Cheng Fangwu: A loyal practitioner of Marxism

Cheng Fangwu: A loyal practitioner of Marxism

Reporter Li Ying Wu Yaqin Correspondent Li Qian

In Lixi Village, Langtang Town, Xinhua County, Chengfangwu's hometown, the three words "Chengfangwu" are the eternal pride in the hearts of local villagers. Despite the changes of the years and the great changes in the mountains and villages, the story of Cheng Fangwu is still deeply rooted in the hearts of the villagers and has been passed down from generation to generation.

Cheng Fangwu was born in 1897 in Zhifang Tuan (present-day Langtang Town) in Xinhua County to a family of scholars. His grandfather was a jinshi during the Qing Guangxu period, and his father was a famous local talent. Under the influence of the family atmosphere, he began to study at home at the age of 4 and developed a good habit of consciously learning. At the age of 13, with the dream of strengthening the army to save the country, Cheng Fangwu went to Japan with his brother to study, and in 1917, he was admitted to Tokyo Imperial University to study guns.

At that time, the atrocities of imperialist aggression against China and the ugly acts of the Beiyang warlords who bent their knees and surrendered made Cheng Fangwu realize that to save the country, it was necessary to rely solely on science and technology to save the country, but more importantly, to enhance the political consciousness of the masses and rely on the masses of the people to rise up and transform old China. Therefore, Cheng Fangwu was determined to move towards revolution.

In May 1918, he participated in the struggle of students studying in Japan against Duan Qirui's signing of the Sino-Japanese Military Pact. In 1919, the "May Fourth" movement broke out. When the news reached Tokyo, he was greatly excited and determined to plunge into this epoch-making storm. In April 1921, Cheng Fangwu returned to China, and together with Guo Moruo, Yu Dafu and others, established the Creation Society of revolutionary literary groups in Shanghai, and successively founded various progressive newspapers and periodicals such as "Creation Weekly", published revolutionary literary works that awakened the masses, and promoted the new cultural movement.

In the spring of 1924, creation day and creation weekly newspaper were discontinued one after another, and the creation quarterly magazine was also difficult to sustain. In June of the same year, Cheng Fangwu came to Guangzhou, the center of the revolution at that time, and taught at Guangdong University, where he also served as a political instructor at the Whampoa Military Academy. In 1927, when the Shanghai workers' armed uprising failed, Cheng Fangwu presided over the drafting of the "Declaration of Chinese Writers on the General People of the British Intellectual Class", angrily accusing British and French imperialism of openly helping the warlord Sun Chuanfang to brutally kill the Chinese working class, and encouraging the proletarian people around the world to unite to overthrow capitalist imperialism. In September 1928, Cheng Fangwu came to Paris, France, was introduced by He Zhaoxu and Zhan Weiming to join the Communist Party of China, and took over the editor-in-chief of the Publication of the Berlin and Paris branches of the Communist Party of China, "Red Light".

In early 1929, Cheng Fangwu moved to Berlin, Germany, to study the original works of Marx and Engels Dewen with the German Communist Political Theorist Heilmann Dongke. In addition, he also studied Russian on his own, studied French fiercely, and quickly mastered five languages: Japanese, German, English, French, and Russian.

At this time, Cheng Fangwu received a letter from Moscow from Cai Hesen, the representative of the Communist Party of China to the Comintern, hoping that he would take advantage of his convenient position in Europe to translate the German version of the Communist Manifesto into Chinese, and pointed out in particular that Engels had stressed that when countries translated the Communist Manifesto, it was better to translate the German version directly Chinese, and not to translate it through other texts, otherwise the difference would be too great. After receiving the letter, Cheng Fangwu immediately began intensive translation work, and it took several months to finally complete the task of translating the German version of the Communist Manifesto.

After returning to China in 1931, Cheng Joined the Chinese Left-Wing Writers' Union in Shanghai. In November of the same year, the party organization sent him to the Eyu-Anhui revolutionary base area to serve as the director of the Propaganda Department of the Provincial Party Committee, the chairman of the Provincial Soviet Cultural Committee, and the secretary of the Hong'an Central County Party Committee. After coming to the revolutionary base area, Cheng Fangwu presided over the drafting of the "Resolution of the Soviet Cultural Committee of Eyu-Anhui Province," edited the "Lenin School Textbook," and vigorously developed school education and social education, so that the Eyu-Anhui Soviet District, which was originally a cultural desert, became a revolutionary big school.

In October 1934, Cheng Fangwu began the 25,000-mile Long March with the Central Red Army, becoming the only university professor in the Ranks of the Red Army. The Red Army arrived in Shaanxi in October 1935. In November of the same year, he became the director of academic affairs of the Central Party School.

After the outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the Chinese nation was on the brink of survival, and in order to train cadres to save the country in the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, Mao Zedong personally ordered cheng fangwu to preside over the establishment of the Northern Shaanxi Public School and serve as its principal. Cheng Fangwu gladly obeyed his orders and left the Central Party School in August 1937 to preside over the establishment of The Northern Shaanxi Public School. In the past two years, Northern Shaanxi Public School has trained more than 6,000 cadres for the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, of which 3,000 have joined the Party.

Since teaching at the Ruijin Central Party School in 1934, Cheng Fangwu has been engaged in the party's educational cause, and has long been committed to publicizing and defending Marxism, translating the Communist Manifesto five times, and proofreading and translating Marxist classics such as "Criticism of the Gotha Program", "Socialism from Utopia to Science", and "Anti-Dühring", making important contributions to the accurate propaganda of Marxism.

On May 17, 1984, Cheng Fangwu died of illness in Beijing at the age of 87.

At the Municipal Museum, a 400-square-meter Chengfangwu Memorial Room is being built. About 900 precious cultural relics, including pre-life items, manuscripts, and books, will be displayed here. "We must make the revolutionary cultural relics of Chengfangwu 'alive', let the red story 'live', and turn the Chengfangwu Memorial Room into a real-life classroom where Bacon casts the soul." Dai Xiaobo, director of the Municipal Museum, said.

[Reporter's Note] Cheng Fangwu's life was a life of eternal attack on the cause of communism, a life of arduous pioneering and creation for the cause of proletarian education, and a life of bowing down to the spread of Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought. His persistent and firm belief in communism and his spirit of never-ending struggle for the revolutionary cause are the eternal driving force leading us to forge ahead in the new era and new journey.