The Cultural Revolution by Frank Dikötter

“A fascinating account of how people twisted or resisted the aims of Mao’s movement ****” - Daily Telegraph “Dikötter's well-researched and readable new book on the Cultural Revolution's causes and consequences is a crucial reminder of the tragedies, miscalculations and human costs of Mao's last experiment.” - The Guardian

Dikötter provides the antidote.” - Wall Street Journal “For those who have swallowed the poisonous claim that the Communist Party deserves some credit for China’s current patchy prosperity, Mr. Dikötter paints a chilling picture.” - Publishers Weekly This book is a significant event in our understanding of modern China.” - New York Times Book Review “If were widely circulated in China, it could undermine the legitimacy of the current regime. A potent combination of precise history and moving examples.” – starred review, Kirkus Reviews Dikötter tells a harrowing tale of unbelievable suffering. excellent follow-up to his groundbreaking previous work. “A fine, sharp study of this tumultuous, elusive era. By showing how economic reform from below was an unintended consequence of a decade of violent purges and entrenched fear, The Cultural Revolution casts China's most tumultuous era in a wholly new light. After the army itself fell victim to the Cultural Revolution, ordinary people used the political chaos to resurrect the market and hollow out the party's ideology. The Cultural Revolution: A People's History, 1962–1976 draws for the first time on hundreds of previously classified party documents, from secret police reports to unexpurgated versions of leadership speeches.

As the country descended into chaos, the military intervened, turning China into a garrison state marked by bloody purges that crushed as many as one in fifty people. Young students formed the Red Guards, vowing to defend the Chairman to the death, but soon rival factions started fighting each other in the streets with semiautomatic weapons in the name of revolutionary purity. The Cultural Revolution's goal was to purge the country of bourgeois, capitalistic elements he claimed were threatening genuine communist ideology. The concluding volume-following Mao's Great Famine and The Tragedy of Liberation-in Frank Dikötter's award-winning trilogy chronicling the Communist revolution in China.Īfter the economic disaster of the Great Leap Forward that claimed tens of millions of lives from 1958–1962, an aging Mao Zedong launched an ambitious scheme to shore up his reputation and eliminate those he viewed as a threat to his legacy.

The Cultural Revolution by Frank Dikötter