Question 1
Evaluate the interpretations in both of the two passages and explain which you think is more
convincing as an explanation of the nature and course of the Cultural Revolution.
Passage A
The Cultural Revolution is sometimes represented as a Party purge. It is true that a certain group of leaders was deprived of power, but this was carried out in a very different way from other countries. The ordinary people in every enterprise and institution were called upon to criticise party members with whom they had been working. The people were to re‑educate the Party, and at the same time learn that the Party was necessary to them.
In the course of the movement, the middle class were to be re‑educated from old ideas, culture, customs and habits, but not personally attacked except when they had committed crimes to be dealt with by law. Middle class scientists and technicians were to be protected. These were the principles of the revolution, but in the first uprush of the Red Guard movement they were not always observed; middle class intellectuals who had committed no offence except to be middle class intellectuals were subjected to cruel humiliations. Throughout the movement, the influence of Chairman Mao, and of all who followed his lead, was strongly opposed to violence and disorder, but it broke out from time to time. Much is obscure, even to those who lived through it, but the main line is clear enough. What took place certainly was a revolution, in the sense of an abrupt reversal of political power, carried out by a popular movement, as opposed to an inner Party purge.
Adapted from: Joan Robinson, The Cultural Revolution in China, published in 1969.
Passage B
The Cultural Revolution saw millions killed, imprisoned, deprived of their jobs or purged as an intensely moralising campaign revived the sense of revolution and the cult of Mao was reasserted. Senior party members, bureaucrats and intellectuals were harried, universities were closed and physical labour was demanded of all citizens in order to change traditional attitudes. In a conscious imitation of May Fourth Movement attitudes, Chinese youth was mobilised to conduct the persecution. By 1968 the country had been turned upside down by these ‘Red Guards’, who were terrorising their seniors in every walk of life. Even Mao himself at last began to show signs that he thought things had gone too far. A substantial delegation and decentralisation of power had taken place, probably unintentionally. The army in the end restored order, though often at the cost of the students. New party cadres were installed and a Party Congress confirmed Mao’s leadership.
The Red Guards’ enthusiasm had been real, though, and Mao’s motives were no doubt complex in using them as he did. Besides seeking vengeance on those who had brought about the abandonment of the Great Leap Forward, he appears really to have felt a danger that the revolution might lose the enthusiasm that had carried it so far. In seeking to protect the revolution, old ideas that might resurface if allowed to do so had to go.
Adapted from: J.M. Roberts, Twentieth Century, published in 1999.
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Answer
