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The Origins of the Cultural Revolution #3
The Origins of the Cultural Revolution, Volume 3
This is the final volume in a trilogy that examines the politics, personalities, economics, culture, and international relations of China from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s. It seeks to answer the central question: Why did Chairman Mao Zedong launch the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), which plunged China into chaos and almost destroyed its Communist Party?
The Coming of the Cataclysm starts with the great famine of the early 1960s, which resulted in tens of millions of deaths and set in train a series of emergency measures that increasingly divided Mao from his comrades-in-arms. His anger that they were prepared to adopt "capitalist" methods to rescue the country was sharpened by his belief that Moscow had actually gone capitalist and sold out to the "imperialist" West. From 1961 to 1966, the period covered by this volume, the increasingly urgent question for Mao was how to prevent a similar revolutionary degeneration in China. The Cultural Revolution was his answer.
Drawing upon new evidence from Party documents, personal interviews, books, and journals, MacFarquhar details the growing rift between Mao and his colleagues as they attempted to cope with domestic privation and an increasingly hostile international environment--until the Chairman finally decided to smash the unity of the Yan'an Round Table by unleashing society against the party-state.
The Coming of the Cataclysm starts with the great famine of the early 1960s, which resulted in tens of millions of deaths and set in train a series of emergency measures that increasingly divided Mao from his comrades-in-arms. His anger that they were prepared to adopt "capitalist" methods to rescue the country was sharpened by his belief that Moscow had actually gone capitalist and sold out to the "imperialist" West. From 1961 to 1966, the period covered by this volume, the increasingly urgent question for Mao was how to prevent a similar revolutionary degeneration in China. The Cultural Revolution was his answer.
Drawing upon new evidence from Party documents, personal interviews, books, and journals, MacFarquhar details the growing rift between Mao and his colleagues as they attempted to cope with domestic privation and an increasingly hostile international environment--until the Chairman finally decided to smash the unity of the Yan'an Round Table by unleashing society against the party-state.
480 pages, Paperback
First published October 28, 1997
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About the author
Roderick MacFarquhar
25 books48 followersRoderick Lemonde MacFarquhar was a Harvard University professor and China specialist, British politician, newspaper and television journalist and academic orientalist.
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November 14, 2025
I have waited until I read all three volumes of MacFarquhar's magisterial trilogy, 'The Origins of the Cultural Revolution', before attempting a review because I have always been a true believer in that old adage "The whole is greater than the sum of its parts", and thus my writing here will be surveying the work in its entirety.
I should begin with what the trilogy actually consists of; put simply, it is a political history of the decade between 1956 and 1966, beginning with 'Socialist High Tide' of collectivization and ending with the first salvoes of the Cultural Revolution. One should be aware that despite the apparent scope of this work encompassing such pivotal events as the Hundred Flowers Campaign, its reflection the Anti-Rightist Campaign, the Great Leap Forward and its aftermath, the emergence of the Sino-Soviet Split, and the Socialist Education Movement, you will find little objective discussion of what occurred. For example, while Vol. II does indeed paint a very vivid picture of the thinking of the party leadership leading up to, and during, the Leap, and is replete with economic data, it mostly glosses over events on the ground. 'Origins' is unabashedly a study, and a thorough one at that, of the political maneuverings of the CPC elite; it is the very opposite of a 'history from below'. It boldly sets out to answer the question: Why did Mao, "who had done so much to make the Chinese regime what it was in the spring of 1966, decide to tear it down and rebuild?"
MacFarquhar's command over his sources is masterful (~a third of this volumes page count being references), his prose is (for the most part) clear, and yet it is far from easy reading; you will be bombarded with names, dates, and reports associated with innumerable work conferences and meetings. What this work shows elegantly is how the standard narrative of the GPCR being the final result of a 'two-line struggle' between the 'revisionism' of Liu Shaoqi and that of the Chairman is utterly erroneous; the picture of Liu that emerges from these pages is far from being a rightist. He quarreled with Mao over the Hundred Flowers precisely because he found it beyond the pale to invite criticism of the CPC by bourgeois intellectuals, and he gleefully carried out their suppression when the Chairman finally relented. He was as enamored with the prospect of economic development by sheer human will, which the GLF represented, as Mao was. He stood for the complete upheaval of the rural party branches during the SEM, decrying them as utterly corrupt and in many cases having been captured by class enemies; in fact, the Chairman had to restrain him on the issue!
One can be forgiven for wondering as they muddle through page upon page of analysis concerning a documents revision process if MacFarquhar had forgotten he was meant to be providing an answer to the question he raised in the opening pages of Vol. I. But one must learn to trust the process; the pieces of the puzzle are fitted together while the nuances of the interactions between CPC leadership are laid out in painstaking detail, culminating in a grand crescendo.
Mao had told Edgar Snow in 1970 that he had decided Liu Shaoqi had to go in January, 1965. The official inciting incident was a quarrel over the proceedings of the Socialist Education Movement. Both men had come to the conclusion that, in the aftermath of the Leap, radical action was necessary to revitalize socialism. Corruption was rampant, the peasants were disillusioned, and counter-revolutionaries had usurped authority in numerous local regions. What then, were the differences between him and Mao? Liu was ever cautious of unleashing any movement of the masses. His Socialist Education Movement was a surgical, targeted, revolution from above. He called for the swamping local countryside cadres with ten-thousand men strong external work teams to fight 'battles of annihilation'. Mao, in contrast, cared little about the petty thievery and embezzlement of the mostly non-party rural officials. He was not concerned that 'peaceful evolution' coming from the countryside; he thought it would come from within the CPC itself.
MacFarquhar puts much emphasis on how international events were intimately connected to domestic developments in China. The Cultural Revolution was launched only after the Americans had constrained the more adventuristic urges of their ally on Taiwan, and after they had made it clear they had no intention of extending the war in Vietnam into the North. Likewise, the GPCR is inconceivable outside of the context of the Sino-Soviet split, the specter of 'revisionism' it raised, and the effect which events in the USSR had on Mao personally. If the 'Secret Speech' made the Chairman worried he may be denounced posthumously, the downfall of Khrushchev forced him to "contemplate the far more alarming possibility of being toppled while still alive". If, in the words of a 'Red Flag' Editorial, the newly formed Brezhnev regime represented a 'Khrushchevism without Khrushchev', was a 'Maoism without Mao' really so inconceivable? It is on this basis that MacFarquhar raises the idea that the designs to be rid of Liu had already appeared in the Chairman's mind in 1964.
But ultimately, as much as one may speculate and posture that the main reason for the GPCR was Mao's admittedly enormous ego and individual drive to maintain and perpetuate his power, as this study expertly shows his authority was never really in question. As MacFarquhar put it, "Prometheus bided his time; he was never bound. And he always made the difference." The Chairman only "bowed to force majeure, not his colleagues", and when he put his foot down the mountain really would come to Muhammad. Reading 'Origins' one can see the emergence of a pattern: Mao was never satisfied with 'smooth sailing', any period of calm was an illusion, one was simply in the eye of the storm. On his own initiative, over the objections, or at least apathy, of the rest of the CPC senior leadership he had led the rapid collectivization of agriculture, the Hundred Flowers, and the Great Leap. When the devastating consequences of the latter two made themselves known, the Chairman promptly retreated while mounting an impressive rearguard action; he had always hedged his statements with vague calls of moderation, and so was able to attribute all the mistakes of the campaigns he had spearheaded to failure to heed his directives closely enough! One can even extend this pattern beyond the scope of this work to the GPCR itself; after a honeymoon period of wanton violence he did not object to the PLA reimposing order and to the exiling of the youth to the countryside.
'Origins' coda is also it's climax. The description of the Chairman's orchestration of the opening move of the Cultural Revolution, his expert maneuvering which sent the dominoes tumbling beginning with Wu Han and terminating with Liu Shaoqi, is nothing less than superb. Mao's coup de grâce was more of a coup d'état. He could not command what was to become the Cultural Revolution from Shanghai, that nest of radicalism, no, he needed to secure Beijing, the bailiwick of Peng Zhen and key ally of Liu. And to attack Peng he had to attack his deputy mayor, historian Wu Han and author of 'Hai Rui Dismissed from Office.' Mao had praised the play when it had first come out in 1962, any indignation he now professed to have against it was purely cynical, but now it was to serve him as the loose string with which he was to unravel the entire party bureaucracy. He had the disgraced Peng Dehuai (the only senior official to have defied him) whisked away from the Beijing area far away to the southwest, acquiesced to the purge of the chief-of-staff of the PLA Luo Ruiqing at Lin Biao's behest to ensure the complete loyalty of the army, and had Yang Shangkun, the head of the Central Committee's General Office (which controlled the paper flow to the top leadership) replaced with his bodyguard Wang Dongxing. Finally, he sent forth Jiang Qing to incense the ultra-leftist literary figure Yao Wenyuan to pen a viciously critical article against 'Hai Rui', when Peng tried to suppress it he was promptly attacked as well. When Peking University Students, incited by the machinations of Kang Sheng, began to cause chaos on campus, the remaining leadership under Liu and Deng sent in work teams to keep them under control. This too was soon denounced; Mao was triumphant. "Whatever genuine if misbegotten idealism inspired Mao, his first resort was to sordid political intrigue. The Cultural Revolution bore the mark of Cain from birth."
As MacFarquhar notes, if the aim of starting the Cultural Revolution was only to safeguard the Chairman's position, it would have run it's course soon enough after the 11th Plenum. Liu had been demoted, the Politburo Standing Committee was packed with his toadies, and the only other potential threat, Zhou Enlai, was inclined to bend over backwards to appease him, going "with whatever Maoist wind was blowing, be it leftist gale or rightist zephyr." But this was not the only reason; "though Mao bore grudges an suspected plots, he also dreamed dreams and envisioned a brave new world." His "ultimate dread - the image of extinction that stalk[ed] him - [was] the death of the revolution," and "if the party could not change society, then Mao would unleash society to change the party."
'Origins' ends with this wonderful paragraph: "Uncertain now where the revolutionary Grail was to be found, Mao pinned all his hopes on the quest for it. Travelling hopefully would have to replace arriving, the means would become the end, making revolution would *be* the revolution. He sent the comrades of the Yan'an Round Table out to face one ultimate test in the hope that purified in the flames of class struggle... at least some - a former favorite like Deng Xiaoping, for instance - might return, born again in Mao Thought, perhaps even bearing the Grail. If they perished, tant pis. He would assemble a new Round Table from the ashes of the old. The revolutionaries are dead; long live the revolutionaries! And if all else failed, the revolution was incarnate in its leader and the prime directive was: Long live Chairman Mao!"
I should begin with what the trilogy actually consists of; put simply, it is a political history of the decade between 1956 and 1966, beginning with 'Socialist High Tide' of collectivization and ending with the first salvoes of the Cultural Revolution. One should be aware that despite the apparent scope of this work encompassing such pivotal events as the Hundred Flowers Campaign, its reflection the Anti-Rightist Campaign, the Great Leap Forward and its aftermath, the emergence of the Sino-Soviet Split, and the Socialist Education Movement, you will find little objective discussion of what occurred. For example, while Vol. II does indeed paint a very vivid picture of the thinking of the party leadership leading up to, and during, the Leap, and is replete with economic data, it mostly glosses over events on the ground. 'Origins' is unabashedly a study, and a thorough one at that, of the political maneuverings of the CPC elite; it is the very opposite of a 'history from below'. It boldly sets out to answer the question: Why did Mao, "who had done so much to make the Chinese regime what it was in the spring of 1966, decide to tear it down and rebuild?"
MacFarquhar's command over his sources is masterful (~a third of this volumes page count being references), his prose is (for the most part) clear, and yet it is far from easy reading; you will be bombarded with names, dates, and reports associated with innumerable work conferences and meetings. What this work shows elegantly is how the standard narrative of the GPCR being the final result of a 'two-line struggle' between the 'revisionism' of Liu Shaoqi and that of the Chairman is utterly erroneous; the picture of Liu that emerges from these pages is far from being a rightist. He quarreled with Mao over the Hundred Flowers precisely because he found it beyond the pale to invite criticism of the CPC by bourgeois intellectuals, and he gleefully carried out their suppression when the Chairman finally relented. He was as enamored with the prospect of economic development by sheer human will, which the GLF represented, as Mao was. He stood for the complete upheaval of the rural party branches during the SEM, decrying them as utterly corrupt and in many cases having been captured by class enemies; in fact, the Chairman had to restrain him on the issue!
One can be forgiven for wondering as they muddle through page upon page of analysis concerning a documents revision process if MacFarquhar had forgotten he was meant to be providing an answer to the question he raised in the opening pages of Vol. I. But one must learn to trust the process; the pieces of the puzzle are fitted together while the nuances of the interactions between CPC leadership are laid out in painstaking detail, culminating in a grand crescendo.
Mao had told Edgar Snow in 1970 that he had decided Liu Shaoqi had to go in January, 1965. The official inciting incident was a quarrel over the proceedings of the Socialist Education Movement. Both men had come to the conclusion that, in the aftermath of the Leap, radical action was necessary to revitalize socialism. Corruption was rampant, the peasants were disillusioned, and counter-revolutionaries had usurped authority in numerous local regions. What then, were the differences between him and Mao? Liu was ever cautious of unleashing any movement of the masses. His Socialist Education Movement was a surgical, targeted, revolution from above. He called for the swamping local countryside cadres with ten-thousand men strong external work teams to fight 'battles of annihilation'. Mao, in contrast, cared little about the petty thievery and embezzlement of the mostly non-party rural officials. He was not concerned that 'peaceful evolution' coming from the countryside; he thought it would come from within the CPC itself.
MacFarquhar puts much emphasis on how international events were intimately connected to domestic developments in China. The Cultural Revolution was launched only after the Americans had constrained the more adventuristic urges of their ally on Taiwan, and after they had made it clear they had no intention of extending the war in Vietnam into the North. Likewise, the GPCR is inconceivable outside of the context of the Sino-Soviet split, the specter of 'revisionism' it raised, and the effect which events in the USSR had on Mao personally. If the 'Secret Speech' made the Chairman worried he may be denounced posthumously, the downfall of Khrushchev forced him to "contemplate the far more alarming possibility of being toppled while still alive". If, in the words of a 'Red Flag' Editorial, the newly formed Brezhnev regime represented a 'Khrushchevism without Khrushchev', was a 'Maoism without Mao' really so inconceivable? It is on this basis that MacFarquhar raises the idea that the designs to be rid of Liu had already appeared in the Chairman's mind in 1964.
But ultimately, as much as one may speculate and posture that the main reason for the GPCR was Mao's admittedly enormous ego and individual drive to maintain and perpetuate his power, as this study expertly shows his authority was never really in question. As MacFarquhar put it, "Prometheus bided his time; he was never bound. And he always made the difference." The Chairman only "bowed to force majeure, not his colleagues", and when he put his foot down the mountain really would come to Muhammad. Reading 'Origins' one can see the emergence of a pattern: Mao was never satisfied with 'smooth sailing', any period of calm was an illusion, one was simply in the eye of the storm. On his own initiative, over the objections, or at least apathy, of the rest of the CPC senior leadership he had led the rapid collectivization of agriculture, the Hundred Flowers, and the Great Leap. When the devastating consequences of the latter two made themselves known, the Chairman promptly retreated while mounting an impressive rearguard action; he had always hedged his statements with vague calls of moderation, and so was able to attribute all the mistakes of the campaigns he had spearheaded to failure to heed his directives closely enough! One can even extend this pattern beyond the scope of this work to the GPCR itself; after a honeymoon period of wanton violence he did not object to the PLA reimposing order and to the exiling of the youth to the countryside.
'Origins' coda is also it's climax. The description of the Chairman's orchestration of the opening move of the Cultural Revolution, his expert maneuvering which sent the dominoes tumbling beginning with Wu Han and terminating with Liu Shaoqi, is nothing less than superb. Mao's coup de grâce was more of a coup d'état. He could not command what was to become the Cultural Revolution from Shanghai, that nest of radicalism, no, he needed to secure Beijing, the bailiwick of Peng Zhen and key ally of Liu. And to attack Peng he had to attack his deputy mayor, historian Wu Han and author of 'Hai Rui Dismissed from Office.' Mao had praised the play when it had first come out in 1962, any indignation he now professed to have against it was purely cynical, but now it was to serve him as the loose string with which he was to unravel the entire party bureaucracy. He had the disgraced Peng Dehuai (the only senior official to have defied him) whisked away from the Beijing area far away to the southwest, acquiesced to the purge of the chief-of-staff of the PLA Luo Ruiqing at Lin Biao's behest to ensure the complete loyalty of the army, and had Yang Shangkun, the head of the Central Committee's General Office (which controlled the paper flow to the top leadership) replaced with his bodyguard Wang Dongxing. Finally, he sent forth Jiang Qing to incense the ultra-leftist literary figure Yao Wenyuan to pen a viciously critical article against 'Hai Rui', when Peng tried to suppress it he was promptly attacked as well. When Peking University Students, incited by the machinations of Kang Sheng, began to cause chaos on campus, the remaining leadership under Liu and Deng sent in work teams to keep them under control. This too was soon denounced; Mao was triumphant. "Whatever genuine if misbegotten idealism inspired Mao, his first resort was to sordid political intrigue. The Cultural Revolution bore the mark of Cain from birth."
As MacFarquhar notes, if the aim of starting the Cultural Revolution was only to safeguard the Chairman's position, it would have run it's course soon enough after the 11th Plenum. Liu had been demoted, the Politburo Standing Committee was packed with his toadies, and the only other potential threat, Zhou Enlai, was inclined to bend over backwards to appease him, going "with whatever Maoist wind was blowing, be it leftist gale or rightist zephyr." But this was not the only reason; "though Mao bore grudges an suspected plots, he also dreamed dreams and envisioned a brave new world." His "ultimate dread - the image of extinction that stalk[ed] him - [was] the death of the revolution," and "if the party could not change society, then Mao would unleash society to change the party."
'Origins' ends with this wonderful paragraph: "Uncertain now where the revolutionary Grail was to be found, Mao pinned all his hopes on the quest for it. Travelling hopefully would have to replace arriving, the means would become the end, making revolution would *be* the revolution. He sent the comrades of the Yan'an Round Table out to face one ultimate test in the hope that purified in the flames of class struggle... at least some - a former favorite like Deng Xiaoping, for instance - might return, born again in Mao Thought, perhaps even bearing the Grail. If they perished, tant pis. He would assemble a new Round Table from the ashes of the old. The revolutionaries are dead; long live the revolutionaries! And if all else failed, the revolution was incarnate in its leader and the prime directive was: Long live Chairman Mao!"
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#豆瓣已删条目# 理想主义的乌托邦幻想，马基雅维利式的无情权斗家，totalitarianism国家机器，三者的结合造成了中国历史上前所未有的劫难。
马林诺夫斯基对和贺龙说“我们已经消除了赫鲁晓夫，你们也应该以我们为榜样，除掉毛泽东。这样我们才能相处得更好。”
马林诺夫斯基对和贺龙说“我们已经消除了赫鲁晓夫，你们也应该以我们为榜样，除掉毛泽东。这样我们才能相处得更好。”
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