Description
After the failure of the Great Revolution, the Chinese Communists
showed great revolutionary heroism in the face of powerful and cruel
counterrevolutionary rule. They refused to be intimidated, got up from
the ground, wiped the blood from their bodies, buried the corpses of their
comrades and fought on. The focus of the Party’s work gradually shifted
to the countryside, and a long, ten-year agrarian revolution. While beating
back counterrevolutionary forces with revolutionary forces, establishing
and expanding revolutionary base areas, and waging agrarian revolutionary
wars, the Chinese Communist Party also attached great importance to
revolutionary literature and art. Mao Zedong once summed up the different
functions of “gun” and “pen” based on the party’s work experience. The long
ten-year Agrarian Revolutionary War proved the “pen” to be irreplaceable
and crucial.
In the Agrarian Revolutionary War, the reactionary Kuomintang
authorities not only carried out the military “encirclement and suppression”
over the Red Army of Workers and Peasants and the revolutionary base
areas, but also enforced fascist cultural domination in the cultural sphere and
“encircled and suppressed” progressive culture. The Chinese Communist
Party waged an arduous agrarian revolutionary war and a fruitful struggle
against the reactionaries on the cultural front.
In the Kuomintang sphere, the first official newspaper of the Central
Committee of the Communist Party of China, the weekly Guide, was
established in Shanghai on September 13, 1922. Early party leaders Chen
Duxiu, Cai Hesen, Qu Qiubai, Peng Shuzhi, Li Dazhao, Zhang Guotao,
Zhao Shiyan, Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, Wang Ruofei, Li Lisan, as well as
Comintern representatives Marin, Wijinsky, etc. all wrote articles for the
magazine. From its inception, the Guide was much loved and welcomed
by the public for its distinctive revolutionary character, profound ideology
and sharp fighting spirit. In June 1925, the first intra-party daily newspaper
after the founding of the Chinese Communist Party – Bloodshed Daily –
was reborn in Shanghai. During the May 30th Movement, Bloodshed Daily
reported in detail on the mass struggles of all strata of society in business,
industry and science, fiercely exposed imperialist atrocities, enthusiastically
spread the news that the international proletariat was supporting the Chinese
people, and pushed the May 30th Movement to a climax with its sharp
commentaries.
During this period, the Kuomintang authorities commissioned some
imperial literati to play with words in order to resist the influence of
revolutionary culture. In 1929, the Kuomintang authorities promulgated the
so-called “The Literary and Artistic Policy of Three People’s Principles”
to counter the emerging proletarian revolutionary literary movement and
enforce their “Party-led culture”, and advocated that nationalism was “the
central consciousness in the development of new literature and art”; under
the Party’s guidance, cultural workers gradually prepared the ground for
revolutionary cultural ideas through hard work. Around 1929, a large
number of Marxist theoretical books, such as Das Kapital (Volume I), Anti
Dühring, Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy,
The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, The State and
Revolution, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, and Materialism
and Empirio-Criticism were published one after another in the Kuomintang
controlled area.
With the support and guidance of the Chinese Communist Party, a
revolutionary mass organization “China Freedom Movement Alliance”
was founded in Shanghai as early as February 1930 to fight for freedom
of speech, publication, assembly, association, etc., and to oppose the
reactionary rule of the Kuomintang. In response to the Kuomintang’s
brutal anti-communist and anti-democratic policies, Soong Ching-ling,
Cai Yuanpei and others initiated and organized the “China Civil Rights
Protection Alliance” on December 29, 1932, and issued a declaration
calling for the release of political prisoners, the abolition of illegal detention
and torture, and the protection and rescue of a large number of Chinese
Communist Party members and anti-Chiang patriots. The establishment
of “The League of Left-Wing Writers” in 1930 marked the strengthening
of the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party over the New Cultural
Movement, the unity of Chinese revolutionary writers under the leadership
of the Party, and a new stage in the development of Chinese revolutionary
literature. Under the extremely difficult conditions of the bloody storm, the
left-wing cultural fighters feared no hardships and dangers and founded 12
progressive publications, including the monthly journals Popular Literature
and Art, Sprouting Monthly, Pioneer, Outpost (Literature Guide), Literature
Monthly and Beidou. These publications actively spread revolutionary ideas
and exposed and criticized reactionary rule and various bourgeois ideologies
of literature and art.
In the central Soviet Area, most members of the Red Army and peasants
and towns people in the rural areas of the Soviet Area were largely illiterate,
while revolutionary literature and art in the Soviet Area made extensive
use of slogans, slogans, pictograms, cartoons, and other popular forms to
disseminate Marxist theory concisely and vividly. Slogans were the most
commonly used forms during this period, and art propaganda in the form of
slogan paintings, leaflet paintings, murals, pictorial works, newspapers and
magazines, and book illustrations increased rapidly. The Central Soviet Area
resorted to the local Hakka folk songs and the melodies of folk songs, folk
hymns, nursery rhymes and created a large number of red songs. Some call
on the poor people to rise up in revolution, overthrow feudal rule and create
a new world for the dictatorship of workers and peasants; others sing praises
to the Communist Party; still others express their passion for liberation and
freedom of marriage. The Red Ballad Movement swept across the Soviet
territory and attracted many ordinary people who participated in singing
and creating ballads. The use of ballads, dramas, dances and other dynamic
forms for the artistic propagation of Marxism is an important feature of
revolutionary literary and artistic activities in the Soviet Area.
Since the establishment of the Provisional Central Government of
the Chinese Soviet Republic in Ruijin, the Communist Party of China has
attached extreme importance to literature and art directly serving the masses
of workers and peasants. Under the direct influence of the Party, various
literary and art institutions and organizations were gradually established, so
that the literary and art movement in the Soviet Area became an organized,
revolutionary and mass-oriented movement. In early February 1934,
Qu Qiubai came from Shanghai to Ruijin, the red capital of the Central
Soviet Area, and assumed the post of People’s Commissar for Education
of the Central Government (Minister of Education) and President of the
Soviet University. He strongly advocated the popular literary and art
movement, did a lot of significant and valuable work, and made outstanding
contributions to the powerful development of the literary and art movement
in the Soviet Area. He was the first to set the direction of the “popular
literature and art” movement and formulate the relevant strategies and
systems. Under the leadership of Qu Qiubai and Xu Teli, the cultural and
educational undertakings of the Central Soviet Area achieved gratifying
success. At that time, there were the Red Army University, the Soviet
University, the Marxist-Communist University and various specialized
schools in the Soviet Area, as well as Lenin elementary schools, night
schools for workers and peasants, literacy groups and clubs throughout the
Soviet Area. In order to strengthen the Party’s leadership over the literary
and artistic movement and ensure that literature and art developed healthily
in the direction of the revolution of the proletariat, Qu Qiubai formulated
regulations and guidelines for the Soviet Theatre Troupe, the Workers’
and Peasants’ Theatre Society, the Gorky Drama School and the Club. In
early April 1934, the Soviet Educational Regulations were promulgated,
which included the Guidelines on Workers’ and Peasants’ Theatre Society,
the Guidelines on Gorky Drama School, the Organic Law for the Soviet
Theatre Troupe, and the Outline for the Club, detailing the policies and tasks
of each organization. As a result, the literary and artistic movement in the
Soviet Area gradually moved along the right path of mass, organization and
revolution.
During the Long March, the fifth issue of the Red Star newspaper also
published an article, Improving Propaganda Work in the Company, calling
for strengthening the company’s propaganda work toward the masses and
holding a slogan-writing contest “to present all our slogans and carry out
our slogans to the masses. Mobilize the struggle of the masses.” Red Army
propaganda members often went into the trenches at night, beating gongs
and drums, singing and shouting at the enemy. The troops sang songs
especially for the enemy, such as the Anti-Chiang and Anti-Japanese Song
and Make My Lad Turn Back, which were full of justice and affection and
moved many officers and soldiers in White Area (KMT-controlled area).
In the propaganda of the Red Army during the Long March, there were no
big words, no empty words or lies, and every word represented the interests
of the common people. The cultural propaganda for the Long March is full
of revolutionary optimism, revolutionary heroism and firm belief in the
pursuit of ideals. The facts prove that the success of the Red Army on the
Long March was inseparable from the vigorous development of cultural
propaganda work.
During the ten-year period of the agrarian revolution, the revolutionary
literary and artistic activities of the Chinese Communist Party revolved
around carrying out the agrarian revolution and armed struggle. The
experience gained during this period, such as the integration of theory and
practice, flexibility and diversity, the insistence on linking Marxism with
Chinese reality, and the importance of the educational function of literature
and art for the masses, still have extremely important practical value today.
