The Cultural Revolution

The Cultural Revolution PDF Author: Richard Curt Kraus
Publisher: OUP USA
ISBN: 0199740550
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 153

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Book Description
Examines the radical Chinese Communist movement called the Cultural Revolution, a period of suppression so controversial in China, that the Chinese government forbids a full investigation into it even 50 years later. Original.

The World Turned Upside Down

The World Turned Upside Down PDF Author: Yang Jisheng
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374716919
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 768

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Book Description
Yang Jisheng’s The World Turned Upside Down is the definitive history of the Cultural Revolution, in withering and heartbreaking detail. As a major political event and a crucial turning point in the history of the People’s Republic of China, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) marked the zenith as well as the nadir of Mao Zedong’s ultra-leftist politics. Reacting in part to the Soviet Union’s "revisionism" that he regarded as a threat to the future of socialism, Mao mobilized the masses in a battle against what he called "bourgeois" forces within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). This ten-year-long class struggle on a massive scale devastated traditional Chinese culture as well as the nation’s economy. Following his groundbreaking and award-winning history of the Great Famine, Tombstone, Yang Jisheng here presents the only history of the Cultural Revolution by an independent scholar based in mainland China, and makes a crucial contribution to understanding those years' lasting influence today. The World Turned Upside Down puts every political incident, major and minor, of those ten years under extraordinary and withering scrutiny, and arrives in English at a moment when contemporary Chinese governance is leaning once more toward a highly centralized power structure and Mao-style cult of personality.

The Cultural Revolution

The Cultural Revolution PDF Author: Frank Dikötter
Publisher: Bloomsbury Press
ISBN: 1632864231
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 433

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Book Description
The concluding volume--following Mao's Great Famine and The Tragedy of Liberation--in Frank Dikötter's award-winning trilogy chronicling the Communist revolution in China. After the economic disaster of the Great Leap Forward that claimed tens of millions of lives from 1958–1962, an aging Mao Zedong launched an ambitious scheme to shore up his reputation and eliminate those he viewed as a threat to his legacy. The Cultural Revolution's goal was to purge the country of bourgeois, capitalistic elements he claimed were threatening genuine communist ideology. Young students formed the Red Guards, vowing to defend the Chairman to the death, but soon rival factions started fighting each other in the streets with semiautomatic weapons in the name of revolutionary purity. As the country descended into chaos, the military intervened, turning China into a garrison state marked by bloody purges that crushed as many as one in fifty people. The Cultural Revolution: A People's History, 1962–1976 draws for the first time on hundreds of previously classified party documents, from secret police reports to unexpurgated versions of leadership speeches. After the army itself fell victim to the Cultural Revolution, ordinary people used the political chaos to resurrect the market and hollow out the party's ideology. By showing how economic reform from below was an unintended consequence of a decade of violent purges and entrenched fear, The Cultural Revolution casts China's most tumultuous era in a wholly new light.

The Origins of the Cultural Revolution

The Origins of the Cultural Revolution PDF Author: Roderick MacFarquhar
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231057172
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 500

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Book Description
The second volume in a trilogy which examines the politics, economics, culture and international relations of Chines from the mid-1950s to he mid-1960s, this volume tells the story of the Great Leap Forward--Mao's utopian attempt to propel China economically and socially into the twenty-fist century by mobilizing his nation's greatest asset: its disciplined, manpower. The effort produced economic disaster and political dissension, and helped to precipitate the Sino-Soviet split. Today's leaders point to it as the beginning of two decades of national trauma, which ended only after the death of Mao and the purge of the Gang of Four. Those leaders have recently authorized the release of a mass of new documentation in the form of political reminiscences, economic statistics, and leaders' speeches. This volume is the first scholarly work to use the new material comprehensively, weaving it into the narrative along with the contemporary record and the revelations published in Red Guard newspapers during the cultural revolution. The result is the most detailed account and analysis to date of what went wrong and why.

China's Cultural Revolution, 1966-69

China's Cultural Revolution, 1966-69 PDF Author: Michael Schoenhals
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131747497X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Book Description
Mao Zedong launched the "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution" 30 years ago. This documentary history of the event presents a selection of key primary documents dealing with the Cultural Revolution's massive and bloody assault on China's political and social systems.

Mao's Last Revolution

Mao's Last Revolution PDF Author: Roderick MACFARQUHAR
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674040414
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 742

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Book Description
Explains why Mao launched the Cultural Revolution, and shows his Machiavellian role in masterminding it. This book documents the Hobbesian state that ensued. 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.

The Cultural Revolution at the Margins

The Cultural Revolution at the Margins PDF Author: Yiching Wu
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674419863
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
Mao Zedong envisioned a great struggle to "wreak havoc under the heaven" when he launched the Cultural Revolution in 1966. But as radicalized Chinese youth rose up against Party officials, events quickly slipped from the government's grasp, and rebellion took on a life of its own. Turmoil became a reality in a way the Great Leader had not foreseen. The Cultural Revolution at the Margins recaptures these formative moments from the perspective of the disenfranchised and disobedient rebels Mao unleashed and later betrayed. The Cultural Revolution began as a "revolution from above," and Mao had only a tenuous relationship with the Red Guard students and workers who responded to his call. Yet it was these young rebels at the grassroots who advanced the Cultural Revolution's more radical possibilities, Yiching Wu argues, and who not only acted for themselves but also transgressed Maoism by critically reflecting on broader issues concerning Chinese socialism. As China's state machinery broke down and the institutional foundations of the PRC were threatened, Mao resolved to suppress the crisis. Leaving out in the cold the very activists who had taken its transformative promise seriously, the Cultural Revolution devoured its children and exhausted its political energy. The mass demobilizations of 1968-69, Wu shows, were the starting point of a series of crisis-coping maneuvers to contain and neutralize dissent, producing immense changes in Chinese society a decade later.

A Continuous Revolution

A Continuous Revolution PDF Author: Barbara Mittler
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674065819
Category : Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Cultural Revolution Culture, often denigrated as pure propaganda, was liked not only in its heyday but continues to be enjoyed today. Considering this art--music, stage works, posters, comics, literature--in its longue durée, Barbara Mittler suggests it builds on a tradition of earlier works, allowing for proliferation in contemporary China.

The Cultural Revolution

The Cultural Revolution PDF Author: Richard Curt Kraus
Publisher: OUP USA
ISBN: 0199740550
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 153

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Book Description
Examines the radical Chinese Communist movement called the Cultural Revolution, a period of suppression so controversial in China, that the Chinese government forbids a full investigation into it even 50 years later. Original.

Rhetoric of the Chinese Cultural Revolution

Rhetoric of the Chinese Cultural Revolution PDF Author: Xing Lu
Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press
ISBN: 1643361481
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
A startling look at revolutionary rhetoric and its effects Now known to the Chinese as the "ten years of chaos," the Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966–76) brought death to thousands of Chinese and persecution to millions. In Rhetoric of the Chinese Cultural Revolution Xing Lu identifies the rhetorical practices and persuasive effects of the polarizing political language and symbolic practices used by Communist Party leaders to legitimize their use of power and violence to dehumanize people identified as class enemies. Lu provides close readings of the movement's primary texts—political slogans, official propaganda, wall posters, and the lyrics of mass songs and model operas. She also scrutinizes such ritualistic practices as the loyalty dance, denunciation rallies, political study sessions, and criticism and self-criticism meetings. Lu enriches her rhetorical analyses of these texts with her own story and that of her family, as well as with interviews conducted in China and the United States with individuals who experienced the Cultural Revolution during their teenage years. In her new preface, Lu expresses deep concern about recent nationalism, xenophobia, divisiveness, and violence instigated by the rhetoric of hatred and fear in the United States and across the globe. She hopes that by illuminating the way language shapes perception, thought, and behavior, this book will serve as a reminder of past mistakes so that we may avoid repeating them in the future.

China's Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution

China's Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution PDF Author: Woei Lien Chong
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780742518742
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 438

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Book Description
Treating China's Cultural Revolution as much more than a political event, this innovative volume explores its ideological dimensions. The contributors focus especially on the CR's discourse of heroism and messianism and its demonization of the enemy as reflected in political practice, official literature, and propaganda art, arguing that these characteristics can be traced back to hitherto-neglected undercurrents of Chinese tradition. Moreover, while most studies of the Cultural Revolution are content to point to the discredited cult of heroism and messianism, this book also explores the alternative discourses that have flourished to fill the resulting vacuum. The contributors analyze the intense intellectual and artistic ferment in post-Mao China that embody resistance to CR ideology, as well as the urgent quest for authentic individuality, new forms of social cohesion, and historical truth. Contributions by: Anne-Marie Brady, Woei Lien Chong, Lowell Dittmer, Monika Gaenssbauer, Nick Knight, Stefan R. Landsberger, Nora Sausmikat, Barend J. ter Haar, Natascha Vittinghoff, and Lan Yang.