From Mao's point of view, was the Cultural Revolution a success, a failure or something in between?

by dingdongwong

Reading about the Cultural Revolution and Mao's role in it, I never really grasped his real motivation and ultimate plan. It seemed like he was constantly flip flopping when it came to certain issues (like who to back and who to accuse). At first I thought he just wanted to oust Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping from power, while regaining power himself, but after achieving those goals his focus kind of shifted (and Mao even recalled Deng Xiaoping later on).

Basically:

  1. Did the Cultural Revolution go according to plan at first, but then went out of control? (But then, why didn't he just stop it? It certainly seemed like he had the power to do so and even nearly did it...until he poured oil into the fire again himself.)
  2. Did it go according to plan from start to finish? (Seems unlikely considering he was backing the Red Guards one day and the PLA the other; same with the ultra leftists and conservatives.)
  3. Did it fail from the beginning? (Also seems unlikely as he did achieve the above mentioned goals)
  4. There was no plan at all and Mao just wanted to stir things up for the sake of stirring things up? (Maybe he was bored? A little bit out of touch? Completely crazy? Doesn't seem plausible either.)
socks_optional

I wrote my thesis on the culpability of Mao close to 5 years ago so forgive me if I'm a bit rusty.

  1. Mao did think the Red Guard were out of control so in 1969 he declared the Cultural Revolution over, though I think it continued until his death. Speaking of his death I assume the reason the revolution continued even after the official declaration that it was over was because of Mao's failing health. He had Parkinson's at the end was pretty weak. He was rarely seen publicly at this time when before he was quite the man of the people.
  2. I don't believe there was ever a concrete plan. If I remember correctly there was a play that kinda set everything off. Madame Mao thought the play criticized her husband and denounced the Beijing mayor who was supporting the play. This spurred on the creation of the Group of Five which transitioned into the Cultural Revolution group. This group started a purge of quite a few top level officials including the mayor of Beijing. After this purge was when Mao and the Cultural Revolution group released a notification which was kind of the official start of the Revolution. So I guess everything went according to plan until the Red Guard went completely bonkers and started killing people. Though I guess thats what happens when you let an unruly mob do your work.
  3. Nope the revolution was all good until 1967ish.
  4. Well the Revolution's intent was to purge the moderates from the party. Khrushchev's secret speech went against everything that Mao built up so he was quite paranoid that the same moderate elements that were now running the USSR would infect his own party. Also you might not be too far off with the boredom question actually. While he probably wasn't bored he did give up a lot of responsibilities during the Great Leap Forward. He gave up the economic decisions and the day to day operations to focus more on Marxist-Leninist theory. So going with the constant revolution theory he started the Cultural Revolution.

So in the end your right in that there wasn't a plan from the start with goals to follow. Thats why you get what seems to be flip flopping (which he did quite often, a symptom of the Chinese need to save face). Also I don't believe that the goal was to ever regain power for himself, though like I said after 5 years of not touching anything Mao I could be rusty. He gave up the power willingly, I don't think he would be so quick to try and get it back. I think the main cause and goal of the whole thing was to just oust the moderates who he believed wanted to follow Khrushchev's lead.

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