In 1927, the "April 12 counter-revolutionary coup" broke out, Chiang Kai-shek began to "purge the party", and the white terror enveloped the whole country. Against this background, there are still many patriotic young people who have joined the revolutionary wave, such as Zhou Yang. Zhou Yang was born in 1908 in Yiyang, Hunan, from a declining landlord family. He studied in his hometown, came into contact with the influence of the May Fourth Movement and the New Culture Movement, and began to write literature.
Later, he went to Shanghai to study, where he came into contact with Marxism-Leninism and became interested in it. Compared with the difficult situation after the outbreak of the "April 12 counter-revolutionary coup" in 1927, Zhou Yang was not intimidated, but strengthened his beliefs and became a full party member. However, soon after, he left the party due to negligence in taking the summer vacation without organizational connections. After that, Zhou Yang went to Japan to study and returned to China in 1930.
After returning to China, he began to lead the left-wing literary movement and rejoined the party in 1932. After joining the party, Zhou Yang was active in the propaganda position for a long time, wrote a large number of Marxist-Leninist works, propagated the party's anti-Japanese ideology, and contributed to the joint construction of the anti-Japanese national united front.
In 1937, after the outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War, Zhou Yang went to Yan'an and served as the director of the Education Department of the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningbo Border Region and the president of Yan'an University, continuing to promote the anti-Japanese national united front and the party's anti-Japanese ideas. During the Liberation War, Zhou Yang was mainly active in North China, serving as the Propaganda Minister of the North China Bureau and other positions, witnessing the birth of New China.
After the founding of the People's Republic of China, Zhou Yang continued to engage in propaganda work and served as deputy director of the Central Propaganda Department. However, there were also mistakes in the work, such as the cases of Hu Feng, Ding Ling and others were related to Zhou Yang, which had a bad impact on the country. It is worth mentioning that in the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China, Zhou Yang led the national literary and artistic movement for a long time. In 1966, Zhou Yang experienced a special period of suffering in Chinese history.
He had just undergone surgery and needed to recuperate, but he was subjected to endless criticism and nine years in prison, which caused great physical and mental damage. It was not until 1975 that he regained his freedom.
In 1978, Zhou Yang delivered a touching speech at the opening ceremony of the enlarged meeting of the All-China Federation of Literary and Art Circles, apologizing to comrades who had been treated unfairly and wronged for his mistakes.
Most of these comrades came from the field of literary and artistic work, and Zhou Yang's work mistakes during his tenure as deputy director of the Central Propaganda Department led to some unjust, false and wrongful cases, for which he has always felt deeply guilty. In his later years, Zhou Yang devoted most of his energy to the writing of his memoirs and lived an ordinary life. Finally, he died in Beijing in 1989 at the age of 81.