The Cultural Revolution: A People's History, 1962—1976

The concluding volume in Frank Dikötter's trilogy on the Communist revolution in China, following Mao's Great Famine and The Tragedy of Liberation. After the Great Leap Forward (1958–1962) caused tens of millions of deaths, an aging Mao Zedong initiated the Cultural Revolution to restore his reputation and remove perceived threats to his legacy. Officially aimed at eliminating bourgeois and capitalistic elements from Chinese society, the campaign mobilized young Red Guards. Rival factions soon clashed with semiautomatic weapons in the streets, and when the military intervened, China became a garrison state with widespread purges affecting as many as one in fifty people. Dikötter draws on hundreds of previously classified party documents—including secret police reports and unexpurgated leadership speeches—to challenge the common narrative of total conformity during the late Mao era. He demonstrates how ordinary people exploited the political chaos to revive market activity and undermine party ideology. After the military itself became a target of the Cultural Revolution, economic reform emerged from below as an unintended consequence of the decade's violence and fear, effectively dismantling Maoism and reshaping China's trajectory.