In fact, Li Dazhao was a fierce man, and in those years, he mainly did several major things, almost changing the situation in the entire north.
One
Because of the long-standing impression and the primary school text "Memories of Sixteen Years Ago", many people understand Li Dazhao as nothing more than the director of the library, writing articles and building the party, and then sacrificing nothing.
If this is the case, there is a historical problem that is not very clear:
From the founding of the party in 21 years to the sacrifice of 27 years, how can Li Dazhao, who has done nothing, have the status of "Southern Chen and Northern Li"?
Li Dazhao and Chen Duxiu in the TV series.
The first thing was to contact Wu Peifu.
Wu Peifu
The Soviet Russia, which was founded after the October Revolution, was very unpleasant in the world and was always facing subversion by foreign forces, so it wanted to ease relations with neighboring countries and let the Bolsheviks who had just established their political power breathe.
China, in particular, is a top priority.
China is a semi-colonial and semi-feudal power, and the interests of the European and American powers in China are complex, and if they are not careful, they will become the front line for Europe and the United States to subvert Soviet Russia.
Moreover, the rising Japan is also threatening the security of the Soviet Union in the Far East, and the Soviet Union must use China's power to balance Japan so that Japan cannot continue to expand northward, after all, the "Russo-Japanese War" has only passed for more than a decade.
So Soviet Russia threw three axes in China: helping the Chinese Communist Party, contacting Sun Yat-sen's Kuomintang, and befriending Wu Peifu in Beiyang.
Why make friends with Wu Peifu?
Because in the early 1920s, Wu Peifu had become a direct tycoon, with hundreds of thousands of troops under his command, and belonged to the powerful faction of the Beiyang government.
Wu Peifu reorganized the troops
Most importantly, during the "May Fourth Movement," Wu Peifu often published telegrams in newspapers opposing the signing of the Paris Peace Treaty and supporting the students' patriotic movement.
At that time, many people felt that Wu Peifu was a "great man who saved the time" and a hero who stood on the people's side in the Beiyang government.
It was precisely his position and attitude that the Soviet Russia valued Wu Peifu, and it was Li Dazhao who was connected between The Soviet Union and Wu Peifu.
Isn't Li Dazhao a scholar, how can he get in touch with warlords?
Coincidentally, when Li Dazhao was in the Beiyang Political Science and Law School, there was a classmate named Bai Jianwu, and the relationship between the two was very good, so he almost wore a pair of pants.
After graduating from Beiyang Political Science and Law, Li Dazhao went to Japan to study in Waseda.
Bai Jianwu went to work in the Beiyang government, successively serving as the secretary of Feng Guozhang and Li Chun, the governor of Jiangxi, and in 1922, he was hired by Wu Peifu as the chief administrative officer and became Wu Peifu's chief strategist, similar to the relationship between Cao Cao and Guo Jia.
This layer of relationship allows Li Dazhao and Wu Peifu to have a direct dialogue.
It just so happens that Wu Peifu also needs Li Dazhao.
Just after the end of the "First Zhifeng War" in 1922, Wu Peifu was preparing to convene a conference to restore legal unity, on the one hand, to seek to unify China by force, and on the other hand, to completely liquidate Liang Shiyi and the Department of Communications.
The Department of Communications is a large faction within the Beiyang government, controlling the railway, shipping, postal and bank of communications, Jincheng Bank and other financial institutions, the generation of the department of communications, Liang Shiyi, known as the god of wealth of the five roads, when he was the secretary general of Yuan Shikai, also known as the second president, you can imagine how powerful it is.
The purpose of Wu Peifu's conversation with Li Dazhao was to ask Li Dazhao to give advice to "reunification by force" and to use the workers' movement to clear the transportation system on the railway.
Both Soviet Russia and Wu Peifu had their own interests, but Li Dazhao was not Wang Ming, and it was impossible to be busy in vain and make wedding dresses for others.
"If Soviet Russia wants to contact Wu Peifu, then I will use personal resources to contact, Wu Peifu wants to unify by force and eliminate political enemies, I can also help, but in the final analysis, we must develop our own party organization."
This is Li Dazhao's plan.
On June 7, 1922, Wu Peifu and Li Dazhao talked in Baoding, and no one knew the specific content, but judging from the results of the talks, there were mainly three issues.
The first is whether relations with the Soviet Union can be eased.
The second is that Li Dazhao helped Wu Peifu to give advice and helped him in political struggle.
When he returned to Beijing from Baoding, he brought 12 telegrams of the conspiracy of Beiyang officials and handed them to Hu Shi's "Effort Weekly" for publication, using his status as a celebrity in the academic circles to help Wu Peifu create public opinion.
At that time, Li Dazhao had no intelligence channels, and the party organization was also very weak, and these 12 telegrams could only be handed over to him by Wu Peifu.
The third is that in exchange, Wu Peifu supported the workers' movement.
Don't you Wu Peifu flaunt your concern for labor, now that you are in power, you should keep your promises, otherwise what is the difference between you and other warlords?
Therefore, after the Baoding talks, Wu Peifu sent a telegram to express political ideas such as "protecting laborers", and asked Li Dazhao to send six secret investigators to work on six railways, including Beijing-Hankou and Jinpu.
These six secret investigators are He Mengxiong and other CCP members. They ostensibly helped Wu Peifu investigate transportation officials, but in fact they were doing the workers' movement. It didn't take long for the party members on the railway to set up 16 workers' clubs, with a fairly strong base of workers.
Of course, Wu Peifu and Soviet Russia did not walk together.
Li Dazhao also understood that it was not the main purpose to connect Soviet Russia and Wu Peifu, but to develop his own organizational strength was the right way, and he once said to people:
"After all, Wu Peifu is Wu Peifu, we don't have any illusions about him, he can send out such a power, even if we don't lose money."
At the end of the day, it's still about taking advantage of the opportunity to do things for yourself.
In the following years, the vigorous strike movement traced back to the source, in fact, Li Dazhao talked about it in Baoding.
Strike movement
Two
After using Wu Peifu as a workers' movement, Li Dazhao went to contact Feng Yuxiang again to prepare to develop strength in the army.
In September 1924, when the "Second Zhifeng War" broke out, Wu Peifu appointed Feng Yuxiang as the commander-in-chief of the Third Army, with the intention of making him fight hard, but Zhang Zuolin sent a bribe of 500,000 silver dollars, and Feng Yuxiang immediately defected.
He privately reconciled with Zhang Zuolin, then led his troops back to Beijing to launch a coup d'état, imprisoned President Cao Kun, and drove Puyi out of the Forbidden City.
But after the matter was done, Feng Yuxiang found:
Their own power is insufficient, and they simply cannot be independent, so how should this be the aftermath?
The only way was to ask Duan Qirui to come out and be a peacemaker, to fight with Zhang Zuolin against his direct family, and to invite Sun Yat-sen to go north to discuss state affairs.
Pull several forces in, in order to barely have a downhill step.
Regarding Sun Yat-sen's move north, the CCP began to disagree.
Many people feel that Feng Yuxiang, like Duan Qirui, is a feudal warlord who must be overthrown, and if he works with them, is he not in the same stream?
Li Dazhao disagreed, believing that Feng Yuxiang could be fought for, at least through a series of work, to make Feng Yuxiang an independent force, and then develop the party organization in Feng Yuxiang's army.
So from December 1924, Li Dazhao contacted Feng Yuxiang through connections and asked him if he could help, General Feng said.
Feng Yuxiang was also not polite, knowing that the relationship between the Chinese Communists and the Soviet Union was good, he said that he needed Soviet assistance.
Li Dazhao saw the opportunity.
In the name of the Chinese Communists, he asked the Soviet Union to assist Feng Yuxiang's Nationalist Army and send people to guide the work. Speaking in the name of the party shows the importance attached to Feng Yuxiang.
Just when the Soviet Union failed to make friends with Wu Peifu, it listened to Li Dazhao's opinion and vigorously assisted Feng Yuxiang.
In the following year, Feng Yuxiang's Nationalist Army received a large number of weapons and equipment, including 55,000 guns, 69 million rounds of ammunition, 70 cannons of various kinds, 230 machine guns, and the Soviet Union also sent military advisers to help Feng Yuxiang run a military academy to train officers and create an arsenal to produce weapons.
A poorly equipped beggar army, so the shotgun for the cannon can walk sideways in China.
Li Dazhao did not do it in vain.
After he established relations with Feng Yuxiang, he sent Wang Ruofei, Xuanxia Father, Liu Tianzhang and other party members into the Nationalist Army, organized clubs to develop Party members, and influenced Feng Yuxiang's Nationalist Army to a considerable extent by propagating revolutionary theory.
Even Feng Yuxiang admitted that the improvement of the combat effectiveness of the Nationalist Army was actually the understanding of the officers and men in order to benefit the poor and the successful revolution, and that imperialism must be overthrown. ”
The party members in the Nationalist Army, after several years of operation, have directly mastered the troops of thousands of people.
Those secret organizations experienced the "Qing Party" and were still preserved in Yang Hucheng's troops.
They were the seeds of the Red Army in the northwest and the Xi'an Incident.
Of course, these were all afterwords, and the biggest purpose of joining forces with Feng Yuxiang at that time was to kill Zhang Zuolin.
Because among the Beiyang warlords, the Anhui and direct clans have fallen, and the largest warlord force is Zhang Zuolin, who does not do what he does.
As the Northern District Committee of the Communist Party of China said in its "Open Letter to the Members of the Chinese Kuomintang": "We must use all our strength to form a great anti-Feng armed alliance, so that the Feng warlords will finally be eliminated." ”
Therefore, when he helped Feng Yuxiang to ask for Soviet assistance, Li Dazhao sent Ren Guozhen and other party members to the northeast to contact the party organizations in Harbin to form the northeast National Autonomous Army headquarters and develop armed forces in Heilongjiang and Jilin.
On the other hand, Li Dazhao promoted the defection of guo Songling, a general of the Feng army, through underground organizational channels.
How it was planned is now unclear, but in 1945 Wang Ruofei publicly said in Yan'an that Guo Songling had defected and had a relationship with Li Dazhao in advance.
Wang Ruofei could not say it blindly, it was basically a nail in the coffin.
Guo Songling and Ren Guozhen formed two fronts, and the great cause they planned was to overthrow Zhang Zuolin.
The specific plan was that when Guo Songling invaded Fengtian, the National Autonomous Army rioted in Heilongjiang and Jilin, and the north-south attack echoed each other and captured the northeast in one fell swoop.
Feng Yuxiang pinned down the troops in Guannei and went out to support when he had spare strength, while Li Dazhao personally launched a revolution in the capital while taking military action, leading the masses of the people to overthrow the Beiyang government.
After the capture of the northeast, Feng Yuxiang and Guo Songling were united with the National Autonomous Army (Communist Army) and then received Soviet aid.
By that time, the whole situation north of the Yellow River was basically fixed.
The plan was ambitious and elaborate, and there was considerable feasibility.
You must know that at that time it was December 1925, the Kuomintang launched the Northern Expedition in Guangdong, there was no shadow, this matter really had to be done, even if there was something about the Nanjing State Government and Chairman Chiang Kai-shek, and the CCP at least had bases in the two northeastern provinces.
pity.
Japan had great interests in the northeast, and seeing that Guo Songling's troops were in a state of flux, and worried that the northeast would break away from Japanese control, he signed the "Secret Treaty of Japan" with Zhang Zuolin, and when Guo Songling arrived at Fengtian City, he sent the Kwantung Army to attack Guo Songling from the flank.
The attack did not go well, and Guo Songling's troops were afraid of the consequences of defeat, so the chief of staff Zou Zuohua forced Guo Songling to surrender.
In desperation, Guo Songling led the guards to break through, and was finally executed by Yang Yuting.
Half a year later, the Kuomintang and the Communists swore an oath to the Northern Expedition in Guangdong, but Zhang Zuolin still did not escape the fate of death.
However, at that time, Li Dazhao had already sacrificed.
Mr. Li Dazhao Library
Three
In 1927, Zhang Zuolin entered Beijing as the commander-in-chief of the An Guo Army, and on April 6, he sent troops to search the Soviet embassy and arrested and imprisoned Li Dazhao.
At this time, Li Dazhao's reputation was very large, and all walks of life were rescuing, but Zhang Zuolin had already asked the opinions of Western countries, and the unified reply was that it could be killed.
Zhang Zuolin was not at ease, and sent a telegram to the Beiyang generals and Chiang Kai-shek, asking them what to do.
Zhang Xueliang and Zhang Zongchang meant immediately correcting the law, and Chiang Kai-shek replied with eight words - speedy execution, so as to avoid future troubles.
Coupled with the fact that Li Dazhao had almost overthrown Zhang Zuolin before, he made up his mind to hang Li Dazhao and 20 other revolutionaries on April 28.
There is a saying that because he did not pay bribes to the nephews, Li Dazhao was hanged three times and it took a full 40 minutes to die.
From the founding of the party in 21 years to his sacrifice in 27 years, Li Dazhao has done many great things, some of which have succeeded, some of which have failed, and some of which have not had immediate results, but have played a role many years later.
In the era when the party organization was weak and small, he single-handedly supported half of the northern country.
I don't think I am qualified to evaluate Li Dazhao, or the most accurate official assessment —the pioneer of the Chinese communist movement, the great Marxist.
Both of these evaluations are very weighty, especially the "great Marxists", and only 9 people in the party have received this evaluation.
The pioneers of the Chinese communist movement are equivalent to fire thieves. When he was young, he took the spark from Soviet Russia, and by the time he sacrificed it, it was already a raging fire that could no longer be extinguished.
One of those sparks was Mao Zedong.
In August 1918, Mao Zedong went to Beijing for the first time, and was introduced by Yang Changji to work in the library of Peking University, and now everyone knows that his monthly salary is 8 oceans.
However, according to the archives of Peking University, Mao Zedong only received a salary in December 2018, January and February 2019, indicating that he had no salary in the previous months.
Mao Zedong's life in Beijing was very hard, and he could get through with an 8 yuan a monthly salary, or after working next to Li Dazhao, Li Dazhao helped him win it.
This kindness was remembered by Mao Zedong for a long time.
He also went to Tiananmen Square and personally heard Li Dazhao give a speech on "The Victory of the Common People", and that kind of passionate speech demeanor also left a deep impression on Mao Zedong's heart.
In December 1919, when Mao Zedong went to Beijing for the second time, Li Dazhao took him to read the Communist Manifesto and Class Struggle, and introduced Mao Zedong to the "Young China Society" and led him step by step to the revolutionary road.
After Mao Zedong returned to Hunan, he founded the Cultural Book Club, but due to the shortage of funds, it was Li Dazhao of Beijing who came to the aid of Li Dazhao in Beijing, using the method of "no deposit" to send more than 50 kinds of books published by Peking University to help the Cultural Book Club tide over the difficulties.
That's why Mao Zedong said, "With the help of Li Dazhao, I became a Marxist." ”
If Yang Changji was Mao Zedong's academic mentor, then Li Dazhao was Mao Zedong's revolutionary mentor.
Three months after Li Dazhao's death in Beijing, Mao Zedong made the assertion that "power comes out of the barrel of a gun" in Wuhan, and then returned to Hunan to lead the autumn harvest uprising and armed uprising.
Twenty-two years later, the broken armed force had become a million-strong division, and Mao Zedong and the central authorities moved to Beijing, and as soon as he entered the city, he began to sigh:
"Thirty years. Thirty years ago, I ran to seek the truth of saving the country and the people, it was not bad, I suffered a lot, and I met a very good person in Beiping, that is, Comrade Li Dazhao. ”
"Alas, he has given his precious life for the revolution. He was a really good teacher for me, and without his guidance and teaching, I would not know where I am today. ”
At that time, Mao Zedong must have remembered the years of working in the library of Peking University, and the earnest teachings of Li Dazhao when he guided him to read.
He looked at Beijing, which was in ruins, and probably said silently:
"Sir, the revolution has succeeded, rest in peace."