How could anyone write history like that? ——Commenting on Jin Yinan's "Misery and Glory"

It's really painful to comment on such a book; Writing a book in this way is really misleading oneself and others, and misleading society.

I never thought I would read Jin Yinan's books, because our majors were originally very different. He served in the Strategic Teaching and Research Department of the National Defense University, and judging from the articles he published, he mainly did the work of commenting on current affairs; What I do is empirical historical research. There is a big difference between the nature and methods of the two jobs, and they are originally a bit unrelated. Knowing that Jin Publishing has a book "Misery and Glory" (Jin Yinan: "Misery and Glory", Huayi Publishing House, 2009 edition), I simply flipped through it in the bookstore, because I found that it was a documentary literary style, the text and historical facts were played casually, and the opinions and data citations were all without source annotations, so I did not have the idea of reading it.

That's why I think I have to read the Golden Book, because this year to commemorate the 90 th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party, many newspapers, magazines, and television stations have invested a lot of manpower, material resources, and financial resources in making commemorative texts or films. After careful questioning, I learned that most of their erroneous words were copied from the golden book. For this reason, I had to go online and find out the relevant chapters of the Golden Book, and the result surprised me: how could anyone write history like this!

I first saw that the Golden Book was in a bookstore fiction essay book, and I didn't want to publish it as a history book when I thought the author published it. Since it is a literary book, it is naturally like "Romance of ××", and it should not be read as a history book. Strangely, this year, there are all kinds of reprints on the Internet, and almost all websites treat it as a real historical work when reprinting and introducing it. Judging from the Internet, the author himself now seems to have forgotten the literary nature of his book, and talks about "party history research" everywhere, as if he has become an expert in the study of the history of the Communist Party of China. It's no wonder that many people, including journalists and editors, read and quote this book as if it were a real history book. What's more, some writers who came quickly have indiscriminately taken the stories told in the Golden Book as historical truth, and copied them into their own books as arguments.

There are basically two types of documentary literary works that have written the history of the CCP that I have read before, one is Quan Yanchi and Ye Yonglie, with the help of a large number of interview records, combined with individual archival historical materials, to describe them literally; One is Li Ruqing's style, which mainly focuses on literary descriptions, but also makes extensive use of interviews to recall historical materials, and at the same time makes personal interpretations of some historical statements. Both methods are mainly based on telling historical stories, but they still have their own historical excavations, especially some historical details will be presented through the recollection of historical materials by little-known parties. The Golden Book is written in a very different way from the above-mentioned works. The author is not a professional writer and has no long-term experience in historical research. In the past, the author's articles basically talked about current politics and current international relations, and he almost never published a research paper on historical facts, so how could he achieve a brilliant work of several hundred thousand words in one day?

Reading some of the chapters of the Golden Book, you can see that the author has done little research on history, but only relies on the research results of his peers in modern history or the history of the Communist Party of China. In fact, the Golden Book is a kind of quick product created by the author according to his own views and creative intentions, cutting and splicing various research works of the academic community according to his needs, processing and "skewering", and then combining his own literary language to play casually.

From the perspective of academic research, it is not impossible to rely on or cite a large number of other people's research results, as long as you can strictly follow the basic norms of academic research, effectively understand other people's research, accurately use the historical materials, historical facts and opinions of others' research, and clearly annotate the original sources of the cited materials or quoted opinions and sayings, so as to draw different views or historical analysis from predecessors. Even if you create a historical documentary work, if you can accurately understand the macro background, the basic historical facts are not fictional, and the general narrative is not outrageous, it is also considered O K.

What is very surprising is that the author, as an academic researcher, should not be ignorant of the basic norms of academic research, but from beginning to end, the Golden Book has relied on and used a large number of research materials discovered and cited by others, including directly drawing on and using the research findings, opinions and conclusions of colleagues in the academic field, but neither notes the source, nor does it explain the information, let alone identify and research, and the whole book does not even list the laziest "references", not to mention that the author has not even thought about it and should write a polite sentence or two to thank his predecessors for their research. It gives the impression that a large number of newly excavated historical materials and opinions used in the book are all discovered and created by the author himself. In fact, the Golden Book is not only "borrowed" unclearly, but also "used" extremely inaccurately.

In today's China, the society is impetuous, everyone wants to take shortcuts and shortcuts, and those who do learning are also eager for quick success, which is indeed a fact. However, there are some basic norms in academia that everyone at least carefully adheres to. The author of the book is a self-confessed "scholar" (Jin Yinan clearly positioned himself as a "scholar of national security and strategic issues" in an interview). See China Youth Daily, February 20, 2009, B8 edition), it is necessary to abide by the rules of conduct and moral conscience of scholars. In order to let the authors of the Golden Book, including those who have read the Golden Book, know some of the historical problems of the book, the following is a little correctness and criticism of the more typical problems in the first chapter of the Golden Book.

Incomprehensible mistake "copy"

Since the government's education and scientific research management institutions began to use quantitative indicators to manage academic research, "a large copy of the world's articles" has become a phenomenon that is not strange to the Chinese people. In the eighties and nineties, there was a professional creative team of so-called "scissors and paste" in colleges and universities, and we can often find that many people rely on "copying" to do scientific research today. However, most of these people's "copying" are still "copying" things within their own professional scope, and it seems that it is rare to see cross-line and cross-professional "copying", and even the situation of "copying" by mistake. But the Golden Book sets this precedent. Here are just a few:

For example, on page 6 of the Golden Book, two telegrams from Liu Jingren, the minister of the Beijing government in Russia, are quoted in the volume of "Historical Materials of Sino-Russian Relations· Russian Coups and General Negotiations" published by the Institute of Modern History of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Taiwan.

I believe that the author should have read the article that was accepted as a text from the Internet or other channels and copied these two telegrams, and it is okay to use them, the author is obviously not familiar with this history, but he prefers to ridicule Liu Jingren's translation ability.

The book reads: "There are some problems with Liu Jingren's Russian translation into Chinese, the Bolsheviks should have translated it as 'majority', but he translated it as 'generalization', which makes people feel a little confused. In fact, like many terms such as "socialism" and "communist party" since the beginning of the 20th century, the word "generalization" is borrowed from the use of kanji. Long before the October Revolution in Russia, the term "generalized school" was used by the Japanese in the Chinese-run "Shuntian Shibao", and before Liu Jingren sent the two telegrams quoted in the golden book, the term was also used by the Beijing government and the domestic Beijing and Tianjin newspapers. Therefore, Liu Jingren did not create this term by "Russian to Chinese", but borrowed this domestic translation method to make it easier to understand. Naturally, this will not be the kind of situation that the author thinks is "a little confusing to watch".

As for the use of this concept in those years, ———Taiwan scholar Wang Yujun explained it in 1978 when he published the book "The Prelude to Sino-Soviet Diplomacy," the earliest work in the academic circles to study the history of Sino-Soviet relations during this period. He wrote: "The government in Beijing at that time referred to the Bolsheviks as generalists, majority parties, radicals, or radicals. (Wang Yujun, "The Prelude to Sino-Soviet Diplomacy", Special Issue of the Institute of Control History, Academia Sinica, Taipei [10], 1978, p. 44)

Example 2, on page 7, Jin Shu talks about a passage in the "Sun-Wen-Yue-Fei Joint Declaration" issued on January 26, 1923, with a total of more than 90 words, which is more than half different from the text commonly used in Taiwan and the mainland.

Sun Yue's manifesto was first published in Shanghai's English-language "Mainland Daily", and at that time, many newspapers and periodicals such as "Oriental Magazine", "Times", and "Minxin Daily" published translations. The most accurate translation is the translation of the World News Agency used by the "Minxin Daily", which was revised and republished by the "Foreign Affairs Monthly" in 1933, and was later used as the final Chinese translation of the declaration by the "Complete Works of the Father of the Nation" published in Taiwan and the "Complete Works of Sun Yat-sen" published in the mainland, so future Chinese researchers will also use this translation as the standard.

The translation reads: "Dr. Sun Yat-sen thought that the communist organization or even the Soviet system could not be applied to China. For there was no situation in China in which the communist or Soviet system could be successful. Yue Feijun completely agrees with this opinion. Moreover, he believes that the most important and urgent issue in China is the success of the reunification of the Republic of China and the achievement of complete national independence. ("Joint Declaration of Sun Wen Yue Fei," January 26, 1923, reprinted in The Complete Works of Sun Yat-sen, vol. 7, Chung Hwa Book Company, 1985, pp. 51-52.) ）

The text transcribed from the Golden Book reads: "Dr. Sun Yat-sen argues that the communist order, and even the Sufi (Evietian) system, cannot actually be introduced into China, because there are no conditions for the successful establishment of communism or the Sufi (Eviet) system here." Mr. Yue Fei fully agrees with this view and further believes that the most important and urgent issue for China at present is to achieve national unity and full national independence. ”

The biggest difference between the Jinshu quotation and the popular Chinese translation of the manifesto is that the former is a Chinese translation in the 1920s, while the Jinshu quotation is a Chinese translation after the popularity of Mandarin in mainland China after 1949. Strangely, there is also a translation of the 1920s sometimes "Sophie" in the Golden Book quotation. The author specially added a parenthesis after the word "Fei", which indicated that it should be the word "Wei", giving the impression that this was a document from the 1920s. As everyone knows, people at that time did not use words such as "actually", "and", "further", etc. Moreover, usages like "Dr. Sun Yat-sen" are rarely seen. (See only the translation of Oriental Magazine, Vol. 20, No. 2 [January 1923] with the word "Zhongshan", which is a substitute for the English word "Dr. Sun" after Sun's pseudonym "Zhongshan.") Those who have a title after the Chinese translation usually cannot call them by their first name, such as Sun Wen, or their pseudonyms, such as Sun Yat-sen, often use their characters or numbers. "Yat-sen" is Sun's number. ）

Therefore, it is doubly puzzling where the Golden Book quotation comes from.

Did the author translate it into English himself? Of course not. The fact that the author deliberately retained the word "Filipino" and made corrections shows that the author wanted to maintain the historical appearance of the copied text. However, under normal circumstances, if the author knows that the quotation is actually an English-Chinese translation, he should pay attention to the accuracy of the translation, rather than deliberately keeping the Chinese translation as it was when it was published. Frankly, if the author really wants to keep the original, he or she should quote the original text directly, translate it himself, and cross-proofread it with other translations.

此段宣言文字的英文原文可见于韦慕庭编辑的《ADocumentaryHistoryof Chinese Communism》一书。 原文如下：

D r. Sunis of the opinionthat，becauseof thenon-existenceofconditions favourable to their success-ful application

in China，it is not poss-ible tocarryout either Com m unismor eventhe Soviet system inChina.M . Joffeagrees

entirelyw iththisview；he is further of the opinion thatC hina‘s m ost im portant andm ostpressing problem s are

the com pletionof national unification and the attain-m ent of full national independence.

The literal translation of this passage today should read:

Dr. Sun pointed out that communism or even the Soviet system could not be implemented in China, because there were no conditions for their success in China. Yue Fei fully agreed with this view, and he further pointed out that the most important and urgent issue for China is to complete national reunification and obtain full national independence.

Comparing the common old translations and the quotations of the Golden Book, it is not difficult to see that the quotations of the Golden Book are not in line with the writing habits of the time, and cannot accurately reflect the meaning of the original text, both in terms of accuracy and in terms of Chinese language, they are very lame. In that case, why didn't the author of the Golden Book just use the old translations that everyone still uses, instead of going through the ingenuity of copying such a lame quote? Is it because the author of the Golden Book does not know that there is a source book such as "The Complete Works of Sun Yat-sen" on the mainland, or is this quotation created by the author himself?

Example 3, on page 9, the author writes: "On November 10, 1917, the Shanghai Minguo Daily published a large headline: 'M axim alist (radical party meaning) occupies the capital', which was the first newspaper in China to report on the October Revolution. (Judging from the similarity of the quoted texts, the author seems to have copied from Chapter 2 of Ma Hongxia et al.'s book "The Relationship between the Communist International and the Chinese Revolution") Because it was copied, the author copied it along with the parenthetical Chinese characters added to the original work after the four characters "Mei Ke Qimei".

The whole passage was first published in an essay by Xiang Qing in the early 1980s (Xiang Qing, "The Communist International and the Chinese Revolution in the Founding Period of the Communist Party of China", Collected Essays on the Relationship between the Communist International and the Chinese Revolution, Shanghai People's Publishing House, 1982, p. 54). According to the analysis of the sources of a large number of errors in the Golden Book, the author should not look for Professor Xiang Qing's article 30 years ago, presumably copied from second-hand or even third-hand articles or books. But in any case, the text copied by Jinshu is basically the same as the text in Xiang Qing's article, which also shows that the author generally does not copy mistakes by himself, and most of the mistakes are from the source.

This passage from Xiang Qing's article reads as follows: "After the October Revolution, the first person in China to report this revolution was the Shanghai Minguo Daily. On November 10, 1917, the "Republic of China Daily" carried a large headline: "M axim alist (transliteration of the radical party) occupies the capital". ”

Comparing the two paragraphs, it can be seen that the similarity between the two is very high. It is important to note that the author did not pay any attention to the claims of this material when transcribing it.

In fact, the annotation that Xiang Qing made in parentheses is not very appropriate. The original form of "M axim alist" is "M axim al", which means very large, very much, and the suffix ism means "extremely much" or "majoritarianism". Hence the so-called "M axim alist", that is, "majority" or "Bolshevik". Since the author of the Golden Book works in the Department of Strategic Studies, specializing in international strategic issues, and his English is not bad, it should be easy to see that there is a problem with the annotation quoted. The author criticized Liu Jingren's translation for not being of a high level and translating the "majority school" into the "generalized school", but he did not distinguish and analyzed, and copied the facts to spread the truth.

Not only that, but if you look at the newspapers of the time, you will know that Xiang Qing's statement was not accurate, because Shanghai's "Republic of China Daily" was not the first to report the news of the October Revolution. On November 10, 1917, a number of Chinese newspapers published the news of the Russian Revolution, including "Declaration", "Shibao", "Zhonghua Xinbao", etc., and it cannot be said that "Republic of China Daily" was the earliest.

What is even more absurd is that the "big headline" of the news reported by the Shanghai "Republic of China Daily" on November 10, 1917 was not "Meikeqimei occupies the capital", but "a sudden Russian coup d'état". Under this heading, several news from the Russian Beijing Electric Power and the London Electric Power were respectively transmitted. Therefore, the subheadings are: "The provisional government has been overthrown", "The new government is about to propose a just peace proposal", etc., and the sentence "The Mekeqimei Party (note: Xiang Qing's original text omitted the word 'party', so the golden book naturally does not have this 'party' word) occupies the capital" is only one of the three subheadings of this edition.

It should also be noted here that the above-mentioned reports and their contents can actually be found in the ninth-grade high school world history textbook published by the People's Education Publishing House. There is a direct interpretation of the "Gramzimei Party" as the "Bolshevik Party", which shows that the author's text was certainly not copied from a secondary school textbook. It is unbelievable that even the content of a history textbook in middle school can be copied so incorrectly by the author.

Example 4, again on page 9, immediately following the above statement, the author writes: "After reading the newspaper, Sun Yat-sen immediately sent a letter to Lenin through the media, expressing his high respect to the Bolsheviks on behalf of the Kuomintang and hoping that the Chinese and Russian revolutionaries would unite and struggle together. He added: "Lenin called this letter 'the dawn of the East.'" On behalf of Lenin, the People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs, Tsicherin, replied: 'Our victory is your victory, our defeat is your defeat, unite in this great struggle for the common good of the proletariat. ’”

Check, this passage of many inaccuracies is almost exactly copied from He Xin's "Chronicle of Major Events in Mao Zedong's Life" written a few years ago.

The original text of Ho's book is as follows: "On November 10, 1917, Sun Yat-sen sent a letter to Lenin, expressing his high respect to the Bolsheviks on behalf of the Kuomintang and hoping that the revolutionaries of China and Russia would unite and fight together. ”

"Lenin called the letter 'the dawn of the East'. On behalf of Lenin, the People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs, Tsicherin, replied: 'Our victory is your victory, our defeat is your defeat, unite in this great struggle for the common good of the proletariat. (He Xin: "Chronicle of Major Events in Mao Zedong's Life" [2], Minsi Blog)

However, He Xin's text indicates that it was prepared for his writing of "Mao Zedong's Biography" and was not published informally, so He Xin can not bear the responsibility for making mistakes. The author of the Golden Book reproduced the original text and published it publicly, and it is difficult to escape the blame.

There are two main inaccuracies here: First, the so-called Sun Yat-sen sent a letter to Lenin immediately after reading the newspaper. In 1994, a scholar made a special investigation in the Journal of Historical Research. The author's conclusion is clear: "Sun Yat-sen's understanding of the October Revolution in Russia and Soviet Russia has undergone a process of gradual development and change...... From the time he began to observe the development of the October Revolution to the first telegram congratulating the Soviet Russian Revolution on its success, and then to his intention to learn from the Soviet Union, he spent three or four years observing and understanding it. In other words, the letter from Sun Yat-sen to Lenin through the intermediary media immediately after reading the November 10, 1917 issue of the Republic of China Daily mentioned by the Golden Book does not actually exist, or the author has completely mistimed it.

Did Sun Yat-sen call to congratulate him after learning the news of the Russian Revolution? Yes, but that was the February Revolution of 1917 in Russia, which had taken place a few months earlier, not the October Revolution. After the overthrow of the Tsar on February 29 (i.e., March 12 of the Gregorian calendar), Sun "immediately convened the members of the Shanghai People's Party to discuss the Russian mutiny, and called the speaker of the Parliament of the Provisional Government of St. Petersburg to congratulate him as a Chinese colleague." (See Cui Shuqin, Sun Yat-sen and Communism, Hong Kong Asia Press, 1954, p. 18.) Therefore, a new coup d'état broke out in Russia a few months later, overthrowing in one fell swoop the Russian republican government established after the February Revolution that Sun Yat-sen and others were optimistic about. This is both common sense and common sense. It was only after May 1918 that Sun Yat-sen's faction began to change their views on Lenin's new government. Sun Yat-sen's letter (as for whether it was a letter or a telegram, it is still unclear because the original cannot be found in the Russian archives) to congratulate him, it was even more in the summer of 1918 (Li Yugang, "Sun Yat-sen's Reaction to the February and October Revolutions in Russia", Historical Research, No. 6, 1994).

Second, the Chinese translation of Qi Qilin's letter quoted in the Golden Book is obviously inaccurate. He Xin's Chinese quotation comes from the aforementioned article in Xiang Qing's early years, and Xiang Qing himself translated it from the book "Soviet Foreign Policy Documents 1917-1924" edited by Jenny · Douglas (Xiang Qingqian citation, same as Xiang Qingqian, p. 55). All the documents in this book were translated from Russian into English, and Xiang Qing translated them from English to Chinese that year, which inevitably led to distortions. In fact, Tsicherin's letter has long been translated directly from Russian by a translator. The translation of this passage is markedly different from the translation of the Golden Book. This translation from Russian, which has been used by most researchers, reads: "In this difficult moment, the Russian working class appealed to their Chinese brothers and called on them to fight together. For our victory is your victory, and if we suffer destruction you will also suffer. (Translated by Sun Jianchen, "Exchange of Diplomatic Letters with Sun Yat-sen", Historical Translation Series, No. 3, 1958)

Comparing the two translations, it can be seen that, in addition to the reversal of the sentence structure, there are two mistranslations in the translation quoted by the Golden Book. First, the meaning of the Russian Revolution, which was particularly emphasized in Zicherin's letter, was extremely difficult and urgently needed the support of the Chinese brothers. Because the previous translation was deleted, and "this difficult moment" was mistranslated into "the great struggle" with a rather optimistic and agitative color, the meaning was changed; The second is to mistranslate the concept of equivalence with "Chinese brothers," that is, "the Russian working class," which is particularly emphasized in the original text, into "the proletariat." It gave the impression that Lenin and others were completely confused about the situation of Sun Yat-sen and his revolutionary party, and believed that they could call on Sun Yat-sen to fight in solidarity with the Bolsheviks "for the common good of the proletariat." Naturally, this also distorts the meaning of the original text. Obviously, the author has no ability to discern this except for "taking it".

Example 5, still on page 9, declares: "Vychensky came to China in March 1920, and some later thought that he had come to help build the Chinese Communist Party, but Vychensky reported to the Comintern that his first task was 'to take advantage of the conflict of interests of Japan, the United States, and China, and to take all means to aggravate this conflict'; ”

The scribbling and shoddy production of the golden book has once again reached an astonishing level here.

First, when did Vychensky come to China in 1920? This page is about March, and page 29 is about April, so it can be seen that the author copied this information to see that it was March, so he wrote March; I copied the information and saw that it was April, so I copied April as it was. As for any contradictions or discrepancies in the timing of the two, I don't care. In fact, there are many archives, letters, and reminiscences about the time of Vychensky's visit to China, and some scholars have written articles specifically to verify it, and it was April instead of March.

Second, some people think that Vychensky is here to help build the Communist Party of China, but in fact, in his report to the Comintern, Vychensky said that his primary task is to base himself on the conflict of interests of Japan, the United States, and China. The person who reported to the Comintern on this task was not called Vychensky, which is translated in Chinese as "Vylensky-Sibiryakov".

Thirdly, this Vylensky, unlike Vychensky, has a "diplomatic mission" at the same time, so it is not possible to simply confuse his work with Vychensky's work. Vychensky's main work, which is clearly stated in his letter to the higher leadership, is "mainly engaged in...... to unite the revolutionary groups into a central organization", to establish revolutionary bureaus in Shanghai and throughout China, to convene congresses of delegates, and at the same time to establish a general socialist youth league (Vychensky's Letter to Someone, June 1920; Letter from Vychensky to the Eastern Nationalities Department of the Central Siberian Bureau of the Russian Communist Party, 1920)

Fourth, although Verensky has a diplomatic mission, he did not say in his report that efforts to aggravate the conflict of interests between Japan, the United States, and China were his "top priority." What he said was that this was "our general policy in the Far East." Under this general policy, he also listed three aspects of work to realize this general policy: first, to arouse the actions of the people of China, Mongolia and Korea to resist the oppression of foreign capitalists; second, to strive to support the revolutionary movement of the peoples of East Asia; The third is to actively help Koreans and Chinese establish guerrilla organizations. In particular, he explained: In view of the fact that on the one hand, we want to avoid direct conflict between Soviet Russia and Japan, and on the other hand, we must always organize a struggle against Japan imperialism, so he should use his "emissary status" to "persist in carrying out communist propaganda among the peoples of East Asian countries while accomplishing other tasks." ("Report of Vylensky-Sibiryakov to the Executive Committee of the Comintern on the Work of the East Asian Peoples Abroad," September 1, 1920, United Communist Party (Comintern and the Chinese National Revolutionary Movement (1920-1925)[1], pp. 38-42)

Unacceptable misreadings

To cite only five examples, the discussion of the problem of the wrong "copying" of the Golden Book is only within the scope of 8 pages of the main text and 4 or 5 pages of the actual description (page 1 of the Golden Book is the title page of the first chapter, and there is no content. Nearly half of the text in the first eight pages of the text is the author's literary reverie, which has nothing to do with the question of the authenticity of historical facts), and thousands of words have already been spent, and no matter the time or length, I am not allowed to give any more evidence and revision. But it's important to point out that even in these eight pages, there are many other errors that I haven't mentioned. Although most of the following errors are related to the wrong "copying" of swallowing dates, eating them alive, and not seeking to understand them, there are slightly more misreadings and misreadings. Therefore, they will be classified as misreadings.

Example 1, page 2, begins with the feeling of reading Chiang Kai-shek's diary of the Xi'an Incident in Chongqing in 1942, "I want to see 'Chiang' when I wrote here, and the hand holding the pen can't help but tremble...... "Yunyun." Here, the diary mentioned by the author is actually Chiang Kai-shek's "Xi'an Half Moon Chronicle". But first, because the author saw the word "first edition" written on the copyright page of the book in the library he went to, he mistakenly thought that the book was first published in Chongqing in 1942, but it was actually wrong. Because the book was published by Zhengzhong Book Company as early as the first half of 1937 shortly after the Xi'an Incident, and it was reprinted several times later (Jiang Zhongzheng and Jiang Song Meiling: "Xi'an Half Moon Chronicles· Memoirs of the Xi'an Incident", Zhengzhong Book Company, 1937). The 1942 Chongqing edition was mostly just a change of publishing house and a new release.

Second, the author is completely unaware that Chiang's so-called "Half Moon Diary", which looks like a diary, is not in fact a real diary, but a text rewritten by Chiang Kai-shek's secretary Chen Bui with reference to Chiang's diary in accordance with Chiang's political intentions, and is for propaganda purposes. Moreover, even the so-called diaries during the Chiang Incident that Chen Bui referred to were not recorded on the spot or on the same day, as the golden book said, and almost all of them were made up after the fact.

Example 2, page 3, when the Xi'an Incident occurred in 1936, "the chairman of the committee was in chaos. He wasn't even dressed properly...... He was only allowed to leave the most heart-wrenching sentence of his life on the page of his diary, which was so dry that it was almost shattered: 'This incident was a major setback in the process ......of the mainland's people's revolution.'" Yunyun Yun. The passage that Chiang Kai-shek left in his "diary" "when he was not even dressed properly" quoted by the author here is not the text of Chiang's diary at all, but a passage in the introduction that Chiang Kai-shek later wrote for "The Half Moon of the Xi'an Incident". The previous author said that he had read this booklet in the library, but judging from this error, the author may not have directly read the booklet "Xi'an Half Moon Chronicle", otherwise how could he take the words in this introduction as Jiang's diary text, and imagine it vividly.

Example 3, on pages 5-6, describes how Li Lisan and Mao Zedong, two young Communist Party members who had just joined the Kuomintang, were "eloquent and fiercely sharp" at the First National Congress of the Kuomintang. He said, "Li Lisan went straight to the point, expounding his views in a large number of paragraphs, including many straightforward remarks criticizing the Kuomintang; Mao Zedong mainly relied on Mr. Sun's statement as a basis to argue his views. Wang Jingwei also sighed sincerely: "What are the young people of the May Fourth Movement!" He said that Sun Yat-sen praised Li and Mao for "two new talents" and "personally approved Mao Zedong as a member of the charter review committee."

In fact, the original source of most of this text should be Zhang Guotao's book "My Memories". It's just that the author not only miscopied the content of Wang Jingwei's quotation again, but also said that the author expounded his own views in a large number of paragraphs and directly criticized the Kuomintang; Mao used Mr. Sun's statement as a basis to prove his own views, which is also inconsistent with Zhang Guotao's statement. Therefore, it can be boldly speculated that the author did not directly copy it from Zhang Guotao's inaccurate memories decades later, but copied it again and again. Therefore, this statement of the Golden Book is also ridiculously wrong.

The minutes of the first meeting of the Kuomintang have survived and have long been published publicly. Even when Li Lisan's son writes about his father's glorious experience, although he has to use Zhang Guotao's diary to prove how outstanding his father was at that time, he must not fail to make a historical narrative according to the archival records of that year, so as not to exaggerate too much (Li Sishen and Liu Zhikun, The Mystery of Li Lisan, People's Publishing House, 2005, p. 63). Naturally, the author of the Golden Book did not look at the minutes of the meeting, but he was suspected of fabricating anything if he said that Li and Mao were "eloquent and fierce in their words" at the First National Congress of the Kuomintang, and also criticized the Kuomintang Yunyun.

The First National Congress of the Kuomintang held 17 meetings (half a day), at which more than 460 people made speeches, and the CPC deputies reported a total of 20 speeches, which was far from being active. Among them, Li Lisan only spoke once, and he still applauded the content of the report of Tan Pingshan, a representative of the Communist Party of China, and did not mean to criticize the Kuomintang at all. Mao Zedong spoke 6 times, the most prominent among the CCP delegates. But Mao's first four speeches were all one sentence, "Please...... to the vote". The last two speeches, which took place at the 14th meeting the morning before the end of the meeting, were slightly longer, one on the establishment of the study council and the other on the method of proportional elections, both of which had nothing to do with Sun Yat-sen's statement. Mao Zedong was elected to the Constitution Review Committee, which took place at the 5th meeting. ("Minutes of the First National Congress of the Chinese Kuomintang", January 20-30, 1924, edited by the Second Historical Archives of China: "Historical Materials of the First and Second National Congresses of the Chinese Kuomintang" [I], Jiangsu Ancient Books Publishing House, 1987 edition, pp. 4-79) What about the "historical facts" of being appointed by Sun as a member of the charter review committee?

Example 4, on page 11, the author writes: "In January 1923, when the Sun Wen Yue Fei Manifesto was published, he summoned the core cadres to solicit their opinions. "There is no problem for everyone in the United Nations...... The main point of contention is the United Communist Party. "Wang Jingwei agreed to unite with Russia and opposed the United Communist Party; Liao Zhongkai was in favor of uniting Russia and the Communist Party, believing that since Russia is united, it is necessary to unite with the Communist Party; Hu Hanmin is between Wang and Liao. …… His argument is peculiar: 'Anarchists are farther away from us than Communists, and if they treat anarchists like this, what is so terrible about admitting Communists into the Party?' He suggested to Sun Yat-sen that the Communists should be conditionally contained first. The condition is 'to truly believe in the doctrine of the Party and work together for the national revolution'; The basis is that 'they have been found to have a side role or side action sufficient to harm the Party'. "Hu Hanmin's views had a great influence on Sun Yat-sen. Later, Sun Yat-sen adopted the idea of conditional alliance with the Communist Party, did not agree to the implementation of extra-party cooperation, and insisted that the Communists join the Kuomintang to implement 'intra-party cooperation', mainly from Hu Hanmin. ”

This material is supposed to be from a speech given by Hu Hanmin in early 1929. Therefore, it is "deserved" because the author of the Golden Book must not have read this historical material, and his quotation is destined to have been copied from second-hand or third-hand sources. Because it was copied over and over again, the result became a mixed bag. For example, the two quotations of Hu Hanmin in the book are quoted, and the latter paragraph can be seen at a glance from Hu's speech. However, the phrase "anarchists are farther away from us than Communist Party members...... not only can be seen at a glance that they are not spoken by people of that era, but in particular, there is a big difference between them and the style of Hu Hanmin's speech, and there is indeed no such thing in Hu Hanmin's speech.

In his speech, Hu Hanmin recalled that he said about the "anarchists" as follows: "My brother thought that it was after the European war, and China's social problems suddenly surged. Our party has always advocated the principle of people's livelihood, and many comrades have not paid attention to it in the past, so it is not impossible for those who study Marxism to be allowed to join our party if they sincerely cooperate with us. Just like Mr. So-and-so was originally an anarchist, he was always loyal to the Three People's Principles and worked hard for his party in his own party. (Hu Hanmin, "The Most Significant Scene of Revolution and Counter-Revolution", January 12, 1929, edited by Cuncui Society: "Hu Hanmin's Deeds and Materials" [4], Hong Kong Dadong Book Company, 1980, p. 1307)

However, compared with the problem of this miscopying, the misreading of this historical fact in the Golden Book is even more laughable. Whether the author is careful or has a little more knowledge of the history of intra-party cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, he should be able to find that the meeting convened by Sun Yat-sen, which took place after the issuance of Sun Yue's manifesto at the end of January 1923, as Hu Hanmin recounted, no longer played any role in the choice of the form of intra-party cooperation. This was because several months before this meeting, the form of intra-party cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party had already taken shape, and most of the Communist Party leaders had already joined the Kuomintang in their personal capacity. The author said that at this meeting, "Hu Hanmin's views had a great influence on Sun Yat-sen. Later, Sun Yat-sen adopted the idea of conditional alliance with the Communist Party, did not agree to the implementation of cooperation outside the party, and insisted that the Communists join the Kuomintang to practice 'intra-party cooperation'.

What is even more inexplicable is that reading pages 33-34 of the Golden Book, it can be found that the author also knew that Sun Yat-sen had already determined the method of intra-party cooperation before holding this meeting. The author himself writes: In the spring of 1922, Ma Lin had already put forward a proposal for CCP members to join the KMT to achieve KMT-CCP cooperation, and was strongly opposed by Chen Duxiu, secretary of the CPC Central Committee. But in August of that year, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China was persuaded to accept the form of intra-party cooperation. In fact, Chen Duxiu, Li Dazhao, and others joined the Kuomintang almost immediately, and in early September, Chen Duxiu was invited to participate in a discussion on the reorganization of the Kuomintang, and was appointed by Sun Yat-sen as a member of the Drafting Committee for Improving the Strategy. The author doesn't even know that the narrative is contradictory?

The only reason that can be explained for such a contradictory historical interpretation by the author is that the author does not know what differences there are between the various statements of his predecessors that he uses or borrows, but only according to the convenience of his logical narration of his views.

Plagiarism is not tolerated

For the sake of space, we will put aside the work of proving the errors of the Golden Book for the time being, and then take a look at the innovations and discoveries of the Golden Book. One of the main reasons why the Golden Book has aroused the interest of many people is that the book tells some truths and dares to face some situations or problems in the middle of history that were not talked about in the past. However, it is not difficult to see from the above that the author's knowledge of historical research is weak and he lacks basic knowledge, and it is absolutely impossible for him to become a creative historian or an expert in the history of the Communist Party of China in one fell swoop. Obviously, success is also Xiao He, defeat is also Xiao He. There are a lot of hard wounds and mistakes in the golden book, and quite a few of them are probably copied; Many of the seemingly creative and innovative things in the Golden Book are actually copied from the research results of others.

Example 1, on pages 12-13, the author writes quite complacently that Sun Yat-sen advocated intra-party cooperation and criticized the skeptics within the Kuomintang, "but Sun Yat-sen had other criticisms that are rare in our own historical sources." He also listed in detail Sun Yat-sen's criticism of Deng Zeru and others' "Denunciation of the Communist Party" in November 1923, saying that it was "today...... We basically don't quote criticisms". It is said that among the superficial successes of the Communists of the Kuomintang's 'First Congress', a newly established organization of the Kuomintang 'First Congress' was ignored by the Communists...... This is the Central Supervisory Commission of the Kuomintang. "There is not a single communist in the Central Supervisory Commission. The Kuomintang, which had always been loosely organized, also set up an eleventh chapter in the party constitution, "Discipline," which was aimed at the Communists. “

Here, "we" should refer to the official academic institutions on the mainland, including the Chinese Communist Party's historical circles and relevant historians, and the meaning is very clear, that is, so far basically no one in the mainland has paid attention to Sun Yat-sen's criticism of the Communist Party, and only the author has noticed the other side of Sun Yat-sen that has been ignored.

Of course, this is not the case. It is true that this situation did exist many years after the founding of the Communist Party of China, but after the reform and opening up, such a situation has long been broken by Chinese and foreign researchers in the field of history. Except for one of the three criticisms and accusations against the Communist Party cited by the author, which "are rare in our own compiled historical materials," except for one that originated from Chen Duxiu's 1929 "Letter to the Whole Party Comrades," the other two were all historical materials compiled in the "Complete Works of Sun Yat-sen" published in the mainland, and the book was published in the mainland from 1985 to 1986.

As for related research, it has a long history. In addition to the Taiwan scholar Li Yunhan who studied and elaborated on this aspect in 1966 (Li Yunhan, "From the Rongrong Communist Party to the Qing Party", Taipei Chinese Academic Works Scholarship Committee, 1966), since the mid-1980s, mainland scholars have also successively introduced some works United States study of Sun Yat-sen's life and deeds to the mainland, such as Wei Muting's "Sun Yat-sen——— Patriot with Unpaid Ambitions", which was translated into Chinese in 1986. Among them, Sun Yat-sen's criticism and his defensive psychology against the Communist Party are introduced in more detail (Wei Muting, translated by Yang Shenzhi, Sun Yat-sen: A Patriot with Unpaid Ambitions, Sun Yat-sen University Press, 1986, pp. 194-196). After that, it is not uncommon for papers to mention this historical source.

Did the author of the Golden Book accidentally discover this material because he had read too little, so he had the problem of reinterpreting this period of history? I'm afraid not. As long as we look at the mistakes made in Sun Yat-sen's criticism quoted in quotation marks in the book, it is not difficult to see that the quotation that the author claims to have noticed only he has noticed is not only not discovered by himself in the process of reading historical materials, but also copied through the loose text of others. In this fragmented, word-limited quotation, there are several more mistakes in quick succession.

First, the word "party and government" in the sentence "all revolutionary parties in Russia belong to people with experience in party and government" was mistakenly copied as "learning";

The second is to copy the "encounter" in the sentence "not for such teenagers to meet (contain)" as "foolish", and did not make any explanation for the deletion of the "(containment)" mark in the original materials;

Third, the sentence "I want them to join the Kuomintang and act in concert with me" in the original text and the unrelated sentence "If Chen does not obey our party, I will also abandon it" after a gap of more than 60 words, were inexplicably copied into one sentence and became: "Since you join our party, you should act in concert with our party; If you do not obey our party, I will abandon it."

In fact, whether it is Sun Yat-sen's criticism, or the establishment of a supervisory committee without Communists at the First National Congress of the Kuomintang, and the special setting up of a chapter on "discipline" in the party constitution, including through these circumstances, it can be clearly seen that Sun Yat-sen tried to make the Communists use them for his own purposes, and carefully guarded against the complex psychology of the Communist Party from disrupting his organization, and in 2001 I had an article entitled "Sun Yat-sen and the Communist Party: A Historical Investigation Based on the Russian Factor", which spent tens of thousands of words to study, introduce and discuss in detail, and I published in 2008 The Kuomintang's "United Communist Party" and "Anti-Communism" also has a special chapter on analysis and explanation (Yang Kuisong, "Sun Yat-sen and the Communist Party: A Historical Investigation Based on the Russian Factor", Modern History Research, No. 3, 2001). Around this time, other scholars have written articles to introduce and further discuss this situation (such as Feng Jin, "Sun Yat-sen and the Breakdown of the First Kuomintang-Communist Cooperation", Party History Wenyuan, No. 8, 2008, etc.). In this way, it can be seen that the inspiration, opinions, basic materials and historical facts of the author of the Golden Book to discuss this historical material were also copied.

Example 2, pp. 29-32, 35, the Golden Book deals specifically with the assistance of Soviet Russia and the Comintern to the Chinese Communist Party and its significance. Because this part of the suspected plagiarism is more typical, the following is listed one by one, so that readers can see it at a glance:

1. Golden Book:

Before the Comintern representative Vychensky came to China in April 1920, the only sources of income for both Nan Chen and Bei Li were teaching and editing salaries and manuscript fees for writing articles. A little bit of money is only enough to run one or two publications. It is powerless to support other social activities, such as the student movement, the labor movement, and the military movement, even if they are significant. After Vychensky and others came to China, the Communist Party of China entered the preparatory stage, and social work increased dramatically, and not only did the majority of party members gradually become unable to teach, edit, and write articles part-time in order to earn salaries, but also the establishment of various periodicals, workers' night schools, and the publication of various revolutionary theoretical books required far exceeded people's ability to pay. Therefore, the Shanghai party organization was the first to receive financial assistance from Vychensky. At that time, this initial assistance was of a very temporary nature. As soon as Vychensky left in January 1921, there was no immediate lack of funds, and all kinds of propaganda work, especially for the enlightenment and education of the workers, had to be stopped, and Bao Huisheng was sent south to Guangzhou to report to Chen Duxiu, even 15 (10 is mistakenly copied 15 here!) I can't get the rest of the money for the journey, so I can only borrow money from private people.

Yang Wen (Yang Kuisong, "Some Information on the Early Communist Organization in China", Party History Research Materials, No. 4, 1990; Yang Kuisong, "The Kuomintang's "United Communist Party" and "Anti-Communism", Social Sciences Academic Press, 2008, Chapter 1, the same below):

Before Vychensky and others came to China in April 1920, Chen Duxiu and others could only withdraw part of the money from the salaries and manuscript fees they received from teaching, editing, and writing articles, which was used to support one or two journals of their colleagues. For other social activities, even if they were considered to be of great significance, such as the work-study mutual aid group at that time, it was obviously not possible to provide more funding. After the arrival of Vychensky and others, with the birth of the Communist Party organization, propaganda and organization of social work increased dramatically, and not only did the majority of Party members gradually become unable to teach, edit, and write articles part-time in order to earn salaries, but they also only founded various periodicals, workers' night schools, and published all kinds of revolutionary theoretical books, and the expenses required were far beyond the people's ability to pay. Therefore, as soon as the Chinese Communist Party in Shanghai was founded, it accepted financial assistance from Vychensky. As soon as Vychensky left in January 1921, he immediately "had no funds", and not only did all the propaganda work, especially the work of enlightening and propagandizing the workers, "have to stop," but even the meagre more than 10 yuan spent on reporting to the south could not be paid.

2. Golden Book:

According to Chen Duxiu's report to the Comintern on June 30, 1922, from October 1921 to June 1922, a total of 16,655 yuan was collected from the International. Due to the small number of party members, the whole party still maintains a per capita annual expenditure ratio of 40 to 50 yuan; But with the dramatic increase in the number of party members after 1925, the funding provided by the International was far from keeping pace with this growth. …… Chen Duxiu estimated that about 94 percent of the party's funding came from the Comintern in the early days of the party's founding, and the party spent another 60 percent of it on the workers' movement. Obviously, the fact that the Communist Party of China was able to play an important leading role in the workers' movement soon after its founding was inseparable from the help provided by the Comintern and from the fact that the CCP devoted the vast majority of its funds to the workers' movement.

Yang Wen:

As to the significance of the funding of Comintern aid, it is enough to look at a few simple figures in Chen Duxiu's report to the Comintern on June 30, 1922. The report stated: "From October 1921 to June 1922, the party expenses were 17,655 yuan from the central organs, 16,655 yuan from the international association, and 1,000 yuan from the self-collection. ...... "It can be seen from this that about 94 per cent of the Party's funding comes from the Comintern, and that the workers' movement alone accounts for about 60 per cent....... Obviously, since the founding of the Communist Party of China in 1921, the Communists were able to play an important role in the workers' movement everywhere very quickly, and gradually became an important leading force in the workers' movement, because the Comintern provided financial assistance to the Chinese Communists, and the Communists devoted the vast majority of it to the workers' movement.

3. Golden Book:

With the continuous development of the Party's organization, there are more and more people who take the revolution as their profession, and all kinds of expenses are increasing day by day. …… Although the Second National Congress of the Communist Party of China clearly stipulates the terms for the collection of party dues, the actual living standards of most party members are already very low, and the income from party dues is extremely limited. Chen Duxiu's report on the "Big Three" said that after the "Second Party Congress" in 1922, "the party's funds were almost entirely received from the Comintern." ”

Yang Wen:

With the gradual development of the Party organization and the increasing number of professional revolutionaries, the Party's expenses of all kinds increased, while the sources of funding decreased correspondingly. Although the Second National Congress of the Communist Party of China clearly stipulated the terms of the collection of party dues, the actual amount of self-raised funds is decreasing. According to Chen Duxiu's report on the "Big Three," after the "Second Party Congress" in 1922, "the party's funds were almost entirely received from the Comintern." ”

4. Golden Book:

From January to July 1927, the party dues paid by party members were still less than 3,000 yuan, while the party expenses in the same period had reached 180,000 yuan; If we add up the party fees, labor freight, regimental fares, agricultural freight, military freight, relief expenses, anti-imperialist expenses, and special expenses provided by the Comintern, the Red Workers' International, the Young Communist International, the Peasants' International, and the Relief International, there are nearly 1 million yuan. Comparatively, the amount of self-raised funds for the party is less than 3/1,000.

Yang Wen:

By 1927, his party fee income was still less than 3,000 yuan. This year, nearly 1 million yuan was paid by the Communist International, the Red Workers' International, the Young Communist International, the Peasants' International, and the Relief International, including the Party Fee, the Labor Freight, the Group Fee, the Agricultural Freight, the Military Freight, the Relief Fee, the Anti-Imperialist Fee, and the Special Fee. Its self-raised funds were actually less than 3% (see the attached table for the party expenses of 180,000 yuan from January to July 1927)

5. Golden Book:

(1921-1925) Due to the small number of party members, the whole party still maintained a per capita annual expenditure ratio of 40 to 50 yuan. But with the tremendous increase in the number of party members after 1925, the expenses provided by the International were far from keeping pace with this increase. The per capita expenditure of the whole party (annually) dropped from an initial average of 40 yuan to 4 yuan in 1927.

Yang Wen:

From the Comintern is...... It is not possible to grow indefinitely in proportion to the increase in the number of party members, and here we can make a brief table to show the relationship between them...... (The table shows that in 1921-1925 it was 40 to 50 yuan per capita, and in 1927 it was reduced to 4 yuan per capita per year). As can be seen from the table above, with the great increase in the number of party members after 1925, the party fees provided by the Comintern were far from keeping pace with the growth of party members.

6. Golden Book:

Comintern aid was of great help to the early Chinese Communists, who had no financial resources. But it was precisely through limited aid that dependence on the Comintern was formed, which caused considerable damage to the Chinese Communists. …… Whether a political party or an organization is independent or not does not depend on the subjective ideas of its leaders, but on whether or not it has objective conditions. If the Chinese Communists want to change this dependence on the Comintern, they will depend not only on the increasing maturity of their political and military experience in struggle, but also on finding a foothold economically. The latter is more critical.

Yang Wen:

The above situation shows that the needs of the Communist Party of China and the Comintern in the early days were manifold. It is not only political, theoretical and organizational, but also very prominently economic. It was these demands that forced the early Communists to form an almost dependent relationship with the Comintern. To truly change this relationship, it is necessary not only to mature politically, theoretically, and in terms of experience of struggle, but also to find a foothold economically. In other words, if the Communists do not have their own army, political power, and create a solid base area, it will be difficult to fundamentally change this interdependence.

From the above comparison, it is not difficult to see the extent to which the plagiarism of the golden book has reached. The above-mentioned basic issues surrounding the financial assistance provided by Soviet Russia and the Comintern to the CCP in the early days, historical references, historical narratives, and even argumentative views were all copied almost exactly from a research paper I published in 1990. Writing a book like the author's sake, plagiarism like this kind of paragraph plagiarism must also exist in other chapters. “

A simple conclusion

Due to the time and length of the article, I really can't expand the scope of my correctness and criticism. In fact, as I said earlier, even in this first chapter, which I have read more carefully, there are many errors in specific information, historical facts, and even interpretation. Not to mention minor issues, such as the part of the author's talk about Chiang Kai-shek's visit to the Soviet Union, the situation when he talked about the Lisan line, and the fact that the Comintern had stopped disbursing the funds of the Chinese Communists, and so on, there are obvious misinterpretations, misinterpretations, and even fabrications. To be sure, with the level of the first chapter of the Golden Book, and with the extremely unserious and extremely unscholarly method of the quick masterpiece, there are few problems of flaws, mistakes, and plagiarism in the other fifteen chapters of the Golden Book.

Of course, what I want to explain in the end is that the author's intention in writing this book may be really remarkable, but it is a pity that he does not pay attention to the rules, disregards the depth, and uses passionate arguments instead of objective and solid academic research, and bases his arguments on all kinds of miscopied and misread historical materials and historical truths.

It's really painful to comment on such a book; Writing a book in this way is really misleading oneself and others, and misleading society.

(Editor's note: Due to space constraints in this article, the large section notes and some examples of correctness and error have been deleted)

Text/Yang Kuisong