Speaking bitterness: Political education in land reform and military training under the CCP, 1947-1951.

Abstract

In breaking the dividing line of 1949, this paper provides a historical account of the speaking-bitterness movement in the countryside and in the People’s Liberation Army from the 1940s through the 1950s. It demonstrates the Party’s motivations, techniques, and effects in organizing and controlling the speaking-bitterness movement as a campaign of political education and ideological transformation. The paper argues that when confronted with widespread, passive resistance and skepticism of the Communist revolution, the Party used speaking bitterness to mobilize poor peasants to participate in Land Reform, and to join the People’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA). PLA soldiers also went through speaking bitterness as an important step of politicization. Speaking bitterness became a significant political ritual of self-education and mutual education. It successfully turned an individual’s experience of trauma and suffering into collective experience, and cut across the traditional identities of lineage and neighborhood.