The Yan'an Rectification Movement () was a political mass movement led by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from 1942 to 1945. The movement took place in the Yan'an Soviet, a revolutionary base area centered on the remote city of Yan'an. Although it was during the Second Sino-Japanese War, the CCP was experiencing a time of relative peace when they could focus on internal affairs.
The legacies of the Yan'an Rectification Movement proved fundamental to the subsequent history of the Chinese Communist Party, according to Kenneth Lieberthal. These included the consolidation of Mao Zedong's paramount role within the CCP, especially from 1942 to 1944, and the adoption of a party constitution that endorsed Marxist-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought as guiding ideologies.Lieberthal (2003), p. 46. This move formalised Mao's deviation from the Moscow party line and the importance of Mao's view of 'adaptation of communism to the conditions of China'. The Rectification Campaign was successful in either convincing or coercing the other leaders of the CCP to support Mao. Because the CCP had overcome great odds to grow and develop during this period, the methods employed in Yan'an were looked upon in reverence during Mao's later years. After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, Mao repeatedly used some of the tactics that had been successful in Yan'an whenever he felt the need to monopolize political power. To a large extent, the Yan'an Rectification Campaign began with the "systematic remolding of human minds".
The CCP made efforts to attack intellectuals and replace the culture of the May Fourth Movement with that of the CCP. The rectification movement is regarded by many as the origin of Mao Zedong's cult of personality.
Background In the 1930s the remote region of Yan'an had not experienced the same turmoil and hostilities as other mainland territories. Situated in northwest China, the area was also difficult to attack. CCP members mostly arrived there after the Long March (1934–1935). The area was known as a territory of camaraderie without corruption, though the Rectification Movement essentially changed everything.
The movement sought to eliminate ideological differences between cadres and intellectuals and to mold them into socialist new men. According to official CCP sources, the purpose of the Rectification Campaign was to give a basic grounding in the Marxist theory and Leninist principles of party organization to the thousands of new members who had joined the CCP during its expansion after 1937. A second, equally important aspect of the movement was the elimination of the blind imitation of Soviet models, obedience to Soviet directives (mostly communicated to China via the Communist International), and "empiricism". Mao emphasized that the campaign aimed at "rectifying mistaken ideas" and not the people who held them.Short, Philip. Mao: A Life. .
Modern research by Chinese and Western scholars, in particular the interpretation of history professor Gao Hua in his work How the Red Sun Rose: The Origins and Development of the Yan'an Rectification Movement, 1930–1945, have focused on the political nature of the Rectification Movement. According to Gao, the Rectification Movement had four purposes: To end the veneration of "Party intellectuals who had studied in the Soviet Union and those who had been educated abroad or through "standard" education within China", ultimately forming the new fashion: "Being well-read was wrong-headed, and ignorance of the classics was commendable." To purge the May Fourth "notions of freedom, democracy, and individual liberation among Party intellectuals", establishing the concept of "the leader and the collective above all, and the individual as negligible." Mao first "drew on the support of the liberal intellectuals in the Party to encircle and suppress the Soviet faction", then reinstated the Soviet faction and used them "to join with [Mao] in suppressing the remnants (the liberal intellectuals) of the 'May Fourth' influence in the Party." To theorize the concept of "peasants as the principal force of the Chinese Revolution" To build up Party ideology and organization by using "the Communist Party's theory of inner-Party struggle", employing "ideological persuasion and coercion to forge an ideal Communist 'New Man' who combined loyalty and obedience with a fighting spirit."
The Yan'an era had a profound effect on the CCP and its future fortunes. When the CCP completed the Long March, it was a relatively small band of less than 10,000 worn out troops from the south, displaced to an isolated and poor area in the hinterlands of northern China. By the end of the Yan'an era, however, the CCP's forces had grown to nearly 2.8 million members, and it governed nineteen base areas that contained a population of nearly one hundred million people.
Remolding of the volunteer corps CCP membership was strongly shaped by the devastation of the final battles for the Jiangxi Soviet, the Long March. With only a few original members of the CCP surviving until the end of the Yan'an period, the party as of the mid-1940s consisted of 90% peasants recruited from the base areas of north China.
The mostly young volunteers who arrived in Yan'an after the Long March were "vital to Mao because they were relatively well educated, and he needed competent administrators to staff his future regime." Most of the Long Marchers and rural recruits from within the CCP-controlled base areas were illiterate peasants. It was these more recent volunteers who were Mao's primary "target".
A large number of the young volunteers congregated in Yan'an, the capital of Mao's CCP. By the time Mao Zedong started his drive to "condition" them, around 40,000 had arrived. Most were in their late teens and early twenties, had joined the CCP in territories controlled by the Nationalists, and later departed to Yan'an. They were excited at reaching what was called a "revolutionary Mecca". One young volunteer described his feeling: "At last we saw the heights of Yenan City. We were so excited we wept. We cheered from our truck... We started to sing the Internationale, and Russia's Motherland March.'"
The CCP's leadership, however, reflected its origins south of the Yangtze River, and was at best supplemented by the intellectuals who trekked out to Yan'an to join the party during the war against Japan. The Yan'an Rectification Campaign was also directed towards the indoctrination of older CCP personnel. "The Party chose to re-emphasize its basic principles during this period, in an evident determination to maintain its Leninist foundations in the midst of all the changes brought about by the war-time shift to the united front."
The Yan'an Rectification Campaign improved the discipline, education, and organization of the membership of the CCP. Having lost many veterans before and during the Long March, the CCP found new sources of recruits among urban youth, students, and intellectuals. Alienated from the Nationalist government and doubting its resolve in resisting the Japanese, many new CCP volunteers were drawn by communist propaganda that portrayed the CCP as "the saviors of the nation", promising democracy and liberal reforms. As a result, hundreds of thousands of students, teachers, artists, writers, and journalists poured into Yan'an, seeking a revolutionary career. In Marxist classification these new recruits were of petit bourgeois origin. Their enthusiasm and various sorts of expertise were useful for the revolution, but only after they had undergone a thorough political reeducation and ideological reform.
The process of indoctrination extended even to the cadres who had survived the Long March and "proven their revolutionary credibility." All CCP members were reeducated with the newly established "Mao Zedong Thought" in order to ensure their high compliance with the new leadership and the new party ideology. In order to secure his power, Mao supported his political authority with ethical and moral rhetoric.
Rise of Mao The Yan'an rectification saw Mao consolidate his position of preeminence in the CCP. To do this he undertook a "thought-reform campaign" from 1942 to 1944. The effort was partly a reflection of Mao's wish to eradicate Soviet influence. Under the conditions of CCP-controlled areas and incessant warfare, Mao could not rely on discipline alone to guarantee obedience in the CCP ranks. In order to ensure the party's obedience to his orders, Mao developed the techniques of the Rectification Campaign to implement 思想改造 sīxiǎng gǎizào "thought reform" or "ideological transformation". Mao's tactics often included isolating and attacking dissenting individuals in "study groups".
Among the texts studied collectively were two volumes of documents from the Sixth Party Congress which Mao edited, Before the Sixth Party Congress and After the Sixth Party Congress. These volumes contended that Mao represented the correct political line of the CCP and contended that Wang Ming and other rivals of Mao were "rightists."
Academics Tony Saich and David Apter describe the group study of texts and the collective self-transformation process in the Yan'an Rectification Movement as a form of "exegetical bonding" which, along with Mao's personal charisma, was a major factor in his becoming the primary "ideological steward" of the Party.
Following the campaign, the CCP ideology consolidated around Mao Zedong's thought. The concept of the mass line developed through the movement.
Operational principles The CCP established numerous schools, formulating a new type of educational system. Among these schools were the Anti-Japanese Military and Political University, the Lu Xun Academy of the Arts, the Northwest Public School, the Central Party School, the Academy of Marxism-Leninism, the Women's University, Yan'an university, and the Academy of the Nationality, as well as a number of special training programs. All veterans and new recruits had to be enrolled and educated in one of these institutions, in accordance with their previous training or their expertise, before they could be trusted with assignment to party and government positions.
At the end of the Yan'an Rectification Campaign the CCP had developed an operational set of principles and practices that differed greatly from the centralized, functionally specialized, hierarchical, command-oriented approach imposed by Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union. In what some authors have labeled the "Yan'an complex", the CCP emphasized a combination of qualities that can be summed up as: decentralized rule with flexibility allowed to local leaders; the importance of ideology in keeping cadres loyal; a strong preference for officials whose leadership spans a range of areas; stress on developing and maintaining close ties with the local population; focus on egalitarianism and simple living among officials.
These became deeply held values of the CCP, and years later became central to the party's mythology that reminisced about the success of the Yan'an era.
Thought reform
The campaign began as a thought reform movement. During the campaign, guided study of texts along with self-criticism of erroneous thought were methods used to incorporate the large number of new recruits into the CCP.
During the Yan'an Rectification Campaign, more sophisticated techniques of thought control were used than had been previously attempted in China. Relying on criticism, self-criticism, "struggle", confession, and the content of the Marxist doctrine, these methods were heavily influenced by contemporary Soviet practices of "thought reform".
Among the major perceived wrongs intended to be rooted out through the campaign were liberalism and criticism of CCP leadership.