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The 1957-1958 Anti-Rightist Campaign in China: History and Memory (1978-2014) Christine Vidal

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The 1957-1958 Anti-Rightist Campaign in China: History and Memory (1978-2014) Christine Vidal The 1957-1958 Anti-Rightist Campaign in China: History and Memory (1978-2014) Christine Vidal To cite this version: Christine Vidal. The 1957-1958 Anti-Rightist Campaign in China: History and Memory (1978-2014). 2016. halshs-01306892 HAL Id: halshs-01306892 https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-01306892 Preprint submitted on 25 Apr 2016 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution - NonCommercial - ShareAlike| 4.0 International License C.C.J. Occasional Papers n°4 ABSTRACT The end of the Mao Era was accompanied neither by a April 2016 full and complete rehabilitation of the victims of the Anti- Rightist Campaign of 1957, nor by a true historiographical revolution. Thus, the “return” of history’s “forgotten ones” first occurred through literature and investigative journalism, which was the main relay for the memory of the victims in the 1980s, before testimony emerged in the following decade. Since then, however, the “historian’s territory” has expanded. This article places the questions about the relationship between history and memory within the specific context of the People’s Republic of China, where the Party in power claims the right to a monopoly over the interpretation of the past, in order to show how a plural memory is being constructed today, and how a history which “works” with this memory is being written. The 1957-1958 Anti-Rightist Campaign in China: History and Memory (1978-2014) Christine VIDAL (Université de Lille 3) The 1957-1958 Anti-Rightist Campaign in China: History and Memory (1978-2014) Christine VIDAL N°4 | APRIL 2016 The author Christine Vidal is an associate professor of Chinese history at the Université de Lille 3, and an associate member of the CECMC at the EHESS. Her main research interest lies in the intersection of the social, cultural and political history of modern and contemporary China. Most of her research so far has focused on Chinese intellectuals and professionals. After completing a doctoral dissertation on the Republican period and the early years of the PRC, she has mainly worked on the 1950s, as well as on the memory of that decade. Her current research draws on diaries and letters written during the Maoist period (and particularly during the 1950s and the early 1960s) to explore the ways in which the big political and economic changes of the period affected their authors’ work and life, as well as the ways in which they personally understood and experienced these changes. Abstract The end of the Mao Era was accompanied neither by a full and complete rehabilitation of the victims of the Anti-Rightist Campaign of 1957, nor by a true historiographical revolution. Thus, the “return” of history’s “forgotten ones” first occurred through literature and investigative journalism, which was the main relay for the memory of the victims in the 1980s, before testimony emerged in the following decade. Since then, however, the “historian’s territory” 2 has expanded. This article places the questions about the relationship between history and memory within the specific context of the People’s Republic of China, where the Party in power claims the right to a monopoly over the interpretation of the past, in order to show how a plural memory is being constructed today, and how a history which “works” with this memory is being written. Keywords PRC, Anti-Rightist Campaign, Political Persecution, History, Memory, Personal Narratives, Historiography Author’s recent publications • « Yu xin zhengquan jiemeng de zhishifenzi: Zhonghua renmin gongheguo chuqi de ji ge ceying, 1949-1952 » 与新政权结盟的知识分子: 中华人民共和国初期的几个侧影 (The intellectuals Rallied to the New Regime: Facets of the Early Years of the PRC, 1949-1952), Zhongguo dangdai shi yanjiu, n°3, 2011, p. 72-90. • « Shanghai entre guerre et révolution (1937-1949) » in Nicolas Idier (dir.), Shanghai. Histoire, promenades, anthologie et dictionnaire, Paris, Robert Laffont, coll. « Bouquins », 2010, p. 60-96. • « Histoire et mémoire des Cent fleurs et de la répression antidroitière en Chine, 1978-2008 », Revue Espaces Marx, n°26, 2009, p. 74-88. • « D’un régime à l’autre : les intellectuels ralliés au pouvoir communiste, 1948-1952 », Études chinoises, vol. XXVII, 2008, p. 42-86. Chine, Corée, Japon UMR8173 — 190-198 avenue de France — 75013 Paris — France http://umr-ccj.ehess.fr The 1957-1958 Anti-Rightist Campaign in China: History and Memory (1978-2014) years.2 Now, other points of view are being expressed or at least attempts are being made to express them. The Party is clearly not ready to grant carte-blanche to every initiative to obtain a full and complete rehabilitation of the victims and a reestablishment of the historical truth, uestions related to history and memory, but it is increasingly difficult for it to control the diffusion the problematic links between individual and contents of information which forms the foundation recollections and collective memory, the for contemporary critical reflection and the affirmation emergence of witnesses and the “wars of civic responsibility. Moreover, recent developments of memory,” which have all been much in historical research suggest that it may not be long debated over these last twenty or thirty before Chinese historians are finally able to shed light Qyears, are compounded, in the case of on this blind spot in the official historiography. mainland China, with problems inherent to the nature of a power that claims the right of monopoly over the interpretation of the past. Since 1949, this monopoly 1. Ultra-Politicization and the Loss has been expressed in terms of a historiography and of History under Mao a policy of memory which are exclusive and partisan and which draw upon an instrumental conception of history and memory that prevails even today, despite the Using the past for political purposes is not particular to developments that have ensued since 1978. China, as the whole history of historiography attests. However, in China, the instrumentalization of the past The historical treatment of the Anti-Rightist Campaign for political ends forms the bedrock of the only truly (fanyou yundong, 反右运动) also called the Anti-Rightist authorized history and memory: i.e., the official history Struggle (fanyou douzheng 反右斗争), which put a and memory adhering to the Party line. Drafting history brutal end to the Hundred Flowers in 1957, is an example and establishing the politics of memory are, in this among others. This campaign led to the persecution of respect, integral parts of propaganda, with which they several hundreds of thousands of people from all social share, among other characteristics, a biased, Manichean, strata, including many intellectuals who, after much shifting nature. This nature is expressed in the hesitation, had made statements, at the insistent demand suppression of facts which do not concur with the of authorities, as part of the Party rectification campaign Party line, the demonization of the “enemies imposed by Mao Zedong 毛泽东 (1893-1976): this of the people,” and constant revision in was a new kind of rectification since it included response to the needs of the moment. external criticism.1 While the Central Committee had condemned the “excesses” of the repression at the end It was in the 1940s that history truly began 3 of the 1970s, there were few publications in China of to be used as a political weapon to serve the historians’ work on this pivotal episode in the history Party, and principally its leader Mao Zedong, of the People’s Republic, which led to the launch of the who succeeded in imposing his unchallenged Great Leap Forward the following year, and with it, the authority at the Seventh Congress of May-June beginning of the deadly utopia that would last until the 1945, during which the famous “Resolution on Certain late 1970s. In addition, any form of commemoration Historical Questions” (Guanyu ruogan lishi wenti de remained impossible, and remains so even today. jueyi 关于若干历史问题的决议) was adopted. This fundamental text defines the “correct line”, in other Yet, despite the reluctance of a Party which is anxious to words, the orthodox version of the history of the Party retain control over the interpretation of the past, since its inception, and it firmly establishes rules to publications addressing this concealed episode of govern historical practices entirely subordinated to recent history have proliferated over the last twenty Party interests. It was also in 1945 that the North China 1 Contrary to popular belief, the Anti-Rightist Campaign did not only affect the University was founded, where the future guardians of intellectuals: the repression reached every social category of the society, and was official history would be educated—the propagandists particularly harsh for cadres, employees and school teachers. Officially, 552,877 who would also become the specialists of official history people were designated as “rightists” (youpai fenzi 右派分子). However, this after 1949. number includes neither the people who suffered various sanctions
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