發揚無產階級國際主義精神！緬懷伊莎白·柯魯克

革命的、戰鬥的一生

無套褲漢2023-08-29

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/25/world/asia/isabel-crook-dead.html?unlocked_article_code=2GUrGnNuLOJXgCyKuaN23EEneJ6vgzGDq1jC807J-iI530gU1WXJ_BmnUtydab8g05gzm-NBNSDt3VMUqOumv2mIp_9v32gRP1xP_g1x-ev3Zm2KX9ojauVMVQPkc1BoUJ9nUDcjlurkdfw9ZjHDHuaRq2TIW8csXozKVIuL88FJVQuj1OYROM7Kuh64o2EFO5GYQWU8LzoXOH49av4KMy9ScoxmnAp8KoQ8_Lm8Wlyyu3_fIIY15OL-mD4YSn8pbk_4SGa4zhy5OL_CsIDQiEuEtf3xsIZOhMbwCCrFXMzrkkLNChlnT0GwduwX1VOurfhqMCHarwVgjT5dV2U&smid=url-share 

Isabel Crook, 107, Dies; Her Life in China Spanned a Century of Change

A noted educator and anthropologist, she spent almost her entire life in China, where she was a committed friend of the Communist government.

Isabel Crook in 1940, when she was Isabel Brown. Her life in China spanned the Japanese invasion and World War II, as well as the subsequent Communist revolution.Credit...via Crook family

By Clay Risen

Aug. 25, 2023

Isabel Crook, a China-born daughter of Canadian missionaries who became one of her adopted country’s most celebrated foreign residents, beloved as an educator, anthropologist and articulate advocate for the Communist state, died on Sunday in Beijing. She was 107.

Her son Carl Crook said the cause of death, in a hospital, was pneumonia.

Mrs. Crook was among the last of a generation of Westerners born to missionaries in China in the decades before the Japanese invasion, World War II and the subsequent Communist revolution.

The experience defined them. Some, like Henry Luce, the publisher of Time and Life, became ardent anti-Communists. But others, including Mrs. Crook, perceived the Communists as saviors who were lifting the country out of colonial squalor. (Still others, like the American diplomat John Paton Davies, made famous as a target of McCarthy-era attacks, fell somewhere in between.)

As an anthropologist, Mrs. Crook saw herself as an observer of social change; as a Communist, she saw herself as an agent of it. 

After returning to China from college in Toronto in 1939, she conducted field work among the impoverished, isolated villages of western Sichuan Province, traveling through ravines and mountain passes by foot, mule-cart and even zip line. 

Mrs. Crook with her husband, David, in about 1947, when they taught English in villages and towns controlled by the Communist Party during China’s civil war.Credit...via Crook family

She met her future husband, David Crook, in China. A dedicated British Communist, he had fought against the fascists during the Spanish Civil War while also working as a spy for the Soviet NKVD, a precursor to the KGB. When the fighting ended, the NKVD sent him to perform similar work in China.

After World War II began, the couple moved to Britain, where David joined the Royal Air Force. Isabel worked in a munitions factory and joined the Communist Party. They married in 1942.

The Crooks returned to China in 1947 to teach English in the villages and towns controlled by the Chinese Communist Party during the country’s civil war. They were among the few Westerners to accompany the columns of Communists during their victorious entry into Beijing in 1949, marking the founding of the new state. 

The Crooks became true believers in Chinese communism. They were on the founding faculty of what became the Beijing Foreign Studies University, where they helped train several generations of Chinese diplomats. 

They wrote two books together based on their years spent among Chinese villagers: “Revolution in a Chinese Village: Ten Mile Inn” (1959) and “The First Years of Yangyi Commune” (1966). 

Isabel Crook in 1963 outside the tomb of the revolutionary statesman Sun Yat-sen in Nanjing, China.Credit...via Crook family 

Both books have become classics in the field of Chinese ethnography, thanks to their analysis of how world-historical changes like the Communist revolution affected everyday rural life.

Unlike other Westerners, the Crooks chose to live on campus, alongside their students and fellow faculty members. They wore simple sackcloth outfits, like their neighbors. No one called Mrs. Crook “professor”; she was always “Comrade Isabel.” 

Their faith remained unshaken even after David was charged with espionage and imprisoned between 1967 and 1973, at the height of the Cultural Revolution. Mrs. Crook insisted he was innocent, but her defense backfired, and she was kept under house arrest for several years.

The two were released in 1973 and rehabilitated by Premier Zhou Enlai. They later said they forgave the Chinese government for its excesses.

Mrs. Crook’s most recent book, and her most significant, published in 2013, is “Prosperity’s Predicament: Identity, Reform, and Resistance in Rural Wartime China (1940-1941),” which is based on her prewar field notes and was written with Christina Gilmartin and Yu Xiji.

One of its editors, Gail Hershatter, a history professor at the University of California-Santa Cruz, said the book offers a unique look at a rural society that even in China, with its rapid urbanization, seems to many like a foreign country. 

Mrs. Crook with President Xi Jinping in 2019, when he awarded her the Friendship Medal of China, the country’s highest honor bestowed on a foreigner.Credit...Greg Baker/POOL, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

“She maintained a lifelong interest in what’s happening outside the major cities, beyond the view of historians and the people that keep the written record,” Dr. Hershatter said in a phone interview. “She had a good instinct for what’s interesting, and what about daily life is really worth writing down.” 

Isabel Joy Brown was born on Dec. 15, 1915, in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan. Her parents, Homer and Muriel (Hockey) Brown, were Methodist missionaries from Canada who worked in the country’s schools and universities.

She graduated from the University of Toronto with a degree in anthropology in 1939. While living in wartime Britain she pursued a doctorate in the same subject at the London School of Economics but did not complete it.

In addition to her son Carl, she is survived by two other sons, Michael and Paul; her sister, Julia Baker; six grandchildren; and nine great-grandchildren. David Crook died in 2000 at 90.

Though Mrs. Crook remained committed to the vision of the Chinese Revolution, she did not shrink from criticizing the government, especially after she retired from teaching in 1981. 

She and her husband were enthralled by the protests around Tiananmen Square in 1989, and appalled by the government’s subsequent crackdown, killing hundreds, if not thousands, of people.

But her occasional criticism did not keep the Chinese government, and the Chinese people, from bestowing her with accolades. In 2019, President Xi Jinping awarded her the Friendship Medal of China, the country’s highest honor available to a foreigner.

Clay Risen is an obituaries reporter for The Times. Previously, he was a senior editor on the Politics desk and a deputy op-ed editor on the Opinion desk. He is the author, most recently, of “American Rye: A Guide to the Nation’s Original Spirit.” More about Clay Risen

A version of this article appears in print on Aug. 27, 2023, Section A, Page 25 of the New York edition with the headline: Isabel Crook, 107, Witness to a Century of Change in China, Dies. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe 

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伊莎白·柯魯克（英語：Isabel Crook，1915年12月15日—2023年8月20日）是英屬加籍社會人類學家、教授、教育家，也是中華人民共和國的國際友人，國際共產主義戰士，以及新中國英語教學事業的拓荒者。 出生於成都，舊姓布朗，曾用中文名饒素梅。

現在，雖然革命社會主義的偉大事業處於暫時退潮時期，但是後代人必將取法他們先賢們的戰鬥表率，不屈不撓地戰鬥到底，直到無產階級的人民民主革命專政取得最終勝利！[Mark Wain 2023-08-29]

附：漢語版

伊莎白·柯魯克去世：中共忠實信徒，“友誼勳章”獲得者

CLAY RISEN

2023年8月29日

https://cn.nytimes.com/obits/20230829/isabel-crook-dead/

伊莎白·柯魯克，攝於1940年，當時的名字是伊莎白·布朗。她在中國的生活經歷了日本侵華、第二次世界大戰以及隨後的共產主義革命。 VIA CROOK FAMILY 

伊莎白·柯魯克周日在北京去世，享年107歲。她出生於中國，父親是一名加拿大傳教士。她後來成為自己所移居的這個國家最著名的外國人之一，作為教育家、人類學家和這個共產主義國家的有力擁護者而深受愛戴。 

她的兒子卡爾·柯魯克說，她因肺炎在醫院去世。 

在日本侵華、第二次世界大戰和隨後的共產主義革命之前的幾十年裡，柯魯克是中國出生於傳教士家庭的最後一代西方人。 

這段經歷定義了他們的命運。有些人，比如《時代》(Time)和《生活》(Life)的出版人亨利·盧斯成為了堅定的反共主義者。但包括柯魯克在內的一些人則將共產黨視作拯救者，認為共產黨讓國家擺脫了殖民統治的悲慘。（還有一些人則介於兩者之間，比如美國外交官約翰·帕頓·戴維斯，他因在麥卡錫時代成為攻擊目標而聞名。） 

作為一名人類學家，柯魯克自視為社會變革的觀察者；作為一名共產主義者，她認為自己是變革的推動者。

1939年從多倫多大學畢業後，她回到中國，在四川西部貧困偏僻的村莊以徒步或者騾車方式進行實地考察，有時甚至是藉助滑索穿越溝壑和山口。

伊莎白·柯魯克與丈夫大衛，攝於1947年前後，他們當時在大後方的鄉鎮教授英語。 VIA CROOK FAMILY

在中國，她遇到了未來的丈夫大衛·柯魯克。作為一名忠誠的英國共產黨人，他在西班牙內戰期間與法西斯作戰，同時還為蘇聯內務人民委員部（克格勃的前身）擔任間諜。戰鬥結束後，該部派他到中國從事類似的工作。

第二次世界大戰開始後，這對夫婦搬到英國，大衛加入了英國皇家空軍。伊莎白在一家軍工廠工作，並加入了共產黨。兩人於1942年結婚。

1947年，柯魯克夫婦回到中國，在中國內戰期間，他們在大後方的鄉鎮教授英語。1949年，共產黨勝利進入北京，標誌着新中國的建立，他們是為數不多陪同共產黨的軍隊進入北京的西方人士之一。

柯魯克夫婦成為了中共的忠實信徒。他們是後來北京外國語大學的創始教員，在那裡，他們幫助培養了幾代中國外交官。

他們根據自己在中國農村度過的歲月，共同寫了兩本書：《十里店：中國一個村莊的革命》[Revolution in a Chinese Village: Ten Mile Inn(1959)]和《陽邑公社的頭幾年》[The First Years of Yangyi Commune(1966)]。

1963年，伊莎白·柯魯克在中國南京的中山陵留影，這裡埋葬着革命政治家孫中山。 VIA CROOK FAMILY

這兩本書分析了共產主義革命等世界歷史變化對農村日常生活的影響，成為了中國民族志領域的經典之作。

與其他西方人不同，柯魯克夫婦選擇住在校園，與他們的學生和其他教職員工住在一起。他們穿着簡單的粗布衣服，就像他們的鄰居一樣。沒有人稱柯魯克夫人為“教授”；她始終是“伊莎白同志”。

即使在1967年至1973年“文革”最激烈的時候，大衛被控間諜罪入獄，他們的信仰也沒有動搖。柯魯克夫人堅稱他是無辜的，但她的辯護適得其反，自己反而被軟禁數年。

他們於1973年獲釋，得到總理周恩來的平反。他們後來表示，願意原諒中國政府的過激行為。

柯魯克於2013年出版了她最後也是最重要的著作《興隆場：抗戰時期四川農民生活調查，1940-1941》[Prosperity’s Predicament: Identity, Reform, and Resistance in Rural Wartime China (1940-1941)]，該書基於她在戰前的田野調查筆記，由柯臨清(Christina Gilmartin)和俞錫璣整理撰寫。

作為該書編輯之一，加州大學聖克魯斯分校歷史學教授賀蕭(Gail Hershatter)表示，這部作品以獨特視角審視了農村社會，即便在中國，由於城市化進程迅猛，農村在許多人眼裡似乎也成了異邦。

2019年，柯魯克與習近平合影，習近平授予她中國的友誼勳章，這是中國向外籍人士頒發的最高榮譽。 GREG BAKER/POOL, VIA AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES

1939年，她從多倫多大學畢業，獲得人類學學位。在戰時的英國生活期間，她在倫敦政治經濟學院攻讀人類學博士學位，但沒有完成學業。

除了兒子卡爾，她身後還留下兩個兒子邁克爾和保羅；她的妹妹朱莉婭·貝克；六名孫輩以及九名曾孫輩。大衛·柯魯克已於2000年去世，享年90歲。

儘管仍致力於實現中國革命的願景，柯魯克沒有迴避對政府的批評，特別是在1981年從教職退休以後。

她與丈夫對1989年天安門廣場周邊的抗議全情投入，並對隨後導致數百乃至數千人喪生的政府鎮壓行動震驚不已。

但她偶爾的批評並沒有影響中國政府和中國人民給予她讚譽。2019年，習近平主席授予她中國友誼勳章，這是中國向外籍人士頒發的最高榮譽。

Clay Risen是時報一名訃告記者。他此前是政治版資深編輯，也是觀點版面副觀點文章編輯。他近期著有《American Rye: A Guide to the Nation’s Original Spirit》一書。點擊查看更多關於他的信息。

翻譯：紐約時報中文網

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leeliang

Salute! 

Anticipate the coming of the next generation of Isabel Crook's.

leeliang

Joe Zhang 

中國農民革命運動非常需要努力學習和發揚伊莎白・柯魯克的無產階級共產國際主義精神，克服和抵制狹隘民族主義、民族利己主義！