This is probably the largest intellectual youth movement on the mainland in modern times, and with Chairman Mao's slogan of making great achievements in the vast world, more than 20 million intellectual youth have swept through the entire land of China like a gust of wind, and this is the movement to go up to the mountains and go to the countryside that everyone knows.
However, many people did not understand this movement at that time, and only with their own enthusiasm and followed Chairman Mao's call, they participated in this movement, but many years later, when people looked back on the past, they finally understood what Chairman Mao was thinking and thinking, and after understanding these things, they could not help but be impressed by Chairman Mao's foresight.
With the successive victories of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the War of Liberation, the turbulent period that had lasted for decades in China finally came to an end, under the leadership of Chairman Mao, the people of the whole country lived a peaceful and happy life, and in the years of peace, the population of the mainland continued to increase, and within a few years after the founding of New China, the number of young people on the mainland reached a new peak, and a thriving scene appeared in the whole of China, but behind such a scene, Chairman Mao keenly discovered some problems.
At that time, although the mainland was moving forward step by step and on the road of industrialization, we still did not have enough posts in the cities to place these young people, which led to the fact that many school-going and knowledgeable young people in the cities at that time had nothing to do. But in the countryside, the opposite is true. The mainland was a big agricultural country, and although we were trying to transform into an industrial country at that time, agriculture was still our pillar industry.
Chairman Mao attached great importance to the peasants' problems, and in the early days of the founding of New China, there were very serious problems in the vast rural areas, that is, there was not much land or means of production in the homes of various peasant households, and the means of production used by the majority of the people were very old and backward.
Today the old Li family lacks a plough rake, go to Lao Wang's family to borrow, tomorrow Lao Wang's family will use a hoe, go to Lao Zhang's house to get it, who has a problem in the field, everyone together to find a way, form a group of mutual help and mutual assistance, Chairman Mao put forward this proposal was soon popularized in the vast rural areas, and through the experience summary of one pilot after another, in 1953 we began to develop agricultural production cooperatives, but after the large-scale development of cooperatives, an important problem began to be exposed. That is the lack of accounting talent.
At that time, almost all the ancestors in the countryside were farmers, for this kind of literacy and hyphenation, but also the work of counting few people can be competent, in the absence of accounting, many cooperatives are relying on farmers themselves to record, although this rough statistics are very prone to problems, but also often bring trouble to the work, but this is already the best solution at that time.
Soon after the proposal of the rural cooperatives, Chairman Mao keenly discovered this problem, and at that time, that is, from that time on, Chairman Mao put forward the prototype of going to the mountains and going to the countryside, when Chairman Mao mentioned in a report that the main work direction and work path of primary and secondary school graduates was to come to the countryside. It was also at this time that Chairman Mao put forward the slogan of broad space and great achievements.
At that time, after Chairman Mao put forward this proposal, it quickly received a response from everyone, after all, because although the number of factory positions in the city was increasing at that time, it was still unable to keep up with the growth rate of the population at that time, and more importantly, under the leadership of Chairman Mao, everyone wanted to shine a light and contribute to the development of the motherland.
It was almost during this period that our big brother of the Soviet Union launched a large-scale reclamation campaign in 1954, which, unlike the previous reclamation campaign that only mobilized peasants, the Soviet Union this time transferred more than 270,000 young and middle-aged laborers from the cities between 1954 and 1956, which directly alleviated the double problems of labor shortage and food shortage in the soviet countryside at that time.
Under the influence of the Soviet Union, in 1955, the first batch of troops from the mainland to go to the mountains and go to the countryside appeared, which were five young people on the outskirts of Beijing at that time, who wanted to make more contributions to the motherland, so after getting approval, they organized a team of 60 people to go to Dachen Island in Wenzhou to open up the wasteland.
In 1956, the mainland officially put forward the slogan of intellectual youth going to the mountains and going to the countryside, and wrote this into our documents, which was also the official beginning of the movement to go up to the mountains and go to the countryside, but although at this time the intellectual youth began to go to the mountains and go to the countryside one after another, the large-scale movement to go up to the mountains and go to the countryside did not really start until around 1968, because during this period, a major event occurred.
Around 1956, the relationship between us and the Soviet Union became closer and closer, mainly because of the victory of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, the Soviet Union began to regard us as a strategic partner, at this time the Soviet Union began to carry out large-scale assistance to us, the famous 156 Plan was at this time, when the Soviet Union carried out a large-scale increase in the original plan for us to build, this plan made our industrialization road from the beginning of the hesitation, to running forward, so during that time, Young people in the city are also gradually entering the increasing number of factories to exercise and learn.
Unfortunately, because the ambitions of the Soviet Union were discovered by Chairman Mao, the relations between China and the Soviet Union deteriorated sharply around 60 years ago, and at this time, three years of natural disasters occurred, the production of grain and other agricultural products throughout the country was greatly reduced, and the supply of grain in the cities exceeded demand. The Soviet Union also took this opportunity to deploy millions of troops on our borders and demanded that we pay off all our foreign debt.
What's worse is that at this time it has been more than ten years since the founding of New China, and in this ten-year period, we have no restrictions on the population plan, under the backward thinking of many children and many blessings, a large number of newborns were born after the founding of New China and around 1960, the population of the mainland almost began to grow in an explosive manner, according to statistics, in 1949, the population of the mainland was about 500 million, and only 11 years later, to 60 years, The continent already has a population of up to 660 million.
In the midst of the increase in population, the laying down of Soviet aid projects, frequent natural disasters, and the need to repay the Soviet Union's foreign debt, going up to the mountains and going to the countryside became the most important solution, that is, at the beginning of this period, the work of going up to the mountains and going to the countryside began to proceed slowly in an organized and planned situation at the higher levels, but the problem was far more serious than we thought.
Between the beginning of the proposal to go to the mountains and go to the countryside around 1955 and 1967, under the leadership of Chairman Mao, the plan of intellectual youth going to the countryside was carried out in an orderly manner, and even in the meantime, many people took the initiative to go to the vast rural areas with lofty ideals to provide support. Many of these intellectuals have gone through that hard time and know the importance of struggle, but with the development of time. Chairman Mao found a serious problem.
After the founding of New China, the mainland's national strength has been continuously enhanced, the advent of the era of peace and the increasingly prosperous life have made many young people a little fluttery, and in some young people, they have even seen some hedonistic shadows, they are addicted to the rich life in the city, gradually forget the hard struggle, and even some have gradually forgotten the revolution, and they even have a contempt for their compatriots in rural areas.
In the vast rural areas, in order to support the development of the cities, the pressure of the peasants is getting bigger and bigger, but without the promotion of intellectuals, the development of the rural areas cannot be fast, and many people at that time believed that such a situation was normal and the only way for our development, but Chairman Mao was keenly aware of the problem.
If we continue to develop in this way, the young people in the future are likely to deny the achievements of the revolutionary ancestors, they will be satisfied with the status quo, lose the spirit of risk-taking and innovation, lose the courage to work hard, and if our young people lose these precious qualities, just focus everything on their own comfort, for a stable life, then this will be a disaster.
Therefore, in Chairman Mao's view, these intellectual youth must be tempered, just like those soldiers, although the soldiers living in the war years have suffered some hardships and tortures, but the tempering given to them in wartime is also unobtainable in peacetime, Chairman Mao hopes that the new generation of young people can bear the development of the whole country and lead the country to move in a stronger direction, so in 1968, the mainland launched a large-scale movement to go to the mountains and go to the countryside.
This campaign to go up to the mountains and go to the countryside is different from the once organized and planned campaign to go up to the mountains and go to the countryside, and the scale of this time can be said to be unprecedented. It is precisely because of this that many urban intellectuals have finally experienced what they cannot learn in books, once in the city, these young people thought that the whole world was so colorful, they knew all the things in this world, but when they came to the countryside they found that everything was different from themselves, there were not only cities in this world, but also the vast land, not all the roads in this world are busy, There are also dusty ones. There are not only comfortable rooms in this world, but also farmland facing the loess and facing the sky, the sun is scorching, there are too many things in this world that they have not seen, and they will also find that the world is not as perfect as they think.
In the process of going up the mountain and going to the countryside, many zhiqing encountered things that they had not encountered in the first decade or two of their lives, their inactivity and grain did not divide their lives into unprecedented difficulties, they could hardly complete agricultural production without agricultural production experience, their rations were almost all dependent on the help of the local people, in the city, they once looked down on those farmers, but here, they also tasted discrimination, and the blows they suffered could be said to be nightmare-level.
When some zhiqing were in the city, they were almost held in the palm of their hands like the stars and the moon, but when they faced heavy physical labor, they could not support it, the hands that once held books and pens now held hoes and sickles, and they who once came to stretch out their hands and food to open their mouths are now working in the countryside under the scorching sun, and countless Zhiqing complain about this life for days, but what they don't know is that in such an environment, they have achieved unprecedented growth.
Once naïve, they began to mature in the process of dealing with people, they no longer rigidly applied to real life according to the things in books, they began to learn to analyze, began to learn to think, their ability to solve problems is constantly improving, and as the old saying goes, read thousands of books, travel thousands of miles.
In such a life, they have a deeper understanding of the knowledge they once had, they have also learned to be self-reliant and self-reliant, and more importantly, after receiving such a tempering, they understand how precious the life was, between reading and farming, a Zhiqing chose to read, they returned to the city, more and more hard, in the later eighties of the study abroad, once as a Zhiqing people accounted for almost half. After having such an experience, the creativity of many literary writers has been greatly improved, he is no longer just describing those illusory things, their creative ideas have also been greatly improved, just like once said by a young intellectual, going to the mountains and going to the countryside allowed them to truly understand the hardships engraved in the wrinkles of the peasants, this road made him from a proud student into a person who can really breathe with the people and share a destiny.
For the rural areas at that time, the arrival of the intellectuals greatly promoted the development of the time, the intellectuals brought great vitality to the countryside, and the knowledge and knowledge they brought and what they saw and heard greatly accelerated the speed of rural development, and many high-level intellectuals used their own knowledge to transform the countryside and greatly improved the level of productivity in the countryside.
The promotion of going up to the mountains and going to the countryside to the countryside is not limited to the productive forces, because the initiation of the movement to go up to the mountains and the countryside, the vast number of rural areas have seen the outside world, know the power of knowledge, and our vast rural areas have begun to attach importance to education, which has a non-negligible role in promoting the development of rural education.
It is worth mentioning that at that time, because of the Zhiqing's going to the mountains and going to the countryside, the medical level in the rural areas has been greatly improved, and because of the development of the movement to the mountains and the countryside, the barefoot doctors going to the countryside movement has also been fully launched, which not only greatly improved the rural medical level at that time, but also provided a solid foundation for the cooperative medical system in our vast rural areas later.
In addition, what they saw and heard in the countryside also allowed many intellectuals to truly see the vast world of the countryside, laying the groundwork for the construction of many township enterprises later. As Chairman Mao said at that time, come from the masses and go to the masses. The movement to the mountains and the countryside has enabled the young people to understand this truth in practice, they have profoundly understood what is called the masses, what is called uniting the masses, and they have also understood what is called reality. I understood the importance of courage and hard work. Some people may have been hurt during this period, but it may be an indispensable part of China as a whole.