Wake up（167）

 

167

 

Anyone who wants to overthrow a regime must first create public opinion, and must first do ideological work. Pan Guangfu said to Chai Jianmin, He Jiafu and Li Tiandao: Mao Zedong continued to carry out the "anti-restoration" struggle in the cultural field, and the Cultural Revolution he launched officially kicked off.

In 1966, Mao Zedong launched the "Cultural Revolution", the original political order was impacted, and "the world was in chaos". A group of previously unknown figures suddenly stepped onto the forefront of the political arena, including Nie Yuanzi, Secretary of the General Branch of the Department of Philosophy at Peking University.

On May 25, 1966, Nie Yuanzi, Secretary of the General Party Branch of the Philosophy Department of Peking University, and seven teachers, Song Yixiu, Xia Jianzhi, Yang Keming, Gao Yunpeng, Li Xingchen, and Zhao Zhengyi, posted a post at Peking University titled "Song Shuo, Lu Ping, What exactly did Peng Peiyun do during the Cultural Revolution? ” big-character posters, targeting the Peking University Party Committee and the Beijing Municipal Party Committee. This big-character poster was called "the first Marxist-Leninist big-character poster in the country" by Mao Zedong.

The big-character posters by Nie Yuanzi and others attacked Song Shuo, Lu Ping, and Peng Peiyun, the main leaders of the Peking University Party Committee and the University Work Department of the Beijing Municipal Party Committee. The big-character poster said that the people of the whole country set off a vigorous cultural revolution, but Peking University stood still, deserted and lifeless, and the strong revolutionary demands of the teachers and students were suppressed. To "guide" the masses not to hold meetings, to publish big-character posters, to create all kinds of rules and regulations, and to suppress mass revolution. The big-character poster calls for breaking all revisionist controls and conspiracies, resolutely, thoroughly, cleanly and completely eliminating all monsters and ghosts, all Khrushchev-style counter-revolutionary revisionists, and carrying the socialist revolution to the end.

The big-character posters written by Nie Yuanzi and others aroused strong repercussions inside and outside Peking University. On the afternoon of May 25, a few hours after the big-character poster was posted, Jiang Nanxiang, Minister of Higher Education, Secretary of the Party Committee and President of Tsinghua University, came to Peking University. Then, Zhang Yan, head of the Foreign Affairs Office of the State Council, and Li Xuefeng, first secretary of the North China Bureau, went to Peking University successively, reiterating that the central government must "distinguish between inside and outside" for posting big-character posters, and that the movement must be carried out in a spirit of leadership, requiring strict adherence to party and state regulations. discipline. The Party Committee of Peking University urgently held a school-wide party member meeting that night to convey instructions from the leaders of the Central Committee and the North China Bureau. The spirit of the directive focuses on the fact that posting big-character posters in public violates the principle of "differentiation between inside and outside". Li Xuefeng suggested that the big-character posters could be torn off or covered with new ones; he asked the Peking University Party Committee to lead the movement well. Although relevant leaders did not object to posting big-character posters, nor did they comment on the content of Nie Yuanzi and others' big-character posters, their critical attitude towards big-character posters and their authors was very clear.

Under such circumstances, Kang Sheng sent the draft of the big-character poster to Mao Zedong in other places behind Liu Shaoqi, Zhou Enlai, Deng Xiaoping and others who were in charge of the work in Beijing. After Mao Zedong saw the big-character poster, he decided to broadcast it to the whole country.

On June 1, Mao Zedong wrote a comment on this big-character poster: "This article can be broadcast in full by Xinhua News Agency and published in various newspapers and periodicals across the country. It is very necessary. The reactionary fortress of Peking University can begin to be broken from now on."

At 8:00 p.m. on June 1, the Central People's Broadcasting Station broadcast the full text of the big-character posters written by Nie Yuanzi and others.

On June 2, the "People's Daily" published the full text of Nie Yuanzi and others' big-character posters under the headline "A Big-Character Poster of Seven Comrades of Peking University Exposes a Big Conspiracy", and at the same time published a commentator's article "Happy Peking University's Big-Character Poster Daily News, slandered Peking University as a "stubborn anti-Party and anti-socialist bastion", and the Peking University Party Committee is a "fake Communist Party" and a "revisionist 'party'", and called for "throwing them down, bringing down their gangsters, gangster organizations, Black discipline is completely destroyed."

During the Eleventh Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee, Mao Zedong wrote "Bombarding the Headquarters—One of My Big-Character Posters" on August 5. Regarding the big-character posters of Nie Yuanzi of Peking University and others, he said: "The country's first Marxist-Leninist big-character poster How well written are the commentaries of the People’s Daily and the People’s Daily! Comrades, please read this big-character poster and this comment again.”

On the same day, Mao Zedong added a comment to the People's Daily commentator article "Happy for a Big Character Poster at Peking University": "Wrong leadership that endangers the revolution should not be accepted unconditionally, but should be resolutely resisted. During the Great Revolution, the vast number of revolutionary teachers, students and revolutionary cadres widely resisted the wrong leadership."

The first big-character poster of Peking University caused widespread shock throughout the country. It directly caused the Party Committee of Peking University and the Beijing Municipal Committee to become the first party organizations to be washed away in the movement, thus setting a precedent for "kicking out party committees to start a revolution."

Under Mao Zedong's personal command and leadership, the unprecedented "Cultural Revolution" escalated dramatically.