At the Eighth Party Congress in September 1956, Mao Zedong Thought was removed from the party charter, while the cult of personality was decried. Hemmed in by Khrushchev, Mao had little choice but to put a brave face on these measures, even contributing to them in the months prior to the meeting. But in private the Chairman was seething, accusing Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping of taking control of the agenda and relegating him to the background.40
The Hungarian revolt gave Mao an opportunity to regain the upper hand. As Soviet troops crushed the rebels in Budapest in November 1956 the Chairman blamed the Hungarian Communist Party for having brought misfortune on itself by failing to listen to popular grievances and allowing them to fester and spiral out of control. Mao posed as a democrat, championing the ordinary man, demanding that non-party members be allowed to voice their discontent. In February 1957 he asked the party to ‘let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools contend’, urging ordinary people to overcome their hesitations and speak out.
Mao badly miscalculated. He had hoped for an outpouring of adulation in which his admirers would punish a party that had written Mao Zedong Thought out of the constitution. Instead, people wrote pithy slogans in favour of democracy and human rights, some even demanding that the communist party relinquish power. Students and workers took to the streets in the tens of thousands, clamouring for democracy and freedom of speech. Mao was stung by the extent of popular discontent. He put Deng Xiaoping in charge of a campaign that denounced half a million students and intellectuals as ‘rightists’ bent on destroying the party, shipping many off to labour camps established along the outer reaches of the empire.41
Mao’s gamble had backfired, but at least he and his comrades-in-arms were united again, determined to suppress the people. Back at the helm of the party, Mao was keen to push through the radical collectivisation of the countryside. In Moscow, where he and other communist party leaders from all over the world had been invited to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the October Revolution in November 1957, he gave his showpiece pledge of allegiance to Khrushchev by recognising him as the leader of the socialist camp.
Deep down Mao believed that it was he who should assume the mantle of leadership over all socialist countries. Even when Stalin was still alive, Mao viewed himself as a more determined revolutionary. It was Mao, after all, who had led a quarter of humanity to liberation. He was both the Lenin and the Stalin vof China. When Khrushchev announced that the Soviet Union would catch up with the United States in per capita production of meat, milk and butter, Mao took up the challenge and proclaimed that China would outstrip Britain – then still considered a major industrial power – in steel production within fifteen years. Mao was determined to outclass Khrushchev, pushing for a Great Leap Forward into communism that would upstage the Soviet Union.
The Great Leap Forward was the Chairman’s first attempt to steal the Soviet Union’s thunder, as people in the countryside were herded into giant collectives called people’s communes. By turning every man and woman in the countryside into a foot soldier in one giant army, to be deployed day and night to transform the economy, he thought that he could catapult his country past the Soviet Union. Mao was convinced that he had found the golden bridge to communism, making him the messiah leading humanity to a world of plenty for all.
Mao used the campaign to relaunch the cult of personality, battering his rivals into submission in a series of party meetings in the early months of 1958. ‘What is wrong with worship?’ he asked rhetorically. ‘The truth is in our hands, why should we not worship it?’ ‘Each group must worship its leader, it cannot but worship its leader,’ Mao observed, explaining that this was the ‘correct cult of personality’.42
His message was immediately picked up by loyal followers. Ke Qingshi, the mayor of Shanghai, quivered enthusiastically: ‘We must have blind faith in the Chairman! We must obey the Chairman with total abandon!’43 All ranking leaders, at one point or another, had to offer a self-criticism. Zhou Enlai was repeatedly demeaned and humiliated, forced to confess to his errors on three occasions before all the assembled party leaders. In the end he told the audience that Mao was the ‘personification of truth’ and that errors occurred only when the party became divorced from his great leadership.44
Zhou Enlai was allowed to stay on, but many inside the party ranks were less fortunate. The leadership of entire provinces was overthrown, as ‘anti-party’ cliques were removed almost everywhere. In Yunnan province alone, an inquisition purged thousands of members, including one in fifteen within the upper echelons of the party.45
Mao insisted on absolute loyalty, turning everyone into a flatterer. As a result, decisions were made on the basis of the Chairman’s whims, often without any concern for their impact. Already in the summer of 1959 it was clear that the Great Leap Forward was a disaster. But even a mild letter of criticism by Minister of Defence Peng Dehuai at a party gathering in Lushan was interpreted by the Chairman as a stab in the back. Peng was described as the leader of an ‘anti-party clique’ and removed from all influential positions. Liu Shaoqi stepped in, covering the Chairman with praise. ‘The leadership of Comrade Mao Zedong,’ Liu observed, ‘is in no way inferior to the leadership of Marx and Lenin. I am convinced that if Marx and Lenin lived in China, they would have guided the Chinese revolution in just the same way.’ As Mao’s doctor put it, the Chairman ‘craved affection and acclaim. As his disgrace within the party grew, so did his hunger for approval.’46
Most of all, Lin Biao rallied to the Chairman’s defence, accusing Peng Dehuai in his frail, squeaky voice of being ‘ambitious, conspiratorial and hypocritical’. Lin was widely considered one of the most brilliant strategists of the civil war and had personally ordered the siege of Changchun in 1948. A gaunt man with a chalky complexion, he suffered from a wide array of phobias about water, wind and cold. The mere sound of running water gave him diarrhoea. ‘Only Mao is a great hero, a role to which no one else should dare to aspire,’ he crowed, adding, ‘We are all very far behind him, so don’t even go there!’47
In private Lin was far more critical than Peng, confiding in his private diary that the Great Leap Forward was ‘based on fantasy and a total mess’. But he knew that the best way to maintain power was to shower the Chairman with flattery. Lin had realised long ago how crucial it was to exalt Mao: ‘He worships himself, he has blind faith in himself, adores himself, he will take credit for every achievement but blame others for his failures.’48
Anyone who had expressed reservations about the Great Leap Forward was hunted down, as some 3.6 million party members were purged as ‘rightists’ or ‘little Peng Dehuais’. They were replaced by hard, unscrupulous elements who trimmed their sails to benefit from the radical winds blowing from Beijing, using every means at their disposal to extract grain from the countryside.49
Instead of steering the economy past that of the Soviet Union, the Great Leap Forward turned into one of the greatest catastrophes of the twentieth century, as tens of millions of people were worked, beaten or starved to death. By October 1960 Mao was forced to retreat from his grandiose plan, although it took more than a year for the economy to begin recovering.50
In January 1962, as some 7,000 leading cadres from all over the country gathered to talk about the failure of the Great Leap Forward, Mao’s star was at its lowest. Rumours were circulating, accusing the Chairman of being deluded, innumerate and dangerous. Some of the delegates held him responsible for the mass starvation of ordinary people. Liu Shaoqi himself had been genuinely shocked by the disastrous state of the countryside. During the proceedings he even used the term ‘man-made disaster’, drawing gasps from the audience. Lin Biao, again, came to the rescue, hailing the Great Leap Forward as an unprecedented accomplishment in Chinese history: ‘The thoughts of Chairman Mao are always correct. He is never out of touch with reality.’ Zhou Enlai stepped forward, taking the blame for everything that had gone wrong.51
The Chairman was pleased with Lin, but suspi
cious of everyone else. His entire legacy was in jeopardy. Mao feared that he would meet the same fate as Stalin, denounced after his death by Khrushchev.
He went on the counter-attack as early as August 1962, laying the groundwork for the Cultural Revolution. Counter-revolutionary forces, he explained, were everywhere, and they were trying to lead the country back onto the road towards capitalism. He launched a Socialist Education Campaign with the motto ‘Never Forget Class Struggle’. A year later Mao exhorted the nation to learn from Lei Feng, a young soldier who had dedicated his life to serving the people. His posthumous diary, a record of his ideological progress, was published and studied across the country. Lei Feng explained how ‘the blood given by the party and Chairman Mao has penetrated every single cell of my body’. Mao even appeared to him in a vision: ‘Yesterday I had a dream. I dreamt of seeing Chairman Mao. Like a compassionate father, he stroked my head. With a smile, he spoke to me: “Do a good job in study; be forever loyal to the party, loyal to the people!” My joy was overwhelming; I tried to speak but could not.’52
Glowing testimonials from workers and villagers were published in letters to newspapers all over China. Tens of thousands of meetings were held, extolling Lei Feng as a model communist. Plays and movies were produced. Songs were composed, some of them running into dozens of verses. Storytellers roamed the villages to enthral illiterate villagers with Lei Feng’s love of the Chairman. A Lei Feng exhibition opened at the Beijing Army Museum, where a huge screen at the entrance inscribed with Mao Zedong’s calligraphy exhorted visitors to ‘Learn from Comrade Lei Feng!’ Lei Feng was the poor man’s Mao, a simplified Mao for the masses. He was meant to rouse people from the apathy caused by Mao’s Great Famine and heighten their hatred for class enemies.53
Lin Biao, who had been rewarded for his performance at Lushan with Peng Dehuai’s job as minister of defence, promoted the study of Mao Zedong Thought within the armed forces. Soldiers were asked to commit short passages from Mao’s collected writings to memory. In January 1964, a mimeographed compendium of these quotations was published, with a fuller version distributed to the People’s Liberation Army later that year. It came covered in gaudy red plastic, and was no bigger than the palm of a hand, easily fitting inside the pocket of a standard military uniform. Lin Biao provided an inscription, taken from Lei Feng’s diary: ‘Read Chairman Mao’s book, listen to Chairman Mao’s words, act according to Chairman Mao’s instructions and be a good fighter for Chairman Mao.’ By the time a new edition appeared in August 1965, millions of copies of the Quotations of Chairman Mao, also known as the Little Red Book, were being distributed far beyond the ranks of the army.54
Mao basked in the adulation and ordered the country to emulate Lin Biao and the People’s Liberation Army. ‘The merit of the Liberation Army,’ he said, ‘is that its political ideology is correct.’ In response, the army began to assume a more prominent role in civil life, setting up political departments in government units to promote Mao Zedong Thought. The army also fostered a more martial atmosphere, in tune with the Socialist Education Campaign. Military ‘summer camps’ for students and workers were organised in the countryside. In primary schools children were taught how to use airguns by shooting at portraits of Chiang Kai-shek and American imperialists. Military training camps were set up for older students from reliable backgrounds, where they learned how to throw grenades and shoot with live bullets. In the summer of 1965 more than 10,000 university and 50,000 middle-school students in Shanghai spent a week in camp.55
On 1 October 1964, to celebrate National Day, the army organised a monumental show on Tiananmen Square with several choirs and ballet dancers in military uniform. A colossal figure of Chairman Mao opened the procession, which edged forward to the tune of ‘Chairman Mao, the Sun in our Hearts’. ‘Armed with Mao Zedong Thought’, the nation was told, the people would be able to overcome ‘capitalist and feudal attempts at restoration as well as attacks by our enemies at home and abroad’. Two weeks later China exploded its first atom bomb, joining the world’s superpowers.56
By the spring of 1966 Mao was ready to launch the Cultural Revolution. It was his second attempt to become the historical pivot around which the socialist universe revolved. Instead of trying to transform the economy, which had resulted in the disaster of the Great Leap Forward, the Chairman focused on culture. Mao must have wondered how one man, Nikita Khrushchev, could have single-handedly engineered a complete reversal of policy in the mighty Soviet Union, attacking Stalin in 1956 and proposing ‘peaceful co-existence’ with the imperialist camp. The answer was that culture had been neglected. The capitalists were gone, their property confiscated, but capitalist culture still held sway, making it possible for a few people at the top to erode and finally subvert the entire system.
Lenin had carried out the Great October Socialist Revolution, setting a precedent for the proletariat of the whole world. But modern revisionists like Khrushchev had usurped the leadership of the party, leading the Soviet Union back onto the road to capitalist restoration. The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution would be the second stage in the history of the international communist movement, safeguarding the dictatorship of the proletariat against revisionism. The foundation piles of the communist future were being driven in China, as the Chairman guided the oppressed and downtrodden people of the world towards freedom. Mao was the one who inherited, defended and developed Marxism-Leninism into a new stage, that of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought. There was no mention of Stalin.57
These were grandiose ideas, but Mao also used the Cultural Revolution to get rid of his real and imaginary enemies, in particular delegates who had discussed the Great Leap Forward in January 1962.
Ten years earlier Mao had miscalculated by allowing intellectuals to speak their minds during the Hundred Flowers. This time he was better prepared. First, he placed the country on alert by having four party leaders arrested in May 1966, accusing them of being part of an ‘anti-party clique’ that had been plotting a return to capitalism. Then, on 1 June, classes across the country were suspended as students were unleashed against their teachers.
Students at every level had undergone years of indoctrination during the Socialist Education Campaign. Encouraged by the party machine, they harassed, denounced, humiliated and even tortured suspected class enemies. But a few went too far, taking to task leading party members. They were punished for their activities by work teams sent by Deng Xiaoping and Liu Shaoqi, put in charge of the Cultural Revolution in the Chairman’s absence from Beijing. In mid-July Mao returned to the capital. Instead of supporting his two colleagues he accused them of suppressing the students and ‘running a dictatorship’. Both were sidelined, while Lin Biao took over from Liu Shaoqi as Number Two.
‘To Rebel is Justified’ became Mao’s battle cry, and rebel students did. Red Guards appeared in August 1966 donning improvised military uniforms, carrying the Little Red Book. They vowed to defend the Chairman and carry out the Cultural Revolution. In the early hours of 18 August, close to a million of them spilled out on Tiananmen Square, waiting to see the Chairman. As the sun began to rise over the eastern end of the square, Mao came down from the rostrum, wearing a baggy army uniform. The crowd erupted in cheers, brandishing the Little Red Book.58
Between August and November 1966 Mao reviewed some twelve million Red Guards at eight mass rallies. In the end, when even the giant square in front of the Forbidden City could no longer contain them, he rode through the city in an open jeep, reaching two million students in one fell swoop. Each rally was meticulously prepared, with Red Guards marched in groups or ferried by a fleet of 6,000 lorries to the square in the middle of the night, always unannounced for security reasons. They were ordered to sit in rows, waiting for hours on end. When the Chairman finally showed himself, they jumped up, craning their necks, surging forward, cheering ‘Long Live Chairman Mao!’59
Many were ecstatic at catching a glimpse of the Chairman; others were disappointed. A few were fri
ghtened. But all of them knew precisely what to do and what to say, as the key sentence had been publicised endlessly by press, radio and television after every mass rally in Beijing: ‘I am the happiest person in the world today. I have seen our Great Leader Chairman Mao!’60
At the end of the first rally on 18 September, Lin Biao made a lengthy speech, appealing to the excited youngsters to destroy ‘all the old ideas, old culture, old customs and old habits of the exploiting classes’.
This they did with gusto, as they burned books, overturned tombstones in cemeteries, tore down temples, vandalised churches, and more generally attacked all signs of the past, including street names and shop signs. They also carried out house raids. In Shanghai alone, a quarter of a million homes were visited, as all remnants of the past were seized, whether ordinary books, family photographs, antique bronzes or rare scrolls.61
As the old world came under attack, a new proletarian culture, Mao proclaimed, would be forged. All understood that the only acceptable alternative was the cult of Chairman Mao. The most visible aspect of this cult was a rash of slogans. They went up everywhere. As one close observer noted: ‘There have always been plenty of them in the past but all previous records have now been broken. Every stretch of clean wall must have its carefully inscribed quotation or tribute to Mao.’ Some of the favourite slogans were ‘Our Great Teacher, Great Leader, Great Commander, Great Helmsman’ or ‘Long Live Chairman Mao!’ Shops, factories and schools were plastered with them, a few stretching across the top of entire buildings. Quotations were painted on the outside of buses, lorries, cars and vans.62
In this new world drenched in red, all the senses were bombarded. Red Guards on temporary platforms called upon the people in shrill voices to join the revolution. Bystanders were harangued in fiery rhetoric peppered with quotations from the Chairman. High up in the skies, air hostesses on internal flights treated passengers to regular readings from the Little Red Book. But the most fearful weapon was the loudspeaker. Loudspeakers had long been used in propaganda campaigns, but now they were switched on permanently, spewing out the same quotations – always at full volume. Red Guards read from the Little Red Book in police boxes, connected to loudspeakers on the streets. Gangs of revolutionary youths paraded through the cities, belting out revolutionary songs praising the Chairman and his thought. The same songs were broadcast on radio, which in turn was connected to loudspeakers in courtyards, schools, factories and government offices. One favourite was ‘When Sailing the Seas, We Depend on the Helmsman’, another ‘The Thought of Mao Zedong Glitters with Golden Light’.63
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