Page 113 - SELECTED WORKS OF CHEN YUN Volume I

DEVELOP REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT AND PREVENT SABOTAGE 109

time a Party organization is destroyed, the secret agents try to divert the
attention of revolutionaries from their own role by shouting that the
destruction occurred because somebody was careless enough to have been
shadowed and tracked down by detectives. Such devices work because many
Communists are not so alert as they should be in difficult conditions and,
with their traditional revolutionary enthusiasm and tenacity, are eager to
re-establish contact whenever a Party organization has been destroyed—so
eager that they don’t even stop to consider whether they have found the right
person. Because we have not carefully studied the problem of hidden enemy
agents, these agents are often able to achieve their purposes. A destroyed
organization may be re-established time and again, but if it fails to eliminate
the enemy agents lurking within it, time and again revolutionaries will be
delivered into the blood-stained hands of the enemy. Long years of experi-
ence in China and elsewhere have taught us that revolutionaries operating
underground should not hurry to restore a destroyed organization. Their first
task is to investigate the cause of the destruction until it becomes perfectly
clear whether any enemy agents were involved. It is true that if we wait to
re-establish an organization we may incur temporary losses, but those losses
are far less disastrous than the death of valuable cadres that may result if we
try to re-establish it prematurely. The loss of revolutionary cadres is the
heaviest loss. Victory in the revolution cannot come about without the
persistent struggle of revolutionary cadres.
A third method used by enemy agents to infiltrate revolutionary organ-
izations is to pass themselves off as revolutionaries who have escaped or been
released from imperialist or Kuomintang jails. They appear with blood
dripping from their heads and claim to have been tortured. This trick often
works, because revolutionaries generally are kind and warm-hearted. In fact,
however, it is not right to accept a person just out of prison into an
organization without prior investigation. Instead of establishing contact with
such a person immediately, the organization should subject him to a rigorous
examination, even if he is a genuine revolutionary. Aside from the danger
of enemy infiltration, there is the possibility that he was photographed while
in jail, and detectives are bound to shadow him in pursuit of other
revolutionaries. A genuine revolutionary will not complain about this sort of
examination, because he knows that its purpose is to ensure the security of
the organization and prevent damage to the revolutionary cause.
Now, how can we identify enemy agents? They do have certain charac-
teristics in common.
First, however much they may pretend, they are, after all, not really
exerting themselves for the revolution. No matter how smooth-tongued they