People of the Revolution and the USSR

Activity(set)
Any Political and party leadership 8 Government and administration 2 Economy, finance and planning 2 Agriculture and land policy 1 Social movements and organizing 1 Science and technology 1
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Position
Any Dissident 1
Citizenship
Any China 1
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Any China 1
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People of the Soviet Union

The old regime and its challengers1905–1917 27 The revolutionary generation1917–1940 91 People of the Stalin era1929–1953 41 People of the thaw and the stagnation1953–1985 44 The last generation1985–1991 30

People of the Chinese revolution and the People’s Republic

The Chinese revolutionary generation1911–1949 3 The reform generation1976–현재 1

People of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic era

The Revolution and the Napoleonic era1774–1830 7

People of the wider world

The age of the Internationals and empires1820–1917 14 The revolutionary wave and the world war1917–1945 64 The Cold War and decolonization1945–현재 52
Social movements and organizing The reform generation 1976–현재 Clear all

Wei Jingsheng

魏京生
Dissident China China 1950–

The electrician who pasted “The Fifth Modernisation” on Democracy Wall, deported after eighteen years in prison

Born 20 May 1950, he pasted “The Fifth Modernization” on the Xidan Democracy Wall in December 1978, spent a total of eighteen years in prison across 1979–1993 and 1994–1997, and was deported to the United States on 16 November 1997.

Raised in a senior-cadre family in Beijing, he wandered the countryside as a Red Guard and saw the traces of famine before becoming an electrician at the Beijing Zoo. In December 1978 he pasted “The Fifth Modernisation — Democracy” on the Xidan Democracy Wall, arguing that Deng Xiaoping’s four modernisations were hollow without democracy, and published the journal Explorations. Arrested in March 1979, he received fifteen years for “counter-revolutionary propaganda and leaking military secrets”; released in 1993, he was rearrested and sentenced to fourteen more. Deported to the United States on medical grounds in 1997, he continues the democracy movement in exile.

Career timeline
  • 1978–1979Democracy Wall activist and editor of Explorations