Chen Yannian: A revolutionary who regards death as a homecoming

"Our Party did not fall from the sky, nor was it born from the earth, still less did it fly from overseas, but grew out of a protracted revolutionary struggle, grew out of a difficult and difficult revolutionary struggle, and became strong." Chen Yannian's words before his death are exactly the true portrayal of his lifelong struggle for the revolutionary cause.

Chen Yannian was a well-known political activist in the early days of the Communist Party of China, born in 1898 in Huaining, Anhui Province, the eldest son of Chen Duxiu. In 1917, he was admitted to Aurora University to study law, and in December 1919, at the age of 21, Chen Yannian went to France to study work-study.

During his time in France, through his own personal experience and study, he abandoned the anarchism he had believed in and turned to Marxism. In June 1922, Chen Yannian, together with Zhao Shiyan and Zhou Enlai, founded the Communist Organization of the Young Communist Party of China in Europe, and served as a member of the Central Executive Committee, responsible for the editing of the monthly magazine "Teenager". In the autumn of the same year, he joined the French Communist Party and soon became a member of the Communist Party of China.

In the summer of 1924, the Party Central Committee decided to transfer comrades from Russia and France to work in China. In October of the same year, after returning to China, Chen Yannian was sent to Guangzhou by the Party Central Committee and successively served as the special commissioner of the Central Committee of the Socialist Youth League in Guangdong, the secretary of the CPC Guangdong District Committee and the director of the Organization Department. Soon after, he was appointed secretary of the Guangdong District Committee of the Communist Party of China. Chen Yannian attaches great importance to strengthening party building, improving the leading organs of the district party committees, establishing a party class system, focusing on the training and education of party members, and strengthening the unity of the party. By March 1927, the Guangdong Party organization had more than 9,000 party members, which was one of the local party organizations with the largest number of party members and the most complete organizational structure in the country at that time, with a high degree of cohesion and combat effectiveness.

In November 1924, Chen Yannian assisted Zhou Enlai in establishing the IronClad Convoy of the Grand Marshal's Office of the Navy and Army. In November 1925, on the basis of the ironclad convoy, Zhou Enlai, Chen Yannian, and others agreed to draw another group of Communist Party members and members of the Communist Youth League from the graduates of the Whampoa Military Academy as the backbone, and established the famous Ye Ting Independent Regiment. In June 1925, Chen Yannian, Su Zhaozheng, Deng Zhongxia and others led the provincial and Hong Kong general strikes that shocked China and foreign countries, which lasted for 16 months and ended in October 1926.

In the Great Revolution of Kuomintang-Communist Cooperation, Chen Duxiu and other party leaders adopted a policy of compromise and concession against the attacks of the Kuomintang rightists. Chen Yannian resolutely opposed it, and he reported to the Party Central Committee in the name of the Guangdong District Committee of the CPC, demanding that the Central Committee resolutely abandon the policy of compromise and concession to the right wing of the Kuomintang, and when talking with Deng Zhongxia and Zhang Tailei about Chen Duxiu's mistakes, he said indignantly: "[Chen Duxiu] cannot see Chiang Kai-shek's conspiracy and the strength of the workers and peasants. He also said: "I am the Communist Party, resolutely stand on the party's standpoint, and oppose the right-wing opportunist policy of compromise and concession!" ”

In the spring of 1927, Chen Yannian went north to Wuhan to attend the Fifth National Congress of the Communist Party of China, and was ordered to go to Shanghai to take over as the secretary of the Jiangsu and Zhejiang District Committee of the Communist Party of China. After the "April 12" counter-revolutionary coup, Shanghai was shrouded in a fog of white terror. Despite the danger, he worked with Zhao Shiyan and other comrades to find separated comrades, restore and rebuild the party organization, and actively carry out the struggle. After the abolition of the Jiangsu and Zhejiang district party committees in June, Chen Yannian was appointed secretary of the Jiangsu Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China.

On June 26, 1927, Chen Yannian was arrested by the Kuomintang military police. The enemy tortured him to the point of exhaustion, in a vain attempt to force him to confess to the Shanghai Party organization. But Chen Yannian always maintained an iron will and preferred to die unyieldingly. On July 4, the enemy secretly escorted Chen Yannian to the execution ground. The executioner ordered Chen Yannian to kneel, but he responded loudly: Revolutionaries are bright and upright, regard death as a homecoming, and only stand to die, never kneel! In the end, he was brutally killed by the murderers with a knife on the ground, and he was only 29 years old at the time of his death.

Although Chen Yannian's life was short, it was extremely magnificent. His name will always be engraved in the hearts of the Chinese people.

(Author Affilications:Central Academy of Party History and Literature)

Source: Party Building magazine