Although Hunan is not a modern industrially developed region, the Hunan working class has made brilliant achievements in the early workers' movement led by the Communist Party of China. After the May Fourth Movement, Hunan workers began to change from a free class to a self-made class, and took the lead in organizing the Hunan Labor Union in the whole country. Huang Ai and Pang Renquan, leaders of the Hunan Labor Union, were killed by the warlord Zhao Hengti when they led the workers of the Hunan First Spinning Factory on strike, becoming the first leaders of the labor movement in the country to sacrifice for the cause of the proletariat.
Huang Ai (left) and Pang Renquan (right)
From January 1922 to February 1923, the workers' movement led by the Communist Party of China formed its first climax. Under the mobilization and leadership of Mao Zedong and the Xiang District Committee of the Communist Party of China, the Hunan workers' movement surged like a tidal wave and shook the whole country. On September 9, 1922, in order to protest the abuse of workers by the railway authorities, Guo Liang, secretary of the Yuezhou Workers' Club of the Guangdong-Han Railway, took the lead in the horizontal rail struggle and launched a general strike on the Guangdong-Han Railway that shocked the whole country, setting off the first climax of the labor movement in Xiang District. After the victory of the strike, Li Lisan, director of the Anyuan Road Miners Club, also acted quickly and sounded the clarion call of the Anyuan Road Miners' Strike. Prior to this, Mao Zedong went to Anyuan several times to do work, and Liu Shaoqi was also sent to strengthen leadership. On September 14, more than 13,000 workers in the Anyuan Road Mine held a huge strike, publicly shouting the slogan "Once it was a cow and a horse, now I want to be a man." After arduous and fierce struggle, the general strike finally achieved complete victory and shook the Xiang district and the whole country. This strike was the first workers' struggle under the independent leadership of the Communist Party of China and a complete victory, and a feat that will go down in history in the history of the Chinese labor movement.
Since then, the strike struggle of Hunan workers has been unstoppable. On October 23, 1922, under the personal initiative and leadership of Mao Zedong, thousands of mud workers in Changsha braved heavy rain to march and petition in the streets. In the same month, workers in Changsha's sewing, hairdressing and other industries held a strike, forming a wave of strikes by the Alliance of Industrial Workers and Handicraft Workers. On December 5, under the guidance of the Xiang District Committee of the Communist Party of China and under the leadership of Jiang Xianyun and other Communists, the lead and zinc miners of Changning Shuikou Mountain held a general strike. After 23 days of struggle, the strike was victorious and the Mining Bureau agreed to all the conditions put forward by the workers. The strike of the lead and zinc miners in Shuikoushan pushed the Hunan labor movement to its climax.
On February 7, 1923, the Beijing-Hankou railway workers' strike was suppressed by force by the Beiyang warlord government. The heroic sacrifices of Communist Party members Lin Xiangqian and Shi Yang led to the "February 7 Massacre" that shocked China and foreign countries, and the national labor movement immediately turned into a low tide. Mao Zedong and other Communists began to realize that the peasant revolution was the fundamental problem of the national revolution, and after that, the Hunan workers' movement began to integrate with the peasant movement.
In April 1923, CPC members Liu Dongxuan and Xie Huaide went to Yuebei Baiguo in Hengshan County to carry out work, and after several months of efforts, more than 300 backbone elements of the agricultural movement were developed. On September 16, they formally established the Yuebei Farmers' Trade Union in Baiguo Town, Hengshan County, raising the first red flag of the Hunan peasant movement. In February 1925, Mao Zedong took advantage of the opportunity of returning to Shaoshan to recuperate from illness and carry out the work of the peasant movement. He set up a number of peasant night schools, established more than 20 secret agricultural cooperative organizations, personally developed the first batch of Communist Party members in Shaoshan, and established the Shaoshan Branch of the COMMUNIST Party, one of the earliest rural party branches in China. In March 1926, Mao Zedong went to Guangdong to serve as the director of the Sixth Guangzhou Peasant Movement Training Institute. This session of the Agricultural Movement Training Institute has recruited 316 trainees in more than 20 provinces and regions across the country, focusing on training the backbone of the agricultural movement, and Hunan is one of the two provinces and regions in the country with the largest number of trainees selected by the party organization. From January 4 to February 5, 1927, Mao Zedong conducted field investigations of the peasant movement in the five counties of Xiangtan, Xiangxiang, Hengshan, Liling, and Changsha. Soon after, Mao Zedong issued the "Report on the Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan", which played a major role in guiding and promoting the development of the peasant movement in Hunan and the whole country. Under the guidance of Mao Zedong, the peasant movement in Hunan flourished vigorously, and by January 1927, the number of members of the province's agricultural associations reached more than 2 million, and the masses led by 10 million people reached 10 million, and Hunan became the center of the national agricultural movement. The great rural revolution set off by the peasants in the province led by the Xiang District Committee of the CPC shook the rule of imperialism and feudalism, caused tremendous shocks to all strata of society, and greatly encouraged the fighting spirit of millions of working people.
After the defeat of the Great Revolution, under the leadership of the Xiang District Committee of the CPC, the Hunan working class and the peasant class fought hand in hand, followed by their predecessors, and carried out heroic armed struggle without fear of sacrifice. Launching the Autumn Harvest Uprising, the Shonan Uprising, the Sangzhi Uprising, and the Pingjiang Uprising, 100,000 workers and peasants attacked Changsha with armed forces, which had a huge impact on the whole country. Under the leadership of Mao Zedong, the workers' and peasants' army of the Autumn Harvest Uprising opened up China's first rural revolutionary base area, the Jinggangshan Revolutionary Base Area. Under the leadership of the Communist Party of China, the broad masses of workers and peasants in Hunan have made outstanding contributions to the Chinese revolution.
(From Xinxiang Review, No. 13, 2021)