On This Day: CCP mass campaign for "systematic remolding of human minds" begins - Feb. 1, 1942
(edited from Wikipedia)
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Yan'an Rectification Movement
The Yan'an Rectification Movement was a political mass movement led by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from 1942 to 1945. The movement took place in the Yan'an Soviet, a revolutionary base area centered on the remote city of Yan'an. Although it was during the Second Sino-Japanese War, the CCP was experiencing a time of relative peace when they could focus on internal affairs.
The legacies of the Yan'an Rectification Movement proved fundamental to the subsequent history of the Chinese Communist Party. These included the consolidation of Mao Zedong's paramount role within the CCP, especially from 1942 to 1944, and the adoption of a party constitution that endorsed Marxist-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought as guiding ideologies.
This move formalised Mao's deviation from the Moscow party line and the importance of Mao's alleged 'adaptation of communism to the conditions of China'. The Rectification Campaign was successful in either convincing or coercing the other leaders of the CCP to support Mao. Because the CCP had overcome great odds to grow and develop during this period, the methods employed in Yan'an were looked upon in reverence during Mao's later years.
After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, Mao repeatedly used some of the tactics that had been successful in Yan'an whenever he felt the need to monopolize political power. To a large extent, the Yan'an Rectification Campaign began with the "systematic remolding of human minds."
[Killings and cult of personality]
The United States Joint Publications Research Service estimated that more than 10,000 were killed in the "rectification" process, as the CCP made efforts to attack intellectuals and replace the culture of the May Fourth Movement with that of CCP culture. The rectification movement is regarded by many as the origin of Mao Zedong's cult of personality.
Background
In the 1930s the remote region of Yan'an had not experienced the same turmoil and hostilities as other mainland territories. Situated in northwest China, the area was also difficult to attack. CCP members mostly arrived there after the Long March (1934–1935).
According to official CCP sources, the purpose of the Rectification Campaign was to give a basic grounding in the Marxist theory and Leninist principles of party organization to the thousands of new members who had joined the CCP during its expansion after 1937. A second, equally important aspect of the movement was the elimination of the blind imitation of Soviet models, obedience to Soviet directives (mostly communicated to China via the Communist International), and "empiricism".
Mao emphasized that the campaign aimed at "rectifying mistaken ideas" and not the people who held them. Mao's tactics often included isolating and attacking dissenting individuals in "study groups."
Modern scholars have increasingly viewed the movement as being initiated by Mao in order to ensure his status as paramount leader of the CCP. According to [professor Gao Hua], Rectification Movement had four purposes:
1. To end the veneration of "Party intellectuals" ultimately forming the new fashion: "Being well-read was wrong-headed, and ignorance of the classics was commendable."
2. To purge the "notions of freedom, democracy, ...", establishing the concept of "the leader and the collective above all, and the individual as negligible."
3. To theorize the concept of "peasants as the principal force of the Chinese Revolution."
4. To build up Party ideology and coercion to forge an ideal Communist 'New Man' who combined loyalty and obedience with a fighting spirit."
The Yan'an era had a profound effect on the CCP and its future fortunes. When the Communists completed the Long March, the CCP was a relatively small band of less than 10,000 worn out troops from the south, displaced to an isolated and poor area in the hinterlands of northern China. By the end of the Yan'an era, however, the CCP's forces had grown to nearly 2.8 million members, and it governed nineteen base areas that contained a population of nearly one hundred million people.
Thought reform
During the Yan'an Rectification Campaign, more sophisticated techniques of thought control were used than had been previously attempted in China. Relying on criticism, self-criticism, "struggle", confession, and the content of the Marxist doctrine, these methods were heavily influenced by contemporary Soviet practices of "thought reform".
Under the guidance of a group leader, an individual, as part of a larger "study group", would study Marxist documents to understand "key principles," and then relate those principles to their own lives in a "critical, concrete, and thoroughgoing way." Other members of the group put the individual under "extraordinary pressure" to examine fully his or her most deeply held views, and to do so in the presence of the group. The individual then had to write a full "self-confession." Other group members isolated the individual during this process. Only when the confession was accepted would the person be drawn back into an accepted position in the group and in the larger society.
These techniques of pressure, ostracism, and reintegration were particularly powerful in China, where the culture puts great value on "saving face", protecting one's innermost thinking, and above all, identifying with a group. Individuals put through thought reform later described it as excruciating. The resulting changes in views were not permanent, but the experience overall seriously affected the lives of those who went through it. The CCP used these same types of techniques on millions of Chinese after 1949.
Phase I
The preparatory phase of the Rectification Campaign lasted from May 1941 to February 1942. The Campaign began on February 1, 1942, under Mao Zedong.
The leading team for the campaign was established with Mao as director and Wang Jiaxiang deputy director. In 1942 the CCP had 800,000 members, of which only a small group of approximately 150 members usually made all major decisions.
During this preparatory phase, Mao used his political skills to consolidate his power base. By manipulating the political climate in Yan'an, Mao was able to break up the alliance of his opponents, most notably Zhang Guotao and the members of the 28 Bolsheviks, and to eliminate his rivals one by one.
Phase II
To gain the support of those who might potentially oppose him, Mao labeled his rivals as comrades who were supporting the wrong cause. This rejection of ad hominem arguments made him appear politically and mentally superior to his political enemies.
Mao forced [his rivals] to criticize each other and self-criticize in rounds of meetings. Every one of them wrote reports of confession and apologies for their mistakes. Those who had produced self-criticisms were later persecuted according to their own confessions.
Mao set up the Central General Study Committee to be in charge of the movement. The Committee gave Mao the ability to exercise authoritarian power without being limited by elections and term limits. The earlier collective decision-making system of CCP center was abandoned, and Mao turned the government of Yan'an into his own dictatorship.
In February 1942 Mao Zedong declared:
Why must there be a revolutionary party? There must be a revolutionary party because our enemies still exist, and furthermore there must not be only an ordinary revolutionary party but a Communist revolutionary party.
Phase III
The third phase of the Rectification Campaign lasted from October 1943 to 1944 or April 1945, depending on sources. Senior leaders restudied party history and attempted to reach agreements on major issues by admitting to "errors".
In the [1943] "Rescue Campaign", members would write about their own confessions, often pointing fingers at other members to save themselves from other people's false allegations toward them. The Rescue Campaign soon became a circular cycle of false guilt and fake reenactments sending many innocent people to death via needless witch hunts.
One of the members crucial to carrying out the Rectification Movement was the secret police boss Kang Sheng.
Wang Shiwei, a journalist and intellectual known for his belief in "democracy and science," wrote an essay denouncing the hierarchy, bureaucracy, and inegalitarian distribution of resources in Yan'an. The essay irritated Mao greatly, and Wang was labeled a Trotskyist. Wang was arrested by the Central Social Department, modeled off the Soviet Union's OGPU, and beheaded in 1947.
Under the leadership of Peng Zhen, the Central Political School of the CCP began to carry out the Rectification Campaign among its students. Massive numbers of party members were forced to write reports of confession and self-criticism. The Central General Study Committee ordered people to report on their daily habits and speech.
The Central Social Department took control of the movement and turned it into a mass persecution in 1943.
Thousands of people, especially those new members who came from areas governed by KMT, were purged, kept in custody, censored, mentally and physically tortured, and occasionally executed. Many of them were labeled as "spies of the Kuomintang" or "anti party activists". Not only were they themselves humiliated, but also their family members and relatives.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yan%27an_Rectification_Movement
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