Chen Tanqiu: Persist in the struggle and sacrifice one's life for righteousness

Source: People's Daily - People's Daily

Portrait of Chen Tanqiu. Xinhua News Agency

In Chen Celou Village, Chen Celou Town, Huangzhou District, Huanggang City, Hubei Province, there is a courtyard covered with pines and cypresses, which is the former residence of Chen Tanqiu, a major representative of the CPC and one of the founders of the party.

Chen Tanqiu was born in 1896. In 1916, Chen Tanqiu entered the English Department of the National Wuchang Higher Normal School, reading progressive publications and studying and propagating Marxism. In the autumn of 1920, Chen Tanqiu and Dong Biwu initiated the establishment of the early organization of the Communist Party of China in Wuhan, and were one of the earliest members of the Communist Party of China. In July 1921, Chen Tanqiu attended the First National Congress of the Communist Party of China.

In the spring of 1922, Chen Tanqiu came to Wuchang Higher Normal School to teach, and under his training, a group of students embarked on the revolutionary road. During this period, under the leadership of Chen Tanqiu and others, the workers' movement, youth movement, and women's movement in Wuhan surged up.

After the defeat of the Great Revolution, under the harsh white terror, Chen Tanqiu worked hard to restore and rebuild the party organization, persisted in secret struggle, and successively served as secretary of the Jiangxi Provincial CPC Committee, responsible person of the Shandong Provisional Provincial CPC Committee, secretary general of the Manchurian Provincial CPC Committee, secretary general of the Jiangsu Provincial CPC Committee, and alternate members of the Fifth and Sixth Central Committees of the Party, leading the workers' movement, student movement, and military movement work in various localities, and running around for the party's cause.

At the beginning of 1933, Chen Tanqiu went to work in the Central Soviet District. In June of the same year, he was appointed Secretary of the Fujian Provincial Party Committee. In January 1934, at the Second Congress of the Chinese Soviet Republic in Ruijin, he was elected as a member of the Central Executive Committee and Minister of Food of the Central Government. Under the extremely difficult conditions of the kuomintang army's tight blockade and military "encirclement and suppression," it made an important contribution to ensuring the supply of grain in the Central Soviet Region and the Red Army. In October 1934, after the Long March of the main force of the Central Red Army, Chen Tanqiu stayed in the Central Soviet Region to persist in guerrilla warfare, and served as a member of the Central Branch of the Cpc Central Committee and the head of the organization. In August 1935, he went to Moscow to attend the Seventh Congress of the Communist International.

On September 27, 1943, Chen Tanqiu, along with Mao Zemin and Lin Jilu, was secretly killed by the warlord Sheng Shicai at the age of 47. After the founding of New China, Chen Tanqiu's remains were buried in the Martyrs' Cemetery on the southern outskirts of Urumqi, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

With the passage of time, the former Wuchang Higher Normal Primary School is now the First Affiliated Primary School of Wuhan University. In the first week of every month, the school will organize party members and teachers to tell the children about the history of the party, and Chen Tanqiu's revolutionary spirit of giving birth to righteousness will be passed down from generation to generation, inspiring people to move forward courageously.

People's Daily ( 2021-05-08 04 edition)