Mao Zedong, also known as Chairman Mao, was a Chinese communist revolutionary who was the founder of the People's Republic of China (PRC), which he ruled as the chairman of the Chinese Communist Party from the establishment of the PRC in 1949 until his death in 1976. Ideologically a Marxist–Leninist, his theories, military strategies, and political policies are collectively known as Maoism.
Maoism, officially called Mao Zedong Thought by the Chinese Communist Party, is a variety of Marxism–Leninism that Mao Zedong developed for realising a socialist revolution in the agricultural, pre-industrial society of the Republic of China and later the People's Republic of China. The philosophical difference between Maoism and traditional Marxism–Leninism is that the peasantry are the revolutionary vanguard in pre-industrial societies rather than the proletariat. This updating and adaptation of Marxism–Leninism to Chinese conditions in which revolutionary praxis is primary and ideological orthodoxy is secondary represents urban Marxism–Leninism adapted to pre-industrial China. The claim that Mao Zedong had adapted Marxism–Leninism to Chinese conditions evolved into the idea that he had updated it in a fundamental way applying to the world as a whole.
Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung is a book of statements from speeches and writings by Mao Zedong, the former Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, published from 1964 to about 1976 and widely distributed during the Cultural Revolution.
Edgar Parks Snow was an American journalist known for his books and articles on Communism in China and the Chinese Communist revolution. He was the first Western journalist to give a full account of the history of the Chinese Communist Party following the Long March, and he was also the first Western journalist to interview many of its leaders, including Mao Zedong. He is best known for his book, Red Star Over China (1937), an account of the Chinese Communist movement from its foundation until the late 1930s.
The Private Life of Chairman Mao: The Memoirs of Mao's Personal Physician is a memoir by Li Zhisui, one of the physicians to Mao Zedong, former Chairman of the Communist Party of China, which was first published in 1994. Li had emigrated to the United States in the years after Mao's death. The book describes the time during which Li was Mao's physician, beginning with his return to China after training in Australia, through the height of Mao's power to his death in 1976 including the diverse details of Mao's personality, sexual proclivities, party politics and personal habits.
John Leighton Stuart was a missionary educator, the first President of Yenching University and later United States ambassador to China. He was a towering figure in U.S.-Chinese relations in the first half of the 20th century, a man TIME magazine called "perhaps the most respected American in China." According to one Chinese historian, "there was no other American of his ilk in the 20th century, one who was as deeply involved in Chinese politics, culture, and education and had such an incredible influence in China."
Red Star Over China is a 1937 book by Edgar Snow. It is an account of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) that was written when it was a guerrilla army and still obscure to Westerners.
Nagalingam Shanmugathasan was a trade unionist and Maoist revolutionary leader in Sri Lanka. He was the General Secretary of the Ceylon Communist Party (Maoist)
Pierre Stephen Robert Payne was an English-born author, known principally for works of biography and history, although he also wrote novels, poetry, magazine articles and many other works. After working in Singapore and China, he moved to the United States in 1946 and became a professor of English literature. From 1954 onwards he lived as a writer in New York.
On Protracted War is a work comprising a series of speeches by Mao Zedong given from May 26, 1938 to June 3, 1938 at the Yenan Association for the Study of the War of Resistance Against Japan. In it, he calls for a protracted people's war, as a means for small revolutionary groups to fight the power of the state.
The history of the Chinese Communist Party, began with its establishment in July 1921. A study group led by Peking University professors Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao to discuss Marxism, led to intellectuals officially founding the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in July 1921. In 1923, Sun Yat-sen invited the CCP to form a United Front, and to join his Nationalist Party (GMD) in Canton for training under representatives of the Comintern, the Soviet Union's international organization. The Soviet representatives reorganized both parties into Leninist parties. Rather than the loose organization that characterized the two parties until then, the Leninist party operated on the principle of democratic centralism, in which the collective leadership set standards for membership and an all powerful Central Committee determined the Party line, which all members must follow.
The Yan'an Forum on Literature and Art was a May 1942 forum held at the city of Yan'an in Communist-controlled China and significant event in the Yan'an Rectification Movement. It is most notable for the speeches given by Mao Zedong, later edited and published as Talks at the Yan'an Forum on Literature and Art which dealt with the role of literature and art in the country. The two main points were that (1) all art should reflect the life of the working class and consider them as an audience, and (2) that art should serve politics, and specifically the advancement of socialism. The excesses of the latter point during the Cultural Revolution led to current Party policy rejecting that point, but retaining Mao's encouragement of peasant-focused art and literature.
Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun is a phrase which was coined by Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong. The phrase was originally used by Mao during an emergency meeting of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) on 7 August 1927, at the beginning of the Chinese Civil War.
The History of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks): Short Course, translated to English under the title History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks): Short Course, is a textbook on the history of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), first published in 1938. Colloquially known as the Short Course, it became the most widely disseminated book during the time that Joseph Stalin served as the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the AUCP (B) and one of the most important works elucidating Marxism–Leninism.
Stuart Reynolds Schram was an American physicist, political scientist and sinologist who specialised in the study of modern Chinese politics. He was particularly well known for his works on the life and thought of Mao Zedong.
In anti-capitalist Mao Zedong thought, a capitalist roader is a person or group who demonstrates a marked tendency to bow to pressure from bourgeois forces and subsequently attempts to pull the Revolution in a capitalist direction. If allowed to do so, these forces would eventually restore the political and economic rule of capitalism; in other words, these forces would lead a society down a "capitalist road".
The Governance of China is a three-volume collection of speeches and writings by Xi Jinping, the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and current paramount leader of China. Presenting the official party line for China's development in the 21st century, the collection is an authoritative source on Xi Jinping Thought and a literary successor to Chairman Mao Zedong's Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung.
Mao Zedong's cult of personality was a prominent part of Chairman Mao Zedong's rule over the People's Republic of China from his rise in 1949 until his death in 1976. Mass media, propaganda and a series of other techniques were used by the state to elevate Mao Zedong's status to that of an infallible heroic leader, who could stand up against The West, and guide China to become a beacon of Communism. Mao himself, however, publicly criticized the personality cult which was formed around him.
Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan of March 1927, often called the Hunan Report, is one of Mao Zedong's most famous and influential essays. The Report is based on a several month visit to his home countryside around Changsha, capital of Hunan in early 1927. The Report endorses the violence that had broken out spontaneously in the wake of the Northern Expedition, makes a class analysis of the struggle, and enthusiastically reports the "Fourteen Great Achievements" of the peasant associations (农民协会).
The Selected Works of Mao Tse-Tung, is a five volume collection of the written works of Mao Zedong ranging from the years 1926–1957. The collection was first published by the People's Publishing House in 1951, and was later translated into English by the state-owned Foreign Languages Press. A fifth volume, which included the works of Chairman Mao from 1949 to 1957, was released during the leadership of Hua Guofeng, but subsequently withdrawn from circulation for its perceived ideological errors. There has never been an official "Complete Works of Mao Zedong" collecting all his known publications. A number of unauthorized volumes of the Selected Works of Mao Tse-Tung have been released, such as Volumes 6-9 which were published in India by the Communist Party of India (Maoist).
