ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses stems in part from author's personal experience as a student at Peking University Middle School from the fall of 1965 until its closure a year later during the tumultuous opening phases of the Cultural Revolution. In the 1980s, official Chinese analyses always depicted the post-Mao reforms as a decisive break with the conflict, chaos, and violence of the Cultural Revolution. In a related but more persuasive vein, Hong Yung Lee and Stanley Rosen argued that the violent conflicts of the Cultural Revolution were linked to political, social, and economic cleavages in Chinese Communist society. The "January Power Seizure" (Yiyue duoquan) was an astounding and bewildering political spectacle. In August 1967, violent factional conflict escalated sharply, lethal weaponry was brought to bear, a virtual civil war erupted in many provinces, and thousands of people were killed or wounded in the carnage. Maoist dictatorship, with its ruthless deployment of militarized autocracy, may have resembled revolutionary-feudal totalitarianism in intent.
