In the waning years of the Cultural Revolution, an ailing Mao achieved the last great political move of his career, normalizing relations with the United States. Mao had initially appealed to the United States before the Communist victory in the Civil War, but had been ignored by fiercely anti-Communist members of the U.S. State Department…. Read more »
The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was Mao’s last and arguably greatest attempt to bring a spirit of destructiveness and permanent revolution to the party. Beginning as a mass movement among students inspired by Mao’s rhetoric and Lin Biao’s “Little Red Book” of quotations, the Cultural Revolution spread quickly through Chinese society, leading to the persecution… Read more »
Lin Biao (1907-1971) was the youngest of the Chinese Communist Party’s top military leaders. He led the Red Army in several decisive defeats over Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist forces, earning himself a spot at the top of the post-war power structure. Lin came to fore in the mid 1960s, when he supported Mao’s plan to launch… Read more »