Roderick MacFarquhar, "The Origins of the Cultural Revolution, Volume 3," (Columbia University Press, 1999)

This is the final volume in a trilogy that examines the politics, personalities, economics, culture, and international relations of China from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s. It seeks to answer the central question: Why did Chairman Mao Zedong launch the Cultural Revolution (1966–76), which plunged China into chaos and almost destroyed its Communist Party?The Coming of the Cataclysm starts with the great famine of the early 1960s, which resulted in tens of millions of deaths and set in train a series of emergency measures that increasingly divided Mao from his comrades-in-arms. His anger that they were prepared to adopt "capitalist" methods to rescue the country was sharpened by his belief that Moscow had actually gone capitalist and sold out to the "imperialist" West. From 1961 to 1966, the period covered by this volume, the increasingly urgent question for Mao was how to prevent a similar revolutionary degeneration in China. The Cultural Revolution was his answer.Drawing upon new evidence from Party documents, personal interviews, books, and journals, MacFarquhar details the growing rift between Mao and his colleagues as they attempted to cope with domestic privation and an increasingly hostile international environment―until the Chairman finally decided to smash the unity of the Yan'an Round Table by unleashing society against the party-state. East Asian Studies Podcast Chinese History Podcast Mao Zedong and the Cultural Revolution The Coming of the Cataclysm analysis Great Famine in China 1960s Chinese Communist Party history Origins of the Cultural Revolution Mao Zedong's political strategies China mid-1950s to mid-1960s Mao vs. Communist Party leadership Soviet-China relations during the Cold War Revolutionary degeneration in China Party documents on Cultural Revolution Mao's response to capitalist tendencies China’s international relations in the 1960s Chinese domestic privation and reforms Yan’an Round Table and Communist unity MacFarquhar’s trilogy on Mao’s China Personal interviews on Maoist China Cultural Revolution and Chinese society Political rifts in the Communist Party Mao’s anti-capitalist ideology Historical analysis of Mao’s policies China’s political chaos in the 1960s