Yesterday was the 152nd anniversary of Lenin's birth, and today is World Book Day on 23 April, which reminds me of a special work of our Party in the period of revolution and war: the Lenin Club.
The Lenin Club, also known as the Lenin Room, was a kind of club established in the revolutionary base areas during the Second Civil Revolutionary War. Undertaking the work of cultural entertainment, political propaganda and education of the common people is the product of our Party's study of the historical experience of the Soviet revolution.
In the early years, when our party established the rural revolutionary base areas, it often faced a very serious problem; the isolation of the rural areas made it impossible for the local people to access the outside world, and they lacked access to knowledge abroad, and the people did not even have a sense of national consciousness, let alone talk about socialist ideology. The Communists came up with the simplest solution: all levels of government and revolutionary groups set up Lenin's rooms, educated workers in literacy, organized political discussions and entertainment activities.
In a backward and poor Chinese countryside, you can find a big map depicting the whole of China, see the Communist Manifesto, Capital, young people can see the world situation at that time and the world's most advanced ideas, and the peasants who have worked in the land all their lives finally know what Shanghai is like that they have never been to in their lives, and children can stare at the globe in front of them and know where they are. The Lenin Club was like a window that opened up the aspirations of the poor and impoverished peasants for the future.
In the early 1930s, the Red Star Newspaper, edited by Comrade Deng Xiaoping, set up a column entitled "Lenin Room." He guided the study of revolutionary theory in the troops and carried out discussions on the "question of war" and the "question of the Paris Commune". Lenin's clubs also often held sports events, and basketball, a product of the West, also appeared on Chinese soil, and sometimes the party's top leadership also participated in this activity to close the distance with the masses. In terms of opera activities, in the Yan'an period, through in-depth investigation of the masses, the famous "White Haired Girl" was born into this world.
You opened a window for me, and I held up the whole beam for you.
In "The Red Star Shines on China", the author Snow wrote down this dialogue:
One day I went to the front with Peng and some of his staff officers to visit a small arsenal and inspect the workers' recreation room, their Lenin room, the Lenin Club. On one of the walls of the room was a large cartoon drawn by a worker, in which a Japanese man in a kimono stepped on Manchuria, Rehe, and Hebei with his feet, raised a blood-stained knife and slashed at the rest of China. The Japanese in the manga have a big nose.
"Who's that?" Peng asked a Young Pioneer who managed Lenin's club.
"That's the Japanese imperialists!" The child answered.
"How do you know?" Peng asked.
"Just look at that big nose!"
Peng laughed and looked at me. "Well," he said, pointing at me ,"there's a foreigner here, is he imperialist?" ”
"He's a foreigner, that's no problem," said the Young Pioneer, "but he's not a Japanese imperialist, he has a big nose, but he's not big enough to be a Japanese imperialist!" ”
In today's countryside, perhaps it should also be the same as 80 years ago, only by keeping the window open, in a closed place, there will be hope for the future.
Are you willing to open a window for them?