The Evolution Of Hunan Peasant's Union Since The Birth Of P.R. China And Its Impact To Rural Society Of Hunan

After the founding of the People's Republic of China (PRC), the development of the Peasants'Union can be divided into two periods: the Peasants'Association, a lawful executive organization during the early years of new China and its land reform period; the Poor and Lower-middle Peasants'Association during the "Four Clean-ups" Movement and until later part of the "Farmers Learn From Da Zai"Movement. This article studies the Peasants Union in Hunan Province since the birth of new China, especially analyzes the reason of its evolution and historical impact of the Hunan Peasants'Union on the rural society of the Hunan Province.During the early period of new China, the Hunan Peasants'Association did a great deal of work on suppressing bandits and local despots, reducing rent for land and returning deposits. In the Land Reform and Land Reform Re-check Movement, the Union worked to improve farmer's ideological conscience, to dismantle feudality and feudalistic land system and encourage democratic process. It helped to break the existing social structure and improve productivity. The Union played a significant role in encouraging cooperation among the peasants and making the full use of the rural anti-feudalism united front. All of these ensured the confidence of the peasants to follow Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and contributed greatly to the success of the democratic process and land reform in Hunan.The Poor and Lower-middle (PLM) Peasants'Association in the 1960s and 1970s, however, emphasized on taking full advantage of the PLM peasants. The cadres were checked by the PLM peasants. The Association educated the PLM peasants so that they stood firm with their class and managed to improve the collective economy of the People's Commune. They also helped to combat and prevent revisionism and to energetically build irrigation and water conservation system.Since the birth of the PRC, the influence on Hunan rural area society by the Peasants'Unions has reached all areas of politics, economy and culture. They play different roles in different historical periods. The evolution process the Peasants'Union has reflected, from a side angle, the Party's rural policy change and the difficult change process of Chinese rural society. With the historical materialism as a guide, this article analyzes the difficult process of the rise, development, change and disappearance of Hunan Peasants'Unions since the founding of PRC from many angles, the multiple echelons, using theory in multiple disciplines, such as sociology, history and social psychology. The influence the Peasant's Union on politics, economy, culture, education and peasant's psychology is analyzed. The comparative study is done for both Peasants'Unions, i.e., the Peasants'Association and the PLM Peasants'Association, to find the similarity and the difference between the two. This article also tries to clearly unfold this part of the history in front of people, to give it an objective assessment and to summarize the experiences and the lessons we learnt from the history, which provides invaluable know-how for the construction, especially the ideological and political work, of the new socialist rural area.