100 PHOTOGRAPHS 35
After decades leading the Chinese Communist Party
and then his nation, Mao Zedong began to worry about
how he would be remembered. The 72-year-old Chairman
feared too that his legacy would be under mined by the
stirrings of a counterrevolution. And so in July 1966, with
an eye toward securing his grip on power, Mao took a dip
in the Yangtze River to show the world that he was still in
robust health. It was a propaganda coup. The image of that
swim, one of the few widely circulated photos of the leader,
did just what Mao hoped. Back in Beijing, Mao launched
his Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, rallying the
masses to purge his rivals. His grip on power was tighter
than ever. Mao enlisted the nation’s young people and
implored these rabid Red Guards to “dare to be violent.”
Insanity quickly descended on the land of 750 million, as
troops clutching the Chairman’s Little Red Book smashed
relics and temples and punished perceived traitors. When
the Cultural Revolution finally petered out a decade later,
more than a million people had perished.CHAIRMAN MAO SWIMS IN THE YANGTZE Unknown, 1966