Anti-Right Deviation Struggle (1959)
반우경 투쟁 (1959)
The campaign that followed the expulsion of Peng Dehuai and others as an “anti-party clique” at the Lushan Conference of 1959, in which, under the resolutions of the Eighth Plenum, party cadres who doubted the Great Leap or called for adjustment were criticised and punished as “right opportunists”. More than three million cadres and party members were targeted, and by reversing the adjustment of the first half of 1959 and reviving exaggeration and forced procurement it worsened the Great Famine. Most cases were reviewed from 1962.
In depth
The Eighth Plenum in August defined Peng Dehuai, Huang Kecheng, Zhang Wentian and Zhou Xiaozhou as an anti-party clique, and Mao called the dispute a continuation of the life-and-death struggle between bourgeoisie and proletariat over the past decade. The campaign ran for about half a year in provincial, municipal and regional organs, rooting out “anti-party elements”, “anti-party cliques” and “right opportunists”. In Anhui the vice-governor Zhang Kaifan, who had ordered public dining halls disbanded, was branded a member of the “Peng Dehuai anti-party military clique”, and provincial secretaries, governors and prefectural and county leaders in Fujian, Qinghai, Hunan, Heilongjiang, Liaoning and elsewhere were purged. In the army Lin Biao weeded out Peng’s supporters, and Mao’s secretary Li Rui lost his party membership.
More people were struck than in the Anti-Rightist Campaign of 1957: according to the 1962 review, more than three million cadres and party members had been made targets of criticism or labelled “right opportunists”. The result was famine. In Henan, Wu Zhipu ordered “little Peng Dehuais” rooted out; grassroots cadres who failed to meet quotas were denounced and peasants who could not hand over grain were beaten, and the Xinyang incident unfolded in the midst of it. Cases were reviewed around the Seven Thousand Cadres Conference of 1962, and by August more than six million cadres, party members and ordinary people had been rehabilitated, but not Peng Dehuai himself. The 1981 Resolution on party history declared the criticism of Peng “entirely wrong” and said it had cut short the rectification of “Left” errors.