The Central Committee of the Communist Party of China:  Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party

This is the first time since the founding of the Communist Party of China that an important historical document has concluded several major historical issues, and it is also a major achievement of the Yan'an Rectification Movement.

This Resolution was adopted at the final meeting of the Seventh Plenary Session of the Sixth Central Committee of the Party on April 20, 1945. It is Included in Selected Works of Mao Zedong, Vol. 3, published by People's Publishing House in 1991. The resolution was modeled on the “Draft Historical Question” written by Mao Zedong in 1942 and was drafted beginning in May 1944.

At the beginning of the Seventh Plenary Session of the Sixth Central Committee of the Party, the Preparatory Committee for the Resolution on the History of the Party, chaired by Ren Bishi and attended by Liu Shaoqi, Kang Sheng, Zhou Enlai, Zhang Wentian, Peng Zhen, Gao Gang, and Bo Gu, was set up, and the drafting work lasted for a year and was revised several times. It was later directly chaired by Mao Zedong and revised several times.

Hu Qiaomu, as Mao's secretary and secretary of the Politburo of the Central Committee, participated in the drafting, revision, and finalization of the resolution. During the Seventh Plenary Session of the Sixth Central Committee, many senior Party cadres participated in the revision and discussion of historical resolutions.

The Resolution was originally intended to be submitted to the Seventh Party Congress for discussion and adoption, but to enable the Seventh Congress to focus on the issue of anti-war guidelines for nation-building, it was discussed and adopted at the Seventh Plenary Session of the Sixth Central Committee of the Party instead.

The Resolution summarized the historical experience of the Party since its founding, especially the period from the Fourth Plenary Session of the Sixth Central Committee to the Zunyi Conference, highly valued the outstanding contribution of Mao Zedong in applying the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism to solve the problems of the Chinese revolution, and fully affirmed the great significance of establishing the leadership of Mao Zedong in the Party.

It was pointed out that "Our Party finally established the leadership of Comrade Mao Zedong in the Central Committee and the entire Party during the final period of the Agrarian Revolutionary War. This was the greatest achievement of the Communist Party of China in this period and the greatest guarantee of the liberation of the Chinese people."

The Resolution comprehensively expounds on the political, military, organizational, and ideological manifestations of the “Left” errors, especially those represented by Wang Ming, and the serious harm they caused.

It is considered that all political, military, and organizational mistakes "come from ideological violations of Marxism-Leninism's dialectical and historical materialism, from subjectivism and formalism, dogmatism and empiricism".

Special emphasis is placed on dogmatism characterized by not starting from the actual situation, but from individual words and phrases in books.

"Instead of carefully studying China's political, military, economic and cultural past and present according to the position and methods of Marxism-Leninism, carefully studying the actual experience of the Chinese revolution, drawing conclusions as a guide to action for the Chinese revolution, and then testing the correctness of these conclusions in the practice of the masses; on the contrary, it discards the essence of Marxism-Leninism and transports. On the contrary, it discards the essence of Marxism-Leninism and transports some individual words and phrases from Marxist-Leninist books to China as dogma, without studying whether these words and phrases are in line with the actual situation in China at the present time."

The Resolution focused on analyzing the social and ideological roots of the mistakes. It was pointed out that semi-colonial and semi-feudal China was an extremely vast country for the petty bourgeoisie.

The CPC is not only surrounded by this broad class from outside the Party; but also within the Party, due to the great victory of Marxism-Leninism in the world since the October Revolution, and the present socio-political situation in China, especially the historical development of the Communist Party and the KMT, it is decided that there cannot be a strong petty-bourgeois party in China, "As a result, a large number of petty-bourgeois revolutionary-democratic elements sought a way out of the proletarian ranks so that elements of petty-bourgeois origin also made up the majority in the Party.

Moreover, even the masses of workers and members of the Workers' Party, under China's economic conditions, are prone to be tainted with petty-bourgeois overtones. Therefore, it is inevitable and not surprising that petty-bourgeois ideas are often reflected in our Party in various ways."

The Resolution clarified the correct policy to be adopted in carrying out the internal struggle of the Party, that is, to adhere to the policy of "punishing the former to prevent the latter and curing the sick to save the others" and "to clarify ideas and unite comrades at the same time".

The Resolution pointed out that the future task of the Party was "to unite all the Party comrades as a harmonious family based on the unanimity of Marxist-Leninist ideology, as a solid piece of steel, to fight for the complete victory of the Anti-Japanese War and the complete liberation of the Chinese people".

The adoption of the “Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party” marked the successful end of the Rectification Movement, unified the understanding of the whole Party, strengthened the unity of the whole Party based on Mao Zedong Thought, promoted the rapid progress of the people's revolutionary cause, and made full preparations for the convening of the Seventh National Congress of the Party.