In November 1979, shortly after the Third Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, the Beijing Municipal High People's Court sent a letter to the Yuci Daily Chemicals Factory in Shanxi Province, addressed to an elderly woman in her seventies.
Strangely, the old woman had just unfolded the letter and had already burst into tears after reading the first few lines, and her emotions could not be calmed down for a long time.
The old woman continued to browse down, and on the other hand, she muttered to herself: "It's been nearly 50 years, and the Party Central Committee has finally avenged me for my grievances, and I didn't frame Comrade Qu Qiubai!"
Qu Qiubai was an early leader of the Communist Party of China, so why could this seemingly inconspicuous old woman get in touch with him?
The story begins in 1934......
In October 1934, due to the failure of the fifth anti-"encirclement and suppression", the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the main force of the Red Army were forced to withdraw from the central Soviet area and began the 25,000-mile Long March.
In February 1935, Qu Qiubai, He Shuheng, Deng Zihui, and Xiang Ying's wife Zhang Liang, who stayed in Ruijin, Jiangxi, prepared to break through together with Zhou Yuelin, minister of the Central Women's Department.
Zhou Yuelin, who was the head of women's affairs at the time, and her husband Liang Baitai were rare elite talents in the party, both of whom had studied in the Soviet Union and immediately devoted themselves to intense revolutionary work after returning to China.
Because Zhou Yuelin had been living in Shanghai for a long time and was engaged in underground work, the Central Bureau decided that she would be responsible for taking Qu Qiubai, who was very weak, He Shuheng, who was over 60 years old, and Zhang Liang, the wife of Xiang Ying, who was pregnant with Liujia, out of the Jiangxi Soviet District, and transferred to Shanghai via Hong Kong with the cooperation of the underground party organization.
After receiving the task, Zhou Yuelin did not slack off and worked out a detailed transfer route. A few days later, the group arrived in Shanghang, Fujian, where they were unfortunately discovered and surrounded by the Kuomintang. In the fierce battle, He Shuheng, whose movement was restricted, died gloriously, Deng Zihui successfully broke through, and Qu Qiubai was captured by the enemy along with Zhang Liang and Zhou Yuelin.
When the three were first captured, their identities had not yet been revealed, so they secretly discussed countermeasures to "change their names and surnames and unify their voices". Qu Qiubai called himself "Lin Qixiang", Zhou Yuelin called himself "Chen Xiuying", and Zhang Liang called himself "Zhou Lianyu", all of whom came to Fujian from Shanghai to do business.
After changing their names and surnames and unifying their calibers, Qu Qiubai and the three of them were not discovered by the enemy for a while. But unexpectedly, two months later, Qu Qiubai's identity was suddenly exposed.
On June 18, 1935, the martyr Qu Qiubai bravely took up his righteousness, while Zhang Liang and Zhou Yuelin were imprisoned by the enemy.
In May 1938, Zhou Yuelin's husband Liang Baitai's deceased released Zhou Yuelin and Zhang Liang from prison on bail. After Zhou Yuelin and Zhang Liang were released from prison, their first thought was to find a party organization and strive to return to the revolutionary ranks as soon as possible.
However, several years have passed, and the connection between both the Soviet district party organization and the Shanghai underground party organization has been severed.
Zhou Yuelin thought of her husband Liang Baitai, so she took Zhang Liang all the way from Fujian to Xinchang, Zhejiang, and learned from her elderly mother-in-law that her husband Liang Baitai died honorably in March 1935.
After a period of time, Zhou Yuelin took Zhang Liang to the New Fourth Army Office in Nanchang, Jiangxi, to prepare to find Zhang Liang's husband Xiang Ying.
At that time, there were already some "rumors" in the party, saying that Zhou Yuelin and Zhang Liang were traitors who betrayed Qu Qiubai. Xiang Ying hadn't seen his wife for several years, and when they met at this time, he was anxious and angry.
On the other side, Zhou Yuelin escaped by luck and went to the office of the Eighth Route Army in Wuhan. When the staff heard her name, they were not only extremely cold, but even shouted loudly.
Zhou Yuelin didn't understand why his comrades-in-arms were so cold and irritable to him after being imprisoned for three years, so he asked to meet Zhou Enlai and Dong Biwu in person.
But in Wuhan, Zhou Yuelin did not see these old leaders, but was interrogated by the organization. After thinking about it, Zhou Yuelin decided to return to his birthplace of Shanghai, and only after arriving in Shanghai did he learn that his parents had already died.
It is very difficult for a woman to live in troubled times, and in desperation, Zhou Yuelin marries a poor boatman. After marriage, Zhou Yuelin gave birth to a son and a daughter.
Until the liberation of Shanghai in 1949, Zhou Yuelin was excited when she heard that her old comrade-in-arms Chen Yi became the mayor of Shanghai, and she really wanted to go to Chen Yi and Pan Hannian to tell her grievances over the years.
But after thinking about it, he was already a tainted person, and it wouldn't be boring to chat with his old comrades-in-arms rashly, and even bring trouble to the other party.
In this way, Zhou Yuelin has been living a poor but stable life with her husband and children.
But on June 18, 1955, the 20th anniversary of the martyr Qu Qiubai's death, Qu Qiubai's widow Yang Zhihua strongly asked the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China to arrest the culprit who betrayed her husband that year.
After receiving Yang Zhihua's request, the relevant departments quickly set up a special task force, and the suspicions focused on the two female comrades, Zhang Liang and Zhou Yuelin, who were captured together with Qu Qiubai.
Since Zhang Liang's whereabouts were unknown, the task force targeted Zhou Yuelin. The public security department quickly found out that Zhou Yuelin lived in Shanghai. In August 1955, the Shanghai Municipal Public Security Bureau received an order from his superiors to arrest Zhou Yuelin.
At the end of 1965, after 10 years in prison, the Beijing Intermediate People's Court issued a formal criminal verdict sentencing Zhou Yuelin to 12 years in prison for "betraying the party's leaders."
In view of the seriousness of the crime, in August 1967, Zhou Yuelin, who had already completed his sentence, was not fully freed, and in October 1969 he was evacuated to work at the Yuci Daily Chemical Plant in Shaanxi Province (under house arrest).
During his more than 20 years in prison, Zhou Yuelin filed numerous appeals. The convening of the Third Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China finally brought hope to Zhou Yuelin.
In November 1979, after a review by the Beijing Municipal High People's Court, Zhou Yuelin's original verdict was revoked and he was acquitted.
What evidence did the relevant departments base on to determine that Zhou Yuelin was not the culprit who betrayed Qu Qiubai?
In the spring of 1979, the Beijing Municipal High People's Court and the Ministry of Public Security, in accordance with Comrade Deng Xiaoping's instructions, conducted a nationwide unified investigation and verification of unjust, false and wrongly decided cases that had occurred in the past few decades.
Regarding whether Zhou Yuelin was a traitor who betrayed Qu Qiubai, in the end, it was also through an inconspicuous old newspaper. This old newspaper reported: "The wife of the secretary of the Fujian Provincial Party Committee of the Red Communist Party surrendered to Cheng and confessed the identity of the bandit leader Qu Qiubai. ”
It is precisely because of this old newspaper that the relevant investigators have peeled off the cocoon, combined with the latest information about Qu Qiubai recently obtained by the party history department, to form a complete chain of evidence.
It turned out that the traitors who betrayed Qu Qiubai back then were not Zhou Yuelin and Zhang Liang, but Xu, the wife of Wan Yongcheng, then secretary of the Fujian Provincial Party Committee of the Communist Party of China.
As mentioned briefly, Qu Qiubai and Zhou Yuelin set off from Ruijin, Jiangxi Province and came to Shanghang County through Changting County, Fujian Province, with their destination being Shanghai.
This small team met Wan Yongcheng, then secretary of the Fujian Provincial Party Committee of the Communist Party of China and political commissar of the provincial military region, in Changting County, Fujian Province.
In the process of receiving Qu Qiubai and others, his wife Xu naturally knew the true identities of Qu Qiubai and Zhou Yuelin. In April 1935, shortly after Qu Qiubai was captured by the Kuomintang, Wan Yongcheng was killed in a battle, and his wife, Xu, was captured by the enemy.
In order to survive, Xu confessed that Qu Qiubai had stayed at his house for two nights, and then rushed to Shanghang.
According to the information provided by the Xu family, the enemy easily found Qu Qiubai, who was aliased as "Lin Qixiang", from among the recently captured personnel. In order to further confirm, Zheng Dapeng, a traitor who had worked in the Soviet area, was asked to identify him in the dark, which led to Qu Qiubai's identity being completely exposed.
Therefore, Zhou Yuelin and Zhang Liang did not frame Qu Qiubai at all, and the two female comrades were tortured, but they never revealed any party secrets.
After Zhou Yuelin was released from prison, he went to the office of the Eighth Route Army in Wuhan, and the reason why he was coldly regarded by the comrades was because at that time, in order to protect and use the traitors Xu and Zheng Dapeng, the Kuomintang secret service announced to the outside world that Zhou Yuelin and Zhang Liang confessed to Qu Qiubai.
Some newspapers at that time also made a big report, and even published a fabricated "Book of Repentance and Anti-Communism" written by Zhou Yuelin and Zhang Liang.
The enemy's hand is very vicious, and splashing dirty water on the communists is also a kind of revenge and framing for them, and even wants to kill Zhou Yuelin and Zhang Liang with their own hands.
At this point, the truth has been revealed. At the time of his rehabilitation, Zhou Yuelin spent 25 years in prison. After being released from prison, the Organization Department of the Shanxi Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China implemented the policy for her, and Zhou Yuelin finally agreed to enjoy the salary and treatment of 17th-level cadres.
In 1980, after the Xinchang County Party Committee and the county government of Zhejiang Province of the Communist Party of China learned that Zhou Yuelin lived in Yuci, Shanxi, they held a special meeting to discuss and formally made a decision to take Zhou Yuelin back to the hometown of her first husband Liang Baitai, which was actually her hometown of Xinchang, Zhejiang.
December 1997. 91-year-old Zhou Yuelin died of illness in Xinchang, Zhejiang.
Bibliography:
[1] Meng Zhaogeng.Qu Qiubai is righteous, who betrayed him? The Kuomintang borrowed a knife to kill people and was suspected of being a traitor, Zhang Liang was killed by her husband Xiang Ying, and Zhou Yuelin was wronged for 50 years[J].Literature and History Monthly,2010(09):23-28.
[2] Yang Xiaobo.Who betrayed Qu Qiubai[J].Communist Party Member,2011(02):47.