Чэнь Дусю: Революционер, основатель Коммунистической партии Китая

Chinese politician and co founder of the Chinese Communist Party (1879–1942)

Chen Duxiu (t=陳獨秀; 8 October 187927 May 1942) was a Chinese revolutionary socialist, educator, philosopher and author, who co founded the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) with Li Dazhao in 1921. From 1921 to 1927, he served as the Communist Party's first general secretary. Chen was a leading figure in both the Xinhai Revolution that overthrew the Qing dynasty and the May Fourth Movement for scientific and democratic developments in the early Republic of China. After his expulsion from the CCP in 1929, Chen was for a time the leader of China's Trotskyist movement. Chen's ancestral home was in Anqing, Anhui, where he established the influential vernacular Chinese periodical New Youth. In order to support overthrowing the Qing government, Chen Duxiu had joined Yue Fei Loyalist Society (t=岳王會) which emerged from Gelaohui in Anhui and Hunan province.

From the late 19th century, the Qing dynasty suffered a series of military defeats against the colonial foreign powers, most recently in the First Sino Japanese War and the war against the Alliance of Eight Nations, which invaded China in response to the 1901 Boxer Rebellion. Government corruption resulted in economic paralysis and widespread impoverishment. During this time, Chen became increasingly influential within the revolutionary movement against both foreign imperialism and the Qing. Influenced by his time in Japan, Chen founded the Anhui Patriotic Association in 1903 and the Yue Fei Loyalist Society in 1905. By 1905, the Yue Fei included anti Qing gentry like Sun Yujing and Bo Wenwei. Chen was an outspoken writer and political leader by the time of the Wuchang Uprising of 1911, which started the Xinhai Revolution and led to the collapse of the Qing dynasty. Yue Fei branches were added in Wuhu and Anqing, with those in Anqing infiltrating and agitating within the Qing military. In 1912, Chen became secretary general to the new military governor of Anhui, while also serving as the dean of a local high school. He used the Yue Fei Loyalist Society to establish an organization of students from Anhui public school, pro rebel Qing soldiers and secret society members. Chen definition of Western civilization focused on egalitarianism rather than competition. He wrote: "socialism is, therefore, a theory of social revolution succeeding political revolution; its aim is to eliminate all inequality and oppression. We can call it 'contemporary' European civilization, which opposes the (merely) 'modern'." or liberal Protestant before becoming dissatisfied with Christianity. In 1921, he also lived and worked at a Protestant church school. The newspaper Shen Bao categorized academics into factions (xuepai). It portrayed Chen and Hu as victims of government persecution, and their opponents as allies of the warlords.

In 1921, Chen, Li and other prominent revolutionaries (including Mao Zedong) founded the CCP. It has been generally asserted that the group had diligently studied Marxist theories, inspired by the Russian Revolution of 1917. Chen was elected (in absentia) as the first General Secretary at the first party congress in Shanghai. He remained the undisputed leader of the party until 1927, and was often referred to as "China's Lenin" during this period. Chen, with Li's assistance, developed a cooperative – and later troublesome – relationship with the Communist International (Comintern). Over the next decade, the Comintern sought to use the CCP as tools of Soviet foreign policy, leading to policy disagreements between CCP leaders and Comintern advisors. By 1922, the party had only about 200 members, not counting those overseas.

Soon after the founding of the Chinese Communist Party, in 1921, Chen accepted an invitation from Chen Jiongming to serve on the education board in Guangzhou in the aftermath of the June 16 Incident, but this position dissolved when Guangzhou was recaptured by the Kuomintang. At the direction of the Comintern, Chen and the Chinese Communists formed an alliance with Sun Yat sen and the Kuomintang (KMT or Nationalist Party) in 1922. Although Chen was not convinced of the utility of collaborating with the Kuomintang, he reluctantly carried out the Comintern's orders to do so. Pursuing collaboration with the Kuomintang, he was elected into that party's Central Committee in January 1924. In 1927, after the Shanghai massacre, he and other high ranking Communists, including Mao Zedong and Mikhail Borodin, collaborated closely with Wang Jingwei's Nationalist government in Wuhan, convincing Wang's regime to adopt various proto Communist policies. The Wuhan government's subsequent land reform policies were considered provocative enough to influence various KMT aligned generals to attack Wang's regime, suppressing it. Chen was forced to resign as General Secretary in 1927, due to his public dissatisfaction with the Comintern order to disarm during the April 12 Incident, which had led to the deaths of thousands of Communists – now known as the Shanghai massacre of 1927, and because of his disagreement with the Comintern's new focus on peasant rebellions.

Chen came into conflict with Mao Zedong in 1925 over Mao's essay "An Analysis of Classes in Chinese Society". Mao opposed Chen's analyses of China. While Chen believed that the focus of revolutionary struggle in China should primarily concern the workers, Mao had started to theorize about the primacy of the peasants. According to Han Suyin in Mortal Flower, Chen "opposed the opinions expressed [in Mao's analysis], denied that a radical land policy and the vigorous organization of the rural areas under the Communist party was necessary, and refused the publication of the essay in the central executive organs of publicity." Although he recognized the value of Mao's interpretation of Marxism in inciting the Chinese peasants and labourers to revolution, Chen opposed Mao's rejection of the strong role of the bourgeoisie that Chen had hoped to achieve. During the last years of his life, Chen denounced Stalin's dictatorship, and held that various democratic institutions, including independent judiciaries, opposition parties, a free press, and free elections, were important and valuable. Because of Chen's opposition to Mao's interpretation of Communism, Mao believed that Chen was incapable of providing a robust historical materialist analysis of China. This dispute would eventually lead to the end of Chen and Mao's friendship and political association.

After the collaboration between the Communist Party and the KMT fell apart in 1927, the Comintern blamed Chen, and systematically removed him from all positions of leadership. In November 1929, he was expelled. Afterwards, Chen became associated with the International Left Opposition of Leon Trotsky. Like Chen, Trotsky opposed many of the policies of the Comintern, and publicly criticized the Comintern's effort to collaborate with the Nationalists. Chen eventually became the voice of the Trotskyists in China, attempting to regain support and influence within the party, but failed. Chen continued to oppose measures like "New Democracy" and the "Bloc of Four Classes" advocated by Mao Zedong. After the communist movement in the late 1920s, Chen Duxiu and Leon Trotsky started to have a complex relationship that was not known in the west. Their relationship reveals the developments of Trotskyism in China and deepen the understanding of the relationship between the Communists of China and Soviet Union. Due to lack of related resources, the public did not have a full understanding of the relationship between Chen Duxiu and Leon Trotsky. Nowadays, this situation has already improved a lot by following reasons. Firstly, more printed Chinese materials about Chen Duxiu are available. Secondly, in 1980, the "Exile papers of Leon Trotsky" which includes letters, personal notes, manuscripts, and many unpublished resource were accessible.

In 1932, Chen was arrested by the government of the Shanghai International Settlement, where he had been living since 1927, and extradited to Nanjing. In 1933, he was sentenced to 15 years in prison by the Nationalist government, but was released on parole in 1937 after the outbreak of the Second Sino Japanese War. Chen was one of the few early leaders of the Communist party to survive the turmoil of the 1930s, but he was never able to regain any influence within the party he had founded. For the last decade of his life, he faded into obscurity. At the time that he was released, both the supporters of Chen and the pro Comintern leaders who opposed him had either been killed or had fallen out of favor with the Communist membership. The Chinese Communist Party managed to survive the purges only by fleeing to the northern frontier in the Long March of 1934–1935, during which Mao Zedong emerged as leader. If only for sheer survival, the Communists had to flee the cities where China's fledgling industrial working class was concentrated, seek refuge in remote rural areas, and there mobilize the support of peasants; this was naturally taken as a vindication of Mao's position in his debate with Chen. Mao and this new generation of Communists would lead the party in China for the next fifty years. On 23 August, Chen was released from prison and refused multiple offers of positions from the Kuomintang. He said that despite the importance of the war effort, "Chiang Kai shek killed many of my comrades. He also killed my two sons. He and I are absolutely irreconcilable." In August 1937, Chen met with the heads of the Chinese Communist Party Office in Nanjing. This led to a concerted attempt by Luo Han and Ye Jianying to allow Chen to return to the Party. In September Mao responded saying that Chen could rejoin the party if he agreed to publicly renounce Trotskyism and express support for the United Front against Japan. Chen responded by letter to the Central Committee of the CCP that he agreed with its line of resistance but would not renounce Trotskyism. This was the end of the last serious attempt to rejoin the CCP. Chen then travelled from place to place until the summer of 1938, when he arrived at the wartime capital of Chongqing and took a position teaching at a junior high school. In poor health and with few remaining friends, Chen Duxiu later retired to Jiangjin, a small town west of Chongqing, where he died in 1942 at the age of 62. Today, he is buried at his birthplace of Anqing.

Chen felt that his articles should reflect the needs of society. He believed that the progress of society could not be achieved without those who accurately report social weaknesses and sicknesses. Chen's articles were always expressive. He criticized the traditional Chinese officials as corrupt and guilty of other wrongdoings. He was under constant attack from conservatives in China, and had to flee to Japan four times. In China, he spent much of his life in the French Concession and the Shanghai International Settlement in order to pursue his writing and scholarly activities free from official harassment. Chen's articles strove to attract publicity, and often arouse discussion by using hyperbole. He lashed out against the backwardness and corruption in China. In New Youth, he wrote various articles using pseudonyms to form "discussions", in order to arouse public interest. Chen's publications emphasized the responses from their audience. In New Youth there were forums and citizens' columns. On average, there were 6 letters from the public in each issue. Whether in praise or strong opposition, Chen encouraged all to write. He also thought that teamwork was very important in journalism, and consequently asked for help from many talented authors and journalists, including Hu Shih and Lu Xun.

On 31 March 1904, Chen founded Anhui Suhua Bao, a newspaper that he established with Fang Zhiwu and Wu Shou in Tokyo to promote revolutionary ideas using vernacular Chinese, which was simple to understand and easy for the general public to read. While Chen was the chief secretary of the newspaper, its circulation increased from only a thousand copies to more than three times that figure in less than half a year, becoming one of the most popular vernacular Chinese newspapers in print at that time. During 1904 and 1905, a total of twenty three issues were published. Each issue had 40 pages – about 15,000 words. However, due to political pressures, the paper was barred from publishing in 1905. Chen had three main objectives in publishing Anhui Suhua Bao: to let his countrymen in Anhui keep abreast of the politics of the Qing dynasty; to spread knowledge to the paper's readers through vernacular Chinese; and, to promote revolutionary ideas to the public. Chen believed that most Chinese believed that the importance of the family was greater than that of the state, and that this limited their interest in political events. He also found Chinese people in general to be excessively superstitious. Chen urged Chinese people to participate in politics through the publication of Anhui Suhua Bao. After its sixteenth issue, the newspaper added an extra 16 columns; the most popular were on military events, Chinese philosophy, hygiene, and astronomy. Almost all of these additional topics were written by Chen. His pen name was San'ai (三爱/三愛). At least 50 articles were published under this name.

In early 1914, Chen went to Japan, where he worked as an editor and writer in the Tokyo Jiayin Magazine, which was published by Zhang Shizhao. Chen once wrote an article entitled "Self Consciousness on Patriotism" (爱国心与自觉/愛國心與自覺) which conveyed a strong sense of patriotism and encouraged people to fight for their freedom. It promoted the idea that those who love their country should spare no pains to protect it, and should fight for the rights of its citizens. This group of people should work together towards the same goal harmoniously. The article was threatening to Yuan Shikai's government, as it tried to arouse the self consciousness of the Chinese people. This preliminary magazine was released for 10 issues in total, before it was prevented from publishing. The magazine was resumed in 1925 in Beijing with the new name Tokyo Jiayin Weekly.

In 1915, Chen started an influential monthly periodical in the French Concession of Shanghai, The Youth Magazine (青年杂志/青年雜誌), which was later renamed New Youth (新青年, literally New Youth). Chen Duxiu said "In many people’s estimation, the differences among Chinese, Indian, and European culture are almost entirely differences in ethnicity, and thus are not limited to those of culture.”