Cultural Revolution (China, 1966–1976)

Initially, the Cultural Revolution was welcomed by large segments of the population as a movement to redress grievances in the state and society. Mao, however, instead of the renewal within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) desired by politicians such as Liu Shaoqi, set in motion a mass movement to destroy the old CCP. Most of the old cadres were removed from their posts. Only 28% of Politburo members, 34% of CC members, and 29% of provincial secretaries managed to hold on to their positions by the end of 1966.

The Cultural Revolution consisted of a series of mass campaigns that alternated and sometimes contradicted each other. Originally, the Cultural Revolution was supposed to last only half a year, then it was prolonged for ten years, until Mao's death. If Mao was still able to inspire substantial parts of the population for the Cultural Revolution at the beginning, the mass movements ordered in the last years became listlessly held compulsory rituals.

The Cultural Revolution is often divided into three phases: the Red Guard period (May 1966 to 1968), the Lin Biao period (1968 to August 1971), and the Zhou Enlai period (August 1971 to October 1976).

Unlike the Great Leap Forward campaign, the economy and agriculture were largely exempted from the Cultural Revolution. It had been learned that production had to continue as undisturbed as possible. The campaigns focused on politics, culture, public opinion, schools and universities, but there the Cultural Revolution initially raged with sometimes boundless cruelty. Several professors were beaten to death. The universities stopped their work at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, and normal university operations, with entrance and final examinations and qualified certificates, were not reintroduced until 1978. Numerous cultural monuments were destroyed by revolutionaries.

Among the leading politicians, too, there was this division of labor between the Cultural Revolution and production. Under Mao's guidance, politicians like Jiang Qing and Lin Biao were responsible for the Cultural Revolution; politicians like Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping were responsible for the economy, which Mao knew little about and left to others.

By the 1960s, in Mao's view, China, like the USSR before it, was on the road to revisionism. In the USSR, in Mao's view, a new bureaucratic class had taken power, aloof from the mass of the population. Mao pointed out that class struggles must be the guiding principle of politics and that the class struggle must be carried out "daily, monthly and annually." In China, however, Mao saw a solidification in the achieved state with a bureaucrat class that cemented its position, aloof from the masses of the people.

Therefore, Mao called for a new socialist revolution in the field of political, social as well as cultural superstructure - the Cultural Revolution. The reason for the proclamation of the Cultural Revolution was not only the overthrow of some politicians of the "pragmatic line" such as Liu Shaoqi or Deng Xiaoping. Their ousting was already done at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution in May 1966, when a large majority in the new Politburo turned against them. They were able to continue in economic and day-to-day politics, but they had lost the backing of the Politburo. Mao had a larger social goal in mind. The whole of society and the party were to be proletarianly renewed, and a further step towards ideal socialism was to be accomplished.

Unlike the politicians around Liu Shaoqi, Mao was concerned that the necessary renewals would be brought about not within and by the Communist Party, but by the masses. He believed that by relying on the onslaught of the popular masses, a change in the overall social situation could be brought about and thus a true socialist society could be created. Hence Mao's expression: "With chaos on earth one achieves great order in the country".

Mao hoped to become the father and leader of the world socialist revolution through the Cultural Revolution and therefore regarded the Cultural Revolution as a decisive event in human history. In 1967 he wrote in the magazine Rote Fahne:

Combined with the daily personality cult around Mao, Mao's proclamation to the Chinese youth to open a new chapter in the history of mankind towards an ideal world with the Cultural Revolution gave the movement enthusiasm, fanaticism as well as brutality, hatred and destructiveness against the alleged enemies.

An essential feature of the Cultural Revolution was its indeterminacy. The aim was to expose "capitalist rulers" and "revisionists" who were taking the "wrong road," but nowhere was it specified what these terms meant. At the same time, the sentences passed were absolute. In the case of a person accused of being on the wrong path, everything was wrong; in the case of persons who were "on the right path," everything was right. From this also often followed senseless brutality against old, deserving comrades and fighters in the Civil War who had allegedly "left the right path." Even between the drivers of the Cultural Revolution, violent conflicts were not uncommon.

Cultural life and higher education came to an almost complete standstill. Universities did not hold normal educational sessions from 1966 to 1978. Avoiding the emergence of a new educational class and propagating the class struggle appeared more important than imparting knowledge.

The exclusion of the economy from the Cultural Revolution made it possible for Deng Xiaoping, who had been attacked as a particularly nasty "revisionist" during the Cultural Revolution, to be politically active in a leading position for five years out of the ten years of the Cultural Revolution, from 1966 to 1968 as general secretary of the party and from 1973 to 1976 as deputy and later successor to Zhou Enlai. On the other hand, the grip in the field of culture was extensive. Jiang Qing, for example, arbitrarily selected works in which proletarian heroes and their exploits were presented as exemplary. The performance of traditional operas was banned.

Shortly before his death Mao received once more his successor HuaGuofeng and his most important comrades-in-arms for the Cultural Revolution, the later Gang of Four Wang Hongwen, Zhang Chunqiao, Jiang Qing and Yao Wenyuan, and gave the following verdict on his life's work:

Four weeks after Mao's death, Wang Hongwen, Zhang Chunqiao, Jiang Qing, and Yao Wenyuan were arrested as a gang of four, and a year after Mao's death, Deng Xiaoping was reinstated to his former posts. The Cultural Revolution, for which Mao had fought for ten years, was over.