The party's revolutionary spirit genealogy | the spirit of the Long March: a great epic, written throughout thousands of rivers and mountains

Source: People's Liberation Army Daily

The great spirit of the Long March is a vivid reflection of the revolutionary style of the Chinese Communists, and we must constantly inherit and carry it forward in the light of the new reality. The new Long March to promote the cause of socialism with Chinese characteristics must be continuously relayed and carried out for a long time, and each generation of us must take its own Long March.

——Xi Jinping

On October 21, 2016, President Xi Jinping pointed out in his important speech at the conference commemorating the 80th anniversary of the victory of the Long March of the Red Army that the spirit of the Great Long March is a vivid reflection of the revolutionary style of the Chinese Communists and the people's army led by them, a concentrated display of the Chinese nation's national character of unremitting self-improvement, and the highest embodiment of the national spirit with patriotism as the core.

In recent years, President Xi Jinping has visited landmark memorial sites such as the departure, turning point and meeting of the Long March.

On May 20, 2019, President Xi Jinping came to Yudu County, Jiangxi Province. In October 1934, the main forces of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, the Central Revolutionary Military Commission and the Central Red Army gathered here, and then crossed the Du River and began the great journey of the Long March.

On April 25, 2021, President Xi Jinping visited the Memorial Hall of the Red Army's Long March xiangjiang battle in Caiwan Town, Quanzhou County, Guilin, Guangxi, to visit the Memorial Hall of the Red Army's Long March Xiangjiang Campaign. From November 27 to December 1, 1934, tens of thousands of Red Army soldiers broke through the enemy's fourth blockade line here, preserving the flames of the Chinese revolution.

On June 16, 2015, President Xi Jinping visited Zunyi, Guizhou. The enlarged politburo meeting held here in January 1935 saved the Party, the Red Army and the Chinese revolution at the most critical juncture, and was a life-and-death turning point in the history of the Party.

On July 18, 2016, President Xi Jinping came to Jiangtai Fort in Xiji County. In October 1936, the three main forces of the Red Army met at Huining and Jiangtai fort, marking the end of the long march.

The great spirit of the Long March forged by the Chinese Communists and the soldiers of the Red Army with their lives and blood has made future generations look up to them again and again.

The Great March, a great feat in human history, and the most precious spiritual wealth left to us, is the great spirit of the Long March forged by the Chinese Communists and the officers and men of the Red Army with their lives and blood.

What is the Spirit of the Long March? President Xi Jinping profoundly pointed out: The spirit of the Great Long March is the spirit of putting the fundamental interests of the people of the whole country and the Chinese nation above everything else, strengthening revolutionary ideals and convictions, and firmly believing in the inevitable victory of the just cause; that is, the spirit of saving the country and saving the people, not afraid of any difficulties and dangers, and not hesitating to make all sacrifices; that is, the spirit of adhering to independence, seeking truth from facts, and proceeding from reality in everything; that is, the spirit of taking into account the overall situation, strictly observing discipline, and closely uniting; that is, the spirit of closely relying on the masses of the people, relying on the people for life and death, sharing hardships and hardships, and sharing weal and woe. The spirit of hard work.

One

The Long March of the Central Red Army lasted only two years, but it became a great symbol.

Why?

Mao Zedong spoke of the Long March at the Wa Yao Fort Conference in December 1935:

Speaking of the Long March, what is the significance? We say that the Long March is the first time in historical records, the Long March is a manifesto, the Long March is a propaganda team, and the Long March is a seeding machine. Since Pangu opened the world and the Three Emperors and Five Emperors to the present, has there ever been a Long March like ours in history? In the middle of 12 months, dozens of planes in the sky reconnaissance and bombing every day, hundreds of thousands of troops underground chased and blocked, and encountered endless difficulties and obstacles on the road, but we started to move each person's two feet, drove more than 20,000 miles, and crisscrossed 11 provinces. Have there ever been such a long march in history as ours? No, never. The Long March is also a manifesto. It declares to the whole world that the Red Army is a hero and a good man, and that the imperialists and their lackeys, Chiang Kai-shek, and others are utterly useless. The Long March declared the bankruptcy of imperialism and Chiang Kai-shek's encirclement and blockade. The Long March is also a propaganda team. It declared to the people of 11 provinces, some twenty million, that only the road of the Red Army was the way to liberate them. If not for this, how could the broad masses of the people so quickly know that there is such a big truth as the Red Army in the world? The Long March is again a seeder. It spreads many seeds in 11 provinces, germinates, grows leaves, flowers, bears fruit, and will be harvested in the future. In short, the Long March ended with our victory and the defeat of the enemy.

These magnificent words profoundly explain the far-reaching significance of the Long March to Chinese history and the Chinese revolution.

Today, the Long March has entered the history of mankind, and Long March is a word that has spread all over the world. Many people around the world, even if they don't know much about China and the Chinese Communist Party, are always in awe when they hear the Long March.

In addition to its great significance to China and the Chinese revolution, what does the Long March mean to the fate of mankind and to the history of mankind?

Why do people in the world respect the Long March in awe?

It is precisely the reflection on these questions that makes us have to return once again to the Notes on Reading the Principles of Ethics, written by Mao Zedong in his youth.

At that time, Mao Zedong did not expect to be the leader of the Red Army, he was just a student of the Hunan First Division, ready to become a teacher after graduation. In this creative note, Mao Zedong discusses philosophical issues.

The young Mao Zedong believed that it was in the process of fighting suffering and passivity that man's willpower was forged.

What kind of value and significance did the philosophical speculations painstakingly carried out by that humble scholar have for his later life, for China and the world?

Many years later, in October 1934, the Red Army was forced to march.

Just as in the spring of 1927, when the defeat of the Great Revolution was foreseen at its height, Mao Zedong foresaw that the Chinese revolution would once again suffer a major setback like the defeat of the Great Revolution.

On July 23, 1934, after an all-night meeting, Mao Zedong climbed the Arashiyama Ridge outside Huichang at dawn and wrote the famous poem "Qingping Le Huichang".

Just as he was staring at Jinggang Mountain, Mao Zedong was staring at the vast Nanyue at this time. He knew that the Red Army would go to completely unfamiliar places and could only rely on the Red Army's own firm political convictions. Beyond that, the Red Army had nothing left.

Isn't this the ultimate in the fight against suffering and passivity?

Only with the ultimate struggle can we have the ultimate ideal and belief, and only then can we have the ultimate spirit of sacrifice at all costs.

Two

If we look at the Long March from the perspective of the fate of the oppressed and toiling masses under the heavens, what enlightenment does the Long March have for the proletarian masses of all mankind? In other words, does the Long March have universal significance, not only for China, the Chinese revolution, but also for mankind, the meaning of the "human apocalypse"?

The Long March is a magnificent lament for the "suffering people of the whole world" to rise up for the revolution, boundless suffering - developed to the extreme in the Long March, and at the same time, the Red Army also developed the will of the "suffering people of the whole world" to the extreme in despair.

If the Long March is a great victory, then the Long March is first and foremost the victory of the revolutionary will of the suffering people of the world, and it is the praise of the will of mankind.

In the history of mankind, no group of revolutionaries has ever faced such historical conditions and objective circumstances as the Long March: an unprecedentedly powerful enemy, such a huge disparity between the forces of the enemy and ourselves, such a serious "Left" dogmatic wrong leadership, and such a harsh and harsh living situation, and all these historical conditions and objective circumstances stand there indifferently like an infinite wall. It seems to declare with bloody cruelty that in China the revolution is impossible, the existence of the Red Army and the Communist Party is impossible, and there is no way out of the revolution.

And without suffering, there would be no miracles; without miracles, there would be no revolutionary splendor.

The Long March was the victory of the oppressed people, and the Long March declared that the ragged Red Army was to overthrow the old world without "heavenly reason."

The victory of the Long March is a miracle in history, an eternal call to "impossible liberation", and a blessing from countless pasts to the infinite future. The Communists at the time of the Long March had nothing; if anything, it was that the Red Army possessed the will of the revolutionaries, which made the revolutionaries sacred.

The countless moving stories of the Long March illustrate how tenacious the willpower of the Red Army was.

Yu Qiuli, wounded in his left arm during the Long March, walked out of the grass with a broken arm. In order to relieve the pain, he constantly poured water on the broken arm, and as a result, the wound rotted and maggots. After 200 days of marching with the broken arm in tow, he was treated with a saw blade to saw the broken arm with bone and flesh.

The female soldier Zhou Uprising was bound on her feet before joining the Red Army, and she walked down the twenty-five thousand mile long march with a pair of small feet. When the comrades-in-arms saw that she really could not walk, mobilized her to stay in the local area, and said that she would come to pick her up again after the victory of the revolution, she did not shed a single tear along the way, but she cried loudly.

Liao Chengzhi saw with his own eyes such a scene: after a Red Army mother gave birth, in order not to drag the troops, she threw her child into the water, and at the moment of throwing the child, the mother also threw herself into the water, and the mother and the child disappeared into the water together.

In the early morning of June 17, 1935, Mao Zedong, wearing a jacket and pants, drank a bowl of steaming chili water and climbed toward the snow-covered mountain. Halfway up the mountainside, snow and hail are falling and the air is thin. Mao Zedong's guard, Dai Tianfu, fell ill with malaria while crossing the Dadu River and could not walk and lay down in the snow. Mao Zedong pulled him up and said: Xiao Dai, you must not sit down, you will not be able to get up when you sit down. Come, I'll carry you away.

At this time, another guard, Wu Jiqing, caught up and preemptively carried Dai Tianfu on his back, while Mao Zedong threw down the wooden stick in his hand and supported him in the back. In this way, the three of them climbed to the top of the mountain with difficulty.

This is the Long March.

This is how the Long March was written in the wilderness of Asia and in the history of mankind.

The thin face, the determined gaze, the legs of the revolutionary, the image of Mao Zedong's Long March era, are written in the picture scroll of the revolution.

The victory of the Long March was the victory of the convictions of countless ordinary Red Army soldiers like Dai Tianfu. They may not understand the profound theory of Marxism, but they understand that they are fighting for the poor, that their struggle is just, and that in the showdown between injustice and morality, they fight morality with their lives, and this is the choice of the Red Army. They soberly chose sacrifice because they knew that their death was not in vain.

The reason why the Long March was able to win was first of all because the Red Army was an unprecedented army in history with firm political beliefs and convictions. The support received by the people of all ethnic groups along the Long March once again proves that conscience is in the hearts of the people.

The Long March is the triumph of the revolutionaries' spirit of constant exploration.

In the Long March, the Red Army groped all the way forward, and they did not know where the end point was; they just knew that they must constantly open up the way forward in battle; they just knew that they must always go forward and forward - north, north, north! They just know that there is no way out of going backwards and going back.

Today, people ask the question: Why does the Chinese Communist Party "can"?

The answer is this - not because the Chinese Communist Party is inherently strong, nor because the Communist Party does not make mistakes, but because no matter how powerful the enemy is, there will always be people in the Chinese Communist Party who will be the first to stand up and shout and charge: Comrades, follow me!

This is because, no matter how great the mistakes are, there will always be people in the Chinese Communist Party who will be the first to stand up and bravely correct the party's mistakes through criticism and self-criticism – just like in Zunyi, just like in Shawo, just like in Ganquan...

On the Long March, the Communists did just that.

The Long March was the beginning of the Communist Party of China's true march toward independence and self-reliance.

Before the Zunyi Conference, all the principal responsible persons of the Communist Party of China were designated by the Comintern, including Chen Duxiu, Zhang Guotao, Qu Qiubai, Xiang Zhongfa, Wang Ming, and Bogu. The congresses of the Party, on the other hand, were first and foremost congresses to study and implement the instructions of the Communist International. On the Long March, because the Xiangjiang Campaign lost contact with the Comintern, the environment of life and death forced the Chinese Communist Party to choose independence and self-determination, and it must choose to seek truth from facts. Therefore, most of the meetings held on the Long March Road were meetings that were independent, seeking truth from facts, fully carrying forward democracy, and safeguarding the unity of the Party. And the greatest of these was the Zunyi Conference.

The Long March marked the establishment of the Marxist line of dialectical materialism in the Communist Party of China and the establishment of the principle of seeking truth from facts in the Communist Party of China.

The Long March made the Communist Party of China realize that the first priority of the Red Army was to eat, to destroy the enemy, and to have a foothold in the revolution. If there is no food to eat, no enemy to be destroyed, no foothold to stay, and if the revolution cannot survive and develop, no matter how lofty theory and no matter how lofty the authority, we must make way for the survival of the revolution. Theories that do not move the revolution forward must be discarded, just as the altar jars carried at the beginning of the Long March must be discarded and smashed.

Three

To explain "why" by "always defeating the enemy", always correcting one's mistakes - this is only the use of "past energy" to explain "present energy", that is, it means that it is the past, the present, and not the future.

"Being advanced in the past does not mean being advanced now; being advanced now does not mean being advanced forever."

One of the most important aspects of the long march spirit is to "firmly believe that the just cause will inevitably triumph."

The just cause is to represent the will of the suffering people of the whole world; the just cause is the moral choice of mankind; the just cause is to rise up, slaves to hunger and cold; rise up, the suffering people of the whole world, full of blood, have boiled and will fight for the truth.

Mao Zedong said: Chinese people are suffering, and we have the responsibility to rescue them. We have to work hard, we have to struggle, and there will be sacrifices.

He also said that countless revolutionary martyrs have not hesitated to use their lives to martyr our cause, and those of us who are alive, do we have any personal interests that we cannot abandon?

The reason why the Communist Party of China "can" is because the Chinese Communists represented by Mao Zedong are on the side of the majority of the people who are suffering and suffering -- the rich and the noble cannot be adulterous, the poor cannot be moved, mountEda is crushed and the landslides are cracked, and they do not bend down; even if they make great sacrifices, they must carry the revolution through to the end.

Why does the Chinese Communist Party "can"? Why can we defeat an enemy of unprecedented strength, why can we correct huge mistakes, and why can we rise from the catastrophe again and again?

This is because the Communists have chosen to stand with the suffering people of the whole world, with justice and truth.

Don't forget your original intention, you have to be consistent.

The people are the heavens, and the people are the earth. "Taking the people as the center" and always standing on the side of the interests of the suffering masses of the people is the "pure heart" of the Communist Party of China.

When the realistic choice is placed in front of the Communists, this choice can actually make him pay for his personal status, and he can also pay for his life.

If you make such a choice, you may be killed by the enemy, or you may be overthrown within the party, and you may be framed and persecuted by the "repression" of the party.

In the years of revolutionary war, to accomplish the just cause, it is necessary to undergo all kinds of severe tests, and every Communist needs to make his own choice. In the face of difficult choices, they may think of the Long March, of Mao Zedong on the Road.

Mao Zedong was thus the leader of the Communist Party of China and the Red Army, the first independent choice.

It was the Long March that proved that Mao's fate was so completely consistent with that of the Communist Party of China, the Red Army, and the revolution.

Frederic Wakeman Jr. once pointed out with this sentiment:

“...... People valued his prophecies too late to achieve early victory... The fate of the revolution is his destiny, and the realization of the revolution is his self-realization. When we get into the characters we design, we all become fictional, and what sets Mao different from most people is that his image, his experiences, and history itself are consistent. ”

These words of his are not exaggerated, because they are proved by the history of the blood of the Chinese revolution.

Each generation has its own Long March, and each generation must take its own Long March. Today, the long march of our generation is to realize the goal of "two hundred years" and realize the Chinese dream of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.

Xiong Guan Man Dao is really like iron, and now he steps forward from the beginning! (Han Yuhai)

(Image source: Jiefangjun Daily data photo)

(Source: Jiefangjun Bao)