envelope pushed into can of worms

Fascinating piece in GT on Lin Zhao, poet and dissident, shortly after the 44th anniversary of her execution in 1968.

She was originally tagged as a rightist during the campaign of that name in 1957. In 1959, she was sentenced to eight years in jail for publishing two articles in an underground dissident publication. She continued to produce articles and poetry in prison using the medium of her own blood on paper given her to produce self criticisms. That got her sentence increased to twenty years. When that didn’t stop her writing, she was shot:

Lin was executed on April 29, 1968 in Shanghai at the age of 36. An officer informed her mother of the execution and collected the fee for the bullet.

The verdict was reversed in 1980 at a time when a lot of Cultural Revolution cases were reassessed. And it’s the Cult Revolt connection that probably made it an auspicious time to publish the article, since it can be read as a veiled criticism of Bo Xilai and his doings in Chongqing.

And yet Lin’s case goes much deeper than the Cultural Revolution, during which time she was already in jail and which ended eight years after her death. Her original criticism of the Party came during the hundred flowers period. Then she fell victim to the Ant-Rightist campaign, which is still extremely sensitive, not least because of the fact that it was organized by Deng Xiaoping. Finally, she went to jail after writing in support of Peng Dehuai’s critique of Mao during the Great Leap Forward, which I believe is still officially ‘the three years of natural disasters.’

So; first you’re in a situation where it becomes necessary to loosen control over discussion of the Cultural Revolution as part of the campaign against Bo. And that in turn allows the publication of a story that encompasses all of the signal catastrophes of Communist Party rule in state-owned media. (Naturally, she's already a cult hero among dissidents) I wonder how long that will be allowed to continue.

UPDATE: Relatedly, check this out. Looks like the Great Leap Forward is way off the official reservation.

Comments

[ejh]

and collected the fee for the bullet.

Christ.

Does this still happen?

[Barry Freed]

I think it's all done intravenously these days. Maybe they make your relatives pay for the needle.

[Strategist]

and collected the fee for the bullet

I thought that was something invented by Terry Gilliam for the film Brazil. (Jonathan Pryce has to go to a guy's wife to deliver a refund on the cost of his torture and execution, as he had been executed by mistake, due to a clerical error.) Which shows what I know.

Is this in fact a widely spread custom? A Commie thing? A traditional Chinese thing? A colonial thing?

[jamie]

It always struck me as the Maoist version of Daily Mail populism. Make the people's enemies pay! I think they stopped it in the early nineties, and they've been shifting over to lethal injection for a while now.

Wouldn't be surprised if they still did it in Henan, mind.

[Strategist]

So is it just a Maoist thing, then? Not a trick that Beria ever pulled, for example?

(Just wondering what influenced Gilliam. I only press because B&T regulars are so damned knowledgeable...)

[johnf]

Isn't it a way of preventing the spirits of the the dead coming back to haunt the executioners and those who ordered it.

The things that killed him or her, the bullets, belonged to his own family. A double curse.

[Barry Freed]

That's an interesting take. I've always seen it more as the final humiliation visited upon the condemned. An admission in itself of the condemned's guilt.

It's a little like being forced to eat a shit sandwich and then being further forced to pen a glowing review of the establishment that served it up.

Here's a question: Does anyone know if there are actual paper bills/receipts in existence for these executioner's bullets? And, I'm not being facetious here, did they give the family the spent cartridge too? That would make for a fascinating exhibit.

[Alex]

Supposedly, in the Napoleonic French army, someone who was executed was said to have got his "quatre sous".

[Richard J]

It's been killing me all weekend that I read somewhere recently about a non-Chicom precursor to this, but can't for the life of me remember where.

[belle le triste]

On the face of it only indirectly related: but British executions from the Tudor period onward sometimes (if only apocryphally?) saw the axeman or hangman being tipped or bribed, to ensure a sharper edge to the blade or a strong silken rope, or to make certain the body was returned to the family for respectful burial, and not eg handed over to the students of the college of surgeons for cash down

[jamie]

The red army used the phrase 'issued with nine grammes of lead' for executing alleged deserters. Think they might have charged the relatives. So could be a soviet import from it's 'China's Big Brother' period.

[Madam Miaow]

Fascinating stuff, jamie. Why aren't you writing for the Guardian? They need some informed commentary.

[Strategist]

could be a soviet import

It just feels so plausible - but I don't think any contibutor has evidenced it yet.

British executions from the Tudor period onward sometimes (if only apocryphally?) saw the axeman or hangman being tipped or bribed, to ensure a sharper edge to the blade or a strong silken rope, or to make certain the body was returned to the family

Maybe I'm reading it wrong, but this feels to have a quality of mercy (crossed with private enterprise) that is somehow the opposite of being coolly issued with an invoice by the state authorities.