The Cultural Revolution

A People's History, 1962—1976

By: Frank Dikötter

Narrated by: Daniel York Loh

Bloomsbury presents The Cultural Revolution by Frank Dikötter, read by Daniel York Loh.

Acclaimed by the Daily Mail as 'definitive and harrowing', this is the final volume of ‘The People’s Trilogy', begun by the Samuel Johnson prize-winning Mao's Great Famine.

'The seminal English language work on the subject’ Sunday Times

‘A major contribution to scholarship on modern China, one that is unequalled, certainly in the English language … both revealing and rewarding reading – for specialists and non-specialists alike' Literary Review

After the economic disaster of the Great Leap Forward that claimed tens of millions of lives between 1958 and 1962, an ageing Mao launched an ambitious scheme to shore up his reputation and eliminate those he viewed as a threat to his legacy. The stated goal of the Cultural Revolution was to purge the country of bourgeois, capitalist elements he claimed were threatening genuine communist ideology. But the Chairman also used the Cultural Revolution to turn on his colleagues, some of them longstanding comrades-in-arms, subjecting them to public humiliation, imprisonment and torture.

Young students formed Red Guards, vowing to defend the Chairman to the death, but soon rival factions started fighting each other in the streets with semi-automatic weapons in the name of revolutionary purity. As the country descended into chaos, the military intervened, turning China into a garrison state marked by bloody purges that crushed as many as one in fifty people.

When the army itself fell victim to the Cultural Revolution, ordinary people used the political chaos to resurrect the market and hollow out the party's ideology. In short, they buried Maoism. In-depth interviews and archival research at last give voice to the people and the complex choices they faced, undermining the picture of conformity that is often understood to have characterised the last years of Mao's regime. By demonstrating that decollectivisation from below was an©2016 Frank Dikötter (P)2023 Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

A MUST READ

Just finished the third book in the series.
All I can say that all three books are a MUST READ
The author as well as the narrator are both excellent.
My thanks to all involved, JK.

The truth never revealed before about the misery caused by communism in China.

Actual accounts by the families of victims of their communist government and socialism etc etc etc etc

Then this happened and that happened...

Long on the effects of starvation and torture but little on why. Excellent narration however