On April 28, 1927, Li Dazhao, a pioneer of the Chinese communist movement, one of the main founders of the Communist Party of China, and a great Marxist, took to the gallows in the city of Beijing under the rule of the warlords of the Fengzhi dynasty, composing the sound and glory of his life with heroic sacrifice.
Regarding the scene of Li Dazhao's bravery and righteousness, judging from the news reports of that year, Li Dazhao was the first to ascend to the hanging platform among the 20 martyrs who went to the martyrdom on the same day; he did not change his look and calmly became righteous. When he was about to be executed, Li Dazhao once asked for a pen and paper, "a will to write a will"; the executioner did not allow it, he stopped talking, and went to the gallows with a relaxed look. At the time of the punishment, "the executioner made his neck stretch slightly", and he "did as he said, and his attitude was very calm", which can be said to be regarded as death, and the righteousness is awe-inspiring. This should be the real scene of Li Dazhao's heroic righteousness.
Hang Li Dazhao's gallows
Did Li Dazhao give a last-day speech when he went to the gallows?
The Biography of Li Dazhao, published by the People's Publishing House in April 1979, is a comprehensive account of Li Dazhao's life and deeds. This biography of Li Dazhao, which reproduces li Dazhao's heroic life and glorious image, was compiled at the suggestion of Deng Tuo, former secretary of the Beijing Municipal CPC Committee, at the party school of the Beijing Municipal CPC Committee in early 1960. The Party School of the Beijing Municipal Party Committee attached great importance to the compilation of the "Biography of Li Dazhao", and the president Zhao Zhengfu personally presided over it, and in the summer of 1960, Yuan Qian, Zhu Qiaosen, Huang Zhen, Zhang Zhonghao, Yang Qin, Li Meirui, etc. wrote a draft of "Li Dazhao's Biography" on the basis of collecting a large amount of information. Later, Zhu Qiaosen and Huang Zhen spent three years and wrote the first draft of the whole book. After the "Cultural Revolution" began, Deng Tuo, Zhao Zhengfu, and others were persecuted to death one after another, Yuan Qian, Zhu Qiaosen, Huang Zhen, and other writers of "Biography of Li Dazhao" were attacked, and this manuscript praising Li Dazhao's historical merits was also unreasonably attacked, resulting in the revision and finalization of the manuscript being interrupted for more than ten years. After smashing the "Gang of Four," Zhu Qiaosen and Huang Zhen seriously revised and supplemented the manuscript, which finally enabled it to meet with the vast number of readers on the occasion of commemorating the 52nd anniversary of Li Dazhao's heroic righteousness, and became a gift to commemorate the 90th anniversary of Li Dazhao's birth.
"The Biography of Li Dazhao" in the ninth chapter of "The Great Festival of Rin Does Not Dishonor the Great Spirit Through changhong", specially set aside "Hang me, hang the great communism!" the section recounts Li Dazhao's heroic sacrifice in Beijing on the afternoon of April 28, 1927:
At 10:00 a.m. on April 28, the enemy's so-called special court suddenly held a verdict: Comrade Dazhao and others were immediately sentenced to hanging. The enemy did not dare to hold a public trial, and the "military law trial" composed of the so-called General Headquarters of the Anguo Army, the General Headquarters of the Gyeonggi Garrison, the High Trial Office of the Beijing Division, and the Police Department of the Beijing Division was secretly and hastily carried out in a living room of the Inspector General of Police. When Comrade Dazhao and others were secretly killed in the afternoon at the Jingshi Detention Center in Xijiaomin Lane, they were even more "cut off from traffic on the road and extremely vigilant," as if they were facing a great enemy. The reactionaries, fearing the great prestige of Comrade Dazhao and his fellow martyrs among the masses, and the strength of the revolutionary people, dare only to sneak into this evil deed in a dark corner.
The gallows, which were a new type of homicide instrument in China at that time. The barbaric and shameless feudal rulers brought the gallows from abroad against loyal revolutionaries. However, when Comrade Dazhao dragged his tortured and heavy body, with awe-inspiring and inviolable majesty, with a firm smile that will never be forgotten, he was the first to calmly and proudly walk up to the gallows, in front of this great communist fighter, how small the gallows and a group of executioners looked!
It was under this gallows, on the execution table of the killing, that Comrade Dazhao delivered his last impassioned speech and shouted: "Long live the Communist Party of China!" "It shows his greatest contempt for death and for the reactionaries, his firm belief in the Party and in the cause of communism. He ridiculed the bandits who killed him for "swimming fish in a hot pot and wanting to play ugly dramas in a daze." He said: "Just because you hanged me today, you can't hang the great communism!" We have trained many comrades, like the seeds of safflowers, scattered everywhere! We are convinced that communism is bound to win a glorious victory in China and in the world! ”
For the lofty communist ideals, Comrade Dazhao fought all his life and finally sacrificed his precious life. He was only thirty-eight years old at the time of his death.
It should be said that this affectionate account is a heartfelt tribute to Li Dazhao's fearless revolutionary spirit of seeing death as a homecoming, and it is also an extremely vivid description. However, the account in it has obvious "hard wounds". The "hard wounds" mainly concern whether Li Dazhao ever delivered the "last impassioned speech" on the execution ground and whether he shouted "Long live the Communist Party of China"! In this regard, shortly after the publication of "The Biography of Li Dazhao", some experts and scholars who studied Li Dazhao questioned it. Obviously, looking at the reports of that year, there was no account of Li Dazhao's last-ditch speech, nor could it find a reminiscence article about Li Dazhao's last-minute speech, let alone the content of Li Dazhao's speech. There is no conclusive historical record that Li Dazhao delivered his deathbed speech at that time.
First, the execution ground at that time was closed, except for the executioners and the military police, who were not put in any crowd to watch, nor were reporters allowed to enter the execution ground for interviews; Li Dazhao could not give a final speech to anyone; first, Li Dazhao really made a speech to whom; first, Li Dazhao really made a speech, and at that time, he obviously searched for the executioners, and the reports on the situation would not be left untouched. According to the author's understanding, the only material that can be found that Li Dazhao delivered his last-minute speech is a re-revised manuscript of the "Chronicle of Laoting County" compiled in 1942 collected by the Laoting County Archives (unpublished), and Han Zuozhou, the chief compiler who was with Li Dazhao's classmates at Yongpingfu Middle School, wrote a biography of Li Dazhao after the founding of New China, and wrote in the record of Li Dazhao's heroic sacrifice: "In the end, the court arraigned him, ordered him to be expelled from the party, and the death penalty was lenient, laughing: 'The head is not spared, individualism, and sacrifice is not spared.'" So he was hanged, and on the twenty-eighth day of the same month, he also happened. "When the executioner generously stepped onto the execution platform, please make a simple speech affirming revolutionary justice and the relationship with the people's livelihood and society, and the audience was moved by it, and left a deep impression and understanding for the up-and-coming revolutionaries."
The language used in this manuscript is full of admiration, limited to the grasp of historical materials, but there are many inaccuracies in some places, especially in the part of the sentence speech, which is most likely subjective speculation and imagination. Comparatively speaking, the Beiyang Pictorial published a newsletter signed "Wang Lang Zijing Sent by the Beijing Division" at that time, "Execution of Li Dazhao and Other Trivia", so Yun "did not have a few executive officials to come, and first sent Li Dazhao to the hanging table." When Li saw this, he knew that he could not avoid it, but he said: 'Please come with a pen and paper, and write a will.' 'The executioner knows that it is too late at this time, and it is not allowed to be rude. Li was speechless, his look had not changed, both. The executioner made his neck slightly extended, and Li responded with a calm attitude. Twenty minutes to begin", should be the real situation at that time. That is to say, when Li Dazhao was righteous, he had prepared and asked to write a "will", but without permission, he "wordlessly" led his neck to the gallows; when he went to the gallows, his appearance "did not change", and when he was put into the gallows by the executioners, he was "very calm". From this, it can be seen that Li Dazhao's performance when he was about to be executed can be said to be calm, calm, and fearless.
In addition, at the beginning of the founding of New China, when Mr. Zhang Cixi compiled the "Biography of Mr. Li Dazhao", which systematically introduced the life and deeds of Li Dazhao, in the chapter "Before and After the Death", he once recorded the information provided by a jailer at that time: "Before the execution, he wanted to make his last speech to the masses, but the soldier who was escorted fell to the ground with one punch." (The so-called "masses" were the jailers present, etc.) This is a direct testimony that Li Dazhao failed to give a speech on his deathbed.
As far as the author has learned for many years, Mr. Zhu Qiaosen, a principal member of the writing team of "The Biography of Li Dazhao," one of the main authors of "The Biography of Li Dazhao," and later a professor and doctoral supervisor of the Teaching and Research Department of the History of the Communist Party of China at the Party School of the CPC Central Committee, confessed to Zhang Jingru, a well-known expert who studied Li Dazhao, shortly after the publication of "The Biography of Li Dazhao," that the plot of Li Dazhao's last-ditch speech was "compiled" on the basis of speculation, and that the passage that Li Dazhao said was also "compiled" on the basis of Li Dazhao's thoughts and discourses at that time. The purpose is to show Li Dazhao's heroism and lofty ideals.
According to the relevant reminiscence article, under the increasingly dangerous situation of the struggle environment at that time, Li Dazhao's cousin once asked him: "Are you not afraid of doing this all the time?" People are so powerful, the military power is in hand, today rush, tomorrow to catch, drive you from here to there, are you not begging for food? Li Dazhao's answer at that time was: "They are like a wall, we pound around, we will always smash this wall." And he said, "What are you afraid of!" Sooner or later we will triumph. Our doctrines, like the seeds of a crop, are scattered everywhere, and they cannot be destroyed. They ruined here, and there grew up, it doesn't matter. The latter sentence was the main "blueprint" for "compiling" Li Dazhao's last words. "Just because you hanged me today, you can't hang the great communism!" We have trained many comrades, like the seeds of safflowers, scattered everywhere! We are convinced that communism is bound to win a glorious victory in the world and in China! This was most likely Li Dazhao's last thought when he walked up to the gallows, but he couldn't do it, and he didn't need to say such a thing to the executioners. This was the real scene at the time.
In addition, Li Dazhao most likely neither delivered his last-minute speech nor shouted "Long live the Chinese Communist Party!" " slogan. Before his death, Li Dazhao shouted "Long live the Communist Party of China!" The plot is from the chapter "Before and After the Death" of Zhang Cixi's "Biography of Mr. Li Dazhao", which reads: "When Mr. Li stepped onto the execution platform, he called out to the Chinese Communist Party for three times!" The actual situation is that after Li Dazhao was arrested, he did not deliberately deny that he was a communist, but he mainly appeared as the head of the northern region of the Kuomintang. In prison, he wrote "self-reports" three times (that is, the "Self-Statements in Prison" written by Sanyiqi), and was also repeatedly interrogated by "Chief Judge He Fenglin, Judge Yan Wenhai" and others. In the 1980s, the Beijing Municipal Archives found two transcripts of Li Dazhao's confessions that were interrogated after his arrest on April 6, 1927, from the archives of the Former Beijing Normal Division High Prosecutor's Office; the confessions were copied from the then Beijing Normal Police Department to the High Prosecutor's Office, and were called "full copies of Li Dazhao's confessions" by the Police Department.
In 1989, the third issue of "Beijing Archives Historical Materials" published the two confession transcripts of Li Dazhao under the title of "Li Dazhao's Confessions in Prison"; the "Complete Works of Li Dazhao" published by Hebei Education Publishing House in September 1999, which compiled the full text of these two Confessions of Li Dazhao and listed them as "Confessions in Prison". Judging from the "Confessions in Prison" and "Confessions in Prison," the so-called "confessions" that Li Dazhao made in prison and answered in court were almost all about the public activities of the National Revolution in the north at that time, as well as some insignificant matters, and did not involve any secrets related to the underground activities of the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, especially the Communist Party, nor did they contain a single "confession" that undermined the party's honor and the interests of the revolution. For this reason, the "presiding judge" and "judge" who were responsible for his trial had no choice but to admit to the press: "Li has no conclusive confession." ”
Newspapers at the time also reported that when Li Dazhao was tried, he was "very refreshed, his attitude was extremely calm, and he admitted himself as a believer in Marx's theory, so he joined the Communist Party, but he did not know anything about all other acts and was very strictly guarded." At the last moment of his life, Li Dazhao shouted in the depths of his heart, "Long live the Communist Party of China!" It is highly probable that he shouted this slogan when he was about to be sentenced, and it seems that he lacks the necessary historical basis.
Li Dazhao may have been killed using the cruel "three-hanging execution method."
Hanging has existed in China since ancient times, and the extremely cruel "three hangings execution method" was popular, that is, torturing the tortured person over and over again during the execution. Hanging, on the other hand, is also popular in Western history and modern times.
After the founding of the Republic of China, hanging was basically abolished, and most prisoners sentenced to death followed the beheading method widely used in the old days. By 1919, after Yuan Shikai's death, Li Yuanhong, who succeeded him as president, ordered a ban on executions by beheading, and the Nationalist government imported a gallows from Britain and began to replace beheading with Western-style hanging
Whether the hanging machine that hanged Li Dazhao was imported from Britain in 1919 is impossible to investigate. According to reports at the time, the Execution Ground of the Jingshi Detention Center, located in Xijiaomin Lane, had two gallows, and Li Dazhao was the first person to be hanged, which took a long time. The Report of the National Daily said that "it took about eighteen minutes per person to die" at the time of his execution, and the Beiyang Pictorial reported that Li Dazhao was "killed in twenty minutes" when he was tortured. According to the recollections of relevant personnel, Li Dazhao's sentence may have been twice as long as "twenty minutes", about 40 minutes.
Li Xinghua, the eldest daughter of Li Dazhao, who was also imprisoned that year, said in the section "Heroic righteousness" in the book "Remembering My Father Li Dazhao" (Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House, January 1981, 1st edition): "The reactionary government regards my father as the 'culprit', and is afraid of him to death and hates him to death. In order to prolong his suffering, the executioners tortured the others for only twenty minutes, and against him for forty minutes. The reason why Li Dazhao was tortured for a long time was that from the rumors and some indications at that time, it should be that the executioner implemented the ancient and extremely cruel "three hangings execution method" on Li Dazhao. In this regard, Zhang Jianguo, the former chairman of the Leting County Literary Association and writer who has lived and worked in Li Dazhao's hometown for a long time, once described it in the section "Calmly And Righteously" in the book "The Story of the Great Sower Li Dazhao" (Hubei People's Publishing House, January 1980, 1st Edition):
The stupid enemy strangled Da Zhao for the first time, put it down again, and still advised him to "repent." Comrade Dazhao woke up and said indignantly: "You hanged me, my soul does not die, the revolution does not die!" ”
The enemy hanged him a second time, and then put him down again, still urging him to "repent." Da Zhao slowly opened his eyes and said with a sneer, "Strive to do it quickly!" ”
The enemy's delusions were completely shattered, and it was only for the third time that he was hanged. Comrade Dazhao finally sacrificed his precious life of only thirty-nine years old for communism and revolution!
In addition, Zhang Jianguo also wrote in this verse: "After Da zhao died, his seven tricks shed blood. A good friend of his, surnamed Zhou, went to the doctor and wiped away the blood for him, and he still looked like a life. ”
Li Dazhao's words at the time of his torture can no longer be examined, but "strive to do it quickly!" It was likely that it was the last voice he left behind.
According to the author's many years of searching, Bai Ruyi, the adopted daughter of Li Dazhao's hometown friend Bai Meichu, said many times before his death that after Li Dazhao's sacrifice, there were three deep blood marks on his neck.