【Party History Study and Education】One Story a Day: "I Don't Want to Be an Official, I Want to Be a Servant of the People"

"Where are the thorns that cannot be cut off?" Where are the jackals who can't die? Where are the mountains that cannot be pushed over? You must struggle, fight bravely, and victory is yours. ”

"The five ridges are full of thin waves, and the mud pills are walking in the mud." This is a sentence from Mao Zedong's poem "The Long March". Qitianling in Yizhang County, at the southern tip of Hunan Province, is one of the "Five Ridges", hence the name of Wuling Town, north of the county seat. There is a small village in Wuling Town called Deng Jia wan, which is the hometown of Deng Zhongxia, an early member of the CCP organization.

In deng Zhongxia's former residence, Deng Rufen, a 40-year-old docent, introduced: "Deng Zhongxia did not graduate from university, his father helped him find a good job in the Beiyang government, he still had the choice to go abroad, but he had to risk the revolution." ”

"My purpose is to seek the welfare of the masses, and I will never get rich alone"

Deng Zhongxia was born into a family of feudal bureaucratic landlords, his father was a late Qing dynasty official, and he spent most of his life holding the rice bowl of the imperial court and the government. In the summer of 1920, before Deng Zhongxia graduated from Beijing University, his father, who was working in the Beiyang Government's Quanshu Bureau (in charge of the personnel administrative organ), began to plan his son's future, and entrusted people to find a well-paid position for him in the Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce. The letter of appointment was sent, but Deng Zhongxia refused: "Those who are officials are all sucking the marrow of the common people. I will not be an official, I will be a servant of the people, and a public servant is a long-term worker of the masses... Create a new world where everyone has food to eat and everyone has clothes to wear. ”

"Improper official" words, he is not the first time to say.

Today, the Lianggong Ancestral Hall next door to Deng Zhongxia's former residence still retains the appearance of that year. Deng Rufen introduced that in August 1919, Deng Zhongxia returned to his hometown for the summer vacation, and it was at the door of this ancestral hall that he gave a speech to the villagers. Deng Zhongxia's speech was interrupted by a villager: "Long Shun, we can't understand these great truths you say." I ask you how will you repay your grandmother, father and fellow villagers after graduating from Peking University in the future? Deng Zhongxia replied, "I want to be a servant of the people, and I will never be an official." I want to unite comrades from all walks of life, work hard and create, so that everyone has food to eat, everyone has clothes to wear, and can live a prosperous life. My aim is to work for the welfare of the masses, never to be selfish and to make a fortune alone. ”

Inside the former residence, the Yangtze River Daily reporter saw a copy of Deng Zhongxia's manuscript from elementary school, involving various knowledge of China's territory, waterways, situation, coastal defense, etc., a total of 21 parts and 41 pages, which can still faintly see "Berlin latitude and Heilongjiang are the same degree, March is still ice and snow" and other content, handwriting is beautiful. In that era when information dissemination was inconvenient, the manuscript of the teenager Deng Zhongxia was completely marked and classified, which showed that he had the world in mind when he was young.

To carry out the labor movement, it is necessary to speak words that the workers can understand

At the age of 20, Deng Zhongxia was admitted to Hunan Higher Normal School and studied under Yang Changji. Yang Changji taught him new knowledge and new ideas, sowing the seeds of revolution in his heart, which made Deng Zhongxia question the feudal family education he had received before. The more suspicious he became, the more he wanted to find out the truth, and in his letters to his father there were a large number of words "freedom" and "revolution".

In 1917, Deng Zhongxia was admitted to the Chinese Literature Gate (Literature Department) of Peking University. Under the leadership of Li Dazhao, Deng Zhongxia organized the Marxist Theory Research Association. The Society holds regular seminars to collect and translate the works of Marx and Engels. Through discussion and study, Deng Zhongxia deepened his understanding of Marxism and began to use Marxism to guide action. During the May Fourth Movement, Deng Zhongxia actively participated in demonstrations, took to the streets to give speeches, called on the people to unite against the enemy, and returned to Hunan to participate in the organization of the patriotic student movement, which effectively supported the anti-imperialist and anti-feudal struggle in Beijing and other places.

After the May Fourth Movement, Deng Zhongxia studied and studied Marxism while devoting himself to the workers' movement, but the work did not go well. At first, he went to the street to mobilize foreign coachmen to gather and block the road to ask for increased treatment, but there were few people, and the police came and smashed the car. The foreign coachmen pulled him to make a claim, and Deng Zhongxia took out all the money to cover the loss fee. Someone on campus saw him and sarcastically said, "How's the labor movement going?" My father also cut off his support because of his participation in "radical" activities. Deng Zhongxia summed up the lesson: Those who pull foreign cars belong to relatively loose individual laborers, and they are affected by help, and the real workers' movement should also go to the organized industrial workers.

Just at this time, Li Dazhao called on the students to go to the workers, and in the winter of 1920, he sent Deng Zhongxia and others to Changxindian to open a labor remedial school. Deng Zhongxia, dressed in a long robe, stood on a high platform to preach "labor sacredness" to the workers and called on the workers to come to the school, but the workers who gathered dispersed after a while. "What's the use of learning this, people who play tricks?" "If you want to give it to the nest head, I'll go." Very few workers came to class.

In order to mingle with the workers, Deng Zhongxia went to Changxindian every week to live on campus for a day or two. He takes 7 yuan a month for living expenses, eats only 3 yuan of food, and saves 4 yuan to buy tea and candy to entertain workers who come to class. Over time, the workers no longer regarded Deng Zhongxia as a gentleman who usually wore a long shirt, often asked him to write family letters, asked him for prescriptions when he was sick, and even asked him to help resolve family disputes.

Some workers think that it is useless to study culture through hard work, and Deng Zhongxia patiently explains that "the labor of workers creates everything in the world", so the poverty of workers "is the largest irrationality in the world", and workers can recognize words so that they can not be fooled and oppressed.

What textbooks are used to teach workers? Some people say that "it is enough to use common character textbooks used by civilians", Deng Zhongxia shook his head, "We should compile a workers' literacy textbook according to the situation of workers' lives and labor, compile the tools and utensils commonly used by workers in labor in textbooks, and let workers know how to write the three words of 'vise' and which two words are 'file'..." He is also good at grasping the ideological characteristics of workers and vividly and vividly giving lessons. For example, when teaching the word "worker", he figuratively said: "The upper horizontal is 'heaven', the lower horizontal is 'earth', and a person standing in the middle is 'worker'." Workers with blue heads and feet on the earth are the masters of the world. "This teaching is very popular with workers.

"After being a worker all my life, I don't see how great we are."

"If you think about it, who built the railway, who drove the train, who built the machine, aren't we the workers?" Isn't it great that the workers do not build houses and no one can live, that the workers do not weave cloth and wear clothes, and that no one in the world can do without the workers? ”

"We are great, why are we still poor?"

"Fate is bitter!" Workers answered the phone.

"It is not because there is a class, there is exploitation, the workers have built buildings for others to live in, and they have woven satin and others have worn. Why can the bourgeoisie exploit? The main thing is that they have political power, and if they want to be free from oppression and exploitation, they must unite and make a revolution. ”

These words fully show that Deng Zhongxia at this time had grown into an intellectual with rudimentary communist ideas.

In order to unite the workers, Deng Zhongxia made some efforts. He believed that to carry out the workers' movement, it was necessary to speak things that the workers could understand. He took a blank piece of paper, propped up with both hands and told the workers to poke with their fingers, and when they poked, they broke; he took 3 pieces of paper and asked the workers to poke and broke; he took a large stack of paper and asked the workers to poke, and his fingers hurt, and none of the paper was broken. Deng Zhongxia explained: This is the strength of unity and the power of organization.

"The more we workers listen to the more open-minded we become, and when we go to the factory during the day, more and more people come to learn." Hang Baohua, a worker at Changxindian, later wrote in a reminiscence, "I began to understand the revolutionary principles at the Changxindian Labor Tuition School. ”

In April 1921, the labor school began to prepare for the establishment of a trade union. On May 1, under the leadership and organization of Deng Zhongxia and others, workers in Beijing Changxindian and Tianjin and Baoding attended the inaugural meeting of the trade union in Changxindian. After the meeting, a large parade was organized, and more than 1,000 workers set out like a flood team breaking through the embankment, demanding higher wages and better treatment. Wang Zhensheng of the Party History Research Office of the Fengtai District CPC Committee of Beijing Municipality told the Yangtze River Daily that this parade was the first "May Day" march of Chinese workers, and Changxindian became the source of China's modern workers' movement.

"The final victory belongs to us after all"

In February 1923, Deng Zhongxia participated in and led the February 7 strike. In May 1925, after the outbreak of the May Thirtieth Movement, he and Su Zhaozheng organized a provincial and Hong Kong general strike together. The provincial and Hong Kong strikes lasted 16 months with the participation of 250,000 workers, making it one of the longest strikes in the history of the world labor movement.

In November 1932, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China sent Deng Zhongxia to serve as the director of the China Mutual Freemasonry Association and secretary of the party group. The comrades feared for his safety and advised him to pay attention to concealment. He said with a smile: "We must be good at concealment, but if we are not in contact with the masses, we will do nothing, then the enemy will not have to fear us, and we will lose the role of a revolutionary fighter." ”

On May 15, 1933, Deng Zhongxia was arrested in the French Concession in Shanghai.

During deng Zhongxia's arraignment, the military judge asked him what the crime was. Deng Zhongxia was awe-struck: "I tell you, the February 7 strike and the provincial and Hong Kong strike were all commanded by me!" ”

Late one night in early September 1933, Deng Zhongxia, Ma Naisong and seven other "political prisoners" were escorted to Nanjing. In the middle of the month, Chiang Kai-shek, who was "encircling and suppressing" the Red Army in Jiangxi, sent a secret telegram to Gu Zhenglun, commander of the Gendarmerie Command: The communist bandit Deng Zhongxia was immediately executed.

Before his execution, Deng Zhongxia wrote 10 big characters on the wall of his prison: "But after ten years, red flowers bloom everywhere." He also left a letter to the Central Committee: "Comrades, I am going to Yuhuatai, and you should continue to struggle!" The final victory belongs to us after all! ”

Author: Zhang Weina