The “September 13 Incident” in 1971 shocked China and abroad, and the Chinese government soon issued Document No. 57 of 1971 and other related materials to explain the incident, but the basic archives have not yet been opened. Many scholars at home and abroad have taken a keen interest in this incident over the years, and in recent years there have been a number of reflective articles, and a number of oral materials have been disclosed in various forms by some of the people involved in the Lin Biao incident and their families. The common feature of these articles and materials is that they have revised the official framework of interpretation of the September 13 Incident and provided some new perspectives on the incident, some of which are strongly sympathetic to Lin Biao. This phenomenon is understandable, because the official materials issued in that year, in which the Gang of Four was involved, maintained their basic conclusions after 1979, and some of their assertions are indeed questionable. In this article, we believe that historical research should emphasize objectivity and impartiality, and that researchers should analyze and identify the materials of the relatives of the people involved in the case.
I. Was Lin Biao forced to leave the country?
At the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, Mao selected Lin Biao as his “successor” at the same time as he deposed Liu Shaoqi. On December 18, 1970, Mao told Edgar Snow that he had already decided that Liu Shaoqi must step down when he formulated the “Article 23” in January 1965. After the National Day in 1965, Mao left Beijing for the south and returned to Beijing only on July 18, 1966, when Mao had made up his mind to dismiss Liu Shaoqi. After returning to Kunming, he was informed that he would rush to Hangzhou on April 20 to attend an enlarged meeting of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau temporarily convened by Mao, and what was waiting for him was a fait accompli that Peng Zhen had been defeated. In May, Mao Zedong in Hangzhou ordered Liu Shaoqi to preside over the expanded meeting of the Politburo in Beijing to solve the problems of “Peng, Luo, Lu and Yang”. On June 1, again without Liu Shaoqi’s knowledge, Mao ordered the Central People’s Broadcasting Station to broadcast a large-character poster by Nie Yuanzi and seven others from Peking University; on July 8, Mao wrote a letter to Jiang Qing in Wuhan, stating his intention to launch the Cultural Revolution; all these showed that it was a matter of time before Liu stepped down.
Deng Xiaoping was also a key member of Mao’s succession echelon, and Mao had relied heavily on Deng for many years, first as secretary-general and then as general secretary of the Central Committee in 1954, with the intention of restraining Liu Shaoqi. Mao did not expect that by the early 1960s, Deng and Liu came together. in June and July 1966, on the issue of dispatching the task force, Deng and Liu again agreed, and Mao had the idea of abandoning Deng.
After rejecting Liu and Deng, Mao pushed Lin Biao to the forefront for historical and practical reasons. Mao launched the Cultural Revolution and knocked out the central front, which could not be backed up without the army. During several critical periods in history, Lin Biao stood on Mao’s side. For decades, Lin Biao fully comprehended Mao’s intentions, yet flagged and dared to take charge. On the one hand, Mao encouraged Lin Biao to invigorate his spirit and take care of his health, and on the other hand, Mao was relieved to have Lin Biao take charge of the army.
Mao wanted to pull Lin Biao out to replace Liu Shaoqi, and there was no opposition in the Party, especially in the military. After the founding of the country, Mao had long adopted the strategy of suppressing the military class and supporting and reusing the Party’s civilian bureaucrats, led by Liu Shaoqi, in order to stabilize the overall situation. After the Gao Gang incident, the pattern of subordination of the military generals to the Party organs was fully established, but the discontent of the military generals with Liu Shaoqi, Peng Zhen and others was not completely eliminated, but lurked. As Mao’s discontent with Liu intensified since the early 1960s, Mao reintroduced the military hierarchy as a counterbalance to Liu’s power. At the “Seven Thousand People Conference” in early 1962, Lin Biao’s famous speech of escorting Mao did not cause any resentment among the participants at that time; on the contrary, some senior cadres thought that Lin Biao’s speech “stood up for himself and spoke about eliminating interference and making our party feel safe “. By the eve of the Cultural Revolution, the proportion of the military in the political life of the country had increased unprecedentedly, and historically the Chinese Communist Party had long been a tradition of the Party and the military as one, in this situation, Lin Biao’s emergence was logical, and Lin Biao’s emergence also represented the expansion of the interests of the broader military, and could be supported and embraced by the military system.
Lin Biao was one of the military commanders who contributed the most to Mao’s fight for the world, and a soldier-politician with few words and deep tactics. Lin Biao returned to Yan’an from the Soviet Union on February 8, 1942. From the end of that year to July of the following year, he was ordered by Mao to go to Chongqing and participate in the negotiations between the Chinese Communist delegation and the Kuomintang, and on October 13, 1943, he met again with Chiang Kai-shek in Xi’an on behalf of Mao. During the Yan’an Rectification Campaign, Lin Biao only supported Mao and did not rectify him, and was ranked seventh in the election of the CPC Central Committee at the Seventh Congress.
During the Liberation War in the late 1940s, Lin Biao led the “Four Fields” to sweep through half of China, and made unparalleled achievements for the founding of the People’s Republic of China. Lin Biao enjoyed great prestige in the “Four Fields” and the “Four Fields” had a military anthem: “We are Lin Biao’s Soldiers”. During the southward period and at the beginning of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, Lin Biao was appointed as the First Secretary of the Central China Bureau, the First Secretary of the Central-South Bureau, the Chairman of the Central-South Military Commission and the Commander of the Central-South Military Region, and he was in charge of the Party, the government and the military. In the early 1950s, Lin Biao was removed from public life.
On October 18, 1950, Lin Biao told Zhou Enlai in the Soviet Union that he would return to China whenever the central government needed him. After the founding of the country, Lin Biao never visited abroad except for the early 1950s when he went to the Soviet Union with Zhou Enlai to get Soviet aid for troops in Korea and spent a year in Sochi for convalescence. For a long period of time, Lin Biao abided by the boundaries of his role and did not overstep the limits of his role to express his views on major Party issues.
Lin Biao had a deep understanding of Mao’s style, psychology and character. After the founding of the country, he had respect for Mao, but he was also worried about his high achievements and was wary of Mao. In the early 1950s, Lin Biao was familiar with “Huang Shi Gong’s Three Strategies” and knew that “a high bird dies and a good bow is hidden, an enemy country is destroyed and a strategist dies” and that “the day of the division is the day of survival. In order to avoid repeating the mistakes of Han Xin, he took the initiative to retire. He wrote in his notes: Western Han deceased to power and nobility is not full, Nanyang deceased to leisurely self-preservation. For nearly a decade, Lin Biao took a long break for political and physical reasons, and did not interact with any of the heads of the Central Committee, including Mao Zedong.
However, Lin Biao could not be truly “idle” and had no desires, and in 1953, when the Region was abolished, there was no arrangement for him for a while, and when Gao Gang came to mobilize him, he and Gao Gang talked very well; after Gao Gang was abandoned by Mao, Lin Biao became cautious again. In April 1955, at the Fifth Plenary Session of the Seventh Central Committee, Lin Biao joined Deng Xiaoping in the Politburo, but the Central Committee still did not make specific arrangements for Lin Biao’s work.
At the Fifth Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee in May 1958, Lin Biao was appointed Vice Chairman of the Party by Mao and became the sixth person in the core of the Communist Party, ahead of Deng Xiaoping. This move had nothing to do with Lin Biao, it was entirely Mao’s layout, but it ignited Lin Biao’s political desire. At this time, although Peng Dehuai still presided over the daily work of the Military Commission, the layout of Lin in place of Peng was already open. Lin Biao realized that Mao’s intention was to “use him as Gao Gang”, and knew that Mao’s move was to use him to balance Liu and Zhou. The company’s main business is to provide a wide range of products and services to the public. “, “ambitious”, “Feng Yuxiang type of character”. In the subsequent enlarged meeting of the military commission, Lin Biao ordered the on-the-spot detention of General Zhong Wei, who defended Peng Dehuai, and published an article that sharply criticized Peng Dehuai and Mao without naming him.
After Lin Biao replaced Peng Dehuai to preside over the Military Commission at a time when the nationwide famine was spreading and Mao’s prestige began to decline, he proposed in 1960 to “hold high the great red banner of Mao Zedong Thought”, “the four firsts” and “the three eights style”. In 1960, he raised the slogans of “holding high the great red banner of Mao Zedong Thought”, “four firsts” and “three eight style”, and launched the activities of “learning Mao” and creating “four good companies” and “five good soldiers” in the whole army to offer loyalty to Mao. On September 23, 1961, Mao talked with British Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery in Wuhan and made it clear that Liu Shaoqi would be his successor after his death. Mao’s statement to Montgomery was an elaborate arrangement prepared in advance and focused on the domestic hierarchy, with the aim of smoothing out the difficulties he was facing at the time. After Montgomery returned to China and made Mao’s remarks public, the Foreign Ministry issued a special briefing on Montgomery’s account to the local and divisional levels, which frustrated Lin Biao.
However, Lin Biao did not sulk, and at the Seven Thousand People’s Congress in early 1962, he made an original remark to praise Mao, which was completely opposite to the main theme of the Congress, and was deeply appreciated by Mao. During the difficult period when Mao’s prestige was damaged, Lin Biao took the first-class credit for escorting Mao. Later, Lin Biao was physically exhausted due to the deployment of troops to the southeast to prevent Chiang Kai-shek’s “counter-attack on the mainland”, and the daily work of the Military Commission was transferred to He Long by Mao. He reminded himself in his own handwriting that he should “always remember” that he should “turn a blind eye to the insults of his opponents and ignore them” and “do not fall for the bait of the enemy’s control teams and guerrillas”, and warned himself to The lesson of Peng Dehuai: “Peng of Lushan is a lot of Peng in the world, how can you delay your life for the sake of a small person, a small matter!” In the years after this, Lin Biao held Mao more fancy: “highlighting politics”, “live and learn”, in May 1964, the army took the lead in issuing “Chairman Mao’s Quotations” and so on, creating a huge social atmosphere of Chong Mao, making Mao wrong and justified, more domineering This created a huge social atmosphere of reverence for Mao, which made Mao wrong but justified and more domineering, and put enormous pressure on the central line.
Was Lin Biao completely and unreservedly devoted to Mao? The answer is no. Among all the leaders of the Communist Party, Lin Biao’s private criticism of Mao was the sharpest, and it pointed directly at Mao’s personal qualities. Lin Biao criticized Mao for “engaging in power tactics”, “contradicting words and deeds” (referring to the difference between Mao’s speech on “Correctly Handling the Internal Contradictions of the People” and the published version), and “suppressing what others have done well and returning it to oneself afterwards. and return it to yourself afterwards”. “He first fabricates a ‘your’ opinion for you, and then he comes to refute your opinion. And no, but fabricated – the usual tactics of the old East, in the future when to pay attention to him this trick”. “He self-worship, self-fascination, worship themselves, merit for themselves, fault for others”. He told Ye Qun: “To save your brain power, don’t read No. 1 (‘No. 1’ refers to Mao) and S (Da Lin)”, and also criticized Mao’s Great Leap Forward as “a haphazard approach based on fantasy”, calling Mao “Lin Biao also accused Mao of “scolding Khrushchev to the hilt” and “not caring about the livelihood of the people” but only about his own “fame, position and power”. Lin Biao also accused Mao of “cursing Khrushchev to death (in his pajamas)” and “fighting against (Wang) Ming to death”, but all these remarks were limited to his wife and family.
Although Lin Biao had opinions about Mao, he was very secretive, and his public statements were all submissive and catered to Mao, a “resolutely left-leaning high profile”. In a nutshell: to pursue the maximization of his own interests. In Lin Biao’s view, whether Mao retreated to the second line or not, Mao’s power was unshakeable. In order to preserve himself or go to the next level, he had to follow the “Mao line” closely, and at the same time, he had to conceal his sharpness to reduce Mao’s suspicion.
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