The Cultural Revolution
by Frank Dikötter, Bloomsbury, £25
The Cultural Revolution in China exploded on Western consciousness in the summer of 1966. It seemed almost incomprehensible that an ancient civilisation which revered tradition, respect for elders and scholarship, and which had accumulated thousands of artefacts of great antiquity, should suddenly set about its own cultural death wish. Yet this is exactly what happened.
This book, written by a historian of modern China and the third in a trilogy about Chairman Mao, explains why and how this appalling 10-year-long period of chaos and barbarity happened. Dikötter writes with the objectivity of an outside observer, but his opinion of Mao is clearly stated at the outset: “Like many dictators, Mao combined grandiose ideas about his own historical destiny with an extraordinary capacity for malice.”
