On September 27, 1921, less than two months after the Chinese Communist Party was proclaimed, in Yaqian Village, Xiaoshan, Zhejiang Province, China's first new type of peasant organization, the Farmers' Association, was officially established.
Since then, the peasant movement has begun to unfold like a spark in the vastst rural areas of China.
Yaqian Village is a village and town in Xiaoshan County, Zhejiang Province, located on the south bank of the Qiantang River, which is a densely populated and well-connected place. However, the peasants here are oppressed by landlords and warlords and live in great poverty.
In April 1921, Shen Dingyi, who was originally from Yaqian Village, returned to his hometown, witnessed the poor life of the peasants, and began to carry out ideological education activities among the peasants. Shen Dingyi, from a family of bureaucratic landlords, is known as the Third Young Master of the Shen Family. He pursued progress and joined the League while studying in Japan.
In 1920, Shen Dingyi, together with Chen Duxiu and Li Da, founded the Shanghai Communist Group in Shanghai, and was one of the earliest members of the Communist Party of China.
In Yaqian Village, Shen Dingyi took off his brother's Chinese clothes, dressed and dressed close to the peasants, and spoke a dialect of his hometown dialect, making the peasants sound very kind, with a strong sense of identity and substitution, and achieved good results, and the audience increased from one hundred and ten people at the beginning to thousands later. He helped the peasants solve practical difficulties, and some peasants lived in difficulties, so he took money from home to help them tide over the difficulties, which deeply touched the peasants.
Under the unremitting efforts of Shen Dingyi, the Yaqian Village Farmers Association was established. At the meeting, the "Declaration of the Yaqian Farmers' Association" and the "Constitution of the Yaqian Farmers' Association" were preached, and the "Declaration" issued the roar of the peasants: "Our consciousness is our destiny." Our organized unity is the way for us to leave bad luck and good luck. What determines our destiny is the fate that determines the fate of all Chinese. ”
After that, the farmers of Yaqian Village, under the leadership of the Agricultural Cooperative, launched a rent reduction campaign and put forward a demand for a 40% discount on rent reduction. The peasants united in their struggle against the landlords and finally won the victory. In that year, the peasants paid 20 percent less rent than in previous years, which greatly encouraged the fighting spirit of the peasants.
In the following year of the peasant movement, Peng Pan, the pioneer of the Chinese peasant movement, also set off a climax of the peasant movement in Haifeng, Guangdong. This was the largest and most far-reaching peasant movement in the early days of the CCP.
Peng Pan was born in 1896 in Haifeng, Guangdong Province, to a wealthy family of industrial and commercial landlords. In 1917, he went to Japan to study, and under the influence of the October Revolution in Russia, he began to study socialist theory and Marxism. In 1921, he returned to China, joined the Chinese Socialist Youth League, and after his desire to save the country through education was frustrated, he resolved to go to the countryside to do practical sports.
In 1922, Peng Pan returned to his hometown, disregarded his family's opposition and burned his own land deeds in public, and went deep into the countryside to propagate Marxism. In the propaganda, Peng Pan "specifically sought to publicize in the cross road where the peasants came and went the most." Changing the method of speech according to the peasants' low level of education, he "translated many written terms into colloquialisms", translated the basic principles of Marxism into popular language, and educated the peasants in light of the fact of how his family exploited the peasants.
In order to make it easy for the farmers to understand, he used the farmers' interest in the phonograph to play music, so he bought a phonograph and used magic to attract the farmers. At first, there were not many listeners, but after half a month, the audience increased and the response became better and better. Over time, as soon as Peng Pan appeared, the surrounding farmers, especially the young farmers, flocked to it, and the influence became more and more large.
In July of the same year, under the organization of Peng Pan, the Chishan Farmers' Association was established. Under the leadership of the peasant associations, the peasants practiced "alliance and non-farming," so that the landlords did not dare to arbitrarily increase rents and change tenants. The peasants fought against the local tyrants and bullies, so that the local tyrants and bullies did not dare to extort the peasants arbitrarily. In addition, farmers' associations mediate disputes between farmers. Seeing that the peasant associations had won victories in their work, the peasants had strengthened their trust in the peasant associations and asked to join them, which further expanded the influence of the peasants' associations among the peasants.
On New Year's Day 1923, the Haifeng General Farmers' Association was established, absorbing 12,000 members and more than 60,000 people. Peng Pan was elected president of the General Farmers' Association. The Farmers' Association discussed and formulated the "Provisional Brief of the Haifeng General Farmers' Association" and other charters, which stipulated the program, purpose and organizational form of the farmers' association, as well as the rights and obligations of its members.
The statute clearly points out that the peasant associations should seek the transformation of peasants' livelihoods, the development of agriculture, the autonomy of rural areas, and the popularization of peasant education.
The charter stipulates that the tasks of the peasant associations include preventing the "landlords from hanging" so as not to make the peasants' lives uneasy, asking the landlords to reduce the rent when they are sorry or their living standards are too high, and the peasant associations will solve disputes among the members, and handle peasant schools, midnight schools, books and newspapers, speech groups, and so on.
According to the reality of the struggle, the Haifeng General Peasants' Association also put forward two different slogans, internal and external. The slogans were consistent with the peasant association's charter, the tone was relatively mild, the spearhead of the struggle was not particularly obvious, and the reactionary warlords could not find any reason to suppress or ban it. The internal slogans were tough, and the spearhead of the struggle was directed at the feudal landlord class and the warlord government. Therefore, Haifeng's peasant movement "has been able to develop relatively freely, and the peasant association has also had considerable strength up to this point."
In March of the same year, the local gentry of Haifeng organized a special maintenance meeting to deal with the peasant association, and arrested and imprisoned the rebellious peasants. Peng Pan immediately organized a massive demonstration of more than 6,000 farmers, forcing the local government to release the detained farmers. The victory of the struggle made "the peasants realize that the peasant associations are organs representing the interests of the peasants themselves", and "so those who asked to join the association came in droves, and there was a real rush of responses." By May 1923, many places in Haifeng, Lufeng and Huiyang counties had established peasant associations, with more than 200,000 members.
In June 1923, the three major congresses of the Communist Party of China were convened, and at the suggestion of Mao Zedong and other comrades, the meeting formulated and adopted the first "Resolution on the Peasant Question" in the history of the Communist Party of China. Since then, the far-reaching peasant movement that has swept the whole country has gradually set off.
In March 1926, Mao Zedong was appointed director of the Sixth Peasant Movement Training Institute.
⬆️ Letter from the Kuomintang Central Committee appointing Mao Zedong as director of the Institute of Peasant Education (issued by Yang Zai'an and Lin Zuhan are both members of the Communist Party of China)
The image comes from the Chinese Academy of History's collection of rare documents of the Chinese Communist Party overseas
Founded in July 1924, the Agricultural Movement Institute has been held for five sessions before that, and the original organizer was Peng Pan, with the purpose of "cultivating the talents of the peasant movement and making them responsible for the actual peasant movement work in various localities." The sixth session had more than 300 trainees from 20 provinces across the country. Mao Zedong personally taught courses such as "The Chinese Peasant Problem" and "Rural Education", which systematically clarified the peasant question as the central issue of China's national revolution. The holding of the peasant movement training institute has greatly promoted the rapid development of the peasant movement.
Editors and reviewers:
Wu Shihong, deputy director of the Fourth Research Department of the Central Academy of Party History and Literature
Zhang Xiujuan Deputy Director of the Information Archive of the Central Academy of Party History and Documentation Research Librarian
Liang Ying, deputy secretary of the party committee of the Central Party History and Documentation Research Institute
Author: Liang Ying Deputy Secretary of the Party Committee of the Central Institute of Party History and Literature
Editor: Ma Aijie
Editor-in-Chief: Chen Xi, Jiang Li, Cui Ming