefangshe 1950:246–7) Interestingly, even before the Party attempted to defend its own hierarchical system, Wang Shiwei, who in 1942 boldly spoke against the leading group’s privileges, had been perceptive enough to predict the logic of Party leaders’ self-defense against intellectuals’ complaints about the Party’s ranking system. In the article “Wild Lily,” which led to his

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tragic fate, Wang was well aware of the justification used by those supporting the system of hierarchical ranks: they argued, according to him, that under the principle of “From each according to his ability, to each according to his value,” those bearing more responsibilities could be indulged a little. For Wang, such a justification could only be unsatisfactory. Insisting that the Communists were still “in the mist of a bitter and harsh revolution,” he contended: “we should not speak in terms of ‘according to one’s value’ and ‘indulging’” (Wang Shiwei [1942] 1994:19). But in defending itself against Wang’s criticism, then popular among Yan’an intellectuals, the Party resorted to precisely the ideological legitimization Wang disapproved of. Why then, did Party leaders assume that such a justification, which stated that revolutionaries’ privilege should be proportional to their contribution and responsibility, would be effective in convincing others generally and the intellectuals in particular of the reasonableness of stratification? We might be tempted to say that the influence of Leninist-Stalinist practice—in this case, nomenklatura—led revolutionary leaders to take the effectiveness of such a legitimization for granted. In addition, we might also assume that the old Chinese notion of hierarchy also played a role here. But such interpretations, emphasizing only the power of Chinese tradition and Russian influence, are not sufficient. When we deal with such issues as intellectuals’ discontent with the Party’s ranking system, we must bear in mind that it is impossible that revolutionary leaders should merely or mainly follow their tradition-bound intuition, or any system of foreign origins. In other words, they wanted their justification to look reasonable to the target audience. We must, therefore, focus on the logic Party leaders put forward to justify the practice of privilege—i.e., that those who took on important responsibilities deserved more. And it was only by viewing itself as operating in a setting where success of the revolution was elevated to the position of ultimate importance that the top leadership thought it sensible to link political contribution to privilege, and to ask the less-privileged to bear the privilege of those whose contribution was essential for the revolution. Instrumental in promoting the essentiality of the victory of the revolution, revolutionary intellectuals’ self-construction, publicized by the Party itself, helped breed the CCP leadership’s assumption that it lived in such a setting. But how did those who felt left out of the privileged circle or those who disliked privilege respond to this justification? Not everyone appreciated the Party’s legitimization of privilege. Wang Shiwei, for one, mocked it, despite his relatively privileged status in Yan’an. In the 1950s and 1960s, a period in which most of the time any attempt to appeal to liberalism was illegitimate, some intellectuals and students expressed their discontent with the sociopolitical stratification of the new China. One of the criticisms was that the government and the Party gave priority to the devoted and capable revolutionaries and their families. How did the stress on political commitment affect socio-political stratification after 1949? How did the Party deal with nonCommunists’ and Communists’ charges that the system of hierarchy was unfair and incongruent with Communist ideals? Answers to these questions require researchers to take into account all these factors—the transformation of the Party from a revolutionary organization to the leading organ of a dictatorial regime, the Communist leaders’ experiences in dealing with dissidents during the Yan’an era, etc.

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It is obvious, nevertheless, that the CCP’s justification of privilege did take root in the Communist contexts. Upon the founding of the Communist regime, the justification gained considerable ground among politically conscious individuals who supported the state. They did not challenge, but instead accepted, the logic that people who contributed to the revolution were entitled to privilege. Consider Wang Meng’s short story, A Young Newcomer in the Organization Department. Lin Zhen, the young Communist intellectual who also loved art, went to work for the Organization Department of a certain district (qu) in Beijing. So idealistic was he that he found Wang Qingchuan, the director of a certain factory, highly unsatisfactory. Seeing Wang’s irresponsible performance, Lin Zhen decided to talk to Liu Shiwu, his superior in the Organization Department. But when Liu pointed out that the irresponsible Wang had once been “a courageous comrade” working for the CCP as a mole in the GMD’s army, Lin was dumbfounded and could only utter these words: “in this case” (Wang Meng [1956] 2002:192). As the story unfolds, Wang is punished as a Party member and factory administrator. But noteworthy is the idealistic young man’s response to the information about the bad director. Upon learning about Wang Qingchuan’s background, Lin changed from being firm to being confused, or at least surprised. Wang Meng presents us a Lin Zhen losing his firmness in that particular conversation, assuming, wittingly or unwittingly, that one should naturally defer to capable and courageous old revolutionaries. Writing the story in 1956, Wang, then a young Bolshevik, assumed the ultimate importance of revolution as he developed his favorite character. Therefore, Lin Zhen, confronted with a bad director who had been a remarkable revolutionary, was “fated” to lose his determined attitude.10 Although I am focusing on China, I would like to consider the possibility that the link between contribution and privilege shaped the classification of people elsewhere in the Communist world. Djilas did not seriously theorize about how the logic was applied by veteran revolutionaries to justify their claims to special treatment. But his observations and condemnations do occasionally document the Yugoslav revolutionary elite’s unofficial application of this logic. A bitter critic of the society and system that he helped create, Djilas vehemently attacked the social exclusiveness of his own circle, the cream of Belgrade society. His Anatomy of a Moral tells us how the young bride of a high-level military officer suffered from isolation and contempt among the old fighters and their wives (Djilas 1959:150). The story was based upon the experience of a good friend of Djilas and his young wife— the Yugoslav Army Chief-of-Staff, General Peko Dapcevic, and Milena Versajkov, a young actress. Disapproving of the arrogance of the old fighters’ wives, Djilas also dissected their mentality to some extent. According to Djilas, one of the ladies, dissatisfied with the young wife’s lack of revolutionary credentials, argued with the groom against his choice by exploiting the aforementioned logic: “It couldn’t have been too hard for you to find her. She found you. Only I can’t understand why you married her. There are so many others around, good old comrades with so much…” (Djilas 1959:158). Moreover, Djilas also noted male fighters’ neglect of the young woman, analyzing in his own words the logic that led to their indifference to an individual trying to gain entry into their group: No one bothered to ask himself, nor could they all in their exclusiveness ask, who the bride really was…. The only important factor for this set was

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that she belonged to a different social stratum, that she had “illegally” sneaked into the group of people who had fought in the war,…and who…have gradually convinced themselves that they are exceptionally meritorious and that all of this privilege is so very natural and logical that only fools and obdurate enemies could have any doubts about it. (Djilas 1959:152) Eager to ridicule his powerful comrades for taking for granted their superiority, Djilas did not seriously explore their reasoning as a logic of legitimization. Neither did he intend to examine the milieu and leading revolutionaries’ self-construction that contributed to the assumption that revolutionary leaders deserved better treatment. However, the story about a disheartened young bride does point to an interesting comparability between the two Communist states regarding how the political elite viewed the foundation of privilege.11 In defense of privilege II: the logic of sacrifice A prominent theme in Communist intellectuals’ self-construction, self-sacrifice contributed to the defense of privilege in a crucial way. The theme of sacrifice, as I mentioned, is ambivalent in the sense that when revolutionary intellectuals elaborated on it in building themselves as heroes, they also revealed their own attachment to what they gave up. Contrary to Djilas’s assertion, the revolution was unable to win the total devotion of the revolutionary intellectuals. The consciousness and memories of their tremendous sacrifice, together with their attachment to what they forsook, lured some revolutionary intellectuals to state that since they (and other revolutionaries) had fought so hard and suffered so much for the revolution, when possible, they should be compensated for their difficult lives. They adopted an assumption which I would venture to call the logic of sacrifice, the logic that individuals should be rewarded if they had relinquished much for the revolution. Communist intellectuals had formed this assumption pertaining to the martyrs as early as the mid-1920s. They believed that their dead comrades should still receive reward in a particular form—that is, special treatment given to their families. For instance, in 1925, after finding out that his subordinates in Zhuhai county in Guangdong province had been killed, Ye Jianying wrote a poem to commemorate the martyrs. The poem contains the following lines: “The success of the revolution will eliminate class inequality/[…]/When the day that I long for finally comes, I shall attend to our martyrs’ parents and nurture their children./This is my way of expressing my gratitude to those who died for the cause” (Ye Jianying [1925] 1997:24–5). In the Communist revolution and regime, one attention-drawing reward tied to martyrdom was the official sanction of special treatment for martyrs’ children. By the late 1930s, the CCP had already established the policy of bestowing favors on martyrs’ children, especially the sons and daughters of well-connected martyrs. Sent to the Soviet Union to receive an education, some of them enjoyed the most elitist education in the Communist context. A famous example is Sun Weishi, Zhou Enlai’s adopted daughter. Upon her return from the Soviet Union to Yan’an she was entrusted with important and “fashionable” responsibilities such as serving as Mao’s translator or planning the development of Chinese theater. Another well-known example is Li Peng. Nominated by

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Li Fuchun and Cai Chang to the Party Central (zhonggong zhongyang), he became one of the martyrs’ children sent to the Soviet Union in 1948 (Guan Xiang and Huang Zigui 1998:278–9). Not all martyrs’ offspring could receive such treatment; the orphans’ ability and personality, and particularly their families’ connections influenced whether, how, or from whom they obtained help. Party leaders usually recommended the offspring of the martyrs they knew well. Li Peng’s family connection was most impressive in the Communist circle. His father, Li Shuoxun, was a close comrade of Zhou Enlai and Deng Yingchao; his mother, Zhao Juntao, was an established revolutionary in her own right, working with Deng Yingchao and Cai Chang; and his uncle, Zhao Shiyan, a famous martyr, was an old friend of Li Fuchun (Guan Xiang and Huang Zigui 1998:1). Other Communist leaders were intent on helping the children of their martyr comrades. In 1949 Wang Shoudao located Xia Weixun, whose grandfather, He Shuheng, and father, Xia Chibing, had been martyrs. An old comrade of Xia Chibing, Wang told Xia Weisun to go to Beijing so that he could be selected by the Party to be one of the martyrs’ children sent to the Soviet Union. Unfortunately, He Weisun arrived in Beijing after all the martyrs’ offspring had taken off (Yi Fengkui et al. 1997:230–1). In addition to believing that martyrs should be rewarded for their sacrifice, the CCP probably also granted privileges to their children for other reasons as well—their sympathy for the children, their intention to cultivate a new generation of elite that was closely connected with the Party, and so forth. Noteworthy, however, is the fact that, benefiting much from the Party’s and family friends’ help, Sun Weishi, Li Peng and people of their like were represented by their benefactors as “martyrs’ children” (lieshi houdai or lieshi yigu). It is obvious, therefore, that the CCP sheltered martyrs’ children with the historical memories of the revolutionaries’ sacrifice, memories that were buttressed by Communist intellectuals’ self-construction. It should be noted that revolutionary intellectuals also wielded the logic of sacrifice to ask for things they themselves wanted. They sometimes asked for things which were quite modest. According to a cultural worker’s recollection, in 1941 Nie Rongzhen told the Resistance Troupe to stage Cao Yu’s Sunrise for the senior military officers in the Jin-Cha-Ji border region when they celebrated the Chinese New Year together. As the leader of a border region behind the Japanese lines, which always suffered attacks from the enemy, Nie justified the senior military officers’ preference for “big plays” by invoking on behalf of his educated peers the logic of sacrifice: “All these comrades [leading officers] are fighting in the heart of the enemy’s sphere of influence…. I cannot tell whether every one of them can make it when we meet the next time. Now they ask for a big play, and I am reluctant to turn them down” (Liu Xiaowu 1988:2/181). While Nie did not explicitly mention the threat of death or these officers’ wartime activities, he obviously had in mind their hazardous lives. On another occasion, his mention of the hard life of revolutionary intellectuals was much more specific. In August 1942, insisting that “performing a great foreign play once a year is not that big a deal” (Hung Chang-tai 1994:225; Nie Rongzhen [1942] 1988:2/9), Nie contended: “our cadres in the Border Region work very hard all year long. Is it really so unacceptable that they watch…a fmous foreign play once a year?” (Nie Rongzhen [1942] 1988:2/9). However, top revolutionary leaders also allowed Party authorities—intellectuals and non-intellectuals alike—to wield the logic to help established revolutionaries at various levels gain an advantage over others. Sometimes the privileges these revolutionary

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leaders enjoyed did not amount to much more than the imposition of their will over the inferiors. Consider Communist cadres’ pursuit of personal relationships as an example. In the history of the CCP, from the 1920s, the Party emphasized revolutionary discipline, a major feature of which was attacks upon the individual’s selfishness. From the late 1930s, through cadres’ study of the Party’s perspective on Communist ethics, introduced by leaders such as Liu Shaoqi, the emphasis on the individual’s subordination to Party interests became all the more established among Communist members. But this did not mean that the CCP members had to give up everything non-political for the Party (Liu Shaoqi [1939] 1950:96). Let us take a look at marriage and courtship from the 1930s to the late 1940s. It is true that the CCP insisted on its right to sanction the marriage plans of its members, and, under certain circumstances, objected to some high-level cadres’ choices of partners.12 It is also true, nevertheless, that it provided advantages to many of its powerful cadres at different levels, including the most celebrated ones, in satisfying their non-political needs—to help them pursue the women they liked, and establish and maintain their families. In this regard, veteran revolutionaries’ recollections are most useful. But at present, most reminiscences that reveal interesting information about leading cadres’ advantages in marriage concentrate on what happened from the mid-1930s.13 At that moment, Party authorities devised a couple of commonly used patterns of marriage arrangement. First, the established male revolutionary would identify the woman he was interested in, and then, through the help of her superiors, obtain opportunities to further observe and approach her.14 A second pattern was much cruder: the Party simply decided who should be married to the cadres who wanted a family. This pattern was sometimes adopted when the Party intended to help those revolutionaries who found it more difficult to impress young women through the “courtship” procedure. What deserves our attention is how the logic of sacrifice was employed when some young women resisted the Party’s arrangement. In an interview published in the official Communist magazine Chinese Women (Zhongguo funü), a woman revolutionary, Zhao Jianhua, recalls her experience in the late 1930s. Originally a student at a women’s normal college in Xi’an, she had just joined the CCP when she was assigned the position of a teacher at Rongjun School. Upon arriving at the school, she discovered that she was assigned to be the wife of Hu Ziming, a one-legged military hero. When she tried to resist the arrangement, Chen Zhenya, a veteran revolutionary who happened to be her superior at the school, employed the logic of sacrifice to explain Hu’s privilege in marriage: “If the Party does not make some arrangement, how can these blind or crippled men find their spouses? They contributed [and sacrificed] greatly to the revolution, and the Party must take care of them” (Li Ling 1989:10). It is clear, therefore, that the Party used the logic of contribution and sacrifice to demand other people’s compliance with established revolutionaries’ privilege and desires. In addition, as the CCP always emphasized the individual’s willingness to bear everything for the revolution, it also transformed this willingness into a particular obligation—i.e., the individual’s duty to yield to the superiors who had contributed to or sacrificed for the Communist cause. In Wang Ruowang’s autobiography, he described how, in the late 1930s, in Baoji, a place close to Xi’an, he had worked with a young woman, who was forced to marry Ke Qingshi, a May Fourth veteran turned Communist. Accepting but resenting the arrangement, this woman wailed in front of Wang that the

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Party exploited “the needs of the revolution” (geming xuyao) as an excuse to make young women conform to Party arrangements which violated their own will (Wang Ruowang 1992:225–8). The demand for the inferior’s compliance was also revealed in another woman revolutionary’s experience. After the Long March, the Party arranged for Deng Liujing, a female Long Marcher, to marry Zeng Shan. Although Deng accepted this arrangement, she did not want to be a housewife (Liaowang bianjibu 1986:142–4). Eager to remain an active revolutionary, as she recalls, she worked at her family’s expense, behavior that dissatisfied her husband. Noteworthy is how Chen Yi, the superior of Deng’s husband, offered his help to the unhappy couple. Chen criticized Deng and solicited her cooperation: “You must not make Zeng Shan [Deng’s husband] stay home to nurse the child…. Our revolution is for all the children. Comrade Deng Liujing, you need to support Zeng Shan. I also need your support.” Recollecting her doomed struggle to be a married but professional revolutionary, Deng said in the 1980s: “If taking good care of the child meant support for Mr. Chen, what else could I say?” (Zhao Runting 1987:2/82–3) Thus, in the name of the revolution, a revolutionary leader felt justified to ask for a young woman’s sacrifice of what she wanted most—a productive political career. They succeeded in their determination to crush a devoted woman revolutionary’s resistance to domestic chores and her dream of becoming a useful revolutionary. As the logic of contribution and sacrifice helped legitimize established revolutionaries’ privilege and superior status, it slipped almost too easily into a tool of manipulation which the Party could use to demand the obedience of the inferior “other” for political and non-political purposes. Ironic is the fact that, while in 1948 Mao as the CCP leader had severely criticized those peasant cadres who believed in their right to privilege for their contribution to and sacrifice for the revolutionary process (da jiangshan zuo jiangshan), the Party had in fact employed the aforementioned logic to legitimate its leaders’ privilege. How was the logic of contribution and sacrifice integrated into the Communist hierarchies? And how did this system influence both the privileged and the less privileged? Further exploration of these questions will cast light on the ways in which people experienced stratification in the Communist regime. To conclude this chapter, I intend to reflect on the significance of Communist intellectuals’ self-construction in the contemporary age. I will pass over the Cultural Revolution and the 1980s, because during these times it was obvious that Chinese individuals—and intellectuals especially—appropriated the revolutionary generations’ legacy, including their self-construction. When the Red Guards declared their revolutionary passions, or when intellectuals such as Zhou Yang and Wang Ruoshui revisited and defended Marxism by invoking what they considered to be humanism (Wang Jing 1996:9–36), or when Dai Houying in her epochal piece created the image of a post-Mao hero who struggled to defend and introduce his own vision of Marxism, their acts revealed the relevance of the legacy of Communist intellectuals for the Cultural Revolution period and the decades that followed. The question I consider more pressing is this: does Communist intellectuals’ self-construction—an important part of China’s revolutionary heritage—remain relevant to the present, which seems such a far cry from the (pre-1949 and Cultural) revolution?

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Revolutionary intellectuals’ self-construction in the post-Mao regime Although its political system is characterized by the monopoly of a political Party that still claims to be socialist, contemporary China since the late 1980s can, in some important respects, be called a post-Communist society. The market economy and the importance of economic power as the determinant of social stratification—two basic features that define post-communism—are easily detected in Chinese society.15 Like other post-Communist societies, China also manifests a sense of alienation from Marxism-Leninism. While observers indicate that Russians seem to have lost confidence not only in grand theories such as Marxism but also in notions such as “democracy” and “the market” (Holmes 1998:165), China scholars point out that marching toward the market is a goal shared by many, ranging from intellectuals and state leaders to bureaucrats and Chinese citizens (Zhang Xudong 2001:328–43). It is said that, although politically conscious intellectuals in the 1980s were active in joining the debates on China’s transformation, their voices and their idealism are now marginalized by both the state and the market (Sheldon Lu 1997:68–9; Zhang Xudong 2001:328–38). As state leaders appropriate “socialism” to achieve “capitalism” (Dirlik and Zhang Xudong 1997:5), contemporary China has become a place where various social groups, ranging from the masses to the cadres, aspire after middleclass affluence, and intellectuals as a category have become fragmented and are struggling in diverse ways to find a place in the new order (Zhang Xudong 2001:343). How, then, does Communist intellectuals’ selfconstruction appear relevant for such an age? I would argue that this self-construction is still part of the repertoire upon which public intellectuals and activists can draw when they struggle for their agendas. While it is hardly controversial that at this point intellectuals are going through a process of professionalization and academicization (Sheldon Lu 1997:76; Hao Zhidong 2003:228– 9), relatively new organizations and visions of activism are also emerging in contemporary China. Women’s groups, professional organizations, environmentalist associations, and others were founded in the 1990s. Some of them receive government funding, and some strive to be independent (White et al. 1996:84–114). Moreover, in the face of the increasing integration of the Chinese economy into the global capitalist process, there are those who are willing to engage with the disparity between the rich and the poor as a problem caused by “development” (Hao Zhidong 2003:167–75). Both the Old Left, the orthodox organic intellectuals losing their influence in the power structure, and the New Left, a younger generation of intellectuals concerned about the impact of globalization on China, act as the watchdogs of the Communist state. And both are quite aggressive in publicizing their views on the problems of development, and their own theories about change (Hao Zhidong 2003:164–75). Those that proclaim their interest in activism sometimes deliberately highlight the influence of the Maoist legacy on themselves. For instance, a Chinese feminist scholar based in the United States who came of age in the 1960s says, reflecting on the impact of the Cultural Revolution on her life, “I am delighted to have found in feminism a cause of my own, for the demise of the Maoist revolution did not extinguish my youthful dream of a society of equality and justice…. I am stuck with the identity of ‘agents of social

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change’ endowed by the Maoist state” (Wang Zheng 2001:52). Although the author centers on the significance of the Maoist revolution and the state in the formation of her self-identity, it must be noted that the Maoist state contains not only the writings and image of Mao but also those of numerous charismatic individuals who helped transform the effort to become an agent for change into an admirable goal. As a matter of fact, in their confrontation with the menaces of the rising capitalist economy, some leftists turn to the revolutionary tradition for help. For instance, in their electronic journal China and the World, the New Left proclaims its mission thus: “We hope this journal will help us regain our historical critical perspectives against both capitalism and imperialism…. We hope it will rekindle the enthusiasm and idealism with which we seek a different way” (Hao Zhidong 2003:170). Constructing themselves as activists in the post-Mao era, these social critics identify with the intellectual-emotional elements—what they call enthusiasm and idealism—that were once so expressively and eloquently disclosed by revolutionary intellectuals. To be sure, not everyone would like to admit and dissect at the conscious level what they have inherited from the Maoist state. Younger activists and intellectuals were born into a historical setting different from the milieu that nurtured those who are now middleaged. Besides, all the social, economic and cultural conditions of the post-revolutionary era are bound to create goals of and perspectives on transformation that look different to those of the Maoist and the pre-1949 years. But current scholarship has already drawn attention to how, at the level of popular culture, the Chinese remain emotionally drawn to the revolutionary past (Liu Kang 2004), and how they have converted the image of Mao into a kind of non-confrontational opposition to the problems of the Reform era (Barmé 1996:15), I would like to press for more attention to how, at a more reflective and politically conscious level, people have responded to the salient features of Communist intellectuals’ self-construction. It is useful to examine contemporary actors’ appropriation of—and departure from—the images of socially and politically engaged individuals as defined in revolutionary intellectuals’ self-construction, for such an exploration shows how various generations of activists are both related to and independent from one another in the course of China’s transformation. I would also contend, moreover, that the legacy of Communist intellectuals’ selfconstruction is complex. Not only does it appear relevant for contemporary activism as socio-political idealism; it has also helped shape the consumerism that marks popular culture in its current form. In post-Communist Eastern Europe, experts point out, the embourgeoisment of the cadres/establishment intellectuals in lifestyle (and other dimensions) is an unmistakable fact (Konrad and Szelenyi 1991:344–5).16 As noted, in China, various social classes’ pursuit of bourgeois affluence is also highly visible. An observer of contemporary China has succinctly pointed out that, because the Maoist state promised pleasure and affluence but failed to deliver what it had promised, the Chinese people of the post-Mao age have decided to use the capitalist way to secure those goals. In other words, Marxism ironically became the Chinese path to capitalism and hedonism (Ci Jiwei 1994). I believe that the post-revolutionary intellectuals’ or the masses’ definition of a good life can be different from that of revolutionary intellectuals. But I agree with this observer’s subtle insight that the revolutionary and Maoist traditions contain intellectual and cultural elements that contribute to the nonsocialist development of the post-Mao age. While he focuses more on the significance of the Marxist past for

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the hedonist present at the ideological level, I would contend that at the cultural level revolutionary intellectuals’ self-construction is vitally relevant to the present and to the future. I would argue for exploring the possibility that Communist intellectuals’ selfconstruction helped create the contemporary commitment to a good life and affluence. By representing themselves as sophisticates reveling in such things as literature and the arts, they endorsed the concept of enjoyment of life. By drawing their self-portraits as selfsacrificing heroes giving up all sorts of material comfort and thus leading a hard life, they implied that what they gave up was desirable. Through their self-construction, revolutionary intellectuals unwittingly reminded the Chinese people that everyone is entitled to comfort, pleasure and gratification. The role played by the revolutionary heritage in the Chinese transition to capitalism, consumerism, materialism and China’s post-revolutionary celebration of the quotidian indeed deserves serious examination.

Conclusion Communist intellectuals were revolutionaries in power in various revolutionary settings and in the Communist regime. With the themes of leaders, heroes and sophisticates, their self-construction helped shape the culture and politics in both the pre-1949 and post-1949 periods. Their self-construction allowed the CCP to legitimate itself as a hegemonic leadership. Their self-narratives also helped illustrate vividly the ideological theme of the CCP’s dedication to the people, and molded the Party into an organization led by Mao the great leader and many charismatic historical agents. Nevertheless, revolutionary intellectuals’ self-construction also had its part in the creation of various types of equalities, which violated the Marxist egalitarian ideal and the CCP leadership’s publicly held commitment to the people. It contributed to the existence of a hierarchy in respectability. Revolutionary intellectuals applied ideological adequacy, political devotion and refinement as criteria to judge themselves and other social groups in China, and placed themselves on top of the hierarchy. The hierarchy in respectability privileged the intellectuals, and marginalized the peasantry in both the revolutionary and post-revolutionary phases. In addition, revolutionary intellectuals’ selfconstruction was instrumental in providing the leadership of the regime with the logic behind the practice of privilege. Loaded with stories of admirable historical actors struggling for the revolution, Communist intellectuals’ self-representations helped to fashion the ideas that revolutionaries sacrificed tremendously for the oppressed, and that others should adopt their self-sacrificing spirit and bear everything for the revolutionary cause. These ideas enabled the Party leadership to exploit the logic of contribution, asking for others’ acceptance of the privileges of those contributing greatly to the revolution. Communist intellectuals’ self-construction also buttressed the logic of sacrifice, which argued that people who suffered more deserved more. As China has entered the post-Communist stage, revolutionary intellectuals’ selfnarratives continue to be vitally relevant for an age in which people from all walks of life crave capitalist-style affluence and success. Their self-narratives are parts of the repertoire that activists and critical intellectuals can and do mobilize for their agendas. Last but not least, ironic as it sounds, Communist intellectuals’ self-construction has, by

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assuming the individual’s entitlement to comfort, pleasure and gratification, strengthened the interest in comfort, desire and affluence in contemporary Chinese society.

9 Conclusion To explore the question of how revolutionary intellectuals constructed themselves as the deserving elite of the revolution is to study elitism. In my analysis of Communist intellectuals’ self-construction, I view them as individuals whose lives were marked by various positions. They were radical agents for change, people who had their own longings and preferences, and educated members of their own society. Moreover, I find it important to examine elitism by showing how it negotiated with anti-elitism, which was so conspicuous in the revolutionary intellectuals’ intellectual-emotional universe and ideological system of knowledge. Assuming that one’s elitism is intimately intertwined with one’s views about others, I focus on how Communist intellectuals viewed/constructed themselves in relation to the peasantry. I depict a complex picture of Communist intellectuals’ elitism. Broader than Party elitism, it existed by finding antielitism a force to be reckoned with—by recognizing, subduing, integrating into itself, and vacating the sphere of influence of, anti-elitism. As radicals and educated members of their own society, Chinese Communist intellectuals demonstrated their knowledge about social change and constructed themselves in relation to the peasants from a functional perspective. Though operating in different temporal and spatial contexts, the Yaqian intellectuals, Peng Pai and Mao constructed themselves in significantly comparable ways. They incorporated the antielitist theme of intellectuals’ inability to understand and communicate with the masses into their elitist self-narratives, representing themselves as imperfect leaders who were, however, able to master the task of self-reform. Their entire revolutionary cause was, in fact, based on the anti-elitist assumption that the rural masses could be subjects of transformation. Accepting this assumption, revolutionary intellectuals, occupying the privileged position of knowing more about the revolution, judged the masses, pointed out the masses’ deficiencies, and thus strengthened their own leadership. Celebrating the masses’ historical agency, revolutionary intellectuals also initially supported the futuristic anti-elitist notion of peasant independence, which implied a transitory role for the revolutionary intellectuals’ leadership. But they gradually eliminated this futuristic ideal from their own writings. Revolutionary leaders such as Peng Pai and Mao asserted that they understood the terms and criteria of revolution better than the non-elite; they repeatedly changed their own criteria in judging the peasantry; and, more importantly, they, in the Bolshevization process, elevated the party as a revolutionary vanguard most capable of self-improvement. As educated individuals, Communist intellectuals also constructed themselves from an emotional perspective, representing themselves as devoted radicals and thus revolutionary heroes. They worked in an ideological framework that, from its very beginning, was critical of intellectuals. Indeed, intellectuals themselves promoted this critical stance. To construct themselves as heroes, they avoided, wittingly or unwittingly, confronting directly the Party leadership’s anti-intellectual, anti-elitist rhetoric. They

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withdrew from the ideological space that was occupied by intellectual-ideological thinking, and expressed their own feelings in a personal, intimate way. Born into a romantic era, they were articulate, though not always elaborate, in expressing their political subjectivity. Not only did they declare their political commitment by displaying their feelings about the status quo, revolution, and themselves and their comrades as revolutionaries; they also “demonstrated” their loyalty to the revolution (and their superior commitment) by expanding on their difficult, struggling and self-sacrificing lives. Their self-expressions to some extent echoed, or were even clearly inspired by, earlier radicals’ writings. And they also integrated into their personalized politicized selfrepresentations traces of Marxism-Leninism. However, despite retreating to die nonideological space and asserting their devotion at a personal level, they reflected on their political passions in a manner that carried ideological consequences. They demonstrated their political loyalty, and manufactured the impression that their political commitment was stronger than that of the oppressed masses. Moreover, operating in the ideological domain, they agreed with the Party’s attack against intellectuals’ petit bourgeois or bourgeois tendencies, embracing the act of self-criticism as a show of their devotion to the revolution. All of this attention to anti-elitism, personal devotion, self-sacrifice and self-criticism lured the Party to integrate these images of revolutionary intellectuals into the CCP’s endeavors to develop and theorize about revolutionary ethics. Building themselves up as individuals of heroic, if not yet mythical, proportions, revolutionary intellectuals helped their images gain an impressive entry into the ideological system of knowledge. Communist intellectuals also appreciated beauty, literature and the arts. Their upbringing and education instilled in them a love for, and the ability to savor, cultural refinement. They were also born or they grew up in a historical setting known for cultivating intellectuals’ interests in aesthetics. Aside from constructing themselves in the functional and emotional dimensions, Communist intellectuals also narrated their experience from an aesthetic perspective, displaying their view that they had better taste in, and superior knowledge of, art, literature, music and other intellectual and symbolic expressions of human experience. After the Yan’an Forum and the Rectification Campaign, revolutionary intellectuals accepted, whole—or half-heartedly, the CCP’s popularization policy, and chastened their own snobbishness. Even so, they did not cease to view themselves as sophisticates. By praising folk art and literature, they represented themselves as sophisticates who benefited artistically from popularization. By characterizing folk art and literature as simple, crude and artistically backward, they narrated themselves as sophisticates who were so benevolent as to lower themselves to the cultural level of the masses. And they created and orchestrated an important project of raising standards in the popularized setting. Moreover, they represented themselves as uniquely able to create and use impressive, if not always popularized, cultural-aesthetic performances to serve revolutionary politics. Despite the revolutionary intellectuals’ radical gesture of honoring the masses’ cultural performances and wisdom, they were not so revolutionary in the sense that they judged themselves and others by classificatory schemes with standards that could only be acquired, used and fully appreciated by the well-educated. Revolutionary intellectuals’ self-construction as leaders, heroes and sophisticates acted as a historical dynamic, shaping the culture and politics of the revolutionary decades and

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the post-1949 regime. This historical dynamic contributed to the CCP’s attempt to legitimate itself as a hegemonic leadership by adding colorful details to the ideological theme of the party’s dedication to the people, and by transforming the revolutionary intellectuals themselves into charismatic agents for change working together with the masses. But Communist intellectuals’ self-construction was also instrumental in creating new kinds of inequalities that went against the Marxist egalitarian ideal and the Communist leadership’s pronounced commitment to the people, the very tenets upon which the Party had built its legitimacy. Their self-narratives helped invent a hierarchy of respectability. Though privileging intellectuals, this hierarchy also revealed Chinese intellectuals’ own subjugation to Westernized culture, which, for them, was a diverse entity containing different things, ranging from Marxism to Soviet and bourgeois art. Moreover, Communist intellectuals’ self-representation also helped provide a system of logic used by Party leadership to create privileged status for those who were important and/or sacrificed for the revolution. In the contemporary age (from the 1990s to the present), which looks far from revolutionary, revolutionary intellectuals’ self-construction is still notably relevant. An examination of how contemporary political actors appropriate—or even depart from—the images of socially and politically engaged individuals, as defined in revolutionary intellectuals’ self-construction, will illuminate the ways in which each generation of activists stands in the course of China’s transformation. Moreover, through their selfconstruction, revolutionary intellectuals have reminded the Chinese people that everyone is entitled to comfort, pleasure and gratification. An examination of the question of how the revolutionary heritage was involved in the Chinese transition to consumerism and the post-modern celebration of everyday life will further reveal the engagement of the revolutionary past with the seemingly hedonistic present. Finally, a few more words before ending this exploration of Communist intellectuals’ self-construction and its significance. Communist intellectuals lived their lives and shaped history as political actors, individuals who retained their nonpolitical longings and desires, and the educated elite of their own society. The ways in which their selfconstruction operated as a historical dynamic reveal the complex role played by revolutionary intellectuals as a particular revolutionary contingent. Their selfrepresentations contributed to the CCP’s attempts at legitimation, but also led to the hierarchy in respectability and helped justify privilege in the revolution and the Communist regime. With its political idealism, Communist intellectuals’ selfconstruction became part of the repertoire for contemporary political actors’ activist performances. But with its reluctance to relinquish the non-political, their selfconstruction in an implicit manner conveyed to the public the message that humans are entitled to comfort and enjoyment of life, thereby contributing to the contemporary Chinese embrace of the quotidian. Perhaps it is by examining historical actors as individuals with various identities that we can understand better historical actors themselves as well as the history and culture they helped shape.

Notes 1 Perspectives 1 To some extent, the definition of self-construction I adopt is quite similar to Foucault’s concept of self-constitution, as both concepts concentrate on how people create their own existence. However, the two concepts differ as well. Analyzing self-constitution, Foucault focuses on practices which “permit individuals to effect by their own means or with the help of others a certain number of operations on their bodies, souls, thoughts, conduct, and way of being, so as to transform themselves in order to attain a certain state of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection or immortality” (Best and Kellner 1991:61). In my work, I do not intend to examine those operations which allow individuals to develop their belief in their own selftransformation or self-improvement. I analyze “self-construction” by mainly focusing on the literary acts of writing, through which individuals reflect on, attempt to make sense of, and represent their being, including their attempts of self-improvement.

Another word I use quite a bit in my research is “individual.” This is a term which has recently drawn a certain amount of attention from scholars of different fields. Scholars always note that in the May Fourth and post-May Fourth contexts the historical usage of the term implies a person’s autonomy and rights vis-à-vis the collective (whether it is a political organization or society at large). In addition, recent scholarship has argued that the Chinese appropriated the foreign concept of the individual, and thus modified the meaning of the term according to China’s needs and conditions (Lydia Liu 1995). Using the term “individual,” I would dissociate my research from any exploration into how the individual was defined in modern Chinese contexts. To describe the individual, I simply mean that he/she is more than a member of any kind of collective, and that his/her life is shaped by various positions in life. Therefore, one sometimes feels the clashes between the feelings, needs and demands rooted in these positions, or conflicts between what one aspires to and what one’s collective wants. 2 I define culture as a complex system that includes people’s knowledge, ideas, values, beliefs composing or staying outside of any ideological system, behavior (including political behavior), sentiments, attitudes, habits, aesthetic practices, institutions and everyday experiences. It is evident that some of these elements are considered by historians to be essential topics for fields such as intellectual history, political history, political philosophy and ideology. When I say that I read a certain element—say, ideology—in cultural terms, I

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explore how this particular element, combining with others, constitutes a complex historical phenomenon (in this study, as I shall discuss later, it is about how many of these cultural elements combine to form elitism in Communist intellectuals’ self-construction). And when I use the term “cultural” as opposed to “political,” and in conjunction with the term “aesthetic” and aesthetics-related issues, I usually refer to tastes or activities that are related to art, music, literature, etc. 3 In this book, revolutionary intellectuals as a category are defined in two ways. First, adopting Gouldner’s conceptualization of intellectuals (Gouldner 1979:48), I view revolutionary intellectuals as those who were relatively well educated, critical, emancipatory and political. But who were identified as the well educated by CCP? In the revolutionary period, the Chinese Communist Party addressed as intellectuals those who had received a high school education, its equivalent (such as training in technical and normal schools), or higher. Much has been said about such issues as the presence of intellectuals in the CCP (Spence 1981:141–2 ; Domes 1985; 50–6), the CCP’s policies of recruiting intellectuals (Lee Hong Yung 1991:13–46), and the internal diversity of the category of Party intellectuals (Chen Yung-fa 1998). At any rate, to a significant degree, I follow the Communist Party’s definition of intellectuals, as this definition determined who should be called intellectuals in the Chinese revolution, and how these “intellectuals” categorized themselves in relation to other social groups in the revolution. To be precise and specific, in this piece of research, revolutionary intellec tuals in the Chinese Communist revolution were individuals who dedicated themselves to the revolutionary mission and received a high school education, its equivalent, or higher.

And second, to some extent I also make use of Gramsci’s concept of organic intellectuals, understood as the thinking and organizing element of a particular social class. His definition of organic intellectuals is different from the CCP’s description of the intellectuals. However, I find it important to take into account the concept of organic intellectuals in my study of Chinese revolutionary intellectuals, for it was their self-appointed mission of thinking for and organizing the oppressed that determined their historical importance. In addition, it should be noted that in the Chinese Communist revolution, some revolutionaries who were not especially educated by the Party’s standards did later engage in literary activities, writing poetry to express their feelings or producing articles to introduce revolutionary ideas. These organic intellectuals were sometimes comparable with their better-educated comrades in terms of the activities they took part in. Therefore, in this study, revolutionary intellectuals include two groups of people: the revolutionaries who were well educated, and the radicals who were able to articulate their emotions and revolutionary ideas in the written from. 4 Luk and Van de Ven approach the issue of Bolshevization differently (see note 9, Chapter 2). But at the same time, they both use the term “Bolshevization” to discuss the process in which the Party leadership was becoming more organized and centralized. In addition, Van

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de Ven in his study notes the conflicts that arose between revolutionaries in this “tightly disciplined” organization (Van de Ven 1991:242). However, this is not an issue I plan to explore here. 5 In a strict sense, the CCP’s proletarianization program, as a policy on restructuring Party leadership from the late 1920s to the mid-1930s, did not conflict with the revolutionary leaders’ elitist contempt for the peasants. We list it in the discussion mainly because this program, at any rate, signified the revolutionary intellectuals’ anti-elitist denial of their own leadership, albeit a denial vis-à-vis the proletariat. In fact, the proletarianization of Communist leadership did not signify the real influence of leaders of working-class background on Party politics. Both Bo Yibo’s and Zhang Guotao’s memoirs indicate that Xiang Zhongfa, a worker named general-secretary in 1928, did not or could not exercise real political power (Stranahan 1998:65; Bo Yibo 1996:89). 6 In this study, when I use the term “identity,” to some extent I refer to how the individual is defined by society and others. Gategories such as “educated members of society” are always based on social perceptions (Schoppa 1995:123). But more importantly, I refer to the individual’s self-definitions—how the individual sees himself (“I am an undergraduate teacher”).

Self-definitions are always social in nature. In other words, the individual tends to explain who he is in terms of his social group membership or position(s) in social contexts. These memberships or positions may mean various things: roles inside the institution of family (“I am a father”); demographic/racial/ethnic categories (“I am Asian American”); gender and/or age groups (“I am a woman” or “I am a senior citizen”); class (“I am a peasant”); political affiliation (“I am a Democrat”); educational degrees and levels (“I am a high school graduate” or “I am an intellectual”), interpersonal relationships (“I am John’s friend”), and so forth. Sometimes, an individual also defines himself by appropriating commonsense psychological concepts. These terms help him reflect on his situation (“I am a person who has obligations and needs”). The individual’s identity is characterized by multiplicity (“I am a father, music club member, and researcher”). These multiple identities are always intertwined with one another, but in different ways, in various contexts (“I am both a friend and researcher explaining to my fellow graduate students my research,” but “I become a student and researcher when I explain my research to my major professor”). And one identity appears to be more salient under some circumstances (e.g., despite being an individual with multiple identities, a doctor always identifies himself as a doctor when working in his office). Concerning this study, what deserves our particular attention is the fact that when the individual chooses or acts upon a certain identity

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based upon his identification with particular social categories or groups, he somehow merges, his individual-level identity with his collective-level identity (e.g., if a person holds the individual-level identity “I am Chinese,” he identifies with members of the same category and possesses a collective-level identity (“we are Chinese”). Moreover, some identities seem to be more fundamental than others: for instance, the identity “I am a revolutionary” is indispensable for the identity “I am a revolutionary leader.” And the identity “I am an intellectual” is quite important, although it may not be indispensable, to the identity “I am a fan of high culture.” 7 In this book, I call this the ideological system of knowledge because of my focus on Marxism, one of the most influential ideologies in the modern age. In fact, many agents for change, particularly those in the contemporary age, would not consider their envisioning of change an ideology.

Regarding the use of the term “knowledge,” I borrow but also to some extent modify Eyerman and Jamison’s theory on the cognitive praxis of social movements. They define knowledge thus: “knowledge is not only or even primarily the systematized, formalized knowledge of the academic world, nor (merely) the scientific knowledge produced by sanctioned professionals. It is rather the broader cognitive praxis that informs all social activity” (Eyerman and Jamison 1991:49). They divide the cognitive praxis of social movement into three closely interrelated facets: the cosmological, the organizational and the technical dimensions (Eyerman and Jamison 1991:61–93 and 165–66). I would like to explain how I appropriate their theory. First, in their examination of socialist and Communist movements, and environmentalist and civil rights movements, Eyerman and Jamison view cosmological knowledge in a broad way, viewing it as factors—the concepts, philosophy, values, etc.—that serve as the intellectual foundation of the movements, and guide their activists to dissect/critique society and nature, and their relationships. However, they are specific in identifying the cosmological dimensions of various movements. For instance, they emphasize the concepts related to ecology while discussing environmentalism (Eyerman and Jamison 1991:70–5), stress the scientific theory of historical evolution while introducing Marx (Eyerman and Jamison 1991:86– 7), and highlight democratic values while dissecting the American civil rights movement (Eyerman and Jamison 1991:122–3). In my

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analysis of Chinese Communist intellectuals’ self-construction, I use their broad definition of the cosmological dimension. Second, using Eyerman and Jamison’s concept of knowledge, I borrow from it the notion of organizational aspect, defined as forms and structures that characterize the movement (e.g. trade union and the revolutionary party of the Marxist movement) (Eyerman and Jamison 1991:88). I also venture into what they call the technical dimension of knowledge, defined by them as tactics and techniques of protest (e.g. the principle of non-violence of the civil rights movement) (Eyerman and Jamison 1991:123). While Eyerman and Jamison do not discuss explicitly and substantially how the technical aspects fit in their conceptual framework of cognitive praxis, I find it relevant to my research, since the technique of protests was essential to the unfolding of the Communist revolution in China. Appropriating the concepts of organizational and technical dimensions, I include with them such factors as strategies that were used to challenge the status quo, or to sustain the prospect of that challenge (i.e. to ensure the survival of the organizational and human agents for change in various historical circumstances). Third, I do not tackle what these two scholars call the technological dimension, which is the exploration of alternative technologies that represent a new approach to nature, machine and social relationships. This is not to suggest that technology is not important for the Marxist movement. I do not mention it because my research is not related to the issue of technology in the Chinese Communist revolution. Fourth, I accept their view that the three dimensions of the cognitive praxis are closely intertwined. But I also realize that sometimes the three dimensions do not constitute a coherent whole. For instance, in Marxism, while equality was certainly an important notion included in its new cosmological knowledge about society, elitism was frequently employed as a principle that organized the Marxist movement. Fifth, while it can be said that Communist intellectuals’ selfconstruction, especially how they perceived themselves from the functional perspective, was part of their knowledge about the revolution, I content myself with focusing on revolutionary intellectuals’ self-construction. But I shall discuss how the integration

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of self-construction into ideology caused complexity to ideological knowledge. 8 Research on the 1911 revolutionaries shows that many historical figures of modern China’s radical politics embraced revolutionary idealism, laden with intense emotions and a selfconsciously heroic selflessness (Rankin 1971:17, 39 and 44–5; Hsueh Chun-tu 1961:5; Price 1974:209–10). Experts on the May Fourth movement and Communism discuss how various kinds of emotions directed toward different objects—such as love for China, hatred for society, or passion for political ideology—accompanied and affected radical intellectuals’ political action (Schwartz 1951:15; Feigon 1983:142). Also explored is the relationship between political passion and radicals’ selfimage. Politics-oriented emotions, both Roy and Schwarcz argue, were significant for revolutionary and non-revolutionary intellectuals’ selfimage, particularly their sense of self-worth (Roy 1971:98–9; Schwarcz 1986:183–92). David Roy shows how the romantic attraction to heroes helped shape Guo Moruo’s selfimage, and Vera Schwarcz demonstrates how political emotion determined some May Fourth-intellectuals’ self-esteem. 9 Vladimir Nahirny defines ideological groups as “groups which require that their members orient themselves to one another primarily in terms of some central symbols and ideas” (Nahirny 1983:1). And he basically follows Edward Shils’ definition of ideology (Shils 1972:23). Nahirny’s research also draws upon the examples of many Russian populists— from Chernyshevsky to Belinsky—to assert that “ideological bearers” attempted to abandon all their personal concerns and ties and were bent on “ideologizing every sphere of their relationships to people, including the ties of friendship and marriage” (Nahirny 1983:88). Although he notes that these men of conviction suffered from the tension between their estrangement from the people and their need for love, he still characterizes their “ideological orientation” as total (Nahirny 1983:163).

Nahirny also pays attention to the diversity of ideological groups’ organizational structures: he differentiates the informal ideological group from the formal one. He defines the latter as more professional in terms of the recruitment process, more centralized in terms of decision making, and thus more hierarchically structured in terms of organization (Nahirny 1983:166–7). He insists, however, that the formal group shares with the informal one that total ideological orientation. Formal groups do not admit “either the separation of public and private spheres of life, or the clear-cut segregation of the individual roles.” According to Nahirny, formal ideological groups continue to demand “a total commitment to the cause,” “which is now authoritatively defined and institutionalized” (Nahirny 1983:166). 10 The assumption that there is tension between the personal and the political is shared by others, too. In Revolution Plus Love, Liu Jianmei argues that in modern literary imaginings the pursuit of revolution and that of love were “inextricably combined.” But she also believes that, as a product of Chinese modernity, the theme of revolution plus love was marked by various types of tensions, including that between collective mythologies and personal happiness, that between the ideal and the real, and that between the sublime and the quotidian (Liu Jianmei 2003:210).

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11 Lenin’s love for music has been noted by experts. For instance, in Revolutionary Ascetic, Bruce Mazlish (1977) uses the approach of psychoanalysis to explore the tension Lenin suffered between his revolutionary role and his non-political drives. He believes that the suppression of the personal (or in my words, the non-political) compelled Lenin to find some emotional outlet through his intense passion for music. 12 It should be noted that Bourdieu’s research is based on surveys conducted in France in the 1960s. The standards of high culture in that context are different from those in modern China in general, and the Chinese Communist revolution in particular. For instance, pieces such as “The Blue Danube” and La Traviata, which were popular among the working classes in France, were not regarded as part of the “mass” culture. I simply appropriate the part of Bourdieu’s wisdom which is applicable to non-French contexts—namely, his points that social and educational backgrounds shaped people’s cultural and aesthetic activities, and that people use the factor of taste to develop their sense of distinction. 13 People define autobiography in slightly different ways. But here I choose a very general definition—autobiography is a literary process in which, by selectively reflecting on their lives, and showing the interconnectedness of personal and historical events that they think are crucial for their life-courses, the authors analyze their formations and developments, and answer the question of “who am I?” 14 In the China field, although literary scholars have long studied autobiographical or semiautobiographical writings of modern Chinese authors, not many researchers have studied autobiography as a genre (for a recent study of modern Chinese autobiography, see Janet Ng 2003). 15 Not only are there numerous studies of Communist ideology and local mobilization, and evaluations of the peasantry’s weaknesses and strength as a political force, but the number of available original sources is also high. A synthesis of what scholars recognize as important sources seems a plausible approach to depicting the basic features of functional elitism. But my examination of functional elitism as part of Communist intellectuals’ self-construction is intended to show the importance of functional elitism for themselves as individuals. Taking into account the fact that many Communist intellectuals wrote elaborately about themselves and the peasantry from a functional perspective, I assume that there should be a better way to investigate their functional elitism than through a synthesis. Therefore, I choose to focus on a few cases in depth. This approach, I presume, will reveal more powerfully and vividly the subjectivity of revolutionary intellectuals as individuals. 16 Some recent publications are aimed at introducing the cultural-aesthetic side of some famous revolutionaries (Fan Shuo 1997; Sun Qinan 1992). But I think they are far from sufficient in bringing out any famous historical actor’s “history” of cultural-aesthetic pursuit. 17 Experts believe that memoirs and recollections can be problematic. Memory always fails when one attempts to recall what one thought, felt and experienced years ago. In addition, people sometimes recreate their and their comrades’ history for certain goals. They may hide details embarrassing to them, indulge in fantasies of self-importance, and, as Stranahan points out, try to settle old scores and to enhance their own position in a new world (Stranahan 1998:15). 18 My interest in the personal (both political and non-political) lives of Communist intellectuals certainly gives rise to the question of how I use the post-Cultural Revolution publications aimed at humanizing revolutionary leaders.

After 1976, there was a widespread, eloquently voiced discontent with the “ultraleftists”’ disregard of individuals’ non-political needs during the Cultural Revolution. Such criticisms came from different groups of Chinese society, including intellectuals and veteran Communist leaders. The post-1976 criticism of the Cultural

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Revolution radicals’ neglect of individuals’ non-political needs, together with a more relaxed political atmosphere, made possible the publications that reveal the “private lives” of famous revolutionaries. These publications cover things ranging from these people’s family lives to aesthetic-cultural activities. From the late 1980s to the 1990s, there was a wave of literary and historical publications that identified “humanizing” Communist leaders as their main mission. Some authors have used humanization to beautify the revolutionary leaders (Quan Yanchi 1990 and 1993; Tie Zhuwei 1989), and others have attempted to represent themselves as insiders exposing the “darkest” secrets of famous revolutionaries (Li Zisui 1994; Ai Bei 1994). But many of these publications are not so credible as historical sources. While the authenticity of the publications critical of celebrated revolutionaries remains a controversial issue, those post1976 materials that beatify them also seem less than dependable. Publications about Mao Zedong are a case in point. The memoir by Li Zisui represents Mao in an unfavourable light, but its authenticity was certainly challenged in a new book on Mao, which is co-authored by Li’s own colleagues. However, this new publication, entitled The True Life of Mao Zedong, purifies Mao’s image so much that its description of Mao’s relationships with women collides with many other accounts of how Mao dealt with women and his several marriages (Lin Ke et al. 1995:192–3; for Mao’s relationship with women, see Wang Xingjuan 1993). Moreover, many of these publications centering on revolutionary leaders’ “private lives” do not specify their information sources and therefore lack scholarly respectability. I therefore use them minimally and cautiously. I take into account the identity of the author. If a pro-government author who writes about celebrated Communist intellectuals’ pasts in a way that does not look flattering, and if this person’s writing is based on a number of veteran revolutionaries’ recollections, I rate it as fairly reliable. But I quote this author’s writing only when the phenomenon (once again, not the specific details related to the lives of any specific individual) he or she mentions is also described in other sources. 19 Regarding gendered differences, I do discuss some women revolutionaries’ writings related to the question of revolutionary intellectuals’ self-construction. But I do not construe my research as one attempting to differentiate between male and female revolutionaries’ state of mind. This is not, however, to deny gender differences. Recent research has already proven

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male-female differences in perspectives on important concerns for modern Chinese intellectuals (Lydia Liu 1994:157–80). This type of research presses us to think about the possibility that gender-based disparities existed when female and male revolutionaries appropriated different concepts/perspectives/ language to construct themselves and the peasantry. In addition, I do not disregard the value of investigating gender differences. Quite the contrary, I think that attention to gendered differences in men’s and women’s construction of the self and peasantry is very important, if we want to penetrate into genderbased diversity involved in the Communist revolutionary heritage. But to study seriously male-female differences (and parallels) is a different kind of undertaking: we need to dissect women intellectuals’ writings on the peasants and on themselves as revolutionaries, and then compare them with male revolutionaries’ writings. This, I have to admit, exceeds my present goal of analyzing multi-dimensional elitism. However, in my analysis, I shall also introduce gender-related themes and ideas which are relevant to elitism and existed in female and male revolutionaries’ self-construction.

It is also interesting to see how revolutionary intellectuals evaluated female and male peasants within their functional perspective—for instance, how revolutionary intellec tuals distinguished peasant men from peasant women in terms of their merits and weaknesses in the revolution. I should clarify, however, that this book is meant to be a “close-up” of revolutionary intellectuals’ self-construction in relation to the peasantry. To study how Communist intellectuals constructed themselves in relation to “the peasantry,” I believe that I should not focus on analyzing the ways in which they perceived gendered differences within the social category of peasant masses. Thus, an examination of Communist intellectuals’ functional evaluation of peasant men and women seems to be out of place in this piece of research. 20 Speaking of revolutionary intellectuals as the elite group of the Communist Party, I include various types of educated Chinese—those who became Party leaders at various levels, those who might have been attracted to Marxism-Leninism for humanitarian reasons, those who suffered miserable fates imposed on them by the Party, those who chose to become loyal functionaries of the CCP, or those who belonged to different political factions in the CCP’s internal struggle. This shows how, despite differences in their relationships to and positions in the CCP, Communist intellectuals contributed to a motif of elitism which united revolutionary intellectuals’ self-construction. This inclusive approach to the category of intellectuals is to some extent comparable to what is said in Cheek’s book on Deng Tuo: “Different intellectuals served the CCP at different levels of responsibility and commitment” (Cheek 1997:8).

It should also be noted that, considering these people as “revolutionary intellectuals,” my modus operandi for dealing with them is different from that of existing scholarship. Placing intellectuals in the context of Communism, some experts have developed the theme of confrontation—that between Communist authorities and revolutionary intellectuals working for the Party. In

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Literary Dissent in Communist China, Merle Goldman chooses to focus on the conflict between the Chinese Communist Party and Chinese writers who had a sincere commitment to the humanitarian aspirations of Marxism and insisted on the right to define Communism in their own way (Goldman 1967:8). When scholars analyze the relationships between China’s intellec tuals and the postwar Communist state (and also, in some research, the pre-1949 fugitive state), they always notice the conflict between the Party and the critical intellectuals, some of whom were Party members (Goldman and Cheek 1987:11–16; Apter and Cheek 1994). What always accompanies the conflict model is a typology of intellectuals working for the Communist establishment in terms of their intellectual activities and relationships with the Party. In her 1967 work, Goldman divides her protagonists into the categories of revolutionary writers and cultural bureaucrats (Goldman 1967:xi– xvii). But recent scholarship also introduces a new and more complex angle on the intellectual-CCP relationship. In his recently published book, Hao Zhidong divides intellectuals working for the Communist Party into revolutionary intellectuals in power (in the post-1949 regime), organic intellectuals (as advisors to those in power), and critical intellectuals (revolutionaries before they were in power). While he notes the tension between the CCP and those intellectuals who work for it, he moves beyond the theme of tension by viewing top revolutionary intellectuals as the leading group of the CCP and, later, the Communist regime. He also examines how organic intellectuals were willing to collaborate with the Party (Hao Zhidong 2003:1–72).

2 Radical intellectuals as the guiding force of change: the beginning of the political odyssey 1 Another major principle, according to Chow Tse-tsung, was science. In his discussion on radical intellectuals’ thinking, he notes their struggle against old superstitions and religions (Chow Tse-tsung 1960:58–9). 2 Dirlik makes this point to help show how the diffuseness of the New Culture movement disguised the anarchist role in the May Fourth era, but it likewise points up the critical role played by the iconoclasts’ faith in democracy: in the May Fourth period, revolutionary eclecticism, audacious as it was, did not welcome those ideas or values that struck the radicals as undemocratic.

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3 What should be included in the New Culture movement is now a matter of debate among researchers. Some intend to move beyond the conventional conceptualization of the New Culture movement as introduced by scholars like Chow Tse-tsung—that is, the understanding that New Culture includes such elements as new literature and the cultural iconoclasm of the late 1910s and early 1920s (Chow Tse-tsung 1960:5). These revisionists argue that New Culture not only covers these elements but also includes late Qing reformers’ and radicals’ envisioning of change (Chow Kai-wing and Hon Tze-ki 2003). In view of the facts that established scholarship on Chinese Communism usually identifies the late 1910s and early 1920s as the New Culture period, and that what the revised definition of New Culture means for the understanding of the Communist movement is unclear at this point, I follow the old definition of the New Culture movement (and also the May Fourth movement). And I do not intend to challenge the conventionally accepted time frame of this movement. 4 From 1913 to 1919, he wrote many articles, descriptive, analytical, or both, to introduce the issues related to democracy—from the merits of the unicameral system and the defects of the bicameral system (Li Dazhao [1913] 1984a:1/52–5) to the relationship between the Russian Revolutions and democracy ([1917] 1984d:1/359–62; [1918] 1984b:1/597–603). He also discussed the responsibility of parliament ([1913] 1984a:1/52–5), the democratic systems of Europe ([1913] 1984b:1/74–7; [1913] 1984c:1/78–81), the principles of democracy ([1916] 1984a:1/153–76), the proper way to frame a republic’s constitution ([1916] 1984b:1/220–5; [1916] 1984c: 1/226–43), and the confrontation between Chinese tradition and a republican constitution (Li Dazhao [1917] 1984b:1/251–4; [1917] 1984c:1/258–60; [1918] 1984a: 1/557–71). 5 We use the word “cosmopolitan” to highlight Chen’s and Li’s commitment to a worldwide, multiracial, egalitarian union. We choose this adjective first because cosmo politanism denotes, amongst other things, an aspiration for a worldwide brotherly union; and second because experts in Marxism usually consider Marxist internation-alism to be a kind of cosmopolitanism (Bottomore 1983:231–3). Thus, in analyzing how these two potential Marxists translated their appreciation of democracy as an agency of worldwide union into a commitment to socialism, we prefer to call this commitment or perspective “cosmopolitaninternationalist.” This compound adjeo tive seems to pinpoint effectively the similarity and continuity between non-socialist and socialist, or even Marxist commitments. 6 Both Li and Chen regarded love, mutual respect and mutual aid as integral parts of the democratic spirit (Li Dazhao [1918] 1984b:1/594; Chen Duxiu [1918] 1922a: 2/583–4; [1919] 1922c:1/366). 7 Their multiple commitments to democracy expose the weakness of the view that nationalistic concern was the paramount, or even exclusive, dynamic leading to the Chinese intellectuals’ acceptance of democracy (Chang Hao 1971:305–6; Nathan 1986:xiii and 104). But still confronting us is the question of the relative weight of the respective commitments. Some scholars have held that May Fourth individualism liberated the individual from the bonds with his family (or tradition in general) but then subjected them to those institutions— ranging from the state to political organizations—fighting for nationalism and other ideological goals. To make the fate of individualism sound less “subjugated,” recent scholarship chooses to talk about how individualism was in complicity with nationalism in the sense that individualism “contributed to the process of inventing geren for the goals of…national revolution” (Lydia Liu 1995:91). It should be noted, however, that, at least in the late 1910s, May Fourth radicals valued the individual and the individual-related principles of liberty and equality not only for the sake of nationalism. This fact was shown clearly in the ways in which they valued all these commitments.

Chen Duxiu tended to give almost equal importance to nationoriented utilitarianism, individual-oriented utilitarianism, and the

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appreciation of democracy’s autonomous value; he was reluctant to give priority to any of them at the expense of the others. His concept of an ideal nation-state, for instance, reflected all three of these commitments, For Chen, the ideal nation-state should be one in which the sovereignty was firmly rooted in the rights of individuals. In other words, individuals’ rights were intertwined naturally with the independence of a nation’s sovereignty (Chen Duxiu [1916] 1922a: 1/45). However, the ideal nation-state meant more than that. As Chen emphasized: “The kind of country we love is that which seeks happiness for her people and not that which demands the people’s sacrifice for her” (Chen Duxiu [1919] 1922d:1/650). It may not be clear whether happiness of the people means that of the people as individuals, as a collective entity, or as both. But recalling his lament over the suffering caused by the lack of individual liberty and rights and his praise of the West’s recognition of individual happiness, we can be certain that his concept of the happiness of the people included that of the people as individuals. Furthermore, the democratic nationstate was ideal not only because its democracy promoted individual happiness, but also because it was democratic per se. Chen’s discontent with Germany—a strong nation—was conditioned by his understanding that most of the German people disliked the idea of human rights (Chen Duxiu [1915] 1922b:1/15). This discontent was not necessarily derived from the belief that lack of democracy led to the individual’s unhappiness. Although Chen was highly sensitive to the cause-effect relationship between the repression of individual rights and individual suffering, he did not deny that dependent, submissive, bonded humans had their own happiness as slaves (Chen Duxiu [1915] 1922a:1/4). But the happiness of the slave was precisely what Chen vehemently rejected: in his debate with a writer who advocated the adoption of minben zhuyi, the doctrine of “for the people,” as the underlying principle of China’s democratic political system, Chen criticized the doctrine because “it eliminates the people’s dignity and independence as individual human beings” (Chen Duxiu [1919] 1922a:1/329). Thus, Chen expressed his appreciation of democracy’s autonomous value in the sense that it embodied the most fundamental moral values, whatever its other benefits.

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In contrast to Chen Duxiu, Li Dazhao gave more weight to his nation-oriented utilitarianism than to his other commitments. It seems that Li’s appreciation of the autonomous value of democracy was somehow limited by his nation-oriented utilitarianism. He argued: “the survival of a nation depends upon law and institution, while the life of individual lies in the realization of natural principles.” For him, “A nation which does not possess its own law and institutions will lose its sovereignty and dignity; an individual who fails to adhere to natural principles will lose his value as a human.” “Thus,” he concluded,” the citizens of a constitutional state should struggle to maintain their nation’s dignity as well as respect the value of being humans” (Li Dazhao [1916] 1984a:1/173). However, while perceiving natural principles as people’s rights to develop and to express their wills (Li Dazhao [1916] 1984a:1/153–157 and 173), Li was concerned about the adherence to natural rights as a factor leading to the progress of the group (Li Dazhao [1916] 1984a:1/173). In this way, his nation-oriented utilitarianism was revealed. Still, Li’s nation-oriented utilitarianism, strong as it was, could not entirely overcome his commitment to the individual-oriented and autonomous value of democracy. When he insisted that the constitution was drawn up for the happiness of the people (Li Dazhao [1916] 1984d:1/245), when he expressed the belief that people’s rights to develop and to express their will were a kind of natural principle (Li Dazhao [1916] 1984a:1/153–7), Li, to some extent at least, embraced individual-oriented utilitarianism and democracy’s autonomous value as significant commitments “in themselves.” Individual-oriented utilitarianism may have been less important than nation-oriented utilitarianism, but it was still significant; democracy’s autonomous value was not only useful for the nation but correct and precious in itself. For both Li and Chen, perhaps, the cosmopolitan—internationalist commitment was the weakest, relatively speaking. Their internationalism was based partly upon their nation-oriented utilitarianism. Moreover, they formed their nation-oriented utilitarianism, individual-oriented utilitarianism, and appreciation of democracy’s autonomous value mainly through their observation of Chinese society. As China remained the focus of their attention and the arena of their intellectual as well as political activities,

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cosmopolitanism-internationalism could not carry as much weight other commitments. 8 When Chen rejected the imitation of the capitalist democratic West in 1920, he chose a position dramatically different from the one he had held only a year earlier. In 1919, as Chow Tse-tsung notes, he still insisted that in implementing democracy, the Chinese must follow the British and American models (Chow Tse-tsung 1960:231). And yet, as early as 1915, Chen had already identified capitalist repression as a cause of social inequality. Under such circumstances, Chen’s attitude toward Western democracy and socialism is intriguing. Did his 1919 call to imitate Western democracy seem to imply an abandonment of his 1915 criticism of this system? Or would Chen in 1919 suffer from self-contradiction in the sense that he both admired and loathed the “English and American models”? These questions deserve further investigation. But it is clear that, while advocating Western democracy in the mid-1910s, Chen could not put aside his reservations about it. It is also clear that in 1920 he rejected Western democracy as a model for China, sharpened his criticism of that system, and became an enthusiastic proponent of socialism. 9 Dirlik’s analysis is soon challenged. Although he does not exactly concentrate on the “origins” of Chinese Communism, Van de Ven, by tracing the CCP’s evolution into a Leninist establishment with a centralized organization, emphasizes that Dirlik is incorrect in speaking of the CCP as a Leninist party in the early 1920s (Van de Ven 1991:57). And, defining a Bolshevik-style party by taking into account all its intellectual, political and organizational dimensions, Michael Luk, too, believes that the CCP was not a Leninist party in its earliest days (Luk 1990:203–4). 10 I do not equate the early Communists’ willingness to work with the Comintern with all CCP leaders’ enthusiasm for following Bolshevik-style policies. For details of early revolutionary leaders’ various views on how closely the CCP should follow the Bolshevik model, see Dirlik (1989:246–9). 11 Among different kinds of socialism, anarchism was most influential. How, then, did the anarchists respond to Communism? For the anarchists’ reaction to the approach of class struggle, Dirlik has an interesting analysis (Dirlik 1989:31). Regarding the anarchists’ perception of the October Revolution and the Communist Party, one interesting question is how they responded to the Communist persecution of Kropotkin and other anarchists. This question is particularly relevant if we want to explain why some Chinese socialists were willing to collaborate with or even join the Chinese Communist Party in the early 1920s. We may need to examine the Chinese socialists’ writings to see whether they were aware of or had any direct thoughts on Kropotkin’s and the others’ fates under the Communist regime (Krebs 1998:20–3). On the basis of existing scholarship, however, we can to some extent speculate on the reasons for some socialists’ willingness to put aside the anarchists’ plight in Russia (assuming that most of them were aware of the anarchists’ difficult situation). They were highly impressed by the Russian approach to economic and social development, an approach which appeared so effective (Luk 1990:37–9). They also had a considerable amount of sympathy for the Soviet Union’s suffering from Western capitalist powers’ aggression, and respected the Bolshevik regime’s ability to resist it. The Chinese socialists’ sympathy, moreover, certainly increased when they learned about the Karakhan Declaration (Dirlik 1989:193). Under the circumstances, perhaps, their desperate enthusiasm for socioeconomic reform led to an appreciation of an ideology coming from a friendly state and offering rational methods of revolution. Such appreciation may have diverted their attention from the authoritarian nature of Russian Communism. And of course, when they found Bolshevism unacceptable, those remaining loyal to anarchism parted ways with it. 12 The multiple commitment to democracy and the militant hostility to the status quo, of course, did not arouse every intellectual’s interest in socialism or make every May Fourth activist a

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Communist. But they did constitute important parts of the cultural nexus that led many radicals to socialism and then on to Bolshevism.

3 Manufacturing political leadership I: the Yaquian intellectuals and Peng Pai 1 In this chapter, I concentrate on intellectual-emotional traits that constituted the antielitist trend of transforming the masses into historical actors. For the movements and organizations radical intellectuals used to cultivate the masses as historical subjects, please see Chow and Schwarcz (Chow Tse-tsung 1960:187–96; Schwarcz 1986:76–93). 2 The emergence of a new radical language to represent the masses is certainly an interesting topic that deserves further scholarly attention. However, my intention here is to portray the ideas and images the May Fourth and Communist intellectuals used in expanding on the revolutionary masses and their suffering. 3 Calling these criteria revolutionary, I am cognizant of the fact that some of these criteria are not particularly revolutionary in a strict sense. Sometimes, I must admit, it is impossible to conceptualize some criteria as traditional or modern: loyalty or obedience to the Party— which, however, was always represented by individual leaders in the eyes of the peasantry— was a modern standard, but reverence to leaders itself was certainly not new. I characterize these criteria as “revolutionary” in the sense that the Communist revolutionaries used them to assess the quality of the peasants as a force for change. 4 As I shall show, these three cases are marked by a high degree of comparability in terms of those themes that featured prominently in revolutionary intellectuals’ elitist selfconstruction. However, I consider respective treatment of each case a more suitable approach, in view of the fact that they took place in different locations and at different stages in the revolution.

Compared with the Yaqian intellectuals’ and Peng’s cases, Mao’s case is most complicated. He was concerned about different issues during his long career (see Chapter 4 of this book). But more important, he also used the discussion on peasants and intellectuals as rhetoric—as a political expedient—to serve particular purposes. To be sure, other radical intellectuals did the same. For instance, Shen and Peng used flamboyant rhetoric on the peasants to lure them into action. But Mao’s use of rhetoric on any social group has been especially “infamous,” for scholars believe that he could change his rhetoric quite easily for various ideological and non-ideological reasons, including his own political survival and his determination to eliminate people he disliked. It is suspected, for example, that in the Nanyang Conference, he adopted a resolution on the vagabonds which was at odds with most of his writings on this social group, to make himself look more orthodox in the eyes of the Central Committee (Schram 1995b: liv). It is a well-known fact that his motivation for attacking intellectuals in the Rectification Campaign

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was not entirely related to his concern for the ways in which educated comrades dealt with the peasants. Should we, then, regard Mao’s rhetoric as part of Communist intellectuals’ elitist self-construction? I think we should if it meets these conditions—that Mao represented his “rhetoric” on the peasants or intellectuals as “interpreted experience,” as observed and dissected reality; that the general elitist and anti-elitist themes of his “rhetoric” were grounded in the Communist intellectuals’ perspectives on themselves and the peasant masses; and that his writings, though possibly serving other purposes, still displayed evaluations of the roles played by peasants and/or intellectuals. I shall focus on Mao’s articles that meet the above conditions. In addition, rhetoric or not, many of Mao’s famous essays on peasants and intellectuals, including those written long before his rise to power, became parts of the CCP’s “classic” revolutionary documents. Despite the fact that many Communist leaders did not share Mao’s ideas, his writings became the most officially dominant and visible Party attempts to represent the peasants and intellectuals, covering their defects, strength and roles in the CCP’s mission of reshaping China and the world. To ignore this type of “rhetoric” is to put aside an important revolutionary leader in Communist intellectuals’ self-construction. 5 Recent scholarship points out that after writing What is to be Done, Lenin changed his position on the essentiality of intellectuals. In One Step Forward, Two Steps Back, he insisted that intellectuals had lessons to learn from the workers in organization and discipline (White 2001:65). 6 Peng’s disappointment in 1929 seems to contradict his former admiration of the peasants’ firmness, which he showed in the Hailufeng report in 1926 while recalling the peasants’ loyalty to the peasant association. It may be simply a contradiction. But we can explain the difference in two other ways. First, Peng may have become more critical of the peasants’ defects after writing the Haifeng report in 1924, and thus changed his view on the steadfastness of his rural followers.

And second, there was possibly a genuine difference between the peasants’ attitude in Hailufeng in 1923 and in 1927. The strike against the peasant association in 1923 was far less disastrous than the suppression that the peasant movement encountered—in the form of a “Soviet Revolution”—during and after 1927. Thus, the peasants may have had difficulty maintaining their devotion to the movement when the situation appeared to be hopeless. 7 Is it also possible that Peng was acutely aware of the lack of support from intellectuals for the larger scale, the more complex structure, and the more diverse functions of his peasant associations? I do not intend to compare the Yaqian and Hailufeng movements in detail, but

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let me mention some relevant information. The Yaqian Peasant Association was founded on September 27, 1921. As the Yaqian Peasant Association extended to Xiaoshan, Xiaoxing, and Shangyu counties, a bigger association was established on November 24. On the surface the scale of the movement was not comparable to that of Hailufeng (founded in July 1923), which soon led to the founding of a provincial peasant association, an organization composed of members from county and xiang peasant organizations. But in terms of the number of peasants who participated in the movement, the Hailufeng movement may not have much surpassed the Yaqian campaign. The CCP in the 1980s estimated that over 100,000 people got involved in the Yaqian movement, and Peng believed that more than 130,000 peasants joined peasant associations in various counties in 1923 (Zhonggong zhejiang shengwei…1987:1; Peng Pai [1926] 1981a:139). Certainly, as the movement unfolded in Haifeng, the peasant association there became rather huge. It has been estimated that by May 1926, nearly 200,000 peasants had been organized into 660 village unions in the county (Marks 1984:208). However, this happened years after Peng had expressed his concern about the shortage of intellectual comrades. 8 In his letter to Li Chuntao on February 9, 1923, Peng said that seven people had joined the association. 9 On the basis of the information Peng provided, Li Chuntao, Peng’s close friend, who was considered at that time by the CCP to be a “Bolshevik outside the Party,” discussed the relationship between the intellectuals and the people: “When intellectual activists go to the people, they are forced to become the leaders. It is because most of the people have not formed their class consciousness and they are not competent enough to organize themselves…. The peasant association in Haifeng represents a rural social movement or even revolution…. Still in the transitional stage, it has its own leader—Peng Pai” (Li Chuntao 1981:282 and 314). If this interpretation of Peng Pai did not prove directly Peng’s belief in the prospect of peasant independence, it showed at least Li’s understanding that the revolutionary intellectuals should contrive to show an unmistakable gesture of deference toward this prospect. 10 To explain the CCP’s transformation into a party marked by its emphasis on and execution of centralized leadership, both Luk and Van de Ven take into account the significance of such factors as factional struggle, the discussion of democratic centralism, the concept of correct line, and the August Seventh Emergency Conference. But Luk focuses more on how Leninist revolutionary elitism, “correct thought” and centralization of power “worked together” to shape the CCP into an authentic Leninist party by 1928, while Van de Ven elaborates on the Communist leaders’ use of Marxism-Leninism as a mode of communication. 11 It should be noted that, according to Zheng Chaolin, not all leading members of the CCP agreed with the Party’s investment in the National Revolution. Instead of focusing on the National Revolution, Chen Duxiu and his supporters, then based in Shanghai, chose to argue for the importance of the revolution which would take place after the National Revolution (Zheng Chaolin 1998:1/258–61).

4 Manufacturing political leadership II: Mao Zedong 1 It has been noted that Mao maintained his rhetoric on rural revolution as anti-imperialist struggle and part of the worldwide revolution in the 1930s. For instance, framing the land law in the February Seventh Conference organized in 1930, Mao stated that “the peasants should help the proletariat…to reject the bourgeoisie and imperialism,…and to push the world revolution to its high tide.” Later, working under the leadership of Wang Ming and the twenty-eight Bolsheviks, he certainly did not forget about linking the rural revolution to the

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struggle of the proletariat of the world (Mao Zedong [1933] 1975:3/23–8). The question remains as to the fate of the radical intellectuals’ cosmopolitan-internationalist expectations of the peasants. In the Yan’an period, Mao fiercely attacked those who were only knowledgeable about “Greece” but ignorant of China (Mao Zedong [1941] 1975b:7/320–1). Did these expectations survive amidst Mao’s attack on the imitation of foreign models and his advocacy of Sinicization, both seemingly unfavorable to cosmopolitanism?

They did. The strenuous advocacy of Sinicization did not mean the abandonment of internationalism. Nor did the Communist leaders dare forfeit the moral and practical support of the Soviet Union, no matter how insubstantial it was. If in 1930 Mao had, shrewdly or genuinely sharing Li Lisan’s optimism, declared in an internationalist manner that “our red flag will fly throughout the entire world,” he retained this internationalist tone in his rhetoric even while successfully representing himself as the champion of Sinicization. In a speech he gave on behalf of the Party at a celebration of the October Revolution, published in Liberation Daily (Jiefang ribao) on November 7, 1943, he said: “We the Chinese soldiers and people should unite and struggle…in order to defeat Japanese Imperialism, to build a new nation in which liberty and equality prevail, and to participate in international cooperation and reconstruction as a new country” (Mao Zedong [1943] 1975a:9/83–4). Writing to celebrate the twentyeighth anniversary of the CCP, he again introduced the internationalist theme: “[the people] will march on, will lead themselves into socialist and Communist society, and will fulfill their historical missions—the elimination of the class system and the realization of the union of the world [datong]” (Mao Zedong [1949] 1975:10/301). Under Mao’s leadership, in fact, the Party always sent cosmopolitaninternationalist messages to the masses. Gao Xiucheng, who was a captain at the end of the Second Sino-Japanese War, recalled: During the eight years of resistance against the Japanese, the political education in the military [budui] often had a strong emphasis on the Soviet Union. I seem to recall that after the Soviet army had occupied Manchuria, the Party distributed a new textbook. The Soviet Union, the textbook told us, was the country of Lenin, and the main force against Fascism…. We loved learning about all this, and assumed that the Soviet Union was as lovely as paradise. We sincerely wanted to be friendly with the “big brother.” (Zhang Zhenglong 1989:26)

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And if Gao’s recollection, given years after the revolutionary days, may not have been most accurate, there is still ample evidence pointing to how the Communist leadership appeared interested in cultivating the rural people’s internationalist consciousness. During the Second World War, the Communist leadership wanted to help the rural masses learn more about the international politics that also influenced China. As many of the Party’s cultural workers recalled years later, working in different regions, ranging from the Jin-Cha-Ji region to Guangdong, they all staged performances to celebrate the occupation of Berlin by the Soviet army (Shi Lei et al. [1987] 1988:2/402; Zhang Xuexin 1988:2/477; 1989:2/866; Gao Li 1988:3/497; Tan Jun 1988:4/461; “Kangdi jutuan chuangzuo yanchu de juben genggai” 1988:4/281; Hu Peng 1989:2/792). 2 According to Luk, in addition to being identified by the Party as the main force of the land revolution, the poor peasants were also made the “‘center’ of peasant associations” (Luk 1990:172). However, although the identification of the poor peasants as the essential revolutionary force remained a permanent feature of the CCP’s peasant strategy, the Party’s definition of categories of peasants—and its use of these categories—varied according to national and local conditions (Goodman 2000:270–1). 3 To explain the CCP’s transformation into a party marked by its emphasis on and execution of centralized leadership, both Luk and Van de Ven take into account the significance of such factors as factional struggle, the discussion of democratic centralism, the concept of correct line, and the August Seventh Emergency Conference. But Luk focuses more on how Leninist revolutionary elitism, “correct thought,” and centralization of power “worked together” to shape the CCP into an authentic Leninist party by 1928, while Van de Ven elaborates on the Communist leaders’ use of Marxism-Leninism as a mode of communication. 4 Mao evaluated the peasantry’s role in the revolution thus: “If we are to compute the relative accomplishments of various elements in the democratic tradition on a percentage basis,…the urban dweller and military would not rate more than thirty percent, while the remaining seventy percent would have to be allotted to the accomplishments of the peasants in the countryside” (Schwartz 1951:74–5; Mao Zedong [1927] 1975a:1/211–12). 5 In the late 1970s and early 1980s, among Party historians in mainland China, there was a consensus that Mao had followed Li’s orders from June to August in 1930. But how enthusiastic he was about the so-called Li Lisan line was a matter of contention (Lin Yunhui 1980:59–65; Tian Yun 1981:65–70). It seems unlikely, however, that Mao followed all of Li’s policies happily. For instance, his land policy did not match the vision of the Li Lisan group. 6 I shall discuss Mao’s use of Marxist or Marxist-sounding terminology to justify what he believed to be a more feasible policy on land revolution in the sub-section entitled “Nonsocialist ideology as a useful political dynamic.” 7 Some of these essays were published in Zhongguo nongmin, coordinated by the GMD’s peasant department (Nongminbu). Some were published in Xiangdao, a CCP paper, which was made available for non-Communist sympathizers. The Hunan report was also published in Xiangdao (Li Yunlong 1981:78–9). For when this report was first published, see note 8. 8 According to Schram, the famous Hunan report was first published in Zhanshi, a weekly put out by the Hunan District Committee of the CCP (Mao [1922] 1994:2/429). Schram also states that, while the Hunan report was addressed to the revolutionary comrades, it was

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meant for the Guomindang. Therefore, Mao did not mention the problems of capital and land. But Schram also asserts that the tone of the report was as radical as Mao’s briefer report to the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (Schram 1994:2/1). 9 Actually, in his report to the Central Committee of the Party on November 25, 1928, Mao demonstrated the tendency to ascribe some Party members’ strategic mistakes, such as “the blind use” of violence, to the operation of their own problematic ideology the petit bourgeois ideology (Mao Zedong [1928] 1975b:2/53). In this document Mao tended to emphasize that the petit bourgeoisie was composed of small landlords, rich peasants and intellectuals (Mao Zedong [1928] 1975b:2/52 and 60). It is quite uncertain whether he, at the time of writing this article, treated other kinds of peasants as members of the petit bourgeoisie, or as people sharing ideological defects with the petit bourgeoisie. In a strict sense, the fact that Mao viewed some Party members’ strategic error as ideological problems in this November report is not equivalent to the fact that he perceived the peasants’ defects as manifestations of their inadequate ideology. Thus, in attempting to demonstrate Mao’s inclination to treat the peasants’ defects as ideological weaknesses, I have used a more straightforward case. 10 For the definition of gongnong, see David Goodman’s new book (Goodman 2000:158). 11 How did the Party leaders perceive their own attempts to adapt to the peasants? Interestingly, in their history of struggle for survival and success, while giving in to but criticizing the peasants’ desire for land, leading Communists employed political terms and concepts in rationalizing—or even beautifying—the Party’s effort to adjust to this rural expectation. I shall just list a couple of examples here. In favor of the Party’s recognition of peasants’ land ownership, Mao Zedong argued for the relative progressiveness of his “poor peasant ideology” as opposed to his rivals’ “rich peasant ideology” in the early 1930s. When peasants requested land distribution after the SinoJapanese War, on behalf of the CCP, which was now willing to go for a more radical land policy than rent/interest reduction in maintaining peasant support, Liu Shaoqi drafted the famous “May Fourth instruction” (Wusi zhishi) in 1946. He also delivered a report to the CCP’s national conference on land reform (Quanguo tudi huiyi) to further land redistribution the next year. He represented Party adjustment to the peasants’ request as the CCP’s successful implementation of the “mass line” (qunzhong luxian)—as the Party’s rightful response to the masses’ need, and as successful union with the masses (Liu Shaoqi [1946] 1981:1/377–83; [1947] 1981:1/386). Mao’s case shows how, in asserting his political correctness, a revolutionary beautified his adjustment to what he admitted to be a politically imperfect request. Regarding Liu, he boasted about the Party’s greatness as he represented as politically correct the Party’s responsiveness to the masses’ non-socialist demand. 12 Other examples are revealing too. For instance, Wang Ming also frequently employed such terms as “peasant” (nongmin) or “peasant ideology” (nongmin yishi) as political weapons to slight his rivals (Zhou Guoquan et al. 1989:196).

5 Narrating politicized subjectivity 1 To be officially recognized as a martyr is a complicated and bureaucratic matter. Before the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the Chinese Communist Party, including the Chinese Communist Underground Party, and the People’s Governments (Renmin zhengfu), including the governments of the soviet, base, and liberated areas (Suqu, Genjudi, Jiefangqu) had the right to confer the title of martyr on an individual. In 1980, Guowuyuan and Minzhengbu specified that the city, county and provincial governments were responsible for appraising the cases of those revolutionaries who were born in areas under their supervision, and qualified to become martyrs (Beijing daxue dangshi xiaoshi yanjiushi 1997:319–21).

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2 In addition to famous left-wing romantics such as Guo Moruo, quite a few Communists were active in the New Culture literary movement—for instance, Zhang Wentian, Yun Daiying, Qu Qiubai, and Fang Zhimin. Literary creation was the vogue in the circle of radical youths. 3 To be sure, around the time of the New Culture movement, Chinese thinking on the issue of the individual was complex. For instance, in his imagining of the individual, Su Manshu, the radical monk of the 1911 generation, wrote fictional pieces that endorsed freedom but at the same time moved beyond the concern for freedom and rights (Ip Hung-yok n.d.). However, it is also true that the celebration of the individual’s freedom, rights and feelings was a prominent theme marking the late 1910s. 4 It is a well-known fact that the 1911 radicals had divergent views on what their revolution should achieve. Some of them emphasized more anti-Manchuism, and some paid more attention to the idea of the republic. 5 For another example, see Xiao Chunü ([1918] 1982:8). 6 A quick survey of the collections of revolutionary martyrs’ poetry reveals that throughout the revolutionary process, they identified foreign nations’ control over China, warlords’ domination, and class-based suffering as conditions which needed to be fought against. The determination to oppose class oppression was particularly prominent in these collections in the sense that a greater number of poems were written to show revolutionary intellectuals’ hatred for the capitalists and compassion for the masses (Xiao San 1962 and 1982). 7 For the emergence of modern Chinese scientism, see Kwok (1965). 8 “Unrevolutionary” as it seems, revolutionary intellectuals did, before and after their conversion to Communism, appropriate Buddhism in their self-representations, although they did not do so as frequently as the early radicals (many pre-Communist radicals remained Buddhist throughout their careers or even lives). For instance, Zhan Gutang, who joined the CCP in 1923, expressed his sympathy for those who suffered as “all sentient beings” (zhongsheng) (Zhan Gutang [1921] 1962:55). At the moment of becoming a Party member, Che Yaoxian described his conversion as an answer to his own search for the correct way of change in “the cosmic infinite” (yuanyuan wuxian) (Che Yaoxian [1929] 1962:317). This term was also Buddhist. 9 For the 1911 radicals’ use of the imagery of the sword, see Liu Yazi ([1904] 1963b: 437) and Ning Diaoyuan ([1906] 1963:465). 10 It seems that in the poems I examine, the plum blossom was a more popular symbol than the chrysanthemum. I cannot eliminate the possibility that it is a coincidence. A strong possibility is that for Communist revolutionaries, the plum blossom looked more admirable for its blooming in winter, a trait signifying defiant persistence under harsh conditions. 11 Guo showed many signs of distress around the time when he wrote his well-known poem “The Nirvana of Phoenix” (Guo Moruo 1996:90–3). 12 It should be noted that, because of their diverse ideological orientations or personalities, the May Fourth intellectuals used the word “beauty” to describe different cultural and political ideals. Ye Shengtao thought that to pursue the ideal of life, one needed to embrace beauty, which he defined as nature. Wang Tongzhao defined beauty as passion, and Xu Zhimo saw the inseparable relationships between love, freedom and beauty (Nie Zhenbin 1991:38). In this chapter, as I concentrate on revolutionaries’ self-representations, I content myself with describing their prevalent use of the term “beauty,” instead of explaining what concrete goals and specific types of transformations they defined as beautiful. 13 As early as the mid-1920s, some Communists intellectuals had already started to develop a Chinese Marxist theory on aesthetics, and one of their central ideas was the political use of the arts (Nie Zhenbin 1991:365–7). 14 For other examples, see Chen Hui (1962:255) and Bai Shenfu (1962:352–4). 15 At a more general level, the beautification of politics is certainly not a unique feature of Communist psychology and culture. It is interesting that, like the Nazis, the Chinese Communists also believed in their political mission of pursuing a beautiful political order

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and eliminating ugliness. For the Nazis, the extermination of the Jews was part of such a mission (Lacoue-Labarthe 1990:69 and 95–6). We should investigate further whether and how various groups of Chinese radicals were influenced by the complex European tradition which linked politics closely to aesthetics. 16 On the basis of this chapter, I would like to reflect briefly on the question of how current scholarship applies the popular concepts of the masculine and feminine in interpreting the imagination and images contained in Communist intellectuals’ self-representations. In his analysis of aesthetics and politics, Wang Ban understands the Western aesthetics of the sublime as the masculine, as the paternal high court where “virility, strength, the Ideal, unity, divinity and transcendence reign” (Wang Ban 1997:7–11 and 101). For him, the traditional Chinese motif of grandeur, used to represent men’s political enterprises and moral pursuits, is masculine as well (Wang Ban 1997:105). As he strives to grasp the complexity of contemporary Chinese political culture, he searches for “what challenges and endangers the sublime” in Mao’s poems, and thus notes the personal and sentimental side of his poetic works (Wang Ban 1997:108–13). But while uncovering “the undermining elements in the drive toward the sublime” (1997:108), he conceptualizes Mao’s poetry as illustrating “a dramatic process of sublimation” (Wang Ban 1997:13). And what is to be sublimated is precisely the feminine—the personal, the affective, the libidinal and the emotional (1997:13 and 114).

Revolutionary intellectuals’ self-representations show what scholars would like to conceptualize as masculine qualities. It is evident that revolutionary intellectuals employed the concept of masculinity to highlight their political courage, that they longed for the expansion of their existence, and that the tears Fang Zhimin and his comrades shed over the suffering people were authoritative and related to the “masculine goal” of socio-political transformation. However, on the basis of my own analysis, I would caution against the tendency, which Wang also to some extent shows, to generalize about the “masculine” nature of Communist intellectuals’ self-representations (Wang Ban 1997:109). My exploration of Communist intellectuals’ writings points to the ambiguities involved in these individuals’ self-expressions. It should be noted, first and foremost, that some revolutionary authors challenged the masculine quality in heroic behavior and in political commitment. Although I do not plan to probe this challenge in depth, it is obvious that while some revolutionary intellectuals yoked together masculinity and political commitment, there was also a counter-tendency, weak or strong, to unyoke them. This is not to suggest that educated Communists who showed this countertendency freed themselves completely from the grip of the masculinized concept of politics. But heeding their divergent attitudes toward masculinity and political behavior, I would venture to assert that if we want to develop more empathy with our objects of study, we

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should also take into account both how they “engendered” and how they “de-gendered” political commitment in their literary acts of selfexpression. Second, even when we insist on applying the concepts of the feminine and the masculine to characterize Communist intellectuals’ self-representations, we find that at times, if not always, these selfrepresentations defy categorization. In this regard the flower imagery is most revealing. It certainly contained some feminine essence in its elegant fragility, and in its function of symbolizing the “dependence” of the revolution on revolutionaries. But the “gendered” nature of popular symbols such as the flower was indefinite and fluid. The flower, however delicate, could be possessed of the masculine—it was also used as a metaphor of revolution and of devoted revolutionaries’ undaunted spirit, which undoubtedly was “manly”. It should also be noted that the flower imagery was endowed with a certain degree of masculinity by its traditional association with moral purity. And all in all, as Wang points out: “when the aesthetic meshes with the social, even the beautiful…becomes the father’s property” (Wang Ban 1997:101). To a significant degree, in revolutionary intellectuals’ emotionoriented self-expressions, whether the flower imagery was feminine or masculine was a contextual issue, since the ways in which revolutionary intellectuals employed it determined the “gendered” essence of the flower. Last but not least, it may be too rigid to consider self-expressions, however political in their content, as strictly political (and thus, in some scholars’ view, masculine). As I point out at the beginning of this chapter, with regard to the issues of audience and purposes, it is hard for us to consider many of these self-expressions political or personal. It is worth repeating the point that when revolutionaries uttered a stream of politics-oriented feelings, they were expressing a form of subjectivity, which, as a component of the individual’s inner world, should also be regarded as personal.

6 The nobility of ambivalence and devotion 1 It is obvious that in interpreting their experiences, revolutionaries, whether intellectual or not, were not completely honest: they always elaborated on their selflessness—i.e., how frugal

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they were, how much they risked their lives, and so forth. Recent research has powerfully debunked revolutionaries’ images and self-images as totally selfless heroes. For instance, in her study of the Communist underground in Shanghai, by estimating some Communist cadres’ allowances, Stranahan dispels the commonly held notion that “revolutionaries lived spare and poverty-stricken lives” (Stranahan 1998:54). In fact, insiders were not totally uncritical of the phenomenon of hypocrisy related to established revolutionaries’ behavior. Wang Shiwei was a good example (see Chapter 8). 2 Xu returned to China from Japan in May 1906. From then, he communicated with Tao Chengzhang regularly to discuss the progress of his revolutionary work. But in his letters, he also discussed how hard his life was. Once he said:” [in Hunan], as I spent all my money in the middle of my journey, there were quite a few days that I had nothing to eat. I am the one who can understand how strenuous this kind of life was” (Xu Xilin 1993:65–6). 3 For another example, see Qiu Jin (1981a:142–3). 4 Liu Shaoqi’s relationship with his family was so harmonious that in the Cultural Revolution the Red Guards condemned him as “a filial son and grandson of the landlord class” (Xu Guansan 1980:6–16). Wang Ruofei, a prominent leader before his death in a plane crash, was known among his comrades for his intimate relationship with his mother and uncles. 5 In the CCP’s history, there are images of revolutionary intellectuals who did not hesitate to leave and even to struggle against their families for their chosen ideology. A good example is Yan Pu. As the “third master” of an eminent gentry family in Wuxi, Jiangsu province, Yan Pu inherited a substantial amount of land from his father. His mother, father and step-mother had all died before he turned six. He joined the CCP in 1925 when he was a student of Southern University (Nanfang daxue) in Shanghai. Resenting his rebellious behavior, the family decided to disown him. In 1927, he organized a peasant uprising in his native area to struggle against the Yan estates and corporate property (Yan Huaijin 1987:31/12). Yan died of cancer in 1949. Although his conflicts with his uncles may have reinforced his determination to attack his own family, his rebellion was memorialized as an act of political commitment. In the Cultural Revolution, when the Gang of Four destroyed Yan Pu’s gravestone, Zhou Enlai defended Yan’s reputation rigorously: “Comrade Yan Pu was a good Communist…. Everyone knows that the ‘third master’ attacked his family to develop the revolution” (Yan Huaijin 1987:31/24). Another famous example is Fang Zhimin, who struggled against his fifth uncle Fang Gaoyu, whom he considered a landlord. The struggle took place in 1927, when Fang Zhimin returned to his native village, Hutang, to implement the policy of rent reduction (Fang Zhimin zhuan bianxiezu 1982:74–8). 6 When Ding Ling and her good friend, Wang Jianhong, stayed in Shanghai in the early 1920s, Wang became Qu’s lover. Thus, Ding Ling was endowed with an excellent opportunity to observe a renowned revolutionary’s struggle to juggle his romantic passion with revolutionary duty. In 1929, Ding Ling wrote a novel entitled Weihu, whose hero and heroine were modeled upon Qu and Wang. Recalling her motivation for writing this novel, Ding Ling said: “I longed to write a story about Qiubai and Jianhong. Although I had a vague idea where his internal conflict lay, in the novel I concentrated only on the conflict between his revolutionary duty and his romantic love” (Ding Ling [1980] 1984:5/101–2). 7 Doing his research in the late 1960s or early 1970s, Leo Lee did not benefit from the post1976 publications that contain details of the non-political aspect of famous revolutionaries’ lives. I do think, however, that researchers should always be aware of the distance between what really happened and literary writings purporting to represent it. 8 I am not suggesting that the Communist intellectuals felt totally alienated from the imagining that heroes enjoyed the bonus of love. It is true, however, that their self-representations as Communist heroes usually did not expand on this theme. 9 For example, see Dai Qing (1994:22–5). 10 These post-1949 recollections include such works as Wang Ruofei zai yuzhong (Yang Zhilin and Qiao Mingpu 1965), Budao de hongqi (Chen Nongfei 1959) and Zai liehuo zhong

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yongsheng (Luo Guangbin 1959). Bo Yibo’s memoir, published in 1996, does not focus on prison, but he does discuss his imprisonment in detail. 11 Fang wrote his account of prison life in 1935 with the possibility, but without any assurance, that it might reach the Party or the public. Wang Fanxi’s memoirs at the very beginning had only a small number of readers—the Trotskyists in Hong Kong. For the question of how Fang struggled to deliver his writings in prison to the Party, see Fang Zhimin zhuan bianxiezu (1982:279–280). Regarding the circulation of Wang Fanxi’s memoirs in the 1950s, see Benton’s introduction to his memoirs (Wang Fanxi 1991). Disillusioned with the CCP, Wang Ruowang in his autobiography deliberately adopts an anti-heroic approach to his portrayal of revolutionaries (Wang Ruowang 1991). 12 Since this chapter is targeted at analyzing revolutionary intellectuals’ interpretations of their prison lives, I do not intend to introduce the Nationalist government’s prison system. For personal or scholarly perspective on the issue, see Wang Fanxi (1991) and Stranahan (1998). Focusing on the Nationalist Military Prison (lujun jianyu) in Hangzhou, Huang Renke’s book is a fairly recent and government-approved work on this topic (Huang Renke 1993). 13 It should be noted that defection did not guarantee a revolutionary’s security. Xiang Zhongfa was executed the day after being turned over to the Guomindang authorities by the Shanghai municipal police, although he had defected. However, many revolutionary intellectuals’ accounts talk about how prison and government authorities promised to lessen, if not end, revolutionaries’ suffering if they confessed or surrendered. 14 Wang Fanxi recalls that before his arrival in 1932 in the Suzhou Military Prison, the Communists had led a number of struggles for better conditions (Wang Fanxi 1991:169) When he was sent there, he says, he found the conditions quite “habitable”: “You could eat as much as you wanted, and there was real cabbage soup to go with it…. In Soochow our morale was much better…. The prisoners were allowed to have all kinds of books and magazines sent in” (Wang Fanxi 1991:169). One powerful strategy used for the improvement of living conditions was the hunger strike: Qiao Mingpu, who stayed in Taiyuan Military Prison with Wang Ruofei, recalled that his comrades organized a hunger strike not only to demand better food but also to win the right to buy and read newspapers and books (Yang Zhilin and Qiao Mingpu 1965:151–9). Wang Ruowang talks about similar things (Wang Ruowang 1991:273–380). 15 Wang Fanxi evaluated his years in Soochow: “Naturally we did not waste our four years in Soochow. Although I had the good fortune to spend four years at university before going to prison…, my true university was gaol.” He stated: “It was not until I got to Soochow that I began to study economics and western classical philosophy in real earnest” (Wang Fanxi 1991:171). His appreciation of the educational function of prison was shared by other revolutionary intellectuals: forced to work in the prison factory at the Central Military Prison, Chen Nongfei and his comrades organized a slow-down strike to improve their working conditions. Finally, the prisoners were only required to work three or four hours in the factory, and such an improvement benefited the political prisoners as it saved them a substantial amount of time for study (Chen Nongfei 1959:99; see also Wang Ruowang 1991:346–51). 16 Wang Ruowang, in his autobiography, describes how, after he had been severely beaten in prison, his more experienced comrades applied slices of cucumber to his body to reduce his pain (Wang Ruowang 1991:312–3). Materials of this kind could not be available without the help of prison guards. Bo Yibo also talks about how political prisoners in Beijing sought help from prison personnel (Bo Yibo 1996:153–5). 17 Sometimes it is difficult to evaluate how formal these prison-based organizations were. Consider one particular case—the Sino-American Cooperative Institute in Chongqing. The biography of the famous woman revolutionary Jiang Zhuyun shows that in the late 1940s, in the Sino-American Cooperative Institute, there was no formal Party organization: Jiang organized the women prisoners only in an “informal” manner (Lu Guangte and Tan

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Zhongwei 1986:28/286). However, Luo’s Winning Eternity in the Burning Fire, which was about a different center in the same prison, mentions the existence of a Party organization there, led by a veteran revolutionary Xu Xiaoxuan (Luo Guangbin 1959:52). 18 For similar emotions, see Wang Xiaoxi (Zhongguo qingnian chubanshe 1983:28). 19 For comparable sentiments shown by another woman revolutionary, see Guo Ganglin’s last words (Zhonggong zhongyang dangshi yanjiushi keyanbu 1997:167). Guo joined the CCP when she was a student in Shanghai in the early 1930s, and was arrested by the Guomindang government in 1934. 20 For instance, Ding Ling’s article on Qu Qiubai, written in the early 1980s, cast significant light on Qu’s psychology during the 1920s. Mainland studies of Qu Qiubai, either published or made more accessible in the 1980s, always have a detailed introduction to Qu’s early revolutionary activities. These studies (see bibliography) are useful for our understanding of Qu as a young revolutionary. 21 Qu’s tragic self-negation reminds us of one important fact—that Communist intellectuals sometimes, if not always, encountered experiences that pressed them to rethink the question of whether they were eligible to construct themselves as heroes. In fact, the change of Qu Qiubai from a self-appointed Bodhisattva to a self-confessed “traitor” shows clearly how, feeling his insufficient devotion to revolutionary politics, a revolutionary painfully debunked the heroic self-image he had once created for himself. Therefore, it is worth looking into the factors that helped sustain Communist intellectuals’ confidence in their high-minded quality, or in the reasonableness of their emphasis on their own nobility.

However, an analysis of how revolutionary intellectuals screened out experiences unfavorable to their self-idealization is destined to be speculative and general. For various reasons, revolutionary intellectuals did not consistently record—let alone analyze—their emotions unreservedly. We can assume, in addition, that selfidealization is a creative process in which humans can, intentionally or unintentionally, select and retain what they like. Self-distortion, we may also believe, is one popular technique for building and maintaining a positive self-image. But looking into the Communist milieu, we can identify some historical factors that may have allowed revolutionary intellectuals to be selective and thus sustain their noble self-images. In explaining revolutionary intellectuals’ sustenance of their superior self-image, we should note that they regarded their admirable qualities as traits shared by all those they categorized as “revolutionaries.” For instance, Fang Zhimin, flaunting his poverty, stressed that the willingness to forsake material comfort was the strength of all revolutionaries. When Liu Yuanan told his wife how brave he was while standing trial, he prided himself on not losing a true Bolshevik’s revolutionary spirit (Zhongguo qingnian chubanshe 1979:63). How, then, did the revolutionary intellectuals ignore those facts that point to some revolutionaries’ insufficient devotion?

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It is evident that there were conditions that barred many Communist intellectuals from recognizing and criticizing those phenomena which pointed to their or their comrades’ unsatisfactory devotion. The Party was determined to suppress the circulation of information that revealed any problematic phenomena. How they dealt with Wang Shiwei and the support he won after publishing such articles as “Wild Lilies” is a good example (Yang Zhongmei 1989:160–75). In addition, there may have been regional differences regarding individuals’ evaluations of their fellow fighters’ devotion. While Wang Shiwei’s criticism of the Party leadership enjoyed much support among intellectual revolutionary youths in Yan’an, Communist intellectuals in other areas did not always share their discontent. Recalling life in guerilla and base areas in Guangdong, which were far less secure than Yan’an, during the Sino-Japanese War, my interviewee emphasized that higher-level cadres did not pursue privileges, and specifically contrasted the Party’s revolutionary past and what she called its “decadent” present. What another veteran revolutionary recalls corroborates the presence of regional difference. Sun Keyou’s recollection of the Rectification Campaign shows how some revolutionaries—not necessarily intellectuals—viewed Yan’an: “Some comrades from the front felt uncomfortable with the atmosphere of Yan’an. They were revolted by some leaders’ enjoyment of ‘special treatment’” (Sun Keyou 1989:2/163). People’s definition of unsatisfactory devotion might vary. But regional differences accounted for the fact that not every revolutionary intellectual or revolutionary needed to confront problems that disturbed Yan’an intellectuals such as Wang Shiwei (Yang Zhongmei 1989:174). But still the problem of inadequate devotion did not escape the attention of Communists throughout the revolutionary process. To maintain their belief in the devotion of revolutionaries as a collective, they needed to explain it away What kinds of schemes, official or unofficial, conscious or unconscious, did their Communist outlook offer them? In defending their self-proclaimed nobility, revolutionary intellectuals may have found useful the official explanation that old

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society had negative influences on the Party. Liu Shaoqi analyzed the flaws of the CCP, which included the problem of devotion: Our party did not come from heaven but from the reality of China. Our members…are from various backgrounds in Chinese society. Moreover, they still live in that society. But Chinese society is under the influence of exploiters. It is characterized by self-seeking inclinations, conspiracies and bureaucratism…. Thus, it is natural that the CCP, which was born into such a corrupt and dirty society, is far from perfect. (Liu Shaoqi [1939] 1950:112)

To remove the defects, Liu encouraged the revolutionaries to cultivate and reform themselves (Liu Shaoqi [1939] 1950:113). Assuming that revolutionaries’ defects, insufficient devotion included, could be removed, such a view might help sustain revolutionary intellectuals’ faith in the collective’s devotion. And to explain the phenomena of desertion and betrayal, many Communist intellectuals tended to rely upon the theory of “natural purification.” Fang Zhimin described the large-scale desertion after the split of the GMD and CCP as follows: “Our first revolution failed… Those who joined the party to seek fame and fortune now unmasked their true selves; they advertised their decision to leave the party in newspapers” (Fang Zhimin [1935] 1985b:34). But Fang did not interpret desertion as evidence of the revolutionary collective’s insufficient commitment. He argued, instead, that desertion could enhance the collective’s level of devotion: “It was a process of natural purification in the party. Only those who were most determined and persistent carried on the struggle” (Fang Zhimin [1935] 1985b:34). According to Chen Nongfei, he and his comrades wielded the same logic viewing desertion in prison (Chen Nongfei 1959:83). The concept of purification deterred Communist intellectuals from associating desertion, however massive its scale, with Party members’ level of political commitment. In addition, confronted with the traitors or those Party members who lacked devotion, Communist intellectuals simply disregarded their formal Communist status, rejecting their revolutionary identity. Communist intellectuals took a non-institutional, emotion-based approach to the definitions of ingroups and outgroups, and thus

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maintained their faith in the devotion of their comrades as an entity. In the early 1930s, Huang Ping, a high-level party member, defected to the GMD’s side. According to those who stayed with Wang Ruofei in prison, to maintain the morale of the Communists in prison, Wang told the others that Huang, as a self-seeking person, “had never been a genuine revolutionary” (Yang Zhilin and Qiao Mingpu 1965:109). Before his execution, Fang Zhimin emphasized in his final words: “If there are any comrades who…work without enthusiasm, they are not our genuine comrades” (Fang Zhimin [1935] 1985c:108). And certainly, a most poignant example is Qu Qiubai, who, realizing his lack of devotion, disqualified his Own “revolutionary membership”: “My revolutionary life has been over for a long time. In a strict sense, …you [my comrades] have the right to regard me as a traitor” (Qu Qiubai [1935] 1981b:270). How, then, did the revolutionary intellectuals categorize those who struck them as ambivalent—those who were devoted but wavered in the face of hardships? Were these “wavering” elements regarded as ingroups or outgroups? In the early 1960s, when Wang Ruofei’s comrades recalled political prisoners’ discussion on these issues in the 1930s, their recollection went as follows. One of Wang Ruofei’s inexperienced comrades in prison did not know how to deal with a certain revolutionary whose case was puzzling. This person did not stand well in court and wrote a confession, but he still performed adequately in prison. While this inexperienced revolutionary sought advice from Wang Ruofei, Wang told him not to exclude this person. But after this person left prison, emphasized Wang, other revolutionaries should not entrust him with important duties until he could demonstrate his ability to endure severe challenges (Yang Zhilin and Qiao Mingpu 1965:141). In his memoirs, Chen Nongfei mentions that he and his comrades recognized the difference between the wavering elements and the traitors. However, he also says, they were unhappy or even angry with those who wavered in their loyalty to the revolution (Chen Nongfei 1959:83–4). To explain the relationship between these wavering elements and the party, Chen recalled: “We were confident that these people would embrace the Party again. But [we decided that] whether they should be trusted should depend upon the nature of our work” (Chen Nongfei 1959:83). And in his autobiography, Wang

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Ruowang shows how, for his initial infirm attitude, he was looked down upon by others in jail (Wang Ruowang 1991:296–303). But in a consciously retrospective and reflective mood, Bo Yibo showed a lot of sympathy for those who obtained release from prison by leaving the CCP or by professing to have made a wrong political choice (Bo Yibo 1996:162). At any rate, all these recollections indicate one thing—the CCP’s willingness to reaccept these people as members. 22 Interestingly, like Fang, Chen in his recollection also assumed that revolutionary leaders’ spirit could move the rank and file. In fact, in his 1957 recollection of the period of guerilla warfare, explaining how he had coped with the problem of demoralization, Chen Yi discussed the difference between the guerilla leaders and the rank and file in quite an unambiguous manner: “Some people hovered between leaving and staying. But after our confession they decided to stay. When they saw that we, the leaders of the Party central and of the guerilla warfare, were determined to stay, how could they choose to leave?” (Chen Yi (1) [1957] 1981:541–90). 23 For the political context in which the idea of self-criticism was first implemented by the CCP, see Luk (1990:216). But, analyzing this context, Luk does not focus on self-criticism as a method directed against insufficient commitment.

7 Clinging to refinement in the revolution 1 I would like to define this commitment as a combine comprising various components—the pursuit of beauty and art through appreciation, creation and participation in aesthetically stimulating activities; the concern for artistic standards, which intellec tuals used to evaluate what they saw; and their longing for the freedom to follow their standards and to engage in artistic activities. 2 From my definition of aesthetic elitism I exclude Communist intellectuals’ confidence in their Party-defined political leadership in the aesthetic realm. For how the intellectuals exercised political leadership in the cultural transformation process, characterized by popularization in the Yan’an period, please see Holm’s analysis (Holm 1991:15–112). 3 See Ding Ling’s recollection of Mao (Ding Ling [1982] 1992:272), and Pan Zhenwu’s recollection of Lo Ruiqing (Pan Zhenwu 1986:1/167). 4 At the age of fourteen Qu wrote this poem: “When the white chrysanthemum blossoms this year,/Only the flowerpot of white jade can match its beauty./Autumn’s color is still light;/Nowhere can we search for the mark of frost” (Qu Qiubai 1981:1). 5 For a careful analysis of how Mao modified the wording of his famous Talks in the postliberation period, see Bonnie McDougall (1980:17–22). She points up how, in the 1950s, Mao further softened his attitude toward learning from traditional Chinese and Western elements. And in this chapter, I quote and translate his original text. 6 The author of Qu’s biography, Chen Tiejian, identifies February 1934 as the time when Qu arrived in Ruijin. But it seems unlikely, as, according to Chen himself, Qu received the order from Party Central that told him to leave Shanghai for Ruijin in late fall, 1931 (Chen Tiejian 1995:443). Li Bozhao recalls that Qu arrived in February 1932 (Li Bozhao [1950] 1986:1/70).

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7 In Liu Wenquan’s and Zhao Mingzhen’s recollections, the name of the troupe differs. According to Party historians’ research, the troupe was officially renamed the Advance Troupe in November 1935 (Lu Ying [1982] 1986:2/404). 8 Although raising standards was a visible idea in Communist culture, the experiences of famous artists and cultural workers varied. The Communists’ respect for Xian Xinghai has been well known. The case of He Luting seems to be much more ambivalent. Before he went to Yan’an, He had worked in central China, enjoying Chen Yi’s patronage (Wang Rujun 1988:3/428). But as Kraus notes: “In the Rectification at Yan’an, He was attacked fiercely by Meng Bo, Mai Xin, and Lu Ji” (Kraus 1989:121). Unhappy as he was in Yan’an, He allegedly was still respected by others. He began to work for the Lianzheng Propaganda Team in the Yan’an area in 1944. And according to one source, after the Sino-Japanese War, when he left Yan’an for northeast China with the team, the Party leadership, to show its benevolence and respect for a famous artist, gave him a donkey to ride (Yan Ke and Wang Ying 1988:1/204). It seems that sometimes lesser-known artists and intellectuals also enjoyed prestigious status in their own settings. There is a recollection by the members of the Fighters’ Troupe that describes Xiao Hua’s attitude toward a drama teacher. This troupe belonged to the army that fought in Shandong during the Sino-Japanese War. In the winter of 1942, the troupe went to southern Shandong (Lunan), organizing performances there to celebrate the birthday of a progressive gentry member who had helped the Communists resist the Japanese invasion. Xiao Hua also went there with some soldiers. Because of the Japanese policy of total elimination (sanguang), the area where they stayed suffered from lack of food. Xiao Hua and the troupe members could only eat coarse food such as bran. Pepper and fried gaoliang cake were regarded as delicacies. But once, when Xiao Hua’s guard had given him a bowl of noodles, Xiao gave half to the drama teacher of the troupe, who he addressed as a “talented literary man” (wenren). Reportedly he said to the teacher: “Although you are not a Party member, you are willing to live with us, sharing our frustration and joy. We are most grateful to you” (Sun Xiaofeng et al. [1985] 1988:3/420–1). The question of how artists enjoyed privileges but suffered from persecution and restriction awaits further study. 9 Zhou’s theoretical discussion is part of his report on the Rectification in the Lu Xun Arts Academy. The theoretical discussion was entitled “The Reform of our Education in the Arts” (yishu jiaoyu de gaizao wenti) and appeared in Liberation Daily on September 9, 1942. 10 It should be noted that Yangge was not the only art form which showed this effort to raise standards. Another good example is how the artists endeavored to improve woodcut products on the basis of popularization. 11 For the origins of the “newspaper play,” please refer to Hung Chang-tai’s analysis (Hung Chang-tai 1994:55–6). 12 Communist intellectuals regarded Beijing opera as a more sophisticated kind of traditional art, and thought about how they could make use of it for political purposes. Noticing that the Communist artists used it to promote the message of national resistance in the Sino-Japanese War, Ding Ling had entertained the idea of restructuring Beijing opera for politics as early as 1938. But in her view, the reform must not violate Beijing opera’s original principles, otherwise it would “lose its original merits” (Ding Ling [1940] 1984a:6/9). The Institute of Beijing Opera, which was aimed at transforming this classical art form to serve the revolution, was founded in Yan’an in 1942. He Long was known for being very interested in Beijing opera. For information related to his involvement in the reform of Beijing opera, see the recollection by Liu Xilin (1988:1/349–53). 13 Li Chuangwang was written by Aying in 1945 (Qian Ying 1988:4/182). And The Promotion of Officials was regarded as one of the so-called large-scale plays (daixing huaju). 14 The speech was published in the Jin-Cha-Ji Daily on August 13, 1942 (Nie Rongzhen [1942] 1988:2/9).

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15 The so-called famous plays, such as Gorky’s Mother or Cao Yu’s Sunrise, which were also popular among the cadres, conveyed political messages that the Party considered progressive.

8 Self-construction, politics and culture: some general reflections 1 It is recognized that Gramsci’s concept of hegemony, arising from his reflections on the establishment and movements in the capitalist West, may not be entirely applicable to Chinese Marxism, which obviously evolved in a very different social, economic and cultural environment. But the most basic part of this concept—that is, the leadership sharing and articulating the aspirations of the led—is certainly echoed by Chinese Marxism. 2 To be sure, if the history of the CCP is analyzed further from a Gramscian perspective, the nature of the Communist regime is highly complex. Particularly in its post-revolutionary phase, the regime was sometimes more like a kind of pseudo-hegemonic situation. Pseudohegemony is, according to Gramsci, a situation in which the government exercises its power in the name of a class that it pretends to represent, without having any true concern about that classes’ interests (Adamson 1980:175). But the Communist elite had never given up its view of itself as a historical agency working for the oppressed groups. And it is evident that this self-identity was not totally groundless. From the mid-1920s, in both theory and action, the Party did to a very significant extent attempt to establish an alliance with the oppressed. 3 In analyzing the legitimacy crisis in the post-Mao period, some scholars believe that it was also to some extent rooted in the post-Mao leadership’s decision to give up the Communist ideological goal of abolishing private property, an ideal which the CCP had used to legitimize its rule (X.L.Ding 1994:1–3). And, to explain the post-Mao CCP’s defense of its right to rule amid the legitimacy crisis, some explore how the Party continued to use but modified some old devices which it had used previously for the purpose of legitimacy. According to them, one of these devices was the notion that the Party was committed to the people (Goodman 1987:292; Tang Tsou 1987:285–9). 4 It is beyond the scope of this study to compare and contrast these internal critics’ thinking. But I would like to make some quick observations here about how they echo and differ from one another. Like Trotsky (and Machajski), Djilas and Voslenskii view the political elite as an important factor in their analyses of the problem of sociopolitical inequality in the socialist state. But, despite his discontent with the “bureaucratic distortion” of a workers’ state (Lustig 1989:9), Trotsky did not lose faith in the future of the socialist state itself, and actually assumed that the nationalized economy still remained a weapon of proletariat dictatorship (Lustig 1989:12). As for Djilas and Voslenskii, they do not think that the Communist system as it was had the potential for developing true equality. In addition, both of them—one calling the Communist elite the new class, the other explaining the concept of nomenklatura—believe that stratification, privilege and inequality were essential ingredients of the Communist state. 5 For another example of revolutionary intellectuals’ knowledge and ability, see my discussion on Liang Bin’s character, Jiangtao. 6 What happened to the prestige of knowledge (understood in the conventional way, as people’s systematized understanding of nature and society) and the understanding that the Chinese majority lacked knowledge in the Cultural Revolution? Although Mao and his followers rejected many kinds of knowledge, they still recognized the existence of true knowledge by relocating its origins. True knowledge, they argued, was derived from one’s work and labor in real life. In Long Live Mao Zedong’s Thought, we find a speech Mao delivered in 1965 in

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Hangzhou. In his lecture, he urged intellectuals and students to have more contact with reality. To make his argument more convincing, he quoted the cases of Watt, Franklin, and so forth, and concluded: “Many knowledgeable men and great scientists did not obtain their education from universities” (Mao Zedong [1965] 1967:3/32). Mao cherished knowledge itself. What he attempted to do was to dissociate knowledge from intellectuals and the academic world. And to associate knowledge with work and labor, Mao and/or Maoists celebrated the working masses as the source of knowledge. Their celebration is clearly revealed in a movie script entitled Breaking with Old Ideas, which was produced in 1975 but never got the chance to be used in China. But their attempts sounded less than convincing for some people, even during the Cultural Revolution. While the Gang of Four opposed using academic criteria to evaluate university candidates, and lauded the students who criticized respect for academic standards or defied school authorities, other Party leaders did not agree with their policies. Zhou Enlai and Zhou Peiyuan emphasized the importance of serious study and research. And in 1972, Party Central began to stress the quality of teaching and urged higher institutions to pay attention to students’ academic levels (Yan Jiaqi and Gao Gao 1986:2/457–69). Despite the negative impact of the Gang of Four on the reorganization of education, this effort represented some Party leaders’ and eminent intellectuals’ assertions regarding the importance of knowledge. 7 Since this study concentrates on revolutionary intellectuals’ self-construction in relation to the peasantry as a revolutionary contingent, I have not explored the question of how revolutionary intellectuals evaluated peasant women as historical actors. Certainly the relationship between women and the Communist revolution is by no means a new topic. Much has been said about peasant women’s gender-specific experiences in the revolutionary process (Stacey 1983; Stranahan 1983; Barlow 1994; Gilmartin 1995; Young 2001). I would argue, however, that despite the well-known fact that peasant men and women were treated differently in the revolution, revolutionary intellectuals sometimes integrated peasant women into their invention and criticism of the peasantry, and injected into peasant women characteristics that they also applied to peasant men.

In Communist usage, the term “peasant” (nongmin) sometimes, if not always, referred only to peasant men, and peasant women were addressed as nongfu. However, Communist leaders and intellectuals always tended to regard peasant women as part of the revolutionary peasantry. Although Gilmartin is correct in observing that Peng Pai always imbued peasant associations with a male identity, it is also clear that Peng sometimes also integrated peasant women into the concept of the peasantry. When he delivered a speech in a conference on the Hong Kong-Guangdong strike in 1925, he talked about how, as a revolutionary force, the peasantry constituted 80 percent of China’s population (Peng Pai [1925] 1981:94–5). When Mao boasted in his Hunan report that “in a very short time, several hundred million peasants…will rise like a tornado or tempest,” he certainly included women (Mao Zedong [1927] 1963:179; Deng Yingchao [1933] 1982:124; Xibeiju [1947] 1982:229). Communist intellectuals also evaluated peasant women’s political quality, reflecting on their performances in or responses to the

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revolution. To some extent they evaluated female peasant cadres’ performances from a gender-specific viewpoint. As a brief example: in the 1940s, some local activists complained about peasant women’s failure to juggle political assignments with maternal duties (Zhang Zifang and Lu Zhiliang [1948] 1985:462–4). But at the same time, revolutionary intellectuals narrated peasant men and women as if they shared many flaws. For instance, when Mao was about to vocalize his idea that the CCP should respond to the peasantry’s nonsocialist desire for land ownership, he noted the linkage between women’s support for the revolution and their interest in land distribution (Mao Zedong [1931] 1975a:2/193). In addition to emphasizing peasants’ or peasant men’s intellectual inferiority, Communist intellectuals also showed their concern about peasant women’s lack of education (Deng Yingchao [1938] 1988:162; Shi Xiuyun [1938] 1985:26). While top Communist leaders were determined to eliminate peasant officers’ ignorance in the late 1940s, local educated activists involved in the women’s movement in the rural area were, around the same time, serious about fighting female peasant cadres’ unsatisfactory intellect: “some female comrades’ cultural level is low, and their abilities are not so impressive…. We should help them to raise their cultural level…[but also hope that] they can grasp every minute to improve themselves.” (Zhang Zifang and Lu Zhiliang [1948] 1985:462–4). 8 While focusing on how Occidentalism could be—and was—mobilized to fight dominating powers in post-Mao China (Chen Xiaomei 1995:3–24), Chen Xiaomei also recognizes that Occidentalism could play the role of an oppressive discourse. In her analysis, one major example of the oppressive role of Occidentalism is that the May Fourth Occidentalist discourse on women’s liberation led to Chinese women’s colonization by Western “fathers” (Chen Xiaomei 1995:5 and 25). Whereas her examination concentrates on how the May Fourth discourse that embraced the foreign contributed to gender-based domination, my discussion here focuses on how Western-oriented cosmopolitanism was oppressive by fostering many people’s psychological subjugation to the West and Westernized culture. 9 In addition to discussing the operation of the new and privileged ruling group and the nature of the Communist system as a whole, Djilas and Voslenskii also offer explanations for the emergence of the privileged class. However, their explanations differ.

While Djilas centers on the Party’s monopoly of power, Voslenskii examines the birth of the Communist ruling class by looking into the effects of revolutionary pragmatism. In order to make the revolution in Russia, Voslenskii tells us, Lenin developed the organization of professional revolutionaries, a factor essential to the seizure of power. The small group of revolutionaries was the embryo of a new

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ruling class—in fact, they became professional rulers after the October Revolution. These tried-and-tested professional revolutionaries turned into employees of a specialized bureaucratic organization, and their privileged status was approved by Lenin. What was born, after the revolution, was not a dictatorship of the proletariat but a dictatorship over the proletariat. In addition, the group of professional revolutionaries, numerically too weak to govern the nation, created ample opportunities for careerists—who rushed in to fill the vacuum. The careerists, employed by Stalin, replaced the old guard, the Bolsheviks who genuinely believed in the ideal of a classless society but ironically had set out on the path of privilege and stratification. For Voslenskii, the victory of the Stalinist nomenklatura—a new ruling group marked by its internal and official hierarchy—over the old guard meant the degeneration of the ruling elite: convinced Communist leaders were replaced by leaders who called themselves Communists (Voslenskii 1984:41–64). 10 During the Cultural Revolution, this view on the intimate connection between political record and privilege came to the surface, aggressively and publicly. The case of United Action (Lianhe xingdong weiyuanhui) reveals that when their families came under attack, the children of high-level cadres used the revolutionary honor of their families to protect their parents and themselves. According to their notorious slogan: “When a father is a hero, his son is naturally bold and good;/When a father is a reactionary, his son can only be a jerk” (Yan Jiaqi and Gao Gao 1986:1/106–7). To demonstrate how noble they and their families were, these young people put on their fathers’ old uniforms, which, along with the bands of the Red Guard, became the fashion in high schools (Yan Jiaqi and Gao Gao 1986:1/109). The essence of this approach to self-defense is crystal clear: it was the manipulation of honor. The Committee of United Action not only attempted to defend their families from any attack, but, as indicated in this slogan, they were also enthusiastic about maintaining their superiority as revolutionary heroes in the social-cultural milieu of the Communist regime. There simply would be no room for such strategies without a special historical context—one that celebrated revolutionary struggle so much so that revolutionaries’ past commitment to revolutionary ideals and contribution to the revolution became political capital, ready to be exploited by its owner (and his/her families) for social and political superiority. 11 A male revolutionary, Djilas might not be so sensitive to his female comrades’ bitterness, caused by the common fact that after the victory of the revolution, or during the revolution, their powerful husbands abandoned them and courted beautiful young women. Therefore his sympathy was with the actress. However, we should pay attention to his women comrades’ way of attacking the actress, which was also possibly a tactic of defense. The female veterans assumed that the young actress was not qualified to become a member of the privileged group, as she did not have a record of revolutionary service. 12 A good example here is that Chen Geng’s relationship with Fu Ya was disapproved of by the Party. They did not get married until the Party, thanks to the intervention of Deng Xiaoping, changed its original decision (Tie Zhuwei 1989:142–71). 13 There are materials about revolutionaries’ romances from earlier times. For instance, Zheng Chaolin’s reminiscences describe quite substantially the romances that caused personal and even political conflicts among famous revolutionaries in the 1920s (Zheng Chaolin

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1998:1/283–99). However, most recollections about the Party’s intervention focus on the late 1930s and 1940s. 14 The kind of woman that a leading member usually pursued was an activist much younger than he was and much lower in the official hierarchy, enjoying a reputation for being personable and thus very eligible in the eyes of that particular leader. When Peng Xuefeng, a highly respected general famous for his literary skill, wanted to make “friends” with Lin Yin, a young woman revolutionary, he asked Lin through her superior to correspond with him (Tie Zhuwei 1989:289). 15 George Konrad and Ivan Szelenyi list three conditions which define a Communist society and state. First, the state has a monopoly in the economy. Second, social structure of this society is marked by a hierarchy, in which political loyalty and educational credentials determine the individual’s status. And third, it is under the rule of a Party that identifies itself as Marxist-Leninist (Konrad and Szelenyi 1991:339). 16 For other dimensions of the embourgeoisment of establishment intellectuals, see Konrad and Szelenyi’s analysis (Konrad and Szelenyi 1991:345–6).

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Biographical notes This section selectively introduces some well-known revolutionaries, particularly those who were revolutionary intellectuals. I include those whose ideas and actions had a significant impact on the course of Chinese radicalism, and many of the intellectual martyrs whose writings are quoted in this study. Some of these individuals were perCommunist activists, such as Tan Stiong and Qiu Jin.

Ai Siqi (1910–1966) Ai Siqi was first educated in Yunnan, and went to Japan in 1927. He joined the CCP in 1935, and was a major figure in the Institute of Marxist-Leninist Studies in Yan’an. He died in 1966.

Bai Shenfu (–1949) Bai Shenfu was a Communist, known mainly for his work as a student movement activist in Sichuan province. He focused on the student movement. He was arrested in 1948 and killed in 1949.

Bo Yibo (1908–) Bo Yibo joined the CCP in 1925 and participated in underground activities in north China. In 1931, he was arrested by the GMD authorities, and imprisoned in Beijing. In 1936 he was released after writing an official statement repenting of his political activism. Bo took on various high-level positions both before and after 1949. In the postCultural Revolution period, he was one of the Party leaders working for economic construction.

Cai Mengwei (–1949) Cai Mengwei was a reporter and poet. He was arrested in 1948 in Chongqing. While in prison, he composed a series of poems representing his and his comrades’ life in prison. He was killed in 1949.

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Che Yaoxian (–1946) Ju Yaoxian was a revolutionary responsible for military affairs in Sichuan during the Sino-Japanese War. He was arrested in 1940 and killed in 1946.

Chen Chang (1894–1930) Chen Chang enrolled in the First Normal College of Hunan (Hunan diyi shifan) in 1911. He was among those who, along with Mao Zedong, co-founded the New People’s Society (Xinmin xuehui). Chen joined the CCP in 1921, and was active in Hunan. He participated in the Northern Expedition and the Nanchang uprising, and worked underground in 1928. He was arrested and executed in 1930.

Chen Duxiu (1889–1942) Chen Duxiu’s life was marked by dramatic changes in his intellectual and political career. He was originally a 1911 revolutionary. He founded New Youth (Xinqingnian) magazine in 1915, promoting the iconoclastic approach to China’s transformation and advocating what he called democratic values. Chen was a co-founder of the CCP, and worked as the Party’s General Secretary until 1927. However, he later lost his influence in the Party and became interested in Trotskyism. At the time of his death in 1942 he was again examining the issue of democracy.

Chen Geng (1903–1961) Chen Geng was born into a landlord family in Xiangxiang in Hunan province. He joined the CCP in 1921, and enrolled in the Whampoa Military Academy. He took part in the Northern Expedition, serving under Jiang Jieshi, and also participated in the Nanchang uprising. During the Sino-Japanese War he was a brigade leader in the Eighth Route Army, and in the Korean War, he assisted Peng Dehuai.

Chen Hui (1920–1944) Chen Hui went to Yan’an in 1938, and moved to the Jin-Cha-Ji region in 1939. He worked at the county level and was killed in battle in 1944.

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Chen Jue (1904–1928) A native of Liling county in Hunan province, Chen Jue joined the CCP in 1923. He was a student movement leader during the anti-Japanese and anti-imperialist movements. He went to the Soviet Union in 1925, and returned to China in 1927. He was arrested while working in Hunan in 1928 and executed in the same year.

Chen Ran (1923–1949) Chen Ran joined the CCP at the outset of the Sino-Japanese War. He headed a group responsible for publishing a magazine called Marching Forward (Tingjinbao), which was owned by the Chinese Communist Underground Party in Chongqing. He was arrested in 1948 and killed in 1949.

Chen Tianhua (1875–1905) A Hunanese, Chen Tienhua was born into a poor peasant family. A student sponsored by the Qing government, he went to Japan in 1903. In response to Japan’s and Russia’s imperial interests in Manchuria, he used his blood to write a few dozen letters that were distributed among schools in China. He can be considered a co-founder of the Revolutionary Alliance (Tongmenghui), and an editor of The People’s Daily (Minbao), the newspaper of the organization. His own writings, such as The Lion’s Roar (Shizihou), were popular among radicals. When the Japanese government attempted to control Chinese students’ political activities, he committed suicide.

Chen Yi (1901–1972) A native of Sichuan, Chen Yi went to France as part of the labor-study movement in 1918. He later enrolled in the University of China and France (Zhongfa daxue) in Beijing, where he joined the CCP. He worked under Li Dazhao from 1924 to 1926, and built his career as a military leader from 1927 to 1937. He is well known for his guerrilla warfare leadership in south China after the Long March. As the Sino-Japanese War began, he led the New Fourth Army against the Japanese advance in central and eastern China. After 1949, he served as mayor of Shanghai and minister of the Department of Foreign Relations. He died in 1972.

Chen Yian (1904–1930) Chen Yian was radicalized in Changsha as a student in 1919 and joined the Socialist Youth Corps in 1922. He then enrolled in the Whampoa Military Academy and

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participated in the Northern Expedition. In 1927 He joined Mao Zedong after the CCP was defeated by the Nationalist government. He went on to serve as an officer of the Fourth Red Army, which was founded in May 1928. He died in battle in 1930.

Chen Yun (1905–1995) Chen Yun had once been an employee of the print shop owned by the Commercial Press (Shangwu yinshuguan) in Shanghai. He joined the CCP in 1925 after participating in the May Thirtieth movement. Chen joined the Long March, and was the head of the organization department (zuzhibu) in Yan’an. After 1949, he specialized in economic planning.

Cheng Xiaocun (1913–1941) A native of Jiangxi province, Cheng Xiaocun joined the CCP in 1936. He was chosen to be a member of the county committee (xianwei) in Poyang in Jiangxi province. He was killed by the GMD authorities in 1941.

Deng Zhongxia (1984–1933) As a Beijing University student, Deng Zhongxia became an important figure of the CCPled labor movement. He coordinated Hong Kong and Guangzhou workers’ general strikes. He served on the Central Committee of the CCP after the Party’s Second National Congress. He was arrested in Shanghai in 1933, and executed in Nanjing. He wrote A Brief History of the Labor Movement in China, which is regarded as an important revolutionary document.

Ding Ling (Jiang Bingzhi) (1904–1986) Born into a gentry family in Hunan, Ding Ling lost her father at the tender age of four. However, her mother, Yu Manzhen, who struggled for her own independence, served as an inspiration to her. Ding Ling left her family around the May Fourth movement, traveling with her good friend, Wang Jianhong, who later became Qu Qiubai’s lover. Ding Ling became a famous writer after publishing Ms. Sophie’s Diary, and was married to Hu Yepin, a young radical. She arrived in Yan’an during the Sino-Japanese War, surveying the changes taking place in the northwest. After criticizing the Party at the beginning of the Rectification Campaign she was attacked by top party leadership and chose to recant.

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Fang Shengdong (1886–1911) Fang studied military affairs in Japan, and joined the Chinese students’ “Righteous Corps” (Yiyongdui), whose goal was to ward off Japanese and Russian intrusions into Manchuria. In 1911 he returned to China to take part in the Guangzhou uprising and was killed.

Fang Zhimin (1900–1935) A native of Jiangxi, Fang Zhimin joined the CCP in 1925. He was one of the founders of the Jiangxi Soviet, and became a member of the Central Committee in 1928. By combining the local units of the peasant self-defense corps, he built the Tenth Red Army, which was defeated by the GMD army in 1934. Upon the destruction of his soviet, Fang moved from one place to another. He was eventually arrested in 1935, and executed in Nanchang.

Guan Xiangying (1903–1946) Guang Xiangying, a Manchu, was born in Liaoling province. He joined the CCP in 1925. He served on the Central Committee and as the political commissar of the 120th division of the Eighth Route Army. He died in 1946.

Guo Ganglin (1909–1937) Guo Ganglin joined the Communist Youth Corps while she was studying in Shanghai. Soon thereafter she became a Party member. Guo was mainly active in Shanghai, where she was arrested in 1934 while coordinating the anti-Japanese movement. She was imprisoned in Nanjing and killed there.

Guo Liang (1901–1928) Guo Liang was a student at the First Normal College of Hunan (Hunan diyi shifan), and joined the CCP in 1921. He was a labor movement leader, working mainly in Hunan. Guo participated in the Nanchang uprising. He was arrested and executed in 1928.

Guo Moruo (1892–1978) Guo Moruo was born into a landlord family in Sichuan. In 1914, he went to Japan to further his education, and earned a medical degree. He also became interested in

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Marxism. In 1921, he founded the Creation Society (Chuangzaoshe) with Yu Daifu. After joining the Northern Expedition, he went to Japan again in 1928. When the SinoJapanese War broke out, he returned to China and engaged in anti-Japanese activities.

He Bin (He Gongwei) (1915–1941) He Bin became a member of the CCP in 1936. He was a provincial committee member of the Party branch in Hubei. He was arrested by the Nationalist authorities in 1947. The GMD government attempted to lure him into surrendering by granting him leadership of the GMD youth movement in Hubei, but he rejected the offer and was executed.

He Long (1896–1969) He Long was born into a peasant family in Hunan province. His political career began when he joined the Chinese Revolutionaries’ Party (Zhonghua gemingdang), founded by the leading 1911 revolutionary Sun Yat-sen. During the First United Front he met and worked with many Communists. In 1927 He joined the CCP, going on to become one of the most important generals in the Communist Party. In the Yan’an period, he was in charge of the defense of north-western China. In 1949, he oversaw the occupation and administration of Xi’an. He died during the Cultural Revolution.

He Qifang (1912–1979) He Qifang was a native of Sichuan province. He enrolled in Beijing University and Qinghua University, and established himself as a young writer. He became a school teacher in 1935. Dissatisfied with his lot in life, he went to Yan’an in 1938 and, soon thereafter, joined the CCP. After 1949, he was the head of the Institute of Literature of the Chinese Academy of Social Science. He was a celebrated poet and well-respected literary critic. He died in 1979.

He Shuheng (1875–1935) He Shuheng was a member of Mao Zedong’s New People’s Society (Xinmin xuehui). Together with Mao, he attended the CCP’s First National Congress in Shanghai. He was sent to the Soviet Union in 1928 and, upon returning to China, worked in the Central Soviet Republic. He was arrested in Fujian after the CCP began the Long March.

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He Xuesong (–1949) He Xuesong was arrested while coordinating a military uprising in 1947. In prison he fought on the side of the Communist inmates. Killed in 1949, he was recognized posthumously as a member of the CCP.

Hu Feng (1903–1986) Hu Feng joined the Socialist Youth Corps in 1923, and went to Japan in 1928. He was known for his reservations about Mao’s efforts to create a popularized, national form of culture in the 1940s. He was accused of being anti-Communist in the 1950s.

Huang Zhimeng (–1912) A native of Guizhou, Huang Zhimeng took part in the Hehou uprising in 1908. He then concentrated on underground activities in Beijing. After the collapse of the Qing government, he attempted to kill Yuan Shikai. Although he managed to injure Yuan’s guards, he was arrested and executed.

Jiang Zhuyun (1920–1949) A native of Sichuan province, Jiang Zhuyun was born into poverty. She once lived in an orphanage. She joined the CCP in 1939, and worked underground in Sichuan province. In 1947 she also began to focus on her home province’s student movement. She was arrested in 1948 and executed in 1949.

Jin Fanchang (1921–1940) Jin Fanchang joined the CCP in 1938, and was active in Shanxi province (part of the JinCha-Ji region). He was arrested by Chinese agents working for the Japanese in November 1940, and was soon executed.

Lan Diyu (–1949) A native of Sichuan, Lan Diyu was arrested in 1948 and imprisoned in Chongqing. He was, together with Chen Ran, executed in 1949.

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Li Bozhao (1911–1985) Li Bozhao accepted Marxism when she was a student at the Second Provincial Normal College for Women of Sichuan (Sichuan shengli dier nüzi zhongxue). She later went to Shanghai, and was sent by the CCP to Moscow in 1925, where she married Yang Shangkun. She returned to China in 1931 and became the head of the Gorky Drama School in the Central Soviet Republic. She worked in different offices during the SinoJapanese War and the Civil War, but always focused on culture and propaganda. She created the famous opera (and later play) The Long March (Changzheng) in the 1950s. During the Cultural Revolution she was struggled against. She died in 1985.

Li Ce (1914–1941) Li Ce joined the CCP in 1934 when he was a student at the Provincial Middle School of Guizhou (Guizhou shengli gaoji zhongxue). In February 1938 he was arrested while helping the CCP promote the message of national resistance in rural areas. He was killed in 1941.

Li Chenghu (1854–1922) Li Chenghu was born into a poor peasant family. After obtaining help from Shen Dingyi in 1921, he ardently supported the Yaqian Peasant Movement. He was one of the earliest and most active members of the Yaqian Peasant Association, and served on the head committee of that organization. When the movement was suppressed in December, Li was arrested. He died in prison on January 24, 1922.

Li Dazhao (1889–1927) A graduate of Beiyang Law School (Beiyang fazheng zhuanmen xuexiao) in Tianjin, Li Dazhao became interested in politics after the 1911 revolution. He went to Japan to further his education in 1913, and became active in the iconoclastic cultural movement initiated by Chen Duxiu. He is regarded as one of the earliest eminent intellectuals who converted to Marxism, and was a co-founder of the CCP. Based in Beijing, he worked with members of both the Communist and Nationalist Parties. Warlord Zhang Zuolin led his army to Beijing in 1926. Zhang had Li rested and killed in 1927.

Li Deguang (1918–1947) A native of Taishan in Guangdong province, Li Deguang was born into a family with overseas connections. He studied in Shanghai. After joining the CCP in 1938, he worked

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in the Guangdong area, taking part in the anti-Japanese resistance. He was ordered to work underground after Japan’s surrender. He was arrested in 1947 and killed.

Li Linguang (1907–1930) When he was twelve, Li Linguang moved to Shanghai where he attended Huining High School and Guanghua University. He joined the CCP in 1927, and worked in the Jiangsu area. He was arrested in 1927 but released after a few months. Upon his release, Li stayed with his mother for a while before resuming his revo lutionary work. He was arrested again in 1928 and killed two years later.

Li Lisan (1899–1967) Li Lisan was a CCP labor movement specialist, and he was elected to the Politburo in 1927. He was the most influential leader in the Party from 1929 to 1930. He envisioned an optimistic future for the revolution, emphasizing the importance of attacking cities. Moreover, Li promoted harsh policies towards rich peasants and denying peasants’ rights to land. He was removed from leadership in 1931, and detained in Russia until 1945. Li is believed to have commited suicide during the Cultural Revolution.

Li Qia (1922–1949) A native of Guangdong province, Li Qia became an activist when he was a high school student, joining the anti-Japanese resistance. After Japan’s surrender, he enrolled in the Citizens’ University in Guangdong (Guangdong guomin daxue), majoring in journalism. He joined the CCP in 1947 and took part in guerrilla warfare in the Guangdong area. He was arrested in 1949, imprisoned in Shaoguan, and eventually executed there.

Lin Jilu (1916–1943) A native of Taishan county, Guangdong province, Lin Jilu studied in Japan. He joined the CCP in 1935 and worked in Xinjiang territory. In 1941 Lin was arrested by Xinjiang ruler, Sheng Shicai, and he was killed in 1943.

Lin Juemin (1886–1911) Lin was first educated in his native province, Fujian, and then went to Japan for his college education. There he became a revolutionary. He joined the Huanghuagang uprising, engineered by Huang Xing, founder of China’s Prosperity Society (Huaxinghui). Lin became one of the legendary seventy-two martyrs killed by the Qing government after the failure of the uprising.

Biographical notes

292

Liu Bojian (1900–1935) Liu Bojian joined the labor-study movement, spending time in both France and Belgium. He joined the CCP in 1923. He went to Russia in 1924, returned to China two years later, and worked under Feng Yuxiang. He visited Russia again in 1927 and later worked in the Central Soviet Republic as one of the leaders of the Fifth Red Army. He was arrested in 1935 by the Nationalist authorities and died in prison.

Liu Shaoqi (1889–1969) A Hunanese, Liu Shaoqi spent the earliest years of his political career in Moscow. Upon his return to China, he helped coordinate the Anyuan mines labor movement. He remained one of the CCP’s most prominent labor leaders until 1949. Liu served as Head of State of the People’s Republic of China after the Great Leap Forward. He died tragically in the Cultural Revolution.

Liu Yazi (1887–1958) A native of Wujiang, Jiangsu province, Liu began his revolutionary activities in 1903 by joining the Patriots’ Club (Aiguo xueshe), a radical organization based in Shanghai, and working with eminent revolutionaries such as Zhang Binglin and Zou Rong. He became a member of the Revolutionary Alliance (Tongmenghui) in 1906, and in 1909 co-founded the Southern Poetry Club (Nanshe), which went on to become one of the most important literary organizations in the early Republican period. After the 1911 revolution he continued to be active in both the political and literary realms, using his writings to confront the warlords.

Liu Yuanan (1890–1930) A native of Chengdu, Sichuan province, Li Yuanan was gradually drawn to Marxism after accepting a teaching position offered by Yun Daiying, who was then the principal of the Southern Sichuan Normal College (Chuannan shifan). He soon joined the CCP, and attended the Sixth Congress of the CCP in 1928. He worked underground in Sichuan but was betrayed by a comrade. He was arrested in 1930 and executed.

Lu Xun (Zhou Shuren) (1881–1936) A native of Shaoxing, Zhejiang province, Lu Xun went to Japan to further his education in 1902. Although he had planned originally to be a medical doctor, he eventually became a writer. He showed a keen interest in Marxism in the final years of his life, and worked closely with Qu Qiubai. Lu is regarded as the titular leader of the League of LeftWing Writers. He died in 1936.

Biographical notes

293

Luo Ruiqing (1906–1978) Luo Ruiqing studied at the Wuhan branch of the Whampoa Military Academy. He joined the CCP in 1928, and the Red Army in 1929. In the Yan’an period, he was one of the top administrators of the Resistance University (Kangri daxue), and was the chief of staff (canmouzhang) of the People’s Liberation Army after 1949. He attempted suicide during the Cultural Revolution but did not succeed. He died in 1978.

Lutefulai Mutalifu (1922–1945) A Uighur revolutionary, Lutefulai Mutalifu worked for the Xinjiang Daily (Xinjgiang ribao) from 1941 to 1943, and became interested in Communism. In 1945, he joined an anti-Nationalist organization. He was arrested and killed in the same year.

Mao Dun (1896–1981) Mao Dun enrolled in the University of Beijing in 1913. He took part in the CCP’s First National Congress in 1921. A gifted writer, he earned national repute after publishing Midnight (Ziye) in 1933. He visited Yan’an in the early stages of the Sino-Japanese War, and was also active in Chongqing. He became an important cultural leader after 1949, supporting and propagating the CCP’s policies on literature and the arts, and served as the editor-in-chief of prestigious magazines such as The People’s Literature (Renmin wenxue). He was struggled against in the Cultural Revolution.

Nie Rongzhen (1899–1992) Nie Rongzhen joined the labor-study movement and went to France in 1919. He became a member of the CCP in 1923, and was sent to Moscow the next year. He participated in the Northern Expedition, the Nanchang uprising and the Guangzhou uprising. In the Yan’an period he was the political commissar of the 115th Division of the Eighth Route Army. After 1949, he served as the mayor of Beijing for a time and occupied various important positions related to military affairs.

Ning Diaoyuan (1885–1913) A native of Liling, Hunan province, Ning Diaoyuan was a member of the Strengthening China Association (Huaxinghui), the Revolutionary Alliance (Tongmenghui), and the Southern Poetry Club (Nanshe). He was arrested in 1904, and, upon his release after a three-year incarceration, founded a revolutionary paper named Imperial News (Diguo ribao). In 1913, Ning was arrested and killed for his plans to oppose Yuan Shi-kai, who was attempting to augment his own influence in the newly founded government.

Biographical notes

294

Ouyang Meisheng (1895–1928) Ouyang Meisheng was a native of Hunan. He joined the CCP in 1926, and worked in the Hunan-Hubei area, focusing on labor issues and serving in administrational roles at both county and provincial levels. He died of illness in 1928.

Qiu Jin (1879–1907) One of the most eminent female radicals of the twentieth century, Qiu Jin was born into an official family based in Xiamen, Fujian province. She later moved to Beijing with her husband. Witnessing the Boxers’ Uprising and the Eight Nations’ Expedition, she was compelled to political activism. In 1904, she headed alone to Japan to further her education and joined the Revolutionary Alliance (Tongmenghui). She was committed to the political revolution aimed at over-throwing the Manchu dynasty, and was hailed as a powerful critic of the traditional/antiquated Chinese patriarchal system still in place at the beginning of the twentieth century. Qiu Jin and fellow revolutionary Xu Xilin led a hasty uprising in Zhejiang, which, despite its rapid failure, inspired many. She was arrested and soon executed.

Qu Qiubai (1899–935) Born into a declining gentry family, Qu Qiubai studied the Russian language in Beijing around the time of the May Fourth movement. Hired as a reporter by the Morning Post (Chen bao) in 1921, he was assigned to Russia, where he became a Communist. He served as General Secretary of the CCP from August 1927 to July 1928. After Wang Ming’s ascendancy in the Party, Qu lost his influence. Gradually withdrawing from politics, he increasingly focused on work related to literature and the arts. He was arrested by the Nationalist government in 1935 after the CCP had begun the Long March, and executed in June of the same year.

Ruan Xiaoxian (189–Ý1935) Around the time of the May Fourth protest, Ruan Xiaoxian founded a student association in Guangdong, his native province. He joined the CCP in 1922, and was active in the Guangzhou area. In the mid-1920s, he was a leader of the Guangdong Peasant Movement, working at the Institute of Peasant Movements and serving as Secretary of the Gaungdong Peasant Movement Committee. Together with eminent revolutionaries such as Zhang Tailei, he coordinated the Guangzhou uprising in 1927. In 1935, Ruan was killed while working in the Central Soviet Republic.

Biographical notes

295

Shen Dingyi (1883–1928) A native of Yaqian, Zhejiang province, Shen Dingyi went to Japan to further his education after earning a degree in the traditional civil service examination system. While in Japan, he joined the Revolutionary Alliance (Tongmenghui). Around the time of the May Fourth movement, he edited radical journals, including the Weekly Review (Meizhou pinglun) in Shanghai. Shen was one of the earliest members of the CCP. After launching the Yaqian Peasant Movement, he went to Russia. He later joined the Nationalist Party. He was expelled from the CCP for objecting to the Party’s United Front strategy. He went on to become a prominent GMD leader in Zhejiang, but was murdered in 1928.

Shi Jianru (1879–1900) Shi Jianru was a native of Guangzhou. He joined the Revolutionary Alliance (Tongmenghui) in 1899, and went to Japan to meet Sun Yat-sen. In 1900, Shi and others planned and led an uprising in Huizhou, attempting an attack on the Guangdong-Guangxi governor. He was arrested and executed in the same year.

Shi Yanfen (1904–1928) A native of Yixing, Jiangxu province, Shi Yanfen joined the Communist Youth Corps in 1927. Later that year he took part in the peasant uprising in Yixing. Sent to work in Nanjing in 1928, Shi was arrested there and executed.

Song Jiaoren (1882–1913) A Hunanese, Song went to Japan in 1904 and studied at Waseda University. After the overthrow of the Qing dynasty, he, together with other leading revolutionaries, engineered the founding of the Nationalist Party (Guomindang) on the basis of a reorganization of the Revolutionary Alliance (Tongmenhui). Considered a brilliant politician, he intended to curb Yuan Shikai’s power through parliamentary elections. He was, however, assassinated in 1913 after the Nationalist Party won the election.

Su Manshu (1884–1918) Su Manshu was born in Japan, the son of a Cantonese merchant and Japanese mother. He returned to China in 1888 and entered the Buddhist priesthood at the young age of seventeen. He often traveled between China and Japan. Amid his unsettled life he became a revolutionary, associating with such eminent revolutionaries as Chen Duxiu and Zhang Binglin. He is most remembered as a talented writer and poet. His poems and romance

Biographical notes

296

novels were very popular in Republican China. Despite being a monk, he was widely admired for his sentimentalism. He died in 1918 in Shanghai.

Tan Sitong (1865–1898) A native of Liuyang, Hunan province, Tan Sitong was born into a high-ranking official family, and thus enjoyed the opportunity to travel across the country. After the First SinoJapanese War he became interested in the idea of reform, founding the Southern Society and studying modernization theory. Regarded as a supporter of the 1889 reform, Tan was arrested upon the Empress Dowager’s suppression of the reform movement. He was eventually executed. Tan was not only interested in the subject of Western approaches to modernity; he was also well versed in Chinese tradition in general and Buddhism in particular. His Theory on Humanity (Renxue), in which he attempted to blend China’s intellectual traditions, ranging from Buddhism and Confucianism to Maoism and Daoism, with Western practices and thinking, has been regarded as one of the most important texts in the Chinese quest for modernity.

Wang Daqiang (1901–1928) Wang Daqiang joined the CCP in 1925 as a student at the First Provincial Middle School of Hubei (Hubei shengli diyi zhongxue). He founded the first Party branch in his own native area, Gujiao. He later became the Hubei province Party secretary He was arrested and executed in 1928.

Wang Fanxi (1907–2002) Wang Fanxi attended Hangzhou Commercial School, and, upon graduation, entered the University of Beijing in 1926. He soon joined the underground Communist Party. He was sent to Moscow by the CCP in 1927, where he became a Trotskyist. Upon returning to China, he worked under Zhou Enlai and in the Central Committee until his Trotskyist identity was revealed in 1931. Refusing to denounce Trotskyism, he chose to leave the Party and continued his revolutionary struggle as a Trotskyist. After 1949, Wang lived in poverty in Macau, the former Portuguese colony near Hong Kong. He went to Europe in 1975.

Wang Ming (1906–1974) Wang Ming received his education in Russia. He and his group, known as the TwentyEight Bolsheviks, dominated the Party after 1931. He began to lose his power within the Party during the Long March, but remained popular among students and intellectuals. Historians believe that the Rectification Campaign was to some extent directed against

Biographical notes

297

Wang and his close comrades. His influence was completely eliminated at the Seventh Congress of the Party in 1945.

Wang Ruofei (1896–1946) Wang Ruofei was born in the city of Anshun, Guizhou province. He participated in the labor-study movement and went to France in 1919; two years later he joined the Chinese Communist group, which was to become part of the CCP. In 1923, Wang was sent by the CCP to Russia, together with a few other young revolutionaries. He worked in various places, including Jiangsu and Inner Mongolia. He was arrested in Mongolia, and was later transferred to a prison in Taiyuan, Shanxi, where he was rescued by Bo Yibo. Wang arrived in Yan’an in 1937, and worked for the CCP on various fronts, including propaganda, land reform and negotiation with the Nationalist Party. He died in an air crash in 1946.

Wang Ruowang (1918–2002) Wang Ruowang was born in Jiangsu. After being expelled from a local normal college, he went to Shanghai, where he became a writer and joined the Communist Youth Corps. He was imprisoned from 1934 to 1937 for his involvement in the labor movement in Shanghai. Upon his release, Wang went to Yan’an. After 1949 he worked as a cadre specializing in labor issues and as a cultural worker. Expelled from the Party in 1957, his membership was finally restored in 1979. In 1987 Wang was again expelled from the Party, this time condemned for promoting bourgeois-style freedom.

Wang Shiwei (1907–1947) Wang Shiwei joined the Chinese Communist Party in 1926 in Shanghai. He was involved with the Trotskyist opposition and translated some of Trotsky’s writings. He went to Yan’an in 1936, and worked for the Institute of Marxist-Leninist Studies, which later became the Central Research Institute. After Ding Ling spoke out against the CCP’s treatment of women in the Rectification Campaign, Wang published his article entitled “Wild Lily,” in which he criticized the privilege system of the CCP. The Party reacted almost immediately, and a struggle session with Wang soon began. As he refused to recant, he was expelled from the Party and incarcerated. When Yan’an was attacked by the Nationalist army, he was moved to another area and then executed by He Long.

Wang Xiaoxi (1903–1928) Wang Xiaoxi became politically active as a high school student. After enrolling in the National University of the Northwest (Guoli xibei daxue) in Xi’an, he became a student movement leader. He joined the CCP in 1925, and was chosen by the Party to reorganize

Biographical notes

298

its branch in Lanzhou. He was also engaged in peasant movement and underground activities at the county level in both Gansu and Sha’anxi. He was arrested and killed in 1928.

Wang Yifei (1898–1928) Wang Yifei was born in Shangyu, Zhejiang province, and eked out a living as a primary school teacher. He joined the Socialist Youth Corps in 1920, and was then sent by the Party to Russia. He returned to China in 1925 and, later, worked in Hankou, starting preparation for the arrival of the Northern Expedition army from the south. He was also interested in translating Russian theoretical works into Chinese. He was arrested by the Nationalist government in 1928 and was killed soon thereafter.

Wu Yue (1878–1905) A native of Tongcheng, Anhui province, Wu Yue was an active radical as a student at Baoding Military School (Baoding junxiao). In 1905, the Empress Dowager sent a mission overseas to study foreign nations’ constitutional systems. When the train carrying the mission was leaving the Beijing station, Wu Yue, a revolutionary willing to take extreme action, tried to blow up the train. He died in the attempt.

Xia Minghan (1900–1928) A Hunanese, Xia Minghan met Mao Zedong and joined the CCP in 1921. In 1925, he became the head of the department of organization (zuzhibu) in Hunan. Two years later, he worked in the Institute of Peasant Movements in Wuhan. He was arrested and killed in 1928.

Xian Xinghai (1905–1945) Xian Xinghai was born in 1905. His father, a fisherman, died soon after his birth, and his destitute mother struggled alone to raise her son. In 1926, Xian Xinghai enrolled in the National Art Institute of Beijing (Beping guoli yishu zhuanmen xuexiao), and later switched to the Shanghai National Music Academy (Shanghai guoli yinyueyuan). In 1930 he went to Paris. In 1938, he and his lover arrived in Yan’an.

Xiang Jingyu (1895–1928) Xiang Jingyu joined the New People’s Society (Xinmin xuehui) founded by Mao Zedong and others in 1918. She went to France as part of the labor-study movement in 1919, and joined the CCP in 1922. She was a member of the Central Committee in the early 1920s,

Biographical notes

299

and was also in charge of the CCP’s department of women. She went to Moscow in 1925 and returned to China in 1927. She was arrested and executed in 1928.

Xiao Chunü (1893–1927) Xiao Chunü began his political career as a 1911 revolutionary. He joined the CCP in 1922, and went to Sichuan to develop the revolution, editing a paper called New Sichuan (Xinshubao). He co-edited Chinese Youth (Zhongguo qingnian) with Yun Daiying in 1925, and later worked with Mao. He was arrested in April 1927 and shortly thereafter executed.

Xiao Cizhan (–1940) A native of Guizhou, Xiao Cizhen joined the CCP in 1938. He worked mainly in Guizhou province. He was arrested by the GMD authorities in 1940, and executed in December of the same year.

Xiong Henghan (1894–1928) A native of Hunan, Xiong Henghan founded a magazine to promote new ideas in the 1910s. He then went to Japan. In 1926, he joined the CCP, and also led the propaganda department of the Hunan branch of the Nationalist Party After the CCP-GMD split, he was arrested in 1928.

Xu Xiaoxuan (–1949) Xu Xiaoxuan joined the CCP in 1938, and worked for the New China Daily (Xinhua ribao) in Chongqing. He was also a leading revolutionary in eastern Sichuan. He was arrested in 1940 and killed in 1949.

Xu Xilin (1873–1907) Xu Xinlin was born in Shanyin, the administrative seat of Shaoxing prefecture of Zhejiang province. After passing the county-level civil service examination, he became interested in what people called “New Learning.” In 1905, he collaborated with other revolutionaries, including Tao Chengzhang and Gong Boquan, to establish Datong Normal School, which was used as a revolutionary training ground. Although Xu was interested in learning military affairs in Japan, his poor eyesight excluded him from military academy admittance. Upon returning to China, he used family connections to purchase an official post, and, coordinating with Qiu Jin, attempted to rise up against the Manchu government simultaneously in Anhui and Zhejiang. He was defeated after

Biographical notes

300

mortally wounding the governor of Zhejiang and fiercely fighting the Qing army, and was executed.

Xuan Zhonghua (1898–1927) Xuan Zhonghua was a graduate of the First Normal College of Hangzhou (Hangzhou diyi shifan). In 1921, he joined the Socialist Youth Corps. After taking part in the Yaqian Peasant Movement, he went to Russia. He joined the CCP in 1924. He was killed in 1927 when the Nationalist Party decided to stamp out Communist influence.

Yang Zhihua (1900–1973) Yang Zhihua worked for the Weekly Review (Meizhou pinglun), a radical journal edited by Shen Dingyi in Shanghai. She participated in the peasant movement. In 1923, she enrolled at Shanghai University, and married Qu Qiubai after getting a divorce from Shen Jianlong (Shen Dingyi’s son) in 1924. She joined the CCP in the same year. After her return from the Soviet Union in 1930, she worked in the CCP-led women’s movement. She was struggled against in the Cultural Revolution, and died in 1973.

Ye Jianying (1898–1989) Ye Jiangyi was born into a well-off merchant family in Guangdong. He joined the CCP in Germany in 1924, and participated in the Northern Expedition and then the Guangzhou uprising in 1927. He became the chief of staff of the CCP’s Eighth Route Army after 1937, and served as Defense Minister of the People’s Republic of China.

Ye Ting (1896–1946) Ye Ting went to Russia to study military affairs in 1934. He joined the Northern Expedition, and took part in the Nanchang and Guangzhou uprisings. He headed the New Fourth Army in the Sino-Japanese War. Ye was arrested by the GMD authorities in 1941, and was kept in several prisons. In 1946 he was released, but he died soon after, together with Wang Ruofei, in an air crash.

Yin Fu (1909–1931) A revolutionary youth, Yin Fu began to publish in radical magazines at the age of nineteen. From 1929 onwards, he focused on the labor and youth movements. In 1930, he became a member of the newly founded League of Left-wing Writers. He was arrested in 1931, and executed in the same year.

Biographical notes

301

Yun Daiying (1895–1931) A native of Jiangxu, Yun Daiying was born in Wuchang, Hubei province. He became politically active while attending Central China University (Huazhong daxue). Although he had once been deeply drawn to a peaceful approach to social transformation, he began to embrace Marxism in 1921. He served as an instructor at the Whampoa Military Academy, and was admired by many revolutionary youths in the mid-1920s. He also served on the Central Committee of the CCP. In 1930, he was arrested in Shanghai while working for the underground. He was executed in 1931.

Zhang Guotao (1897–1975) Zhang Guotao began his political career as a student activist at Beijing University (Beijing daxue). He is regarded as one of the founders of the CCP. He served on the Central Committee in the 1920s, and stayed in Moscow from 1928 to 1931 as the CCP’s Communist International representative. In the early 1930s, he was the vice-chairperson of the Central Soviet Republic. During the Long March, he and Mao parted on the movement of the Communist army, but he joined Mao in Sha’anbei in 1936. Marginalized in the Communist government, he left Yan’an in 1938. He remained politically active during the Sino-Japanese War.

Zhang Wentian (1900–1976) Born into a peasant family in Nanhui in Jiangsu province, Zhang Wentian was a student at the River and Sea Engineering School (Haihe gongcheng zhuanmen xuexiao) in Nanjing when the May Fourth protest broke out. In 1922, he went to the USA through the labor-study movement and worked in the library at the University of California, Berkeley. And from 1921 to 1924, he invested much effort in introducing foreign authors to his compatriots and translating their works. Upon his return to China, he joined the CCP in 1925. After his stay in the Soviet Union, he became one of the Twenty-Eight Bolsheviks who dominated the Party from 1931 to 1935. He was also the General Secretary of the CCP from 1935 to 1945. In 1959, he was purged as a “rightist.”

Zhao Sheng (1873–1911) Zhao Sheng studied military affairs first in Nanjing and then in Japan. Upon his return from Japan, he taught at Liangjiang Normal College (Liangjiang shifan xueyuan) in Nanjing, and distributed revolutionary pamphlets among soldiers of the Qing army. He was an important leader of the Revolutionary Alliance (Tongmenghui) and, together with Huang Xing, led the Guangzhou uprising. After the uprising failed, Zhao, a broken man, died of illness.

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302

Zhao Yiman (1905–1936) Zhao Yiman joined the Socialist Youth Corps in 1923, and the CCP in 1926. She was sent to Moscow in 1927. Upon her return to China, she worked underground in Shanghai and Jiangxi. She moved to Manchuria in 1931 after the “September 18 incident.” She was injured in battle in 1935 and was captured. Caught while attempting to escape, Zhao was executed in 1936.

Zhao Yunxiao (1906–1929) Zhao Yunxiao was sent to Moscow by the CCP in 1925. In 1927 she returned to China, working in areas such as Hunan and Manchuria. She was arrested while working in Hunan in 1928, and was executed in 1929.

Zheng Chaolin (1901–1998) Zheng Chaolin participated in the labor-study movement and went to France. He joined the CCP in 1922. Upon his return to China, he was responsible for editing The Guide (Xiangdao). He was a participant in the Emergence Conference of August 7, 1927, and became a Trotskyist in 1929. He was arrested by the Communist authorities in 1952, and incarcerated until 1979.

Zhou Enlai (1989–1975) After studying in Tianjin, Zhou Enlai, supported by a famous educator, went to France. He joined the CCP there in 1922. A skillful politician, he survived internal party struggles and remained a top party leader. From 1949 until his death, Zhou served as the Premier of the People’s Republic of China.

Zhou Shi (1885–1911) Zhou Shi was born into a landowning but increasingly impoverished family situated in the Huaian region of Jiangsu province. At the age of thirteen, he became interested in the idea of revolution while reading about the American and French revolutions. After earning a first-level degree in the traditional civil service system in 1902, he enrolled in Liangjiang Normal College in Nanjing. In 1909, he joined the Southern Poetry Club, cofounded by Liu Yazi. When the revolution broke out in Wuchang, he attempted to coordinate an uprising in Huaian. Before he could do so, Zhou’s plot was discovered, and he was killed by the Qing county magistrate and some conservative members of the local gentry elite.

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Zhou Wenyong (–1927) Zhou Wenyong participated in the Guangzhou uprising. When the uprising failed, he was arrested. He was tortured in prison and killed.

Zhou Yang (1908–1989) After studying in Japan, Zhou Yang became one of the most important left-wing literary leaders in Shanghai in the 1930s. But he conflicted with Lu Xun. After moving to Yan’an, Zhou became the president of the Lu Xun Art Academy in Yan’an during the Sino-Japanese War, contributing much to Mao’s popularization policy. He was the ViceMinister of Culture after 1949, and suffered in the Cultural Revolution.

Zhu De (1866–1976) Born into a tenant family in Sichuan, Zhu De received a relatively modern education with the support of his family. He joined the Revolutionary Alliance (Tongmenghui) in 1909, and, after the revolution, accepted a teaching position at the Yunnan Military Academy (Yunnan lujun jiangwu tang). In 1922, he went to Germany to further his education, and he joined the CCP in the same year. In 1928, he and Mao co-founded the Fourth Red Army. As the Sino-Japanese War broke out, he was one of the key leaders of the Eighth Route Army. In the Civil War, he was Commander-in-Chief of the People’s Liberation Army. After 1949, he remained a top party and government leader. He died in 1976.

Index of Chinese names and phrases This is a list of selected Chinese names and terms that appear in the book

Aiguo xueshe Ai Siqi

300 162, 167, 292 166

anhao

Bai mao nü

260

Bai Shenfu

106, 107, 237 n. 14 249, 292

Balujun zongbu

152, 277 111

banya banyi nong

69 96

baodao cheng yikuai Baoding junxiao

306 172

Baowei Huanghe Beida

194, 195, 250

Beiping junren fansheng fenyuan Benben zhuyi Bohuo ji

71 196, 266

Bo Yibo Buyi

120–3, 125, 178, 222 n. 5, 240 n. 16, 243 n. 21, 292, 305 160

Cai Mengwei

107, 292

Changzheng

298

Che Yaoxian Chen bao Chen Chang Chen Duxiu

121

293 99 101, 293 24–32, 40, 43, 104, 116, 136, 230 n. 7, 8, 293

Index of Chinese names and phrases

Chen Geng

248 n. 12, 293

Chen Hui

293 50

Chen Jinsheng Chen Jue

117, 127, 293 122, 294

Chen Ran Chen Tianhua

93, 294 134, 155, 212, 294, 243 n. 22, 151, 175–6

Chen Yi

118–19, 294

Chen Yian Chen Yun

137, 294–5

Cheng Xiaocun

106, 108, 295

Cheng Yanqiu

177

chiweidui

166

Chixin zhoukan

54

choujiazi

78

dajia guixiu

138

da jiangshan zuo jiangshan dashan

212

54

datong daxi

234 n. 1, 307 13, 179

daxing huaju

174

daxing ju

172

daxing wuhui

151 169

Dazhong Deng Zhongxia

44, 45, 63, 111, 136, 137, 295

Deng Yanda

150

dianxing

197

Ding Ling (Jiang Bingzhi) 12, 295 Dongfang hong

dongxi

171 115

175

8, 117, 155, 171, 182, 239 n. 6, 240 n. 20, 244 n.

190

Dongjiang zongdui

duilian

305

Index of Chinese names and phrases

e shili

37

Fang Shengdong Fang Zhimin 242 n. 21, 295

113, 295 95, 96, 98–104, 106–7, 112, 120, 121, 124–6, 132–4, 137–8, 140, 239 n. 11,

Fengyan tu

196

ganbu xi

179

gaoliang genjudi

244 n. 8 165, 236 n. 1

geming xuyao

212

geming yingxiong zhuyi

139

gongnong ganbu

201 159

Gongnong jushe gongnong tongzhi

133 150–1, 296

Guan Xiangying Guo Ganglin Guo Liang

296 93, 101, 296

Guomin canzhenghui

178

Guo Moruo

93–4, 103, 106, 180, 296

Guowuyuan

236 n. 1

He Bin (He Gongwei)

122, 127, 140, 296

heci He Long

177 160, 177, 296

He Qifang

154, 157, 164, 181, 297

He Shuheng

114, 119, 210, 297

hexi shaonian tou

96

He Xuesong Hongqi ribao Hongqi pu Hongsijun Hong Yan

306

97, 177, 297 191 196 159 194

Index of Chinese names and phrases

Hu Feng

162, 166, 167, 297 180

Hufu Huabei junqu

174 171

Huadong huaju

174, 180, 244 n. 13

Huazhongju

164

Huangshui yao

172

Huang Zhimeng

107, 297

Huaxinghui

300, 302

Huhai yiwenshe

175

huobao

174

Jiang Zhuyun

97, 297

jianghu yisheng

92

Jiefang ribao

140, 233 n. 1

jiefangqu

201, 236 n. 1

jilie

94

Jinguang dadao

197

kaiming shishen

178

kangri genju di

165

Kangda

67, 170, 180

Kangdi jushe

174

Ku caihua Kunqu

196 150

Lan Diyu

108, 298

laodong renmin

138

Laoding yin Lao Gui lao yi tao Li Bozhao Li Ce

44 205 170 159, 160, 165, 168, 298 108, 298

307

Index of Chinese names and phrases

Li Chenghu

47, 50–2, 59, 298

Li Chuangwang

178, 244 n. 13 56, 57, 60, 61, 233 n. 9

Li Chuntao Li Dazhao

25–32, 37–8, 43, 44, 52–3, 229–30 n. 7, 298 299

Li Deguang Li Linguang

112, 299

Li Lisan

68, 71, 76, 128, 136, 299

Li Qia

102, 108, 124, 299

Li Zisui

226 n. 18 247

Linhe xingdong wenyuanhui 210

lieshi houdai lieshi yigu

210

lilun

78

Lin Jilu

299

Lin Juemin

95, 116, 300

Liu Bojian

132–3, 300

Liu Shaoqi

114, 137, 211, 235 n. 11, 238 n. 4, 241–2 n. 21, 300

Liu Yazi

92, 93, 97, 101, 177, 300

Liu Yuanan

126, 241 n. 21, 300

Lujun jianyu

239 n. 12, 261

Lu Xun (Zhou Shuren) Luyi

308

104, 105, 143, 162–3, 301

265, 273, 288, 290 83

Lun renmin minzhu zhuangzheng Luo Ruiqing

141, 150, 301

Lutefula Mutalifu

301

Makesi zhuyi yu wenyi

162 162, 164, 167, 301

Mao Dun

Mao Zedong 13–14, 33, 38–9, 67–86, 132, 140–1, 149, 150, 152–8, 160, 176–80, 182, 190, 205–6, 217, 231–2 n. 4, 233, 5 n. 1, 234 n. 4, 245 n. 6 meihua rensheng meishu Meizhou pinglun

105 160 25, 303, 308

Index of Chinese names and phrases

Minguo ribao

309

51

Minli bao

107 165, 168, 169

minjian yiren Nangfang daxue

239

nianhua

165 176, 179, 210, 301

Nie Rongzhen Ning Diaoyuan

97, 99, 302

nongfu

246 n. 7, 255

nongmin

55, 235 n. 7, 246 n. 7

Nongminbu

235 n. 7

nongmin yishi

76, 86, 235 n. 12

Ouyang Meisheng

302

Peng Pai

54–65, 77–8, 84–5, 140–2, 188–9, 191, 217, 232 n. 6, 246 n. 7

Qingchun zhi ge

286

qingku

112

qingpin

112

Qinqiang

153

Qiu Jin

93, 97, 101, 103, 106, 302

Qu Qiubai 33, 36, 90, 99–100, 103–4, 117, 128–31, 136, 150, 152, 159, 162, 168, 239 n. 6, 240 n. 20, 21, 242 n. 21, 302, Quanguo tudi huiyi Quanmin kangzhan Qunzhong

235 n. 11 181

80

qunzhong luxian renge

235 n. 11

30

Renmin ribao Renmin zhengfu Ruan Xiaoxian

83 236 n. 1 115, 135, 302–3

Index of Chinese names and phrases

sanguang

244 n. 8

Shan Xialan

50

Shenzhou ribao

99

Shengguan tu

178

Sheng Dingyi

46–53, 59, 65, 75 85, 303

Shi Jianru

121, 303 128, 303

Shi Yanfen Song Jianren

113, 303

sufan

137

Su Manshu suqu

92, 98, 111, 116, 303–4 236 n. 1

Suzhou tanci

125, 149, 240 n. 14 162 91, 101, 113, 304

Tan Sitong Tingjin bao

294

Tongmenghui

37, 294, 300, 302, 303, 309, 311

tong yi bikong chuqi tu li tu qi

70 201

Wang Daqiang

106, 304

Wang Fanxi Wang Ming Wang Ruofei

120–3, 125, 239 n. 11, 240 n. 14, 15, 304 68, 77, 78, 304–5 114, 242 n. 21, 305

Wang Ruofei zai yuzhong

120, 239 n. 10 108, 120, 211–12, 239 n. 11, 240 n. 16, 305

Wang Ruowang Wang Shiwei Wang Xiaoxi Wang Yifei

206, 207, 241 n. 21, 305 95–6, 305–6 118, 306 130

Wei Hu weiwu buneng qu wengong tuan wenjiao

310

95 171 81

Index of Chinese names and phrases

wenren

14, 130, 244 n. 8

wu zhishi jieji hua

56 235 n. 11

Wusi zhishi Wu Yue

94, 306

Xia Minghan

94, 96, 101, 306 13, 161, 172, 306

Xian Xinghai xiang

73 235 n. 7

Xiangdao

Xiangjiang pinglun

269

Xiang Jingyu

115, 306–7

Xiao Chunü

307

Xiao Cizhan

100, 307

Xiao fangniu

179 114

xiaohun xiaojia biyu

138 181, 307

Xinhua ribao 36

Xin shehui

293, 297, 306

Xinmin xuehui xinshi

150

Xin zhishi

175 200

Xin zhongguo funü 151

Xin zhonghua bao Xiong Henghan

114 240 n. 17, 307–8

Xu Xiaoxuan Xu Xilin

111, 238 n. 2, 307 47, 50, 56–7, 308

Xuan Zhonghua

Yan’an wenhua julebu Yanfu bao Yangge Yanyang tian

151

175 13, 168–9, 172–3 198

311

Index of Chinese names and phrases

yangban xi

197

Yang ershe huayuan

168–9 70

yang jiaoxi Yang Kaihui

149 70

yang xuesheng Yang Zhihua

46–50, 150, 308 46–54, 232 n. 7

Yaqian Ye Jianying

176, 209, 308

Ye Ting Yin Fu

95, 308 100, 102, 308 127

yiqie yishu jiaoyu

168 133

youjie shizhong yuanxiao

114

yuanyuan wuxian

236 n. 8

Yun Daiying

37, 39, 67, 94, 113, 126, 135–6, 308–9

zhangfu

96

zhanqu

180

Zhang Guotao

92, 309

Zhang Wentian

98–100, 106, 114, 153, 155–6, 309

Zhao Sheng

309

Zhao Yiman

97, 309–10

Zhao Yunxiao

118, 127–8, 310

Zheng Chaolin

108, 122, 124, 149–50, 248 n. 13, 310 78, 206

Zhengfeng wenxian Zhengqi ge

93

Zhengwei

80

Zhengzhibu zhenli

312

71, 178 122

zhiguo ping tianxia

129

Zhonggong zhongyang

53, 69, 83, 108, 209, 240 n. 19

Index of Chinese names and phrases

Zhonggong zhongyang junwei Zhongguo funü

84 211 96, 99, 102, 108, 112–13, 115, 118, 124, 127–8, 240 n. 18,

Zhongguo qingnian 307 236 n. 8

zhongsheng

73

Zhongyang Zhongyang dangxiao

78, 139, 151

Zhongyang geming junshi weiyuanhui zong zhengzhibu Zhongyang junren jianyu

125 159

Zhongyang jutuan Zhongyang lanshantuan

159

Zhongyang weiyuanhui

84

Zhou Enlai Zhou Shi

92, 160, 191, 246 n. 6, 310 107, 310 96, 310

Zhou Wenyong Zhou Yang

160, 162–3, 173, 212, 310–11, 168–9, 171

Zhou Zishan

165 68, 150, 181, 311

Zhu De zhuangshi

96

ziwo piping

137

ziyouhua Zuolian

313

107 152

71

Subject and name index aesthetics 9–10, 149–52; and gender 237–8 n. 16; literature 103–9; standards, popularization and raising of 152–7, see also culture; literature; opera; poetry agriculture: socialization of 83–4, see also land; peasants Ah! Humans (Dai Houying) 200 Ai Siqi 162, 167; biographical note 292 Alternative Culture, The (Lidtke) 10 Analysis of the Different Classes of Chinese Society, An (Mao Zedong) 69 anarchism 29; and Bolshevization 230–1 n. 11 Anatomy of a Moral (Djilas) 208 anti-elitism see elites Apter, David 8 art see culture Art and Ideology in Revolutionary China (Holm) 13 Association of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Drama 159 autobiography 14–15 Ba Jin 113–14, 117 Bai Shenfu 106; biographical note 292 Bai Yan 157–8 Beacon Fire (Liang Bin) 197–8, 199 Beijing Opera 177, 244 n. 12 Benton, Gregor 134, 175 Bergson, Henri 26 betrayal 242–3 n. 21 Bitter Flower (Feng Deying) 196–8 Bo Yibo 120, 121, 122, 123, 125, 178; biographical note 292; desertion 243 n. 21 Bolshevization 4, 85; and anarchism 230–1 n. 11;

Subject and name index

influence on Li’s democratic commitment 29; Li Dazhao advocates 31–2; move to Bolshevik model of revolution 35 Bourdieu, Pierre 9, 156, 225 n. 12 Bowra, Cecil 102 Brandt, Conrad 4 Braun, Otto 68 Brief Account of My Revolutionary Life (Fang Zhimin) 133 Bright Sky, The (Hao Ran) 198 Buddhism 236 n. 8; Buddhist images 98 Cai Mengwei 107; biographical note 292 Cai Yuanpei 104, 105 Cao Yu 179, 180, 210 Central Philharmonic Orchestra 180 Central Troupe 159 Che Yaoxian 293 Cheek, Timothy 14, 154 Chen Bo 177 Chen Chang 101; biographical note 293 Chen Duxiu 104, 116; biographical note 293; calls for overthrow of Confucianism 40; commitment to democratic values 25–8; conversion to Marxism 30; on democracy and science 24, 230 n. 8; economic development 31; on individual 26, 30–1, 32, 229 n. 7; on intellectuals 136; internationalism 230 n. 7; on laborers 43; on right and might 27; socialism and democracy 28–32; state 43 Chen Geng 248 n. 12; biographical note 293 Chen Hui 293 Chen Jinsheng 50 Chen Jue 117, 127; biographical note 293 Chen Nongfei 125, 135, 150; desertion 242 n. 21 Chen Ran 123; biographical note 294 Chen Tianhua 94; biographical note 294 Chen Tiejian 33 Chen Xiaomei 246–7 n. 8

315

Subject and name index

316

Chen Yi 134, 155, 212; biographical note 294; desertion 243 n. 22; poetry 151, 175–6 Chen Yian 118–19; biographical note 294 Chen Yun 137; biographical note 295 Chen Yung-fa 11, 80 Chen Zhenya 211 Cheng Fangwu 160 Cheng Xiaocun 106, 108; biographical note 294 Chiang Kai-shek 55, 68 Chinese Communist Party (CCP): distrust of intellectuals 5; independence of peasant movement abandoned 62–5; Peng Pai 55; pseudohegemony 245 n. 2 Chinese Modern (Tang Xiaobing) 8 Chow Tse-tsung 24, 34, 228 n. 1 cities, cultural work 178 Civil War 82–3 class: class consciousness, Yaqian group on peasants 49–50; class struggle, attitude of Communist intellectuals to 45–6; Li Dazhao on inequality and democracy 30; masses as historical subjects 42–6; May Fourth radicals views of laborers and liberation 43–4, see also peasants ‘collective individualism’ 8 comfort, sacrificing 111–12 Communist, The 47 Confucianism: Chen Duxiu on 40; influence on May Fourth radicals 44 cosmopolitanism 201–3, 228 n. 5 Cui Su 113 Cultural Revolution 212; United Action 247 n. 10 culture 9–10, 221 n. 2; artistic leadership 168–74; CCP’s attitude to art and literature 12–14; developing sophistication of intellectuals 161–6; experiences of artists and cultural workers 243–4 n. 8; folk culture 152–3, 155, 161–2, 164, 166, 167–8, 173, 182; Mao on 81–2, 153–4; plays, on production of 17980; popularization and refinement of arts 182; Rectification Campaign 13; teaching 158–61; wood-block artists 181,

Subject and name index

317

see also aesthetics; education; literature; opera; poetry Dai Houying 200, 212 Dai Qing 200 Dan Hui 170 dance parties 151–2 darkness, as metaphor 99–100, 103–4 democracy: Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao 25–34; May Fourth radicals 23–34 Deng Fa 152 Deng Liujing 212 Deng Tuo 14, 153, 179 Deng Yanda 150 Deng Zhongxia 44, 45, 63, 111, 136, 137; biographical note 295 desertion 134–5 Dilthey, Wilhelm 14 Ding Ling (Jiang Bingzhi) 8, 117, 155, 171, 182, 239 n. 6, 240 n. 20; Beijing Opera 244 n. 12; biographical note 295; on Mao’s appreciation of art 182 Dirlik, Arif 23–4, 30, 35, 36, 230 n. 9; anarchists 230 n. 11; changing view of laborers 43 Discourse in Mao’s Republic (Apter and Saich) 8 Djilas, Milovan 7, 247 n. 11; bureaucracy 245 n. 4; privilege 203–4, 207, 247 n. 9 Dong Biwu 176 Dou Shangchu 80 Eagleton, Terry 9–10 Eakin, Paul 14–15 economic development, Chen Duxiu on 31 education: class inequality and democracy 30–1; and democracy, May Fourth intellectuals on 30–1, 34; Mao Zedong on 81–2, 83; martyrs’ children 209–10; Yaqian peasants 48–9, see also culture egalitarianism: Mao Zedong on 205–6, see also privilege elites: and anti-elitism 5, 11, 12, 42–6, 65, 85;

Subject and name index

and emotions 7–9; leadership 3–5; leadership’s introduction of new knowledge 6–7; Yaqian intellectuals 48–54, see also leadership; privilege emotions: and elitism 7–9; expressions of discontent 93–5, see also culture; opera; personal; poetry exploitation, Li Dazhao on 43 Eyerman, Ron 223–4 n. 7 Fallen Leaf, A (Zhang Wentian) 98, 99, 106, 114 families: difficult relationship with 113–16, see also gender Family (Ba Jin) 113–14 Fan Changjiang 164, 175 Fang Shengdong 113; biographical note 295 Fang Zhimin 98–9, 100, 120, 140; biographical note 295; campaign to eliminate counter-revolutionaries 137; capture of 132; on desertion 134, 242 n. 21; feelings as a revolutionary 101–3; flower as metaphor 106–7; portrayal of heroism 95, 96, 241 n. 21; portrayal of rural China 104; poverty 112; prison experiences 121, 123, 124, 126, 239 n. 11; relationship with peasants and workers 133–4; self-criticism 137–8 Feigon, Lee 29–30, 77 Feng Deying 196, 197 Feng Wenjian 65 Feng Xuefeng 155 Feuerwerker, Yi-tsi Mei 79 Fighters’ Troupe 244 n. 8 Finocchiaro, Maurice 66 flower, as metaphor 103, 106–9, 236 n. 10 folk culture 152–3, 155, 161–2, 164, 166, 167–8, 173, 182 Foucault, Michel 221 n. 1 French Revolution: and democratic values 26; impact upon Mao 38 Friedman, Edward 83

318

Subject and name index

Front Troupe 161 Galbiati, Fernando 64 Gao Li 180 Gao Xiucheng 234 n. 1 gender: and aesthetics 237–8 n. 16; masculinity and heroism 96–7; peasant men and women 246 n. 7; self-construction 226–7 n. 19, see also families Gilmartin, Christina 113, 246 n. 7 Golden Road, The (Hao Ran) 197, 199 Goldman, Merle 13, 227 n. 20 Gorky, Maxim 163 Gouldner, Alvin 3, 4, 79, 222 n. 3 Gramsci, Antonio 4, 70, 222 n. 3; elitism 66; hegemonic leadership 187–8 Gu Chengshuo 108 Gu Jiegang 43 Gu Yuan 181 Guan Xiangying 150–1; biographical note 296 Guangdong Socialist Youth Corps 54 Guo Ganglin 296 Guo Liang 93, 101; biographical note 296 Guo Moruo 93–4, 103, 106, 180; biographical note 296 Guomindang (GMD), Peng Pai 55 Haifeng Soviet 64 Hailufeng Soviet 64 Hao Ran 197, 198, 199 Hao Zhidong 214 He Bin (He Gongwei) 122, 127, 140; biographical note 296 He Bozhuan 136 He Fang 171 He Jingzhi 173 He Long 160, 177; biographical note 296 He Luting 161, 243 n. 8 He Qifang 154, 157, 164, 181; biographical note 297 He Shuheng 114, 119, 210; biographical note 297 He Xuesong 97; biographical note 297 heci 177

319

Subject and name index

320

heroism (representations of) 95–103; devotion to the Revolution 240–3 n. 21; and sensitivity 97–9, 103–9 Hofheinz, Roy 72 Holm, David 13, 173 Hsia Tsi-an 8, 129 Hsiao Tso-liang 76 Hu Feng 162, 166, 167; biographical note 297 Hu Yichuan 165 Hu Ziming 211 Huaian Poetry Club 175–6 Huang Ping 242 n. 21 Huang Zhimeng 107; biographical note 297 Huang Zunxian 104 Hung Chang-tai 13 Hung Shen 170 identity 222–3 n. 6 ideology 224–5 n. 9; and self-construction 139–42 independence (of peasant movement): Mao Zedong on 72–3, 81, 85; Peng Pai 59–62; Peng Pai abandons goal of 62–5 individual 221 n. 1, 228–30 n. 7; Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao on 26, 30–1, 32; personal and political 7–9; romanticism 92 Infamous Bandit Zhou Zishan, The 165–6 intellectuals: CCP’s attitude towards 12; Mao Zedong on 69–72, 78–9; Rectification Campaign 78–9; revolutionary intellectuals, definition 222 n. 3; Yaqian intellectuals 46–54 internationalism, Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao’s commitment to 32, 230 n. 7 Iron Current Troupe 170 Jamison, Andrew 223–4 n. 7 Jiang Xueqin 194 Jiang Zhuyun 97, 118, 121, 240 n. 17; biographical note 297 Jiangxi Soviet 68 Jin Fangchang 96; biographical note 298 Journal of the New Society (Xin Shehui) 33, 36 Kang Youwei 91, 113 Ke Qingshi 211–12

Subject and name index

Ke Zhongping l53, 154 knowledge 223–4 n. 7, 245–6 n. 6; leadership’s introduction of new knowledge 6–7 Konrad, George 248 n. 15 Kraus, Richard 13–14 laborers, Chen Duxiu on 43 Laing, Dave 10 Lan Diyu 108; biographical note 298 land: Mao Zedong’s policies on 75–7; Peng Pai on land nationalization 64; redistribution 82–3; Sheng Dingyi 75, see also agriculture; peasants language: and literature 162; people’s language, Qu Qiubai on 168 Lao Gui 205 Lao Mei 52 leadership 3–5; hegemonic leadership 188; May Fourth radicals, masses as historical subjects 42–5; Peng Pai’s de-intellectualization 55–6, see also elites Lee, Leo Ou-fan 8, 117, 201–2, 239 n. 7 legitimacy crisis, post-Mao period 245 n. 3 legitimization, intellectuals’ self-construction 187–92 Leng Xiaonong 115, 116 Lenin, V I. 10, 54, 204, 232 n. 5; bureaucracy 247 n. 9; love for music 225 n. 11 Leninism: Mao on non-proletarian ideology 74, see also Bolshevization Li Bo 164 Li Bozhao 159, 160, 165, 168; biographical note 298 Li Ce 108,298 Li Chenghu 47, 50–2, 59; biographical note 298 Li Chengjiao 47 Li Chishan 44 Li Chuntao 56, 57, 60, 61, 233 n. 9 Li Dazhao 25, 37–8; biographical note 298; class inequality and democracy 30; commitment to democratic values 25–8; on exploitation of the oppressed 43, 44;

321

Subject and name index

on individual and socialism 30–1; individualism 26; nation and the individual 229–30 n. 7; ‘Pan-ism’ 27; peasantry, leadership and self-determination 52–3; on revolution and violence 40; socialism and democracy 28–32 Li Deguang 299 Li Fuchun 160 Li Huanzhi 164 Li Ji 163 Li Laogong 60 Li Laosi 61 Li Linguang 112; biographical note 299 Li Lisan 68, 71, 128, 136; biographical note 299; land distribution 76 Li Lisan line 234–5 n. 5 Li Pei 61 Li Peng 209 Li Qia 102, 108, 124; biographical note 299 Li Shuoxun 209 Li Shutong 105 Li Yuanqing 161 Li Zheshi 121 Li Zhiqiang 118–19 Liang Bin 196–8, 199 Liang Qichao 29, 104 Lidtke, Vernon 10 Lin Boqu 175, 176 Lin Jilu 299 Lin Juemin 95, 116; biographical note 300 lineage, Mao on social organization of peasants 74 Literary Dissent in Communist China (Goldman) 13 literature: darkness as metaphor 99–100, 103–4; emotions of radicals 93–5; flower as metaphor 103, 106–9, 236 n. 10; heroism and courage, representation of 95–103; and language 162; plum blossom as metaphor 103; popular novels 194–9; radicals 91–3, see also culture; poetry; romanticism Liu Baiyu 138, 164 Liu Bojian 132–3; biographical note 300

322

Subject and name index

323

Liu Dabai 47 Liu Hulan 139 Liu Jianmei 225 n. 10 Liu Lequn 200–1 Liu Qingyang 36 Liu Renjing 60 Liu Shaoqi 114, 137, 211, 235 n. 11, 238 n. 4; biographical note 300; privileges 241–2 n. 21 Liu Xiaowu 179 Liu Xinchu 34 Liu Yazi 92, 93, 97, 101, 177; biographical note 300 Liu Yuanan 126; biographical note 300; portrayal of heroism 241 n. 21 Long March 68 love, and politics 116–19, 225 n. 10 Lu Ming 161 Lu Xun (Zhou Shuren) 104, 105, 143, 167; biographical note 301; illiterate writers 162–3 Lu Xun Arts Academy 157, 160–1, 165, 171, 173 Lu You 114 Lu Zhengcao 176 Lu Zhenyu 175 Luk, Michael 29, 44, 69, 222 n. 3, 233 n. 10, 234 n. 2, 234 n. 3 Luo Baoyi 200–1 Luo Guangbin 121, 240 n. 17 Luo Ruiqing 141, 150; biographical note 301 Luo Yinong 121 Lutefulai Mutalifu 301 McDonald, Angus 69 Machajski, Waclaw 192 Mao Dun 162, 164, 167; biographical note 301 Mao Zedong 67–86, 160, 217, 233–5n; arts to attract well-educated 178–9; on authority 72; Bolshevization 85; Ding Ling on Mao’s appreciation of art 182; early attitude to revolution 38–9; on egalitarianism 205–6; elite and popular culture 153–4, 158; influence of Paulsen 39; intellectuals 69–72, 140–1; knowledge 245 n. 6; land, policies on 75–7, 82–3; leadership qualities of 190;

Subject and name index

324

memories of Beijing 149; national culture 153; overthrowing Japanese oppression 33; peasant independent action, changing policies on 72–3, 81, 85; on peasants 73–5, 132, 234 n. 4; poetry 150, 176–7; popularization and refinement of arts 182; on production of big plays 180; raising cultural standards 152–7; Rectification Campaign 13–14, 78–80; rhetoric of 231–2 n. 4; self-criticism 78–9; Sinicization and internationalism 233–4 n. 1 Marcus, Laura 14 Marks, Robert 64 Marshall, George 82 Marx, Karl 4, 7 Marxism: Chen Duxiu’s conversion to 30; move to Bolshevik model of revolution 35, see also Bolshevization Marxism, Literature and the Arts (Zhou Yang) 162–3 masculinity, and heroism 96–7 mass line 81 May Fourth radicals 23–41; Confucianism, influence of 44; democracy 23–34; education and democracy 30–1, 34; hostility towards status quo 35–41; masses as historical subjects 42–5; romanticism 92; Russian Revolution, influence of 33; socialism and democracy 23–4, 33–4 Meisner, Maurice 23; Li Dazhao’s views on leadership 52; Li Dazhao’s views on violence 40 Michel, Louis 98 modernity, and the Revolution 202 morality, relationships and politics 200–1 Mu Qing 181 My Fathers (Dai Qing) 200 Nahirny, Vladimir 8, 224–5 n. 9 National Defense Troupe 178 National Revolution 69, 233 n. 11 nationalism: Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao attitude to 31–2; and commitment to democracy 27; Mao on overthrowing Japanese oppression 33 nationalization, Chen Duxiu on nationalization of capital 31 New Culture movement (1915–1919) 25, 29, 92, 98, 228 n. 3

Subject and name index

325

New Knowledge 175 New Youth magazine (Youth magazine) 25, 43, 44 Nie Rongzhen 176, 179, 210; biographical note 301 Ning Diaoyuan 97, 99; biographical note 302 Northern Expedition 64 Occidentalism 246–7 n. 8 On New Democracy (Mao Zedong) 153 On the Democratic Dictatorship of the People (Mao Zedong) 140–1 opera: appreciation of 150; Beijing Opera 177, 244 n. 12; Qin opera 153 Ouyang Meisheng 302 Ouyang Shan 158 ‘Pan-ism’, Li Dazhao on 27 Paulsen, Friedrich 39 peasants: class solidarity 57; demand for land 235 n. 11; Mao Zedong on inadequacies of 73–5; Mao Zedong on peasant independent action 72–3, 81, 85; Peng Pai 54–65; plight of 46; relationship to CCP 11–12; rent resistance and reduction 53; The Communist on 47; Yaiqian movement 47–54, see also agriculture; independence (of peasant movement); land; rural communities Peng Pai 54–65, 77, 84, 140, 217, 246 n. 7; abandons goal of peasant independence 62–5; Bolshevization 85; as de-intellectualized 55–6; peasant independence 59–62; on peasantry 232 n. 6; relationship to CCP 64–5; representations of his leadership 188–9; self-criticism and self-reform 78; tribute to 191; view of revolutionary peasantry 56–9; Yao Hua on 141–2 Peng Xuefeng 248 n. 14 People’s Troupe 153 Perovskaya, Sophia 97 personal 226 n. 18;

Subject and name index

326

commitment to revolution 131–42; difficult relationship with families 113–16; forsaking comfort and possessions 111–12; love and politics 116–19, 225 n. 10; and political 7–9; prison life 120–31, see also emotions; gender Plamenatz, John 31 plays, on production of 179–80 plum blossom, as metaphor 103 poetry 150–1, 169; Chen Ran 123; Chen Yi 151, 175–6; Cheng Xiaocun 106, 108; Fang Zhimin 98–9; Gu Chengshuo 108; Guan Xiangying 150–1; Guo Liang 94; Guo Liang and Xia Minghan 101; Guo Moruo 103, 106; heci 177; Huaian Poetry Club 175–6; imagery, chrysanthemum and plum blossom 236 n. 10; Li Ce 108; Liu Bojian 133; Liu Yazi 177; Mao Zedong 150, 176–7; Snow (Mao Zedong) 176; Xia Minghan 96, 101; Xiao Cizhan 100; Xu Yun 122; Yin Fu 100; Zhao Yiman 97; Zhou Shi 107; Zhou Wenyong 96 Price, Don 91 prison life, sacrifice 120–31 Prison Song (He Bin) 127 privilege 241 n. 21; justification 203–13, see also elites Prometheus, as symbol 100 Qian Yi 108 Qiao Mingpu 240 n. 14 Qin opera 153 Qiu Jin 93, 97, 101, 103, 106; biographical note 302 Qu Qiubai 33, 36, 90, 99–100, 103–4, 117, 136, 239 n. 6, 240 n. 20; biographical note 302;

Subject and name index

327

collapse of heroic self-image 240 n. 21; culture and aesthetics 150, 152, 159; desertion 242 n. 21; language and literature 162; people’s language 168; prison experiences 128–31 race, Li Dazhao on cooperation and confrontation 27–8 Rectification Campaign 13–14, 78–80, 136, 138, 139, 155, 171, 180 Red Cliff, The 124, 194–5 Red Heart Weekly 54, 56 Red Sun Troupe 159 Report on the Haifeng Peasant Movement (Peng Pai) 57, 60 Resistance Troupe 174 revolution see National Revolution; Russian Revolution; socialism; socialist revolution revolutionary intellectuals, definition 222 n. 3 Roaring Troupe 170 romanticism 91–2; love and politics 116–19, 225 n. 10; and scientism 96 Ruan Xiaoxian 115, 135; biographical note 302–3 rural communities: CCP’s mobilization of 11, see also peasants Russian Revolution: impact on May Fourth movement 33; impact upon Mao 38; liberty 28 sacrifice see personal Saich, Tony 8 Sang Fu 171 Schoppa, Keith 48 Schram, Stuart 69, 235n. 8 Schumpeter, Joseph 7, 101, 102 Schwartz, Benjamin 23 scientism, and romanticism 96 Selden, Mark 81 self-criticism 137–9; Mao on 78–9 sensitivity 97–9 Sha Kefu 169 Shan Xialan 50 Shanghai Communist group 46–7 Shen Dingyi 46–7, 59, 65, 85; biographical note 303; class position of peasant 49–50;

Subject and name index

as leader of peasants 48; Li Chenghu on 51; peasantry, leadership and self-determination 52–3; private property 53, 75; self-determination 51; speech to Yaqian Peasant Association 48; on violence 50 Shi Jianru 121; biographical note 303 Shi Lemeng 165–6 Shi Yanfen 128; biographical note 303 Shi Yang 34 Shih Shu-mei 201 Shils, Edward 4, 35–6, 92, 96; ideology 224 n. 9 Shu Qiang 173–4 Sino-American Cooperative 240 n. 17 Snow, Edgar 149 Snow (Mao Zedong) 176 socialism: and democracy, Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao on 28–33; and democracy, May Fourth radicals 24, 33–4 socialist revolution, and democracy 28 Socialist Youth Corps 60 Song Jiaoren 113; biographical note 303 Song of the Red Flag (Liang Bin) 196–7 Song of Youth, The (Yang Mo) 194–6, 198–9 Song Zhidi 134 Soviets, Peng Pai on 57–8 Stalin, Joseph 68, 206 state, Chen Duxiu on 43 status quo, hostility of May Fourth radicals to 35–41 Stranahan, Patricia 238 n. 1 Su Manshu 92, 98, 111, 116; biographical note 303–4 Su Su 189 Su Yu 83 Sun Keyou 241 n. 21 Sun Weishi 209 Sun Yat-sen 29, 75, 92 Sunrise(Cao Yu) 179, 180, 210 Superflous Words, The (Qu Qiubai) 128, 129–31 Szelenyi, Ivan 248 n. 15 Tan Mingqian 34 Tan Sitong 91, 101, 113; biographical note 304 Tang Gongxian 47 Tang Xiaobing 8, 117

328

Subject and name index

329

Tao Zhu 176 Teiwes, Frederick 190 Thunderstorm (Cao Yu) 179, 180 Tianjin protest (1920) 36 torture 121 Triad Society 57 Trotsky, Leon 9–10, 192; bureaucracy 245 n. 4 United Action, Cultural Revolution 247 n. 10 Van de Ven, Hans 222 n. 3, 230n 9, 233 n. 10, 234 n. 3 violence, Shen Dingyi on 50 Voice of Labor 44 Voslenskii, Michael 203, 204; bureaucracy 245 n. 4, 247 n. 9 Wang Ban 127; gender and aesthetics 237–8 n. 16 Wang Chaowen 165 Wang Dachun 189 Wang Daqiang 106; biographical note 304 Wang Fanxi 120, 239 n. 11; biographical note 304; prison experiences 121, 122, 123, 125, 240 n. 14, 240 n. 15 Wang Guansan 49, 56 Wang Guowei 104 Wang Jianhong 150, 239 n. 6 Wang Jingwei 68, 96 Wang Meng 199–200, 207–8 Wang Ming 68, 77, 78; biographical note 304–5 Wang Ruofei 114; biographical note 305; desertion 242 n. 21 Wang Ruoshui 212 Wang Ruowang 108, 120, 211–12, 239 n. 11, 240 n. 16; biographical note 305; prison experiences 121, 123–4 Wang Shiwei 206, 207, 241 n. 21; biographical note 305 Wang Shoudao 210 Wang Xiaoxi 95–6; biographical note 305–6 Wang Yifei 118; biographical note 306 Wang Zheng 214 Wang Zuoxin 62 Weekly Review 46 Wei Hong 161

Subject and name index

330

West, Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao on limitations of Western democracy 28–9 White-haired Girl 173–4, 189 wood-block artists 181 World War I, Chen Duxiu on right and might 27 Wu Shushen 159–60 Wu Xiaobang 163 Wu Yin 172 Wu Yue 94; biographical note 306 Xia Chibing 210 Xia Minghan 94, 96, 101; biographical note 306 Xia Weixun 210 Xian Xinghai 13, 161, 172; biographical note 306 Xiang Jingyu 115; biographical note 306–7 Xiang River Review 38, 39 Xiang Zhongfa 239 n. 13 Xiao Chunii 307 Xiao Cizhan 100; biographical note 307 Xiao Hua 244 n. 8 Xiao San 151, 191 Xiao Tong 180 Xiong Henghan 114, 126; biographical note 307 Xu Baiming 47 Xu Beihong 181, 183 Xu Teli 160, 181 Xu Xiaoxuan 240 n. 17; biographical note 307–8 Xu Xilin 111, 238 n. 2; biographical note 307 Xu Yun 122, 127 Xuan Zhonghua 47, 50, 56–7; biographical note 308 Yan Pu 238–9 n. 5 Yang Kaihui 149 Yang Li 138–9 Yang Mo 194–6, 198–9 Yang Shande 46 Yang Zhihua 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 150; biographical note 308 Yangge 13, 168–9, 172–3, 244 n. 10 Yao Hua 141–2 Yaqian movement 46–54, 47–54; Li Chenghu 50–2 Yaqian Peasant Association 47, 48, 232 n. 7

Subject and name index

331

Ye Jianying 176, 209; biographical note 308 Ye Tiandi 105 Ye Ting 95; biographical note 308 Yellow River Cantata 172 Yi Baisha 44 Yin Fu 100, 102; biographical note 308 Young Newcomer in the Organization Department (Wang Meng) 199–200, 207–8 Yu Lan 164–5 Yuan Guoping 115 Yuan Shikai 107 Yun Daiying 37, 39, 67, 94, 113, 126, 135, 136; biographical note 308–9 Zeng Shan 212 Zhang Aiping 175 Zhang Binglin 93 Zhang Geng 173 Zhang Guotao 92; biographical note 309 Zhang Huangyan 93 Zhang Ma’an 60–1 Zhang Qinqiu 159 Zhang Tengxiao 160 Zhang Wentian 98, 99, 100, 106, 114; biographical note 309; on culture 153, 155–6 Zhao Boxian 111 Zhao Jianhua 211 Zhao Juntao 209 Zhao Sheng 309 Zhao Yiman 97; biographical note 309–10 Zhao Yunxiao 118, 127–8; biographical note 310 Zheng Chaolin 108, 122, 124, 248 n. 13; arrest 149–50; biographical note 310 Zhou Enlai 92, 160, 191; biographical note 310; knowledge 246 n. 6 Zhou Peiyuan 246 n. 6 Zhou Shi 107; biographical note 310 Zhou Wenyong 96; biographical note 310 Zhou Yang 160, 162–3, 173, 212; biographical note 310–11; people’s art and revolutionary leadership 168–9;

Subject and name index

Rectification Campaign 171 Zhu De 68, 150, 181; biographical note 311 Zhu Ming 138 Zhu Zhimin 33–4 Zou Rong 93

332