沈迈克 撰（瑞典）
微尘译 启之校
时至2008年，研究文革的学者们又多了一个理由去铭记9月13日这个特殊的日子。理由之一是广为人知的：1971年的这一天，毛泽东钦定的接班人林彪，乘坐三叉戟飞机在蒙古草原上坠毁，从这个世界出发去见另一个世界的卡尔·马克思了。理由之二，第一代中国文革研究中的首席学者王年一教授在2007年的这一天去世。现在，有了第三个理由——文革研究的学者们可以将2008年的这一天，作为《记忆》创刊号的日子来庆祝。这是第一个专门针对文革进行学术研究的刊物。至2008年年底，该刊已出版了九期，每期将近70页。
《记忆》是一份由中国的文革史学家编写的电子刊物。它昭续了五·四时代知识分子携手探索的传统，既不以观点一致为重，亦不与同派政见为伍。其愿望仅仅是摒除偏见，追寻史实。它的部分撰稿人记述了毛泽东时代政治金字塔尖上的个人经历，其中包括中共九大中央委员会政治局成员的政治秘书及其退休的助理。其他的撰稿人则重在历史探索和档案研究。它的主办者是中国现代史学家中的佼佼者，他们参加了民间发起的2006年首届非官方纪念文革四十周年北京研讨会（关于该研讨会的评论，请见《中国季刊》，2007年6月第190期，P492-93）。在《记忆》的目录中，欧洲和北美学者也不时地出现在上面。该刊虽是中国人一个冒险性的尝试，但时至21世纪的今天，已经没有什么力量可以阻止文革研究的全球化。
该刊的主办者在“发刊词”中，慨叹了文革发生在中国，“文革研究成果在国外”的可悲事实。并告诉人们，此刊之出版就是“为了改变这一现状的微薄努力。”因此，他们把“汇聚研究成果 提供学术资讯 建立交流平台 推动文革研究”作为创办此刊之目的。
从已经问世的九期的内容来看，主办者在这些方面已经取得了相当的成功。曾经有不少人提到在中国互联网为推动研究和交流所带来的革命，以及实际或潜在的影响。显然，如果没有无纸发行和网络即时多方供稿这些渠道，《记忆》可能永远不见天日。有些《中国季刊》读者可能会发出这样的疑问：它是如何穿越长城防火墙的？据笔者猜测，它并未飞跃高墙，而是像一只钻过墙根缝隙的小鼠，尽管已被监测到了，但是，管理网络的黑猫或白猫却将它放了过去。
《记忆》提供的是低成本、高质量、拒绝花架子的研究。可以说，这是一个有实在内容，无花俏外表的刊物。从第九期开始采用的超级链接——点击目录即可直达其Word格 式的文章，就是它使用到的全部“高科技”。该刊每期包含几篇较长的研究文章：如第九期是与毛泽东“武装左派”政策有关的“抢枪专题”。撰稿人之一，是前中 央文革小组办事组组长。另一位撰稿人，是一位参加过红卫兵的文革史学者。该专题还收录了两份珍贵的“抢枪”的原始资料以及一篇个人经历的“抢枪”事件。所 有这些文字都对这一特殊难题做了有益的探索。（请比较《中国季刊》2005年6月第182期P277-300）
《记忆》的主办者致力于推动对研究方法、叙述模式、史料引用等问题的探讨。为此，他们早就呼吁对特别有影响力的文革文本进行深入的研究和评论。读者首次被邀“笔谈”的是香港中文大学2008年出版的十卷本《中华人民共和国史》的第八卷（1972-1976）——此书的两位作者史云、李丹慧，是资深的共和国史学者。此书得到了清华大学教授唐少杰先生的积极评价。唐认为，该书令他“愈益坚信，中国大陆学者反思和研究文革已从整体上远离甚至‘告别’了官方‘钦定’ 的文革论说模式。”（《记忆》第九期P3）一位旅居国外的、化名的历史学者则以一种不同的方式来研究史、李的这一著作。他对其文字逐句剖析推敲，质疑这个形容词或那个副词的使用是否妥帖允当，质疑某页某行所描述的周恩来的动机甲、念头乙是否可信，质疑作者对故事整体的讲述方式是否带有某种倾向性等等。
《记忆》的主办者已宣布，下一轮笔谈将把目标指向罗德里克·麦克法考尔与我合著的《毛最后的革命》。此书的中文版将于是2009年夏季在台湾、香港两地面世。
正如主办者在其办刊宗旨中所宣布的那样，《记忆》负担着“提供学术资讯”的使命。为此，该刊每期都为历史学者刊发一些原始资料。自第三期开始，连续五期按照时间顺序刊发的一注解丰赡的日记原稿，记叙了1967年6至10月间重庆发生的血腥内战。“小资料”栏目还搜集了文革中首届省级革命委员会名单，这种名单不仅为读者提供了委员们的姓名，还包括了年龄、性别、民族、职位、工作单位等详细情况。“故纸堆”栏目通常刊登一些社会历史的残存档案，例如1976年7月复旦大学的中国学生揭发一位外籍学生的大字报；1967年上海市革委会按月份和主题统计的关于民众请愿的材料（即上海革委会内部刊物《接待通讯》——译者）；此外，还刊载了文革时期杂技艺术如何创新的冷门资料（关于此主题，详见欧洲学者李塞（Daniel Leese）载于Klöpsch, Lämmer与Tokarski所编《Sport in China（中国的体育）: Beiträge aus interdisziplinärer Sicht》Köln: Sportverlag Strauß，2008年，pp.65–88 的近期著作。）《记忆》中也有一些风格略微轻松的文章，如11月28日号发表了创作于40年前的一篇手稿：北京第二外国语学院的红卫兵穿越时空，与文学巨匠鲁迅(1881–1936)谈论如何进行教育改革的“访问记”。
此前，抱有与《记忆》类似雄心的学术刊物也曾昙花一现——1988年，在进入互联网时代之前，曾有一份跨国交流的小型期刊出现在中国境外【参见《国外社会科学动态》，1989年第九期，p.65】。然而，那份名为《中国共产党研究通讯》的小报在出版了11期之后悄然消失。我们非常希望《记忆》能存在得更长久，看来这并非奢望。45年前，中共宣称，有了修正主义，列宁主义才能万岁。而这一最高指示也一定意味着，只有在其否定物久存于人们记忆之中的时候，一个和谐社会才能万岁。
2008年12月21日
* 此文发表于《中国季刊》第197期。《中国季刊》于1960年3月 创刊，编辑部设在英国伦敦大学亚非学院，是海外中国研究领域内的权威学术期刊。其内容涵盖现代中国（主要是中华人民共和国）的各个方面。其学科研究的主题 极为广泛，包括人类学、社会学、文学、艺术；商业、经济；地理、历史；国际事务、法律、政治。此刊历任编辑都为享有很高声誉的学者担任。它所发表的高质 量、权威性的学术论文，使读者能追踪到中国的最新时事。此刊的编撰有着国际性的学者阵容，使其读者可以从历史、学术等方面对中国和中国文化有着更深刻的理 解。除了主要文章和研究报告，此刊每期还包含一个非常全面的书评部分，每季度有一份大事季度表，知会读者中国的大事及其对中国的影响。《中国季刊》编委会 的成员中，有西方研究文革史的著名学者，如罗德里克·麦克夸法尔（美国哈佛大学教授、《中国季刊》1960年首任主编）、 魏昂德（美国斯坦福大学教授）、裴宜理(美国哈佛大学教授)、 泰伟斯（悉尼大学教授)等，以及中国学界熟悉的沈迈克（瑞典隆德大学教授）。
请点击http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayMoreInfo?jid=CQY&type=eb 即可看到中国季刊的编委会（Editorial Board）
附：英文原文 (from The China Quarterly)
As of 2008, historians of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution have yet another reason to remember 13 September as a date of some significance. Their first reason, of course, has long been that on this day in 1971, Mao Zedong’s designated successor Lin Biao “went to see Karl Marx,” departing this world from the burning wreckage of a Hawker Siddeley Trident on the Mongolian steppe. A second reason surely ought to be to remember the greatest of the first generation of Chinese Cultural Revolution historians, Professor Wang Nianyi, who passed away on this day in 2007. Finally, they may now celebrate the publication, on 13 September 2008, of the inaugural issue of the first journal dedicated exclusively to academic research on the Cultural Revolution. By the end of 2008, nine issues of it had appeared, each close to 70 pages in length.
Remembrance (记忆, jiyi) is an electronic journal edited by Cultural Revolution historians in China in the May 4th tradition of the joint intellectual venture that does not so much put a premium on uniformity of opinion – and even less on common party political affiliation – as on a shared desire to explore a subject without prejudice in the pursuit of historical truth.
Some of those who publish on its pages write from personal experience of life at the very apex of Mao Zedong’s political system: they include, for example, retired assistants and former political secretaries of members of the ninth CCP Central Committee Politburo. Other writers contribute on the basis of lesser involvement or their own historical research and archival studies. The publishers themselves belong to the cream of the crop of China’s contemporary historians, including some of the same individuals who, in 2006, organized the first Chinese non-governmental Symposium on the Cultural Revolution (for a review of the minutes of that symposium, see The China Quarterly, No. 190, June 2007, pp. 492–93). Here and there in the table of contents, the names of contributors to Remembrance based in Europe and North America also appear. The journal is a Chinese venture, but in the 21st century that no longer prevents it from being a globalized one.
The mission statement in issue No. 1 deplored the fact that while the Cultural Revolution had occurred in China, “the fruits of the research conducted on it are to be found abroad.” In view of this, the publishers have set themselves the task of “making an effort, no matter how small, toward changing this state of affairs. Our aim is to gather the fruits of research, serve as an academic resource, establish a forum for exchange, and promote Cultural Revolution research.” Judging by the contents of the first nine issues, the publishers have already been quite successful in doing most of these things. Much has been written about the internet revolution and its impact – actual and potential – on how research is conducted and communicated in the PRC, and obviously without access to the empowering resources of paperless publication and instant multiple recipient distribution across the web, Remembrance would possibly not have seen the light of day. How does it jump the Great Firewall, sceptical CQ readers might then ask? Metaphorically speaking, this reviewer’s guess is that it does not: it is a tiny mouse that darts through cracks in the wall’s foundation, noticed but left alone by the cybercensor’s black and white felines.
Remembrance is a no-frills low-cost carrier of first class research: it is, one could say, all substance and no appearance. As of issue No. 9, there are hyperlinks from the table of contents to the actual articles in MS Word format, but that is about as high-tech as it gets. Every issue contains a few longer research articles: in No. 9, these deal with the theft of arms and Mao Zedong’s policy of “arming the left.” One is written by a former Central Cultural Revolution Group staffer, another by an ex-Red Guard turned professional historian. Transcriptions of a couple of rare primary source texts plus a personal recollection of what taking part in the “theft” was about round off the probe into this particularly difficult subject (compare The China Quarterly, No. 182, June 2005, pp. 277–300).
In an effort to stimulate debate on research methodology, narrative conventions, and source selection bias, the publishers of Remembrance called early on for in-depth analyses and critiques of particularly influential texts on the Cultural Revolution. The first such text on which readers were invited to engage in a “conversation in writing” was volume eight – covering the years 1972–1976 – of the large ten-volume History of the People’s Republic of China published by the Chinese University Press in Hong Kong in 2008. Written by Shi Yun and Li Danhui, two PRC historians with impeccable research credentials, the book is given a very positive rating by Tang Shaojie from Qinghua University. Tang says it made him “all the more convinced that in their reassessments and research on the Cultural Revolution, scholars from Mainland China have on the whole already moved a considerable distance away from, or even altogether ‘parted company’ with, ‘imperially mandated’ forms of exposition and argumentation in as far as the history of the Cultural Revolution is concerned” (Remembrance No. 9, p. 3). A pseudonymous historian based outside China approaches Shi’s and Li’s work rather differently, dissecting segments of it literally sentence by sentence, casting doubt on the appropriateness of an adjective here, an adverb there, on the ascription of motives X and Y to Zhou Enlai’s actions as presented on page n, and on the overall slanting of the story as far as the importance of A, B and C is concerned (Remembrance No. 8, pp. 2–10; No. 9, pp. 5–18). Next in line for the same enhanced intellectual interrogation process, the publishers of Remembrance have announced, will be the Chinese-language edition of Mao’s Last Revolution by Roderick MacFarquhar and myself, due to appear on Taiwan in 2009.
As they explain in their mission statement, the publishers want Remembrance to be able to “serve as an academic resource.” Toward this end, they provide in each issue “raw data” of likely interest to historians. Running in five instalments beginning in No. 3 is the text (with copious explanatory annotation) of an original diary from Chongqing in which the bloody battles that shook that city between June and October 1967 are chronicled. The make-up of some of China’s first provincial-level Revolutionary Committees is presented in the Documentation section, providing readers not just with the names of members but also with their age, sex, ethnicity, position, work unit and more. In a special section called The Old Paper Pile, Remembrance regularly publishes salvaged “scraps” of social history documentation, such as a July 1976 big-character poster from Fudan University denouncing a foreign student, the Shanghai Revolutionary Committee’s internal 1967 month-by-month and subject-by-subject statistics on popular petitions, and a curious document on Cultural Revolutionary callisthenics. (For a European historian’s recent study of this esoteric subject, see Daniel Leese’s chapter in Klöpsch, Lämmer and Tokarski, eds., Sport in China: Beiträge aus interdisziplinärer Sicht. Köln: Sportverlag Strauß, 2008, pp. 65–88.) On the lighter side, Remembrance in November 2008 reprinted for the first time in over 40 years the famous time traveller transcript – long believed lost – of a conversation between the literary giant Lu Xun (1881–1936) and Red Guards from Beijing’s No. 2 Language Institute on how to revolutionize education.
Ambitious academic projects similar to Remembrance have come and gone before. The trans-national CCP Research Newsletter – a minor serials and network venture launched outside China prior to the internet age, in 1988 – folded quietly after 11 issues. One would very much like to hope that Remembrance will live longer, and for now that appears entirely within the realm of the possible. Four and a half decades ago, the CCP declared that Leninism could survive only on the condition that revisionism, its negation, was given an equally long lease on life. Surely that supreme instruction must mean that a harmonious society, too, can only remain a reality for as long as the remembrance of its negation (was that not what the Cultural Revolution ultimately was?) is not made to fade.
Michael SchoenhalS
21 December 2008