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The Cultural Revolution, 1966–1969
China’s Self-Isolation: Creating the Spiritual Conditions
for Communism
The period from spring 1966 to late 1968 saw spreading upheaval across China.
This upheaval reflected a struggle over power and policy within the top levels
of the CCP. Mao had become convinced that the more development-oriented
policies introduced by leaders like Liu Shaoqi after the collapse of the Great
Leap Forward would, if continued, take China toward the “restoration of
capitalism” he believed had already occurred in the Soviet Union. Mao also
deeply resented having been pushed aside by Liu, Deng, and others. He could
perhaps have used the internal security apparatus, firmly controlled by Mao
loyalist Kang Sheng, to purge his rivals. Stalin had done that. Instead, Mao
opted to use his immense personal authority and charisma to call forth orga-
nizations of idealistic radical youth to ferret out and hound out of office all
power-holders who questioned Mao’s leadership and policy directives. These
“Red Guard” organizations soon gained a momentum of their own and tar-
geted many of the privileges and abuses of power-holders empowered during
the “construction of socialism” over the previous fifteen years. The Cultural
Revolution became a curious phenomenon of a popular uprising against the
institutions of power of a Leninist state, but an uprising led by the paramount
leader of that party. Mao imagined, or at least he said, that Red Guard youth
were gaining experience in “making revolution” just as he and his genera-
tion had when they were young, and this revolutionary experience would
help keep China on the correct road to communism. Mao, age seventy-three
in 1966, was contemplating his own mortality and sought to ensure that his
spirit lived on in the course of the Chinese revolution.
The Cultural Revolution saw the most extreme efforts to force Chinese
society to conform to the utopian vision of Mao. The Great Leap had been
Mao’s and China’s first utopian thrust. But that era had concentrated on
rapid increases in economic production, in Marxist terms on the economic