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Journal of Modern Chinese History

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The “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution”: China's modern trauma

Thomas Heberer

To cite this article: Thomas Heberer (2009) The “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution”: China's modern trauma, Journal of Modern Chinese History, 3:2, 165-181, DOI: 10.1080/17535650903345379

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17535650903345379

Published online: 11 Dec 2009.

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ARTICLE

The ‘‘Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution’’: China’s modern trauma

Thomas Heberer*

Institutes of Political Science and East Asian Studies, University Duisburg–Essen

This paper examines and analyses the causes and consequences of the Cultural Revolution in China. This great twentieth century Chinese trauma cannot be detached from Mao as a person. He was its initiator and – as a charismatic leader – stood above the people and the party, and in the consciousness of the majority of the people was perceived as a great, compelling leader. This paper traces the historical setting, the causes, the process and the consequences of this tremendous political and social movement. In addition, the role of Mao and the concepts of his followers are scrutinized. Finally, the issue of whether or not the Cultural Revolution should be classified as a ‘‘revolution’’ is discussed.

Keywords: Cultural Revolution; Mao Zedong; political culture; Chinese road to devel- opment; revolution

‘‘The great proletarian cultural revolution now unfolding is a great revolution that touches people to their very souls and constitutes a new stage in the development of the socialist revolution in our country, a deeper and more extensive stage.’’ With this sentence began the ‘‘Decision of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CCCPC) concerning the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution’’ of August, 1966.1 Fifteen years later the party leadership declared this period to be a ‘‘ten-year catastrophe, which had led to national chaos.’’2 Nothing demonstrates more clearly the political contrast that accrued during this period in China.

When the Cultural Revolution began in 1966, in fact a new, even though tragic, chapter in the history of China, as well as in the history of socialism had begun. For the first time a Communist leader (Mao Zedong) called for publicly attacking and actually destroying the party, its elites and the structures and institutions of the state. All this took place in the name of the proletarian revolution and the fight against bureaucratic and neo-capitalist structures. It also awakened hopes in the West because for the first time a reformation process in a socialist country seemed to get under way in the sense of Marxist’s original ideas: a reformation from within, by the ‘‘masses’’ and supported by a supposed humanitarian revolutionary leader.

Journal of Modern Chinese History Vol. 3, No. 2, December 2009, 165–181

*Email: [email protected] 1Zhonggong zhongyang [The Central Committee of the Communist Party of China], Zhongguo gongchandang zhongyang weiyuanhui guanyu wuchan jieji wenhua dageming de jueding [Decision of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CCCPC) concerning the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution] (Beijing: People’s Publishing House, 1966), 1. 2Zhonggong zhongyang, Guanyu jianguo yilai dang de ruogan lishi wenti de jueyi [Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party since the Founding of the People’s Republic of China] (Beijing: People’s Publishing House, 1981).

ISSN 1753-5654 print/ISSN 1753-5662 online # 2009 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/17535650903345379 http://www.informaworld.com

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The idea of creating a new socialist man through a ‘‘mass revolution’’ and overthrowing the bureaucratic layer that seemed to be responsible for the corruption of socialism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and the hope for a more humane socialism had made the Cultural Revolution not a pure Chinese project. Mao’s call for ‘‘swimming against the tide’’ inspired not only the majority of Chinese young people, but also the political left and many intellectuals in industrialized Western countries. China (and its Cultural Revolution) was celebrated as a new beacon of socialism and model for liberation of the people. A flood of writings seized on Chinese propaganda and traced a development that existed only in the heads of Western intellectuals. They believed that in China a new utopia was under construction.

Western Leftists idealized the Cultural Revolution and translated its ideas into the context of their own countries: ‘‘rebellion is justified’’ became one of the most important slogans of that time. ‘‘We educated ourselves by way of rebelling,’’ a brochure of the ‘‘ Red Cells and the General Students’ Committee’’ at the German University of Kiel in 1972 declared. ‘‘Break with traditional ideas radically,’’ a brochure of the Sinology Working Group of the University of Frankfurt proclaimed in 1974. ‘‘Half the Sky, Women’s Liberation and Children’s Education in China,’’ one of the cult books by the French writer Claudie Broyelle during the 1970s, enthused over the ‘‘socialization of the mother’s func- tion,’’ the takeover of children and a ‘‘new concept of love.’’3 Joshua Horn’s ‘‘An English Surgeon in People’s China’’ described the ‘‘revolutionary organisations in health care’’ and the revolutionizing of doctor–patient relationships.4 In the mid-1970s, a German play about the Chinese school system began with a teacher who entered the class intending to check the students’ homework. The pupils stayed at first irreverent, sitting and continuing their talking about ‘‘the revolution,’’ then they turned toward the teacher and criticized her as a ‘‘bour- geois authority,’’ a ‘‘representative of the capitalist way in education’’ and finally they forced her to undergo self-criticism.5 Not only in China, but also here in Germany one intellectual model was of a Chinese student, who handed in a blank examination paper with a marginal note stating that he was a worker and had therefore no time to prepare for the examination (he was later nominated a vice-minister of the Ministry of Education). Charles Bettelheim, Professor of the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris, was a pioneer of economic idealism, which glorified the working relationships in factories.6

Therefore the significance of the Cultural Revolution reached far beyond China. Mao’s mass line, where the masses did not symbolize the real people, but the ‘‘idea of a moral energy with supranational attractiveness,’’7 seized students and intellectuals outside China because it promised power and change and seemed to point a way out of the frozen socialism of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union and an escape from the assumed authoritarian circumstances in their own countries. The pursuit of creating a ‘‘new man’’ gratified the needs of someWestern intellectuals in the 1960s, especially since they had found it neither in the writings of Karl Marx nor in those of the leftist psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich.

This introductory explanation is intended to suggest the global significance of the Cultural Revolution. However, the following article is not about an historic footnote, but

3Claudie Broyelle, Die Hälfte des Himmels. Frauenemanzipation und Kindererziehung in China (Berlin: Klaus Wagenbach, 1974). 4Joshua S. Horn, An English Surgeon in People’s China (London: The Hymlyn Publishing Group, 1969). 5German–China Friendship Association, ed., Erziehung in China (Bremen, 1973). 6Charles Bettelheim, Cultural Revolution and Industrial Organization in China: Changes in Management and the Division of Labor (New York: New York University Press, 1974). 7G€unther Roth,PolitischeHerrschaft und pers€onliche Freiheit (Frankfurt (Main): Suhrkamp, 1987), 105.

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rather is an attempt to explain the causes and consequences of the Cultural Revolution in China. This twentieth century Chinese trauma cannot be detached fromMao as a person. The American historian John K. Fairbank once wrote that without the dual role of Mao as a revolutionary leader (in his self-conception) and as a new emperor (from the aspect of power) the Cultural Revolution cannot be understood. As a charismatic leader, he stood above the people and the party, and took up the cult figure position in the consciousness of the majority of people. 8 This function of Mao will be discussed at the end of this paper.

I. Political culture and culture revolution

In the analysis of social and political phenomena a basic question was brought forward: that is, to what extent can we actually understand other processes in other cultures with our scientific rationality and categories developed from western patterns? The French Sinologist Marcel Granet once raised the question of whether Chinese characters could actually be translated into our own perceptions.9 Moreover, the single Chinese characters are the result of multi-layered tradition that has grown in the course of centuries. In our context this is valid not only for the Chinese concept of ‘‘culture’’ (wenhua), which traditionally was related to people mastering the rites, classical music, classical writings and rules of Confucian culture. It is similarly valid for the Chinese concept of revolution, which differs fundamentally from the European concept. The former encompasses the Confucian perception that the ruler does not possess a right to rule but a ‘‘mandate from heaven,’’ which he can be deprived of if the ruler does not fulfill his obligations. ‘‘Revolutions’’ (meaning a change of mandates, geming, the word still used today for revolution) were in fact a legitimate tool in Chinese state theory. If harmony, meaning social balance, no longer obtained, if the ruler was unable to act as a regulator of social processes any more, he could forfeit his mandate. In that case uprisings occurred, and even tyrannicide was justifiable. In Chinese history, periods of social unrest and political conflicts followed periods of social harmony and rest. Historians call this interaction the dynastic cycle.10 This term indicates that even radical upheavals did not generate a change of the basic structures of society (in the sense of a revolution), but, as the sociologist Barrington Moore once argued, they were rather rebellions, which brought new dynasties into power and reestablished the original Confucian ruling system or left it widely untouched.11

In this context, the so-called Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) changed nothing in principle, because it altered neither the basic power structure nor the social system on which it was based. Nevertheless it offered something new: it was not a movement plotted from the bottom up, the charismatic leader (Mao) initiated it rather from the top down. It was also not a revolt supported by the peasants, the social group which still makes up the majority of the Chinese population. Rather, fringe groups at first were affected by it. It was also not led by a revolutionary party, but Mao’s charisma stood behind it. He was still seen as the inviolable leader.

If we refer to the traditional content of the Chinese concepts of culture and revolution, a special meaning seems to lurk behind the ‘‘Cultural Revolution’’: namely that ancient Confucian-classical culture should be deprived of its right (mandate) to exist. The ancient or ‘‘old’’ culture and the ways of thinking and behaving associated with it should be wiped out. ‘‘Proletarian’’ stood for an anti-Confucian and new or ‘‘modern’’ culture, corresponding

8John K. Fairbank, Geschichte des modernen China 1800– 1985 (Munich: dtv-Verlag, 1989), 316–17. 9Marcel Granet, Das chinesische Denken (Frankfurt (Main): Suhrkamp, 1985), 19–37. 10See, for instance, C.Y.C. Chi and N.D. Lei, ‘‘Famine, Revolt, and the Dynastic Cycle: Population Dynamics in Historic China,’’ Journal of Pop Economics 7 (1994): 351–78. 11Barrington Moore, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World (Boston: Beacon Press, 1966).

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to Mao’s concepts of culture and modernity. Accordingly, the Cultural Revolution can be classified as an anti-traditional movement.

II. Historical starting point

In themid-1950s themajority of party leaders believed that therewas nomore class antagonism after the nationalization of enterprises and the collectivization of agriculture, but merely contradictions among the people. This point of view was declared the official line by the Eighth Party Congress of theCPC (1956). There wasmassive criticism on the political situation mainly from intellectuals in early 1957 (The Hundred Flower Campaign), which caused a rethinking: Mao and his supporters were convinced that the class struggle would continue to exist, primarily in the ideological field. In the anti-rightist campaign that followed, at first intellectuals were the targets of political assaults. It was believed that the intellectuals had non- revolutionary or counterrevolutionary ideas in their minds and therefore constantly had to be criticized and reeducated. The workers and peasants in contrast were classified as ‘‘poor and blank,’’ as pure-minded and hencemalleable toMao’s revolutionary concepts. ‘‘The population of 600 million in China,’’ said Mao in 1958, ‘‘has two peculiarities; they are, first of all, poor, and secondly blank. . . A clean sheet of paper has no blotches, and so the newest and most beautiful characters can be written on it, the newest and most beautiful pictures can be painted on it.’’12 This concept was a crucial factor for the ‘‘Great Leap Forward’’ (1958–1960), a disastrous attempt tomodernizeChina throughmassmobilization in just a few years. The social costs of this erroneous belief were enormous: about 20–30 million people starved to death.

The inner-party criticism on the policy of the Great Leap and Mao’s leadership strength- ened his believe that within the Communist Party large counterrevolutionary forces were struggling to fight his ‘‘Chinese way’’ of development. Those forces represented the class enemy, the Bourgeoisie. Accordingly he warned in 1962: ‘‘Never forget class struggle.’’13 The development in the Soviet Union after 1956 (criticism on Stalin and his personality cult, along with a certain degree of liberalization) and the return of more market-oriented, competition- oriented and private economic activities in China in the early 1960s nourished his vision of a ‘‘capitalist restoration.’’ He assessed the developing social differentiation as polarization and the beginning of a recurrence of classes. In May 1964 he asserted: ‘‘One third of all basic units are not in our hands,’’ and at the end of that year: ‘‘How many of our industrial enterprises are led by a capitalist management? One third? The half? Or more?’’He spoke for the first time of the existence of a ‘‘bureaucratic class’’ inside the Communist Party. In January 1965 he declared in the politburo that the main targeting objects in the future would be ‘‘those within the party who are in authority and are taking the capitalist road.’’14

Initially science and culture stood in the focus of criticism, domains where there was more freedom since the early 1960s. Concurrently, after the fiasco of the Great Leap Forward, increasing criticisms of Mao and his leadership occurred in the disguise of historical events, figures and allusions. Hence, Mao believed that bourgeois power was concentrated here. For the first time the idea of a ‘‘Cultural Revolution’’ emerged and was justified by reasoning that it was about a ‘‘revolution in the superstructure’’ with the goal of creating a ‘‘new man.’’ This would comprise a revolution in the ideological field and require a permanent education and reeducation process.

12Mao Zedong, Mao zhuxi yulu [Quotations from Chairman Mao] (Beijing: People’s Publishing House, 1969). 13Mao, Mao zhuxi yulu. 14Helmut Forster-Latsch and Jochen Noth,Chinas weg in die Moderne. Anders alsMoskau? (Frankfurt (Main): Sendler, 1986), 135–36.

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III. Principle reasons

Besides the aforementioned historical factors there are essentially five strands of causes and conflicts:

(1) Economic conflicts: the existence of rival, antithetical concepts of development, which included, for instance, the main political and social emphasis (class struggle or economic development; development through mass mobilization or by means of technology and raising the educational level of the population), the priorities of development (technicalization or collectivization), the ownership system (ownership diversity or a one-sided nationalization) or the incentive system (moral or material incentives). The different positions congregated into two fractions. Mao and the then Head of State Liu Shaoqi stood at the top of two diverging fractions, respectively.

(2) Political conflicts: such as a different assessment of priorities. Mao stood for the opinion that class struggle must take the lead. Liu contrarily believed that the problem of class struggle had largely been solved, and therefore economic devel- opment had to be put in the foreground. Those different political concepts and the attempts of both factions to enforce their concepts politically resulted in a struggle to create a political power base for concept enforcement.

(3) Social reasons: increasing employment problems and the discontent of urban youth with their compelled dispatch to rural areas in order to solve those same employment problems became socially explosive. There was also dissatisfaction with regard to the education system. It was based on a strict selection which gave preference to children from political and intellectual elites to the disadvantage to those from worker and peasant families. Additionally, career prospects for university graduates worsened. Furthermore, rural contract laborers in urban enterprises were also dissatisfied because they felt like second-class citizens. They could obtain no permanent residence permit in urban areas, were socially discriminated against and were paid lower wages than urbanites. In addition, unlike the urban workers they were not integrated into the national social welfare system. There was also dissatisfaction among young workers and young apprentices. They had to do the hardest jobs, but were badly paid in return. Poorer peasants in turn were dissatisfied because the household contract management established in 1962 brought few if any benefits to them. Finally, therewas considerable dissatisfaction about the increasing dimension of corruption, bureaucratic orientation and privileges of leading cadres. With this in mind, the Cultural Revolution could be labeled a ‘‘fringe group revolt,’’ meaning that socially discriminated against or disappointed people felt enthusiastic over the ‘‘new revolution’’ proclaimed by Mao and his supporters who favored those groups and instigated them to ‘‘rebel.’’

(4) Ideological reasons: Mao’s concept of Socialism, for example his viewpoint of the role of class struggle as a driving force in social development or his concept of a necessary and successful re-education through permanent revolutions andmassmove- ments associated with his image of mankind and the belief that a ‘‘newman’’ could be created by political mass movements, also played a salient role. Mao held the opinion that China could cast off its economic backwardness and achieve the level of devel- oped capitalist countries by means of comprehensive mass mobilization. ‘‘After a successful revolution,’’ he wrote, ‘‘it is not very problematic to push for mechaniza- tion. The main problem lies in the reeducation of the people.’’15

15Mao Tse-tung, ‘‘Das machen wir anders als Moskau!,’’ ed. Helmut Martin (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1975), 29.

Journal of Modern Chinese History 169

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(5) Individual factors related to Mao as a person: his individual experience of power, his concept of power, his military-strategic and egalitarian world image, finally his separation from the real situation and facts, the personality cult promoted by him as well as his leadership style (his unwillingness to accept criticism or opposition, his reliance on political intrigues in order to consolidate and expand his power) are also essential considerations in order to understanding his thinking and acting. Mao, the sociologist G€unther Roth once noted, wanted ‘‘to enforce an identity of the party with himself and therefore did not shy away from the destruction of the existing party apparatus.’’16 He wanted to use his charisma to change the ‘‘mandate’’ according to his will. Already after the failure of the Great Leap Forward he had threatened that if other party leaders were not in line with his opinions, he would withdraw to the countryside and lead the peasants in overthrowing the government. ‘‘If the Liberation Army will not follow me, I will found a new Red Army,’’ he had intoned. With this statement he underscored a view of himself as a charismatic and outstanding autocrat.

Finally, Mao desired that his developmental model should be forced through by the Cultural Revolution and that his opponents and intellectual critics should be eliminated once and for all. By recruiting new social forces in the form of representatives of his development model or new elites loyal to the person of Mao, the old political elites would be replaced by a new one. New foci concerning the fields of education (manual labor prior to spiritual education, political training prior to professional knowledge, practice prior to theory) were to guarantee the cultivation of a young generation with absolute loyalty towards Chairman Mao.

That unsatisfied parts of the population could be made to play an instrumental role in effecting the Cultural Revolution, lies on the one hand in Mao’s position as a charismatic leader (he possessed almost unlimited authority inside the party and among the population), and on the other hand in the international situation (conflicts with the Soviet Union, international isolation of China, and China’s aspiration for the leading role in the world communist movement). Moreover, there were also the so-called social contradictions and nationalist sentiments (such as the search for a distinct Chinese development model as a role model for both the Chinese and world revolutions) which inspired people.

The initiation of the Cultural Revolution was facilitated by the organizational struc- tures of the Communist Party, to which every individual was subjected: people’s commu- nes and production teams in rural areas and the danweis in urban areas, the enterprise units and dwelling units, which constituted working and living spaces, as well as social and political entities. All of these were greatly exploited as organizations of political control. The various political campaigns throughout the 1950s and the early 1960s, in which all social groups were embroiled, had in fact already eliminated a considerable portion of critics and opposition to the CP regime. In the first half of the 1950s, the land reform movement broke down the opposition of the rural elites; the campaign to suppress counterrevolutionaries eradicated many political opponents. The ‘‘Five Anti’s Campaign’’ was directed against entrepreneurs and businessmen. The criticism of Hu Shi was directed against artists and writers. In the second half of the 1950s, the Campaign against the Rightists broke down intellectual, free thinking and critical forces inside as well as outside the party. An ideological campaign to study Mao’s idea within the armed forces during the first half of the 1960s saw soldiers swearing personal loyalty to Mao and to his

16G€unther Roth, Politische Herrschaft und pers€onliche Freiheit (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1987), 92.

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concepts. And finally, the Socialist Education Movement of 1964/65 was directed against those who opposed Mao’s strict collectivization and supported more liberal policies in the rural areas.17

IV. The pathway of the Cultural Revolution

His increasing isolation within the party leadership in the mid-1960s, caused by the afore- mentioned failure of the Great Leap Forward and his insistence on class struggle and campaigns of political criticism instead of giving priority to economic development and improving the living conditions of the population, made Mao think about a new political movement, which should both consolidate his power (and his political program) and finally help to enforce it. This movement, the Cultural Revolution, began at first in the realm of literature and art with a criticism of the drama Hai Rui’s Dismissal from Office. In it, the renowned dramatist Wu Han portrayed the fate of an upright and incorruptible official in the Ming Dynasty, who was wrongly dismissed by an emperor due to an intrigue. Mao scented an attack on him behind it and linked the drama’s content to the dismissal of Marshal Peng Dehuai in 1959, who was a critic of the Great Leap Forward and former minister of defense. But the criticism campaign initiated by Mao brought only indeterminate results, so that his feeling of political isolation was further strengthened.

Mao demonstrated his comeback to the political stage with a symbolic, sensational swim in the Yangtze River18 at the beginning of 1966. In May of that year a document of the Central Committee of the CPC mentioned for the first time that class struggle between socialism and capitalism existed also within the Communist Party and that the representa- tives of the bourgeoisie had attempted to usurp power in party and state. It called for a strong fight against these representatives within the party and in all social spheres. An enlarged conference of the Politiburo dismissed four Politburo members and 13 members of the secretariat. Mao had pushed this step through by individually talking to other party leaders. A Central Cultural Revolution Group was established, which in principle took over the tasks of the Politburo and the Central Committee.

The first ‘‘big-character poster’’ appeared now at Peking University, which criticized the ‘‘bourgeois trends’’ in the educational system as well as university lecturers and demanded the overthrow of all Mao’s opponents. This first large-character poster was strongly sup- ported by Mao and may even have been launched by him. A plenum of the Central Committee on 1 August 1966 approved the execution of a ‘‘cultural revolution’’ with only a narrow majority. The major part of Mao’s opponents were prevented from attending and accordingly replaced by ‘‘revolutionary teachers and students.’’ During the conference Mao hung up a large-character poster, in which he called upon the participants to ‘‘bombard the headquarters.’’ This was directed against party leaders reluctant to follow his line. At the same time he called upon the youth to rebel against all ‘‘authorities.’’ Red Guards organiza- tions arose among dissatisfied young people.19 While Mao openly called upon the people to participate actively in the Cultural Revolution, the booklet Quotations from Chairman Mao was published. Mao’s ‘‘closest comrade-in-arm,’’ Marshal Lin Biao, wrote in the preface that in order to really master Mao’s ideas ‘‘it might be best to memorize some of his maxims

17Compare Richard Baum, Prelude to the Revolution, Mao, The Party, and the Peasant Question, 1962–66 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1966). 18Mao demonstrated with this action that the strength of (his) human will overcomes all contradictions, man could steer his fate himself. 19On the details of the Cultural Revolution: Roderick MacFarquhar and Michael Schoenhals, Mao’s Last Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006).

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and to study and apply them repeatedly.’’20 The arbitrarily selected quotations replaced in the following years the reading of other books and even of Mao’s Collected Works themselves. In 1966 the watchword ‘‘the whole land must become a big school of Mao Zedong thought’’ was formulated, and the ‘‘little red book’’ was considered the sole, true source of ideas. The ideological makings of a fanatical totalitarianism ominously revealed itself. Thirty years later, a former schoolboy told of what effects the quotations had wrought at that time. When his classmates visited the zoo in Beijing and were asked by a zookeeper to keep quiet during their visit in order not to frighten the animals, they shouted then at the zookeeper Mao’s maxim that ‘‘a revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery; a revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another one.’’ Thereafter the zookeeper shrank back without a word. Quoting Mao was most adequate to hector elderly people and to silence them.21

The Red Guards initially emerged in middle schools and universities. In 1966/67 they carried forward the Cultural Revolution in all parts of the country. Since Mao personally supported the establishment of such organizations and because a directive of the Central Committee had determined that their actions should be protected without any hindrance, social arbitrariness spread out everywhere. Officially, the function of the Red Guards was ‘‘to destruct the Four Olds’’ (old customs, old culture, old habits, and old ideas). As no definition of ‘‘old’’was given, the Red Guards selected the targets of their attacks themselves. What had initially begun with mildly humorous actions such as renaming street signs or shifting the functions of traffic lights (red = free run, green = stay), quickly became more serious.

The ‘‘Program of Beijing’s Red Guards’’ prescribed the following:

l Every citizen should work l Portraits of Chairman Mao should be hung everywhere l Mao’s quotations should be installed everywhere on advertising signboards l Luxury restaurants should be closed, taxis abolished l Revisionist titles and office names must be eliminated l Loudspeakers should be mounted in all streets, so that correct behavior might be

conveyed to the people.22

The arbitrariness suddenly turned into terror. Unpopular, suspected or denounced per- sons or critics were – in Mao’s name – arbitrarily arrested, tortured or killed by members of the Red Guards. No private space existed any longer. The chaos devolved into a kind of civil war when ‘‘rebel organizations’’ engaged in bloody combat with one another inMao’s name. The history of Ken Ling (pseudonym) is well known. This 16-year-old youngster became a leader of the Red Guards in the east China seaport city of Xiamen and was entrusted with the control of 146 industrial firms. He set up a bloody regime of terror in the area under his control and later fled to Taiwan, where he wrote down his story (‘‘I was Mao’s little general’’).23 Social cracks ran through families, residential areas, firms and schools. Rung Chang, a female Red Guard during the Cultural Revolution, described the procedure of Red Guards in her imposing family history:

20Lin Biao, preface to Mao zhuxi yulu, new ed. (Beijing: People’s Publishing House, 1969), 2. 21Shi Ming, ‘‘Schlagt ihm den Hundeschädel ein,’’ Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, May 11, 1996. 22Bundeszentrale f€ur Politische Bildung, ed., ‘‘Informationen zur Politischen Bildung – Die Volksrepublik China’’ (Bonn, 1983), 15–16. 23Ken Ling, Maos kleiner General. Die Geschichte des Rotgardisten Ken Ling (Munich: dtv-Verlag, 1974).

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As soon as I was pressed into the room with the others, my nostrils were filled with the stench of feces, urine, and unwashed bodies. The room had been turned upside down. Then I saw the accused woman. She was perhaps in her forties, kneeling in the middle of the room, partly naked. . . Her hair was in a mess, and part of it seemed to be matted with blood. Her eyes were bulging out in desperation as she shrieked: ‘Red Guard Masters! I do not have a portrait of Chiang Kai-shek!24 I swear I do not!’ She was banging her head on the floor so hard there were loud thuds and blood oozed from her forehead. The flesh on her back was covered with cuts and bloodstains. I was so frightened that I quickly averted my eyes. Then I saw her tormentor, a seventeen-year-old boy named Chian, whom up to now I had rather liked. He was lounging in a chair with a leather belt in his hand, playing with its brass buckle. ‘Tell the truth, or I’ll hit you again,’ he said languidly. . . My feeble protest was echoed by several voices in the room. But Chian cast us a disgusted sideways glance and said emphatically: ‘Draw a line between yourselves and the class enemy’. Chairman Mao says, ‘Mercy to the enemy is cruelty to the people!’ If you are afraid of blood, don’t be a Red Guard!’. . . Outside the door, I saw the woman informer with the ingratiating eyes. . . As I glanced at her face, it dawned onme that there was no portrait of Chiang Kai-shek. She had denounced the poor woman out of vindictiveness. The Red Guards were being used to settle old scores.25

What is described here was not only an individual case. It was the everyday life of terror and arbitrariness which ran rampantly throughout the first phase of the Cultural Revolution and affected every individual person. The number of dead is unknown today, but many people were driven mad by terror and torture. Officially 34,000 dead were announced, but in truth it may be more than four million. The ‘‘trauma literature,’’which began to appear at the end of 1970s and the beginning of 1980s, made an initial attempt to review the past, but it is today still in its infancy.

The writer Ba Jin elucidated the mental consequences of the Cultural Revolution in a self-analysis:

It happened inAugust and September of 1966.My frame ofmindwas very odd at that time. Later I said that I seemed to be hypnotized, even that expression might not be accurate. My head became so confused that I couldn’t think independently any more. I only felt that I had fallen into the water with a heavy burden of sin on my back. I wanted to save myself, but sunk deeper and deeper.26

The Cultural Revolution proceeded by no means without resistance. Those who had profited from the economic policies in the early 1960s (skilled workers, part of the peasantry) stood considerably against the Cultural Revolution at first and resisted it. There was also resistance from the cadre side, particularly among many leading cadres. In almost all provinces there appeared walkouts, strikes and attacks on Red Guards. The rural areas and the peasantry were at first less concerned, they took the advantage of the anarchic state of affairs to acquire more economic freedom. In many regions there appeared spontaneously the reintroduction of markets, land allocations, the reemergence of private economic activ- ities and the disbandment of collectives by dissatisfied peasants. In 1967/68, attacks on state purchasers and Red Guards, who wanted to revolutionize the villages occurred in 21 provinces. In 1967 resistance reached such a degree that the leaders of the Cultural Revolution had to ask the army for support in order to prevent its collapse. It became an important reason for the conflicts in the following years, which led to a civil war-like situation. Rival ‘‘rebel organizations’’ combated each other across the country, where both

24Chiang was president of China before 1949. After being defeated by the Communists he fled to Taiwan where he was president of the Republic of China until his death. 25Jung Chang, Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China (London: Harper Perennial, 2004). 26Quoted in Mark Siemons, ‘‘Der Traum ist tot, der Schrecken bleibt,’’ Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, April 4, 1992.

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sides grotesquely declared themselves to be supporters of ‘‘Chairman Mao’’ and his ideas. A big-character poster hung up by Li Yizhe,27 which also became prominent outside China, and the protest movement in early 1976, both calling for an end to the oppression, indicated that the resistance against the Cultural Revolution had in no way been totally broken.

However, party, state and the judicial systems had in fact disintegrated. A state of arbitrariness and anarchy prevailed. Schools and universities were closed for years, educa- tion and science were ostracized, intellectuals persecuted (as ‘‘stinking number nine’’).28

Ethnic minorities were forcibly assimilated. Foreign contacts were possible only for selected individuals. China became a totalitarian police state isolated from the rest of the world.

In order to get a grip on the chaos and to avoid a famine and to restart industrial production again, Mao asked the army to step in to restore order at the beginning of 1968. The influence of rebels and Red Guards organizations was gradually pushed back with the help of the army, the sole state agency that was still functioning and had not been included in the political conflict initiated byMao. The ‘‘rebels’’were sent to villages for reeducation. As urbanites they were not used to the hard work in the countryside. The peasants regarded them as useless nebbishes. Accordingly, they were not welcomed by rural people. Where Red Guards resisted being sent to rural areas, bloody clashes with the armed forces occurred, leading in part to a high number of casualties. For a long time, these young people were considered a ‘‘lost generation,’’who had to spend their youth in remote and poor rural areas, received no professional training, and disappointedly streamed back into cities as protesting social groups at the end of the 1970s.

The armed forces succeeded finally in taking power at the regional and local levels. They attempted to re-establish the party and state structures by setting up ‘‘revolutionary commit- tees,’’ in which representatives of the army, ‘‘the masses,’’ various rebel fractions and ‘‘revolutionary cadres’’ were required to take part. The Ninth Party Congress of the CPC in 1969 finally approved the program of the group aroundMao. Minister of DefenseMarshal Lin Biao was elected as Mao’s deputy. For the first time in the history of communist parties, the successor of a leader was written into a party constitution while the leader was still alive. The actual winner at the party congress was the armed forces. Nine out of 25 politburo members and almost half of the members of the Central Committee now came from the army. The party congress determined at the same time to re-establish and reorganize the party and state structures.

A new opposition to the Maoist group arose among the military forces related to Lin Biao. Lin stood for the militarization of all areas of life and society. When Mao from 1970 onwards commenced to gradually push back the power and influence of the armed forces, some people under Lin Biao attempted to eliminate Mao through a coup d’état to seize power. This attempt failed. According to official information sources, Lin Biao crashed in Outer Mongolia while attempting to escape to the Soviet Union.

But the suffering of the people was not yet over. Factional strive among party leaders continued between those who wanted to perpetuate the Cultural Revolution, and those who wanted to re-establish order, to enhance economic development, and to open China to foreign countries and the world market. The proponents of a permanent revolution still held the upper hand. They continued to transform the consciousness of the people by perpetuating political and mass campaigns: there were campaigns against Lin Biao, against Confucius, and finally against Beethoven or, for instance, the Italian filmmaker

27Li Yizhe, Helmut Opletal, and Peter Schier, China: Wer gegen Wen? (Berlin: Rotbuch, 1977). 28The ninth category after landlords, rich peasants, counterrevolutionaries, bad elements, Rightists, renegades, enemy agents and ‘‘capitalist roaders.’’

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Michelangelo Antonioni. These campaigns were geared towards supporting the aims of the Leftist proponents of the Cultural Revolution: to carry through their political concepts and to eliminate their opponents.

The main target in the first half of the 1970s was Premier Zhou Enlai who took a rather pragmatic stance and desired to restore political stability and economic development. He and his concepts were the targets of several campaigns. The Left saw him as the ‘‘Confucius of our time.’’ Beethoven was criticized because Zhou enjoyed his music, Antonioni was criticized as he had obtained permission from Zhou to shoot a documentary film in which he had shown, with no ill-will intended, the shady side of China at that time. Consequently that film was heavily criticized by the Left and Zhou was blamed for giving Antonioni permission.

The year 1976 was a crucial year in various respects, in which quite a few events stood in the focus: in January the popular and lovable Zhou Enlai passed away. In April during Tomb Sweeping Day (Qingming), large, spontaneous memorial demonstrations took place at Tian’anmen Square in the heart of Beijing and also in other cities. The government’s attempt to criminalize these demonstrations led to open protest and finally to the demonstrators’ violent dispersion with an unknown number of casualties. Grassroots political anger was chiefly expressed in poems which were written by thousands of people and spread nationwide. The following poem, one of many which were passed around at the time, provides a sample of the feelings and hopes of many people during the final stage of the Cultural Revolution:

In my grief I hear demons shriek; I weep while wolves and jackals laugh. Though tears I shed to mourn a hero, With head raised high, I draw my sword. China is no longer the China of yore, And the people are no longer wrapped in sheer ignorance; Gone for good is Chin Shih Huang’s feudal society. We believe in Marxism–Leninism, To hell with those scholars who emasculate Marxism–Leninism! What we want is genuine Marxism–Leninism. For the sake of genuine Marxism–Leninism, We fear not shedding our blood and laying down our lives; The day modernization in four fields is realized, We will come back to offer libations and sacrifices.29

Awave of arrests swept across the country. The event was officially labeled the Tian’anmen Counter-Revolutionary Incident. Deng Xiaoping was held responsible and was for the second time removed from all his posts and a new campaign against rightist deviationism commenced. In September 1976 Mao died; several days later the Gang of Four, including Mao’s wife Jiang Qing, was arrested. In a public trial they were some years later sentenced to long terms of imprisonment.

This marked the end of the Cultural Revolution. Its protagonists had defied every attempt at reorganization and the orientation of policies towards economic problems. The part of the party leadership who themselves had become victims, or who considered themselves to be the victims of the Cultural Revolution, now declared that the policy of permanent Cultural Revolution would continuously lead to crises. The unrest of the spring of 1976, which had opposed the policies of the Cultural Revolution, had already indicated that the endurance of the people was exhausted.

29‘‘Die Wahrheit €uber den Tian’anmen-Zwischenfall,’’ Peking Rundschau 48 (1978): 14–15.

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Deng Xiaoping, general secretary of the CPC prior to the Cultural Revolution and the most important surviving party leader of the older generation, was rehabilitated in 1977 and returned to power. He had twice been discredited and removed from office: at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution in 1966 and in the spring of 1976. Most people saw in him the guarantor of a new order. He took the lead in replacing those transitional leaders who unceasingly wanted to adhere to ‘‘Mao’s line’’ from the period of the Cultural Revolution and opposed far-reaching economic reforms. They were removed during the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee of the CPC in December 1978. A new party leadership supporting economic reforms, was appointed. The same conference determined that the focus of the Party should be shifted from class struggle to economic modernization. It initiated the first steps toward reforming the economic system.

Why could the protagonists of the Cultural Revolution, after a decade of dominance, be so easily eliminated and why could this ‘‘revolution’’ be so easily ended?Momentum accruing in three spheres seems to be crucial for that: the political, the economic and the social spheres. The continuous conflict due to the arbitrariness and chaos facilitated by an aging Mao and his retrenched ability tomake decisions, as well as the dissatisfaction of the political elites, most of whom were dishonestly deprived of power at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, led to the emergence of counter-elites. They used the short power vacuum after Mao’s death to seize control. The political paralysis had at the same time led to an economic decline and deficien- cies and shortages in the supply of products needed for daily life. In 1976, the economy reached its lowest level since the Great Leap Forward with negative growth rates. The priority on heavy industry dictated byMao led to a drastic decline in light industry, the service industry and the living standards of the people. The supply situation was catastrophic. It was reinforced by a severe crisis in agriculture, where there were no incentives or motivation for peasants at all. Therefore, the Cultural Revolution – from an economic point of view – constituted the most serious economic crisis since the Great Leap Forward at the end of the 1950s. And finally, the discontentment among the people was enormous. The protest demonstrations in the spring of 1976 were an expression of the immense dissatisfaction with the desolate economic situation, the everyday shortages, the permanent political campaigns and inner-party power struggles. Concurrently, all of this encouraged the counter-elites to change the situation quickly and decisively after Mao had passed away.

V. The consequences

The conjectural, heavily propagandized goals (creating a new man, abolishing bureaucracy, etc.) were not attained. A total centralization of the political and economic spheres, similar to the Stalinist-era in the former Soviet Union, had prevailed. The existing juridical instruments (law, the courts) were abolished, a state of lawlessness and arbitrariness existed. The abolition of markets and the private sector led to serious supply shortfalls. Intellectuals and cadres were periodically sent to rural areas for ‘‘reeducation,’’ and were no longer available for continuous service in science, technology, economic and societal develop- ments. The disrespect of intellectual education and science led to the conversion of schools and universities to de facto factories and workshops. The consequence was a considerable deficiency of education among youth and the lack of a qualified labor-force. The peasantry was subjugated to centralized dictation: they had no rights concerning the organization and implementation of cultivation. Private economic activities, peasant markets and handicraft production were strictly prohibited. The vast amount of unpaid labor which peasants had to provide could be interpreted as a hidden form of forced labor. In urban and rural areas wages were paid according to ‘‘political awareness,’’ something which was hard to measure and in

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the final analysis awarded the highest income to yes-men and opportunists. Nationwide ‘‘models’’ (villages, firms) required uniform emulation, leading to the neglect of regional, local or branch particularities. In one serious case the press reported that a party secretary of a People’s Commune in the lowland plain of Northeast China had in the mid-1970s visited the national model village Dazhai in a northwest mountainous area. In order to fully copy this model, she ordered mountains to be built in the plains of her home region so as to precisely copy the terraces in Dazhai. Other repercussions included infringement upon, the class of cadre and the forced assimilation of, ethnic minorities. China was totally isolated diplo- matically and was economically separated from the world market. Besides political, social and ethnic problems, it is important to note that the Cultural Revolution affected every person. Nobody escaped from it, either as a victim or an offender.

Finally, Mao’s vision was the result of traditionalist ideas about ruling and power, coupled with a leadership cult, for which Stalin and others provided the model. The ‘‘cow monsters and snake demons’’ (niugui sheshen) which Mao wanted to ferret out through the Cultural Revolution, were not annihilated by it, but rather created by it. Perhaps the Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin was right, when he objected that intellectuals would construct ideologies and give politics precedence over economy in order to bring themselves to power. At least with Mao, this certainly was the case.

VI. The role and concept of Mao

A first critical evaluation by the party leadership of the Cultural Revolution and Mao’s role took place in 1981. In the ‘‘Resolution of the Central Committee of the CPC Concerning Some Issues in the History of the Party,’’ a detailed assessment of the recent history of the party was performed for the first time since the end of the Cultural Revolution. The Cultural Revolution was assessed as follows:

l It was responsible for the most severe setbacks and the heaviest losses since 1949. l It represented an entirely erroneous appraisal of the prevailing class relations and the

political situation within the Party and state. l It absolutely could not come up with any constructive program, but rather could only

induce grave disorder, damage and retrogression in its train. History has demonstrated that the Cultural Revolution was initiated by a leader laboring under misapprehension and was capitalized upon by counter-revolutionary cliques.

Mao, although the actual initiator of the Cultural Revolution, was widely protected in the evaluation.

Comrade Mao Zedong was a great Marxist and a great proletarian revolutionary, strategist and theorist. It is true that he made gross mistakes during the ‘cultural revolution’ but, if we judge his activities as a whole, his contributions to the Chinese revolution far outweigh his mistakes. His merits were primary and his errors secondary.30

And:

After all they were the mistakes of a great proletarian revolutionary.31

30Zhonggong zhongyang, Guanyu jianguo yilai dang de ruogan lishi wenti de jueyi, 39–41. 31Ibid., 28.

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Not Mao, but the Gang of Four was blamed for all the degeneracy. It helped his wife Jiang Qing little, when – during the defending process – she referred to Mao’s responsibility and indicated that she stood in court on behalf of her husband.

Deng Xiaoping, the strongman after Mao, prevented profound criticism on Mao. A condemnation of Mao would have challenged and called into question the goals and successes which Mao stood for in the official historiography. In that case, both the Party as such and the biographies of most party veterans would have been opened to repudiation or at least negatively affected. In addition, a thorough criticism would also have affected Deng himself and broached in general questions about the character of the party and its organiza- tional principles. Deng understood that this would have been the first step toward the self- destruction of the party itself. Therefore, an overall positive view of Mao as a person and of his ‘‘contributions’’ had to be maintained. Deng considered the major contribution of Mao to have been his guidance along a ‘‘Chinese road of development.’’

Mao was not against industrialization, he wanted in fact to catch up with and to ‘‘over- take’’ the developed countries. But this should not be accomplished by imitation of foreign models, but rather through a specific ‘‘Chinese way,’’ which would be superior at the same time. This is illustrated by some of the mass movements initiated by Mao: peasants should build backyard furnaces for steel production at the end of the 1950s so as to surpass Great Britain in steel-making. He was in search of a development model which contrasted with Western models (including that of the Soviet Union). Since modernization in developing countries was often identified with Westernization, Mao’s search for an alternative was an attempt to safeguard Chinese peculiarities. As in other developing countries, the trauma of colonial intervention and exploitation by Western powers and the consequent aversion arising against Western models and institutions constituted a fundamental point of departure for the communist movement in China. In contrast with earlier concepts developed in the nineteenth century such as importing modern Western technology, but not Western thought to China, Mao reacted to the import of modern technology by uncoupling China from the world market (‘‘relying on one’s own strength’’). Technological imports should and could be superseded by the power of the masses. Upon hammering out a concept of total Sinification of development, the negative aspects of Western developmental models, such as the pauper- ization of large sections of the population, the uprooting of people and individualization at the expense of society, could seemingly be avoided. Finally Mao wanted to safeguard traditional Chinese structures. The ‘‘new man,’’ whom he wanted to create, should not be self-aware, but compliant and sequacious. Mao attempted to set up the ideal of a self- sufficient, unitary and egalitarian collective community, against Western models with their negative impacts and effects. Poor though it be, life in Mao’s China was to be suffused with meaning and the ideal of a communist vision. Mao believed that he had found a mode of Chinese alternative development through the Cultural Revolution.

Therefore, theCultural Revolution can also be conceived as an attempt to respond toWestern concepts of modernization. A community of national solidarity, as Mao imagined, required maximum egalitarianism. All diverging trends, such as class and stratum, various ownership forms, heterogeneous ethnic and religious movements, regional and local particularities and family interests, were viewed as detrimental to such a community. The attempt at enforced conformity of society through mass campaigns, the fight against any interests of distinct social groups by means of political rectification or ‘‘class struggle,’’ as well as the limitation of the division of labor all harken back finally to Mao’s vision of an ideal, which resulted from a traditional understanding of harmony and a total pretension to power. Here it could be easily argued through a quasi-Marxian logic that: the division of labor allowed a surplus product, a surplus product could be acquired by a minority, who then rose to the position of a new ruling

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class and so undermined the social solidarity of the national community. Accordingly, the basic reason for this evil, the division of labor, had to be limited rigorously.

When Mao, during the Cultural Revolution, appealed to youth to ‘‘swim against the tide,’’ he by no means meant independent thinking, nor democratization of criticism nor critical reflection on political positions. He had time and again massively attacked his critics; critique was something that should only be directed towards his opponents. ‘‘Swimming against the tide’’ did not mean questioning power per se or even Mao’s own power. Rather the invitation was to attack the opponents of his ideas and concepts overtly.

Mao’s concept of the Cultural Revolution possessed significant affinities with political traditions. The Sinologist Wolfgang Bauer pointed out once that the almost magic character of books, the religious veneration of charismatic men, the idea that will and consciousness can change reality, and the faith in a final paradisiacal final state had always held great meaning in the Taoistic–messianic and chiliastic movements.32 The permanent interplay of order and chaos was strange neither to Taoism nor to Confucianism and was completely understood as an act of purification. It found expression symbolically in Mao’s words ‘‘The world is in total chaos, the situation is excellent’’ (tianxia daluan, xingshi dahao), which were often quoted during the Cultural Revolution. The idea of a permanent revolution, but also other core phenomenon during the Cultural Revolution, such as the ‘‘Mao-Bible,’’ the cult of Mao, the idea of voluntarily changing people’s minds and the imagining of a communist Utopia, therefore have solid roots in the political culture of China. The applica- tion of such traditional patterns, which were part and parcel of Mao’s ‘‘Sinification of Marxism,’’ has made socialism (or better: its Sinicized interpretation) acceptable to large sectors of the population.

The goal of Mao’s policies and his Cultural Revolution was industrialization without modernization (contrary to the current policies which aim at modernization without wester- nization). Yet, his modernization strategy has unintentionally created the prerequisites for the reform process, because it weakened the potential hostility to modernization. The results of Mao’s policies have concurrently generated a critical moment (criticism of Mao, of his development model, and finally of the party and of the political system).

VII. From revolution to reform

The Cultural Revolution was ended not by a farsighted party leadership alone. It was rather the obvious failure of Mao’s developmental model, the economic, social, political and agrarian crises in the middle of the 1970s, characterized by declining agrarian revenue, massive poverty and a growing potential for protest in the rural areas, which led to a debate about the future coarse among the political elite. The perplexity of party leaders created a vacuum, which gave the peasants room to maneuver. And they acted spontaneously, as had happened time and again since the 1950s: in the poor areas of central and southern China the land was divided by peasants. This resulted in returning to cultivation on a family basis. When the party leaders recognized the success of these measures, it was implemented countrywide as an agrarian economic reform after a short and conflicting debate among the political elite. The Cultural Revolution was ended. The end went along with the rehabilitation of tens of thousands of political prisoners, assumed ‘‘class enemies’’ and ‘‘rightists’’ exiled to the countryside, intellectuals and cadres. Larger political transparency, the opening up to foreign investment and the world market, the establishment of a legal system and a judiciary, relatively extensive personal freedoms, economic liberalization

32Wolfgang Bauer, China und die Hoffnung auf Gl€uck (Munich: dtv-Verlag, 1974), 567–69.

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meaning the withdrawal of the omnipresence of the state from society, must also be under- stood as the result of the experiences during the Cultural Revolution. The Cultural Revolution resulted at the same time in the perception that revolution does not constitute a suitable means for social change. In this way the revolution conquered the revolution.

That China after 1978 has undergone a relatively successful process of economic and social change, which has been fundamentally different from the transformation processes in Eastern Europe and in the former Soviet Union, is related to the special factors of Chinese development, and indirectly also to the Cultural Revolution. This trauma functioned as a negative experience for elites and the people. The Cultural Revolution led to the weakening of the old, revolutionary elite and therewith also to the weakening of potential hostility to reform. Even now the fear of social and political instability still prevails among the political elites as well as among the common people, because instability is equated with Mao’s political campaigns and particularly with the experiences of the Cultural Revolution and therefore with chaos (luan).

The Cultural Revolution is over. A new version, as had been predicted by Mao, seems to be unlikely. The process of coming to terms with it stands however yet at the beginning. The Taiwanese writer Bo Yang in his work ‘‘The Ugly Chinaman’’ argued in respect to the Cultural Revolution that:

The Cultural Revolution was a disaster unprecedented in the history of human civilization. The Cultural Revolution not only left millions dead, it also crushed humanitarian values and defiled the sanctity of the human spirit, without which there remains very little to separate men and beasts. During China’s ‘ten-year holocaust’ people behaved like wild beasts. How can a people which morally has fallen so deep ever rebound back?33

The collective process of mourning related to the Cultural Revolution, which is so important for overcoming the traumata of a people, is still in the beginning stages. The political leadership is still afraid that a radical criticism, which would have to commence with Mao himself, might affect the Party as an organization and possibly tear it apart in a swirl of criticism. The thirtieth anniversary of the Cultural Revolution in May 1996 and the fortieth anniversary in May 2006 did not witness any review of this event. Any intensive criticism was not permitted. In 2006, TV dramas and films preferred to remind people of the positive sides: though a difficult time, it was characterized in dramas by simplicity and honesty, and therefore was portrayed quite positively in contrast with the extortionate morality of the market nowadays. The Cultural Revolution serves as learningmaterial for ethic andmoral education, in the interpretation of the party. It still remains the task of future generations to analyze and assess the experiences and sufferings of the Cultural Revolution in a fundamental way and therefore to contribute to the political and cultural understanding of those days, which shocked the world.

The final question is whether or not the Cultural Revolution was in fact a ‘‘revolution’’? If not, what was it? The late sociologist Ralf Dahrendorf once called revolutions the ‘‘bittersweet moments of history.’’ Hopes flare up shortly and run quickly into disappoint- ment and new grievances.34 This was also the case for China. The Cultural Revolution was planned as a revolution by Mao and his supporters in the sense that it should fundamentally alter and remodel the existing state of affairs, and consequently bring a break to continuity. But in retrospect, it was not able to principally change the political structures in any enduring way. The basic structures of the system remained widely the same during this phase.

33BoYang, The Ugly Chinaman and the Crisis of Chinese Culture, trans. and eds. Don J. Cohn and Jing Qing (St. Leonards, NSW, Australia: Allen & Unwin, 1992). 34Ralf Dahrendorf, Der moderne soziale Konflikt (Munich: dtv-Verlag, 1994), 13.

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Therefore it entailed rather a radical mobilization of countervailing power in order to enforce Mao’s political concepts. Unlike Stalin’s purges of the 1930s, it didn’t rest upon the state apparatus, but on the actions of dissatisfied people (‘‘the masses’’). Not physical liquidation, but forced mental reeducation gained priority. The results for the people were very similar, but the end was different: Stalin was condemned in the Soviet Union and liberalized socialism, which proved to be as rigid as the old model and little changed, finally collapsed. In China, quite the contrary occurred: Mao’s leadership was criticized, but not (yet) condemned. The trauma of the Cultural Revolution disembogued into a reform program, which brought successful economic development and rapid social change. Therefore, it was in fact a watershed in modern Chinese history.35

(translated from German by Zhang Wenhong)

Glossary

Ba Jin 巴金 Bo Yang 柏杨 Rung Chang 张戎 danwei 单位 Dazhai 大寨 Deng Xiaoping 邓小平 geming 革命 Hu Shi 胡适 Jiang Qing 江青 Ken Ling 凌耿 Li Yizhe 李一哲 Lin Biao 林彪 Liu Shaoqi 刘少奇 luan 乱 niugui sheshen 牛鬼蛇神 Peng Dehuai 彭德怀 Qingming 清明 Tian’anmen 天安门 tianxia daluan, xingshi dahao 天下大乱, 形势大好 wenhua 文化 Wu Han 吴晗 Xiamen 厦门 Zhou Enlai 周恩来

Chinese Language Bibliography Mao Zedong 毛泽东,《毛主席语录》, 北京: 人民出版社, 1969年。 Zhonggong zhongyang 中共中央,《中国共产党中央委员会关于无产阶级文化大革命的决定》,

北京: 人民出版社, 1966年。 ——,《关于建国以来党的若干历史问题的决议》, 北京: 人民出版社, 1981年。

35See the seminal work by Roderick MacFarquhar and Michael Schoenhals, Mao’s Last Revolution (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2006).

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