7 Mao Zedong 7be reorganized into “people’s communes.” However,
neither the resources nor the administrative experience
necessary to operate such enormous new social units of
several thousand households were in fact available, and,
not surprisingly, the consequences of these changes were
chaos and economic disaster.
Mao’s Great Leap Forward and his criticism of “new
bourgeois elements” in the Soviet Union and China alien-
ated the Soviet Union irrevocably; Soviet aid was
withdrawn in 1960. The disorganization and waste created
by the Great Leap, compounded by natural disasters and
by the termination of Soviet economic aid, led to wide-
spread famine in which, according to much later official
Chinese accounts, millions of people died.
Cultural Revolution
The movement that became known as the Great
Proletarian Cultural Revolution represented an attempt
by Mao to devise a new and more radical method for deal-
ing with what he saw as the bureaucratic degeneration of
the party. But it also represented, beyond any doubt, a
deliberate effort to eliminate those in the leadership who,
over the years, had dared to cross him. The victims, from
throughout the party hierarchy, suffered more than mere
political disgrace. All were publicly humiliated and
detained for varying periods, sometimes under very harsh
conditions. Many were beaten and tortured, and not a few
were killed or driven to suicide.
This vast upheaval wrecked the Communist Party
bureaucracy, paralyzed education and research, and left
the economy almost a shambles. Only slowly did China
begin to recover. By then Mao was old and ill. Other, more
moderate hands guided policy. Zhou Enlai seemed to
emerge as the nation’s real leader when relations were