Setting Things Right and the History Resolution

Alongside the tide of liberated thinking, work to redress unjust, false and wrongly decided cases began nationwide. During the Cultural Revolution large numbers of cadres and ordinary people were persecuted, producing countless such cases. Under Hu Yaobang and others, the Organization Department of the Party Central Committee carried out the work comprehensively; by the end of 1982 more than three million cases had been redressed and over 470,000 Party members had their membership restored. In 1980 the Fifth Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee fully rehabilitated Liu Shaoqi, restoring the reputation of the head of state who had died after being wronged. In 1980–1981 a Special Court of the Supreme People’s Court tried the principal members of the Lin Biao and Jiang Qing counter-revolutionary cliques in public. To sum up the experience and lessons since 1949, in June 1981 the Sixth Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee adopted the Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party Since the Founding of the People’s Republic of China. It summarized the Party’s major historical events since 1949, fully repudiated the theory and practice of the Cultural Revolution, and assessed Mao Zedong’s historical standing, concluding that his achievements were primary and his errors secondary, and affirmed the great significance of Mao Zedong Thought as the Party’s guiding ideology. Its adoption marked the successful completion of the task of setting things right in guiding ideology.