ABSTRACT
At the very moment when partisans of the "two whatevers" were getting ready to strangle a China newly awakened from the nightmare of the "Gang of Four," Hu Yaobang took over at the Central Party School. The Mao Zedong of 1945 and Deng Xiaoping of 1978 themselves, at a time when they were in a position to control the trend of history, brandished the standard of freedom and democracy to unite those forces that alone could further China's progress. At the 1978 Third Plenum, Deng Xiaoping proposed to appoint Wang Zhen to the Politburo, a recommendation that encountered violent opposition. Dialectic is vicious in that it creates ideological ossification and cultural despotism. Mao himself read almost all the Chinese classics. The arrival of Hu in 1977 at the Central Party School indeed offered a historic opportunity to change the fate of China.
