上山下乡运动再评价

A Historical Assessment of the “Up to the Mountains, Down to the Villages" Movement

上山下乡运动作为一场大规模的社会试验,以往外国学者的研究都将解决城市就业和人口问题作为领导人发动这场运动的动机。现在可参考的资料并不支持这种似乎合理的解释,因为正是在城镇青年下放的同时,发生了大规模的城乡劳动力的对流。本文重点分析了1968至1980年的上山下乡运动,认为毛泽东防止修正主义的意识形态和建立政治新秩序的动机起了最关键的作用。但是这个政策并没有取得预想的成功。它没有得到知青和他们的父母的拥护,从70年代末开始,公开的抵制出现,最终以上山下乡政策的结束而告终。虽然这场运动的确培养了很独特的一代,但是下乡城市青年没有变成“社会主义新农民”,他们中的大部分人没有获得正常的教育机会。这对他们,对国家都是很重大的损失。

The rustication of urban educated youths became a political mass movement in 1968 and was relinquished only in 1980, after 16.6 million young people had experienced years in the countryside. Foreign scholars have originally insisted on the economic rationale of this movement, construed as a way to solve the problem of unemployment and to prevent over-urbanisation. Data now available on this period do not support this purely “rational' explanation and indeed show that Mao's political and ideological motivations were the most decisive factors in the launch and continuation of this movement. Until the end of his life, Mao insisted on pursuing this policy. But the transformation of young urbanites into peasants did not succeed: they resisted the movement, which was eventually rescinded at the end of the 1970s. This policy failed from the point of view of its economic, political and ideological objectives. It has indeed shaped a very specific generation but their mentality is far from the idealistic model of the mid-1960s. Most members of this generation have been deprived of a normal education, which represents a considerable loss for them and for the country. However, the movement has produced some remarkable personalities in the fields of literature, arts and social sciences.