User:Remsense/Cultural Revolution
Background[edit]
As a landmark event in Chinese history, the Cultural Revolution cannot be understood without adequate context: both within China, and throughout the world.
Emergence of social revolution[edit]
Beginning in Europe during the early modern period, increasing social sophistication and economic interconnection led to the emergence of new political philosophies—first liberalism, and then socialism—all ultimately contributing to a historical wave of mass upheaval and revolution. Classically, a distinction is made between so-called political revolutions, which replace one government structure or ruling bloc with another, with social revolutions, which seek to additionally rewrite social norms and the values of the greater population. The confessional dimension of the 17th-century English civil wars can be contrasted with the greater scope of universal liberty and nationalism seen in the French Revolution over a century later, which ultimately destroyed the social norms of feudalism and divine right forever in France. The 19th century would become the so-called Age of Revolutions in Europe, as popular resentment slowly shifted from the class of nobility to a newer class of capitalists and urban landlords. Ultimately, several socialist revolutions in part seeking to abolish the fundamental paradigm of private property itself would be crushed, until the Russian Empire collapsed under the strain of World War I—with the Soviet Union becoming the first state officially ruled in by the proletariat in world history, despite having a much higher peasant population needing to be included in government compared to the rest of Europe.
May Fourth and Civil War[edit]
Creation of the People's Republic[edit]
On 1 October 1949, Mao Zedong declared the People's Republic of China, symbolically bringing the decades-long Chinese Civil War to a close. Remaining Republican forces fled to Taiwan, and continued to resist the People's Republic in various ways. Many soldiers of the Chinese Republicans were left in mainland China, and Mao Zedong launched the Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries to eliminate these left behind soldiers, as well as elements of Chinese society viewed as potentially dangerous to Mao's new government. This was one of the earliest examples of mass arrests, detainments, and killings across all of China that would later be mirrored in the Cultural Revolution.
Great Leap Forward[edit]
The Great Leap Forward, similar to the Five-year plans of the Soviet Union, was Mao Zedong's proposal to make the newly created People's Republic of China an industrial superpower. Beginning in 1958, the Great Leap Forward did produce, at least on the surface, incredible industrialization, but also caused some of the worst famines in modern history, while still falling short of projected goals. The Great Leap Forward soon came to be seen as one of Mao's greatest mistakes, eventually costing him some of his official status in the Communist Party.
.jpg)
The major changes which occurred in the lives of rural Chinese people included the incremental introduction of mandatory agricultural collectivization. Private farming was prohibited, and those people who engaged in it were persecuted and labeled counter-revolutionaries. Restrictions on rural people were enforced with public struggle sessions and social pressure, and forced labor was also exacted from people.[1] Rural industrialization, while officially a priority of the campaign, saw "its development ... aborted by the mistakes of the Great Leap Forward".[2] The Great Leap was one of two periods between 1953 and 1976 in which China's economy shrank.[3] Economist Dwight Perkins argues that "enormous amounts of investment only produced modest increases in production or none at all. ... In short, the Great Leap [Forward] was a very expensive disaster".[4]
Impact of international tensions and anti-revisionism[edit]
In the early 1950s, the PRC and the Soviet Union (USSR) were the world's two largest communist states. Although initially they were mutually supportive, disagreements arose after Nikita Khrushchev took power in the USSR. In 1956, Khrushchev denounced his predecessor Josef Stalin and his policies, and began implementing economic reforms. Mao and many other CCP members opposed these changes, believing that they would damage the worldwide communist movement.[5]: 4–7
Mao believed that Khrushchev was a revisionist, altering Marxist–Leninist concepts, which Mao claimed would give capitalists control of the USSR. Relations soured. The USSR refused to support China's case for joining the United Nations and reneged on its pledge to supply China with a nuclear weapon.[5]: 4–7
Mao publicly denounced revisionism in April 1960. Without pointing at the USSR, Mao criticized its Balkan ally, the League of Communists of Yugoslavia. In turn, the USSR criticized China's Balkan ally, the Party of Labour of Albania.[5]: 7 In 1963, CCP began to denounce the USSR, publishing nine polemics. One was titled On Khrushchev's Phoney Communism and Historical Lessons for the World, in which Mao charged that Khrushchev was a revisionist and risked capitalist restoration.[5]: 7 Khrushchev's defeat by an internal coup d'état in 1964 contributed to Mao's fears, mainly because of his declining prestige after the Great Leap Forward.[5]: 7
Other Soviet actions increased concerns about potential fifth columnists.[6]: 141 As a result of the tensions following the Sino-Soviet split, Soviet leaders authorized radio broadcasts into China stating that the Soviet Union would assist "genuine communists" who overthrew Mao and his "erroneous course".[6]: 141 Chinese leadership also feared the increasing military conflict between the United States and North Vietnam, concerned that China's support would lead to the United States to seek out potential Chinese assets.[6]: 141
Precursor[edit]
In 1963, Mao launched the Socialist Education Movement, the Cultural Revolution's precursor.[7] Mao set the scene by "cleansing" powerful Beijing officials of questionable loyalty. His approach was not transparent, executed via newspaper articles, internal meetings, and by his network of political allies.[7]
In late 1959, historian and deputy mayor of Beijing Wu Han published a historical drama entitled Hai Rui Dismissed from Office. In the play, an honest civil servant, Hai Rui, is dismissed by a corrupt emperor. While Mao initially praised the play, in February 1965, he secretly commissioned his wife Jiang Qing and Shanghai propagandist Yao Wenyuan to publish an article criticizing it.[5]: 15–18 Yao described the play as an allegory attacking Mao; flagging Mao as the emperor, and Peng Dehuai, who had previously questioned Mao during the Lushan Conference, as the honest civil servant.[5]: 16
Yao's article put Beijing mayor Peng Zhen[note 1] on the defensive. Peng, Wu Han's direct superior, was the head of the "Five Man Group", a committee commissioned by Mao to study the potential for a cultural revolution. Peng Zhen, aware that he would be implicated if Wu indeed wrote an "anti-Mao" play, wished to contain Yao's influence. Yao's article was initially published only in select local newspapers. Peng forbade its publication in the nationally distributed People's Daily and other major newspapers under his control, instructing them to write exclusively about "academic discussion", and not pay heed to Yao's petty politics.[5]: 14–19 While the "literary battle" against Peng raged, Mao fired Yang Shangkun—director of the party's General Office, an organ that controlled internal communications—making unsubstantiated charges. He installed loyalist Wang Dongxing, head of Mao's security detail. Yang's dismissal likely emboldened Mao's allies to move against their factional rivals.[5]: 14–19
On 12 February 1966, the "Five Man Group" issued a report known as the February Outline. The Outline as sanctioned by the party center defined Hai Rui as a constructive academic discussion and aimed to distance Peng Zhen formally from any political implications. However, Jiang Qing and Yao Wenyuan continued their denunciations. Meanwhile, Mao sacked Propaganda Department director Lu Dingyi, a Peng ally.[5]: 20–27
Lu's removal gave Maoists unrestricted access to the press. Mao delivered his final blow to Peng at a high-profile Politburo meeting through loyalists Kang Sheng and Chen Boda. They accused Peng of opposing Mao, labeled the February Outline "evidence of Peng Zhen's revisionism", and grouped him with three other disgraced officials as part of the "Peng-Luo-Lu-Yang Anti-Party Clique".[5]: 20–27 On 16 May, the Politburo formalized the decisions by releasing an official document condemning Peng and his "anti-party allies" in the strongest terms, disbanding his "Five Man Group", and replacing it with the Maoist Cultural Revolution Group (CRG).[5]: 27–35
- ^ Mirsky, Jonathan. "The China We Don't Know Archived 2015-10-16 at the Wayback Machine." New York Review of Books Volume 56, Number 3. February 26, 2009.
- ^ Perkins, Dwight (1991). "China's Economic Policy and Performance" Archived 2019-02-26 at the Wayback Machine. Chapter 6 in The Cambridge History of China, Volume 15, ed. by Roderick MacFarquhar, John K. Fairbank and Denis Twitchett. Cambridge University Press.
- ^ GDP growth in China 1952–2015 Archived 2013-07-16 at the Wayback Machine The Cultural Revolution was the other period during which the economy shrank.
- ^ Perkins (1991). pp. 483–486 for quoted text, p. 493 for growth rates table.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l MacFarquhar, Roderick; Schoenhals, Michael (2006). Mao's Last Revolution. Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-02332-1.
- ^ a b c Meyskens, Covell F. (2020). Mao's Third Front: The Militarization of Cold War China. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/9781108784788. ISBN 978-1-108-78478-8. OCLC 1145096137. S2CID 218936313.
- ^ a b Baum, Richard (1969). "Revolution and Reaction in the Chinese Countryside: The Socialist Education Movement in Cultural Revolutionary Perspective". The China Quarterly. 38 (38): 92–119. doi:10.1017/S0305741000049158. ISSN 0305-7410. JSTOR 652308. S2CID 154449798.
Cite error: There are <ref group=note> tags on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=note}} template (see the help page).