As a result of
the failure on the Great
Leap Forward,
Mao
Zedong retired
from the post of chairman of the People's Republic of China. However,
he returned to power in 1966 when with Lin
Biao he
initiated the Cultural Revolution. On 3rd September, 1966, Lin Biao
made a speech where he urged pupils in schools and colleges to criticize
those party officials who had been influenced by the ideas of Nikita
Khrushchev.
Mao was concerned
by those party leaders such as Liu Shaoqi,
the State Chairman of China, who favoured the
introduction of piecework, greater wage differentials and measures
that sought to undermine collective farms and factories.
In an attempt
to dislodge those in power who favoured the Soviet model of communism,
Mao galvanized students and young workers as his Red
Guards to attack revisionists in the party. Mao told them the
revolution was in danger and that they must do all they could to stop
the emergence of a privileged class in China. He argued this is what
had happened in the Soviet Union under Joseph
Stalin and Nikita
Khrushchev.
Lin
Biao compiled some of Mao's writings into the handbook, The
Quotations of Chairman Mao, and arranged for a copy of
what became known as the Little Red Book,
to every Chinese citizen.
Zhou
Enlai
at first gave his support to the campaign but became concerned when
fighting broke out between the Red Guards
and the revisionists. In order to achieve peace at the end of 1966
he called for an end to these attacks on party officials. Mao remained
in control of the Cultural Revolution and with the support of the
army was able to oust the revisionists.
The Cultural
Revolution came to an end when Liu Shaoqi
resigned from all his posts on 13th October 1968. Lin
Biao now
became Mao's designated successor.
Mao Zedong officially declared the Cultural Revolution to have ended in 1969, but historians tend to use the term "Cultural Revolution" to describe the period between 1966 and the arrest of the Gang of Four in 1976.
Lin
Biao and Mao
Zedong during the Cultural
Revolution.
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