“Although the words are superfluous, why say it? Having come to the end of my Life, the remaining days cannot be counted not only by years but even by weeks …… I would like to write a little of my last and most frank words while this remaining life is not yet over.” These are the opening words of the posthumous work “Extra Words” written by Qu Qubai, who served as the top leader of the Chinese Communist Party in the early days before his death. It was because of these “superfluous words” that Qu was branded a “traitor” by the CCP after his death, his wife died, his children were imprisoned, and his Parents‘ graves were dug up.
What “superfluous words” did Q Qubai say in “Superfluous Words” that displeased the Chinese Communist Party?
Extra words” before his death
In 1935, after being arrested by the Kuomintang, Qu Qubai completed his “Extra Words” a month or so before his execution, profoundly analyzing how an intellectual was attracted to the Communist Party by the ultimate ideals of Communism, and then, in the real reality, faced with the Communist Party’s brutal external and internal struggles, his soul split under the Party’s principles of loyalty and obedience, until he became an “actor” who gave up his independent thinking. “actor”, propagating the ideas of the Communist Party while doubting the logic of using class to destroy class and using the unbeautiful to reach the beautiful.
In his essay, Qu confessed that he was only a half-baked man of letters, and that his participation in the political movement and even his becoming the leader of the Communist Party was a “historical misunderstanding”. In the chapter “I and Marxism”, he claimed that he had never studied Marxist thought systematically, and had never read Capital, and that the only common knowledge he had was from the sporadic papers in newspapers and magazines and a few pamphlets by Lenin. Marxist theorist'”.
Qu Qubai, who believed that it was a historical misunderstanding to be the leader of the Chinese Communist Party, also believed that it was a “more important misunderstanding” to use Marxism to study modern Chinese society, because it was started by him, a so-called “expert” who knew little about Marxism. What could be the result of such a study?
In his final “farewell,” Qu calls his life a “comic opera” because he was never able to become a proletarian fighter, and his ultimate self-identification was that of a “man of letters. “. At the end of his life, he did not recommend any Marxist-Leninist-Maoist doctrine, but several literary works, including Dream of the Red Chamber and Anna Kalinina, and white Chinese tofu.
Qu Qubai also wrote in his “Preface”: “I am not afraid of being blamed or condemned, but I am afraid of being ‘admired’. I hope that the youth of the future will not follow my example, and will not think that what I wrote in the past represents any doctrine.”
Qu Qubai’s not “superfluous words” were not to justify or to survive, but to show that he had deep doubts about Marxism-Leninism and the Chinese Communist Party, and such doubts were related to his own experiences, as well as to his strong intellectual feelings.
Going astray
In 1899, Qu Qiubai was born in Changzhou, Jiangsu Province. His ancestors were from a prestigious Family in Yixing, and his father, Qu Shiwei, was good at painting, swordsmanship, and Medicine, but he was indifferent by nature and did not rule the family business. His mother, Jin Xuan, was also the daughter of a government official and was skilled in poetry. Qu Qiubai was the eldest son of the family and liked to read since his childhood, reading the Thirteen Classics, the Twenty-four Histories, books, notebooks, series of books, poems, lyrics and songs.
After the Xinhai Revolution, Qu Shisun abandoned his official position and lived idly in Hangzhou, stopping his financial support for Qu Shiwei’s family. As a result, Qu Qiubai’s family fell into financial difficulties and was forced to live on pawns and debts. Unable to pay tuition, Qu was forced to drop out of school. Later, his mother, Jin Xuan, committed suicide by taking poison, and Qu Qiubai’s family joined relatives and friends.
At the end of 1916, with the financial support of his cousin’s aunt, Qu Qiubai entered the Wuchang Foreign Language School to study English. The following year, he studied Russian at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In 1919, he joined the May Fourth Movement and joined the Marxist Research Society initiated by Li Dazhao and others. “In 1920, he became a member of the Beijing Morning Post.
In 1920, he became a special correspondent for the Beijing Morning Post and the Shanghai Current Affairs New Paper, and was sent to Moscow for interviews. While in Moscow, he met Lenin and became an interpreter and assistant teacher in the Chinese class at the Oriental University, whose students included Liu Shaoqi and others. in 1922, Qu Qubai joined the Chinese Communist Party and went astray from there.
One of the reasons for Qu’s acceptance of Marxism, which was steeped in traditional Chinese Culture, was probably that, in his view, the Marxist ideal of a communist society did not conflict with the Chinese cultural ideal of a commonwealth society, and, more importantly, Marxism also showed him how to achieve it, namely through the “dictatorship of the proletariat. It was not until his execution that he finally realized that Marxism and its “latent gentleman’s consciousness, the Chinese style of the Shih Tzu, and the petty-bourgeois or mercenary consciousness that later metamorphosed, were in a completely hostile position.
Fleeing to the north and being abandoned
Qu Qubai, who joined the CCP, was invited by Chen Duxiu to return to China in 1923 and translated articles on Lenin’s and Stalin’s theories. Under Sun Yat-sen’s policy of uniting with Russia and tolerating the Communist Party, and after the Communist International issued a directive for Chinese Communists to join the Kuomintang and develop in a shell, Qu Qubai and other Chinese Communists joined the Kuomintang in droves. Qu was elected as an alternate executive member of the Kuomintang Central Committee, and at the same Time, he was elected as a member of the Central Committee, a member of the Central Bureau and a member of the Central Politburo at the fourth, fifth and sixth national congresses of the Communist Party, and became one of the leaders of the Communist Party.
In 1927, the right wing of the Kuomintang began to “purge the Party” and arrest members of the CCP. The Communist Party launched armed rebellions in various places, and Chen Duxiu and Qu Qubai also participated in the riots in Shanghai.
At that time, the Soviet Union was divided over the future of the CCP. Trotsky, another Soviet leader who could rival Stalin at the time, drew up a political program for the CCP entitled “The Political Situation in China and the Tasks of the Opposition,” arguing that “China had entered a period of political stability and economic recovery, and that the CCP could only call for a national conference to solve the most important problems of the country.” Chen Duxiu agreed with this, but the headstrong Stalin did not admit his mistake, criticized Trotsky and Chen Duxiu, and dismissed Chen Duxiu from his post as General Secretary of the CCP in August 1927.
Qu Qubai, who had a background in the Soviet Union, was then appointed by the Communist International as a member of the Standing Committee of the Provisional Central Political Bureau and presided over the Central Committee, becoming the second top leader of the CCP after Chen Duxiu. After attending the Sixth Congress of the Communist Party of China in the Soviet Union, he remained in Moscow as head of the Communist delegation to the Comintern for two years.
In 1930, he was removed from his post as the Communist Party’s representative in Moscow and returned to China, and in 1931, he was dismissed from his leadership position. In 1934, he came to the Communist base and took up the post of Minister of Education.
Soon after, under the siege of the Kuomintang, the CCP was forced to flee northward. At that time, a part of the CCP leaders had to stay behind, and it became a very sensitive issue as to who would leave and who would stay. According to the recollection of Zhang Wentian, another senior CCP official, the decision of who left and who stayed for the senior cadres was made by Zhou Enlai, Li De and Bogu. Qu Qubai, who asked to leave several times, was eventually refused, which led to his arrest.
There are explanations that this was because he was not well enough to make the long journey, but in recent years an analysis of articles has confirmed that it was Bogu who gave the order for him to stay. Zhang Wentian had this recollection: “Qu Qubai had asked me to go with him, and I expressed my sympathy and proposed to Bogu, who objected.”
Shot “on the spot”
In 1935, while on the move, he was captured by the local armed security corps of the Kuomintang, who identified him as a high-ranking Communist official based on the items he was carrying. Because he refused to accept surrender, Chiang Kai-shek ordered him to be “shot on the spot” more than a month later.
Dai Jitao, a senior Kuomintang official who advocated his death, said, “Qu Qiubai has redefined millions of young people.
After his death, he was branded a “traitor” by the Chinese Communist Party and his bones were thrown into the air.
It was also because of “Extra Words” that Qu Qubai, who had been recognized as a “revolutionary martyr” by the Chinese Communist Party and buried in Babaoshan, did not have peace after his death, and his family was also subjected to hardships.
According to the article “Qu Qubai’s Unjust Case” did not begin with the persecution by the Gang of Four” in the 10th issue of 2010 of Literature and History Reference on the mainland, the biography of Qu Qubai written by Sima Lu was published by Hong Kong‘s Zilian Publishing House in 1962, and the full text of “Extra Words” was appended to the book In 1963, the fourth issue of Historical Research published Qi Benyu’s “Review of the Autobiography of Patrick Li”, denouncing him as a traitor. Both the academic community and the Chinese Propaganda Department criticized Chi’s article.
However, when Mao Zedong, who reintroduced the “class struggle” after 1962, saw the “Extra Words” and the “Review of Prof. Li’s Autobiography”, he made the following assertion: Prof. Li was “black and white, with iron-clad evidence, and the disloyalty of the loyal king is not enough to teach”, and considered that Qu Qubai “He also said: “Why not publicize Chen Yucheng instead of Patrick Li? Why not propagandize Fang Zhimin but Qu Qiubai? It should be said that Mao at this time closely linked it to the “traitor problem within the party” that he wanted to solve. In those days, since Mao had given such a phrase, others could only follow the order. The exhibition of the former residence of Qu Qubai, which was already underway, was discontinued.
After the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution in 1966, a wave of “traitor arrests” swept across the country, and “Extra Words” became known as “Qu Qubai’s manifesto (confession) of rebellion against the Party. “There are not all martyrs on Mount Babao, there is also Qu Qubai!” On May 6, the Red Guards of the Beijing Academy of Political Science and Law and the Red Revolutionary Rebellion Headquarters of the Beijing Municipal Court jointly published the first issue of the “Qu War Journal”, and on May 12, the Red Guards of the Beijing Academy of Political Science and Law stormed Mount Babao and smashed the tomb of Qu Qiubai, forcing his widow Yang Zhihua to criticize her husband’s white bones.
Wife Persecuted to Death, Daughter Imprisoned
Both Qu Qiubai and Yang Zhihua were not their original spouses. Qu Qiubai’s original wife was Wang Jianhong, with whom he died after seven months of Marriage. Yang Zhihua’s ex-husband was Shen Jianlong, and they had a daughter who took Qu Qiubai’s surname and was named Qu Duyi. When Yang Zhihua was a student at Shanghai University, Qu was his teacher. Later, Qu also met Shen Jianlong and became acquainted with him. Shen agreed to a divorce and Qu was united with Yang Zhihua.
After the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution, with Qu Qubai branded a “traitor,” Yang Zhihua was also isolated and censored, and later had her Beijing household registration revoked and transferred to Qincheng Prison, where important political prisoners were held. In the early hours of October 20, 1973, at the age of 72, Yang Zhihua died of an unjust illness.
Qu Duyi Wen Ge, who was deeply attached to Qu Qubai, was imprisoned in a cowshed. She was married to journalist Li He, who died of heart disease in 1962. Their two sons, one died during the war years and one died of cancer at the age of 23. There is also a daughter who lived abroad for a long time.
Graves of parents exhumed
On January 19, 1967, the Red Guards stormed the Ximen Cemetery in Changzhou, Jiangsu Province, and smashed the grave of Qu’s mother, who was there. His father, Qu Shiwei, who had taught in Jinan, was buried in the southern suburbs of Jinan after his death in 1932. During the Cultural Revolution his tombstone was destroyed and the grave was flattened, later becoming an orchard.
Conclusion
Qu Qubai, who reflected on his life but did not break with the CCP until his death, probably did not expect that the CCP would treat him, his wife and children, and his deceased parents so badly after his death. If he had known, he would have realized that his “superfluous words” were not superfluous, and would have wished that the young people he had poisoned would stay away from the CCP.
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