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. In the local primary school he received a classical Chinese education, which included familiarity with 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 to 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 the orders of Mao 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 Hundred Flowers movement 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 overtake 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 CPC 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 over 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 from the leading bodies of the party all those who disagreed with his policy, to impose on the party and people its 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 calls: "In industry, learn from the Daqing oilmen, in agriculture, from the Uachzhai production brigade", "The whole country learn from the army", "Strengthen preparations 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 the 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 (GCR) was also created, headed by former secretary Mao 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 high school at Beijing 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 is our backbone. 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 government workers were taken to the "court of the masses" in clownish 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 supplemented by 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 spoken of 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 destruction of the authorities began public organizations, party committees. 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, persecution 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 CPC committees, and often spontaneously, repulsed 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 turned into a state where chaos reigned and terror reigned. Party and government bodies at all levels were paralyzed. Leading cadres and intellectuals 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 public institutions, begun in the spring of 1968. The entire history of the party was presented as a struggle of the "line of Mao Zedong" 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 development, improvement of the people's life, and development of democracy. Theoretical basis activities of the CPC were proclaimed "the ideas of Mao Zedong". 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 beginning of the world communist movement, such a strange phenomenon has not yet been.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 national economy, 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 commune members to household plots, recognized the production brigade (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.

Shortly after the adoption of the new constitution, the nominees - the "cultural revolution" undertook try again 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 the control of the moderates.

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.

Mao Zedong (1893-1976), Chinese statesman and politician.

Born December 26, 1893 in the village of Shaoshan (Hunan Province) in the family of a wealthy peasant. Graduated from school and pedagogical college (1913-1918); He worked as an assistant librarian at Peking University.

In 1919 he joined a Marxist circle, in 1921 he became one of the founders of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). In 1921-1925. carried out the organizational tasks of the leadership of the CPC, then began active work on the creation of peasant unions in the villages. In April 1927, Chiang Kai-shek unleashed an anti-communist campaign, and the leadership of the CPC headed for armed uprisings.

In 1928-1934. Mao Zedong organized and led the Chinese Soviet Republic in rural areas in the south of Central China, and after its defeat led the communist detachments on the famous Long March to the north of China.

During the Japanese aggression in Northern China (1937-1945), the CCP led the resistance movement, and in 1945 resumed the civil war with Chiang Kai-shek. After the victory of the Communists (1949), Mao Zedong became the head of the People's Republic of China (PRC), while also remaining chairman of the CPC Central Committee (he held this post from 1943).

He pinned great hopes on the economic and technical assistance of the USSR. In 1950-1956 various kinds of “counter-revolutionaries” were subjected to repressions, while an agrarian revolution took place in the country, industry and trade were socialized.

In 1957-1958. Mao Zedong put forward a program of social and economic development known as the "Great Leap Forward": huge labor resources were thrown into the creation of agricultural communes and small-scale industrial enterprises in the countryside. The principle of equal distribution of income was introduced, the remnants of private enterprises and the system of material incentives were liquidated. As a result, the Chinese economy fell into a deep depression.

In 1959, Mao Zedong resigned as head of state. He played a decisive role in the growing ideological strife between China and the USSR.

In the early 60s. Mao was preoccupied with certain economic and political trends: he believed that the retreat from the principles of the "Great Leap Forward" had gone too far and that some persons in the leadership of the CPC did not want to build socialism. In 1966, the world learned about the "cultural revolution" in China, with the help of which it was supposed to purge the CCP of all those who "took the capitalist path."

The "Cultural Revolution" ended in 1968 - Mao Zedong had fears that the USSR could take advantage of political instability and deliver a sudden blow to China. In 1971, he handed over the powers of the head of the CCP to Zhou Enlai, under whose leadership (and with the personal approval of Mao Zedong) China set a course for peaceful coexistence with the United States.

Mao Zedong (December 26, 1893 - September 9, 1976) was a Chinese statesman and politician of the 20th century, the main theorist of Maoism.

Joining the Communist Party of China (CCP) at a young age, Mao Zedong became the leader of the communist regions in Jiangxi province in the 1930s.

He was of the opinion that it was necessary to develop a special communist ideology for China. After the "Long March", of which Mao was one of the leaders, he managed to take a leading position in the CCP.

In 1949, Mao Zedong proclaimed the formation of the People's Republic of China, of which he was the de facto leader until the end of his life.

From 1943 until his death, he served as chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, and in 1954-59. also the position of President of the People's Republic of China.

He conducted several high-profile campaigns, the most famous of which were the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), which claimed the lives of many hundreds of thousands of people.

Mao's reign was characterized by the unification of the country after a long period of fragmentation, the growth of China's industrialization and the moderate growth of the people's welfare on the one hand, but also political terror during mass campaigns and the cult of Mao's personality on the other.

The name of Mao Zedong consisted of two parts - Tse-tung. Ze had a double meaning: the first - "moisture and moisturize", the second - "mercy, kindness, beneficence." The second hieroglyph is "dun" - "east".

The whole name meant "Beneficent East". At the same time, according to tradition, the child was given an unofficial name. It was supposed to be used on special occasions as a dignified, respectful "Yongzhi". "Yong" means to chant, and "zhi" - or, more precisely, "zhilan" - "orchid".

Thus, the second name meant "Sung Orchid." Soon the middle name had to be replaced: from the point of view of geomancy, the sign "water" was absent in it. As a result, the second name turned out to be similar in meaning to the first: Zhunzhi - “Water-irrigated orchid”.

With a slightly different spelling of the hieroglyph "zhi", the name Zhunzhi acquired one more symbolic meaning: "Beneficent to all living."

Mao's mother gave the newborn another name that was supposed to protect him from all misfortunes: "Shi" - "Stone", and since Mao was the third child in the family, his mother began to call him Shisanyazi (literally - "Third child named Stone" ).

Mao Zedong was born on December 26, 1893 in the village of Shaoshan, Hunan Province, not far from the provincial capital, Changsha. Zedong's father, Mao Zhensheng, belonged to small landowners, and his family was quite wealthy.

The strict disposition of the Confucian father led to conflicts with his son and, at the same time, the boy's attachment to the soft-spoken Buddhist mother, Wen Qimei.

Following the example of his mother, little Mao became a Buddhist. However, as a teenager, Mao abandoned Buddhism. Years later, he told his associates: “I worship my mother ... Wherever she went, I followed her ... they burned incense and paper money in the temple, bowed to the Buddha ... Because my mother believed in Buddha, I believed in him too !"

He received a classical Chinese education at a local school, which included exposure to the philosophy of Confucius and the study of ancient Chinese literature.

The Xinhai Revolution finds young Mao in Changsha, where he moves from his native village at the age of sixteen.

The young man becomes a witness to the bloody struggle of various groups, as well as soldier uprisings, and for a short time he joins the army of the provincial governor. Here, reading the Xiangjiang Ribao and other newspapers, Mao first became acquainted with the ideas of socialism.

After six months, he left the army to continue his studies, this time at the First Provincial School in Changsha. Mao once again delved into his studies, achieving brilliant results in the humanities. In 1917, his first articles appeared in major socialist journals, such as New Youth.

In a document of that time, the diary of Professor Yang Changji, Mao's teacher, under the date April 5, 1915, it is written: "My student Mao Zedong said that ... his clan ... consists mainly of peasants and that it is not difficult for them to get rich."

A year later, following his beloved teacher Yang Changji, he moved to Beijing, where he worked as an assistant to Li Dazhao, who later became one of the founders of the Communist Party of China, in the library of Peking University.

After leaving Beijing, young Mao travels around the country, is engaged in an in-depth study of the works of Western philosophers and revolutionaries, and is keenly interested in events in Russia.

In the winter of 1920, he visits Beijing as part of a delegation from the National Assembly of Hunan Province demanding the removal of the corrupt and cruel provincial governor.

A year later, Mao, following his friend Cai Hesen, decides to adopt the communist ideology. In July 1921, Mao takes part in the Shanghai Congress at which the Communist Party of China was founded.

Two months later, upon his return to Changsha, he became secretary of the Hunan branch of the CCP. At the same time, Mao marries Yang Kaihui, Yang Changji's daughter. Over the next five years, they have three sons, Anying, Anqing and Anlong.

At the insistence of the Comintern, the CCP was forced to enter into an alliance with the Kuomintang. Mao Zedong, who was a member of the CPC Central Committee in the summer of 1923, did not welcome this compromise.

In 1926, Mao was promoted to the post of secretary of the CPC for the peasant movement, and a year later - head of the Kuomintang Institute of the Peasant Movement.

All these years, he has been doing a lot of work with the peasantry, with whom Mao helps his rural origin to find mutual understanding.

Mao comes to the conclusion that in China, where the vast majority of the population is made up of peasants, the proletariat cannot be the main revolutionary force. Already at that time, he began to formulate for himself the main theses of the future ideology (Maoism).

In April 1927, Chiang Kai-shek, having occupied Shanghai with the help of the Communists, began to pursue a policy of merciless terror in the city against yesterday's allies. Thousands of CCP members have been arrested or killed.

At this time, Mao Zedong organizes the "Autumn Harvest" peasant uprising in the vicinity of Changsha. The uprising is suppressed by the local authorities with great cruelty, Mao is forced to flee with the remnants of his army to the Jinggangshan mountains on the border of Hunan and Jiangxi.

Soon the attacks of the Kuomintang forced Mao's groups, as well as Zhu De, Zhou Enlai and other military leaders of the CPC, who were defeated during the Nanchang uprising, to leave this territory. In 1928, after long migrations, the Communists firmly established themselves in the west of Jiangxi province.

There, Mao creates a fairly strong Soviet republic. Subsequently, he carries out a number of agrarian and social reforms - in particular, the confiscation and redistribution of land, the liberalization of women's rights.

Meanwhile, the Chinese Communist Party was going through a severe crisis. Its membership was reduced to 10,000, of which only 3% were workers.

The new party leader Li Lisan, due to several serious defeats on the military and ideological front, as well as disagreements with Stalin, was expelled from the Central Committee.

Against this background, the position of Mao, who emphasized the peasantry and acted relatively successfully in this direction, is strengthening in the party, despite frequent conflicts with the party leadership.

Mao dealt with his opponents at the local level in Jiangxi in 1930-31. through a crackdown in which many local leaders were killed or imprisoned as agents of the fictional AB-tuanei society. The AB Tuanei case was, in fact, the first "purge" in the history of the CCP.

At the same time, Mao suffered a personal loss: Kuomintang agents managed to capture his wife, Yang Kaihui. She was executed in 1930, and somewhat later younger son Mao Anlong dies of dysentery.

His second son by Kaihui, Mao Anying, died during the Korean War. Shortly after the death of his second wife, Mao begins living with activist He Zizhen.

In the autumn of 1931, the Chinese Soviet Republic was established on the territory of 10 Soviet regions of Central China, controlled by the Chinese Red Army and partisans close to it. Mao Zedong became the head of the Provisional Central Soviet Government (Council of People's Commissars).

By 1934, Chiang Kai-shek's forces surround the communist areas in Jiangxi and begin to prepare for a massive attack. The CCP leadership decides to withdraw from the area.

An operation to break through four rows of Kuomintang fortifications is being prepared and carried out by Zhou Enlai - Mao is now again in disgrace.

After the removal of Li Lisan, the leading positions were occupied by the 28 Bolsheviks, a group of young functionaries close to the Comintern and Stalin, led by Wang Ming, who were trained in Moscow. With heavy losses, the communists manage to break through the barriers of the nationalists and withdraw into the mountainous regions of Guizhou.

During a short respite in the town of Zunyi, a legendary party conference takes place, at which some of the theses presented by Mao were officially accepted by the party; he himself becomes a permanent member of the Politburo, and the group of "28 Bolsheviks" is subjected to tangible criticism.

The party decides to evade open confrontation with Chiang Kai-shek by rushing north through the rugged mountainous regions.

A year after the start of the Great March, in October 1935, the Red Army reaches the communist region of Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia (or, by name largest city, Yan'an), which it was decided to make the new outpost of the Communist Party.

During the Great March, through hostilities, epidemics, accidents in the mountains and swamps, as well as through desertion, the communists lost more than 90% of the composition that left Jiangxi.

However, they manage to quickly regain their strength. By that time, the main goal of the party was considered to be the struggle against the growing Japan, which was gaining a foothold in Manchuria and Prov. Shandong.

After open hostilities broke out in July 1937, the Communists, on Moscow's orders, set out to create a united patriotic front with the Kuomintang.

In the midst of the anti-Japanese struggle, Mao Zedong initiates a movement called "correction of morals" ("zhengfeng"; 1942-43). The reason for this is the sharp growth of the party, replenished with defectors from the army of Chiang Kai-shek and peasants who are not familiar with the party ideology.

The movement includes communist indoctrination of new party members, active study of Mao's writings, and "self-criticism" campaigns, especially against Mao's archrival Wang Ming, which effectively suppresses free thought among the communist intelligentsia. The result of zhengfeng is the complete concentration of intra-party power in the hands of Mao Zedong.

In 1943, he was elected chairman of the Politburo and Secretariat of the CPC Central Committee, and in 1945, chairman of the CPC Central Committee. This period becomes the first stage in the formation of Mao's personality cult.

Mao studies the classics Western philosophy and especially Marxism. On the basis of Marxism-Leninism, some aspects of traditional Chinese philosophy and, last but not least, his own experience and ideas, Mao manages, with the help of his personal secretary Chen Bod, to create and theoretically substantiate a new direction of Marxism - "Maoism".

Maoism was conceived as a more flexible, more pragmatic form of Marxism that would be more adapted to the Chinese realities of the time.

Its main features can be identified as an unambiguous orientation towards the peasantry (and not towards the proletariat) as well as a certain amount of nationalism. The influence of traditional Chinese philosophy on Marxism is manifested in the development of the ideas of dialectical materialism.

In the war with Japan, the Communists are more successful than the Kuomintang. On the one hand, this was due to the tactics worked out by Mao guerrilla war, which made it possible to successfully operate behind enemy lines, on the other hand, this is dictated by the fact that the main blows of the Japanese military machine takes over the army of Chiang Kai-shek, better armed and perceived by the Japanese as the main enemy.

At the end of the war, even attempts are made to get closer to the Chinese communists from America, disillusioned with Chiang Kai-shek, experiencing one defeat after another.

By the mid-1940s, all the public institutions of the Kuomintang, including the army, were at the final stage of decay. Unheard-of corruption, arbitrariness, and violence flourish everywhere; the country's economy and financial system are virtually atrophied.

Part of the leadership of the Kuomintang had a very mild attitude towards China's main enemy, Japan, preferring to conduct the main military operations against the communists. All this contributes to the spread of a negative attitude towards the Kuomintang among the majority of the population, including among the intelligentsia.

At the beginning of 1947, the Kuomintang managed to win the last major victory: on March 19, they captured the city of Yan'an - the "communist capital".

Mao Zedong and the entire military command had to flee. However, despite the successes, the Kuomintang failed to achieve the main strategic goal- destroy the main forces of the communists and capture their strongholds.

The categorical refusal of Chiang Kai-shek to organize life in the country after the end of the war according to democratic norms and the wave of repressions against dissidents cause the complete loss of support for the Kuomintang among the population and even its own army.

After the start of active hostilities in 1947, the communists, with the help of the troops of the Soviet Union, who had settled in Manchuria by that time, managed to capture the entire territory of continental China in 2.5 years, despite the multiple numerical superiority of the Kuomintang troops and the active opposition of the United States.

October 1, 1949 (before the end of hostilities in the southern provinces) from the Tiananmen Gate, Mao Zedong proclaims the formation of the People's Republic of China with its capital in Beijing. Mao himself becomes chairman of the government of the new republic.

The first years after the victory over the Kuomintang were devoted mainly to solving urgent economic and social problems. Mao Zedong attaches particular importance to agrarian reform, the development of heavy industry and the strengthening of civil rights.

Almost all reforms are carried out by the Chinese communists on the model of the Soviet Union, which had quite a big influence to the PRC. In particular, land is being confiscated from large landowners; within the framework of the first five-year plan, with the help of specialists from the USSR, a number of large industrial projects are being carried out.

In foreign policy, the beginning of the 50s for China was marked by participation in the Korean War, in which about a million Chinese volunteers, including Mao's son, died during 3 years of hostilities.

After the death of Stalin and the 20th Congress of the CPSU, disagreements also arise in the highest echelons of power in China over the liberalization of the country and the permissibility of criticism of the Party. Initially, Mao decides to support the liberal wing, which included Zhou Enlai (Premier of the State Council of the People's Republic of China), Chen Yun (Vice Chairman of the CPC), and Deng Xiaoping (General Secretary of the CCP).

In 1956, in his speech "On the Just Resolution of Conflicts Within the People," Mao called for open expression of opinion and participation in discussions, throwing out the slogan: "Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools compete."

The Party Chairman did not calculate that his call would provoke a flurry of criticism of the CCP and himself. intelligentsia and simple people strongly condemn the CCP's dictatorial style of government, violations of human rights and freedoms, corruption, incompetence, and violence.

Thus, already in July 1957, the Hundred Flowers campaign was curtailed, and a campaign against right-wing deviators was proclaimed instead. About 520,000 people who protested during the "Hundred Flowers" are arrested and repressed, a wave of suicides sweeps the country.

Despite all efforts, the growth rate of the Chinese economy in the late 1950s left much to be desired. Agricultural productivity has regressed. In addition, Mao was worried about the lack of a "revolutionary spirit" in the masses.

He decided to approach the solution of these problems within the framework of the "Three Red Banners" policy, designed to ensure the "Great Leap Forward" in all areas of the national economy and launched in 1958. In order to reach the production volumes of Great Britain in 15 years, it was supposed to organize almost the entire rural (and also, partially, urban) population of the country into autonomous "communes".

Life in the communes was extremely collectivized - with the introduction of collective canteens, private life and, moreover, property were practically eradicated.

Each commune had to not only provide itself and the surrounding cities with food, but also produce industrial products, mainly steel, which was smelted in small furnaces in the backyards of the members of the commune: thus it was expected that popular enthusiasm would make up for the lack of professionalism.

The policy of the "Great Leap Forward" ended in a grand failure. The quality of steel produced in the communes was extremely low; the cultivation of collective fields went from bad to worse: 1) the peasants lost their economic motivation in their work, 2) many laborers were involved in "metallurgy" and 3) the fields remained uncultivated, as optimistic "statistics" predicted bumper harvests.

Already after 2 years, food production fell catastrophically low level. At this time, provincial leaders reported to Mao on the unprecedented successes of the new policy, provoking raising the bar for the sale of grain and the production of "home" steel.

Critics of the Great Leap Forward, such as Defense Minister Peng Dehuai, lost their posts. In 1959-61. the country was seized by the greatest famine, the victims of which, according to various estimates, from 10-20 to 30 million people.

In 1959, Mao's radical leftist views led to a break in China's relations with the Soviet Union. From the very beginning, Mao is extremely negative about Khrushchev's liberal policies and, in particular, his theses about the peaceful coexistence of the two systems.

During the Great Leap Forward, this hostility escalates into open confrontation. The USSR withdraws from China all the specialists who helped to raise the country's economy, and stops financial assistance.

The domestic political situation in China is also changing significantly. After the catastrophic failure of the Great Leap Forward, many leaders at both the top and local levels are beginning to withhold Mao's support.

Inspection trips around the country by Deng Xiaoping and Liu Shaoqi (who replaced Mao Zedong as head of state in 1959) reveal the monstrous consequences of the policy pursued, as a result of which most of the members of the Central Committee more or less openly go over to the side of the "liberals". There are veiled demands for the resignation of the CCP chairman.

As a result, Mao Zedong partially admits the failure of the Great Leap Forward and even hints at his own guilt in this. While maintaining authority, he stops actively interfering in the affairs of the country's leadership for a while, watching from the sidelines how Deng and Liu are pursuing a realistic policy that is fundamentally at odds with his own views - dissolving communes, allowing private land ownership and elements of free trade in the countryside, significantly weakening the grip censorship.

At the same time, the left wing of the party is strenuously strengthening its positions, operating mainly from Shanghai. Thus, the new Minister of Defense Lin Biao is actively promoting the cult of Mao's personality, especially in the "People's Liberation Army" under his control. For the first time, Jiang Qing, Mao's last wife, began to interfere in politics - at first the politics of culture.

It sharply attacks the democratically minded writers and poets of China, as well as the authors of "bourgeois" literature, who write without the overtones of the class struggle.

In 1965, in Shanghai, on behalf of the left-wing radical journalist Yao Wenyuan, an article was published in which the drama of the famous historian and writer, Deputy Mayor of Beijing Wu Han, “The Demolition of Hai Rui”, was subjected to devastating criticism, which in an allegorical form, using an example from antiquity, illustrated the reigning in China corruption, arbitrariness, hypocrisy and lack of freedom.

Despite the efforts of the liberal bloc, the discussion around this drama becomes a precedent for the start of great changes in the field of culture, and soon the Cultural Revolution. It is assumed that the image of Hai Rui allegorically expresses nothing more than a defense of Peng Dehuai, who was demoted for his sincere criticism of the Chairman's policy.

Despite the high rates of development of the Chinese economy after the rejection of the Three Red Banners policy, Mao is not going to put up with the liberal trend in the development of the national economy. He is also not ready to consign to oblivion the ideals of the permanent revolution, to allow "bourgeois values" (the predominance of economics over ideology) into the life of the Chinese.

Nevertheless, he is forced to state that the bulk of the leading cadres do not share his worldview. Even the established "Committee on the Cultural Revolution" prefers not to crack down on critics of the regime at first.

In this scenario, Mao decides to carry out a new global upheaval, which was supposed to return society to the bosom of revolution and "true socialism."

In addition to the left-wing radicals Chen Boda, Jiang Qing and Lin Biao, Mao Zedong's ally in this enterprise was to be primarily the Chinese youth.

Having made a swim on the Yangtze River in July 1966 and thus proving his "combat capability", Mao returned to leadership, arrived in Beijing and launched a powerful attack on the liberal wing of the party, mainly on Liu Shaoqi.

A little later, the Central Committee, at the behest of Mao, approved the Sixteen Points document, which practically became the program of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. It began with attacks on the leadership of Peking University lecturer Nie Yuanzi.

Following this, students and pupils of secondary schools, in an effort to resist conservative and often corrupt teachers and professors, inspired by revolutionary sentiments and the cult of the "Great Pilot - Chairman Mao", which was skillfully fomented by the "leftists", begin to organize themselves into units of "Hongweiping" - "Red guards" (can also be translated as "Red Guards").

A campaign against the liberal intelligentsia is launched in the press controlled by the left. Unable to withstand the persecution, some of its representatives, as well as party leaders, commit suicide.

On August 5, Mao Zedong published his dazibao titled "Fire on Headquarters", in which he accused "some leading comrades in the center and localities" of "implementing the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and trying to suppress the turbulent movement of the great proletarian cultural revolution."

This tzibao, in fact, called for the destruction of the central and local party organs, declared to be bourgeois headquarters.

With the end of the Cultural Revolution, China's foreign policy takes an unexpected turn. Against the backdrop of extremely tense relations with the Soviet Union (especially after the armed conflict on Damansky Island), Mao suddenly decided to rapprochement with the United States of America, which Lin Biao, who was considered Mao's official successor, sharply opposed.

After the Cultural Revolution, his power increased dramatically, which worries Mao Zedong. Lin Biao's attempts to pursue an independent policy make the chairman completely disappointed in him, they begin to fabricate a case against Lin.

Upon learning of this, on September 13, 1971, Lin Biao makes an attempt to escape from the country, but his plane crashes under unclear circumstances. As early as 1972, President Nixon visited China.

After the death of Lin Biao, behind the back of the aging Chairman, there is an intra-factional struggle in the CCP. Opposing each other are a group of "left radicals" (led by the leaders of the Cultural Revolution, the so-called "gang of four" - Jiang Qing, Wang Hongwen, Zhang Chongqiao and Yao Wenyuan) and a group of "pragmatists" (led by moderate Zhou Enlai and rehabilitated Deng Xiaoping).

Mao Zedong tries to maintain a balance of power between the two factions, allowing, on the one hand, some easing in the field of the economy, but also supporting, on the other hand, mass campaigns of leftists, for example, "Criticism of Confucius and Lin Biao." Mao's new successor was Hua Guofeng, a dedicated Maoist on the moderate left.

The struggle between the two factions escalates in 1976 after the death of Zhou Enlai. His commemoration turned into massive popular demonstrations, in which people pay respect to the deceased and protest against the policies of the radical left.

The unrest is brutally suppressed, Zhou Enlai is branded posthumously as a "capputist" (that is, a supporter of the capitalist path - a label used during the Cultural Revolution), and Deng Xiaoping is sent into exile. By that time, Mao was already seriously ill with Parkinson's disease and unable to actively intervene in politics.

After two severe heart attacks on September 9, 1976 at 0:10 o'clock Beijing time, at the age of 83, Mao Zedong died. More than a million people came to the funeral of the "Great Helmsman".

The body of the deceased was embalmed according to a technique developed by Chinese scientists and put on display a year after death in a mausoleum built on Tiananmen Square by order of Hua Guofeng. By the beginning of 2007, about 158 ​​million people had visited Mao's tomb.

With logistical support People's Army(Lin Biao) The Red Guard movement has become global. Throughout the country, mass trials of leading workers and professors are held, during which they are subjected to all sorts of humiliations, often beaten.

At a million-strong rally in August 1966, Mao expressed full support and approval for the actions of the Red Guards, from whom the army of revolutionary left terror was being consistently created. Along with the official repression of party leaders, the brutal massacres of the Red Guards are increasingly taking place.

Among other representatives of the intelligentsia, the famous Chinese writer Lao She was brutally tortured and committed suicide.

Terror seizes all areas of life, classes and regions of the country. Not only famous people, but even ordinary citizens are robbed, beaten, tortured and even physically destroyed, often under the most insignificant pretext. The Red Guards destroy countless works of art, burn millions of books, thousands of monasteries, temples, and libraries.

Soon, in addition to the Red Guards, detachments of revolutionary working youth, “zaofani” (“rebels”), were organized, and both movements were split up into hostile groups, sometimes waging a bloody struggle among themselves. When terror reaches its peak and life in many cities freezes, regional leaders and the PLA decide to speak out against anarchy.

Skirmishes between the military and the Red Guards, as well as internal clashes between revolutionary youth, put China under the threat of civil war.

Realizing the extent of the reigning chaos, Mao decides to stop the revolutionary terror. Millions of Red Guards and Zaofans, along with party workers, are simply sent to the villages. The main action of the Cultural Revolution is over, China is figuratively (and partly literally) in ruins.

The 9th Congress of the CPC, which was held in Beijing from April 1 to 24, 1969, approved the first results of the "cultural revolution". In the report of one of the closest associates of Mao Zedong, Marshal Lin Biao, the main place was occupied by the praise of the "great helmsman", whose ideas were called "the highest stage in the development of Marxism-Leninism" ...

The main thing in the new charter of the CPC was the official consolidation of the "ideas of Mao Zedong" as the ideological basis of the CPC. The program part of the charter included an unprecedented provision that Lin Biao is "the successor to the cause of Comrade Mao Zedong."

The full leadership of the party, government and army was concentrated in the hands of the Chairman of the CPC, his deputy and the Standing Committee of the Politburo of the Central Committee.

The cult of personality of Mao Zedong originated during the Yan'an period in the early forties. Even then, classes on the study of the theory of communism mainly used the works of Mao.

In 1943, newspapers began to appear with a portrait of Mao on the front page, and soon "the ideas of Mao Zedong" became the official program of the CCP.

After the victory of the communists in the civil war, posters, portraits, and later statues of Mao appear on city squares, in offices and even in citizens' apartments. However, the cult of Mao was brought to grotesque proportions by Lin Biao in the mid-1960s.

At that time, Mao's quotation book, The Red Book, was first published, which later became the Bible of the Cultural Revolution. In propaganda writings, such as, for example, in the fake "Lei Feng's Diary", loud slogans and fiery speeches, the cult of the "leader" was forced to the point of absurdity.

Crowds of young people drive themselves into hysteria, shouting out toasts to "the red sun of our hearts" - "the wisest Chairman Mao." Mao Zedong is becoming the figure on which almost everything is focused in China.

During the years of the Cultural Revolution, the Red Guards beat cyclists who dared to appear without the image of Mao Zedong; passengers on buses and trains had to repeat excerpts from the collection of sayings (citation) of Mao in chorus; classical and modern works were destroyed; books were burned so that the Chinese could read only one author - the "great helmsman" Mao Zedong, published in tens of millions of copies. The following fact testifies to the planting of the cult of personality. The Red Guards wrote in their manifesto:

We are the red guards of Chairman Mao, we make the country convulsed. We tear and destroy calendars, precious vases, records from the USA and England, amulets, old drawings and raise the portrait of Chairman Mao above all this.

Mao left his country in deep, all-encompassing crisis to his successors. After the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, China's economy stagnated, intellectual and cultural life was destroyed by left-wing radicals, political culture was completely absent due to excessive public politicization and ideological chaos.

The crippled fate of tens of millions of people throughout China, who suffered from senseless and brutal campaigns, should be considered a particularly painful legacy of the Mao regime. Only during the cultural revolution, according to some sources, up to 20 million people died, another 100 million suffered in one way or another in its course.

The number of victims of the "Great Leap Forward" was even greater, but due to the fact that most of them were in the rural population, even approximate figures characterizing the scale of the disaster are not known.

On the other hand, it is impossible not to admit that Mao, having received in 1949 an underdeveloped agrarian country mired in anarchy, corruption and general devastation, in a short time made it a fairly powerful, independent state with atomic weapons.

During his reign, the illiteracy rate dropped from 80% to 7%, life expectancy doubled, the population more than doubled, industrial output more than 10 times.

He also succeeded in uniting China for the first time in several decades, restoring it to almost the same boundaries as it had under the Empire; rid it of the humiliating dictates of foreign powers that China has suffered since the period of the opium wars.

Beyond this, even Mao's critics recognize him as a brilliant strategist and tactician, which he proved to be capable of during the Chinese Civil War and the Korean War.

The ideology of Maoism also had a great influence on the development of communist movements in many countries of the world - the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, the Bright Path in Peru, revolutionary movement in Nepal, communist movements in the US and Europe.

Meanwhile, China itself, after the death of Mao, in its policy moved very far from the ideas of Mao Zedong and communist ideology in general. The reforms initiated by Deng Xiaoping in 1979 and continued by his followers de facto made China's economy capitalist, with corresponding consequences for domestic and foreign policy.

In China itself, the person of Mao is extremely ambiguous. On the one hand, the majority of the population sees in him a hero of the Civil War, a strong ruler, a charismatic personality. Some older Chinese are nostalgic for the confidence, equality, and lack of corruption that they believe existed during the Mao era.

On the other hand, many people cannot forgive Mao for the brutality and mistakes of his massive campaigns, especially the Cultural Revolution. Today in China, there is a rather free discussion about the role of Mao in the modern history of the country, works are published where the policy of the "Great Pilot" is sharply criticized.

The official formula for evaluating his activities remains the figure given by Mao himself as a characteristic of Stalin's activities (as a response to revelations in Khrushchev's secret report): 70 percent victories and 30 percent mistakes.

However, there is no doubt about the enormous significance that the figure of Mao Zedong has not only for Chinese, but also for world history.

After the defeat of the Gang of Four, the excitement around Mao subsides significantly. He is still the "galleon figure" of Chinese communism, he is still honored, monuments to Mao still stand in cities, his image adorns Chinese banknotes, badges and stickers.

However, the current cult of Mao among ordinary citizens, especially young people, should rather be attributed to manifestations of modern pop culture, and not a conscious admiration for the thinking and deeds of this man.

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 1960s, Mao engaged in some political and economic issues: he considered that the retreat from the ideas of the "Great Leap Forward" had gone far and 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.

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. Along 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 "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 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 overtake 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 oilmen, in agriculture, from the Uchazhai production team," "The whole country learn from the army," and "Strengthen preparations 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 not hesitate to 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 commune members to household plots, recognized the production brigade (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/