On Suppression of the Counter-Revolutionaries

From December 1950 to October 1951, Mao Zedong drafted telegrams and comments for the Central Committee of the Communist Party on suppressing counter-revolutionary movements. It was included in the Collected Works of Mao Zedong, Volume 6. In the early days of the founding of New China, the new people's regime was faced with a severe domestic situation, there were about 600,000 counter-revolutionaries, such as KMT secret agents, 600,000 backbone members of reactionary party groups, as well as a large number of bandits, bullies and leaders of reactionary societies, lurking around the country.

These counter-revolutionaries repeatedly carried out major sabotage and undermining activities in the financial and economic sectors in an attempt to obstruct the construction of the Chinese people and seriously threaten the new people's political power. Therefore, it is an urgent task to resolutely suppress all counter revolutionary activities and severely punish all counter revolutionaries who harm the people, so as to consolidate the people's democratic dictatorship and consolidate and develop the victorious achievements of the Chinese people. Mao Zedong's telegrams and comments on suppressing the counter-revolutionary movement mainly include the following contents:

(1) We must adhere to the unified leadership of Party committees in anti-counterrevolutionary work. The targets of counter-revolt include: (A)Counter-revolutionaries in society; (B)The counter-revolutionaries hidden in the old personnel and new intellectuals of the military and political system; (C)Counter-revolutionaries hidden in the Party.

To suppress the counter-revolutionaries in these three aspects, we should take steps, not simultaneously. However, we must promptly clean up the counter revolution in some important departments of the Party, the government and the army, especially in the public security departments. If possible, we can do one or two at the same time. As for bandit leaders, hardened brigands, bullies, important secret agents and secret service leaders with evidence, we should let go and kill several groups. "It is a great struggle to suppress counter-revolutionaries. Only when this is done well can the regime be consolidated."

(2) The basic principle of anti-counterrevolutionary work is to “strike surely, accurately and relentlessly.”

"To strike surely means to pay attention to tactics. To strike accurately means to avoid wrong executions. To strike relentlessly means resolutely to kill all such reactionary elements as deserve the death penalty (of course, those who don't will not be executed)." Firstly, the principle of evidence should be adhered to in the fight against counter-revolutionaries. The purpose of mastering evidence is not to make mistakes and to make oneself passive. "The secret agents and the secret service leaders who have no evidence should be investigated to obtain corroboration, instead of killing people at will."

In order to suppress counter-revolt, we should avoid two kinds of deviations: one is the deviation of lethargy, the other is the deviation of rashness. “In particular, rashness presents the major danger. For by education and persuasion those who are lethargic can eventually become active, and it doesn't make much difference if a counter-revolutionary is put to death a few days sooner or a few days later. But being rash and making wrong arrests and executions will produce very bad effects. We must suppress all counter-revolutionaries, but on no account should we make wrong arrests or executions."

Attention should be paid to extensive publicity and careful examination of the list in the work of suppressing counter revolutionaries. Extensive publicity should be carried out in the cities and villages to make the people well-known about the work.

The scope of the targets of counter-revolutionary work should be strictly limited to the bandit chieftains, hardened brigands and local tyrants in the rural areas, and the local tyrants, bandit chieftains, hardened brigands, leaders of criminal gangs and heads of reactionary secret societies in the cities; and not include thieves, drug addicts, ordinary landlords, ordinary members of the KMT and KMT league, and the ordinary officers of the KMT.

(3) The sentencing of death penalty should be strict and prudent, and the policy of "death sentence with a reprieve" should be adopted more often.

Mao Zedong pointed out that the number of counter-revolutionaries’ executions must be strictly controlled.We should not execute too many people. If we execute too many people, we will lose social sympathy and labor force.

“Capital punishment execution shall be confined to those who owe blood debts, or who have committed other major crimes which evoke public indignation, such as frequent rape or the plundering of large amounts of property, or who have done extremely serious harm to the national interest, while the policy towards the rest shall be one of passing the death sentence, granting a two-year reprieve and subjecting them to forced labour during this period to see how they behave.”

For the sake of prudence, "the power to approve the list of arresting and executing people must be controlled in the hands of the prefectural Party committee". A very small number of people who carry out the death penalty must report to the major administrative region or the major military region for approval.

As a precaution, the very small number of executions to be carried out (amounting to roughly 10% to 20% of all those sentenced to death) must without exception be reported to the greater administrative areas or the greater military areas for approval.

This policy of "imposing death penalty, suspension of execution, compulsory labor and observing aftereffect" later formed a system of suspension of death penalty in our judicial practice, which greatly controlled and reduced the actual number of executions of death penalty and played a good social and political role.

Mao Zedong's telegrams and comments on the suppression of the counter-revolutionary movement provided general guidelines for the smooth progress of the suppression of the counter-revolutionary movement. At the same time, they corrected the deviations in the work of suppressing the counter-revolutionary movement in some localities, basically eliminated the remaining counter-revolutionary forces left by the KMT in the mainland, eliminated the reactionary organizations such as secret agents, tyrants, bandit leaders, and sects that were rampant for a while, and consolidated the new vitality people's political power.