The Origins of the Cultural Revolution, I: Contradictions Among the People, 1956-1957

In mid-1966 China was engulfed by the 'cultural revolution.' At first this seemed to be just an attack on old customs and superstitions but soon it became apparent that it involved a frontal assault on the Chinese Communist Party. Chairman Mao Tsetung was hailed as China's great supreme commander at frenzied mass rallies, but his old comrades-in-arms were paraded through the streets in disgrace by the youthful Red Guards. Almost a complete generation of communist leaders was purged, and the party which had led one of the world's greatest revolutions was demoralized, paralysed, and — for a time — effectively destroyed. The victorious Red Guards then turned on foreigners (burning down the British embassy and beating up its officials was their most spectacular feat) and on each other. Bitter and bloody internecine warfare was only quelled when at last Chairman Mao ordered the army to restore law and order. By this time it was clear, however, that Mao, the principal architect of the communist regime, was himself the progenitor of the cultural revolution that had threatened to destroy it. The three volumes of this study seek to explain Mao's apparently inexplicable behaviour by showing how a combination of political, economic, social, and international developments, as well as cultural ones, led him to make his fateful decision to launch the cultural revolution. The author presents a history of the tumultuous decade that preceded it, drawing on the revealing documentary materials that appeared during its course and after — this is the first study to make use of the hitherto secret Mao speeches which became available in the summer of 1973 — as well as on the even more copious material of the pre-cultural revolution period. The present volume deals with the famous episode of the blooming of the 'hundred flowers'.