신중국의 사회주의 작가 양성 실험 ― 중앙문학연구소(1950-1957)를 중심으로

초록

This article aims to reconstruct the establishment and operation of the Central Institute of Literature (hereafter CIL) from 1950 to 1957 in order to elucidate the concrete features and historical significance of the early PRC’s experiment in cultivating socialist literary personnel. The CIL was officially launched in December 1950 as an institution under the Ministry of Culture and administered by the Chinese Writers’ Association (the predecessor of today’s Writers’ Association), with the entire process overseen by the writer Ding Ling, who served as its first director. In the latter half of 1953, the CIL was reorganized into the Literature Training School of the Writers’ Association, and it was ultimately abolished in November 1957. Over the course of seven years, the institution trained a total of 286 students across four cohorts. The trainees consisted primarily of writers from former revolutionary base areas or the military who sought systematic re-education, aspiring writers from worker–peasant–soldier backgrounds, as well as critics, editors, and students aiming to become literary and cultural cadres. Instruction was largely provided by prominent writers, professors, and scholars residing in Beijing who were invited as visiting lecturers. The curriculum was broadly divided into Chinese literature, foreign literature, literary theory, and political study and practice, and was conducted under the so-called “sixteen-character guideline”: “self-study as the main method, instruction as a supplement; linking learning to reality and combining it with creative practice.” The establishment of the CIL represented an ambitious attempt to redefine writers not merely as cultural producers, but as public subjects selected, trained, and managed within the ideological apparatus of the Party-state. However, as a hybrid project that simultaneously embraced Soviet-style professional literary education and the Yan’an tradition of political praxis, the Institute was fraught with internal tensions and structural instability from the outset. Ultimately, it was abolished in tandem with the political downfall of Ding Ling, who had played a central role in shaping and sustaining the institution.

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