Chapter 2 preface

I wrote "The Biography of Zhu Yuanzhang", and after twenty years, I wrote it four times.This is the fourth book recently rewritten.The first book was called "Ming Taizu Biography" and was published in June 1944; the second book was called "Zhu Yuanzhang Biography", which was completed in August 1948 and published in April of the following year.There are many mistakes in the content of the first and second booklets, and some places even made serious mistakes. For example, I described the strong and unyielding Western Red Army organizer Peng Yingyu with my own super-class thinking at the time, and rashly based on insufficient historical materials. Thinking that he retired after success, he was full of praise.It is believed that the revolution can be abandoned halfway, and there is no need for the revolution to the end.After arriving in the Liberated Area, this erroneous point of view was theoretically inspired, and I admitted my mistake.After returning to Beijing in February of the following year, I re-studied angrily, and found historical materials that I hadn’t paid attention to in the past. Peng Yingyu was killed by the Yuan army after fighting to the end; He thought that the state apparatus was just bureaucracy and the army, and compared it to the two wheels of feudal imperial power; the third was because of his hatred for the reactionary ruling Chiang Kai-shek clique at that time, and Zhu Yuanzhang alluded to Chiang Kai-shek.Although on the one hand, he had to affirm Zhu Yuanzhang's due status in history, on the other hand, he accused Sang and scolded Huai, giving excessive reprimand to the more prominent feudal emperor Zhu Yuanzhang in history.Not entirely realistic evaluation.

After these relatively serious mistakes were pointed out, a second book was published in Shanghai.He decided to rewrite and correct the mistakes.But because of the busy work, I couldn’t find a more complete time. After wasting five years, in April 1954, I made up my mind to write more when I had time, and write a little bit when I had time, intermittently, after a whole year. , just finished the third book.I understand that my theoretical level is low and I have no self-confidence, so I mimeographed more than a hundred copies and distributed them to friends from all walks of life, asking for advice.After more than a year, I have indeed received many letters pointing out many shortcomings and mistakes.

The main shortcomings and mistakes of the third book are that it did not pay enough attention to class relations, class contradictions, and class analysis, and did not fully evaluate Zhu Yuanzhang, a historical figure. After nine years of study, some issues seem to be clearer than before, especially about class, class analysis, class struggle, and evaluation of historical figures. I studied more carefully and wrote some articles.At the same time, many readers wrote to ask "The Biography of Zhu Yuanzhang" has long been out of print, when will it be reprinted?In order to correct the erroneous arguments once spread among the readers, and to restore the true colors of Zhu Yuanzhang, a historical figure, I took advantage of the opportunity of recuperation after the illness to rewrite it for the fourth time.Since the beginning of February this year, I have been writing a little bit every day. After two months, I finally finished writing.

The purpose of rewriting this book is to understand the era of this person through the narration of this specific person; through the summary of this specific person, to provide the standards and scales for evaluating historical figures; of course, it also includes my own evaluation of this person. A preliminary understanding of era studies. Although I have studied this era for thirty years, my knowledge is still very limited, and my theoretical level lags behind that of historical knowledge.Learning is endless, and mistakes are inevitable. We look forward to criticism and correction from readers.

In addition, there is another issue worth discussing incidentally, and that is the name of the peasant army in the peasant uprising at the end of the Yuan Dynasty in this book, the Red Army. At the end of the Yuan Dynasty, the peasant uprising army was easy to distinguish from the enemy, and the friendly army was easy to identify. During the uprising, a piece of red cloth was wrapped around the head. , the title of the Red Army is relatively common.The enemies of the Red Army, the Mongolian and Han ruling classes, landlords, gentry, and Confucian scholars, denounced them as red bandits and red thieves.

On the contrary, the armies organized by the landlord class call themselves militia, militia, rebels or rebels, township army, etc., and also use the clothes they wear as titles, such as Qingjun, Huangjun, and so on.Obviously, the people of the militia and the militia refer to the out-and-out landlords, and the righteousness of the rebel army and the righteous soldiers also refers to the righteousness of the landlord class. By the way, a little story, in 1941 when I was a professor of history at Southwest Associated University in Kunming, the National Institute of Compilation and Translation in Chongqing asked me to write a "History of the Ming Dynasty". return.There is a note attached to the manuscript: The starting of the Red Army is planned to be changed to the starting of the civilian army, and the following changes will be made accordingly.Dongfang, 1, 14 (I still keep this original manuscript and this note as a commemoration.) It means that as long as I change a word and change it to popular, the manuscript can be published.I was very angry at the time. First, it was because the Kuomintang was afraid of the Red Army led by the Communist Party. It was even afraid of the Red Army nearly 600 years ago. Second, as mentioned above, the militia was an armed force organized by the landlord class at that time, and it was the title of an army that opposed the Red Army. The army is gone, this is really unreasonable, it is a big joke.From these eleven words, I saw the political and academic level of the Kuomintang academics, so I ignored it accordingly, and this manuscript will not be published.

This little story left a deep impression on me, and it also had positive significance for my subsequent political life.Therefore, this book still uses the term Red Army, which I think readers can understand. Wu Han April 7, 1964 in Beijing