Text: Nie Hongde
For a period of time in history, the rural areas of the mainland practiced the people's commune system, which was a form of grassroots political power organizations below the county level after the founding of New China. It began in 1958 and ended in 1980, and has existed for 23 years. The system of people's commune is based on three levels of ownership based on the production team, i.e., the commune, the brigade and the production team. During the period of people's communization, my hometown was the second production team of the Qiaotou Brigade of Yanggang Commune, Guangde County (that is, the 11th villager group of Hongqiao Village, Xujie Town, Guangde City. In 1980, the second production team at that time was divided into two production teams, named the second production team and the eleventh production team respectively, and I was in the eleventh production team after the detachment). After graduating from high school in 1975, I immediately returned to my hometown to work in the production team. Therefore, they are well aware of the existence and operation of the production team at that time. Although nearly 50 years have passed, they are still vivid in my mind. Now, from the perspective of "don't forget history", I have briefly recorded the form of the existence of the production team at that time, the basic operation mode and some of the social customs involved, so that the majority of readers can understand and taste.
Team Committee
At that time, I was in a production team of about 31 or 2 households, with a total population of about 210 people, which was considered a large production team at that time. Although the production team was the smallest organizational unit under the people's commune system at that time, the economic accounting unit owned by the three levels and based on the team was at this level. Although the sparrow is small, since there is an organization at the level of the production team, there must also be an organizational structure, and this organizational structure is the team committee. Under normal circumstances, the leadership team and personnel composition of the team committee are between 5 and 6 people, including the production team leader, the Fu team leader, the chairman of the poverty association (the chairman of the poor middle peasant association), the women's team leader, and the accountant. Some production teams also have political instructors.
The main responsibility of the team committee is to discuss how to implement the annual production task plan issued by the commune and the brigade and what measures to take to ensure its completion. At that time, the state's policy toward the rural areas in various localities was a planned economy, that is, with grain as the key link and comprehensive development, and the rural areas were basically dominated by grain cultivation. The so-called production plan issued by the higher authorities is to complete the task of how many acres of rice to plant, and most of them are double-cropping rice planting tasks, and there is no room for bargaining.
The division of labor of the team committee is that the production team leader is responsible for the overall arrangement of daily farm work; Captain Fu is responsible for arranging the specific farm work that the members will be engaged in the next day, such as who will use the oxen (i.e., ploughing the field) tomorrow, who will carry water (using large and small water wheels to carry water in the river), etc., and what other members will do, what the men will do, and what the women will do, clearly and clearly. All of this had to be done the night before. In addition, Team Captain Fu is responsible for blowing the whistle every morning, shouting to work, and then carrying a shovel to each field to see the water, (that is, responsible for taking all the paddy fields of the production team to check whether there is any water leakage in the paddy field ridges, and whether there is any farmland that needs to be replenished for water)
The chairman of the poor association of the production team must be a poor peasant or a lower middle peasant, and he is usually an older person. As a result, the main role of the President of the Association is generally in the form of an advisor. When the team committee meets, it only makes a few suggestions.
The role and role of the female captain of the production team was more important in those days. Chairman Mao's sentence "Women can hold up half the sky" made the women at that time like Jiang Shuiying in the Peking Opera "Ode to the Dragon River", with a steep increase in status, a steep role, and a great role, and this role must be led by a very capable woman. This leader is the women's captain. In addition, if there are more young girls in this production team, the leaders of the production team also require the establishment of an "Iron Maiden Combat Team", so that the role of "half the sky" can be played even more.
In addition to participating in the discussion of the production team, the role of the accountant is mainly to be consulted in the team, such as answering the captain's question of how much cash and how much food (specific figures) there is still in the team.
In those days, no matter what unit or department, whether it was cadres or the masses, they had to closely follow the situation and highlight politics. The task of the political instructor is to organize the members to study Chairman Mao's quotations and the latest important news in the newspapers, especially the editorials of the People's Daily, the Red Flag magazine, and the Jiefangjun Daily. This was an essential task at the time.
The necessary means of production in the production team
As a production team with a population of more than 200 and more than 200 acres of cultivated land, the necessary means of production are indispensable to ensure daily production activities. Taking my production team as an example, in addition to the existing more than 200 acres of cultivated land, the main means of production at that time were: two ploughing cattle (each cow was also specially equipped with a child for herding cattle, aged between 15 --- 18 years old. In the mid-70s, the production team added a walk-behind tractor specializing in ploughing the field), two pairs of tongtong, (in the mid-70s, it was changed to two manpower rice threshing machines), one large and one small water wheel, one old diesel engine pumping machine with 12 horses, two pairs of wooden ploughs, one pair of water rakes and one pair of water rakes, and three warehouses. Regardless of the efficiency, these indispensable means of production played a good role in ensuring the normal operation of production in each season at that time.
Work and work
At that time, the members of the production team went out to do farm work, and the working hours were not like the current mode of eight in the morning and five in the evening in the organs and enterprises, but the three-stage mode of "morning, morning, and afternoon". In other words, no matter what farm work you do, you have to do it every morning for a while. Under normal circumstances, the time of work in the morning is between 4.30 ---- 6.00, and after 6.00, go home for breakfast. When it is particularly busy, such as planting early rice and carrying out "double guns" (harvesting early rice and planting double cropping late rice), work is generally done at 4 o'clock in the morning. In the morning farm work, all male and female laborers had to work except for one person who was left at home to cook breakfast. Captain Fu of the production team has to get up 10 minutes early every morning, and then blow the whistle to notify the work.
Every day in the morning and afternoon to do farm work, there is also a mode of rest for a period of time in the middle, commonly known as "rest". The rest time is about half an hour. This is mainly considered from the following aspects: first, people who work continuously need to take a break, second, let women go home and hurry up to make lunch, and third, let lactating women go home and feed their children's milk. At that time, this was also a person's comparative consideration and management. The end of the night is usually when the sun is about to set. Especially during the morning and afternoon breaks, the women walk very fast, some even trotting all the way, in order to get home as soon as possible to cook and feed the children.
If there is a commune film team to show a movie on this day, it will end half an hour early in the afternoon. At this time, on the way from work, men, women and children will talk and laugh happily. And it's a rare day of the year.
What also needs to be said here is that in that era, the production team was a large collective, and the work was done to make a big Hulong, coupled with the lack of necessary means of production such as fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, etc., it seems that only more than 200 acres of farmland have more than 100 people to cultivate every year, although it is sunny and rainy, but the labor efficiency and income are always not high.
The general meeting of the work division and the production team
At that time, the work value of male and female laborers in the production team was different from that of children. The labor force is divided into 10 divisions for men and 8 for women, and the children who have just participated in the labor force should be divided according to his (her) physical condition, size, and proficiency in doing things. It's usually 4, 5, 6 points at the beginning, and then slowly increases. In the special farming period, men and women are added 2 points of labor every day, such as the "double robbery" in three summers.
Under normal circumstances, every two days, the production team must carry out the last work division in a unified manner, (that is, the work score is recorded, and the people are used to calling it the work division.) In the particularly busy season, sometimes it is one work per day), that is, the work of each person in the production team in the past two days is recorded in the work book in everyone's hand. That night, all the men and women of the whole production team who participated in the labor in the previous two days should come to the site of the work division and truthfully report your labor situation. The reason why the time for recording work points cannot exceed two days is because it is easy to forget the labor matters of the first two days after more than two days, and at the same time, it also prevents a small number of people from making up work out of nothing. During the period, a full-time clerk, according to his oral statement, report the labor matters and time he participated in the first two days, and write down the work points, and then a reviewer will check and stamp the check seal, even if the work is completed.
And every time the production team records the work, it is also the time for the production team to hold a plenary meeting. The main content of the meeting was the following farm work matters and specific division of labor. As soon as everyone came to the scene and sat down (because the space of the venue was limited, most of the people were standing), the captain began to clarify the farm work matters for the next two days, and then carried out the division of labor, who did what, who did what, and what the rest of the people did, clearly and clearly.
In the special era of the "Cultural Revolution", it is indispensable to study politics and keep up with it. If it rains heavily and cannot go to work, the production team will organize members to study collectively, learn Chairman Mao's quotations, and study important news and articles in the People's Daily. Those who participate in the study are not counted for work.
Wheat field
This was a special landscape for every production team in that era.
After the beginning of summer, the mid-season gradually matures, and it is necessary to harvest and thresh. Before the beginning of the 70s, there were no threshers in rural areas, and after the crops were harvested, in addition to the rice threshing with a tong, wheat and rapeseed had to be threshed by flail. Flail is a tool that uses fine bamboo (generally a kind of water bamboo) to make a handle, and uses other bamboo to break it and weave a small board to connect it together for crop threshing. Threshing is carried out on sunny days, and the harvested wheat or rape is evenly spread on the flat rice field, and after being exposed to the sun for a period of time, the men and women each bring a flail, divide it into two groups in half according to the number of people on the spot, and then lift the flail face to face and beat the wheat or rape. It should be noted that the more the sun is (hot), the more you have to beat, because in this way the threshing effect will be better. During the threshing, the women's captain shouted cheering slogans in her crisp voice from time to time, and then dozens of people present responded together, which was very lively. The shouts of dozens of people are uniform, coupled with the sound of dozens of "popping" flails, the sense of rhythm is quite strong, and it sounds very pleasant and good, no less than some popular songs now, which is really very nostalgic. Looking at the scene, it is simply a very beautiful scenery.
Brigade cadres inspected
It's rice planting season.
Under normal circumstances, before and after the Qingming Festival, the captain of the production team will send people to plough the farmland planted with safflower grass when its flowers are in full bloom, irrigate and make fertilizer, and prepare for planting early rice seedlings. This time is chosen because this time is the most lush period for the growth of safflower grass, and the effect of manure is the best, and it is not good to be early or late. At that time, there was a great shortage of chemical fertilizers in the countryside, and it was a very effective way to fertilize the fields with safflower grass every year. By the way, the amount of safflower grass planted in the farmland of the production team every year was also a mandatory requirement of the superiors at that time. Because it has a very good effect on fertilizing the field after it is fertilized.
The production team has a task to plant early rice every year, and it is a mandatory task issued by the commune and the brigade, and you are not allowed to bargain at all. At the same time, the planting of rice seedlings, the row spacing, plant spacing is also required, all five or five inches, wide is not good, narrow can be. If it is found that the seedlings planted in a certain field exceed this size on a large scale, they will have to be reworked and destroyed. At that time, when the cadres of the brigade were planting early rice seedlings, their main task was to inspect the fields planted by each production team. During the inspection, in pairs, each holding a ruler in their hands, carefully inspect the fields that have been planted, and use the ruler to measure the row spacing and plant spacing from time to time. If you find that it does not meet the size requirements, you will criticize the cadres of the production team if you have less, and if you have more area, you will destroy it and start over, which is not ambiguous at all. This kind of practice is put aside by science and unscience, but it reflects and reflects how mechanical the grassroots cadres in that special year are, and their rigid work style is really speechless.
Double grab
This was the highlight of all the farm work of the rural production team in a year at that time. Because it is related to the annual grain production of the entire production team, to the task of paying the state's surplus grain (i.e., agricultural taxes and grain orders), and to the distribution and feeding of each family throughout the year.
Around the time of the great heat, the early rice matures. In the season of early rice ripening, the climate is high temperature and thundershowers. And the more this is the case, the more it is necessary to rush to collect. Because if the ripe early rice is not retrieved in time, the rice will fall in the field, which makes harvesting very difficult; In addition, it is necessary to plant the seedlings of double-cropping late rice before the beginning of autumn, and it is useless to exceed the beginning of autumn season. This has created a situation where time is tight and life is heavy. Therefore, during this time, it is necessary to get up early and touch the dark, wear the stars and the moon, work overtime to do farm work, and be in a hurry. Therefore, the farmers worked very hard.
When double robbing, first, members are generally not allowed to ask for leave; Second, the time to do the work should not be later than 4 o'clock in the morning and the end time should not be earlier than 6 o'clock in the evening, which is very hard, and the rice harvest should be carried out as long as it does not rain; When planting seedlings, whether it is sunny or cloudy, windy or rainy, rain or shine. What's more, the weather during this period is the hottest and hottest time of the year, and working in the fields is very detrimental. When the elderly people mention the double robbery at that time, they are all unforgettable and emotional.
Pay the public grain and sell the surplus grain
public grain, i.e., agricultural tax; Surplus grain, that is, ordered grain. Both are hard tasks of the state and are determined according to the area of cultivated land for each production team.
After the early rice harvest arrives, it is necessary to start handing over the grain. At that time, it was called "Wangong Grain". The time to complete the public rations is basically carried out after the completion of the double robbery task. When the grain is finished, the first thing is to dry and dry the rice that has been harvested, and organize manpower to send it to the commune grain station. The water content and impurity content of rice must meet the requirements of the state. If the moisture content of the delivered rice exceeds the requirement, the grain station will refuse to accept it, and you will be asked to either return it or re-dry it at the grain station's premises, which is very troublesome. Therefore, every time I go to the commune grain station to finish the grain, the rice meets the requirements in terms of water content and impurity content, so as not to meet the requirements and find trouble for myself in the end.
Our production team handed over the grain and sent it to the commune grain station, and on the way, we had to pass through a big river (Tongwei River) in the middle. At that time, there was no current road bridge over the river, only a wooden plank bridge about 50 meters long and 60 centimeters wide, and it was still rickety when you walked on it. On the day of the delivery of public grain, all the members of the production team either carried baskets or wheelbarrows to the grain station of the commune. When passing this rickety wooden plank bridge on the way, some timid people simply did not dare to go on the bridge. At this time, other brave people will help to bring his basket over. Whenever the rations were handed over, on the way back, they could always hear happy singing and chattering and laughter. This is because we are all very happy that we have accomplished an honorable national task.
The time for selling surplus grain is generally carried out in the autumn when the farm is relatively slack, and the quality standards are the same as those of public grain. Surplus grain, also known as ordered grain, also has a target task. The surplus purchased by the state is mainly supplied to the residents of the cities and to the officers and men of the troops, and it is also an honorable task for the peasants who farm the land. The cash proceeds from the sale of the surplus are used for the year-end redness of the members and the production team for the next year's production.
Accumulation of fertilizer
The dealer is a flower, and it all depends on the fertilizer. If there is no fertilizer in the field, the farmer will not grow, or the yield of the farmer will be very low. At that time, due to the lack of chemical fertilizer, the production team had to find a way to accumulate fertilizer. In general, there are two ways to accumulate fertilizer (fertilization) in the farmland: one is to plant safflower grass and apply fertilizer as mentioned above; Second, in the winter when the farm is slack, some members are organized to use a small wooden boat and pond mud clamp to clamp the bottom mud in the pond near the village to a small wooden boat, and then use a farm tool called "lifting" to dump the pond mud and pile it up in the empty field on the shore, and then organize the members to pick it up to the farmland after the pond mud is dry. Don't look at this inconspicuous pond mud, it has played a great role in increasing the grain production of farmland.
Year-end dividends
When the group is large, the members of the production team are looking forward to it, just standing on tiptoe and waiting for the year-end final account dividends.
As soon as the end of the year-end farm work is approaching the end of the year, the production team will carry out the year-end final accounts. In the year-end accounts, in addition to the scene crowded with people from various families, the main cadres of the brigade are to participate. The main reason for the participation of the family members is to get the news as early as possible and know whether the family is a surplus or a lack of food; The main cadres of the brigade participated in the meeting, which was a requirement of the system at that time, and second, the cadres of the brigade should understand and grasp the distribution of production income and production efficiency of each production team of the brigade one by one. If the production team has a high income and good efficiency, they should publicize and promote the experience in each production team; If the income of that production team is low and the efficiency is poor, they have to meet with the production team to find out the reason. If it is found to be too bad, the production team leader must be replaced.
I remember that in the 70s, the annual year-end accounts of our production team (that is, each worker, that is, 10 divisions) were between 0.72 --- 0.75, and among the 12 production teams of the whole team, they were basically in the middle of the ranks. This was relatively good at the time. Taking my family's 1975 final account dividends as an example, that year, when my family's 9 people at home and 4 laborers paid dividends at the end of the year, the result was that the surplus grain households, in addition to the basic rations that should be obtained according to the population, also received a lot of grain due to the annual earning work, and also received 73 yuan in cash, which was a proper "surplus grain household", and everyone was very envious. However, there are a small number of families that do not, because there are many children in the family, there are few laborers working in the production team, and the work earned throughout the year is small, and the year-end production team has settled its accounts, except for receiving part of the basic rations of the population, the labor distribution is very small, and the whole family still owes money to the production team, becoming a "food-deficient household", and life is very sad.
Participate in nation-building
When the people's commune is collected, each production team does not only do the work of its own production team, and the rest can be left alone. Not really. At that time, the slogan was "Implement the Party's Unified Leadership," and if there was anything in the commune, the brigade, or even the county, that was done by the production teams, the production teams had to send people to do it. The people who go to work are also the same as the attendance in the production team, and the work is recorded according to the day, and the dividends are paid in the production team at the end of the year.
Since the state implemented the people's commune in the grass-roots organizations below the county level, there have been a number of national project projects and the construction of the commune's basic projects in which various production teams have participated, including: the construction of the Chencun Reservoir in the upper reaches of the Qingyi River, the Zhangjiawan Reservoir in the Xujie Commune of Guangde County (called the Upstream Reservoir when it was first built in 1958), the Guangdelu Village Reservoir, the Houcun Reservoir in the territory of the Yanggang Commune, and the Zonghong Wei Dike on the Yanggang Tongwei River, etc. However, all these national and local projects involved are for the benefit of the people, and ultimately bring great benefits to the people, including the people who participated in the construction of the year and their descendants. Every time some people who participated in the construction and are still alive now talk about these things, they show a proud expression.
Accept delegated students
Of the 23 years of communization, 10 of them were spent during the Cultural Revolution. On December 22, 1968, under the order of the great leader that "it is necessary for intellectual young people to go to the countryside and receive re-education from the poor and middle peasants," junior and senior high school graduates from cities across the country came to the countryside in a mighty manner. The campaign lasted 13 years until November 1981. At that time, the acceptance of decentralized students was based on the production team. From 1968 to 1974, my production team received two batches of decentralized educated youth. The first batch was 1 person in 1969, a fresh junior high school student from Wuhu City, male, surnamed Liu. The second group was a 1974 Shanghai high school graduate, 6 people, all of whom were women, surnamed Mao, Wu, Lu, Zhang, Shen and Du (all of whom have files to check). It is a major policy and a hard task of the state for the production team to accept and decentralize students and make good arrangements for their production and life, and it is not allowed to pass the buck or bargain, and no matter how great the difficulties are, they must be overcome. At that time, in order to accommodate these decentralized students, our production team built three straw houses for them (limited to the conditions at that time, only straw houses could be built), built a two-pot stove, and equipped with wooden beds, dining tables, chairs and other necessary daily necessities. Of the seven intellectuals who were placed in our production team, except for a female intellectuals surnamed Mao, who was recommended to study at a certain university in 1979, the remaining six all returned to the city in 1980 according to the policy.
The history of these urban students being sent to the production team to receive re-education for the poor middle peasants is also an unforgettable episode in the 23-year people's communization movement of the production team.
Endless nostalgia
More than 40 years have passed. Although the grassroots system of that era was a large collective, a big hurry, the productivity was also very low, and the common people lived a hard life, but when doing farm work, the production team leader really responded to all calls, all of them were full of enthusiasm, no one was lazy, and they never bargained when they divided the farm work. When there are many people working, they chatter, talk and laugh, and feel very happy. Especially when I go to work at night, the scene is lively and lively, talking and laughing, and the atmosphere is very warm. In 1964, when the great leader Chairman Mao issued the call for "Agricultural Dazhai", all parts of the country responded positively from top to bottom. Because there are directions, goals, and requirements, the members are particularly energetic when they do farm work. This was also a major scenery of the rural production team at that time.
Memories are often beautiful. The scene of the production team in the big collective is still nostalgic to this day.
Nie Hongde, a retired veteran cadre from Qiucun Town, Guangde City.
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