Biography
Mao was born into a peasant family, Mao Ginseng, in Hunan Province. At the local elementary school, he received a classical Chinese education, which included exposure to the philosophy of Confucius and traditional literature.
The study was interrupted by the revolution of 1911. The troops under the leadership of Sun Yat-sen overthrew the Manchu Qing dynasty. Mao served in the army for half a year, acting as a liaison officer in the detachment.
In 1912-1913. he, at the insistence of relatives, had to study at a commercial school. From 1913 to 1918 Mao Zedong lived in the administrative center of Changsha, where he studied at a normal school. Leaving for a year (1918-1919) in Beijing, he worked in the library of Peking University.
In April 1918, together with like-minded Mao Zedong, he created the New People Society in Changsha with the aim of "searching for new ways and methods of transforming China." By 1919 he had gained a reputation as an influential political figure. In the same year, he first became acquainted with Marxism and became an ardent supporter of this doctrine. The year 1920 was full of events. Mao Zedong organized the "Cultural Reading Society for the Spread of Revolutionary Ideas", created communist groups in Changsha, married Yang Kaihai, the daughter of one of his teachers. The following year, he became the chief delegate from Hunan Province at the founding congress of the Communist Party of China (CCP) held in Shanghai in July 1921. Together with the rest of the CPC, Mao Zedong joined the Nationalist Kuomintang Party in 1923 and was even elected a reserve member. Executive Committee of the Kuomintang in 1924
Due to illness, at the end of that year, Mao had to return to Hunan, where he moved steadily to the left, creating unions of workers and peasants, which served as a pretext for his arrest. In the autumn of 1925, Mao Zedong returned to Canton, where he contributed to a radical weekly.
A little later, he attracted the attention of Chiang Kai-shek and became the head of the propaganda department of the Kuomintang. Political differences with Chiang emerged almost immediately, and in May 1925 Mao Zedong was removed from office.
He became an employee of the course for the training of leaders of the peasant movement, representing the extreme left wing of the CPC. However, in April 1927, Chiang Kai-shek broke his alliance with the CPC and launched an offensive against the CPC members during his "Northern Expedition". Mao Zedong went underground and, independently of even CCP members, organized a revolutionary army in August, which he led during the Autumn Harvest Uprising on September 8-19. The uprising was unsuccessful, and Mao Zedong was expelled from the leadership of the CCP. In response, he gathered the remnants of forces loyal to him and, united with Zhu De, retreated to the mountains, where in 1928 he created an army called the "Line on the Masses."
Mao Zedong and Zhu De together organized their own Soviet republic in the Jinggang mountains on the border of Hunan and Jiangxi provinces, which by 1934 had a population of fifteen million people. By this, they expressed open defiance not only to the Kuomintang and Chiang Kai-shek, but also to the Comintern, which was under the influence of Soviet leaders, which ordered all future revolutionaries and communists to concentrate on capturing cities. Acting contrary to the orthodox Marxist doctrine, Mao Zedong and Zhu De did not rely on the urban proletariat, but on the peasantry. From 1924 to 1934, using guerrilla tactics, they successfully repulsed four Kuomintang attempts to destroy the Soviets. In 1930, the Kuomintang executed Mao's wife, Yang Kaihai. After the fifth attack on the Soviets in Jinggang in 1934, Mao Zedong had to leave the area with 86,000 men and women.
This mass exodus of Mao Zedong's troops from Jinggang resulted in the famous "Long March" of about 12,000 km, ending in Shanxi Province. In October 1935, Mao Zedong and his supporters, numbering only 4,000, set up a new party headquarters.
At this point, the Japanese invasion of China forced the CCP and the Kuomintang to unite, in December 1936 Mao Zedong made peace with Chiang Kai-shek. He undertook the operation known as the "One Hundred Regiment Offensive" against the Japanese between August 20 and November 30, 1940, but was otherwise less active in operations against the Japanese, and focused on strengthening the CCP's position in northern China and his leading position in the party. In March 1940, he was elected Chairman of the Politburo of the CPC Central Committee.
During the war, Mao Zedong organized peasants and in April 1945 was elected Permanent Chairman of the Central Committee of the Party. At the same time, Mao Zedong wrote and published a series of essays in which he formulated and developed the foundations of the Chinese version of communism. He singled out three most important components of the party's style of work: the combination of theory and practice, close contact with the masses, and self-criticism. The CCP, which had 40,000 members at the outbreak of hostilities, had 200,000 members in its ranks when it withdrew from the war in 1945.
With the end of the war, the fragile truce between the CCP and the Kuomintang also ended. Despite attempts to create a coalition government, a bitter civil war broke out. Between 1946 and 1949, Mao Zedong's troops inflicted defeat after defeat on Chiang Kai-shek's armies, eventually forcing them to flee to Taiwan. At the end of 1949 Mao Zedong and his communist supporters proclaimed the People's Republic of China on the mainland.
The United States, which supported Chiang Kai-shek and Nationalist China, rejected Mao Zedong's attempts to establish diplomatic relations with them, thus pushing him into close cooperation with the Stalinist Soviet Union. In December 1949 Mao Zedong visited the USSR. Together with Premier Zhou Enlai, he negotiated with Stalin and signed the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Alliance and Mutual Assistance before returning to China in February 1950.
From 1949 to 1954, Mao Zedong mercilessly opposed the landlords, proclaiming a program of collectivization in the countryside, similar to the Soviet five-year plans of the 1930s. From November 1950 to July 1953, the PRC supported North Korea on the orders of Mao Zedong in the war with South Korea, which meant that communist China and the United States clashed on the battlefield.
During this period, Mao Zedong gained more and more importance in the communist world. After Stalin's death in 1953, he proved to be the most prominent of the Marxist figures. Mao openly expressed dissatisfaction with the slowdown in the pace of revolutionary change in the Chinese countryside, pointing out that leading party officials often behave like representatives of the former ruling classes.
In 1957, Mao initiated the "Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom" movement, whose slogan was "Let a hundred flowers bloom, let thousands of schools of different worldviews compete." He encouraged artists to boldly criticize the party and its methods of political leadership and administration. At the same time, Mao Zedong resumed the policy of relations with the peasantry, calling for the complete abolition of private property, the elimination of commodity production and the creation of people's communes. He published the "Great Leap Forward" program, the purpose of which was to accelerate industrialization throughout the country. At party congresses, slogans were put forward: "Three years of hard work and ten thousand years of prosperity" or "In fifteen years to catch up and overtake England in terms of the most important industrial output", which did not correspond to the real state of affairs in China, did not rely on objective economic laws.
Simultaneously with the movement for making a "great leap" in industrial production in the countryside, a campaign was launched for the widespread creation of people's communes, where the personal property of their members was socialized, leveling and the use of unpaid labor spread.
The "Great Leap Forward" policy encountered not only popular resistance, but also sharp criticism from prominent CCP figures Peng Dehuai, Zhang Wentan and others.
Mao Zedong stepped down as head of state and was replaced by Liu Shaoqi; in the late 1950s - early 1960s. Mao Zedong allowed himself to live in solitude and peace, but by no means in inactivity - in the mid-1960s. he returned to social activities and led a carefully orchestrated attack on Liu Shaoqi. The basis of the struggle was the "great proletarian cultural revolution" proposed by Mao.
Between about 1966 and 1969 Mao Zedong and his third wife, Jian Qing, had a heated discussion about her political future and, after Mao Zedong again assumed the post of party chairman and head of state, started a revolution. It was aimed primarily at eliminating all unreliable members from the leading bodies of the party, implementing a scheme for China's development in the spirit of the accelerated construction of socialism and the rejection of economic incentives. These ideas were clearly reflected in the appeals: "In industry, learn from the Daqing oil workers, in agriculture, from the Uchazhai production brigade", "The whole country learn from the army", "Strengthen preparation in case of war and natural disasters." The first stage of the "cultural revolution" lasted from 1966 to 1969. This was the most active phase of the revolution.
In May 1966, at an expanded meeting of the Politburo of the CPC Central Committee, a message was heard outlining the main ideas of Mao Zedong about the "cultural revolution", after which a number of top leaders of the party, government and army were sharply criticized and then removed from their posts. . A Cultural Revolution Group (CRG) was also established, led by Mao's former secretary, Chen Boda. Mao's wife Jiang Qin and secretary of the Shanghai City Party Committee Zhang Chunqiao became his deputies, and Kang Sheng, secretary of the CPC Central Committee, who oversaw the state security organs, became the group's adviser. The GKR gradually replaced the Politburo and the Party Secretariat and turned Mao Zedong into the "Headquarters of the Cultural Revolution."
Youth assault detachments of the Red Guards, the Red Guards, began to be created (the first Red Guards appeared at the end of May 1966 in a secondary school at Peking's Tsinghua University). The first manifesto of the Red Guards said: "We are the guards protecting the red power, the Central Committee of the Party. Chairman Mao Zedong is our backbone. The liberation of all mankind is our duty. Mao Zedong's ideas are the highest guidelines in all our actions. We swear that for the sake of protection Central Committee, in defense of the great leader Chairman Mao, we will without hesitation give the last drop of blood, resolutely carry the cultural revolution to the end."
Classes in schools and universities were suspended on Mao's initiative so that nothing would prevent students from carrying out a "cultural revolution". The persecution of the intelligentsia, members of the party and the Komsomol began. Professors, schoolteachers, scientists and artists, and then prominent party and government workers were taken to the "court of the masses" in jester's hats, they mocked him allegedly for their "revisionist actions", but in reality - for independent judgments about the situation in the country , for critical remarks on the domestic and foreign policy of the PRC.
Terror within the country was complemented by a fairly aggressive foreign policy. Mao Zedong strongly opposed the exposure of Stalin's personality cult and the entire policy of the Khrushchev thaw. From the end of the 50s. Chinese propaganda began to accuse the leaders of the CPSU of great-power chauvinism, of trying to interfere in China's internal affairs and control its actions. Mao Zedong emphasized that in the international arena, China must fight against any manifestations of great-power chauvinism and hegemonism.
Mao Zedong began curtailing all cooperation with the USSR, provided for by the 1950 friendship treaty. A campaign was launched against Soviet specialists in order to make it impossible for them to continue their stay in China. The aggravation of the situation on the Soviet-Chinese border began. In 1969, things came to open armed clashes in the area of ​​​​Damansky Island and in the Semipalatinsk region.
In August 1966, a plenum of the CPC Central Committee was convened. On August 5, Mao Zedong personally wrote and posted in the meeting room His dazibao "Fire at headquarters!" He announced to the plenum participants the existence of a "bourgeois headquarters*, accused many party leaders in the center and in the localities of exercising the "dictatorship of the bourgeoisie", and called for them to open "fire on the headquarters", intending to completely defeat or paralyze the leading party bodies in center and locally, people's committees, mass organizations of workers, and then create new "revolutionary" authorities.
The IX Congress of the CPC (April 1969) approved and legalized all the actions taken in the country in 1965-1969. The IX Congress approved the course towards "continuous revolution" and preparation for war.
A new party charter was adopted. The "ideas of Mao Zedong" were proclaimed the theoretical basis of the CPC's activities. The program part of the Charter contained a provision on the appointment of Lin Biao as Mao Zedong's "successor".
After the IX Congress from the beginning of the 70s. elements of planning, distribution according to work, and material incentives began to be cautiously introduced. Measures were also taken to improve the management of the national economy and the organization of production. There have been some changes in cultural policy as well.
Since 1972, the process of restoring the activities of the Komsomol, trade unions, and the women's federation has been intensified. The 10th Congress of the CCP, held in August 1973, authorized all these measures, and also approved the rehabilitation of part of the party and administrative cadres, including Deng Xiaoping.
In 1972, Mao Zedong embarked on the path of establishing diplomatic and economic relations with the United States, receiving President Nixon in 1972 in Beijing.
In early 1974, Mao Zedong approved a plan for a new nationwide political and ideological campaign "criticizing Lin Biao and Confucius." It began with speeches in the press aimed at debunking Confucianism and praising legalism, an ancient Chinese ideological trend that dominated under Emperor Qin Shi Huang (3rd century BC). A specific feature of the campaign, like some of the previous ones, was the appeal to historical analogies, to arguments from the field of the history of Chinese political thought in order to solve urgent ideological and political problems.
In January 1975, after a 10-year break, Mao Zedong convened a parliament. The new constitution of the People's Republic of China was adopted. The constitution was the result of a compromise: on the one hand, it included the provisions of 1966-1969. (including calls to prepare for war), on the other hand, it secured the right of members of the communes to household plots, recognized the production team (and not the commune) as the main self-supporting unit, provided for the need for a gradual increase in the material and cultural standard of living of the people, pay according to work.
Soon after the adoption of the new constitution, the promoters of the "cultural revolution" made a new attempt to consolidate their positions. To this end, on the initiative of Mao Zedong at the turn of 1974-1975. A campaign was launched under the slogan of struggle "for the study of the theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat." An important task of this campaign was to fight against those representatives of the leadership of the CPC who advocated the need to increase attention to the development of the economy, the use of more rational methods of managing the national economy.
In the course of the new political campaign, distribution according to work, the right to household plots, and commodity-money relations were declared "bourgeois rights" that must be "restricted", i.e. introduce equalization.
After a serious illness in January 1976, Premier of the State Council of the People's Republic of China Zhou Enlai died. In April of the same year, during a ceremony dedicated to his memory, mass demonstrations took place on Beijing's main square, Tiananmen.
In April of the same year, during a ceremony dedicated to his memory, mass demonstrations took place on Beijing's main square, Tiananmen. This was a strong blow to the prestige of Mao Zedong. The participants in the speeches condemned the activities of his wife Jiang Qin and other members of the Cultural Revolution Affairs Group and demanded their removal. These events caused a new wave of instability in the country. Deng Xiaoping was removed from all posts, and Minister of Public Security Hua Guofeng became Premier of the State Council of the People's Republic of China. In China, a new political campaign "to combat the right-wing deviationist fad of revising the correct conclusions of the Cultural Revolution" was launched, the spearhead of which was directed against Deng Xiaoping and his supporters. A new round of struggle against "persons in positions of power and following the capitalist path" has begun.
On September 9, 1976, Mao Zedong died.
http://ru.ruschina.net/abchin/hicul/polhist/mao_zsedun/

Mao Zedong is the creator of the "Cultural Revolution", one of the bloodiest tyrants of the twentieth century.


The creator of the "Cultural Revolution", one of the bloodiest tyrants of the twentieth century, Mao Zedong, along with the classic trinity: Marx, Engels, Lenin, was considered one of the pillars of Marxist political thought. Ruthlessness, purposefulness and perseverance distinguished one of the founders of the Communist Party of China and the founder of the People's Republic of China (1949).

Mao Zedong was born on December 26, 1893 in the family of a wealthy peasant Mao Zhengshen in Hunan province. At the local elementary school, he received a classical Chinese education, which included exposure to the philosophy of Confucius and traditional literature.

The study was interrupted by the revolution of 1911. The troops under the leadership of Sun Yat-sen overthrew the Manchu Qing dynasty. Mao served in the army for half a year, acting as a liaison officer in the detachment.

In 1912-1913. he, at the insistence of relatives, had to study at a commercial school. From 1913 to 1918 Mao lived in the administrative center of Changsha, where he studied at a normal school. Leaving for a year (1918-1919) in Beijing, he worked in the library of Peking University.

In April 1918, together with like-minded Mao, he created the New People Society in Changsha with the aim of "searching for new ways and methods of transforming China." By 1919 he had gained a reputation as an influential political figure. In the same year, he first became acquainted with Marxism and became an ardent supporter of this doctrine. The year 1920 was full of events. Mao organized the "Cultural Reading Society for the Spread of Revolutionary Ideas", created communist groups in Changsha, married Yang Kaihai, the daughter of one of his teachers. The following year, he became the chief delegate from Hunan Province at the founding congress of the Communist Party of China (CCP) held in Shanghai in July 1921. Together with the rest of the CPC, Mao joined the Nationalist Kuomintang Party in 1923 and was even elected a reserve member of the Executive Committee of the Kuomintang in 1924

Due to illness at the end of that year, Mao had to return to Hunan, but he did not sit idle there. He moved steadily to the left, creating unions of workers and peasants, which served as a pretext for his arrest. In the autumn of 1925, Mao returned to Canton, where he contributed to a radical weekly.

A little later, he attracted the attention of Chiang Kai-shek and became the head of the propaganda department of the Kuomintang. Political differences with Chiang emerged almost immediately, and in May 1925 Mao was removed from office.

He became an employee of the course for the training of leaders of the peasant movement, representing the extreme left wing of the CPC. However, in April 1927, Chiang Kai-shek broke his alliance with the CPC and launched an offensive against the CPC members during his "Northern Expedition". Mao went underground and, even independently of CCP members, organized a revolutionary army in August, which he led during the Autumn Harvest Uprising on September 8-19. The uprising was unsuccessful, and Mao was expelled from the leadership of the CCP. In response, he gathered the remnants of forces loyal to him and, teaming up with another outcast of the CCP, Zhu De, retreated to the mountains, where in 1928 he created an army called the "Line on the Masses."

Mao and Zhu together organized their own Soviet republic in the Jinggang mountains on the border of Hunan and Jiangxi provinces, which by 1934 had a population of fifteen million. By this, they expressed open defiance not only to the Kuomintang and Chiang Kai-shek, but also to the Comintern, which was under the influence of Soviet leaders, which ordered all future revolutionaries and communists to concentrate on capturing cities. Acting contrary to orthodox Marxist doctrine, Mao and Zhu placed their bets not on the urban proletariat, but on the peasantry.

From 1924 to 1934, using guerrilla tactics, they successfully repulsed four Kuomintang attempts to destroy the Soviets. In 1930, the Kuomintang executed Mao's wife, Yang Kaihai. After the fifth attack on the Soviets in Jinggan in 1934, Mao had to leave the area with 86,000 men and women.

This mass exodus of Mao's troops from Jinggang resulted in the famous "Long March" of about 12,000 km, ending in Shanxi Province. In October 1935, Mao and his supporters, numbering only 4,000, set up a new party headquarters.

At this point, the Japanese invasion of China forced the CCP and the Kuomintang to unite, in December 1936 Mao made peace with Chiang Kai-shek. Mao launched the operation known as the "Offensive of the Hundred Regiments" against the Japanese between August 20 and November 30, 1940, but was otherwise less active in operations against the Japanese, and focused on strengthening the CCP's position in northern China and his leading position in the party. In March 1940, he was elected Chairman of the Politburo of the CPC Central Committee.

During the war, Mao not only organized the peasants, but also directed the program of purges, which secured his election in April 1945 as the Permanent Chairman of the Central Committee of the Party. At the same time, Mao wrote and published a series of essays in which he formulated and developed the foundations of the Chinese version of communism. He singled out three most important components of the party's style of work: the combination of theory and practice, close contact with the masses, and self-criticism. The CCP, which had 40,000 members at the outbreak of hostilities, had 200,000 members in its ranks when it withdrew from the war in 1945.

With the end of the war, the fragile truce between the CCP and the Kuomintang also ended. Despite attempts to create a coalition government, a bitter civil war broke out. Between 1946 and 1949, Mao's troops inflicted defeat after defeat on Chiang Kai-shek's armies, eventually forcing them to flee to Taiwan. At the end of 1949 Mao and his communist supporters proclaimed the People's Republic of China on the mainland.

The United States, which supported Chiang Kai-shek and Nationalist China, rejected Mao's attempts to establish diplomatic relations with them, thereby pushing him into closer cooperation with the Stalinist Soviet Union. In December 1949 Mao visited the USSR. Together with Premier Zhou En-lai, he negotiated with Stalin and signed the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Alliance and Mutual Assistance before returning to China in February 1950.

From 1949 to 1954, Mao ruthlessly purged the Party of his opponents. He spoke out against the landowners, proclaiming a program of forced collectivization in the countryside, similar to the Stalinist five-year plans of the 1930s. From November 1950 to July 1953, the PRC intervened on Mao's orders in the war between North and South Korea, which meant that communist China and the United States clashed on the battlefield.

During this period, Mao gained more and more importance in the communist world. After Stalin's death in 1953, he proved to be the most prominent of the Marxist figures. Mao openly expressed dissatisfaction with the slowdown in the pace of revolutionary change in the Chinese countryside, pointing out that leading party officials often behave like representatives of the former ruling classes.

In 1957, Mao initiated the "Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom" movement, whose slogan was "Let a hundred flowers bloom, let thousands of schools of different worldviews compete." He encouraged artists to boldly criticize the party and its methods of political leadership and administration. Whether it was preconceived, or simply frightened by the hostile tone of criticism, Mao soon turned the rapidly growing movement of the Hundred Flowers against dissidents and set about building his own cult of personality, as Stalin had done in his time. At the same time, Mao renewed pressure on the peasants, calling for the complete abolition of private property, the elimination of commodity production and the creation of people's communes. He published the "Great Leap Forward" program, the purpose of which was to accelerate industrialization throughout the country. At party congresses, slogans such as "Three years of hard work and ten thousand years of prosperity" or "In fifteen years to catch up and overtake England in terms of the most important industrial output" were put forward, which did not correspond to the real state of affairs in China, did not rely on objective economic laws.

Simultaneously with the movement for making a "great leap" in industrial production in the countryside, a campaign was launched for the widespread creation of people's communes, where the personal property of their members was socialized, leveling and the use of unpaid labor spread.

By the end of 1958, signs began to appear that the policy of the "great leap" and "communization of the countryside" was reaching a dead end. Mao, however, stubbornly continued on his intended course. The miscalculations and mistakes of the "Great Leap Forward" were the cause of the difficult state of the PRC's national economy. Serious disproportions arose in industry, inflation increased, and the standard of living of the population fell sharply. The volume of agricultural and industrial production began to decline sharply. The country was short of grain. All this, combined with administrative chaos and poor natural conditions, caused a general famine.

The "Great Leap Forward" policy encountered not only popular resistance, but also sharp criticism from prominent CCP figures Peng Dehuai, Zhang Wentan, and others. Mao resigned as head of state and was replaced by Liu Shaoqi; late 1950s - early 1960s Mao allowed himself to live in solitude and peace, but by no means in inactivity; mid 1960s. he returned to social activities and led a carefully orchestrated attack on Liu Shaoqi. The basis of the struggle was the "great proletarian cultural revolution" proposed by Mao.

Between about 1966 and 1969 Mao and his third wife, Jian Qing, engaged the entire country in a heated debate about its political future and, after Mao returned to the post of party chairman and head of state, plunged China into a state of permanent revolution. It was aimed primarily at eliminating all those who disagreed with his policy from the leading bodies of the party, to impose on the party and the people their own scheme for the development of China in the spirit of the leftist concepts of "barracks communism", the accelerated construction of socialism, and the rejection of methods of economic stimulation. These ideas were clearly reflected in the appeals: "In industry, learn from the Daqing oil workers, in agriculture, from the Uchazhai production brigade", "The whole country learn from the army", "Strengthen preparation in case of war and natural disasters." At the same time, the development of the personality cult of Mao Zedong continued. Constantly violating the principles of collective leadership of the Party, Mao by this time placed himself above the Central Committee of the CPC, the Politburo of the Central Committee, the Party, often without discussing with the latter the decisions he made on behalf of the Party.

The first stage of the "cultural revolution" lasted from 1966 to 1969. This was the most active and destructive phase of the revolution. The reason for the start of the movement was the publication in November 1965 of an article by Yao Wenyun "On the new edition of the historical drama" Demotion of Hai Rui ". The play was written in 1960 by a prominent Chinese historian, Deputy Mayor of Beijing Wu Han. He was accused of narrating in his drama about an episode from the life of medieval China, he allegedly hinted at the injustice of the persecution and demotion of the marshal, the former Minister of Defense of the PRC Peng Dehuai, who gave a negative assessment of the "Great Leap Forward" and the people's communes in the PRC in 1959. The play was named in the article “anti-socialist poisonous grass.” This was followed by accusations against the leaders of the Beijing City CCP Committee and the Propaganda Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.

In May 1966, at an expanded meeting of the Politburo of the CPC Central Committee, a message was heard outlining the main ideas of Mao Zedong about the "cultural revolution", after which a number of top leaders of the party, government and army were sharply criticized and then removed from their posts. . A Cultural Revolution Group (CRG) was also established, led by Mao's former secretary, Chen Boda. Mao's wife Jiang Qin and secretary of the Shanghai City Party Committee Zhang Chunqiao became his deputies, and Kang Sheng, secretary of the CPC Central Committee, who oversaw the state security organs, became the group's adviser. The GKR gradually replaced the Politburo and the Secretariat of the Party and, through the efforts of Mao, became the "Headquarters of the Cultural Revolution."

To suppress the opposition forces in the party, Mao Zedong and his supporters used politically immature youth, from which the assault detachments of the Red Guards were formed (the first Red Guards appeared at the end of May 1966 in a secondary school at Beijing Tsinghua University). The first manifesto of the Red Guards said: "We are the guards defending the red power, the Central Committee of the Party. Chairman Mao is our support. The liberation of all mankind is our duty. The ideas of Mao Zedong are the highest guidelines in all our actions. We swear that for the sake of protecting the Central Committee In defense of the great leader Chairman Mao, we will give our last drop of blood without hesitation and resolutely carry through the Cultural Revolution."

Classes in schools and universities were suspended on Mao's initiative so that nothing would prevent students from carrying out a "cultural revolution". The persecution of the intelligentsia, members of the party and the Komsomol began. Professors, schoolteachers, scientists and artists, and later prominent party and state workers were taken to the "court of the masses" in jester's caps, beaten, mocked at him allegedly for their "revisionist actions", but in reality - for independent judgments about the situation. in the country, for critical statements about the domestic and foreign policy of the PRC.

According to far from complete data provided by the Beijing branch of the Ministry of State Security, in August-September 1956, the Red Guards killed 1,722 people in Beijing alone, confiscated property from 33,695 families, searched the homes of more than 85,000 people who were then expelled from the capital. By October 3, 1966, 397,400 "evil" people had already been expelled from the cities throughout the country.

Terror within the country was complemented by an aggressive foreign policy. Mao came out resolutely against the exposure of Stalin's personality cult, against the entire policy of the Khrushchev thaw. From the end of the 50s. Chinese propaganda began to accuse the leaders of the CPSU of great-power chauvinism, of trying to interfere in China's internal affairs and control its actions. Mao emphasized that in the international arena, China must fight against any manifestations of great-power chauvinism and hegemonism.

Mao began curtailing all cooperation with the USSR, provided for by the 1950 friendship treaty. A campaign was launched against Soviet specialists in order to make it impossible for them to continue their stay in China. The PRC authorities began to artificially aggravate the situation on the Soviet-Chinese border and openly put forward territorial claims against the USSR. In 1969, things came to open armed clashes in the area of ​​​​Damansky Island and in the Semipalatinsk region.

In August 1966, a plenum of the Central Committee of the CPC was convened, in which many members of the Central Committee, who fell victims of repression, did not participate. On August 5, Mao personally wrote and posted in the meeting room His dazibao "Fire at headquarters!" and urged to open "fire on the headquarters", intending to completely defeat or paralyze the leading party bodies in the center and in the localities, people's committees, mass organizations of workers, and then create new "revolutionary" government bodies.

After the "reorganization" of the party leadership at the plenum of the five vice-chairmen of the Central Committee of the party, only one remained - Minister of Defense Lin Biao, who was referred to as the "successor" of Mao Zedong. As a result of Mao's flirting with the Red Guards and during the plenum (meaning his correspondence with the Red Guards, meetings with them), calls to open "fire on headquarters", the atrocities of the Red Guards after the plenum assumed even greater proportions. The defeat of the authorities, public organizations, party committees began. The Red Guards were placed, in essence, above the party and government agencies.

Life in the country was disorganized, the economy was severely damaged, hundreds of thousands of CCP members were repressed, and the persecution of the intelligentsia intensified. During the years of the "cultural revolution", it was said in the indictment in the case of the "quartet" (1981), "a large number of senior officials of the CPC Central Committee, public security organs at various levels, the prosecutor's office, the court, the army, and propaganda organs were subjected to persecution, harassment and destruction. The victims of the Quartet and Lin Biao, according to the document, were a total of more than 727 thousand people, of which over 34 thousand were "brought to death". According to official Chinese data, the number of victims during the "cultural revolution" was about 100 million people..

In December 1966, along with the detachments of the Red Guards, detachments of zaofan (rebels) appeared, in which young, usually unskilled workers, employees, and students were involved. They had to transfer the "cultural revolution" to enterprises, to institutions, to overcome the resistance of the workers to the Red Guards. But the workers, at the call of the CCP committees, and often spontaneously rebuffed the rampant Hongweipins and Zaofans, sought to improve their financial situation, went to the capital to present their claims, stopped work, declared strikes, and entered into battles with the rioters. Many top leaders of the country spoke out against the destruction of the party organs. To break the resistance of the opponents of the "cultural revolution", a campaign was launched to "seize power". In January 1967, the Zaofani of Shanghai seized the party and administrative power in the city. Following this, a wave of "seizure of power" from "those in power and following the capitalist path" swept across China. In Peking, in mid-January 1967, power was seized in 300 departments and institutions. Party committees and authorities were accused of having been striving to "restore capitalism" for 17 years since the founding of the PRC. The "seizure of power" was carried out with the help of the army, which suppressed resistance and exercised control over communications, prisons, warehouses, storage and distribution of secret documents, banks, and central archives. Special units were allocated to support the "rebels", since there was dissatisfaction with the atrocities of the Red Guards and Zaofan in the army. The plan to "seize power" was not quickly implemented. Workers' strikes expanded, bloody clashes with the Zaofans took place everywhere, as well as clashes between various organizations of the Red Guards and the Zaofans. As Chinese historians write: "China has become a state where chaos reigned and terror reigned. Party and government bodies at all levels were paralyzed. Leading cadres and intelligentsia with knowledge and experience were persecuted." Since January 1967, the creation of new anti-constitutional bodies of local power - "revolutionary committees" - began. At first, the leaders of the Red Guards and Zaofan gained predominance in them, which caused dissatisfaction among party workers and the military. The political struggle intensified in the center and in the localities, and in a number of regions there were clashes between military units and organizations of the Red Guards and Zaofans. At the end of the summer of 1971, the country was actually taken under military control. The plenum of the CPC Central Committee, held in October 1968, which was attended by about a third of the Central Committee, since the rest had been repressed by that time, authorized all the actions of the "cultural revolution", "forever" expelled Liu Shaoqi from the party, removed him from all posts, approved the draft of the new charter of the CPC. Intensive preparations began for the convening of the 9th Congress of the CPC.

The IX Congress of the CPC (April 1969), to which delegates were not elected but appointed, approved and legalized all the actions taken in the country in 1965-1969. In the main report, which Lin Biao delivered at the congress, the directive was put forward to continue the purge of party organizations and state institutions, which began in the spring of 1968. The entire history of the party was presented as a struggle of the "Mao Zedong line" against various "deviators". The 9th Congress approved the course towards "continuous revolution", towards preparations for war.

The new Party Rules adopted by the Congress, in contrast to the Rules adopted in 1956, did not define the Party's tasks in the field of economic and cultural construction, improvement of the people's life, and development of democracy. The "ideas of Mao Zedong" have been proclaimed to be the theoretical basis of the CPC's activities. The program part of the Charter contained a provision on the appointment of Lin Biao as the "successor" of Mao Zedong. The provision on the successor, characteristic of monarchical absolutism, introduced into the Charter of the CPC, was considered a "pioneering phenomenon" in the field of the international communist movement. It was indeed an innovation in the sense that that since the rise of the world communist movement there has not yet been such a strange phenomenon.It is difficult to say how great a significance it had for the world, but it brought China to the brink of disaster.

After the 9th Congress, some of those leaders who managed to maintain their positions demanded that Mao correct extremist attitudes in the field of the economy, taking into account the urgent needs of the country's development. On their initiative since the early 70s. elements of planning, distribution according to work, and material incentives began to be cautiously introduced. Measures were also taken to improve the management of the national economy and the organization of production. There were also some changes in cultural policy, although tight control over cultural life was still maintained.

In 1970-1971. events took place that reflected a new crisis within the Chinese leadership. In March 1970, Mao decided to revise the PRC Constitution, proposing to abolish the post of President of the PRC. Defense Minister Lin Biao and head of the Cultural Revolution Affairs Group Chen Boda disagreed.

As a result of the unfolding struggle for power, Chen Boda disappeared from the political scene, and in September 1971 it was the turn of Lin Biao and a group of military leaders. According to the Chinese side, Lin Biao died in a plane crash on the territory of the MPR, trying to escape abroad after the failed "coup". This was followed by a new purge in the army, during which tens of thousands of officers were subjected to repression.

However, the country could not live only by violence. Since 1972, the regime has been softened somewhat. The process of restoring the activities of the Komsomol, trade unions, and the women's federation is being activated. The 10th Congress of the CCP, held in August 1973, authorized all these measures, and also approved the rehabilitation of part of the party and administrative cadres, including Deng Xiaoping.

In 1972, Mao surprised the world by embarking on the path of establishing diplomatic and economic relations with the United States by receiving President Nixon in Beijing in 1972.

Despite the compromise reached at the Tenth Congress between the various forces in the CPC, the situation in the country continued to be unstable. In early 1974, Mao approved a plan for a new nationwide political and ideological campaign "criticizing Lin Biao and Confucius." It began with speeches in the press aimed at debunking Confucianism and praising legalism, an ancient Chinese ideological trend that dominated under Emperor Qin Shi Huang, the head of the first pan-Chinese despotism (3rd century BC). A specific feature of the campaign, like some of the previous ones, was the appeal to historical analogies, to arguments from the field of the history of Chinese political thought in order to solve urgent ideological and political problems.

In January 1975, after a 10-year break, Mao allowed the convocation of parliament. The new constitution of the People's Republic of China was adopted. The constitution was the result of a compromise: on the one hand, it included the provisions of 1966-1969. (including calls to prepare for war), on the other hand, it secured the right of members of the communes to household plots, recognized the production team (and not the commune) as the main self-supporting unit, provided for the need for a gradual increase in the material and cultural standard of living of the people, pay according to work.

Soon after the adoption of the new constitution, the promoters of the "cultural revolution" made a new attempt to strengthen their positions. To this end, on the initiative of Mao at the turn of 1974-1975. A campaign was launched under the slogan of struggle "for the study of the theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat." An important task of this campaign was to fight against those representatives of the leadership of the CPC who advocated the need to increase attention to the development of the economy, the use of more rational methods of managing the national economy.

In the course of the new political campaign, distribution according to work, the right to household plots, and commodity-money relations were declared "bourgeois rights" that must be "restricted", i.e. introduce equalization. Under the guise of a new campaign, the economic interests of the workers were infringed upon in many industrial enterprises and communes. In a number of cases, measures of material incentives were canceled, overtime work was practiced, household plots were liquidated. All this caused mass discontent of the people, strikes and unrest.

After a serious illness in January 1976, Premier of the State Council of the People's Republic of China Zhou Enlai died. In April of the same year, during a ceremony dedicated to his memory, mass demonstrations took place on Beijing's main square, Tiananmen. This was a strong blow to the prestige of Mao Zedong. The participants in the speeches condemned the activities of his wife Jiang Qin and other members of the Cultural Revolution Affairs Group and demanded their removal.

These events triggered a new wave of repression. Deng Xiaoping was removed from all posts, and Minister of Public Security Hua Guo-feng became Premier of the State Council of the People's Republic of China. In China, a new political campaign "to combat the right-wing deviationist fad of revising the correct conclusions of the Cultural Revolution" was launched, the spearhead of which was directed against Deng Xiaoping and his supporters. A new round of struggle against "persons in positions of power and following the capitalist path" has begun.

The wave of terror ended on September 9, 1976. Mao Zedong died. His intended heirs were immediately subjected to repression. Jian Qing and her closest associates, dubbed the "Gang of Four", were arrested. Mao's carefully chosen successor to the presidency, Zhao Guofeng, was ousted from the inner party circle as soon as the government was under moderate control.

The "Cultural Revolution" was a remarkable mixture of contradictions. Like the Hundred Flowers movement, its main principles were criticism, questioning the honesty of people in power, and the doctrine of the "right to protest." And yet, undoubtedly, its goal was to create and consolidate a mass "cult of personality" - loyalty to the ideas and personally to Mao Zedong, whose ubiquitous image flaunted in all public places and private homes. The "Little Red Book" - a collection of sayings by Chairman Mao (The Quote Book) - could be seen in the hands of literally every man, woman and every child in China. Meanwhile, not even a few years after Mao's death, the Chinese Communist Party, paying tribute to Mao as the initiator of the revolution, condemned the "cultural revolution" for its extremes, including the worship of Mao's personality.


Keywords: What is Mao Zedong's nationality?

In 1949, after the victory of the Communists on a national scale, Mao Zedong became the leader of a new state - the People's Republic of China, retaining the post of Chairman of the CPC Central Committee. Already in the first years of the existence of the new regime, he placed great hopes on the economic and technical assistance of the USSR. Between 1950 and 1956 step by step (land reform - the creation of peasant cooperatives - collectivization) agrarian transformations were carried out. In the cities during this period, to overcome the economic crisis, there was a merger of private industry and trade.

At a critical moment in 1957-1958, Mao put forward a program of socio-economic development known as "big jump". He threw huge labor resources into the implementation of an adventurous program of building artificial reservoirs, creating agricultural communes and small industrial enterprises in the countryside. In accordance with the so-called "Yan'an model" of partisan communism, labor mobilization and militarization of the peasant masses took place on a gigantic scale. The principle of equal distribution of income was introduced everywhere, the remnants of private enterprises and the system of material incentives in industry and agriculture were liquidated. China was instructed "within 15 years to overtake and overtake Great Britain" and build communism.

The Great Leap Forward failed. From 1959 to 1961 agricultural production continued to decline steadily, and the Chinese economy slipped into a state of deep depression. As a result, the "Yan'an model" was abolished, and it was replaced by a more balanced and pragmatic system of individual incentives and differentiated material rewards.

In the early 1960s, Mao was seriously concerned about some of the economic and political trends in China itself. He believed that the departure from the principles of the Great Leap Forward had gone too far, that an excessive emphasis on material incentives and other manifestations of "bourgeois individualism" threatened to undermine the foundations of the socialist revolution. Mao understood that the CPC itself was becoming more and more conservative, elitist and overburdened with bureaucracy, as a result of which this party ceased to "serve the people." "What is to be done," Mao asked menacingly in 1965, "if revisionism penetrates to the very heart of the Party?" He answered this question a year later, when he personally proclaimed the beginning of the "great proletarian cultural revolution."

Having mobilized youth all over the country (into the ranks of the “Hongweibing” - “Red Guards”), workers and peasants (“Zaofan” - “revolutionary rebels”), Mao set out to purge the CPC of those “demons” and “monsters” that supposedly “ went along the capitalist path"[i]. Among the party leaders who have become objects of mass criticism and disgrace, were Mao's longtime ally, his successor in the leadership of the CCP, Liu Shaoqi, and the party's general secretary Deng Xiaoping. They were accused of laying the groundwork for the restoration of capitalism in China and, along with thousands of party and state leaders, were removed from their posts.

The "Cultural Revolution" came to an abrupt end in 1968, when, under the impression of the invasion of Czechoslovakia, Mao had strong fears that the USSR might take advantage of the political instability in Beijing and launch a surprise attack on China. In August, the Red Guard detachments were disbanded, and the army was instructed to restore order.

As in 1969 and 1970 Mao tried to restore the defeated party, he became increasingly concerned about the ambitions of the Minister of Defense of the PRC Lin Biao. Built in 1969 instead of Liu Shaoqi to the rank of Mao's official heir, Lin Biao began political maneuvering. After the death of Lin, Mao Zedong, who by the age of 80 had noticeably lost his health and energy, transferred the powers of day-to-day political leadership of the country to Zhou Enlai, whose devotion has not been in doubt since the time of the "Long March". Under Zhou's leadership, China set a course for peaceful coexistence with the United States. The dialogue between China and the United States was based on the united front tactics developed by Mao during the Yan'an period, according to which one should "take advantage of the contradictions in the enemy camp" and "join with secondary enemies to isolate the main enemy." Mao was convinced that the USSR, at least for the foreseeable future, was China's most dangerous external enemy.

By January 1976, Mao Zedong's health continued to deteriorate. In June, amid rumors that he was near death (due to a prolonged flare-up of Parkinson's disease and a serious heart attack), he stopped receiving foreign visitors. The last act of his public political will was the refusal to appoint his longtime associate, Deng Xiaoping, to the vacant post of Prime Minister of the State Council after Zhou's death. On September 9, 1976, first in Beijing, and then throughout the PRC, an official announcement was made about the death of the great leader.

However, the strategy and principles proposed by Mao Zedong did not disappear from the life of the PRC with his death. It is important to note that the death of Mao Zedong and subsequent events, including the arrest of his former closest associates (wife - member of the Politburo of the CPC Central Committee Jiang Qing, Vice Chairman of the Central Committee of the CPC Wang Hong-wen, Vice Premier of the State Council of the PRC Zhang Chun-qiao and Politburo member of the CPC Central Committee Yao Wen Yuan) does not mean that Maoism has left the political arena of China. On the contrary, the new leadership of China, forced to control the most odious features of Mao Zedong's policy, at the same time demonstrated its loyalty to the fundamental principles of the theory and practice of Maoism.

Commitment to Maoism in modern China has a different meaning than before: it is a struggle not for the CCP and power in the country, but against them, against the course of privatization of enterprises, against property stratification, corruption, unemployment, and for social justice. Most of the orthodox Maoists in the modern PRC are in opposition to the Communist Party and the regime, which regards them precisely as oppositionists.

At the same time, the political and economic ideas and theses developed by Mao Zedong are gaining new strength in today's China. It is important to note that a new attempt to implement them in the modern PRC began in 2000. However, this is only partially happening: the ideas of the “cultural revolution” and the “great leap politics” are no longer relevant.

The death of Mao Zedong marked a new era in China. Mao left his country in deep, all-encompassing crisis to his successors. After the "Great Leap Forward" and the "Cultural Revolution", the country's economy was at a rather low level, cultural life and science were destroyed by left-wing radicals. However, the most negative consequence of the Mao regime should be considered the crippled fate of tens of millions of people who suffered from cruel socio-economic experimental campaigns.

On the other hand, Mao, the leadership of the Central Committee of the CPC and the entire Chinese people, having received in 1949 an underdeveloped, corrupt, almost completely destroyed agrarian country, in a short time made it a fairly powerful, independent power. During the years of Mao's rule, the percentage of illiterate people in China decreased from 80% to 7%, life expectancy doubled, the population more than doubled, and industrial output more than 10 times. Mao also managed to unify China for the first time in decades, restoring it to almost the same borders that it had under the empire, freeing it from the humiliating dictates of foreign states.

The ideology of Maoism also had a great influence on the development of the communist movement in many countries of the world - the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, the Bright Path in Peru, in the USA and Europe. Meanwhile, the reforms initiated in the PRC in 1979 by Deng Xiaoping and continued by his followers essentially made China's economy capitalist.

In China itself, Mao's personality is assessed rather ambiguously. On the one hand, most of the population sees in him a hero of the civil war, a strong ruler. On the other hand, many people cannot forgive Mao for the cruelty and mistakes of his massive campaigns. However, modern China continues to develop, again returning to the ideas of Mao Zedong, trying to build a communist society and state, based on the ideas of the great leader.

Mao Zedong biography and activities of the great Chinese statesman and politician of the 20th century, the main theorist of Maoism are described in this article.

Mao Zedong short biography

Mao was born on December 26, 1893 in the village of Shaoshan, Hunan province in the seed of a small landowner. Taking an example from his mother, he practiced Buddhism until adolescence, after which he abandoned it. His parents were not literate. Zedong's father studied at school for only 2 years, and his mother did not study at all.

In 1919 he joined a Marxist circle. And already in 1921, Zedong became one of the founders of the Communist Party of China. In subsequent years, Mao carried out tasks of an organizational nature to the leadership of the CPC and was active in creating peasant unions.

Thanks to his successful activities, the future Leader organized the Chinese Soviet Republic already in 1928-1934, located in the rural areas of southern Central China. After its defeat, he led the great communist detachments on the famous Long March into northern China.

In 1957-1958, Zedong put forward the famous program for social and economic development. Today it is known as the "Great Leap Forward" and meant:

  • Creation of agricultural communes
  • Creation of small industrial enterprises in the villages
  • The principle of equal distribution of income was introduced
  • Liquidated the remains of private enterprises
  • The system of material incentives was eliminated

Such a program led the PRC into a deep depression. And in 1959 he leaves the post of head of state.

In the early 60s, Mao took up some political and economic issues: he considered that the retreat from the ideas of the "Great Leap Forward" had gone far and that some individuals in the leadership of the Communist Party did not want to build real socialism. Therefore, in 1966, the world learned about Zedong's new project - the "cultural revolution". But she did not bring the desired result.

Mao Zedong (1883 - 1976)
Biography of Mao Zedong

Mao Zedong (1883 - 1976) founded the People's Republic of China in 1949. He was also one of the founders of the Chinese Communist Party in 1921 and is regarded, along with Karl Marx and V. I. Lenin, as one of the three great theorists of Marxist communism. Mao Zedong was born on December 26, 1893 into a wealthy peasant family in Shao-shan, Hunan province. As a child, he worked in the fields and attended the local elementary school, where he studied traditional Confucian classics. He often clashed with his strict father, whom Mao learned well to confront him with the support of his gentle and loving mother, who was a true Buddhist.

Since 1911, when the Republican forces of Sun Yat-Sen began the overthrow of the Ch "ing (or Manchu) dynasty, Mao spent more than 10 years in Chang-sha (Chang-sha) - a provincial capital. He was influenced by the rapid political and cultural changes that were sweeping the country at the time. He briefly served in the Republican Army and then spent half a year self-taught at the provincial library. This helped him get into the habit of self-education.

By 1918, Mao graduated from the Hunan First Normal School and moved to Beijing, the national capital, where he briefly worked as an assistant librarian at Peking University. Mao did not have enough money for his studies and, unlike many of his classmates, he did not study any foreign language or travel abroad to study. Due to his relative poverty during his university years, he was never fully identified with the cosmopolitan bourgeois intellectuals who dominated Chinese student life. At university, he made friends with radical intellectuals who later joined the Chinese Communist Party. In 1919, Mao returned to Hunan, where he became involved in radical political activities, organizing groups and publishing political reviews with the direct support of the head of an elementary school. In 1920, Mao married Yang Kyai-hui (Yang K "ai-hui), the daughter of one of his teachers. Yang Kyai-hui was executed by the Chinese nationalists in 1930. In the same year, Mao married Ho Tsu-chen (Ho Tzu -chen), who accompanied him during the Long March. In 1937, Mao divorced her and in 1939 married Chiang Ch'ing.

When the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was organized in Shanghai in 1921, Mao became one of the founders and leaders of its Hunan branch. At this stage, the new party formed a united front with the Koumintang Party of Republican followers of Sun Yat-sen. Mao worked within the united front in Shanghai, Hunan, and Canton, focusing on labor organization, party organization, propaganda, and the Peasant Movement Training Institute. His "Report on the Movement of the Peasantry in Hunan" (1927) expressed his view of the revolutionary potential of the peasantry, but this view was not yet formulated in the proper Marxist form.

In 1927, Chiang Kai-shek gained control of the Koumingtang Party after the death of San Yat-sen and reversed the policy of cooperation with the Communists. A year later, after gaining control of the Nationalist army as well as the Nationalist government, Chiang purges the movement of communists. As a result, Mao was forced to hide in the countryside. In the mountains of southern China, he settled with Chu Teh under the protection of a guerrilla army. It was almost an accidental innovation - the fusion of the Communist leadership with a guerrilla force operating in rural areas with the support of the peasants, which was to make Mao the leader of the CCP. Their ever-increasing military power was soon enough for Mao and Chu to be able, by 1930, to defy the order set by the Soviet CCP leadership, which ordered them to try to capture the cities. Later, despite the fact that his position in the party was weak and his policies were criticized, Chinese councils were established in Juichin, Kiangsi Province, with Mao as chairman. A series of extermination campaigns led by the Nationalist government of Chiang Kai-shek forced the CCCP to leave Yuichin in October 1934 and begin the "Long March". At Tsun-i in Kweichow, Mao first gained effective control of the CCP. This ended the era of Soviet control over the leadership of the CCP.

The remnants of the Communist forces reached Shensi in October 1935, after a 10,000 km (6,000 mi) march. They then set up a new party headquarters in Yen-an. When the Japanese invasion of 1937 forced the CCP and Kuomintang to once again form a united front, the Communists were given legal status and Mao became the national leader. During this period he established himself as a military theorist, and the essays "On Contradiction" and "On Practice" published in 1937 allowed him to be ranked among the most important Marxist thinkers. Mao's essay "On New Democracy" (1940) highlighted a unique national form of Marxism suited to China; his "Talks at the Yen-an Forum on Literature and Art" (1942) provided a basis for the party to control cultural affairs.

The validity of Mao's self-confidence and rural guerrilla strategies was proven by the rapid growth of the CCP during the Yong-an period, from 40,000 members in 1937 to 1,200,000 members in 1945. The shaky truce between the Communists and the Nationalists was broken at the end of the war. The US took steps to lead a coalition government. The civil war broke out, however, in the next 3 years (1946-49) the rapid defeat of Kuomintang was noticeable. Chiang's government was forced to flee to Taiwan, leaving the People's Republic of China, formed by the Communists in late 1949, to control most of mainland China.

When Mao's efforts to improve relations with the United States failed in the late 1940s, he decided that China would have to "lean to one side" and a period of closed cooperation with the USSR ensued. Hostility towards the United States was exacerbated by the Korean War. In the early 1950s, Mao was chairman of the Communist Party, head of state, and chairman of the military commission. His international status as a Marxist leader rose after the death of Soviet leader Stalin in 1953.

Mao's uniqueness as a leader is evident from his commitment to continue the class struggle in the name of socialism, which is confirmed in his theoretical treatise On the Correct Handling of Contradictions among the People (1957). Dissatisfaction with the slowness of development, the loss of revolutionary momentum in the countryside, and the CCP members' tendency to behave like a privileged class led Mao to take unusual initiatives in the late 1950s. He encouraged constructive criticism of party management from the 1956-57 Hundred Flowers movement. This criticism showed a deep hostility towards the leadership of the KCP. Around the same time, Mao began to accelerate rural property reforms, calling for the removal of the last remnants of rural private property and the formation of people's communes to initiate rapid industrial growth in a program known as the Great Leap Forward. The haste of these steps led to administrative unrest and popular resistance. In addition, adverse weather conditions led to poor harvests and severe food shortages. As a result of all these changes, Mao lost his position as head of state, his influence in the party was greatly undermined. This led to the fact that by the end of the 50s there were strong differences between the Mao government and the USSR.

During the 1960s, Mao counterattacked against party leaders and the new head of state, Liu Shao-Chi (Liu Shao-Ch "i), through the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, which reached its climax between 1966 and 1969 The Cultural Revolution was largely orchestrated by Mao's wife, Chiang Ch'ing. It was arguably Mao's biggest innovation, and became essentially an ideological struggle for public opinion in the form of fierce national disputes. Mao turned out to be a good tactician "When he lost the opportunity to publish his ideas in Beijing, he used the Shanghai press to attack the Beijing leaders. The student militia, known as the Red Guards, became his mainstay. As the situation escalated and the situation threatened to break out out of control, Mao was obliged to rely on the military under Lin Piao.In return for this military support, Ling's party was recognized as Mao's successor in const 1969 intuitions. By 1971, however, Lin was reported to have died in a plane crash after attempting to plot the assassination of Mao, who was back in firm control of power. The impulse of the Cultural Revolution was transferred to the Chinese masses, and the people realized that they had the "right to rebel", that it was their privilege to criticize the authorities and take an active part in the development of decisions. During the Cultural Revolution, Mao's sayings were printed in a small red book that was distributed to the people; his words were regarded as the final guide, and his person as the object of enthusiastic flattery. Despite how Mao might appear to have had more power than the CCP, he showed a true conviction in Leninist ideas about the collective leadership of the party. He expressed his dissatisfaction with the "cult of personality", apparently asking to reduce the number of his monuments.

Towards the end of his life, Mao puts forward a new analysis of the international situation, in which world states are divided into three groups: underdeveloped nations, developed nations, and two superpowers (the United States and the USSR), both of which seek world hegemony. This analysis highlighted China's position as the leader of the Third World (that is, an underdeveloped group) and helped to arrive at a rationalized rapprochement with the United States. Building closer relations with the United States was seen as a way to reduce the influence of the USSR, whose relations with China continued to deteriorate. In 1972, Mao, using his prestige to reverse this policy, hosted US President Richard M. Nixon in Beijing.

Mao died in Beijing on September 9, 1976. Over the next month, Ch'ing and his radical associates, known as the Gang of Four, were arrested. Mao's successor Hua-Feng was stripped of his positions of influence because the party was under the control of Teng Hsio-P'ing, who pursued a softening policy. In 1981, the party criticized the excesses of the Cultural Revolution, which was praised during Mao's rule.The 1982 constitution declared that economic cooperation and progress were more important than class struggle and prohibited all forms of personality cults.During the 1980s, the divergence from Mao's ideas became so great that in some areas in February 1989, a member of the Central Advisory Commission of the Communist Party wrote to the official Beijing newspaper Guangming Daily that "Mao was a big man who personifies the misery of the Chinese people, but later on he made big mistakes for a long period, and the result was more disaster for the people and the country. He created a historical tragedy." Along with the founders of the Han and Ming dynasties, Mao Zedong was one of the three rulers of China who came from peasant origins and achieved their power from scratch within only their lifetime. Mao's greatest achievements include the unification of China through destroying the Nationalist power, creating a unified People's Republic, and leading the biggest social revolution in human history.This revolution included the collectivization of land and property, the destruction of the property-owning class, the weakening of the urban bourgeoisie, and the elevation of the status of peasants and workers.As a Marxist thinker and leader of the socialist state, Mao gave theoretical legitimacy to the continuation of class struggle in the socialist and communist stages of development, he emphasized the importance of land redistribution for the benefit of the peasantry, and his theories greatly influenced the non-industrial third world.