Peng Pan: Pioneer of the Chinese peasant revolutionary movement

Peng Pan statue. Xinhua News Agency

Born in October 1896 in Haifeng County, Guangdong Province, Peng Pan is a proletarian revolutionary of the older generation of our Party, a pioneer of the Chinese peasant revolutionary movement, and the famous founder of the Hailufeng Soviet power.

Peng Pan went to Japan to study in his early years. In 1918, he entered the Faculty of Political Economy at Waseda University in Japan. While in Japan, he actively participated in the patriotic movement of Chinese students studying abroad.

After returning to China in May 1921, Peng Pan joined the Chinese Socialist Youth League and founded the Socialist Research Society and the Workers' Sympathy Association in his hometown of Haifeng to spread Marxism. In the summer of 1922, he went deep into the countryside alone to understand the sufferings of the peasants and mobilize the peasants to organize and carry out the peasant movement. Peng Pan wrote the book "Haifeng Peasant Movement" and was known as the "King of the Peasant Movement". Comrade Mao Zedong pointed out in the "Report on the Inspection of the Peasant Movement in Hunan" that "county politics must be clarified by the peasants, and Haifeng in Guangdong has already proved it." ”

In April 1924, Peng Pan became a member of the Communist Party of China, and at the same time went to Guangzhou to lead the peasant movement and founded the peasant movement training institute. In the later Great Revolution, he also served as the commander-in-chief of the Guangdong Peasant Self-Defense Army. In March 1927, he went to Wuhan and, together with Mao Zedong and others, initiated the organization of the Provisional Executive Committee of the All-China Farmers' Association, and served as an executive member and secretary general.

After the defeat of the Great Revolution, Peng Pan went to Nanchang and participated in leading the Nanchang Uprising. The 1987th Party Congress elected the Provisional Politburo, who was elected a member of the Politburo and later a member of the Southern Bureau of the CPC Central Committee.

In October 1927, Peng Pan returned to Guangdong. In November, an armed uprising broke out again in Hailufeng and established the Hailufeng Soviet regime. In the spring of 1928, Peng Pan led the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army to expand the revolutionary base area centered on Hailufeng to the southern part of the East River.

In November 1928, Peng Pan was elected a member of the Politburo of the CPC Central Committee and was ordered to go to Shanghai to serve as secretary of the CPC Central Committee, member of the Central Military Commission of the CPC Central Committee, and secretary of the Military Commission of the Jiangsu Provincial CPC Committee.

On August 24, 1929, Peng Pan was arrested for betrayal by traitors and imprisoned in Longhua Prison in Shanghai. In prison, Peng Pan showed a revolutionary integrity that regarded death as a homecoming, and he firmly stated: "In the near future, it will certainly be possible to overthrow reactionary rule and establish Soviet power throughout the country." ”

On August 30, 1929, Peng Pan was killed by reactionaries at the age of 33.

Nowadays, the center of the activities of the Hailufeng Soviet power in that year has become the "Memorial Hall of the Former Site of the Red Square of the Haifeng Red Palace", a national key cultural relics protection unit, a national patriotic education demonstration base, etc., attracting thousands of people to visit, pay homage and hold various educational activities every year.

Source: People's Daily