So far as artistic form is concerned, Peking opera has a relatively long history and has attained a relatively high artistic level; it is a type of opera with relatively strict conventions. For these reasons it is rather difficult to reform. But once successfully reformed, it will have a bright future.
Chinese politician (1902-1997)
Peng Zhen (Chinese: 彭真) (October 12, 1902 – April 26, 1997) was a leading member of the Chinese Communist Party who served as the leader of the party organization in Beijing following the victory of the Communists in the Chinese Civil War in 1949 and later served as the inaugural head of the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission and chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, from 1980 to 1988.
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If we don’t grasp the tasks of class struggle well and of socialist education too, then, it is also possible for revisionism to appear. Speaking frankly, there are quite a few problems in literary and artistic circles, surely no less than in other fields of work. Therefore, it is necessary to launch a rectification campaign and a movement for socialist education and wage the struggle between the two roads of socialism and capitalism on the front of literature and art. We must study Comrade Mao Tse-tung’s works carefully, learn Marxism-Leninism, and maintain a firm proletarian stand.
You work on plays on contemporary revolutionary themes, but if your ideology is not revolutionized you cannot be at one with the workers, peasants and soldiers, you cannot establish flesh-and -blood relations with them. If your head is full of the ideology of the feudal landlord class or bourgeoisie, how can you identify yourselves with the proletariat and the working masses? Under such circumstances how can you establish flesh-and-blood ties with them? So, if you want to perform a play on a contemporary revolutionary theme you need, in the first place, to have a revolutionized ideology. You should be determined to remould yourself and raise your political level. Once you are determined to be revolutionary, things will go well. Change a little bit today and a little bit tomorrow, and you’ll build up a revolutionary ideology bit by bit.
The revolutionary struggle of the proletariat and people of each country goes through different stages and has its own characteristics, but none can be independent of the general laws governing the development of world history. It is of great importance for a proletarian party leading the revolutionary struggle and formulating the revolutionary line and policies of its own country to adhere to the principle of integrating the universal truth of Marxism-Leninism with the concrete revolutionary practice of its own country. Only when the universal truth of Marxism-Leninism is skillfully integrated with the concrete revolutionary practice of one’s own country, can one make Marxism-Leninism take root, blossom and yield fruit in the country, and lead the revolution to victory.
Many Peking operas of the past portrayed emperors and kings, generals, ministers, scholars, beauties, lords and dowagers, young gentlemen and ladies; they prettified the exploited classes and denigrated the working people. Very few plays were staged on contemporary revolutionary themes. Over a long period in the past Peking opera in the main served feudalism and capitalism. Many attempts were made to reform Peking opera, and a number of plays were successfully revised, but at the current Festival of Peking Opera on Contemporary Themes we are witnessing for the first time reforms that are so comprehensive and systematic, so rich in content and well received by the broad masses of the people. This is indeed a revolution in Peking opera.
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After World War I, the capitalist system enjoyed a short period of relative stability. Since World War II there has been no such relative stability. The forces of imperialism have been greatly weakened. U.S. imperialism, the main prop of the imperialist system, is also in a state of general decline. The general crisis of capitalism has greatly deepened.
U.S. imperialism has over-reached itself. It has deployed its armed forces in every continent and ocean of the world; it has committed aggression and tried to suppress the people’s revolution everywhere. With its shortage of troops, its far-flung battle fronts, its remote rear and the dispersion of its forces, it is keeping up its strength in one place at the expense of others, and is unable to attend to everything at once Its position is becoming very passive and strategically it is already receiving blows on all sides.
There are many types of plays on contemporary themes. Hollywood is also producing “plays on contemporary themes”; the rubbish the modern revisionists are staging also goes under the name of “plays with contemporary themes”. But what we are staging are plays on contemporary revolutionary themes serving the workers, peasants and soldiers and the socialist revolution and socialist construction.
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The international balance of class forces is very favourable to the socialist countries and the revolutionary people of the world and very unfavourable to imperialism and all the reactionaries. The international balance between the forces of revolution and of counter-revolution has changed, but not one of the basic contradictions of the contemporary world-the contradiction between the socialist camp and the imperialist camp, the contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie in the capitalist countries, the contradiction between the oppressed nations and imperialism, and the contradictions among the imperialist countries and among the monopoly capitalist groups-has disappeared. These basic contradictions are all objective realities and they are becoming increasingly acute.
From the point of view of our wishes, the best thing would be for them to abandon revisionism, or at least refrain from siding with U.S. imperialism, the common enemy of the people of the world. Indeed we were actuated by this wish when we repeatedly advised and criticized them, hoping that they might turn from their erroneous ways. Unfortunately, they have turned a deaf ear to all this. What can one do if they are happy in their own degeneration? They have insisted on staying outside, the united front of the people of the world against U.S. imperialism and conducting an ardent flirtation with it so that they are like a pair of lovebirds that even clubbing cannot separate. In these circumstances, of course it is impossible for them to really join the Marxist-Leninists and the people of the world in any “united action".
In endeavouring to bolster up the tottering edifice of imperialism, in addition to the direct use of violence, the monopoly capitalists of the imperialist countries invariably rely upon the labour aristocracy as a social prop and life-saver to sap the revolutionary will of the proletariat, to fool and divide the revolutionary people and to resist the proletarian revolutionary storm.