Chinese Society amid Mao's Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution: The Roots and Nature of the Tragedy

Frank Dikötter, The Cultural Revolution: A People's History, 1962–1976. London: Bloomsbury, 2016. 432 pp. £22.50.Editor's Introduction: Frank Dikötter's landmark three-volume history of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in the era of Mao Zedong is a compendium of self-inflicted catastrophes. Tens of millions of Chinese died of starvation during the famines produced by Mao's Great Leap Forward in the late 1950s and early 1960s; vast numbers of others had already been killed during the rampantly violent consolidation of Mao's Communist regime in the early to mid-1950s; and nearly all of Chinese society was swept up in the systematic cruelty of Mao's Cultural Revolution. This forum deals with the last of these three periods, as recounted in the final volume of Dikötter's trilogy, The Cultural Revolution; A People's History, published on the 50th anniversary of the start of the Cultural Revolution. An earlier forum on China's Cultural Revolution appeared in the Spring 2008 issue of the journal, with five commentaries about Mao's Last Revolution, a sweeping political overview published by Roderick MacFarquhar and Michael Schoenhals as a sequel to MacFarquhar's monumental three-volume survey, The Origins of the Cultural Revolution. Dikötter's The Cultural Revolution covers some of the same ground but adds a great deal about the disastrous impact of the Cultural Revolution on Chinese society, drawing on a remarkable panoply of archival holdings.When the Cultural Revolution began in 1966, the PRC was bitterly at odds with both the United States and the Soviet Union. The growing enmity between Beijing and Moscow gave rise to deadly armed clashes between Chinese and Soviet military forces along the two countries’ shared border in March and August 1969. Those confrontations were one of the factors that spurred Mao to seek a rapprochement with the United States, helping to offset the Soviet military threat. The U.S.-China rapprochement became a reality after Henry Kissinger and President Richard Nixon visited the PRC in 1971 and 1972 respectively. Even as the Cultural Revolution dragged on until Mao's death (albeit with less chaotic violence than in 1966–1967), China was fundamentally reorienting its strategy in the Cold War.We asked three experts—Sergey Radchenko, Joseph Torigian, and Radoslav Yordanov—to offer their appraisals of Dikötter's third volume. Their commentaries are published here along with a reply by Dikötter.— Mark KramerThe much‐awaited final volume of Frank Dikötter's trilogy on the history of Mao Zedong's China is not for the faint of heart. The first volume in the trilogy (Mao's Great Famine) was horrifying, and the second volume (The Tragedy of Liberation) showed that the catastrophe of the Great Leap had deeper roots than many had thought.1 Executions, torture, starvation, cannibalism, and … numbers, numbers, numbers: millions of lives falling into the dark chasm of non-being in a meaningless succession of shrieks. Even before I picked up the third volume I expected to be horrified again by the sheer cruelty of Mao's regime. Sure enough, beatings, rapes, torture, and murders are all there. But the systematic monstrosity that animated the earlier years of the Maoist experiment is not. Instead, the reader beholds a chaotic stage—a war of all against all, a bizarre, partly orchestrated, partly spontaneous rebellion that left the hierarchies of power in deep paralysis, a baffling spectacle that turned the whole society upside down, leading in the long run to anything but what Mao had expected when he issued his famous call to “bombard the headquarters.”What did Mao expect, and why did he unleash the chaos? Many a historian of the Cultural Revolution has tried to answer these questions, and so does Dikötter. There are no great surprises here. We learn that Mao wanted to “retain his position at the center” (p. 14). But why, in this case, did he not wrap up his revolution in late 1966 or early 1967, when his opponents, real and imagined, were already sidelined? Also, Mao evidently wanted to “shore up his own standing in world history” (p. x). But if so, why did he choose such a strange way of going about it—effectively destroying his own party? The book delves into these questions only superficially, probably by design. To the extent that Dikötter tries to unwrap the sordid mysteries of Mao's court, he shows that many of the early victims of the Cultural Revolution, including Liu Shaoqi, Wang Guangmei, and Deng Xiaoping, had viciously hounded others before being hounded themselves. There were no good guys, no martyrs unjustly prosecuted: just the stench of hypocrisy and back‐stabbing.For the most part, though, Dikötter is content with leaving the realm of high politics in deliberate vagueness. He is more interested in the grassroots; this is, after all, a “People's History.” We learn about the world as it looked from the window of a crowded train, bringing thousands of unwashed, hungry, but enthusiastic Red Guards to Beijing to worship Mao. We learn about the ransacking of homes, the thriving trade in Mao badges, the secret reading and hand‐copying of pornographic novels. In short, we learn about ordinary people living in ordinary places during extraordinary times. The perspective is refreshing, not to of Cultural Revolution some of Dikötter's He on his tried and of and from the a what is the that the of the book the of Dikötter's to the The first is that at the of he second from but in on the thriving in the of homes, were living same people Mao in and from the Red to to and Cultural Dikötter no more than (p. This why China so and to after the Cultural Revolution. was not by not by not by second is that the Chinese people the Maoist by was the people the that had been in was the people the revolution by and Dikötter from Deng only as he had the the to the (p. There is to this the of was in the Deng for the Dikötter's own that for was a and some to be But this is a of a I turned the last I the was left was the Cultural power and but was This was the only in the history the of the and of when the Communist was threat. The that it was Mao the does not the that the was by and at the The Cultural Revolution the hierarchies of To Dikötter's final it the of the in in the of for the Chinese a of the Cultural Revolution. had it all to the before the whole was in The so at Mao's years this of 1966 were of from of But is a between the one that in the of the between Chinese society and Chinese for the not just in China but in of the Dikötter's The Cultural Revolution: A People's and of the and by ordinary Chinese during the Cultural Revolution. 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But as were no good guys, no martyrs unjustly prosecuted: just the stench of hypocrisy and that I on first reading a of at been so as to the for a But after the including the of MacFarquhar and Michael Schoenhals the leading on political I that both are to the same these about high politics There be a or a or a on the of a about this or that as a I it more to at the of the that is and what of questions be and to about a of the lives of the vast of the that is the way the the of the Communist in Beijing