Mao Zedong: Difference between revisions

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=== Retreat And Counterattack ===

~~[[File:Mao-Zedong-1965.jpg|thumb|252x252px|Mao Zedong in 1965.|link=Special:FilePath/Mao-Zedong-1965.jpg]]~~

Though few spoke up at Lushan in support of Peng, a considerable number of the top leaders sympathized with him in private. Almost immediately, in 1960, Mao began building an alternative power base in the People’s Liberation Army, which the new defense minister, [[Lin Biao]], had set out to turn into a “great school of Mao Zedong Thought.” At about the same time, Mao began to denounce the emergence, not only in the Soviet Union but also in China itself, of “new bourgeois elements” among the privileged strata of the state and party bureaucracy and the technical and artistic elite. Under those conditions, he concluded, a “protracted, complex, and sometimes even violent class struggle” would continue during the whole socialist stage.

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=== The Cultural Revolution ===

The movement that became known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution represented an attempt by Mao to go beyond the party rectification campaigns—of which there had been many since 1942—and to devise a new and more radical method for dealing with what he saw as the bureaucratic degeneration of the party. It also represented, beyond any doubt or question, however, a deliberate effort to eliminate those in the leadership who, over the years, had dared to cross him. The victims, from throughout the party hierarchy, suffered more than mere political disgrace. All were publicly humiliated and detained for varying periods, sometimes under very harsh conditions; many were beaten and tortured, and not a few were killed or driven to suicide. Among the casualties was Liu, who died because he was denied proper medical attention.~~[[File:Mao-Zedong-1967.jpg|thumb|242x242px|Mao Zedong in 1967.|link=Special:FilePath/Mao-Zedong-1967.jpg]]~~The justification for those sacrifices was defined in a key slogan of the time: “Fight selfishness, criticize revisionism.” When the young Chinese known as the [[Red Guards]], who constituted the first shock troops of Mao’s enterprise, burst onto the scene in the summer of 1966 with their battle cry “To rebel is justified!” it seemed for a time that not only the power of the party cadres but also authority in all its forms was being questioned. It soon became evident that Mao, who in 1956 had justified decentralization as a means to building a “strong socialist state,” still believed in the need for state power. When the Shanghai leftists Zhang Chunqiao and Yao Wenyuan—who were later to make up half the Gang of Four—came to see him in February 1967, immediately after setting up the Shanghai Commune, Mao asserted that the demand for the abolition of “heads” (leaders), which had been heard in their city, was “extreme anarchism” and “most reactionary”; in fact, he stated, there would “always be heads.” Communes, he added, were “too weak when it came to suppressing counterrevolution” and in any case required party leadership. He therefore ordered them to dissolve theirs and to replace it with a “revolutionary committee.”

The movement that became known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution represented an attempt by Mao to go beyond the party rectification campaigns—of which there had been many since 1942—and to devise a new and more radical method for dealing with what he saw as the bureaucratic degeneration of the party. It also represented, beyond any doubt or question, however, a deliberate effort to eliminate those in the leadership who, over the years, had dared to cross him. The victims, from throughout the party hierarchy, suffered more than mere political disgrace. All were publicly humiliated and detained for varying periods, sometimes under very harsh conditions; many were beaten and tortured, and not a few were killed or driven to suicide. Among the casualties was Liu, who died because he was denied proper medical attention.

The justification for those sacrifices was defined in a key slogan of the time: “Fight selfishness, criticize revisionism.” When the young Chinese known as the [[Red Guards]], who constituted the first shock troops of Mao’s enterprise, burst onto the scene in the summer of 1966 with their battle cry “To rebel is justified!” it seemed for a time that not only the power of the party cadres but also authority in all its forms was being questioned. It soon became evident that Mao, who in 1956 had justified decentralization as a means to building a “strong socialist state,” still believed in the need for state power. When the Shanghai leftists Zhang Chunqiao and Yao Wenyuan—who were later to make up half the Gang of Four—came to see him in February 1967, immediately after setting up the Shanghai Commune, Mao asserted that the demand for the abolition of “heads” (leaders), which had been heard in their city, was “extreme anarchism” and “most reactionary”; in fact, he stated, there would “always be heads.” Communes, he added, were “too weak when it came to suppressing counterrevolution” and in any case required party leadership. He therefore ordered them to dissolve theirs and to replace it with a “revolutionary committee.”

Those committees, based on an alliance of former party cadres, young activists, and representatives of the People’s Liberation Army, were to remain in place until two years after Mao’s death. At first they were largely controlled by the army. The Ninth Congress of 1969 initiated the process of rebuilding the party; and the death of Lin Biao in 1971 diminished, though it by no means eliminated, the army’s role. Thereafter it seemed briefly, in 1971–72, that a compromise, of which [[Zhou Enlai]] was the architect, might produce some kind of synthesis between the values of the Cultural Revolution and the pre-1966 political and economic order.

@@ Line 89: / Line 89: @@
 === Retreat And Counterattack ===
-[[File:Mao-Zedong-1965.jpg|thumb|252x252px|Mao Zedong in 1965.|link=Special:FilePath/Mao-Zedong-1965.jpg]]
 Though few spoke up at Lushan in support of Peng, a considerable number of the top leaders sympathized with him in private. Almost immediately, in 1960, Mao began building an alternative power base in the People’s Liberation Army, which the new defense minister, [[Lin Biao]], had set out to turn into a “great school of Mao Zedong Thought.” At about the same time, Mao began to denounce the emergence, not only in the Soviet Union but also in China itself, of “new bourgeois elements” among the privileged strata of the state and party bureaucracy and the technical and artistic elite. Under those conditions, he concluded, a “protracted, complex, and sometimes even violent class struggle” would continue during the whole socialist stage.
@@ Line 99: / Line 98: @@
 === The Cultural Revolution ===
-[[File:Mao-Zedong-outset-Cultural-Revolution-1966.jpg|left|thumb|204x204px|Mao Zedong in 1966, at the outset of the Cultural Revolution.|link=Special:FilePath/Mao-Zedong-outset-Cultural-Revolution-1966.jpg]]
-The movement that became known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution represented an attempt by Mao to go beyond the party rectification campaigns—of which there had been many since 1942—and to devise a new and more radical method for dealing with what he saw as the bureaucratic degeneration of the party. It also represented, beyond any doubt or question, however, a deliberate effort to eliminate those in the leadership who, over the years, had dared to cross him. The victims, from throughout the party hierarchy, suffered more than mere political disgrace. All were publicly humiliated and detained for varying periods, sometimes under very harsh conditions; many were beaten and tortured, and not a few were killed or driven to suicide. Among the casualties was Liu, who died because he was denied proper medical attention.[[File:Mao-Zedong-1967.jpg|thumb|242x242px|Mao Zedong in 1967.|link=Special:FilePath/Mao-Zedong-1967.jpg]]The justification for those sacrifices was defined in a key slogan of the time: “Fight selfishness, criticize revisionism.” When the young Chinese known as the [[Red Guards]], who constituted the first shock troops of Mao’s enterprise, burst onto the scene in the summer of 1966 with their battle cry “To rebel is justified!” it seemed for a time that not only the power of the party cadres but also authority in all its forms was being questioned. It soon became evident that Mao, who in 1956 had justified decentralization as a means to building a “strong socialist state,” still believed in the need for state power. When the Shanghai leftists Zhang Chunqiao and Yao Wenyuan—who were later to make up half the Gang of Four—came to see him in February 1967, immediately after setting up the Shanghai Commune, Mao asserted that the demand for the abolition of “heads” (leaders), which had been heard in their city, was “extreme anarchism” and “most reactionary”; in fact, he stated, there would “always be heads.” Communes, he added, were “too weak when it came to suppressing counterrevolution” and in any case required party leadership. He therefore ordered them to dissolve theirs and to replace it with a “revolutionary committee.”
+The movement that became known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution represented an attempt by Mao to go beyond the party rectification campaigns—of which there had been many since 1942—and to devise a new and more radical method for dealing with what he saw as the bureaucratic degeneration of the party. It also represented, beyond any doubt or question, however, a deliberate effort to eliminate those in the leadership who, over the years, had dared to cross him. The victims, from throughout the party hierarchy, suffered more than mere political disgrace. All were publicly humiliated and detained for varying periods, sometimes under very harsh conditions; many were beaten and tortured, and not a few were killed or driven to suicide. Among the casualties was Liu, who died because he was denied proper medical attention.
+The justification for those sacrifices was defined in a key slogan of the time: “Fight selfishness, criticize revisionism.” When the young Chinese known as the [[Red Guards]], who constituted the first shock troops of Mao’s enterprise, burst onto the scene in the summer of 1966 with their battle cry “To rebel is justified!” it seemed for a time that not only the power of the party cadres but also authority in all its forms was being questioned. It soon became evident that Mao, who in 1956 had justified decentralization as a means to building a “strong socialist state,” still believed in the need for state power. When the Shanghai leftists Zhang Chunqiao and Yao Wenyuan—who were later to make up half the Gang of Four—came to see him in February 1967, immediately after setting up the Shanghai Commune, Mao asserted that the demand for the abolition of “heads” (leaders), which had been heard in their city, was “extreme anarchism” and “most reactionary”; in fact, he stated, there would “always be heads.” Communes, he added, were “too weak when it came to suppressing counterrevolution” and in any case required party leadership. He therefore ordered them to dissolve theirs and to replace it with a “revolutionary committee.”
 Those committees, based on an alliance of former party cadres, young activists, and representatives of the People’s Liberation Army, were to remain in place until two years after Mao’s death. At first they were largely controlled by the army. The Ninth Congress of 1969 initiated the process of rebuilding the party; and the death of Lin Biao in 1971 diminished, though it by no means eliminated, the army’s role. Thereafter it seemed briefly, in 1971–72, that a compromise, of which [[Zhou Enlai]] was the architect, might produce some kind of synthesis between the values of the Cultural Revolution and the pre-1966 political and economic order.