Author: Shi Qian
Awarding medals and medals to meritorious personnel during the revolutionary period is a commendation given by the party and the government to servicemen, to make a historical summary, and to award military ranks to military personnel is the highest honor bestowed on military personnel by the people of the country, and it is also to affirm the status of military personnel in the military and facilitate work command.
In 1955, Luo Ronghuan, director of the General Cadres Department, proposed to the Central Military Commission three ways to handle the evaluation of the awarding of military ranks by local responsible cadres, and finally submitted a list of 21 people who evaluated military ranks but did not award military ranks, and the list of 21 people was led by Teng Daiyuan, who had outstanding military achievements.
According to the requirements of the judge, Teng Daiyuan's qualifications fully met the criteria for awarding the rank of general, why was he not awarded a military rank in the end?
A native of Mayang County, Huaihua City, Hunan Province, Teng Daiyuan joined the Communist Party of China in 1924, was the early founder of the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army and one of the leaders of the Chinese People's Liberation Army.
Lin, one of the two most outstanding generals in the civil war after the victory of the War of Resistance, was always a man who cherished words like gold, and he only evaluated two other generals, one of which was that Teng Daiyuan was eligible to be awarded the rank of marshal.
One of the eight armed uprisings, the Pingjiang Uprising, was initiated by Peng Dehuai and Teng Daiyuan, and in early 1927 Chairman Mao, accompanied by Liu Zhixun and Teng Daiyuan, went to Hunan to investigate, and in June of the following year, Teng Daiyuan went to Pingjiang to organize a riot, before which Teng Daiyuan was a commissioner of the provincial party committee.
In January 1929, the enemy army encircled and suppressed at Jinggangshan, Teng Daiyuan and Peng Dehuai led the 30th Regiment of the Red Army and Wang Zuo to stay behind, and in the process of attacking Yudu, only 300 people were left in the breakthrough to Gannan, and teng Daiyuan and Deng Ping were seriously wounded at that time.
Three months later, Teng Daiyuan, Peng Dehuai, and Deng Ping joined forces to form the Red 5th Army, with Peng Dehuai as its commander, Huang Gongliu as its deputy commander, and Teng Daiyuan as its party representative. In 1930, Huang Gongluo transferred to the Red First Army and was transferred to the Red 6 Army, and Teng Daiyuan began to appoint him as the political commissar of the Red Third Army.
After Huang Gongluo was transferred to office, he died at The Liudu Pass in Donggu, Ji'an, and then led by Teng Daiyuan and Peng Dehuai on an eastern expedition to Fujian, leading a total of 4 counter-encirclement and suppression campaigns, and later Teng Daiyuan went to the Soviet Union to study in January 1934.
After Teng Daiyuan returned to China during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, he married Lin Yi in northern Shaanxi in 1939, and after the marriage, Lin Yi served as the chief of the intelligence section of the headquarters. In 1942, Zuo Quan was sacrificed, and after the organization decided that Teng Daiyuan would eventually take over the position of Zuo Quan, Teng Daiyuan would plot with Peng Zong to avenge Zuo Quan after taking office, and Lin Yi, whose husband and wife accompanied him, also disguised himself three times to provide first-hand intelligence.
Chinese New Year's Eve, the year of Zuo Quan's death, Liu Manhe, a staff officer of the Eighth Route Army's special task force, led a commando team into Qi County to assassinate the members of the Annual Meeting of the Japanese Mashiko Advance Team, and completed the task with 30 people, causing Japan to disband the Mashiko Advance Team.
Subsequently, in 1945, Teng Daiyuan was elected as one of the 44 members, in 1948 he was also the commander of the Railway Corps, and the following year after the founding of New China, Teng Daiyuan was appointed as the first minister of railways, and this appointment was 16 years.
Luo Ronghuan, director of the General Cadres Department and director of the General Political Department, proposed to confer titles and medals in accordance with the regulations on medals and medals in the regulations on the service of officers, and according to the positions of the comrades of the central leadership and the troops.
In the preliminary plan put forward by the General Cadre Department, Chairman Mao was given the rank of Grand Marshal, Comrade Zhou Enlai, Comrade Liu Shaoqi, and Comrade Deng Xiaoping as Marshal, and Comrade Tan Zhenlin, Comrade Deng Zihui, and Comrade Zhang Dingcheng as generals.
All members of the NPC Standing Committee agreed with Luo Ronghuan's "Request for Instructions on the Evaluation and Awarding of Ranks of Local Responsible Cadres" put forward by Luo Ronghuan, and one after another held that Chairman Mao and others had made major contributions to the building and development of the Communist Party and should be awarded military ranks and medals. Chairman Liu Shaoqi knew in his heart that Chairman Mao was resolute not to confer titles and medals, so he proposed in the NPC Standing Committee that everyone should go to Chairman Mao for instructions and not make a decision on awarding titles for the time being.
One day not long after, Peng Dehuai, who presided over the daily work of the Central Military Commission, and Luo Ronghuan, director of the General Cadre Department, took the lead in systematically reporting to Chairman Mao and the central leading comrades on the preliminary plan for awarding titles and medals.
Sure enough, chairman Mao immediately said after listening to it that it is a very big and difficult job to engage in appraisal and appraisal, and that he does not want the rank of grand marshal, and it is uncomfortable and inconvenient to put on the uniform of a grand marshal and go to the masses to speak.
Then, headed by Chairman Mao, the central leading comrades all took the initiative to propose not to confer titles, which resolved many contradictions in the work of evaluating the titles of general cadres and was also an education for the cadres of the whole army. After the revision of the preliminary plan for the appraisal of titles, in the end, there was no grand marshal, and 10 marshals, 10 generals, 55 generals, 175 lieutenant generals and 802 major generals were evaluated.
Comrades Tan Zhenlin, Deng Zihui and Zhang Dingcheng, who were rated with military ranks in 1955 but were not awarded generals according to the preliminary plan, all left the army when they were awarded the ranks, and they served as deputy secretaries-general, vice premiers in charge of agriculture, and procurators general of the Supreme People's Procuratorate, respectively.
Teng Daiyuan, who was appointed minister of railways at that time, was the most likely to be awarded the rank of 21 people in the list, because the position of minister of railways was also a marshal in the Soviet army, and the military rank system at that time was to learn from the Soviet army's award system. Only later, it was uniformly clarified that all soldiers in the list of 21 people who did not award titles would no longer be awarded ranks.
According to the description of Teng Daiyuan's descendants, in 1955, Teng Daiyuan arranged his work itinerary very tightly, worked vigorously, and did things from beginning to end.
Teng Daiyuan combined the army's rules and regulations with fine traditions, implemented the instructions of the party Central Committee's leadership in the requirements of himself and cadres, and listed the construction of the Wuhan Yangtze River Bridge as one of the key points of his work.
When asked about the evaluation of military ranks, Teng Daiyuan only told his descendants that the former Soviet Union awarded the rank of marshal to the commander of the railway troops.
It seems that the passing of the award of military ranks did not bring any negative emotional impact to him as the minister of railways, and what remained unchanged in Teng Daiyuan's mind was to adhere to the party's policy and complete the instructions of the central leadership.
He knew that the decisions made by the leaders of the Party Central Committee were all justified, and that Chairman Mao's voluntary refusal to confer the rank of Grand Marshal set a benchmark and an example for all officers, and for Teng Daiyuan the lack of access to military ranks became irrelevant.
In the war period, he began to follow the pace of the party, and at each stage he established meritorious service, and even if Teng Dai was far from being awarded a military rank, his dedication to the party and the people in this life would still be firmly remembered.
About author:Shi Kui, history teacher at colleges and universities, history researcher. He has been cultivating the history of the Party, the Military and the History of War for a long time. History lovers are welcome to exchange criticisms.