p The experience of the USSR and other socialist countries shows that in the period of socialist and communist construction the role of the intelligentsia in society acquires special importance. This is due not only to the scientific and technological revolution which is taking place in all the advanced countries, but also to the fact that in contrast to antagonistic class formations socialism does not arise or develop spontaneously but on the basis of a conscious application of the objective laws of social development which men have comprehended. In these conditions, the activity of those who engage in brainwork turns out to be the most important factor without which it is impossible for society to function normally.

p One of the main specific features in the emergence of a socialist intelligentsia is that it is shaped mainly after the triumph of the socialist revolution. Whereas the bourgeoisie was in a position to build up a numerous intelligentsia long before it had taken over, and as new productive forces emerged, the proletariat has very few intellectuals on its side before the triumph of the socialist revolution, and these are in the first place professional revolutionaries.

p Following the overthrow of the bourgeoisie and the establishment of proletarian dictatorship it is faced with gigantic tasks in creating the new, socialist society. Quite naturally, the small group of proletarian intellectuals who sided with the people before or just after the revolution, cannot cope with these tasks in full. That is why one of the most important tasks of the cultural revolution is to build up a new, socialist intelligentsia. However, this cannot be done in a short time. That is why there arises the task of making use of bourgeois specialists. In the early Soviet years, Lenin taught the Party how to go on fighting the counter-revolutionary elements, while creating an atmosphere of comradely co-operation for honest specialists who were loyal to the Soviet state, how to carry on painstaking and systematic efforts to involve them in the work of the Soviet power, being prepared to pay them high salaries and make bolder use of their knowledge and experience, learn from them how to manage the economy, while educating them 270 ideologically. Lenin wrote: “We cannot build it [Soviet power—Ed.] if we do not utilise such a heritage of capitalist culture as the intellectuals."  [270•1 

p But it was also impossible to build the new society without fostering intellectuals who came from the ranks of the people. This was a much more intricate and difficult task than the winning over of bourgeois specialists for the revolution. It required above all the raising of the people’s general cultural standard so as to enable socialist intellectuals ultimately to rise from its ranks.

p It goes without saying that the fulfilment of these tasks proves to be the more difficult the more backward, economically and culturally, is a country taking the way of socialist revolution.

p In the early years of the people’s power in China a great deal was done to overcome the people’s age-old backwardness: illiteracy was reduced, the working people’s cultural standards raised and national intellectuals trained. As the revolution in China entered its seventh year, there were already 3,840,000 specialists working in the national economy, with about 100,000 of them trained to the highest standards.  [270•2  In a report at a conference on the question of the intelligentsia, called by the CPC Central Committee on January 14, 1956, Chou En-lai said that the intelligentsia was a “great force in socialist construction" in five principal spheres: scientific research, education, engineering, public health, culture and art. Invaluable assistance was given to the Chinese People’s Republic by other socialist countries, the Soviet Union above all. Thousands of Soviet specialists helped the Chinese people to implement the plans of national economic development, while many thousands of Chinese young men and women studied at Soviet institutions of higher learning and were trained to become high-skilled specialists.

p However, later, in violation of the decisions adopted by the 8th Congress of the CPC, and in contravention of the Party’s general line, Mao and his followers acted in such a manner that Soviet specialists were recalled from China 271 and Chinese students left the USSR. At the same time, a campaign was mounted in China against “Soviet revisionism" and its “agents” in the midst of the Chinese intelligentsia. In the course of this campaign, a succession of draconian measures was aimed against workers in Chinese culture ( numerically still very small), as a prelude to the “great cultural revolution" in China.

p In 1945, Mao declared that intellectuals should be “esteemed as valuable assets of the nation and society".  [271•1  In 1948, he said: “It is entirely right that we should value intellectuals, for without revolutionary intellectuals the revolution cannot succeed."  [271•2  From 1964 to 1966, that is, just before the decisions were taken by the llth Plenary Meeting of the CPC Central Committee marking the start of the “great proletarian cultural revolution”, the present CPC leadership scrapped the old line and mounted a succession of attacks against the intelligentsia, primarily against workers in the art and the humanities, that is, against the overwhelming majority of intellectuals. As a rule, the intellectuals in the scientific and technological fields, constituting a small minority of the workers by brain, were spared any attack, and the Hungweipings were even officially forbidden to touch them in any way. This must have been motivated chiefly by the Maoists’ militaristic policy and was, for a very good reason, connected in the relevant instructions for the “great cultural revolution" with China’s nuclear blasts.

p It is true that before the full-scale offensive against the intelligentsia was started in late 1964, there had been attacks from 1951 to 1964, like the criticism of the film entitled The Life of Wu Hsun, the campaign over the analysis of the classical novel, Dream in the Red Chamber, the fight against Hu Feng and his “counter-revolutionary clique”, the fight in 1957 against the “bourgeois Rightists”, and so on. But in scale and effect, the drive from 1964 to 1966 surpassed all these attacks and “critical campaigns" taken together.

p In the course of this unprecedented drive against the intellectuals in China, there was another “reappraisal of values": all the traditions of revolutionary Chinese culture 272 of the 1920s and 1930s were overthrown, the very traditions which had been considered the “pride of China’s national literature and art”.

p Among the victims of the fierce “discussion” that followed was the film In February, in Early Spring, a screen adaptation by the well-known producer Hsieh Teh-li of a novel by Jou Shih (Chao Ping-fu), a Communist writer shot in 1931; and the works of Yin Fu, Hu Yeh-pin, Li Wei-hsien and Feng Keng, who had been shot together with Jou Shih by the Kuomintang, and who, according to Lu Hsun, “had written with their own blood the first page of Chinese proletarian literature”. The Maoist critics also attacked the writings of Mao Tun (in connection with the screening of his story, “Lin”s Shop”) and the writings of all the authors who had been grouped round Lu Hsun in the 1930s. The final blast against “the so-called literature and art of the 1930s" came from an editorial article in Chiefangchiun pao on April 18, 1966, which was subsequently reprinted by all the newspapers and Hungchih. It called for an end “to the blind faith in the so-called literature and art of the 1930s”, which were characterised as an “anti-Party, anti-socialist black line opposing the thought of Mao Tse-tung".  [272•1 

p In 1965 and 1966, the Chinese press was virtually swamped with a flood of “denunciatory” articles against leading Chinese intellectuals, chiefly historians, philosophers, economists, workers of cultural and ideological establishments, and against all those who used their own heads and had “directly or indirectly expressed doubt about the correctness of Mao’s line. It is highly indicative that the hardest blows were dealt above all at the members of the older generation, active Party members like the playwright Tien Han, Deputy Chairman of the All-China Association of Literary and Art Circles, the script writer Hsia Yen, Deputy Minister of Culture Lin Mo-han, Prorector of the Higher Party School under the CPC Central Committee Yang Hsiang-chen, and others. Mao Tun, the world-famed writer, was removed from the post of Minister of Culture, which he had held since 1949.

p But there was “logic” in this madness, for those who had gone through the great school of revolutionary activity were 273 most consistent in adhering to Marxism-Leninism and internationalism. All of them were variously accused of being politically unreliable and subjected to different repressions, like humiliating “criticism”, dismissal from their posts, and deportation to remote rural areas.

p Jenmin jihpao admitted that in 18 months of 1965 and 1966, 160,000 intellectuals were sent to the countryside for “physical re-education”. Subsequently, at the height of the “cultural revolution”, at least 400,000 more “hostile elements" and members of their families went the same way. Of course, not all of them were intellectuals, but they were engaged in creative work. As a result, the overwhelming majority of the best members of China’s intelligentsia were for all practical purposes subjected to repression.

p The 1964-1966 campaign against the intelligentsia, a sort of prelude for the “great proletarian cultural revolution”, like the “cultural revolution" itself, announced at the llth Plenary Meeting of the CPC Central Committee, cannot be understood unless they are viewed in the context of the Maoist domestic economic policy and foreign policy.

p In their efforts to cover up the collapse of the “Great Leap Forward" policy, the failure of the people’s communes and the economic difficulties which sprang from the adventurist domestic policy, together with foreign-policy fiascos, the present CPC leaders used the “cultural revolution" as a cover for their massacre of Party cadres and intellectuals who took a critical view of Mao’s line. The “struggle against modern revisionism" in Chinese literature in the course of the “proletarian cultural revolution" was in fact a political fight against the leading workers in Chinese culture, the Party’s internationalist cadres, the most revolutionary sections of China’s youth, and all the forward-looking Chinese who urged loyalty to the ideas of Marxism-Leninism.

p The decisions of the llth Plenary Meeting of the CPC Central Committee and the practice of the “cultural revolution" showed the world that Mao and his entourage had abandoned Marxism-Leninism and the socialist camp. There was good reason why the anti-Soviet campaign flared up afresh following that plenary meeting. The Chinese leaders did their utmost to worsen relations between the Soviet Union and China, a sinister scheme which was to be implemented behind the smokescreen of the “cultural revolution”.

p In 1964, the journal of the CPSU Central Committee, Kommunist, gave an assessment of the nihilistic policy of the CPC leadership on cultural values. An editorial article in the journal said: “It is now very hard even to imagine the vast damage the Chinese people will suffer in the sphere of culture from this policy of national isolation, the urge to separate oneself from the cultural life of the world, especially of the socialist countries."  [274•1 

p Three years later, with the blessings of the “great helmsman”, the Hungweipings were let loose on their rampage, destroying the “demons and monsters of the old ruling classes”, the Greek, Roman and Chinese treasures at the Peking Museum and the Central Academy of Arts, the Pushkin monument in Shanghai, and the bookshops and art shops with their “feudal” and “revisionist” works by the masters of world culture. Today, most journals and newspapers in China are not being published, virtually no scientific and art books are being printed, because all the paper goes into the publication of Mao’s Little Red Book and eulogies of the great leader. Feature films have not been shown in the country for over five years. Cinema-goers may see only newsreels about government receptions, parades, festivities and sports events.

p No sign of life comes from the modern drama, or the dialogue drama, as it is known in China. For several years now, the “revolutionised” Peking Musical Theatre has been running the same plays which had been prepared “with the personal participation of Chiang Chang, and which glorify her husband’s “radiant thought”. The ballet is regarded as a “counter-revolutionary” art, but two ballet pieces—“The Red Women’s Company" and the “Grey-Haired Girl"—are still on: they have been “revolutionised” through the introduction of a chorus which keeps singing songs about Mao Tse-tung.

p At Peking University, the students keep learning Mao’s statements by rote. Following the “re-organisation” of the education system, all the departments at the Peking Technical Institute of Forestry have been abolished and all the teachers and students organised in “companies”. In a country 275 where hundreds of millions of people are still unable to read or write all the schools have been closed down. Academic centres, research institutions and laboratories have been declared a “battlefield”. There, “bourgeois reactionary authorities”, scientists who do not accept the “thought of Mao Tse-tung”, are being “winkled out of the dark corners”. Professor Lu Ping, Rector of Peking University, who dared to teach the students “some kind of chemical formulas" instead of the “thought of Mao Tse-tung" was killed, while Professor Hua Loo-keng, Director of the Institute of Mathematics of the Academy of Sciences, was subjected to repressions, and so on.

p Everything is being done to fence off the Chinese people not only from world civilisation and from the advanced experience of the socialist community, but also from China’s own cultural heritage. Thus, Chen Po-ta, the former head of the group for “cultural revolution" affairs under the CPC Central Committee, declared that “it is better for old books to be read by only a small number of men, and only for the purpose of subjecting such literature to criticism and supplying the fertiliser for producing correct ideas in the heads of the new generation of Chinese”. This “sage” statement links up with Mao’s own sentiment that “the more books you read, the stupider you become. There is no point at all in much learning.”

p Of the 13,000 book titles issued over the last 50 years by the Chunghua Publishers only 500 titles have been permitted to remain. The rest are being barbarously destroyed, including classical philosophic, literary and historical works. In the recent period, some 500,000 old editions of books have been destroyed only by the central and the southern branches of the Hsinhua shutien Publishers. Family libraries that had been handed down from generation to generation have been destroyed in the flames.

p In recent years, no work of fiction has been published in the country and libraries and museums have been closed. At the same time, the plan for the publication of Mao’s Selected Works, his Little Red Book, and collections of his poems, was fulfilled “ahead of schedule”, reprinting 3,000 million copies. “This is a brilliant achievement,” said Hsinhua News Agency. “This is an unprecedented triumph for the cultural revolution.” There was a time when on New 276 Year’s Day Hsinhua reported the overfulfilment of national economic plans and successes in education and public health, and this was a source of joy for all the friends of the Chinese people. Ever since Mao’s “special line" was adopted and the “cultural revolution" started in China, Hsinhua makes no mention at all of five-year plans and does not publish any concrete data on their fulfilment.

p The “cultural revolution" showed that Mao’s followers regard the intelligentsia and all workers by brain in general as a force hostile to the Chinese people, a force which could easily take the way of “revisionism” and “bourgeois degeneration”. It turns out that there is only one way to prevent this, and that is to make these men do manual labour, because it is the embodiment of everything that is truly popular and revolutionary. Manual labour is the one and only cure-all for the “degeneration” of the Chinese intelligentsia. The “theoretical” arguments for this were set out by Mao as follows: “In order to determine what this or that member of the intelligentsia is—a revolutionary, a non-revolutionary or a counter-revolutionary—there is only one decisive criterion: one needs to know whether he is willing to coalesce with the workers’ and peasants’ masses and whether he does in fact coalesce with them."  [276•1 

p The practical implication here is that the intellectual must be made to do manual labour on a par with the worker and the peasant. According to Mao’s view, the intellectual’s task is to sink to the cultural level of the peasants and to adopt their way of life, instead of passing on his knowledge to the working people and helping them to raise their cultural and political standards. Here is, for instance, how Hsinhua News Agency presented the “sobering up" of one Chinese intellectual. He had come from a poor family, but after being long out of touch with manual labour, the callosities on his palms became thinner and his feelings for the poor and lower middle peasants shallower. Having now arrived with his whole family permanently to live and work in a production brigade, he took off the uniform of the cadre worker and put on peasant garb. He wore the straw shoes he had woven himself, and began to work with the peasants. He said thoughtfully: “The thicker the callosities on your palms, 277 the deeper your feelings for the poor and lower middle peasants, and the more strength you have in fighting against revisionism and for its prevention."  [277•1 

p The Maoists insist that manual labour can help “change the ideology and feelings of the intelligentsia and revolutionise their consciousness".  [277•2  The Chinese press quoted, for instance, these assertions by the cadre workers who went to the rural areas to engage in manual labour: “This time we have really made a beginning in revolutionising our consciousness by leaving our families, schools and offices and entering the homes of the poor and lower middle peasants."  [277•3 

Just after the “cultural revolution" a campaign was started in China to dispatch young people who could read and write to the countryside to make them “merge with the poor and lower middle peasants”. In this context, Jenmin jihpao wrote: “The boundless expanses of the villages are universities for the remoulding of literate young people."  [277•4  The Chinese press has repeatedly stressed that literate young people are sent to the countryside to accept a new education from the poor and lower middle peasants, because “when out of touch with manual labour one may be infected with revisionist ideology".  [277•5