Robert
Elegant, who covered East Asia and served as Hong Kong bureau chief for
Newsweek and the Los Angeles Times, gave Western readers a detailed and
comprehensive look at how Mao Tse-tung’s brutal Cultural Revolution
changed
China in his book “Mao’s Great Revolution.”
The Red Guards were re-enacting in miniature in the
autumn of 1966 the eight-thousand-mile Long March of the Red Army in 1934 and
1935. The instructions ran for five pages in the Canton Red Guard Journal.The Disciple Lin Liao was determined that his shock
troops would maneuver under precise discipline. He further issued a 25-page
atlas “for use in exchanging revolution experience,” the official euphemism for
the destructive Long Marches of the Red Guards.
Like any good military manual, the painstaking
instructions to the insurgent adolescents assumed that the readers were, by and
large, idiots. The People’s Liberation Army, having organized the Red Guards,
continued to oversee their peregrinations. Official reception centers were
established in major cities under Army officers called “political advisers.”
Transportation was assigned, as were quarters and rations at destinations. The
chief railway station of Peking was reserved solely for the millions of Red
Guards who attended the Eight Great Mass Rallies. The Liberation Army Daily was
not indulging in metaphor when it hailed the Red Guards as “the powerful
reserve force of the People’s Liberation Army.” It was intended that their
“disorder and rebellion” would be stringently controlled by the Army.
The guerrilla general, who had become the second man
in China by intimidation, used the Red Guards as his private political army.
The single most powerful force in the country, the People’s Liberation Army,
had been his personal fief as Minister of Defense since 1959. But the army had
been systematically “corrupted” by the Securityman, Chief-of-Staff Lo
Jui-ching, appointed to purge non-Maoist officers. Besides, Lin Piao did not
wish to wage open war against the Chinese people, but a limited war against the
opposition. He therefore hurled his Red Guard guerrillas at the structures of
the Communist Party, the People’s Government—and all fundamental institutions
of Chinese society. He was, however, driven by the same compulsion that has
driven other generals fighting other political wars. He longed for the “total
victory” that is the Holy Grail of all generals.
The Disciple, the field commander, and his mentor, Mao
the grand strategist, ordered a massive assault on the institutions built by 18
years of Communist rule—and on the intellectual and social remnants of the
past. Their assault troops were the Red Guards. Their objective was the “four
olds—old habits, manners, custom, and culture,” in sum really the entire extant
civilization of China. The Mao-Lin faction decided to burn down the house in
order to smoke out their enemies. Utopia would rise “on the ashes of the old
society.”
But the opposition was entrenched in “local
strongholds” everywhere in China. The initial attacks had combined the chief
aspects of Peking Opera and traditional Chinese battles. The Disciple was using
tactics proved in the distant past and the recent present to demoralize his
enemies. Fierce display of weapons, igniting firecrackers, clanging cymbals,
and firing cannon before a traditional Chinese battle sought to break the
enemy’s will by demonstrating the immensely superior force he opposed; tens of
thousands of guerrilla pinpricks had broken the nerve of Japanese and
Nationalists opponents during the long struggle for power. The first Red Guard
terror sought the same results, but failed. Despite much shouting of criticism
and blowing of bugles and chanting of slogans, the “stubborn bourgeois element
within the Party” was not sufficiently terrorized by the Children’s Crusade.
On September 15, 1966, the Third Great Mass Rally
assembled a million “rebel revolutionaries” in the Plaza of Heavenly Peace. Lin
Piao issued new orders. It was time to alter his tactics. As he had done in his
formal battles, he concentrated his attack upon the center of enemy resistance.
The Disciple ordered the Red Guards to “bombard the
headquarters” of his opponents within the Communist Party everywhere in China.
The men who still dared resist would be broken by frontal assault.
In the gathering dusk of the Peking autumn, the
Disciple spoke “on behalf of Chairman Mao,” who was again present, but again
did not speak. Lin Piao praised the Red Guards for creating consternation among
“the handful of men in power who take the capitalist road”; for terrifying the
“reactionary bourgeois scholarly authorities”; and for paralyzing the
“blood-suckers and parasites.”
“You have done well!” The Disciple’s tone and manner
marked him as the master of China. “The present movement’s main target of
attack is now those men within the Party who are in power and who
are taking the capitalist road. You must bombard their headquarters.”
Minister Chou En-lai struck a note of caution. He
emphasized the necessity to maintain production in order “to advance the
revolution”—and admonished the insurgent adolescents not to interfere with
industry or agriculture. Nascent fear that Red Guard violence might escape
control was reflected by The People’s Daily’s subsequent instructions:
“Production must not be interrupted. The Cultural
Revolution in the factories and rural areas should be carried out in connection
with the original arrangements for the Four Purifications Movement.” Since the
general urban public was sufficiently terrorized, the Maoists wished to
concentrate Red Guard violence directly on the “power-holders” within the
Communist Party. They still believed they would avoid injuring the economy,
since it was not necessary to attack workers and peasants.
In mid-September, the Cultural Revolution had
encountered greater resistance than was anticipated, yet it was still
proceeding as planned. While the Red Guards were exhorted to “destroy the old
civilization in order to establish the new civilization,” a new administrative
structure was being constructed to displace the People’s Government. The
“Groups and Committees of the Great Cultural Revolution” were quietly
established in colleges, schools, factories, and Communes throughout China.
They were to be the basis of “true proletarian rule,” inspired by the Paris
Commune of 1871. But the Communist Party itself was originally not marked for
destruction. The Revolutionary Committees would manifest “extensive democracy,”
which the Party would guide under “democratic centralism.”
By the end of September, a totally new strategy was
forced on the Maoists. They would if necessary destroy the Communist Party
itself. The “reasoned approach,” the calculated use of limited terror, was
failing. The non-Maoists entrenched in the Communist Party—and, for want of
more attractive objects, in the affections of the masses—were too strong and
too determined. By the end of September, the rampages of the adolescent Red
Guards had become a spectacle of mindless, indiscriminate terror. The Red Guards
had, in part, escaped central control, but, equally, the Maoists were compelled
by circumstances to press the total, vicious assault on all stable
institutions.
Although it may appear somewhat absurd, the total
offensive was not wholly Quixotic within its own particular context. The
Maoists had been frustrated time and time again by the most tenacious
civilization and the most stubbornly conservative race on earth. Although they
had striven since 1949, they had failed to smash the world’s oldest living culture.
They had neither created the ideal China they envisioned, nor made their own
power absolute. Since they did not recognize universal “human nature” but only
“class nature,” they could not acknowledge that their enemy was the essential
character of the human being. Instead, they concluded that their ambition was
frustrated by the “bourgeois thought patterns” of the unregenerate “bourgeois
elements” within and without the Communist Party. They therefore determined to
destroy the old culture by force in order that a new “proletarian class nature”
might burgeon. The decision was rigorously logical within their own
philosophical framework, however ludicrous it may appear to non-Maoists.
The peregrinations of the newly hatched Red Guards
were essential to the grand Maoist design. The adolescents would not only
“remold” their own nature by enduring hardships and “learning from the
proletariat,” but would inspire the masses by their sterling example.
Transferring the shock troops was also a tactical necessity. The “vigorous
attack” on the entire established order could not be mounted by youths in their
native areas. The “revolutionary rebels” were still restrained by ingrained
respect for officials, teachers, and parents who had brought them up.
Since every city and town was to be invaded by
“outside” Red Guards, all China was astir with the movement of earnest youths
and maidens wearing the crimson armband in the autumn of 1966. Whether to
Peking to draw inspiration from mass rallies at which the silent Chairman Mao
was exhibited like an animate idol or to the provinces to “make revolution,”
millions of Red Guards stalked across the vast nation like hordes of enraged
soldier ants. They traveled by railroad, bus, and airplane until the transportation
system began to collapse under their weight. Then they were ordered to emulate
the heroic Long March on foot.
In the beginning, an efficient system provided food,
lodging, and specific assignments to the errant Red Guards the insular Chinese
called “foreigners” when they were 50 miles from their homes. Their assignments
varied: “reforming” schools; ridiculing Party officials; humiliating
professors; and destroying all objects and manifestations of the “old
civilization”—to the accompaniment of choral readings fromQuotations From Chairman Mao; staging propaganda playlets; and composing
“great-character posters” attacking “bourgeois diehards.” From September
through December 1966, the Red Guards’ “campaign” was the emotional heartbeat
and the chief administrative activity of the People’s Republic of China.
Sometimes they were orderly, but determined. Sometimes they were frivolous or
venal. Often they were violent and cruel, with the special relish of youths
exacting vengeance upon the unsatisfactory world of the elders’ creation—and
upon their elders, too.
The Red Guards came close upon midnight in early
October to a Nanking home. Mrs. Yang was the widow of a senior member of the
Democratic League, one of the splinter “democratic parties” that had previously
propped the façade of “coalition rule.” Ten young men trooped into her anteroom
and read aloud the rump Central Committee’s Sixteen-Point Directive commanding the “destruction of the old world.” Having
been briefed from dossiers, they knew the family’s history well. The Yangs, the
adolescents, declared, were a nest of rightists, a-virulent “bourgeois
infection.” They then searched for “decadent objects,” which might be anything
from a reproduction of a Western painting or a non-Maoist book to Nationalist flags
or propaganda.
Mrs. Yang had learned to bow before the wind, unlike
those foolhardy householders who resisted, verbally or physically, and were
beaten or killed for their courage. She assured her inquisitors that she was
eager to destroy any bourgeois artifacts they might find.
She felt reasonably certain that she possessed no
incriminating objects, except letters and photographs from her daughter, who
had fled to Hong Kong three years earlier. She had not been able to bring
herself to destroy those mementoes. The Red Guards did so for her. They then
carried away every piece of furniture, even the old lady’s bed and small radio.
All her belongings, except for a few garments, were adjudged “bourgeois objects
of pleasure.” They did not, however, molest her further because she had not
opposed their search. Later, two families of workers were quartered on Mrs.
Yang. They helped her buy a few essential pieces of furniture with money her
daughter sent from Hong Kong.
Perhaps harassing elderly “bourgeois elements” helped
create an earthly Utopia. But many other antics appeared only perverse
“self-education.” Girls wearing tight trousers were restored to modesty with
razor blades, while boys or girls wearing long hair were “proletarianized” with
scissors. Colorful clothing, pointed shoes, or bright make-up, whistling
Western songs, and reading nonrevolutionary novels—all non-Maoist diversions
were forbidden. The “revolutionary rebels” severely punished all those outward
manifestations that mark young rebels in the West.
Homes were purged of “reactionary
objects”—reproductions of Western or traditional paintings, non-Maoist
literature, jewelry, and classical, popular, or jazz records—all ornaments, in
sum, except portraits of Chairman Mao and Deputy Chairman Lin, and all objects
that touched non-Maoist intellectual or emotional chords. The total ideological
purification also cleansed public buildings, and even the streets—in its own
way. The ideal human being was the hard-working farmer or laborer. The entire
physical environment was, therefore, to be transformed to harmonize with his
presumably austere and simple needs.
All “bourgeois luxuries” were destroyed. The signboard
of the Wing On Department Store in Shanghai was toppled because its name,
Eternal Peace, offended revolutionary militants. Wing On was, thenceforth, to
be known as the People’s Department Store. Morrison Road in Peking became
People’s Road because it recalled “foreign imperialism.” Signs that evoked the
classic Chinese tradition were also pulled down in the assault on “the four
olds.” The Moon Terrace Tea Shop became Food Shop Number Two, and the Moon and
Pine Pavilion became Food Shop Number Three.
Zeal often outdistanced even the magic carpet of
Maoist logic. Shanghai’s Peace Hotel, so called after the city’s “liberation”
in 1949 because Cathay Hotel was repugnantly “imperialist,” was again renamed
because the word “Peace” was “revisionist.” But the Fragrant Shrimp Restaurant,
faintly evocative of the classical tradition, was renamed the Peace Restaurant.
One becomes two and two becomes one—as Mao Tse-tung teaches. Hundreds of
East-Is-Red streets appeared—and scores of Anti-Revisionism alleys and
Anti-Imperialism roads.
One of the first casualties of the paralysis of
authority and the proliferation of “revolutionary” street names was the Chinese
Postal Service, China’s most faithful civil servants were hindered by Red
Guards or condemned to wander about with packets of letters they could not
deliver. That dislocation of communications may seem minor amid the total
disruption of the Cultural Revolution, but it was not.
The Postal Service was among the most efficient
institutions in China. The Mongol Dynasty (c. 1280-1368) had stationed relays
of swift posthorses and built straight roads to maintain rapid communication
throughout their enormous Empire. After half a millennium, the Postal Service
was re-created in the nineteenth century by the Chinese Maritime Customs,
organized and administered by foreigners. In the twentieth, letters mailed in
Japanese-occupied Shanghai were delivered to the provisional capital of
Chungking on a regular schedule, and even the Civil War did not disrupt the
service. Like secular heralds, the postmen were immune to harassment as had
been the sacred heralds of ancient Greece.
The breakdown of the Postal System demonstrated the
“destruction of the old civilization”—and the disintegration of order. Letters
from Shanghai to Chungking took six to eight weeks. They had normally taken a
week—and, even during the wars, no more than two or three. Drab-uniformed
postmen wandered bewildered through the maze of “revolutionary” streets,
wondering in which of dozens of East-Is-Red streets, Anti-Imperialism alleys,
or Anti-Revisionism roads they might find the particular Mr. Wang or Mrs. Li they
sought.
Their patient, frustrated plodding typified the
Cultural Revolution as much as the public rampages of the Red Guards. Like
everything that smacked of the past, the Postal Service was to be
“remade”—regardless of social or economic effects. It was as much a relic of
the old imperialism as were the buildings on the riverfront Bund in Shanghai.
“The tall buildings along the Bund, which was once the
center of the Imperialists’ criminal activities aimed at plundering the Chinese
people,” Peking reported, “have also been the targets of the revolutionary
rebels, who have made a clean sweep of every vestige of imperialism. They
removed the bronze lions placed in front of the entrances of buildings by the
imperialists and took away the foreign signs on the walls.”
Major vandalism of buildings was unusual, but the
total purge of every physical, emotional, or spiritual aspect of China that
evoked the old days and the old ways was unremitting. Nothing in the physical
environment was to distract from total attention to the greatness of Chairman
Mao and his “closest comrade-in-arms and best disciple, Deputy Chairman Lin
Piao.” No diversion was to impede the ceaseless study of the sacred Thought of
Mao Tse-tung.
Mao Tse-tung.
قراءة النص باللغة
العربية