Mao died in 1976, his preserved remains placed on view in a marble tomb at the center of Tiananmen Square, where they remain today. As China’s leader, Mao left behind a devastating record of turmoil and death. The country he turned over to his successors was desperate for change.
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 »