Four old people
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The four old men ( Chinese 四旧 , Pinyin sìjiù ) are a battle term from the Chinese Cultural Revolution . This refers to old ways of thinking , old cultures , old habits and customs in China. In 1966, at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution (during Red August ), Mao Zedong and Lin Biao launched a campaign against the Four Elders with the aim of liberating China from the old and creating new ones. This campaign was carried out by the Red Guards .
These terms were not specified in more detail, and the Red Guards were thus relatively free to act.
The campaign
During the Cultural Revolution, a campaign against the Four Elders was started, initiated by Mao Zedong and Lin Biao. It said: Smash the Four Olds (((pò sìjiù 破四旧))), which meant old ways of thinking , old cultures , old habits and old manners . The campaign was carried out from August 19, 1966 (" Red August ") to the beginning of 1967 and was practiced mainly by the Red Guards.
In the 40 days of late summer 1966, also known as Red August , 1,772 people were killed or committed suicide in Beijing . 33,695 households were looted, 85,196 residents were evicted and 4,922 historic sites were destroyed.
The beginnings
On August 1, 1966, Mao Zedong wrote a letter to Qinghua University asking the Red Guards, with their revolutionary rebel spirit, for their support in the Cultural Revolution. This letter is the starting point of a development that led to the establishment of Red Guards in the countryside.
At the 11th plenary session of the 8th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), a 16-point plan was passed on August 8, 1966 and published in the People's Daily on August 9, 1966 . In this plan, the Four Ancients are mentioned publicly for the first time. However, before that, on June 1, 1966, an editorial appeared in the People's Daily entitled Get rid of all cow demons and serpent spirits , which Lin Biao quoted in his speech in Tian'anmen Square on August 18, 1966. Mao was present at this rally and wore the red bracelet of the Red Guards as a token of his affiliation. Lin Biao called on the Red Guards to wage war against the Old World and crush the Four Olds. Thereupon began a movement against everything that was considered capitalist, feudal, reactionary or revisionist and summarized under the four old things. The movement originated from Beijing No. 2 Middle School and quickly spread across the country.
Background of the campaign
Mao's ostensible reasons for the campaign were to cleanse the party of revisionist aspirations and to free it from bureaucratic undesirable developments. He looked for ways to regain the power he had lost to Liu Shaoqi during the Great Leap Forward . He also said that he wanted to free society from the old in order to renew it. Mao Zedong was allegedly keen to prevent the revolution from falling asleep because he had planned the eternal revolution so that no bureaucrat class would establish itself.
Red Guards
On May 29, 1966, a group from Beijing's Qinghua Middle School secretly met and called themselves the Red Guards for the first time. They were mainly children and adolescents whose parents were government officials. Their leaders were by Nie Yuanzhi, Kuai Dafu , Han Aijing, Tan Houlan and Wang Dabin. You were the executors of the Smash the Four Olds campaign .
Implementation of the campaign
The Campaign Smash the Four Olds is broad and its goals are imprecisely defined. The methods of running the campaign are also extremely unspecific. This lack of clarity can definitely be seen as a strategy to unleash revolutionary potential unchecked. At the beginning of the campaign, schools and universities were closed so that the youth had enough time for the revolution. The wall newspapers served the Red Guards as a mouthpiece to announce the war against the Four Elderly. At the Beijing Second Middle School, the first wall newspapers were used to help run the campaign. Name changes were made, for example streets, restaurants, hospitals and people were renamed. A start was also made to change old cultural assets in the spirit of the revolution, for example plays, operas and films were banned or changed.
In the course of the campaign, the Red Guards called for a radical departure from religion. As a result, temples and religious art treasures, books, scrolls, statues and pictures were destroyed. Everything individual was also declared harmful, in the course of which private property was confiscated. What was suspected of being Western, bourgeois or revisionist was destroyed. In the street, women and girls had their heels chopped off and their braids cut off. Likewise, people who were friends with foreigners were seen as capitalists and thus treated as opponents of the system. Teachers who did not support the Red Guards were often branded as representatives of the Four Elders and were tortured, cast out or even murdered.
The consequences
Due to the campaign, anomalous conditions prevailed in China at the end of 1966 . In the meantime other groups had formed who also invoked Mao Zedong, but were and were taking action against the Red Guards. On April 2, 1967, a revolutionary committee was convened to put an end to the chaotic situation. Mao Zedong and Lin Biao tasked the military with restoring order and in 1968 they also ordered the rural movement (xiàfàng 下放), which meant a mass deportation of around 15 million educated young people so that they could be re-educated in the countryside would experience.
literature
- Jian, Guo; Song, Yongyi and Zhou Yuan: Historical Dictionary of the Cultural Revolution. Historical Dictionaries of Ancient Civilizations and Historical Eras, No. 17. Lanham, Md [et al. a.], 2006.
- Domes, Jürgen: The Mao Tse-tung era: domestic politics in the People's Republic of China. Stuttgart 1971.
- Gernet, Jacques: The Chinese World. 1st edition Frankfurt am Main, 1997. 7th edition 2006.
- Jian, Guo; Song, Yongyi and Zhou Yuan: Historical Dictionary of the Cultural Revolution. Historical Dictionaries of Ancient Civilizations and Historical Eras , No. 17. Lanham, Md [et al. a.] 2006.
- Kuntze, Peter: The east is red. The Cultural Revolution in China. Munich 1970.
- Schmidt-Glintzer, Helwig: The new China. From the Opium Wars until today. 1st edition 1999. 4th revision. 2006 edition.
- Yan, Jiaqi; Gao, Gao: Turbulent decade: a history of the cultural revolution. Honolulu, 1996.
- Macfarquhar, Roderick; Schoenhals, Michael: Mao's last revolution. Cambridge, Mass. [u. a.], 2006.
- Helwig Schmidt-Glintzer: Small history of China . CHBeck, 2008, ISBN 978-3-406-57066-7 ( limited preview in Google book search).
Individual evidence
- ↑ Jian, Guo. 2006, p. Xxi.
- ↑ Schoenhals, Michael [ed.]; MacFarquhar, Roderick: China's Cultural Revolution, 1966–1969. Not a dinner party. Cambridge 2006. p. 33.
- ↑ Jian, Guo. 2006, p. 65.
- ↑ Jian, Guo. S. xxviii.
- ↑ a b Jian, Guo. 2006, p. 71.
- ↑ Jian, Guo. 2006, p. 241.
- ↑ Helwig Schmidt-Glintzer: Small history of China . CH Beck, 2008, ISBN 978-3-406-57066-7 , pp. 229 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
- ↑ Jian, Guo. S. xxix.