Annotations and Revisions to Zhou Yang’s Article
“A Great Debate on the Literary and Artistic Front”
[1]
(February 1958)
Comrade Mo Han:
This article is very well written. I have made a few minor revisions; may I ask whether they are acceptable? If the latest issue of the Literary Gazette has not yet gone to press, it would be best to publish this article simultaneously in both the Literary Gazette and the People’s Daily.
Mao Zedong
February 24th
[1]
Zhou Yang was then Deputy Minister of the Publicity Department of the CPC Central Committee and Secretary of the Party Leadership Group of the Chinese Writers Association. “A Great Debate on the Literary and Artistic Front” was compiled and supplemented based on his speech at the expanded meeting of the Party Leadership Group of the Chinese Writers Association on September 16, 1957, after he had exchanged views with several comrades in the literary and artistic circles. The article consists of three parts: Trials Amidst Stormy Winds; Two Irreconcilable Worldviews; and the Revisionist Line in Literature and Art. After the article was completed, Lin Mohan, Director of the Literary and Artistic Division of the CPC Central Committee’s Publicity Department, submitted it to Mao Zedong for review. Mao Zedong made revisions on two occasions. This first section contains Mao’s annotations from his initial round of edits; sections two through nine contain his annotations from the second round of edits.
Sections four through nine present six passages of Mao Zedong’s revisions to Zhou Yang’s article. Text printed in Song typeface indicates words added or altered by Mao Zedong.
[2]
Zhou Yang’s “A Great Debate on the Literary and Artistic Front” was later published in the February 28, 1958 issue of the People’s Daily and in the fifth issue of the Literary Gazette, released on March 11, 1958.

To Comrade Lin Mohan:
There is one minor revision; please decide accordingly.
Add the two characters “art” after “literature.”
Four
Mao Zedong
February 27th
For a time, it truly felt as though “a storm was brewing, with winds filling every corner of the building.” A rightward trend was sweeping through the literary and artistic circles. Witnessing this phenomenon, certain dogmatic “leftists” became anxious and sought to suppress this unhealthy current through crude, coercive methods.
Of course, dogmatism and such repressive measures cannot overcome revisionism. The reason these dogmatists fear open debate lies in their lack of faith in the strength of the working class and the broad masses of the people, as well as in the power of Marxism-Leninism. Thus, their ostensible “leftism” actually reveals an underlying “rightism.”
The Party resolutely adopted a policy of allowing free expression, because those who clamored for it were, in fact,
[l]
The original draft of Zhou Yang’s article stated: “Our literature should educate the people in communist ideology, rather than continuing to instill feudal or capitalist ideas.” Mao Zedong added the word “art” after “our literature” and wrote this annotation.

Annotations and Revisions to Zhou Yang’s Article
“A Great Debate on the Literary and Artistic Front”
They had gone mad, eager to swallow the Communist Party whole. They had completely abandoned all reason. They betrayed socialism, betrayed the Constitution, and betrayed their own promises. The Party had long ago publicly declared that we need not fear weeds—we will dig them up and turn them into fertilizer; we need not fear monsters and demons; we will invite them to serve as negative examples for the people. Now that these weeds have begun to sprout, let them grow. For weeds are an objective reality, and their vigorous growth signals that the working-class weed-pulling force must be mobilized. To attempt to bury existing weeds beneath layers of earth, preventing them from emerging, or to crush them at once as soon as they appear, is a foolish approach that misunderstands the strategy of class struggle and will inevitably leave behind future problems, requiring far greater effort to eradicate them later. The Party believes that the masses possess the ability to identify and overcome these weeds.
The Party knows how to deal with class enemies. In this way, the right-wing elements in the literary and artistic fields, like their counterparts in other sectors of society, were exposed in their true form, seizing the opportunity to act brazenly, thus forming two opposing camps. Both sides rejoiced. The rightists—those reactionary forces—were delighted to see the Communist Party seemingly on the verge of collapse, believing that capitalism could be restored. Meanwhile, the revolutionary camp was pleased that the ranks of “monsters and demons” had been unleashed, presenting an opportunity to eliminate them.
Five
In our country,
only in 1957 did a comprehensive socialist great revolution take place across the ideological and political fronts, delivering a fatal blow to bourgeois reactionary thought, liberating the productive forces of the literary and artistic circles and their reserve forces, removing the shackles imposed upon them by the old society, eliminating the threat posed by reactionary influences, and opening up a broad path for the development of proletarian literature and art. Prior to that, this historic task had not been accomplished. The work of clearing away the old foundations will continue in the future; it cannot be fully completed within a single year. However, the basic path has now been opened, allowing tens or even hundreds of columns of proletarian literary and artistic warriors to move freely along it. Literature and art must also build up their forces and conduct training. A completely new proletarian literary and artistic army is currently being formed, and its establishment can only proceed in tandem with that of the proletarian intellectual army, with their respective achievements roughly coinciding. Only those ignorant of historical materialism would consider this view incorrect.
/'\
Marxism teaches us that the principal contradictions facing humanity are those between humans and nature, and between humans themselves.
These two fundamental contradictions manifest as the struggle for production and the class struggle; after the abolition of classes, they transform into the conflict between the old and the new.
Seven
A work is, through its artistic form, both a reflection of social reality and an influence upon society.
}\
We regard socialist realism as the finest method of creation, but this can only be advocated for writers—to encourage them to deepen their Marxist-Leninist ideological cultivation, strengthen their ties with the working people, and allow socialist thought to truly become part of their very being—not by issuing any mandatory commands to writers.

Annotations and Revisions to Zhou Yang’s Article
“A Great Debate on the Literary and Artistic Front”
Nine
The people of our country are engaged in the momentous task of transforming the world and reshaping the face of history with overwhelming momentum. Their high labor enthusiasm and revolutionary zeal are irresistibly expressed in every sphere of life and must necessarily find their due reflection in the special ideological domain of literature and art.