| Date: 28 April 2011, 06:41
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Mao's Last Revolution
By Roderick MacFarquhar, Michael Schoenhals
* Publisher: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press
* Number Of Pages: 752
* Publication Date: 2008-03-15
* ISBN-10 / ASIN: 0674027485
* ISBN-13 / EAN: 9780674027480
Product Description:
The Cultural Revolution was a watershed event in the history of the People’s Republic of China, the defining decade of half a century of communist rule. Before 1966, China was a typical communist state, with a command economy and a powerful party able to keep the population under control. But during the Cultural Revolution, in a move unprecedented in any communist country, Mao unleashed the Red Guards against the party. Tens of thousands of officials were humiliated, tortured, and even killed. Order had to be restored by the military, whose methods were often equally brutal.
In a masterly book, Roderick MacFarquhar and Michael Schoenhals explain why Mao launched the Cultural Revolution, and show his Machiavellian role in masterminding it (which Chinese publications conceal). In often horrifying detail, they document the Hobbesian state that ensued. The movement veered out of control and terror paralyzed the country. Power struggles raged among Lin Biao, Zhou Enlai, Deng Xiaoping, and Jiang Qing—Mao’s wife and leader of the Gang of Four—while Mao often played one against the other.
After Mao’s death, in reaction to the killing and the chaos, Deng Xiaoping led China into a reform era in which capitalism flourishes and the party has lost its former authority. In its invaluable critical analysis of Chairman Mao and its brilliant portrait of a culture in turmoil, Mao’s Last Revolution offers the most authoritative and compelling account to date of this seminal event in the history of China.
(20060901)
Summary: From Chairman Meow's Anarchist Outpost
Rating: 5
A fantastic history of the Cultural Revolution. This history dispels a lot of notions about the Cultural Revolution highlighting Mao's involvement and direction of the programme, its motivation in party-purging and realignment, and the influence of Zhou Enlai in curbing its more radical goals. Very well-wrought and engaging.
See other reviews at Chairman Meow's Anarchist Outpost[..]
Summary: Great Accessible Book on a Hard Topic
Rating: 5
This was a wonderfully easy to read book that gave me a much better perspective into the events and intrigues of the Cultural Revolutions.
MacFarquhar and Schoenhals do a fantastic job of explaining the detailed events of this tumultuous time period while simultaneously providing the bigger picture. They also remain objective, but also hypothesize to the detail of some activities to which we still have limited information.
Overall--a wonderfully written history of the Cultural Revolution that helps to explain a pivotal period that has deeply shaped China today.
Summary: Years of Upheaval
Rating: 4
This book, by two distinguished scholars of modern Chinese politics, is a comprehensive history of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, an event initiated by the 'Great Helmsman', Chairman Mao Zedong. It ran for about a decade, spanning the years 1966-1976, a period roughly paralleling the major social changes occurring in the West (France, the USA) and Latin America (Guatemala, Cuba, Chile).
The book features an introductory chapter which very succinctly outlines the motive for the upheaval, but the remainder of the book is an exhaustive catalogue of the defining events. Each and every political figure of even the most tangential importance to the Cultural Revolution is given abundant ink. While this is of great importance to serious students of modern China, the wealth of detail is daunting for the general reader searching for an explanatory but non-superficial history. The arcana of Chinese Communist Party internecine warfare are catalogued in excruciating detail, replete with all the bloated slogans and cant typical of that era in modern Marxism. The vast damage to the Chinese economy, the armed forces, the educational system and the Chinese social structure is highlighted. The dubious role played by Zho Enlai (portrayed in many sources as a moderating force) is also discussed in detail, as is the tumultuous career in CCP politics of Deng Xiaoping. The unplanned ascendency of the Peoples Liberation Army as a result of GCR policies eventually required the removal of Mao's planned successor, Lin Biao and his supporters in the PLA general's ranks.
The authors note that, along with the tumult engendered by Mao's 'Great Leap Forward', the GCR was equally cataclysmic for China. Widespread famine resulted from the GLF and vast economic disruption from the CGR. Many millions of people died as a combination of these attempts at social engineering, much like the collectivization efforts undertaken in the USSR in Ukraine. Presumably, as a result of these two upheavals, the stage was set for a more pragmatic form of statecraft by Deng and his successors.
The parallels to Stalin's purges of the ranks of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union are evident, but are unstated, as are detailed explanations of Mao's motives (the purging of "revisionism", the backlash against Nikita Krushchov's reforms and the imagined threats to Mao's own rule); these aspects of the history are largely left to the reader's own background knowledge
Finally, the authors note that, along with Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin, Mao will be remembered as one of the great tyrants and murderers of the 20th Century. In summary, this is a highly detailed work which is not for the casual reader.
Summary: Very Good
Rating: 4
This fine book is a narrative and analysis of the disastrous Cultural Revolution. The authors are recognized experts on modern Chinese history and this book synthesizes their own primary research and a large volume of secondary research, drawing on both Western and Chinese sources. A major focus is the complex politics at the apex of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Macfarquhar and Schoenhals do a good job of integrating information about provincial politics and the general social impact of the Cultural Revolution. More detail about the social consequences of the Cultural Revolution would have been helpful but this is probably limited by sources.
The central figure of this book, not surprisingly, is Mao Zedong and his central role is a part of the reason much of the book focuses on the higher politics of the Cultural Revolution. Though the Cultural Revolution unleashed latent, destructive forces within China, Mao set the Cultural Revolution in motion and sustained it for years. The authors describe Mao accurately as one of the great tyrants of the 20th century and the text shows his incredible egoism very clearly. Mao clearly set out to produce a state of chaos in China. Why? Mao definitely believed in some idea of a perpetual revolution and mass mobilization. More important, however, seems to have been his insecurity about his paramount position. In the aftermath of the catastrophic Great Leap Forward and seeing the example of the deposition of Krushchev in the Soviet Union, Mao was concerned that there was a risk of no longer being the Supreme leader. Mao initiated the Cultural Revolution by destroying important centers of independent leadership within the CCP and decapitating the military leadership. These moves were followed by mass mobilizations that essentially destroyed the existing formal governmental structures and party discipline. In this chaos, Mao's position and authority as the central arbiter were enhanced greatly. Stalin used similar tactics in the great Purges of the 30s. Recurrent purges and contrived crises produced states of virtual civil war in many parts of China, enormous economic disruption, and caused hundreds of thousands of deaths.
The Cultural Revolution ended only with Mao's death and the
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