ABSTRACT
In the end, however, Liu's vision of how this combination of order and revolution, equality and economic efficiency could be achieved was overwhelmed by the sweep and depth ofthe revolutionary drive in China, as symbolized by Mao Zedong. Liu was dismissed as heir apparent and then purged, bringing his civil existence to an end. But his greatest contribution to the Chinese revolution was his last, as its victim, a role he played according to the principles that had guided bis previous career. From August 1966 to the spring of 1967, despite the rising tide of public criticism, he chose not to oppose Mao actively and thus plunge China into even greater chaos. In his dignified, "cultivated" bearing during two years of intense and relentless polemical attacks, Liu lived up to his own prescription for a good Communist:
Even if it is temporarily to his disadvantage and if, in upholding the truth, he suffers blows of all kinds, is opposed or censured by most other people and so finds himself in temporruy (and honorable) isolation, even to the point where he may have to give up his life, he will still breast the waves to uphold the truth.1
