Mao Cult: Rhetoric and Ritual in China's Cultural RevolutionAlthough many books have explored Mao's posthumous legacy, none has scrutinized the massive worship that was fostered around him during the Cultural Revolution. This book is the first to do so. By analyzing secret archival documents, Daniel Leese traces the history of the cult within the Communist Party and at the grassroots level. The party leadership's original intention was to develop a prominent brand symbol, which would compete with the nationalists' elevation of Chiang Kai-shek. However, they did not anticipate that Mao would use this symbolic power to mobilize Chinese youth to rebel against party bureaucracy itself. The result was anarchy and when the army was called in it relied on mandatory rituals of worship such as daily reading of the Little Red Book to restore order. Such fascinating detail sheds light not only on the personality cult of Mao, but also on hero-worship in other traditions. |
Contents
Coming to Terms with the Cult of the Individual | 25 |
1 The Secret Speech and Its Impact | 27 |
2 The Dual Nature of Commodities | 47 |
3 Redefining the Cult | 67 |
Charismatic Mobilization | 87 |
4 Lively Study and Application | 89 |
The Little Red Book | 108 |
6 Spectacles of Worship | 128 |
Cult and Compliance | 149 |
7 Ambiguous Symbols | 151 |
8 The Language of Loyalty | 174 |
9 Rituals and Commodities | 195 |
10 Curbing the Cult | 226 |
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Common terms and phrases
activist congresses April army badges Beijing Biao’s cadres campaign CCP Chairman CCP leadership CCRG Central Propaganda Department Chairman Mao charismatic Chen Boda China Chinese chubanshe communist Comrade CPSU CRDB criticism Cultural Revolution Cultural Revolutionary Deng Xiaoping dictatorship display document established example factions geming geren gongzuo Guizhou Hebei Hebei Provincial Ibid internal Jiang Qing Khrushchev’s leader cult Leap Forward Lin Biao Lin’s Liu Shaoqi loyalty MacFarquhar mangos Mao cult Mao quotations Mao statues Mao Zedong Thought Mao zhuxi Mao’s Mao’s image Marxism-Leninism masses military movement official organizations Party Committee party’s People’s Daily People’s Republic personality cults Politburo political portraits propagation Red Guards Renmin ribao revolutionary committees rhetoric rituals role Schoenhals secret speech Shanghai situation Soviet Stalin study classes symbols Tianjin tongzhi Wang weiyuanhui worship Xinhua Yan’an Zhang zhong Zhongfa Zhonggong zhongyang Zhongguo Zhongyang guanyu Zhou Enlai