作者：钟然
编辑：钟然 翻译：周敏
康生（1898－1975），山东诸城人，中共早期领导人之一，曾任中央政治局常委、中央书记处书记，是中共秘密警察体系、意识形态审查机制和党内政治清洗制度的关键奠基者之一。他在毛泽东时期长期掌控情报、保卫与意识形态领域，被普遍视为中共历史上最具破坏性的幕后权力人物之一。
康生早年加入中共，20世纪30年代长期在苏联活动，深受斯大林体制及其秘密警察体系影响。回国后，他在延安时期主持中央社会部，负责情报、保卫与肃反工作，逐步确立了以“政治审查”“思想清洗”和“组织纯洁性”为核心的整肃模式。这一时期，他通过逼供、互相揭发和无限扩大化的“特务”认定，制造了大量冤假错案，为中共党内恐怖政治奠定了制度基础。
1942年至1945年的延安整风运动，是康生权力全面显现的起点。在其主导下，“抢救失足者”“审干”等运动演变为系统性的政治迫害，大批干部、知识分子被指控为“叛徒”“特务”“托派”，身心遭受严重摧残。许多在文革中再度被整肃的人，其最早的“政治原罪”正源于康生在延安时期建立的档案与定性。毛泽东不仅纵容这一做法，且将其视为巩固个人权威的重要工具。
建政初期，康生一度淡出公开权力核心，但并未真正失势。他长期掌握意识形态审查、历史定性和档案系统，与江青等人保持密切关系。随着毛泽东对党内“修正主义”的警惕加剧，康生逐渐重新被倚重，成为文革前期重要的理论与政治准备者。他炮制的现代版文字狱《刘志丹》案牵连的受害者达六万多人，其中六千多人被迫害致死。《刘志丹》案被视为文化大革命的先声。
文化大革命期间，康生是中央文革小组的核心成员之一，虽不以公开形象示人，却在定性、定罪和路线斗争中发挥决定性作用。1968年获得了中共首要情报机关中共中央调查部的领导权，制造了大量的冤案，成为在党内斗争中令人畏惧的刽子手。他以“考据”“史学”“理论斗争”为手段，提出并推广“影射史学”“反党学术权威”等罪名，将学术分歧和历史研究转化为政治罪行，为大规模迫害知识分子和高级干部提供了“合法性”包装。最终在严肃历史研究与回忆资料统计中文革期间被迫害致死的知识分子超过30万人！
在重大政治案件中，康生直接或间接参与了对刘少奇、彭德怀、贺龙、陶铸等党和国家领导人的打击，并系统性地操控调查结论与证据来源。大量所谓“历史材料”与“特务证据”事后被证明存在伪造、篡改或恶意拼接的问题，但在当时却成为决定个人生死的重要依据。
与街头暴力的红卫兵不同，康生的作用体现在制度层面。他将迫害流程化、审查技术化，使政治清洗不再依赖情绪动员，而是通过组织程序和意识形态话语持续运转。他所塑造的模式，使国家权力能够以“理论正确”“路线斗争”的名义，长期、稳定地实施打压。
1975年，康生病逝，终其一生未被追责。文革结束后，中共在内部文件中承认康生是“文革中最严重的罪犯之一”，但并未对其进行公开清算，也未系统纠正其制造的大量冤案。他的责任被有限度地承认，却被刻意从制度根源中剥离。
官方讣告仍将其描述为“党的重要领导人”，而在历史评价中，康生更多被视为中共极权运作的典型样本。他将秘密警察逻辑、意识形态垄断与个人崇拜结合，使政治迫害成为一种可复制、可延续的治理方式。
康生不仅是毛泽东时代的重要权力人物，更是中共政治清洗机制的制度设计者之一。他所建立的整肃模式，对此后中国政治文化和权力运作产生了深远影响，其阴影远未随着个人死亡而消散。
The Grand Inquisitor: Kang Sheng
Author: Zhong Ran
Editor: Zhong Ran Translator: Zhou Min
Kang Sheng (1898–1975), a native of Zhucheng, Shandong, was a titan of the early CCP leadership. As a member of the Standing Committee of the Politburo and the Secretariat, he stood as a primary architect of the CCP’s secret police apparatus, its ideological censorship mechanisms, and the institutionalized system of internal political purges. Throughout the Mao era, Kang wielded absolute control over intelligence, security, and the ideological sphere, earning a reputation as one of the most destructive “shadow players” in the history of the People’s Republic.
In the 1930s, Kang spent years in the Soviet Union, where he was deeply indoctrinated into the Stalinist terror apparatus. Upon his return, he headed the Central Social Department in Yan’an, overseeing intelligence and “counter-suppression” efforts. It was here that he codified a purge model predicated on “political vetting,” “ideological cleansing,” and “organizational purity.” By weaponizing forced confessions, mutual denunciations, and the elastic definition of “enemy agents,” Kang manufactured a wave of wrongful convictions that laid the institutional foundation for the party’s politics of terror.
The Yan’an Rectification Movement (1942–1945) marked the total ascendance of Kang’s power. Under his aegis, campaigns like the “Rescue of Lapsed Cadres” devolved into systematic persecution. Intellectuals and officials were branded as “traitors,” “spies,” or “Trotskyites,” suffering profound physical and psychological trauma. For many who would be purged again decades later during the Cultural Revolution, their “original political sins” were meticulously filed in the dossiers Kang created in Yan’an. Mao Zedong did not merely tolerate these methods; he embraced them as indispensable tools for consolidating his absolute authority.
Though he briefly receded from the public spotlight in the early years of the PRC, Kang never lost his grip on power. He remained the gatekeeper of ideological orthodoxy and the arbiter of historical characterization. As Mao grew increasingly paranoid regarding “revisionism,” Kang returned to the vanguard as a chief theoretician of the Cultural Revolution. His fabrication of the Liu Zhidan case—a modern-day “literary inquisition”—implicated over 60,000 people, resulting in more than 6,000 deaths. This case served as the dark overture to the decade of chaos that followed.
During the Cultural Revolution, as a core member of the Central Cultural Revolution Group, Kang operated from the shadows to dictate the fate of his rivals. In 1968, he assumed control of the Central Investigation Department, the CCP’s premier intelligence agency, where he became a dreaded “executioner” of intra-party struggles. By weaponizing “allusive historiography,” he transformed academic debate into capital treason, providing a “legal” veneer for the wholesale persecution of the intelligentsia. Historical research and memoir data now suggest that the number of intellectuals persecuted to death during this era exceeded 300,000.
Kang was instrumental in the downfall of top state leaders, including Liu Shaoqi, Peng Dehuai, He Long, and Tao Zhu. He systematically manipulated evidence and forged “historical dossiers” that determined life and death. Unlike the street-level brutality of the Red Guards, Kang’s influence was structural. He proceduralized persecution and technicalized censorship, ensuring that political cleansing did not rely on fleeting emotional fervor, but on a self-sustaining bureaucratic machine.
Kang Sheng died in 1975, escaping accountability in his lifetime. While post-Mao internal documents labeled him “one of the most heinous criminals of the Cultural Revolution,” there was never a public reckoning or a systemic reversal of his fabricated cases. His culpability was acknowledged only in isolation, deliberately severed from the institutional roots of the party-state.
Even today, official obituaries cautiously describe him as an “important party leader.” However, in the eyes of history, Kang Sheng remains the quintessential specimen of totalitarian governance. By fusing secret police logic with ideological monopoly and the cult of personality, he transformed political persecution into a replicable and enduring mode of rule. He was not just a powerful figure of the Mao era; he was the engineer of a mechanism of fear whose shadow continues to haunt Chinese political culture long after his death.
