Lecture 8: Maos Life

1930-1970 was a time where you had to carry a red coloured book and every time you saw him, or his
image you were supposed to wave the red book and not doing it would get you shot. Mao fought no
external wars during his term, but within china he slaughtered 70 million people. This is literally putting
Stalin to shame. He lived a long paranoid wife. Each one of his 4 wives was progressively more paranoid.
His 4 one, Madam Mao joined him in all his ventures. He did everything possible to persecute people and
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china lived a nightmare. It was only after his death that china tried to make a recovery.

His closest parallel would be Stalin. In Russia today, people will tell you that Stalin was a paranoid dictator
and made bad decisions and caused suffering. But in Maos case, he is still looked up to as a deity despite
having a huge number of lives taken to his name.

China was a huge country, but just agriculturally inclined, and was brought to shame by even Japan in war.
It was not doing much. Mao was born in the late 1800s in the province of Hunan as a son of a rich
agricultural man a wealthy peasant. He gets influenced early in his life by communist thought, so much
so that he started hating his own father and what he stood for. Rich peasants even here were called
Kulaks. He gets interested in politics and decides to leave his studies. There are two options that face him.
There was a party called CPC i.e. the communist party of china which at this time was just a group of
politicized villages. His other option was Kuomintang. This was a nationalist party which was more active.
They catered to the educated urban elite. However, he hates the idea of elitism. In the 1930s, he joins to
Kuomintang, much to everybodys surprise. He wants to know how a party functions.

They find that he is very good at hiding stuff and specially at cleaning up whatever mess is caused. They
make him head of propaganda and he gives a lot of bright ideas and suggestions. Kuomintang are looking
at the higher class, yet Mao is able to fool these people. This is where his political career begins. A less
promising side of Mao is he constantly takes leaves. During these leaves his whereabouts are completely
unknown. The leadership begins thinking that somebody so valuable shouldnt be disappearing like this.
On investigation they find out that Mao goes back to his village in Hunan and trains people in Gorilla
warfare. He is training them to become fighters, and is raising an army of peasants, but who was he trying
to overthrow?

China does has a lose monarchy, and if he was looking to overthrow them, okay. But what if he was trying
to overthrow the Kuomintang party itself. On being asked for an explanation he doesnt give one, and
instead he says your party Is already corrupted. With this he names traitors from within the party. He
makes a convincing case by asking them why they needed a PR agent? Because you keep getting into
messes? Because they are not working with full efficiency because of the traitors. He asks for authority to
deal with these traitors, and even his services wouldnt be required in the future. He said there were
10,000 traitors to start with.

On being given this authority, he comes up with corrective measures as methods of re-education.

1. Toad drinking water a traitor had his hands behind his back, then he was made to crouch. In
front of him was a bowl of acid which he was made to drink at knifepoint. It was burning his
insides, but he couldnt stop. Mao coined the phrase because once the acid starts going in, the
person starts making toad like noises.

2. Monkey on the chair: a sedan chair made of iron with hot coal under it on which you were made
to lounge, and the person would start jumping like a monkey.
3. Aeroplane the ultimate traitors were taken to a high cliff and thrown off to fly.

This is his role without holding political office. With this excuse of correcting the party he kills 50,000
people. At this point he is kicked out. 50,000 arent just cleaning up. Mao then joins the CPC after having
learnt whatever politics he wanted to. His guerrilla army is now meant to attack the Kuomintang. He
attacks them from 1920-30, for 10 years ferociously and 1,80,000 people from Kuomintang are killed.
These are street fights or a civil war. Even the monarchy isnt working. China is a mess.

The regions which Mao has conquered using this army are called The Soviet republics of china like a mini
soviet union. Even without him being a leader, he is already making an impact. Mao worked with a crazy
mind set. He said revolutions did not have anything nice, there was nothing like a bloodless coup. He said
political power comes from a gun point it, thats the direction of power. He was not just obsessed with
power but was also a genius in this regard. He also said it is always darkest before it gets completely dark.
When you think things cant get any worse, they do. He had a revelation about why people die of
starvation because there isnt any food. Hence the solution is, have less people. (not more food!) Kill
those on the verge of starvation. Dont give them food from others share. China will never anyway have
to worry about not having enough people.

Maos major opposition was the head of the Kuomintang. Mao had his opponents exiled. He was an
influential looked up to politician in China. His name was Chiang Kai-Shek. This is Chiang Kai Sheks final
assault on Maos capital. This conflict ran throughout world war two. They were more concerned about
internal battles than fighting off the Japs. Maos guerrilla fighters would still fight the Japs, but the
Kuomintang fighters refused to. Hence, Maos party were still looked at as the better of the two options.
Chian Kai Shek and his party were seen as traitors. CKS decides to attack Mao at the Hunan Province. Even
though execution is not recommended, he asked Mao and his followers to perform a humiliating exercise.

Maos stronghold was south china, with virtually no support in the north. CKS asks them to walk from 1
end of china to another called the long march. It took them from 1946-47 at gunpoint to march. Abuses
were hurled at them as they march. Mao decides to capitalize on the same. As he is being humiliated, he
also decides to start giving speeches and influencing people. By the time they finish the march, all the
abusers become huge supporters. At the end of the march, Mao launches a counter attack. He
understands that the part is based out out Changchun in north east china. He lay a siege here for 5
months, without any supplies or people getting in or out. At the height of starvation, Maos guerrillas
attacked. It was brutal. 200,000 people were killed. CSK was told that his only refuge would be in Taiwan
the outskirts. This made it clear that Mao was absolute authority and he wouldnt accept any opposition.

VIDEO

Mao came to power when Stalin was leader. Stalin dies shortly after the world war and 1953 saw Nikita
Khrushchev. Mao tells Nikita that he feels Stalin was an elder brother. He also tells nikita that he must
look up at him as a big brother. Nikita replies by demonstrating his nuclear weapons, hence Mao being
looked at as the leader of world communism faded away. Hence, Maos relations with Russia became
bitter.

Mao felt that Russia should have used nukes at the CBC. He insists upon the same and is unconcerned
with collateral damage. The Russians realize he is unreliable.
Maos 4 wife was a failed actress and got into politics with vengeance against the actors who did not
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launch her, she was called Madam Mao and loved to be called the same.

Mao launches a campaign to purify society called the 3anti5anti campaign. 3anti was for students. The
people students were supposed to look up to were 2 parents and a teacher hence 3. 5anti was for people
who were once students but had now become workers they were supposed to look up to parents,
teacher, boss and yourself hence 5anti. You must fight yourself as well, because when you start earning
you become capitalist.

Hence, If your parents were not doing what you feel was right, you could organise a struggle session. Your
parent would be dragged on to the streets, tied to the ground. Accused and accuser were both tied. If he
is guilty, he Is severely beaten. If he has not, the son has lied and he should be beaten. Hence, whenever
you accuse somebody one out of the two is guilty. You could hurl abuses and provocations to make one
confess that they were wrong starting when they would be lynched. Your life then depended upon the
mercy of the crowd. You could accuse anybody but then had to prove that the person you accused was
guilty. This campaign was supposed to cleanse society.

In 1953 he launched his first 5 years plan as an exact replica of Stalins plan. It was looked at as a disaster.
He gave ambitious targets of steel infrastructure and increasing agriculture. The first plan surprisingly was
a reasonable success. He felt that he was on the right path, just going a little slow. Hence a second fast 5
year plan called the great leap forward came about. He gave his people 2 commitments. 1 steel up by
200% and agriculture up by 400%.

The only way you manufacture that much steel is if the farmers start making it too. But how do you make
steel, you have to mine it? each village has a head appointed who reports to the party and this head has
a target. He needs to get a certain amount of steel from a village. Hence, somebody had to be answerable
so what ended up happening was entire villages did both tasks. For steel they put all their steel utensils
in massive earthenware pots and melted them to create steel. Mao saw results and was satisfied. He
increased the tempo. He wanted people to double up efforts, but people had nothing more to melt. Mao
simply said 1 year they managed, 2 year no results = corrupt party officials. He started the great purge.

He gave an open invitation to people of china for suggestions. He said anybody who thinks they have a
better plan can come up and I am free to negotiate. As a sign of goodwill these experts economists,
business people etc were sent red roses as a sign of love. He wanted to keep things open for debate. This
campaign came to be called the red roses campaign and 50,000 + people met at the Pollitt Bureau. On
being asked their opinions most of them were honest and said Maos policies were ridiculous.

After hearing all this criticism, Mao said thank you and said that the real reason why these campaigns
werent working was because of such dangerous thinking. They were all killed.

Chin Shi Yuan Di used to bury 400 scholars alive. Mao said, people should stop thinking highly of him, I
buried 40,000 compared to his 400. He then went back to the great leap forward without any changes or
compromises. This lead to collectivisation.

He also launched a second policy as to why collectivisation wasnt working due to the rich kulak
peasants hence this lead to a purge of Kulaks. China met a famine, and he waited till 30 million people
died till Mao declared that they had a problem. It was the single largest famine in human history All
propaganda posters had farmers looking as happy as could be however by the 2 5 year plan it was evident
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that he GLF was a disaster.

There was an anti grain concealment drive to see if people were hiding grain even in the worst times of
the famine. He launched attacks into Tibet in 1949 and what followed following this annexation was a
disaster of uncontrolled proportions. These Tibetans were brought to china and were asked to cultivate
the Gobhi desert. They had to keep working as they died. Tibetans were looked at as people who
worshipped a fake god the Dalai Lama. Women were repeatedly and regularly raped, and people died
as though they were flies. The number of monasteries went from 8000 6. There was a complete genocide
and absolute destruction of culture.

VIDEO

Some Chinese politicians who were a part of the CPC decided this cannot go on. The glf was a fail. Mao
then decided to target culture starting from education.

VIDEO

Mao decides that for a permanent revolution schools needed to be targeted. He used the help of his wide
Madam Mao. As vicious as Mao, she was made the cultural head of the entire country and would now
define Chinese culture.

VIDEO

The level of hero worship was Mao despite the GLF was ridiculous.

VIDEO

Mao when started losing his power in the Pollitt Bureau, he launched the cultural revolution instead of
protecting his own position. For 10 years Chinese people were allowed nothing at all in terms of viewing.
The cause to be focussed upon became MAO who was depicted as a perfect deity in all these films. He
was trying to brainwash people specially the youth to then take on the communist party. He set the
children upon CPC members. He raised an army of kids mobilized, trained in weapons and made them
kill party members. This was the red guard of 11 million kids made of young children viscous,
brainwashed. It was almost a para military force. They trained on dummies, and were only to happy to
substitute the same.

This was china literally being brought down to its knees.