Word: mao
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...befits a man whose minions are estimated to have killed between 10 million and 15 million people since 1949, Mao began his revision of Marxist dogma by admitting that murder is a vital tool in the construction of a Communist society. "The total number of those liquidated by our own security forces," he said in a burst of frankness, "is 800,000." But now, he insisted, "we are no longer using methods of terror." Where the Russians went wrong, he implied, was in not recognizing that even after a Communist government has crushed all organized opposition, it may face "internal...
...persists in using the methods of terror in solving internal antagonisms," declared Mao, "it may lead to transformation of these antagonisms into antagonisms of the nation-enemy type, as happened in Hungary," where the Communist Party, because it chose "repression instead of persuasion . . . simply disappeared in the matter of a few days." The right way to allay popular unrest, he went on, is to encourage public criticism and then, by means of "persuasion and education," eradicate both the criticism and the mistakes that caused it. "It can even be said," proclaimed Mao, "that small strikes are beneficial because they point...
Releasing Steam. This was one of the most explosive bits of creative Marxism ever expounded by a Communist ruler. In Mao's eyes, toleration of an occasional strike presumably had at least two things to recommend it. It would give 1) the hard-pressed Chinese masses a chance to let off a bit of steam without doing too much damage, and 2) the government a line on potential revolutionaries. But, as Hungary and Poland had demonstrated, Moscow could only look with horror on the concept of "beneficial small strikes" in East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Rumania. (When Khrushchev...
...Mao turned this specter loose in the Communist world? The answer seemed to be that Mao was primarily concerned with solving the strains and stresses created by Red China's grave economic difficulties-and perhaps was trying to prevent a Hungarian-style outbreak in his own land...
...speeches Mao rejected the doubts of some Chinese bureaucrats as to the wisdom of his policy of "let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought contend": "Marx never said that he should not be criticized. To those who do not follow that teaching of Marx, I would address an old saying: he who does not allow himself to be criticized during his life will be criticized after death." And last week, as an encouragement to some understandably timid flowers, the Peking regime released Author Hu Feng, whose arrest in 1955 was the keystone of a campaign...