In 1977, after Deng Gong's comeback, a large-scale rectification was launched, and his legendary life was inseparable from four right-hand men: Ye Shuai, Xu Shuai, Nie Shuai, and the last Yang Shangkun. The first three were all founding marshals, powerful, and all of them were from military backgrounds. However, unlike them, Yang Shangkun did not hold any military rank.
Yang Shangkun, born in 1907 in Tongnan, Sichuan, was born in turbulent times, but was able to live a relatively privileged life. However, his ideals were much more than that, and he was eager to participate in the revolution under the influence of red culture. As an intellectual, Yang Shangkun was brilliant in literature and influenced by Marxism-Leninism, and was very outstanding in theoretical research. In 1931, he was sent to the Soviet Union to study Xi, and this precious opportunity allowed him to achieve a lot of achievements and make great progress in his thinking. After returning to China, he engaged in propaganda work in Shanghai, fighting for the rights of workers and fighting against the enemy. However, in 1933, Shanghai fell into the White Terror, and in order to avoid more revolutionaries from being victimized, the party organization secretly transferred Yang Shangkun and sent him to Ruijin, the first Soviet area.
In Ruijin, Yang Shangkun served as the Minister of Propaganda, and in the face of the warlord melee and the situation of ** being controlled, he and ** set up a red communication unit, launched his own newspaper, and launched a text confrontation with the Kuomintang. Yang Shangkun's article criticized the Kuomintang to the fullest, which greatly annoyed the KMT's top brass and ordered these "pen sticks" to be smashed. However, Yang Shangkun was not afraid of power and continued to use the knowledge of Marxism-Leninism he had acquired during his Xi study in the Soviet Union to explain Marxism-Leninism to the officers and soldiers of the Red Army, and achieved remarkable results.
Yang Shangkun was not a weak scholar who only knew literature, but became a strategist when the revolution needed it. In 1934, faced with the dilemma of being ambushed by the Red Army's westward advance, he quickly found Mr. Peng and asked to carry out ideological education activities for all staff to prevent demoralization. Under the ideological mobilization of Yang Shangkun, the morale of the army quickly stabilized. With the victory of the revolutionary cause, he held important positions after the founding of the People's Republic of China and became the chief of staff and the secretary general of the Military Commission.
However, during the period of domestic turmoil, Yang Shangkun's body was affected many times and he fainted for a while. Fortunately, he was later rehabilitated and reinstated, but was soon transferred to Guangdong. At the request of Deng Gong, he devoted himself to the development of Guangdong's economy. In the early 80s, Deng Gong appointed Yang Shangkun as the vice chairman of the Military Commission, one of Deng Gong's "Four King Kongs". In his work, he has always supported Deng Gong's reform and opening up policy and witnessed the prosperity of the country.
Later, Yang Shangkun served as the first and co-founded a number of policies with Deng Gong. With the emergence of the younger generation of leaders, Yang Shangkun also understood that the future belonged to young people, so he stepped down after serving for 4 years, completing his brilliant revolutionary career. Although he retired, he continued to care about national affairs until his death in 1998 at the age of 92.
Yang Shangkun's life is admirable, and his contribution to the revolutionary struggle cannot be ignored.