ABSTRACT
The bloody civil war known as the Cultural Revolution officially began in May 1966, with the Maoist faction launching a written public attack on P'en Chen, mayor of Beijing and member of the Politburo. Although issued by Mao,1 this was in the form of a circular of the Central Committee and was disseminated throughout the party and army. It concludes that:
The whole Party must follow Comrade Mao Tse-tung's instructions; hold high the great banner of the Proletarian Cultural Revolution; thoroughly expose the reactionary bourgeois stand of those so-called 'academic authorities' who oppose the Party and socialism; thoroughly criticize and repudiate the reactionary bourgeois ideas in the sphere of academic work, education, journalism, literature and art, and publishing; and seize the leadership in these cultural spheres. With this end in view, it is at the same time necessary to criticize and repudiate those representatives of the bourgeoisie who have sneaked into the Party, the government, the army, and all spheres of culture, to clear them out or transfer some of them to other positions. Above all, we must not entrust these people with the work of leading the Cultural Revolution. In fact many of them have done and are still doing such work, and this is extremely dangerous.
