Mao Zedong or Mao Tsé-toung (zh [[wikt: 毛毛]] [[wikt: 泽泽]] [[wikt: 东东]] zh Máo Zédōng, " máo" mean " Poil" , " Zé" mean " marais" or " humide" , " dōng" mean " est". A literal translation of its name can be " Hair which moistens/irrigates Est") is a Révolutionnaire, Théoricien, Guerillero and statesman Chinese, founder and directing Popular republic of China. Wire of easy peasants, it was born with Shaoshan (韶山 Sháo Shān) in the province from the Hunan (湖南 Hú' nán) the December 26th 1893, and deceased with Beijing the September 9th 1976.
One of the cofounders of the Chinese Communist party (Shanghai 1921), it gradually managed to be made some recognize like directing it supreme, in particular at the time of the famous episode of the Long walk (1934 - 1935) (fleeing the nationalist troops of Tchang Kaï-Chek, Mao undertakes Long walk towards Yan' year, in the North-West of the country, where it gains the peasants with the revolutionary cause gradually). After long years of guerilla against the nationalists of the Guomindang directed by Tchang Kaï-chek, like against the Japanese invader during the Sino-Japanese War (1937 - 1945), Mao left victorious the ultimate phase of the Chinese civil war (1949): this year knew the victory of the popular Army of release. Mao Zedong proclaims the Popular republic of China, on October 1st with Beijing. He will be president of 1949 with 1959. He was thus the founder and one of the more top-ranking executives of the Popular republic of China, until his death in 1976.
Mao restored the unit and the national independence of China, at the end of decades of internal divisions and “semi-colonization” by the Occident. He imposed on the population the communist Collectivisme and the dictatorship of the sole party, while following initially very close the Soviet model. In the name of the definition of a “Chinese way towards socialism”, Mao broke then with the USSR and was the direct inspirer of the Grand Step ahead (1958 - 1960), radical failure balanced in the campaigns by vastest and most fatal Famine which knew the 20th century. Put consequently on the key by his colleagues, it raised the Chinese students against the direction of the Party to take again the capacity, delivering China to the unrestrained violence of the red Gardes during confused the Cultural revolution (1966 - 1969): the Red Little book summarizes the thought of Mao. Having eliminated its rivals, having disgrâcié the red Guards and having restored the order with its profit, it was the subject of a Culte of the personality carried to its paroxysm and then brought closer more popular China of a State of the type Totalitaire (1969 - 1976). It however started an international relaxation and a bringing together with the Occident, which allowed the rehabilitation of China in the world concert (entry with UNO, 1971), and let its faithful Prime Minister Zhou Enlaï issue the program of the “Four Modernizations” (1975). He died without to have indicated of successor, and China rehabilitated shortly after a certain number of its victims, while decreasing considerably political control on the company and by opening with a certain form market economy.
Mao Zedong remains one of the most known characters and most passionately discussed 20th century and Histoire of China.
It is him which ultimately returned to modern China its independence and its unit, following the fight to be able it with the Guomindang. But the deficiencies of the most significant programs of Mao - the Large Step ahead and the Cultural revolution especially - were highly proposed. Their exorbitant cost amounts in fact today of tens of million died and in step less wasted lives and broken destinies, without forgetting the enormous wasting of resources and energies, of undeniable economic regressions, ecological and technical, the smothering in the long term of the Chinese cultural creativity and the identity of the ethnic minorities (Tibet at the head), or the outbursts of Vandalisme. There also remains delicate to evaluate in its action and its ideas the share of the socialist ideology, often largely used like propaganda of frontage, and the share of the power plays in its favor, which seem to have dominated its policy options for China.
There remains finally difficult to very judge place of Mao in the continuity of the Chinese long story: does radical rupture with the past, or reign of new a Empereur of China of a new nature? Almost ever left China, nourished traditional culture of old the Empire of the Medium, itself poet, Calligrapher and writer at his hours, Mao Zedong seems with much to have drawn often as much from the heritage of Confucius than in that of Karl Marx. Besides he intended to adapt the Marxisme to the Chinese situation, while making as of the Années 1920 of the farming community and either of the Working class the engine of the revolutionary combat and the social transformation.
Although always officially respected in China, it is not any more one reference for a mode whose policies diverged from those recommended by Mao. Parties and bunches Maoists throughout the world continue with révérer Mao as a large revolutionist whose thought would be the quintessence of the Marxisme. In the world, men often with thousand miles of the Marxism and Maoism greeted in him a military genious strategist, a patriot having known to return his dignity to its country, a leader of the Tiers-Monde and a character of a not very common historical scale, of which the epopee fascine still today. But more and more of historians dismount the legend and insist on through man and the Dictateur with the often unfortunate choices and successor in title the death of several tens of million people in China (65 million according to the black Book of Communism , 70 million according to Mao. Unknown history ).
See also the article on the History of the Popular republic of China .
Biography
Childhood and revolutionary formation
Mao is the oldest son of a relatively prosperous family of Shaoshan in the department of Xiangtan, province of Hunan. Its ancestors had come from the province of the Jiangxi under the Dynastie Ming and had settled as peasants. Its native language was the Xiang and not the Mandarin, dialect mainly understandable of other Chinese but which will remain characteristic of its speeches, but also of its low capacities in languages: it will never control the Putonghua, the Chinese standard language that its own mode set up.
In 1908, his/her father Maria with one of her nieces, Luo, four years its elder. In 1936, Mao claimed with Edgar Snow never not to have lived with it. She died in 1910. Of this marriage, Mao became a keen adversary of the arranged marriages.
During the Chinese Revolution of 1911, Mao engaged in a local regiment of the Hunan. However its aversion for the military service led it to turn over to the school to Changsha.
In 1918, it was graduate first provincial teacher training school of the Hunan. It started to travel with its professor Yang Changji, his future father-in-law, to Beijing or it passed the events of the Mouvement of May 4th in 1919.
Yang was professor with the Université of Beijing. Thanks to the recommendation of Yang, Mao worked like librarian assistance at the university under the orders of Li Dazhao. Mao was recorded as part-time student with the university and follow-up of the courses and seminars exempted by famous intellectuals like Chen Duxiu, Hu Shi, Qian Xuantong, etc During his stay in Beijing it lute enormously what enabled him to be familiarized with the communist theories. It Maria with her school-fellow Yang Kaihui, the girl of professor Yang.
Employed with the library of Beijing, Mao Zedong revealed thereafter his resentment towards the Chinese well-read men, who scorned his country origin. He kept however a taste for the Poésie and the Calligraphie, become celebrates thereafter.
Contrary to some of its eminent revolutionary contemporaries, such as Zhou Enlai, Mao rejected the idea to go to study in France: out the financial aspect of the tour, the idea was advanced that the low linguistic capacities of Mao had discouraged it: the Chinese language being already an obstacle (the dialect of Hunan being its principal reference). It is noticed that it never went thereafter in Soviet Union for example. Later, he declared that it was because he believed firmly that the problems of China could be studied and solved in China. It is often advanced that Mao very early concentrated himself on the problems of the farming community. He appears on the contrary which it is rather late that the country problem became an important point for him: it is when Guomindang ordered to him articles for reviews devoted to the country world that a pretense of interest, not being even with its initiative, left traces in its biography.
The July 23rd 1921, in the 27 years age, Mao took part in the first session of the congress of the Chinese Communist party with Shanghai: it seems that he did not take any active share with the debates, vis-a-vis the other participants implied since a long time than him in the revolutionary cause. Two years later, he was elected one of the five police chiefs of the central committee of the party during the session of the third congress.
Mao remained a certain time in Shanghai, an important city where the PCC tried to promote the revolution. But after the party had encountered major difficulties while trying to organize the movements trade unionists and that its relations with its nationalist ally, the Guomindang had worsened, Mao lost his illusions to make the revolution in Shanghai and turned over to Shaoshan. During his return to the house, Mao reanimated his interest in the revolution after being informed risings of 1925 in Shanghai and Canton. He was then in Guangdong, the base of Guomindang, and took of it share with the preparation of the second national congress of Guomindang.
He worked there actively for Guomindang, obeying in this respect the directives of the Kremlin, which wished to develop a wide area network of communist moles declared or official; however its engagement within Guomindang, opportunist, was worth to him to be taxed with traitor by the other Communists. It is one period of its life which is largely obliterated Chinese official story.
To at the beginning of 1927, Mao turned over in the province of Hunan where, in a meeting of the Communist party, it submitted a report/ratio on the conclusions which it drew from country risings following the Expédition of North. This is regarded as the initial but decisive starting point towards the application of the revolutionary theories of Mao.
Of the guerilla to the revolution
In the first part of his political life, Mao Zedong was influenced by the Mouvement of May 4th, 1919, the rejection of the traditional culture, the Impérialisme and the contribution of socialist ideas . In 1927, Mao led the Soulèvement of the harvest of autumn to Changsha, Hunan, as a commander-in-chief. Mao was with the head of an army, called the “revolutionary army of the workers and peasants”, but was overcome and isolated afterwards from the violent battles. Then, the exhausted troops were forced to leave the province of Hunan for Sanwan, Jiangxi, where Mao reorganized the isolated soldiers, reorganizing military divisions in smaller regiments. Mao also asked that each company have a cell of the party with a police chief who can give political instructions on the basis of higher instruction. This military rearrangement with Sanwan, province of Jiangxi, began the absolute control of the PCC on its military forces and was regarded as having the most fundamental impact of the Chinese revolution. Later on, Mao moved in the Jinggang Shan, Jiangxi.
In Jinggang Shan, Mao persuaded two local rebellious chiefs to subject himself. Mao was joined by the army of Zhu Of, thus creating l'" Red Army of the workers and the peasants of Chine" , that is to say, in short, the Red Army .
From 1931 to 1934, Mao establishes the Chinese Soviet republic of Jiangxi and was elected president of this small republic in the mountainous regions of the Jiangxi. It is there that Mao Maria with He Zizhen. Its preceding wife Yang Kaihui having been stopped and carried out in 1930.
In Jiangxi, the authoritative domination of Mao, in particular in the military field, was defied by the branch of the PCC of Jiangxi and by officers. The opponents of Mao, among whom most important was Li Wenlin, the founder of the branch of the PCC and the Red Army in Jiangxi, opposed the agrarian policies of Mao and his reform proposals of the local branch of the party and the leaders of the army. Mao reacts initially by showing his opponents of Opportunisme and of Koulak ism and removed them in a systematic way. The number of victims is estimated at several thousands and could reach 186.000 (ref.: China: The archipelago forgotten by Jean-Luc Domenach, pg 47.) Thanks to this Terrorism, the authority of Mao and its domination of Jiangxi were reinforced. Jung Chang and Jon Halliday estimate that with her apogee, the Chinese Soviet republic covered a few 150.000 km ² for a population of ten million inhabitants. They also state that, only on the central zone of Jiangxi and Fujian, the Communist regime made, in three years, seven hundred and thousand victims (assassinations, suicides, forced labors,…), that is to say 20% of the population.
Mao, with the assistance of Zhu Of, built a modest but effective army, and undertook experiments of rural reform and government, and offered a refuge to the Communist which fled the purgings droitists in the cities. The methods of Mao are normally regarded as those of a Guérilla; but Mao made a distinction between guerilla ( youji zhan ) and mobile Guerre ( yundong zhan ).
The guerilla of Mao or his mobile Guerre rested on a Red Army which had an armament and a ridiculous formation but included/understood poor peasants encouraged by revolutionary passions and having faith in the communist Utopia.
In the years 1930, There was not less than ten areas considered as “Soviet areas” under the control of the PCC and the number of soldiers of the Red Army bordered a hundred and thousand. The prosperity of the “area Soviet” astonished and annoyed Chiang Kai-shek, president of Guomindang, which launched five campaigns against these “Soviet areas”. More than one million soldiers of Guomindang were implied in these campaigns, four of them having been pushed back by the Red Army led by Mao.
Long walk, a modern myth
After the foundation of the Soviet of the Jiangxi on the Russian model, Mao Zedong pains to assert himself in the hierarchy of the Party. Regarded as moderate, even a droitist, it discovers a Soviet method which it will not forget thereafter any more: purgings. He manages to sit a certain authority while thus proceeding to a mode of terror, being based on the pretext of thwart " AB" (anti-Bolsheviks), or under other labels.
Discredited because of its strategic choices always taken according to its personal interest, with the risks of useless thousands of deaths, it is discredited by its pars, and it is only with large-sorrow that it would have managed to join the quota of the troops of the popular Army, in what pompeusement will pompeusement be called later the Long walk.
Operating unceasingly to climb in the military and political hierarchy, while threatening its collaborator close relations to make them take the responsibility for its own errors, he manages to make turn in round the quota of the troops having to operate the junction with the quota of North, under the direction of a more powerful chief and thus threatening for his authority. The troops led by Mao Zedong usually practiced plundering to ensure their provisioning, also it seems completely false to regard Long walk as a federator movement of the country world: those were terrorized, and preferred the domination of the nationalist party of Tchang Kaï-chek, less violent.
It also seems to be necessary to consider the fact that Tchang Kaï-chek tolerated to a large extent the movement of the troops of the popular Army, on the one hand because of the theoretical support of the Soviet Union, but also because the Kremlin retained as an hostage the son of the nationalist leader. Tchang would have thus knowingly made it possible the communist troops to carry out the junction with the troops of north.
Advent of the Popular republic of China
October 1st 1949, with Beijing, of the balcony of the prohibited Quoted of the former emperors, Mao Zedong proclaims the advent of the Popular republic of China. This takeover puts an end to one long period of civil war marked by the Japanese invasion and the Long walk, Guomindang being exiled with Taiwan.
Of the leader repudiated with the worship of the personality
After his accession with the capacity, Mao repeated the errors of economic management, generally catastrophic for his country; its intelligence of the wheels of the capacity is on the other hand out of the commun run, which enabled him to remain in place until its death.
Hundred flowers
The Countryside of the Hundred Flowers (symbol of " hundred schools, hundred opinions which expriment") : in 1957, Mao encourages the freedom of expression of the population, exhorting the intellectuals in particular to criticize the Party. But the movement quickly becomes extensive which it had not considered: criticisms explode literally, escaping well quickly its control and carrying out it to a violent campaign of repression.
The “large Step ahead”
Between 1958 and 1960, Mao Zedong implements a movement of industrial reforms which was to allow " to catch up with the level of production of steel of Angleterre" in only 15 years. Communes of production are organized at the local level, and all the population, and over everyone country, is summoned to contribute its share there. Mao places in the force of the people, of the " prolétariat" disproportionate hopes: during the " large step ahead " , the peasants will be overexploited, one will ask them to do everything at the same time, of harvests to the iron and steel-making. In spite of the made superhuman efforts, it is a catastrophe, the inexperienced labor produces goods of an execrable quality while harvests, for lack of time, rotted on foot. The " large step ahead " thus balances itself by a bitter failure and a famine of the disastrous width, perhaps most fatal that the ground ever carried. Mao Zedong, after having a long time been unaware of the disaster or having rejected the cause of the not-effectiveness of his program on external elements (for example of the counter-revolutionaries wanting to stop its capacity) finds himself in minority at the Steering committee of the Party. Moreover, the confidence of the people in the ideology of Mao is strongly shaken.
The Cultural revolution
The Cultural revolution (1966-1969) during the period of disorders and disputes which follows catastrophic the " large step ahead " , allows him to take again the capacity and the reins of the country. Started in order to rehabilitate Mao in his capacity, it starts following a polemic which lance its wife Jiang Qing. The " revolution culturelle" incite the young people to seize the power, to revolt against the corrupted civils servant, from now on " enemies of the peuple" - the red Gardes (which are not other than the students " révolutionnaires") are created on this occasion. But, as at the time of the movement of the " hundred fleurs" , the polemic escapes control from Mao and the whole will be balanced once more by a violent armed repression, a bloody massacre. Following that, much of intellectuals will be sent in rehabilitation, is forced to leave the cities to leave to live in the countryside where they will undergo a hard training of the trade of peasant and a considerable part of the Chinese cultural heritage is destroyed on this occasion. With leaving this new crisis, the Chinese people will be definitively traumatisé, as well by the physical atrocities as by incredible violences morals (such as famous the " autocritiques" , public humiliations of a moral cruelty traumatisante). Chinese Gulag, the " Laogai " is populated much more than its Russian equivalent; its detention conditions are not better there.At the end of his reign, Mao Zedong changed his strategy of autarky by inviting the US president Richard Nixon in China, preceding the policy of opening of Deng Xiaoping. By this meeting, the two leaders understood to counterbalance the power of the Soviet Union.
Thereafter, the extreme ideological policy followed by Mao Zedong made the object of criticism open within the Chinese Communist party, which puts an end to the Culte personality and the idolatry that it itself had organized and intensified at the end of his life. Dismissal of Band of Four, of which its wife, Jiang Qing, which took place quickly after its death proves well at which point its policy had fallen in disgrace, so much in the higher realms of the party than in the popular spirit.
For the majority of the Chinese, there remains nevertheless the large liberator of China and the manufacturer of modern China. In spite of the catastrophic consequences of its spectacular reforms, it will have left memory the one period of equality and of unit and there remains révéré by the people like the last of the Chinese emperors. The Western historians criticized much its policy options and its authoritarianism, always prone to controversy.
Conclusion
It is very difficult to give an opinion on the work of Mao Zedong, whose “benefits” (the creation of modern and independent China) are counterbalanced by the repression of a totalitarian mode: sole party (and thus authoritarian regime and undemocratic), Propaganda, primacy of the soldier, police state (arbitrary arrests, tortures,…), political endoctrination as of childhood, Self-criticism S obligatory, Laogai, repression of the minorities (Ouïghours), territorial expansion (occupation of the Tibet, whose occupation was launched in October 1950), Eugénisme… This ultra-repressive feature, common to the majority of the country having adopted a Stalinist mode (the USSR, Kampuchea, North Korea…) is to be replaced in the context of the decline of the colonial Impérialisme, then of the Cold war.
The propaganda of Mao Zedong
The worship of the personality
The worship of the personality of Mao Zedong takes his roots in the Long walk, at the time which it was essential as charismatic leader. Following the example Stalin, the style of propaganda original realistic-Socialist of the Official art evolved then to a marked deification of Mao, contrary to the first representations where it is located at the sides of the peasants and workmen, in a relation of equal footing. Starting from the Cultural revolution, date of its return to the capacity, the effigy of Mao, idealized, is located in the sky, is detached from the commun run of the mortels. The native village of Mao Zedong, Shaoshan in the Hunan, is always the place of pilgrimage for many Chinese, giving place so that one calls sometimes “red tourism”.
The red Little book
Selected quotations were gathered and published in the Années 1960 under the name of red Little book , sails very about it during the Cultural revolution. The first editions were prefaced by a penmanship of Lin Biao and were put at the rammer when this companion of Mao fell in disgrace. The editions which circulated in France at the time of May 68 were provided with this foreword.
This book brought much to those which did not believe any more in the USSR and which saw a communist paradise in China.
Works
In addition to the red Little book , Mao is the author of several other philosophical treaties, written before and after its accession with the capacity. One can quote:- Of the practice , 1937;
- Of contradiction , 1937;
- Of the new democracy , 1940;
- Of the literature and art , 1942;
- Of the right solution of contradictions within the people , 1957;
- the revolutionary war , collection of 2 texts:
- strategic Problems of the revolutionary war in China , 1936;
- Questions of strategy in the war of partisans antijaponaise , 1938;
- With the memory of Norman Bethune ;
- To serve the People .
Mao wrote poetry, mainly in the forms Ci and shi . Its literary merit is difficult to evaluate in the light of its discussed political statute.
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