Word: karnow
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...Stanley Karnow was among the few American journalists to cover the Cultural Revolution from its inception. His dispatches from Hong Kong in The Washington Post from 1965 to 1970 were thorough and revealing. It is no surprise that his book shares the same merits. The writer has succeeded in sifting diverse sources to produce a composite picture of the period...
...Karnow has anchored his discussion on the theory that Mao is a revolutionary who could not adjust to the transition from warfare to stable government. Frustrated by self-seeking Party-bureaucrats, Mao instigated the Cultural Revolution to bring a new era in which citizens would focus their efforts on strengthening the state and not on personal advancement...
...youth contingents which staged battles with the Mao-inspired radicals. Workers, who were jealous of Red Guard privileges, frequently took the opportunity to chastise Mao's "Little Red Generals." As the level of violence rose throughout the country in 1967, Mao called on the army to restore order. Karnow notes a comment by Mao in August 1968, to the effect that the Red Guards "won't even be fit to take over county committees...
...during those years of turmoil. From regional radio broadcasts, newspaper stories, wall posters, speeches, government documents, refugee tales and many other sources came a provocative mixture of facts, accusations, propaganda, rumors and half-truths. As a correspondent stationed in Hong Kong (originally for TIME, later for The Washington Post), Karnow monitored enough of this material to be able to see it for what it really was-the first approximation of a free press ever known in Communist China. His idea, brilliantly carried out, was to sort the mess into reliable narrative history...
...Karnow considers the Cultural Revolution a culmination of the long conflict between Mao's romantic dream of permanent revolution and the Chinese people's natural drift toward realism. Repeatedly, whenever Mao sensed that the bureaucrats seemed to be taking over, he forced a return to basic revolutionary principles, often at chaotic cost to the country. He skirmished with intellectuals, with army professionals who thought that modern weapons were more important than revolutionary élan, with economic planners who thought the Great Leap Forward to instant industrialization was dangerous nonsense (which...