In Cultural Revolution and Revolutionary Culture, Alessandro Russo presents a dramatic new reading of China's Cultural Revolution as a mass political experiment aimed at thoroughly reexamining the tenets of communism. Russo explores four critical phases of the Cultural Revolution, each with its own reworking of communist political subjectivity: the historical-theatrical “prologue” of 1965; Mao's attempts to shape the Cultural Revolution in 1965 and 1966; the movements and organizing between 1966 and 1968 and the factional divides that ended them; and the mass study campaigns from 1973 to 1976 and the unfinished attempt to evaluate the inadequacies of the political decade that brought the Revolution to a close. Among other topics, Russo shows how the dispute around the play Hai Rui Dismissed from Office was not the result of a Maoist conspiracy, but rather a series of intense and unresolved political and intellectual controversies. He also examines the Shanghai January Storm and the problematic foundation of the short-lived Shanghai Commune. By exploring these and other political-cultural moments of Chinese confrontations with communist principles, Russo overturns conventional wisdom about the Cultural Revolution.
- Cover
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I. A Theatrical Prologue
- 1. Afterlives of an "Upright Official"
- 2. Political and Historical Dilemmas
- 3. An Unresolved Controversy
- Part II. Mao’s Anxiety and Resolve
- 4. A Probable Defeat and Revisionism
- 5. Shrinking the Cultural Superego
- Part III. A Political Test for Class Politics
- 6. Testing the Organization
- 7. A Subjective Split in the Working Class
- 8. Facing a Self-Defeat
- Part IV. At the Edge of an Epochal Turning Point
- 9. Intellectual Conditions for a Political Assessment
- 10. Foundations of Deng Xiaoping's Strategy
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- A
- B
- C
- D
- E
- F
- G
- H
- I
- J
- K
- L
- M
- N
- O
- P
- Q
- R
- S
- T
- U
- V
- W
- X
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Text
Audio
Adobe DRM
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