Concluding Speech at Meeting in Commemoration of Lu Hsun
by Chen Po-ta
[This article is reprinted from Peking Review, Vol. 9, #45, Nov. 4,
1966, pp. 11-12. Thanks are due to the WWW.WENGEWANG.ORG
web site for some of the work done for this posting.]
I WISH to say a few words at the conclusion of our meeting to commemorate Lu Hsun, that great fighter on the cultural front.
On the eve of his death, Lu Hsun made a famous testament. It contains some penetrating remarks which are worthy of deep thought even today.
Lu Hsun wrote: “Never mix with people who injure others yet oppose revenge and advocate tolerance.”
He also said: “... once during a fever (Lu Hsun had tuberculosis and often suffered attacks of fever) I remembered that when a European is dying, there is usually some sort of ceremony in which he asks the pardon of others and pardons them. I have a great many enemies, and I thought, what should my answer be if some modernized persons should ask me my views on this? After considering it, I decided: Let them go on hating me. I shall not forgive a single one of them.”
I feel this a most important testament Lu Hsun has left us, something we must never forget.
Lu Hsun was hitting out at the renegades of that time who went over to the enemy but pretended that they had “foresight.” Lu Hsun mockingly dubbed them “modernized persons.”
At that time, Lu Hsun actively supported our Party and the Anti-Japanese National United Front advocated by our great leader Chairman Mao. The counterrevolutionary Trotskyites, however, bitterly opposed Chairman Mao’s proposal for unanimous resistance to Japan, so Lu Hsun denounced them scathingly. Lu Hsun sharply pointed out that the Trotskyites’ behaviour “runs counter to the present-day standards of morality of the Chinese people.” At the same time, Lu Hsun entirely supported Chairman Mao’s policy of both unity and struggle in the united front, and his policy of maintaining proletarian independence within the united front. Lu Hsun bitingly exposed the fact that “ever since the ‘coalition front’ was proposed, those ‘revolutionary writers’ who went over to the enemy have reappeared posing as pioneers of the ‘coalition front’ All their contemptible acceptance of bribes and their traffic with the enemy are now made out to be ‘progressive,’ ‘glorious deeds.’”
Lu Hsun accepted Chairman Mao’s thought and was diametrically opposed to the capitulationism of Wang Ming, Chou Yang and their like.
Now, thirty years later, Lu Hsun’s prophetic words have not lost a ray of their lustre. Let those shameless modern revisionists listen to them! Was not every word of Lu Hsun’s exposure of capitulationism and the traitors of that time also meant for them?
The modern revisionists with the C.P.S.U. leadership as their centre have betrayed the great Lenin and are on a honeymoon coexisting with the U.S. imperialists. In this criminal cause, they are using the name of so-called “united action” in an attempt to sell out the revolutions of the world’s peoples and to sacrifice the world-shaking, heroic and great struggle of the Vietnamese people.
I think it is very useful today, as we commemorate Lu Hsun, to recall his testament, for it helps to reveal the schemes of the modern revisionists and the U.S. imperialists in their united opposition to revolution, to the people, to communism, to the Vietnamese people’s anti-U.S. war, and to New China. Once the people of the various countries see through the schemes of the modern revisionists in capitulating to imperialism headed by the United States, then, as our Chairman Mao has often pointed out, they will take their destinies into their own hands and their revolutions will be ever-victorious.
Long live the spirit of Lu Hsun, the great comrade-in-arms of Comrade Mao Tse-tung!
Let us follow in the footsteps of Lu Hsun, the forerunner of the cultural revolution, and march forward!
Let us forge ahead along the road of the great thought of Mao Tse-tung!
Contents page for this Peking Review issue.
Peking Review article list (in date order).
Peking Review article list (by subject).