It was in this subjective and objective situation that after reading the communiqué of the Fourth Plenary Session of the Seventh CPC Central Committee, I began to write the report to the Central Committee.
I simply understood the Prime Minister's instruction that he should be "persuasive" because the Central Committee realized that my concerns about the tendencies and style of literary and artistic leadership were somewhat a reflection of the state of practice, but later they became the reason why the literary and artistic leaders put me above the position of a defendant. I am unwilling and impossible to refute or even explain the criticism of Lin Mohan and He Qifang. However, I believe that in the future, the Central Committee will always clean up this problem, and I will have to put forward my own opinions, and I certainly have this responsibility. But after a few years of grinding, I was so tired that I didn't have the energy to think about it. Now read the communiqué, which mentions that the party has also made mistakes. I feel that I can't help but sort out my views on the practice of literature and art and the leaders of literature and art, and put them forward to the Central Committee. I have no way of knowing that the errors mentioned in the communiqué refer to principled errors in such and such fields. But I think that at least there should be mistakes in the field of literature and art. I thought that since I had raised my opinion on the literary and artistic leaders to the premier more than two years ago, and later the literary and artistic leaders openly criticized me, and I did not put forward my opinions for the reference of the central authorities, it would be too much to the premier (the central authorities), and at least I should not believe in the party's principles and the central authorities. I wrote calmly, without any scruples of principle......
Most of the specific contents of the report are vaguely remembered, but it is necessary to examine and explain in general the ideological stance and attitude of the time.
1. My views on leadership tendencies and styles are summarized from many examples, including historical situations, some of which I have seen and heard, and some of which I have experienced myself and the writers who are related to me. The most experienced, the longest history, of course, the most familiar, the most telling. Theoretical problems include two ready-made typical materials of Lin Mohan and He Qifang. Isn't that considered to be an argument for oneself? I don't think there's a need to worry about that. His own situation is also an objective fact, and as long as he treats it as an objective issue, the central authorities will not misunderstand it. What's more, the entire content of the report is clearly for the future of the literary and artistic movement, and that is to say, for the party's literary and artistic cause. Their own works or theoretical viewpoints are precisely concrete reality, and in the face of the central authorities, they will never be different because of whether they justify or not.
However, the works cited and the experiences they suffered were only used as examples to illustrate the style of leadership, and they did not put forward their own specific analysis and evaluation of the works, and instead of providing the Central Committee with the theme of the struggle from the standpoint of the Party and asking for examination, they turned over the difficulties and asked the Central Committee to carry out the struggle on my behalf. The attitude toward the works of others, especially our own, is the key issue of the leadership style, and failure to strictly and responsibly analyze and evaluate these works is to make a serious mistake in attitude and a non-collectivist attitude that violates the stance of writing reports to the Central Committee.
Second, the arguments criticized by Lin Mohan and He Qifang were cut off from my papers from the 30s to the pre-liberation period. In advance, the materials staff of the Central Propaganda Department extracted some of the arguments from my thesis, divided them into categories, regardless of the logical connections, and printed a booklet that did not indicate the publisher. They probably found it again from that pamphlet. It not only discarded the connection with the specific time, place, and conditions, but also proceeded directly from the political concept and made a judgment without making a specific analysis. Of course, the problem must not be mentioned in the specific historical environment, and the specific problem must be analyzed in detail. With regard to the former, I quoted Stalin's "everything shifts with time and place" (the words are not accurate) and Chairman Mao's "the difference between the environment and tasks of literary and artistic workers in the base areas and those in the Kuomintang-ruled areas"; with regard to the latter, I quoted Chairman Mao's "Marxism can only include, but cannot replace, realism in literary and artistic creation" as the guiding ideology, and put forward an analysis and explanation of their criticism. But in this regard, there are at least three problems. First, I only criticized their mechanistic understanding of the problem, which reflected the serious harmful effect on the practice of literary and artistic creation, and finally used the "five knives" as a metaphor to warn against it. But I do not go further on each of these arguments as to what is not a knife, but a positive statement or full explanation of the streetlight. Second, the questions were raised in several periods of old China, but I also linked those arguments to the situation of literary and artistic practice after liberation. That was my own mistake of not taking into account the specific historical circumstances and not making a proper analysis. Third, this is especially important, because they criticize arguments in which I or others associated with me are guilty of carelessness or mistakes related to one of them. For example, I have not directly and solemnly criticized Zhang Zhongxiao's distortion or even insult of the "Speech at the Yan'an Forum on Literature and Art", and my own understanding of the issue of ideological transformation has not been raised from the perspective of literary and artistic practice to the height of political principles. I have not made counter-criticisms on the basis of my self-examination of these issues, and this mistake of violating the principle of ideological struggle cannot be justified by the fact that I wrote "Study for the sake of Practice," and I have not been able to raise the issue to the level of principle there......
3. At that time, my basic emotional attitude was that I was writing a report to the Party Central Committee and Chairman Mao, and all I wrote was to provide materials for the Central Committee's examination of issues. Of course, my self-confidence is based on my feelings and understanding of Chairman Mao's revolutionary line, including the cultural, literary and artistic line, over the years. So it didn't occur to me to quote Chairman Mao's specific instructions. When I explain my situation and my views to the Party Central Committee and Chairman Mao, if I quote Chairman Mao's instructions to make judgments, it is not only completely unnecessary, but also an arrogant attitude. I quoted two of Chairman Mao's and Stalin's just to illustrate that I could only have this understanding at that time: according to these three points, it was Lin Mohan who was anti-Marxist and not me, and He Qifang was anti-realist and not me. From my point of view, their theories are characterized by their detachment from concrete reality, and theories divorced from reality replace the special (realism) with the general (Marxism). Rather than confronting and analyzing special processes guided by general principles. What's more, their understanding of general principles is not necessarily correct or honest. Thus, I feel as if their method of thinking is not a materialist dialectic but an idealist (mechanistic or dogmatic) metaphysics. I am not sure and should not make such a judgment, and I will only provide the central authorities with what I have seen and known about the actual situation and my own specific understanding of the specific situation. But because my theoretical foundation is so poor, my analysis must contain a lot of errors......
Fourth, I did not quote Chairman Mao's teachings at all regarding the situation of literary and artistic practice in the past four years since liberation, the analysis of the specific facts I put forward, and the suggestions for reference. In addition to the fact that such arrogance is not necessary and should not be carried out in the third paragraph above, there is also a question of conditionality. Of course, it is necessary to formulate specific principles and measures in accordance with Chairman Mao's ideological line. However, this is no longer the Yan'an era of wartime military communism, still less the old China ruled by semi-feudal and semi-colonial reactionaries, but a new China and a new era in which the whole country has liberated and entered socialist revolution and construction. How to combine the understanding of "Lu Xun's direction is the direction of China's new culture" in "On New Democracy", which summarizes the revolutionary literary tradition and international revolutionary literary experience since the May Fourth Movement, with the understanding of a series of principles in "Speech at the Yan'an Forum on Literature and Art", which summarizes the experience of literary and artistic struggles since the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, especially in the base areas and even in the base areas behind enemy lines, and apply them to the literary and artistic practice (including organizational work) and literary and artistic struggles in the new era and new China? theoretical ability, not to mention identity) to be able to consider and conceive.
However, at that time, learning from the experience of the USSR was the mainstream of thought. We should learn, of course, as Chairman Mao instructed later, we should learn critically or creatively, and we should also learn from both positive and negative experiences. In literature and art, they live and struggle under the party's ideological principles and policies, proceed from the reality of the lives of the working people in the socialist revolution and socialist construction, serve the needs of the working people and socialist politics, critically inherit the tradition under the guidance of socialist realism, and open up the road of creation in as many ways as possible. There was such a fundamental commonality, and at that time I thought that it was not only possible to learn from the positive and negative experiences of the Soviet Union, but also that it should be. Leaders at that time, such as Hu Qiaomu, also expressed such an attitude and did their work. In my case, in order to overcome the crisis of the practical situation, I highlighted the negative experience of the Soviet Union, that is, the lesson. Here are two things to keep in mind:
A. Rapp's experience. Rapp played a hindrance role in Soviet literature, but China's mechanistic theory was much more vulgar and crude than Rapp's. Rapp is only a literary organization, and the literary and artistic organizations opposed to it are not banned. China is an all-round party leader, and it is impossible for there to be any literary and artistic activities.
B. The experience of the Soviet Union in opposing the "non-conflict theory" at that time. In China, too, it was much more serious at that time than in the USSR. There have been heroes who can only write heroic characters, and who have no shortcomings as required by Lin Mohan's guiding theory. If a person wants to be perfect, he cannot write about "shortcomings"; a writer's world view must not have "defects." In critical articles, the phrase was as popular as in the Soviet Union: "Is life like this?" Liberated, life is good, there are no contradictions, there is no antagonistic struggle. The example of criticizing "Red Flag Song" was given earlier. The most serious is the criticism of Lu Ling's "Long Live the People". Originally, the North China No. 1 or No. 2 Regiments also wanted to play this script, and they all wanted me to help fight for it, but how could I do it? Later, it was a party member cadre who really wanted to play this script that criticized it in a drama magazine, attacking the characters in the script as hooligans and attacking the playwright as a hooligan with bad quality. In the play, there is a female worker, Liu Donggu, whose father is a hooligan, who raped her (his own daughter) when she was still a minor, making her a stubborn but cynical character. She hated her father, her brother was a spy, and she despised and hated him. She fell in love with a worker, Li Yingcai, a capable worker with certain non-working-class ideas who helped him with his technical self-confidence and friendship. This worker, under the leadership of the Communist Party (the script is written about two hard-working and deep workers' communists), stood in front of the masses and launched a struggle to protect the factory at a time when the war of liberation was tense. After being arrested, after a deep introspective examination (the script is very touching), I realized that I had gone the wrong way in the past, and now I was on the right path for the last time, and I felt bright and greeted death. And the female worker was really in love with him and fell into a semi-crazy state because of his arrest. When she learned the news that he was to be or had been put to death, she suddenly seemed to be dispelled from the fog in her heart, and felt the spiritual attraction of the worker she loved, and realized how pitiful her unjustified life was, but in retaliation for the pain of playing with others! She seemed to cry out to the old worker's Communist Party member named Zhang Huzi with a fever all over her body: "Huzi, where is the Communist Party? Are you a Communist Party? Let me join the Communist Party! Hu Zi, let me join the Communist Party!" I don't know in real life, but in literary and artistic works, I have never heard and cannot have a heart-shaking and sincere voice than her shouting, "Let me join the Communist Party." Then, the spy followed, and was scolded by her, the agent shot and wounded her, and she mustered the last of her strength to shout: "People...... Long live the people!"...... I will only introduce one main plot here, and it is very simple, the whole drama summarizes the flesh and blood content of the class struggle as rich as life, and overturns the dark backlog of the entire semi-feudal and semi-colonial social structure and ideology, and we feel the dark pain of the old China in the pain. Li Yingcai and Liu Donggu, the sons and daughters of the working class who have endured this dark and painful pressure, have finally awakened in the struggle and spiritual baptism under the leadership of the party of this class, and the collectivism and fearless revolutionary heroism condensed by blood and tears have risen. Yes, it can be said that Liu Donggu's last shout of "Long live the people!" was shouted by the author for her, but if you read through the script (let alone perform it on stage), as long as you have a little emotional connection with the people, who can not feel that this is Liu Donggu, Li Yingcai and their flesh-and-blood class brothers and sisters have gradually become depressed since they entered the battlefield of life, they don't know how to shout, there is no way to shout, the painful but will burn like fire emotional longing? Are you looking for an artistic image of revolutionary romanticism? And such a script was pushed into a mud pit, and the author himself was judged by Communist Party critics to be a hooligan of bad quality. At that time, I couldn't understand why the cadre of the art troupe ×× earnestly wanted to act in this script, but later became so viciously "criticizing" the script and attacking the author. Now that I think about it, when he wanted to stage this script and was later investigated by the literary and artistic leaders, he had to write such a "criticism" instead of public repentance and save himself.
Green Plains