A few notes on the "cipher event".
The above-mentioned "secret wire incident" is a historical fact that I personally experienced. Because the "secret wire incident" is a matter of great importance, and as a historical issue, there are still some controversies. Next, I would like to touch on a few more specific questions about this incident in order to clarify the historical facts and give readers a comprehensive understanding of the truth of this issue.
(1) Disclosure of "cipher incidents".
The "Secret Cable Incident" occurred on September 9, 1935, but because of its important content, the consequences were dangerous, and the main party involved was Zhang Guotao, who was then vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, general political commissar of the Red Army, and held the military and political power of the Red Fourth Front.
As a result, the Party Central Committee had to take extremely cautious steps when disclosing this incident.
On September 12, 1935, after the Party Central Committee quickly got out of danger and led the column of the Central Military Commission and the Third Army of the Red Army to the north alone to the Russian border to join the First Army of the Red Army, it immediately convened an enlarged meeting of the Politburo to discuss and criticize Zhang Guotao's mistake of splitting the party and the Red Army on a small scale, and made the "Wrong Decision on Comrade Zhang Guotao" without directly talking about the content of the secret telegram.
However, even this decision was not immediately announced by the Party Central Committee in consideration of the unity within the Party and the Red Army, as well as for the sake of education and the enlisting of Zhang Guotao himself.
After that, Zhang Guotao insisted on acting recklessly, did not listen to advice, first violated the Party Central Committee's policy of going north, and led the main forces of our Left and Right Route Armies to the south without authorization, and on the way north after the defeat in the south, and after the three armies joined forces, he repeatedly interfered with the implementation of the Party Central Committee's strategic plan, forcing the Party Central Committee to meet again to discuss the issue of Zhang Guotao after moving to Yan'an in January 1937, and to publicize Zhang Guotao's crime of splitting the party and splitting the Red Army within the scope of the whole party and the whole army.
The first to disclose the "secret cable incident" was Mao Zedong.
On March 21, 1937, at the enlarged meeting of the Politburo held by the Party Central Committee in Yan'an, Mao Zedong criticized Zhang Guotao for conspiring against the Party Central Committee in person, and pointed out: Zhang Guotao turned against Mao Ergai as soon as he arrived, and he held a meeting of his overseers here and used a gun to review the line of the Party Central Committee...... Comrade Ye Jianying stole the secret order to show me, and we had to go north alone, because the telegram said that we should go south and carry out a thorough struggle within the party. If you weren't careful, you would have had a fight.
Later, Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, and some senior cadres who knew about it talked about or recounted Zhang Guotao's "secret cable incident" in articles and memoirs.
What I know is:
After Lin Biao's conspiracy to seize power was exposed, on August 28, 1971, when Mao Zedong talked with Ding Sheng, Liu Xingyuan, Wei Guoqing and others in Changsha, he said: ...... Later, Zhang Guotao was split up. This time, Comrade Ye Jianying made a great contribution. Zhang Guotao sent a telegram to Chen Changhao and Xu Xiangqian, saying that he must resolutely go south, otherwise it will be completely resolved. At that time, Comrade Ye Jianying was the chief of staff, and he gave me this telegram first, not Chen Changhao and Xu Xiangqian, and we left, otherwise we would have been prisoners. Comrade Ye Jianying has meritorious service at the critical moment, so you should respect him. Wang Dongxing also took part in the talk.
After Lin Biao defected and fell to his death, on June 12, 1972, Zhou Enlai said on the issue of secret telegrams at the report meeting on criticizing Lin Rectification: Comrade Jianying first reported the secret telegram to Chairman Mao, so the (Central Committee) escaped danger and made great contributions. Chairman Mao often talked about this matter, and many comrades present here have heard it.
Didn't Chairman Mao always use this ancient thing as a metaphor? Didn't there be a Lu Duan in the Song Dynasty, the ancients had two sayings: "Zhuge is only cautious in his life, and Lu Duan is not confused about major things." "The Chairman used this example many times to say this.
At that time, the army took action, and later Chen Changhao saw the telegram, knew about it, and wanted to chase it. According to what Comrade Xu Xiangqian said at the group meeting this time, he stopped it. He objected to it and did not let him chase it. He said, how can the Red Army fight the Red Army. We believe in Comrade Xu Xiangqian's words, because there are always comrades who take the overall situation into account.
So that time it was a very sinister environment. That is to say, without Comrade Jianying's skill, if Xu Xiangqian hadn't come out to stop it, the situation would have been very bad. At the critical moment, it was revealed that he was a comrade! As the old saying goes, "The wind knows the grass, and the board knows the honest minister"!
The above-mentioned conversations of Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai have been recorded.
Peng Dehuai wrote: "Ye Jianying's secret report: Zhang Guotao called the southbound ......, and I discussed with Ye Jianying how to steal the map and come to the headquarters of the Third Army Corps before dawn tomorrow morning, and Ye signaled to find a way. …… I haven't seen it yet, so I thought something was wrong. Just when he was suspicious, Ye Rate Second Bureau (Director Zeng Xisheng) even brought the map. The surveillance arranged by Chen Changhao was all gotten rid of by Ye, fortunately. ”
After smashing the "Gang of Four", on May 14, 1977, Nie Rongzhen wrote a poem to congratulate Ye Jianying on his 80th birthday. If Lu Duan knows major things, he will be ashamed of his success", once again praised Ye Jianying for his immortal feat of defending Chairman Mao and the Party Central Committee after discovering that Zhang Guotao had "completely resolved" the secret order of the Party Central Committee and the Central Red Army on the way to western Sichuan during the Long March.
In 1981, in an interview with Epstein, Liu Hui, and Zeng Shuzhi, Deng Yingchao said after talking about the grassland: "He (Zhang Guotao) sent a telegram to Chen Changhao of the Fourth Front Army, asking him to solve Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, Zhang Wentian, Bogu and others by force, just to arrest these people." As a result, this telegram was obtained by Ye Jianying, the chief of staff, and immediately reported to Chairman Mao. Chairman Mao was wise and decisive, and led the First Front Army to travel seventy or eighty miles overnight and get rid of the Fourth Front Army. ”
On June 15, 1984, in an interview with American writer Harrison Salisbury, Li Xiannian said: I remember that there was a key sentence in the telegram, that is, Chen Changhao was instructed to "thoroughly carry out the intra-party struggle."
Since then, many veteran comrades who have experienced that period of struggle have separately disclosed the "secret cable incident" from different angles in their memoirs. In his "Memories and Research", Li Weihan said: "...... He (Zhang Guotao) also violated the decision of the Politburo meeting and sent a secret telegram asking the Right Route Army to immediately go south.
The Right Route Army was Xu Xiang's former commander-in-chief and Chen Changhao was the political commissar. The Right Route Army had two armies of the Four Fronts, the 30th Army, and the 4th Army, and the 30th Army was the main force of the Four Fronts.
Luo Fu told me that Zhang Guotao had a telegram saying that if Mao Zedong, Luo Fu, Bogu, Zhou Enlai, and others did not agree to go south, they would be placed under house arrest. After telling me what happened, Luo Fu asked me to take charge of bringing the central organs, government organs, the General Political Department, and other units to Brazil in the early morning of the next day, and went north with the Party Central Committee, and asked me to return to the central organs as head of the organization. Luo Fu told me to keep the above decision absolutely secret. ”
The above-mentioned speeches and writings were all made by the central leading comrades and senior cadres of the Red Army who followed the actions of the Right Route Army at that time, and their disclosure of the "secret cable incident" is enough to show that the occurrence of the "secret cable incident" is a historical fact that no one can erase. There are many other writings and conversations that expose the issue of Zhang Guotao's secret telegram, and I will not list them all here.
(2) The process of revealing the basic content of the cipher telegram
While Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, Deng Yingchao, and others disclosed the secret telegram incident, they all talked about the central content of the "secret telegram" sent by Zhang Guotao, which was to ask all the Right Route Army to go south, and if the central authorities insisted on going north and did not agree to go south, they would use force to solve the problem. However, none of the above central leaders talked about the full text of the cipher. At the same time, due to various reasons, we still can't find the original cipher.
Zhang Guotao attended the enlarged meeting of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee on March 21, 1937, and when Mao Zedong disclosed the "secret cable incident" in person, he did not make any defense, nor did he give an in-depth account of the situation about the secret telegram.
Chen Changhao died during the Cultural Revolution, and he was never seen to talk about secret telegrams.
The whereabouts of other people who had seen the contents of the secret telegram were still unknown to the people who sent the telegram and the translator appointed by Zhang Guotao at the Aba Red Army General Headquarters. In addition to me, Chen Maosheng died heroically on April 26, 1937 in the battle against the enemy in Hongliuyuanzi, Anxi, Gansu Province, when the Western Route Army was defeated.
Although Ye Jianying, on the other hand, did not deserve his credit; although he talked with a small number of leading comrades and their children, and I about the "secret cable incident" after the incident, he never published an article on this incident, nor did he make a speech.
Although I have not openly talked about the "secret telegram incident" since the "secret telegram incident" occurred on 9 September 1935 in accordance with the instructions of Chief of Staff Ye Jianying, I was young at that time and was extremely impressed by this major event that had a bearing on the fate of the party and the Red Army, so much so that I could still remember the general content of the secret telegram sent by Zhang Guotao many years after the incident.
Beginning in 1977, after some newspapers and magazines published articles related to the "secret cable incident," the editorial department of the then Soldiers' Publishing House (now the People's Liberation Army Publishing House) felt that the original 10 volumes of "Sparks in the Plain" lacked a memoir of the struggle between the Party Central Committee and Zhang Guotao to split the party and the Red Army during the Long March, so they sent three comrades to me to investigate and explain their intentions.
I told them the basics of what I knew. They asked me to write a memoir. At the request of the editorial department of Spark in the Plain, I wrote an article entitled "A Grim Hour" in the winter of 1978 and sent it to them. At that time, Jiefangjun Bao also needed this kind of memoir, and with my consent, "The Grim Moment" was published in the Jiefangjun Bao issue of May 1, 1979. "Sparks in the Plain" also compiled this memoir into the third episode.
In my article "The Grim Hour", I recalled the contents of the cipher as follows:
× day was reported. After long-term consideration, the time is not ripe for the northward advance, and it is most appropriate to establish a base area on the Sichuan-Kang border, and then develop in the northeast direction when the tide of revolution comes, hoping to persuade Mao (Zedong), Zhou (Enlai), and Zhang (Wentian) to abandon the Maoergai plan and turn back to the south with the Right Route Army. If they do not heed the advice, they should immediately monitor their movements, and if they persist in going north, they should be resolved by force.
This is the content of the recollection, and it is not exactly the same as the original cipher. But I'm sure that's pretty much the basic content of the original.
There are a few points that I remember very clearly in my mind:
First, we resolutely oppose going north.
The second is to ask the Right Route Army to turn back and go south.
Third, if the central authorities insist on going north and do not agree to go south, they should monitor their actions, and it is not accurate to remember whether it is a "solution by force" or a "complete solution," but it means that the central authorities should be harmed by force.
Before writing this reminiscence, I had consulted the relevant articles published in the newspapers and magazines of the time. At that time, the phrase was "to settle by force", so I used it as well.
Later, I saw that the record of Mao Zedong's conversation with senior cadres in Changsha on August 28, 1971 was "completely resolved". Therefore, when I published my book "The Steps of Youth" in July 1984, in the subheading of Chapter 8 "Grim Moments," it was written that "the struggle within the Party should be waged and resolved once and for all." There are no quotation marks in both places, indicating that it is not the original text of the cipher, but the original meaning.
Ye Jianying and his agent (guard) Fan Xixian, after reading the content of the secret telegram recalled in the article "Grim Moment" published in the "People's Liberation Army Daily", confirmed: This means so. It is true that Ye Shuai asked Lu Liping for maps and telegrams. (Fan ID attached)
In addition, I would like to make some additional comments on how I was able to understand the contents of the cipher as a combat staff officer at that time:
Ever since the Red Front Army had radio stations, the operational staff officers of the headquarters that had radio stations could not only read telegrams related to the operation, but could also draft telegrams in this regard, submit them to the chief for signature, and send them to the Translation and Telecommunications Section (Unit) for translation and distribution.
This system was also adopted in the Red Fourth Front Army, and it is still the case today.
Here, we might as well cite some reminiscences of two veteran confidential workers, Li Zhizhong (of the First Front Army) and Ding Yuan (of the Fourth Front Army), to illustrate this issue.
When recalling the relationship between the Confidential Section and the Operations Section of the Red Army General Headquarters, Comrade Li Zhizhong said: In the Red Army era, during the Red Army's Long March, the Confidential Section and the Operations Section had close contacts with each other. For example, Huang Huxian, Kong Shiquan, Lu Liping, Luo Shunchu, Huang (Wang), Zeng Zhaotai, Xie Hanchu, and other operational staff officers of the Operations Section of the Headquarters often go to the Confidential Section to check for typos in the cipher telegram and proofread the cipher telegram; The verification of the time of the telegram was also orally explained by Comrade Mao Tingfang, chief of our confidential section, and in fact a system had been formed at that time.
In 1935, Comrade Ding Yuan was transferred to the Confidential Section of the General Headquarters as a translator and telegrapher. Recalling the business relationship between the Operations Section and the Confidential Section of the Red Army Headquarters, he also pointed out:
At that time, unrelated personnel were not allowed to enter the office of the Confidential Information Section, and the requirements for the interpretation and telecommunications personnel of the Confidential Information Section were also very strict, and they were not allowed to come into contact with other personnel casually.
The operational telegrams are drawn up by the chief himself, whether drafted by the chief himself or drafted by the operations section, and after approval by the chief, the staff officers of the operations section register and issue the telegram and send it to the confidential section, and the confidential officer on duty receives the draft and signs the register, and then translates it into a code and sends it to the radio station for distribution.
For the receipt of the report by the Confidential Section, the time number of the call is first registered, and after the translation is made, the telegram to be read by the chief is sent directly to the chief for reading. Telegrams relating to combat operations are sent to the Operations Section, which is submitted by the Operations Staff Officer to the Chief. As the work requires the approval of the chief, the operational staff officer can go to the Confidential Section to check and proofread the telegrams. Interpreters may also send or receive telegrams to the Operations Section.
As for why the original copy of the cipher message could not be found, it is necessary to start with the people who wrote the cipher and read the message at that time.
The author knows that there are 8 people who have seen the cipher:
Zhang Guotao (the writer of the secret telegram), the translator (designated by Zhang Guotao), Chen Maosheng, Lv Jixi (the translator), Ye Jianying (Lv, Chen send
to him), Mao Zedong (Ye gave it to him), Chen Changhao, Xu Xiangqian (receiver).
Except for Zhang Guotao, who has the original manuscript of power generation, and Chen Changhao, who has the original copy of the power collection, the rest are all those who have passed the secret electricity.
Among them, Mao Zedong, Ye Jianying, and Lu Jixi have all confirmed that Zhang Guotao sent a secret telegram.
Although Zhang Guotao "admitted the mistake of establishing the Provisional Central Committee...... I am willing to assume all the responsibilities for opposing the Central Committee. In the book he does not and does not mention the issue of cipherlands.
However, on March 30, 1937, when Zhang Guotao attended an enlarged meeting of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee that criticized him, Mao Zedong criticized him in person for carrying out the Central Committee's telegram to order the Right Route Army to go south and thoroughly carry out the intra-party struggle, in an attempt to endanger the main leading comrades of the Party Central Committee. This was clearly true, and he acquiesced in the formal meeting. Otherwise, can Zhang Guotao, who has rich experience in intra-party struggle, not refute and deny it?
The name of the translator designated by Zhang Guotao is still unknown.
Chen Maosheng April 26, 1937. Died heroically in the battle of the Red Willow Garden in Anxi County, Gansu Province.
Chen Changhao died during the "Cultural Revolution", and he was not heard to explain the secret telegram problem before his death.
After Zhang Guotao and Chen Changhao went south to meet, wouldn't they talk about the issue of secret electricity? In particular, before the forced announcement of the abolition of the puppet Central Committee on June 6, 1936, and the northward march with the Red Second Front Army in early July, could Zhang Guotao and Chen Changhao leave the original copies of the secret telegrams and telegrams that conspired to endanger the Party Central Committee and the First Front Army to be kept in the confidential department and give them a handle?
That's why you can't find the original cipher.
Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to answer the questions of some other comrades about the "secret cable incident."
Some comrades said that some comrades had very strong opinions on exposing Zhang Guotao's secret telegram in the newspapers and periodicals in an attempt to harm the central authorities, but no one had any solid basis, and it was no good to publish articles and put them out for debate, and it was very detrimental to the unity of the party and the army.
Zhang Guotao's secret telegram is a historical fact, a question of admitting or not admitting it, and not a question of "not dwelling on historical problems."
On October 29, 1986, Hu Yaobang, then general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, said in his eulogy at Ye Jianying's memorial service: "During the Long March, he resolutely maintained the unity of the whole party and the whole army. When Zhang Guotao refused to carry out the Party Central Committee's policy of going north and attempted to split and endanger the Party Central Committee, Comrade Ye Jianying, who was the chief of staff of the General Headquarters of the former enemy of the Red Army, saw through Zhang Guotao's conspiracy and immediately reported it to Comrade Mao Zedong. The Party Central Committee took the correct measures to ensure the victorious northward march of the Red Army. Mao Zedong later repeatedly praised this as a great contribution of Comrade Ye Jianying to the establishment of the party and the revolution at a critical moment. ”
When it comes to the unity of the party and the army, as everyone knows, it is premised on the party's constitution, program, line, and purpose of army building, and it is not unprincipled unity.