A new Chinese word "Falun Gong"has entered the global political lexicon. Dramatic events, such as the self-immolation of Falun Gong practitioners in the central square of Beijing in 2001, attracted the attention of the press and public alike. In response, the Chinese press reported collecting one million signatures condemning the movement. The official authorities say that it is a sect whose members are under the most severe psychological control. According to them, the founder of Falun Gong, Li Hongzhi, is forcing his followers to abandon their families, their jobs, refuse normal medical treatment in favor of meditation, and even take their own lives.

What exactly is Falun Gong? What is the state of modern Chinese society if millions of followers of the self-proclaimed "new Buddha" suddenly appear in it, seemingly from scratch?

In April 1999, an unprecedented and unheard-of incident occurred in the history of the People's Republic of China. As if by magic, unexpectedly for the public security authorities of the PRC, the residence of the leaders of the CCP and the PRC, that is, the Beijing Kremlin - Zhongnanhai, part of the former imperial winter palace in the very center of the city - was besieged by more than ten thousand people, who staged a silent strike under its walls and at the main gate.

These people appeared as if from unknown places, coming singly or in small groups; among them were many visitors from various provinces. They sat and stood in silence. There were no slogans, no shouts, no speeches, no violent actions. But it felt like the atmosphere was getting thicker. It was a silent but formidable crowd.

Those in power, who were immediately informed of what was happening, were at a loss for some time. There may have been some hesitation, the top officials did not know what to do, which of the two usual ways to go: whether to use force, as was the case in 1989 in Tiananmen Square and the surrounding streets of Beijing (and in April 1999, the events unfolded in a similar way on the main avenue of the capital of the PRC - Changanj, near Tiananmen Square), or resolve the issue peacefully. Zhu Rongji, the head of the country's government, probably had a particularly difficult time, as many saw him as the main representative of the forces that sought to continue and deepen the transformation in the country. It was even suggested that some of his political rivals in the leadership of the party and state rubbed their hands with glee, thinking that Zhu Rongji was in a desperate situation, and hoping that any steps could later become a pretext for removing him from the post of premier of the Russian Council of the People's Republic of China.

Zhu Rongji did not use force, instead, they tried to find out what they wanted from the crowd.

It turned out that they were supporters of a kind of neo-Buddhism, who put forward two demands: first, that the authorities explain their attitude to an article that appeared in one of the provincial magazines condemning their movement, and, secondly, that the activists of the movement who were detained in Tianjin, where they were detained for several days, should be released from arrest. before the Beijing events, there were also silent strikes involving thousands of people.

The authorities promised to consider these requests. The silent mass of people left Zhongnanhai alone, dispersed, and disappeared. The incident seemed to be over.

But the whole of China and the whole world learned about the existence of a new mass religious movement in the PRC.

WAKING UP AFTER "HIBERNATION"

In this connection, memories of fifteen years ago came back to me. In 1984, just five years after the beginning of the changes in China, which represented a departure from the course of Mao Zedong, Chinese peasants, instinctively, as they say, in their gut, feeling that the system of suppression and fear with the death of Mao Zedong had weakened, spontaneously dismantled their land plots back into their actual property.

Being near the city of Hangzhou, I was struck by a sight that I had never seen before in all the 35 years of the PRC's existence. The fact is that Hangzhou, like almost everywhere else in China, has Buddhist monasteries and temples. Perhaps the most famous of them is the Lingyinsi Temple, which loosely translates as the Temple of the Afterlife for pure souls. Throughout the previous history of the PRC, this temple was empty. A few foreign visitors were taken there on excursions, but there were no monks or ordinary believers to be seen. After all, religious organizations were taken under close state guardianship and control. They performed some state functions mainly in the outside world, being in fact on state support. But the life of believers in China itself froze, worship services were rare.

One might have thought that religion in China was dead, eradicated as a class enemy. However, it turned out that she, like the cold-blooded inhabitants of reservoirs in winter, only stiffened, froze,

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I lay low for a while, until spring, until the thaw.

The return of the peasants from the people's communes and cooperatives, from the party-administrative system to their families, to human relations gave an impetus to the revival of their spiritual life and traditional faith. To a large extent, this faith in China was and still is Buddhism in its various manifestations.

So, on my way to the Lingyinsi Temple in Hangzhou in 1984, I saw a silent, endless line of people moving along the roadsides on both sides of the highway. They were simple-looking villagers: old and young, men and women dressed as if they were going on a pilgrimage (I later learned that many of them were walking hundreds of miles).

In the temple itself, a real pandemonium was going on. Donations, however small, flowed freely. The monks both served and managed the flow of people with great difficulty. On the white towels of the pilgrims, the monks put large red seals of the temple, certifying that the bo-gomolets had performed this kind of Chinese hajj.

Consequently, in 35 years Vera did not die. The Chinese soul required filling, not least of all, with faith in the Buddha. After three decades of "hibernation" under the rule of Mao Zedong, there was a revival of Buddhism, its "second coming". It was revived in China spontaneously, and not by the will of the authorities, who had to put up with the religious revival. Fifteen years have passed since then. And now it became known about the events of spring 1999 at the walls of Zhongnanhai.

THE SOLDIER TURNS INTO A "LIVING GOD"

In the history of China at the end of the XX century, a new name appeared: Li Hongzhi. It was he who turned out to be the initiator of a new mass movement, the founder of a new faith or a new, perhaps unconventional, Buddhism, a kind of religious leader.

This person has one of the most common surnames in China: Li. His name Hongzhi means "irresistible or unyielding will". It is likely that his parents were religious Buddhists and put a special meaning in the name of their son.

Li Hongzhi was born in northeast China, in Manchuria, on July 7, 1952 in the city of Gongzhuling, Jilin Province. In 1999, when the events at Zhongnanhai Gate took place, he was 47 years old.

In his autobiography, Lee wrote that he received an idea of Buddhism in his early childhood in his family. Most likely, this is true, because Li Hongzhi knows the language of Buddhism, its terminology to a sufficient extent to influence believers, his followers, and it is hardly possible to doubt his sincere belief in the teachings of the Buddha.

Lee's formal education was limited to elementary school. He passed the exams for admission to an incomplete secondary school, but he did not have to study there.

The fact is that in 1966 Mao Zedong, in his words, "lit the fire of the great proletarian cultural revolution in China", claiming to change the way of thinking of the Chinese. Li Hongzhi was 14 years old at the time. Obviously, the "cultural revolution" was a huge shock for a teenager who was in the midst of it, saw the abuse of all traditions and orders, instigated by Mao Zedong attacks on previously untouchable government leaders, rampant violence. At the same time, Li Hongzhi understood that the "fire of the cultural revolution" was also directed against Buddhism, which could deeply wound his soul.

In 1970, at the age of 18, Li Hongzhi was drafted into the army. At that time, the authorities sought to bring order to the raging and runaway youth, in particular by recruiting them into the armed forces. Li Hongzhi served in the PLA for eight years and was discharged at the age of 26 in 1978. The era of Mao Zedong, who died in 1976, was coming to an end, a time of change in the country, which was officially called the time of reform and openness.

His time in the military had instilled a habit of order; he had acquired a certain understanding of discipline and organization.

By nature, Lee was endowed with the ability to exercise, breathing exercises such as yoga. Obviously, certain physical abilities, the nature of upbringing in the family, and, possibly, the education received in a city school, served as the basis for using it in the system of army cultural institutions. During these years, he apparently developed the abilities of an orator and an actor who can ignite the masses of listeners.

After leaving the army, Lee worked for four years in one of the hotels for military personnel. Then, from 1982 to 1991, that is, from 30 to almost 40 years old, Li served in the security department of a food company in Changchun City.

Outwardly, one might get the impression that he was not a very capable and not very successful person who had already lived half of his life unnoticed and by the age of forty had achieved practically nothing.

However, Li Hongzhi probably had another secret life. For the first forty years of his life, he somehow prepared to perform in a completely different way.

In his autobiography, in particular, he claimed that in the 1970s he continued to deepen his knowledge of Buddhism.

Since 1991, Li Hongzhi has devoted himself entirely to his main occupation. He started spreading his own version of Buddhism. It all started with breathing exercises, which he and his closest friends conducted with groups of interested people. Lee acted both as an instructor and as the author of texts explaining the meaning of exercises that gave them

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the nature of initiation into the mysteries of Buddhism.

Li Hongzhi was quite good at all of this. Moreover, he showed a talent for bringing together his own ideas about modern Buddhism with the need of many Chinese for a Buddhist-based philosophy of life.

So there was a new version of modern Buddhism. Li Hongzhi called his teaching " Asceticism (or cultivation) in the knowledge of the wheel of dharma." According to Buddhist teachings, one can reach the state of nirvana through dharma. In Chinese, the new teaching was called " Falun Gong."

Li guessed the main thing: many Chinese people wanted to escape from the vanity of life in the world of dreams, and if possible, go to a blissful state of nirvana.

At the same time, Lee began to present himself as nothing more than a modern incarnation of Shakyamuni Buddha. He managed to correct the date of his birth in the documents for May 13, 1951. This was the basis for the claim that Li Hongzhi was born, like Shakyamuni, on May 13, and therefore is his embodiment in modern life.

In short, at the age of 40, Li began to play the role of the modern Buddha, the new religious leader in China. Out of nothing, he created a "religious empire", for whose subjects Lee became a living God.

THE ROAD TO THE "HEAVENLY STATE"

The Empire was founded in Beijing in 1992 and was called the "Society for the Study of the Great Laws of the Wheel of Dharma". Naturally, Lee himself became the head or chairman of the society. Moreover, it operated quite openly, and its ranks grew rapidly.

Throughout the PRC, in provincial centers, autonomous regions, and cities of central subordination, that is, in all administrative divisions of the state, 39 main mentoring centers were established, under which there were 1,900 mentoring points, which, in turn, united and directed the work of grassroots organizations. According to the Ministry of Public Security of the People's Republic of China, there were 28,263 such groups across the country; they consisted of 2.1 million people (there were probably 10 times more).

Thus, in just seven years, from 1992 to 1999, the number of followers of Li reached several million people, and they were available everywhere in China. There were several times fewer of them than the CCP, but the growth of the Communist ranks almost stopped, and the Li Hongzhi movement gained a lot of new followers every year. In any case, during these years, the growth rate of the movement led by Li Hongzhi was higher than the growth rate of the CCP's membership.

Thus, an all-China system of organizations was created, which united millions of people in the PRC. In the history of the PRC, there has never been another example of creating such a massive organization outside the control of the party.

The society acted in accordance with the strict instructions of its leader. All appointments and displacements of cell leaders were made in a centralized manner. There were many instructions. Obviously, Lee's familiarity with army rules and discipline had something to do with it. He referred to his orders as prescriptions or orders.

What was it about Li Hongzhi's teaching that resonated with the masses of people in China?

Of course, there were also purely practical reasons. After all, especially in the first period of his activity, Li claimed that the set of exercises he offered, which resembled the traditional Chinese breathing exercises "qigong", was able to cure the poor, who do not have money for medicines, or even doctors of Chinese traditional medicine, from any diseases, including cancer.

He further promised that those who regularly do the appropriate exercises and believe in the Buddha will be healthy and happy. Moreover, he inspired the idea that spiritual health, moral purity allow you to cope with material adversities, to overcome evil. According to Li, followers of his teachings will eventually gain immortality of the soul, get rid of the sins that follow people from their past lives, and they will be provided with the transition to "tian guo", which literally means "Heavenly State" in Chinese, that is, a kind of "Kingdom of Heaven".

A person, following the instructions of Li, could become a Buddha, and Buddhas can live indefinitely, the destruction of the world does not affect them. Along the way, it can be noted that the mythology of one of the currents of Buddhism - Mahayana provides that the opportunity to achieve Buddhahood is given to all beings. A Buddha is a person who has reached the highest limit of spiritual development. After reaching nirvana, that is, Buddhahood, he can remain living in human society.

Lee called for an honest and blameless life, for a struggle in oneself with everything base and vain, including the evil that haunts a person in the present, being the legacy of a person's past lives. Lee denounced self-interest and corruption.

Another element of the teaching is the prediction of the demise of mankind. Salvation will bring compliance with the norms of morality and morality.

Lee himself wrote in his book that he only "passes the laws", proceeding, as he claimed, from great love and great mercy towards humanity, without having political interests and without seeking fame and honors.

At the same time, Lee emphasized that everything depends only on the person himself. There is something of the Buddha in every person, and therefore everyone needs to improve, strive for the good. When a person forms the right ideas in himself, then he will be able to control his life, his thoughts and moods.

As for the treatment of diseases, Li Hongzhi called for improvement, to take breaths-

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and if this did not help, then he said that there was nothing to be done, because it was a matter of conviction, of the person's own faith. After the CCP Central Committee's decision to ban party members from participating in Fa Long Gong activities, Li Hongzhi said that there were claims that he was encouraging people not to take medication, but in fact this was not the case, as he was only talking about the relationship between medication and breathing exercises.

Li Hongzhi also indirectly addressed the situation in Chinese society. He believed that morals and morals are in decline, that humanity is going to ruin, and no government can save it. Only Lee's teaching can help people.

FORBIDDEN FRUIT IS SWEET

Li Hongzhi referred to his teaching as "Falun Gong." Falun means "wheel of dharma" or "wheel of law"in Buddhism. It is an emblem of Buddhism that goes back to the Sanskrit concept of dharmachacra. In Buddhism, there is also such a concept as "Falun chang chuan". It means that the wheel of the law is always turning, and this implies the transmigration of souls.

As for the character "gong", which is included in the name of the teaching, this character means in Chinese" good deed"," good qualities", it also has such meanings as" work"," asceticism in the name of something"," exploits","merits".

Thus, Falun Gong is asceticism in the name of the wheel of dharma, the wheel of law.

All these ideas, transformed by Li into simple truths, met the needs of many Chinese people, who wanted, on the one hand, to dissociate themselves from the difficult realities of life, and on the other - to provide themselves with a little health and hope for joining the afterlife, a kind of "ticket to paradise".

The teaching was also in demand because for several decades religion, including Buddhism, was inaccessible to people. It is not surprising that Li Hongzhi's non-Buddhism has turned into a kind of "forbidden fruit" that has suddenly become allowed.

The work in the organization was carried out on a large scale. Textbooks, audio and video tapes, and discs with music accompanying the exercises were created. All this was produced in mass circulations. Members of the society believed that classes would save money from spending on medicines and doctors. Admission to the group of students studying a set of exercises under the guidance of a mentor was paid. For example, in Harbin, the fee was 53 yuan per person; in other places, it cost up to one hundred yuan. They paid for the textbook, that is, for Li Hongzhi's book, at 20 yuan per copy. The price of videotapes and discs was up to 300 yuan.

When a nationwide campaign against the organization was launched in the second half of 1999, the authorities alleged that Li Hongzhi had evaded taxes and that his relatives had purchased homes and cars in Beijing and Changchun. It is obvious that the spiritual principle coexisted with purely earthly interests.

Beijing did not immediately perceive Li Hongzhi's movement as a serious challenge, as the organization emerged in the first half of the 90s, when the CCP leadership was just catching its breath after the events in Tiananmen Square.

Responding to the Tiananmen shock, the authorities went two ways: on the one hand, they tightened the screws, imposed strict controls on students and intellectuals to prevent new demonstrations. On the other hand, measures were taken to stabilize the situation and calm people down. At the same time, certain allowances were also made for religious organizations.

Probably, the authorities initially considered Li Hongzhi's organization harmless. Moreover, in the beginning, the Li Hongzhi Society focused on group breathing exercises with the elderly and retired people.

However, the organization has grown so strong in the seven years of its existence that it has begun to defend the positions it has won, even going to direct confrontation with the authorities. The silent strike of more than ten thousand people at the entrance to the residence of the top leaders of the CCP and the PRC was not the only and not the first such action. Prior to this, the movement held 18 silent strikes during the year to protest against media criticism of Falun Gong's activities. This happened in various cities of the country, including in 1998 near the Beijing television Center.

As for the events of April 25, 1999, Li Hongzhi claimed that he knew nothing about them. Obviously, he would like to present these actions as a purely spontaneous reaction of the followers of his movement to the actions of the authorities, which they saw as infringing on their rights. Li Hongzhi argued that no organizational work was carried out in this regard in the movement, and that in general the movement cannot be considered as an organization in the usual sense of the word in the PRC. Li Hongzhi gave the impression that the movement's organizational work was limited to purely internal affairs.

Li Hongzhi himself was in the United States in April 1999, where he has been a permanent resident since 1993.

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However, on the evening of April 22, that is, three days before the events at Zhongnanhai in Beijing, he flew from America to Australia to the capital of the PRC, where he spent 44 hours and shortly after noon on April 24, 1999, flew from Beijing to Hong Kong, from where he went to Australia on April 27.

THE PARTY STRIKES BACK

After the demonstration in Zhongnanhai, the CCP leadership came to the conclusion that the Li Hongzhi movement should be put to an end.

In July 1999, three documents were published. The first and most important of these was a notice issued by the CPC Central Committee, in which party members were forbidden to study the Li textbook, follow the guidelines of this textbook, that is, take part in the movement.

Another was a decree issued by the Ministry of Civil Administration, which prohibited the activities of the society.

Finally, the Ministry of Public Security banned government employees from participating in Falun Gong activities, and also banned any gatherings of Falun Gong members.

The relevant instructions were issued through the Ministry of Education. It required educational institutions at all levels to quickly organize large numbers of students to study the CCP Central Committee's notice. The campaign was launched all over the country: both along the party and administrative lines. Newspaper pages and television screens have been filled for weeks with messages about the struggle against " Falun Gong."

The information war has also spread to the world stage, to the Internet, where, on the one hand. Li Hongzhi and his followers protested against the actions of the authorities, defended their understanding of the rights of the human person, and on the other hand, hackers acting in the interests of the PRC authorities hacked into the servers of Li's supporters, seeking to prevent the dissemination of their information on the Internet.

At the same time, it became clear that party members were also involved in the movement. The party document noted that " some party members also took part in this, and an extreme minority even became the backbone of the organization." More than 20 old party members, and some hints suggest veteran military leaders, have filed a collective statement to the CCP Central Committee defending the activities of the Falun Gong movement. But just at this time, the activities of many party organizations, as indicated in the press, either froze, or these organizations began to crumble and disintegrate.

In short, the CCP is in danger from an unexpected angle, at least at the grassroots level.

The situation seemed so serious to the Chinese leadership that the CPC Central Committee announced the need to strengthen the role and place of the CPC in the life of the country, properly "establish the leadership of the party" and "manage its affairs". Thus, it was recognized that in the 1990s, party life was largely left to its own devices.

At the 15th CPC National Congress in 1997, it was precisely the restoration of the party's leadership role, the role of party committees everywhere and at all levels, that was put forward as the central task. Hu Jintao, the current Vice-president of the People's Republic of China, who is expected to succeed Jiang Zemin, was assigned to lead this work.

At the same time, the head of the Party and state, Jiang Zemin, put forward the idea that it was essentially necessary to purge its senior personnel within the Chinese Communist Party, purge the nomenclature, during which every functionary, starting with the head of the county level, had no right to leave their places of residence and work during the entire purge period in 1999 and had to report to before the party organs and before the masses, in how he studies the theoretical foundations of the party line, how he implements its principles, and how he keeps his moral character clean.

In other words, CCP functionaries were required to swear allegiance to the official party line and be tested for integrity in front of both the relevant party bodies and the non-party masses.

The purge of the party began even before the ban on the movement's activities. However, in the second half of 1999, this work was carried out in conjunction with the fight against Falun Gong. In this regard, the party members were asked to contrast the idealism and theism of Li Hongzhi with Marxist dialectical materialism and atheism.

As a result of a massive nationwide campaign, by October 1999, the open activities of Li Hongzhi's organization were stopped and the entire network of its organizations was formally liquidated; Falun Gong functionaries were detained by the authorities, and many of them publicly repented of their "deeds." CCP members were asked to withdraw from the Li organization and ideologically dissociate themselves from it. The vast majority did so.

For example, just a week after the ban, by August 1, 1999, 50 thousand people in Shanxi Province alone had declared their withdrawal, and in Gansu - 10 thousand people, including one thousand CCP members.

In the fall of 1999, the Falun Gong organization as an open mass movement ceased to exist in the territory of the People's Republic of China, but remained, however, in a number of countries among foreign Chinese.

To sum up, when the CCP loosened its control over its members and the spiritual life of the country and allowed some religious freedom for a few years, millions of people, including quite a few CCP members, voluntarily joined the Li Hongzhi movement. When the party officially banned Falun Gong activities and announced that those who did not dissociate themselves would be treated "according to the law" as "troublemakers" and "criminals," the vast majority of Falun Gong members left. In other words, a part of the Chinese population voluntarily rose up under the banner of the" new Buddha", that is, Li Hongzhi, to openly speak out for the ideals of morality, against corruption and corruption of officials. But these same people quickly backed down when they were pressured. The emotional impulse could not withstand a direct confrontation with the party and the state.

The authorities managed to put an end to mass demonstrations under the banner of the "new Buddha" only by applying administrative and police methods. Has this protest finally been suppressed? The question remains open.

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