Figure 1.-- Mao denounced his critics as revisionists and demanded that they be removed through post-revolutionary class struggle. He turned to Chinese youth to do it. At a meeting of the Plenum of the Central Committee (August 1966), he set his movement in motion. He closed schools throughout China. He called for Chinese youth to mobilize and seize the Party back from the corupt, decadent leaders embracing bourgeois values and lacking in revolutionary spirit. Chinese youth did not fail him and pursued the movement with a vengence. Groups of idealistic young people like the teenagers here formed Red Guard units to carry out Mao's instructions. China descencd into chaos.

One of the most dramatic events of the People's Republic of China was the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolutuion (1966-76), now seen as a violent and tragic episodes in modern Chinese history. Mao Zedong, chairman of the Chinese Communist Party was persoally responsible. Mao had established himseld as the preeminent leader of the Communist Party nd as a result of the People Republic with the Comminist victory in the Cicil War (1949). He was thus able to launch the chaotic Great Leap Forward with little opposition (1958-60). The disaster including famine and economic crisis which followed weakened his once unquestion control of the Party and Government. He decided to strike at his critics. He thought that the Party leadership in hina as well as the Soviet Union were losing their revolutiojary ardour and becoming revisionist. He objected to the growing emphasis on expertise rather than on ideological purity. Discarding expertise of course is what caused the Great Leap Forward disaster. Mao backed a group of radicals, including his wife Jiang Qing and Defense Minister Lin Biao, to assist him in regaining control. Mao launched the movement (May 16, 1966). He charged that 'liberal bourgeois' elements were permeating the Party and society at large and they were trying to restore capitalism to China. Mao demanded that these persons be removed through post-revolutionary class struggle. He turned to Chinese youth to do it. At a meeting of the Plenum of the Central Committee (August 1966), he set his movement in motion. He closed schools throughout China. He called for Chinese youth to mobilize and eize the Party back from the corupt, decadent leaders embracing bourgeois values and lacking in revolutionary spirit. Chinese youth did not fail him andpursued the movement with a vengence. . Mao's Cultural Revolution rapidly escalated. The students formed paramilitary action groups which became known as Red Guards. They attacked and terrorized China’s elderly and intellectual population--many died as a result. Mao had been revered before the Cultural Revolution a personality cult emeged imilar to that of the Josef Stalin in the Soviet Union. Different factions emerged claiming ro represent the true representative of Maoist thought. Defense Minister Lin Biao ordered Mao's Little Red Book to be printed in massive numbers distributed throughout China. He captuted the imagination of China's idealistic young people. Controling what he unleashed prove more difficult. The movement quickly spread into the military, the workers, and the party leadership itself. Mao finally responding to the chaos, officially declared the Cultural Revolution to have ended (1969). Turning it off proved more difficult tghm lighting the fuse. It did not end. The power struggles and political instability continued under the Gang of Four led by Jiang Qing, who had become a kind of culltural queen under Mao. Their authority was not challenged until Mao died (1976).

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Created: 12:25 PM 11/27/2013
Last updated: 12:25 PM 11/27/2013