Chen Duxiu’s Last Years

Chen Duxiu’s arrest was a major event. The press carried lengthy reports on it, in which the Trotskyist leader was described as a ‘Communist prisoner’ and as founder of the and its General Secretary at its first five congresses, for whose arrest the Guomindang had offered a reward of 30,000 silver dollars. On 19 October 1932, he was taken at night to . On the 20th, Shenbao carried a report saying that Chen Duxiu and ‘another impor- tant Communist Party leader’ (Peng Shuzhi) had been sent by night-train to the capital, and the North Station (from where the train left) had been put under martial law, ‘in case anything unexpected happened’. On 25 October, He Yingqin, the Guomindang military leader, invited Chen Duxiu on Chiang Kai-shek’s orders to a reception-room in his Department for an hour-long meeting described by Chen as ‘half chat, half interrogation’. Although Chen Duxiu talked with ease and confidence and gave a detailed account of the Chinese Communist Party’s policies and the Trotskyists’ poli- cies, He Yingqin was unable to make head or tail of it. Finally, it dawned on him that Chen Duxiu would have nothing to do with Chiang Kai-shek’s cam- paign to eradicate the Chinese Red Army. After the meeting, a dramatic scene ensued: He Yingqin’s officers beseeched Chen Duxiu to write some characters for them. He said: ‘Thank you for your kind affection, which is deeply gratify- ing. Surrounded on all sides by you, my younger brothers, I am overwhelmed’. Chen Duxiu, a good calligrapher, wrote: ‘Only when the ink is exhausted will I escape your encirclement’. (See Chen Duxiu’s letter to Gao Yuhan’s wife.) Something similar had happened at the time of Qu Qiubai’s arrest. Qu Qiubai was a famous seal-maker, and officers under Chiang Kai-shek’s Commander Song Xilian asked him to make seals for them. By the time of his death, he had carved at least one hundred. For a master is a master, whether Guomindang or Communist. Later, Chiang Kai-shek had Xie Depan sent to Jiujiang to work at the front ‘exterminating the Communists’ and investigate the relationship between Chen Duxiu and the Red Army in Jiangxi. Only when he was sure there was not the slightest contact between Chen Duxiu and the Chinese Red Army did he relax. On 26 April 1933, the Jiangsu Supreme Court sentenced Chen Duxiu to thir- teen years in prison and fifteen years’ deprivation of civil rights. Chen Duxiu appealed, but his appeal was rejected on 22 June; after a further appeal, and interventions by various individuals, the sentence was commuted to eight years, and Chen was taken to Jiangsu’s No. 1 Model Prison. According to his

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‘accomplice’ Pu Dezhi, Chen Duxiu received preferential treatment. He had his own cell and was allowed to leave the prison-dormitory. At the same time, Pan Lanzhen was allowed to visit him. Normally, Pu Dezhi and Luo Shifan took turns at looking after him. Pu Dezhi was Chen Duxiu’s junior cousin, and cared for Chen ‘in every way possible’. In prison, Chen Duxiu’s life was bearable, apart from the loss of liberty. In his letter to Gao Yuhan’s wife he said: ‘Every day I can walk for a few minutes and do a bit of exercise. I’m no different in health, looks, and spirit from when I first arrived here’. Chen Duxiu put a desk and bookshelf in his cell, which was around a dozen square metres, and got people (even Hu Shi) to buy him a great number of books so he could begin a study of and phonology. He turned his cell into a study, and, from the summer of 1933 to the summer of 1937, when he was released, he wrote six works on classical Chinese phonology and linguistics. In his memoirs, published in his old age, Xu Enzeng, head of the Central Investigations Bureau, talked about the esteem in which members of the Guomindang ruling élite held Chen Duxiu, and their disappointment in him:

He is so well read in , he had the traditional manners of a literatus, he had a strong national self-confidence, he made a seminal contribution to the in his 1919, and even today he continues to enjoy the admiration of young people. He was differ- ent from most Communists. At the same time, he gave me the impres- sion that one could prevail upon him to give up his past political views. But after our conversation, my confidence in him was shaken. I found his attitude was very stubborn. He wasn’t prepared to give up his belief in . Although he had been expelled from the Communist Party, he still proclaimed himself a true Marxist. I failed to persuade him, so numerous old friends who had been colleagues of his at University from before and after 1919 [such as Jiang Menglin, who became Dean of Beijing University in 1930] were invited to talk with him, but he con- tinued his stubbornness. Afterwards we stopped putting pressure on him, and merely let him live a quiet life in Nanjing and pursue his research.

In prison, Chen Duxiu did not give up his Trotskyist ideas, but the Trotskyists themselves failed to appreciate him. After 15 October 1932, when Chen Duxiu and all the Chinese Trotskyist leaders were rounded up by the Guomindang, two men stood out, but for different reasons. One was Chen Qichang, an earnest and down-to-earth person who quietly laboured for his beliefs, of whom more later. The other, floating along the surface and determined to enjoy the limelight as a Trotskyist leader, was Liu Renjing.