Cultural Revolution Dbq
The Cultural Revolution as an Unintended Result of Administrative Policies
Because the Cultural Revolution wounded so many patriotic Chinese, the question of its cause haunts current politics. Its violence - including widespread physical attacks against intellectuals and local leaders - was its most unusual aspect, the thing that calls for explanation, the experience that tends to overwhelm other memories of 1966-1968 in many Chinese minds.
The Cultural Revolution obviously tapped frightening parts of the human soul. The People's Republic before that time had suffered bouts of brutality, but none so widespread or directed at so many kinds of victims at so many levels of society. The particularly extensive and loosely organized tumult …show more content…
Some could join together in good family-background groups. Others could hope their talent, work, and loyalty would make their lives secure. But for many the oppression had become sharp-and when the state apparatus temporarily weakened (for reasons that originated in Beijing), the local reaction was more enthusiastic, violent, and uncontrolled than anyone had predicted. The growing conflict of top leaders catalyzed the 1966 explosion, but the ingredients of the bomb were mixed local motives created by longstanding organizational policies to categorize, monitor, and frighten people.
COMPARING THE POLICY-RESULT THESIS WITH USUAL ALTERNATIVES
Most Chinese and Western views of the CR treat it essentially as a conflict of high (not local) elites, as a response to the concerns of a few people (not of many). Many explanations of this event fall into four types, relating it to (1) Chairman Mao's personality and cultural or political habits, (2) power struggle among high leaders, (3) ideal policies for radical development in an impoverished society, or (4) basic-level conflicts, induced by previous policies, of the sort suggested above. Let us examine these in order.
Mao's Personality and Chinese or Leninist Political …show more content…
One Red Guard interrupted the poster writing of another to ask, "How did you get to be so dedicated and enthusiastic?" The reply was general, all about personality: "I want to exercise myself. I want to collect experience. Supporting the Great Cultural Revolution is a great chance for us young people to develop ourselves.' This early radicalism combined, as Mao did, an interest in personal exercise with a crusading, war-loving spirit. As the Huguenot enthusiast de Mournay put it, "Peace is a great evil, war is a great good. . . . Peace is proper to the miscreant; but war, to the true believer. Contrasts between passive flight and violent activism, between blackness and light (especially the sun), between secret procedures and open ones, between dirt and purity-this Manichaean syntactic structure was inherent to the style of the
Because the Cultural Revolution wounded so many patriotic Chinese, the question of its cause haunts current politics. Its violence - including widespread physical attacks against intellectuals and local leaders - was its most unusual aspect, the thing that calls for explanation, the experience that tends to overwhelm other memories of 1966-1968 in many Chinese minds.
The Cultural Revolution obviously tapped frightening parts of the human soul. The People's Republic before that time had suffered bouts of brutality, but none so widespread or directed at so many kinds of victims at so many levels of society. The particularly extensive and loosely organized tumult …show more content…
Some could join together in good family-background groups. Others could hope their talent, work, and loyalty would make their lives secure. But for many the oppression had become sharp-and when the state apparatus temporarily weakened (for reasons that originated in Beijing), the local reaction was more enthusiastic, violent, and uncontrolled than anyone had predicted. The growing conflict of top leaders catalyzed the 1966 explosion, but the ingredients of the bomb were mixed local motives created by longstanding organizational policies to categorize, monitor, and frighten people.
COMPARING THE POLICY-RESULT THESIS WITH USUAL ALTERNATIVES
Most Chinese and Western views of the CR treat it essentially as a conflict of high (not local) elites, as a response to the concerns of a few people (not of many). Many explanations of this event fall into four types, relating it to (1) Chairman Mao's personality and cultural or political habits, (2) power struggle among high leaders, (3) ideal policies for radical development in an impoverished society, or (4) basic-level conflicts, induced by previous policies, of the sort suggested above. Let us examine these in order.
Mao's Personality and Chinese or Leninist Political …show more content…
One Red Guard interrupted the poster writing of another to ask, "How did you get to be so dedicated and enthusiastic?" The reply was general, all about personality: "I want to exercise myself. I want to collect experience. Supporting the Great Cultural Revolution is a great chance for us young people to develop ourselves.' This early radicalism combined, as Mao did, an interest in personal exercise with a crusading, war-loving spirit. As the Huguenot enthusiast de Mournay put it, "Peace is a great evil, war is a great good. . . . Peace is proper to the miscreant; but war, to the true believer. Contrasts between passive flight and violent activism, between blackness and light (especially the sun), between secret procedures and open ones, between dirt and purity-this Manichaean syntactic structure was inherent to the style of the