"The Second Armed Forces": A Study Of The Militia In Shanghai During The Cultural Revolution(1966-1976)

This paper studies the history of Shanghai militia during the "Cultural Revolution".There has been a lot of research on the history of the "Cultural Revolution";There are also many studies on the history of Chinese militia.There are few studies on the history of the militia during the cultural revolution,especially in Shanghai.Taking Shanghai as an example,this paper examines the origin,initial establishment,formation of the militia in Shanghai during the "Cultural Revolution" and the process of rectification after the smashing of the gang of four.It points out that the essence of the militia in Shanghai during this period is the arming of rebel groups,and its command ownership,organizational system,functions and tasks are quite different from those before,Being a civilian armed force under the leadership of Shanghai local administrative authorities and independent of the jurisdiction of local regular army,it was called "the second armed force" for a time,and became a unique case which was quite different from the new China's militia system.This paper attempts to analyze the causes of this unique case,and holds that it has the greatest relationship with Zhang Chunqiao,the person in charge of the local authorities in Shanghai.It is a round of experiments in Shanghai on Mao Zedong's idea of "transforming the militia" and transforming Chinese society.The research in this paper tries to provide a special case sample for the contemporary militia history and the local "Cultural Revolution" history,so as to enrich and deepen the research in these two fields of contemporary history.