Today, my incorrect speech at the reading club reflected bourgeois black ideology and was a serious ideological reactionary issue. Comrades criticized me for it. Below, I will summarize and reflect on this matter as a reference for comrades. If there are any other mistakes, I welcome correction. The content of my speech was roughly as follows: I subjectively believed that the German imperialists, driven by profit, (actively) sent Lenin back to Russia. This statement was inspired by the bourgeois idealist reactionary writer Zweig’s poisonous book “The Starry Sky of Humanity,” which I read several times in high school, and it had a significant negative impact on my thinking. After my speech, Comrade Fenghuo and other comrades immediately criticized me, pointing out that German imperialism had never voluntarily opened transit rights, and that Germany only agreed to let Lenin pass through due to the pressure of circumstances. Moreover, the Russian bourgeois provisional government, together with the Mensheviks, also used this to slander Lenin as “a German spy carrying German gold” (which is quite coincidental!). At this moment, I finally realized that I was almost standing with the vulgar reactionary bourgeoisie, ready to slander Lenin as well! I believe the reasons for this are as follows: 1. I am essentially still a petty bourgeoisie, have not undergone labor reform, and have not completely eliminated petty bourgeois class consciousness; 2. My study progress is lagging, my theoretical level is relatively low, my ideological awareness is not high, and my struggle against bourgeois worldviews is far from enough; 3. When I began ideological struggle, I only discarded those games, porn sites, and poisonous books altogether, but did not use ideological methods to thoroughly deny such things, which led to my failure to root out those reactionary thoughts and speech. To thoroughly correct and eradicate my bourgeois black ideology in the future, I will appropriately review and learn the missing theoretical knowledge in my reading club; at the same time, I will persist in doing household chores regularly, and during long holidays, I will take part-time work to undergo labor reform. I will resolutely struggle at school, and perhaps in the future, I can promote a few leftist students I know to come to the forum. (Additionally, my understanding of Zweig’s poisonous book “The Starry Sky of Humanity”: this work is a rampant promotion of idealist heroism, attempting to deny the materialist view that “the people, only the people, are the driving force of world history” by claiming that “heroes create history”; it also contains private agendas, such as the falsehoods mentioned earlier about slandering Lenin.)
This book also greatly praises how Wilson pursued peace at the Paris Peace Conference. Even the Chinese Communist Party’s “Building the Great Cause” says, “America’s Wilson is a liar.”
The Moment of Humanity’s Stardom is a trashy, worthless biography. It puts colonial robbers, imperialist explorers, feudal emperors, Lenin, and even Napoleon together as if they were on the same level. The writing about Lenin and Napoleon is also very poor. It fails to show Lenin’s progressiveness as a proletarian revolutionary; of course, Zweig probably couldn’t write about such content. The writing about Napoleon also ignores his service to the revolutionary government and his role as a bourgeois emperor fighting against European feudal forces, instead focusing on the defeat at Waterloo. It attributes Napoleon’s failure to the contingencies of war.
Stefan Zweig’s articles feel just like Nazi history textbooks—vulgar and reactionary.