Communist Leaders Part One: Mao Zedong, Pol Pot & Fidel Castro

the man known to history as pol part was born with the name salazar in the village of brexpal in northeastern cambodia at some time in the second half of the 1920s official records places birth date as being on the 25th of may 1928 but others have suggested a date of birth over three years earlier on the 19th of may 1925 given the age that we know that salat began his education the latter date of 1928 seems more likely he was known as salazar for over 30 years and as we will see the name pol pot was a revolutionary pseudonym which he gradually began using during the 1960s one of many he later employed although it was the one by which he was most commonly known his mother was sok nim a pious buddhist who had nine children of which sar was the eighth and his father was salat pem a relatively wealthy farmer in the praxpal region of mixed khmer and chinese ethnicity both then as now brexpal was a very small fishing village on the sen river and since salad pem owned over 20 acres of rice growing paddies and a small herd of cattle he was one of the district's most affluent individuals as such the man who would one day become known as pol pot grew up in an affluent upper middle class family an important point to remember when evaluating his later ideologies any account of pol pot's life and career must be understood against the backdrop of cambodia's wider history as cambodia's past had been extremely varied by the time that the roman empire was collapsing and the middle ages were dawning in europe in southeast asia cambodia belonged to a number of regions including modern-day thailand which had absorbed elements of indian culture but which were rooted in buddhism rather than hinduism in the 9th century a strong imperial state began to emerge in cambodia the khmer empire so named for the khmer speaking people of the region it rose in the centuries that followed to become the most powerful state in southeast asia its capital of angkor wat may eventually have been home to nearly a million people in the 12th and 13th centuries but thereafter the khmer empire declined and by the 16th and 17th centuries cambodia had become a backwater between siam and vietnam it is not surprising that the kingdom was easily absorbed by the french into their growing colony of french indochina in 1867 although the relatively peaceful transition to colonial rule ensured that the monarchy was kept in place as a public government by the french thus the cambodia which pol pot was born into and grew up in was a french protectorate though one in which some benefits had accrued from european dominance owing to slightly improved standards of living and more secure food supplies for instance the cambodian population more than quadrupled in the 80 or so years after the commencement of french rule from just under a million people to well over 4 million by the middle of the 20th century pol pot's family enjoyed extensive connections with the cambodian government including the royal family and it was through these that the young tsar was able to obtain a position as a novice monk at the buddhist monastery of at bottom wade in the capital phnom penh in 1934 here he learned buddhist teachings and literature but perhaps the more significant impact of his time here was his exposure to a system of rigid discipline thereafter he was sent to a roman catholic primary school in 1935. this was a colonial establishment where pol pot was educated alongside the children of the french colonial community he was not very academically gifted or inclined preferring sport instead of his studies and it was not until 1941 that he graduated from the primary school two years behind schedule nevertheless his privilege and family ties continued to benefit him and despite his poor performance hitherto as a student he was admitted in 1942 to a prestigious new boarding school which was patronized by the cambodian monarchy he would remain there until 1947 again indulging his passion for football and basketball over his studies cambodia's politics was shifting dramatically while pol pot was undertaking his education french colonial rule in southeast asia was weakening considerably as a result of the outbreak of the second world war in europe in the autumn of 1939 taking advantage of the situation in october 1940 the neighboring kingdom of thailand invaded cambodia and laos and succeeded in taking possessions of some border provinces from the french then in april 1941 king monivong the puppet monarch of cambodia died he was replaced by the french by king cyanuk an 18 year old whom the french believed would be more pliable than prince moneret monivong's designated successor but cyanuk would prove less of a puppet than was foreseen and he would play a major role in the tumultuous politics of cambodia over the next 70 years no sooner was he on the throne than cambodia was invaded by the empire of japan as a second world war spread across eastern asia and the pacific cambodia would suffer four years of occupation then as the end of the war neared in 1945 cyanuk proclaimed an independent kingdom of kampuchea in march 1945 it proved short-lived and french colonial rule was quickly reimposed on cambodia in october 1945 but this brief experiment in independence foreshadowed the struggle to end colonial rule which was to follow polpart's path in the years following the second world war though increasingly pushed him away from cambodia altogether having left boarding school without finishing his studies or acquiring his baccalaureate he enrolled in 1948 in a carpentry course at the technical college in phnom penh given his family background pol pot might have been expected to follow a different career path and setting out on a vocational training as a carpenter would have been viewed as a step down for the son of a wealthy landowner at the time in cambodia yet it seems that his privilege once again benefited him in the months ahead as pol pot's academic shortcomings were ignored and in 1949 he was awarded a prestigious scholarship to attend an advanced engineering school far away in paris in europe the capital of the french colonials at the time it was not uncommon for the french to invite the sons of well-connected colonial families to acquire their education in france itself the goal being to inculcate young men like pol pot to the virtues of french society and encourage them to want to maintain french control over countries like cambodia rather than seeking independence thus it was that pol pot set out for paris in 1949 however the political climate of cambodia in the post-war period was such that pole pot would become radicalized against french colonial rule while in europe rather than inculcated into becoming a supporter of the french presence in indochina before examining pole parts time in europe we need to look at events in cambodia itself in the late 1940s and early 1950s in the aftermath of the second world war king cyanuk had succeeded in gaining some concessions from the french government to grant greater autonomy to cambodia the country's first elections to a domestic parliament were held in 1946 and a new modern constitution for the country came into effect in may 1947 negotiations continued in the years ahead for cambodia to be given a more concerted form of independence and thereafter this was driven by events elsewhere in indochina as since december 1946 the french had been fighting a war in neighbouring vietnam against insurgents who wish to acquire independence from french indochina the first indochina war would drag on eventually until 1954 and would extend into neighbouring laos and cambodia it was the beginning of a long period in which events in vietnam substantially impacted on developments in cambodia and for the meantime the insurgency in vietnam made the french government more willing to grant concessions to king cyanuk and cambodia as a means of shoring up support there and avoiding another independence war yet the concessions which cyanuk continued to obtain in the late 1940s were viewed as not going far enough and so as cambodia entered into the early 1950s the country was rife with political instability as many parties emerged calling for independence and an end to french colonial rule with some also wishing for the abolition of the monarchy which was tainted by its long associations with the french this was the situation at home as pol pot arrived in paris in 1949 the stormy politics of cambodia had been transplanted to the french capital while he lived on the banks of the seine in the months that followed pol pot became associated with numerous political groups that had been organized by his fellow cambodians in paris one of these was the khmer student association which met regularly and was broadly committed to achieving cambodian independence from french rule more extreme and effectively illegal was the circle marxist or marxist circle a marxist leninist organization which met in secret to read marxist leninist and other communist writings and to discuss cambodia's struggle against french oppression it is important to remember that the great majority of anti-colonial independent struggles in africa and asia in the post-second world war period adopted one form of communism or another as their ideological base in their independent struggles not least because the best way to throw off european imperial rule was by obtaining financial and material aid from communist russia or china but in assessing pol pot's ideology and future career we can largely dismiss any ardent affection for marx's thought which he might have claimed to have had as in reality the future dictator did not really understand marx's thought at all what little of karl marx's own writings he had read he later admitted he had not been really able to comprehend rather pol pot was attracted by the idea of continuous revolution without concerns for the violence and humanitarian implications of it which had become a feature of marxist leninist thought in the post-war period this unswerving commitment to acquiring independence and carrying out a revolution at all costs became the central focus of his political leanings later on not any ideological commitment to communism part spent three years in paris becoming more and more embroiled in politics there his departure from the french capital would eventually come about owing to developments back in his homeland in january 1953 as the political situation in cambodia lurched from crisis to crisis king cyanuk disbanded the national assembly and began ruling by decree domestic political turmoil increased rapidly thereafter such that by the spring of 1953 cambodia was virtually in a state of civil war already in late 1952 the sec marxist in paris had determined to send one of their members back to cambodia to assess the situation on the ground in order to determine which of the competing entities they should be supporting and so it was that pol pot found himself returning to southeast asia in december 1952 after three years in france as a result he was back in cambodia to witness king cyanuk's call for independence from france in the summer of 1953 a request which was granted by the french government in november when it realized that it lacked the support or the military capacity to maintain its control over cambodia independence had been achieved but it remained to be seen exactly what kind of state would emerge in the new cambodia the next 15 years in cambodia were a period of almost continual turmoil which eventually in 1968 would result in the outbreak of a civil war which was the result of the unrest which continued to dominate southeast asia in the 1950s and 1960s although the geneva conference of 1954 succeeded in ending the first indochina war between the french and pro-independence vietnamese conflict in southeast asia was in no way brought to an end henceforth the northern parts of vietnam became the independent country of north vietnam which was pro-communist while the south of the country also gained independence as the pro-western republic of vietnam however no sooner had the dust settled on the geneva conference the north vietnam began efforts to unite the country under communist rule thus in 1955 the second indochina war or what is more commonly known as the vietnam war erupted it would last for 20 years with the south backed primarily by the united states of america as french influence in southeast asia waned and the north backed by soviet russia and communist china throughout its entire duration cambodia was caught up in the conflict primarily because the north vietnamese troops known as the viet cong used cambodia as a staging base for attacks into south vietnam with vietnamese camps established in the jungles of northern and eastern cambodia but as we will see cambodia was also increasingly tied up with the north vietnamese because radical marxist leninist revolutionaries within cambodia such as pol pot sought north vietnamese aid to ferment their own rebellion in cambodia pol pot's path would soon collide with the north vietnamese but for now in the post-independence period in cambodia during the 1950s he became involved in efforts to effect change through political participation the first post-independence elections in the country were held in 1955. it was widely believed that the anti-monarchy democratic party would win these and pol pot and his fellow marxist leninist cambodians now attempted to infiltrate the democratic party as a means of exercising influence from within the government which it was assumed would soon come to power however the king had other ideas with the elections imminent sienuk quickly abdicated in favor of his father naradam and then cyanuk established his own political party called san comria nium meaning the community of the common people and in the election through widespread voter intimidation and fraud sancom won over 80 percent of the vote effectively establishing a one-party dictatorship with cyanuk serving as prime minister as a consequence of the manner in which independence quickly gave way to conservative dictatorship headed by the former king paul part spent the next few years in a kind of political wilderness he continued to be active within marxist leninist circles in cambodia but these had largely been driven underground by cyanuk's seizure of power and for the time being a concerted armed struggle by either the communists or the democratic party seemed elusive meanwhile polpot acquired a job teaching history geography and literature at a private school in phnom penh and in 1956 he married q ponnery political oppression continued throughout these years with senior members of the democratic party being subjected to public humiliation and physical attacks during a supposedly official debate in august 1957 however by the end of the decade resistance to xenox dictatorship was greatly diminished and then things started to change in 1959 members of the marxist leninist cambodian movement established the kampuchean labour party the forerunner of what would later become the infamous khmer rouge in late september 21 senior members of the party including paul pot met in a room of a railway station in phnom penh where they agreed to rename the party as the workers party of kampuchea and party positions were allocated to samat was made general secretary while his ally nuan cheer was appointed as his deputy but pol pot was elected to the bureau and was effectively third in command of the new revolutionary party he would not have to wait long before he ascended to a position of leadership when two samat was killed by the cambodian government less than two years later pol pot would be elected as his successor and as the second in command nuancia decided to step back from the revolutionary struggle but samat's death was also part of a wider crackdown on the socialist movement in cambodia and even before pol pot had officially been appointed as the new head of the workers party he was forced to flee with his wife to a viet cong encampment near the border between cambodia and south vietnam it was the beginning of the drift towards civil war and the horrors that followed in its aftermath in cambodia pol pot spent the next half a decade largely living in encampments in the jungles of cambodia and vietnam his personality as a dictator was formed during these years he was a somewhat enigmatic character one who displayed a large level of self-control and was reserved and introspective nevertheless despite his taciturn character and the deplorable nature of his later crimes many are agreed that he could be charming when a situation necessitated him to be so while his varied upbringing and middle years had seen him develop an ability to interact with people from many walks of life yet behind the apparently amiable facade lay an individual with a great thirst for power a propensity for savage violence and a personality that was increasingly paranoid none of this was alleviated in any fashion by his personal circumstances his wife suffered from deteriorating mental health in the 1960s which would descend into chronic schizophrenia in the 1970s pol pot and she would eventually divorce in 1979 and although he remarried later in life he never enjoyed much of a family life having just one child a daughter who was born in the mid-1980s when he was in his late fifties equally he suffered from very poor health throughout his adult life with insomnia and intestinal ailments conditions which would have done nothing beneficial to stabilize an already erratic personality above all if we are to seek to discover who pol pot was and what motivated him we must remember that he was an ardent cambodian nationalist and one whose tendencies in this regard were heightened in the 1960s as he built up opposition to cyanuk's regime in the wayward north and east of the country and if there is any consistency to his actions it is surely found in his zealous desire for cambodian independence from french rule and the monarchy epitomized by cyanuk as well as being formative in his personal development these years in the jungle were a time of growth for the cambodian communist movement as ceonuke's repressive regime gained more and more enemies more revolutionaries fled from civil society into the jungles to plot revolution here they found a new umbrella organization for their resentment the workers party renamed itself in 1966 as the communist party of kampuchea but at the south west in phnom penh cyanuk had begun referring to the party's members as the khmer rouge meaning red cambodians and although pol pot and his followers initially rejected the term themselves it quickly gained traction and is the name most typically used for the communist party of kampuchea today a byword for the terror which would occur years later when pol pot came to power but beyond this name change the party was also evolving in new ways during the mid 1960s first and foremost it was developing its own independent streak wishing to break away from the north vietnamese secondly it had set out on a new ideological course one which appreciated that the vast majority of cambodians were actually farmers as a result any marxist leninist revolution in cambodia would not be driven by an urban proletariat such as marx had envisaged a hundred years earlier and which had occurred to some extent in russia in 1917 rather the undeveloped state of the cambodian economy dictated that this would be a revolution of the rural peasantry in cambodia so much of which had been impoverished by french colonial rule and that of the collaborationist monarchy the continuation of which was epitomized in the form of the former king and current dictator cyanuk finally the major factor at play in these years was the growth of the party and its military capabilities by 1967 it had several thousand members who were armed in the jungles of northern and eastern cambodia waiting to take action against cyanuk's one-party state they struck in the first days of 1968 it was the start of a long and bloody eight-year civil war the cambodian civil war was initiated in january 1968 when polpat's insurgents attacked an army base at baidamran south of batambang the regional capital of northwest cambodia cyanuk's initial reaction to this limited insurrection backfired he ordered a violent crackdown with widespread bombing of the north and east of the country indiscriminate attacks which were designed to hit at communist encampments but which largely succeeded in alienating hundreds of thousands of rural cambodians whose livelihoods were damaged by the scorched earth tactics favored by the government in phnom penh consequently support for the revolt of which pol pot was increasingly the undisputed leader swelled in the late 1960s he was now also increasingly referring to himself as pol pot rather than sar and it is from this time that the cambodian communist leader became primarily known by his pseudonym in 1970 the civil war took a dramatic turn owing to cambodia's ongoing role in the vietnam war to the east in the spring of 1969 the president of the united states richard nixon ordered a series of bombing raids into cambodia to try to interrupt the vietcong supply lines into south vietnam and hit at vietcong camps and bases in the jungles of northeast cambodia this was followed in march 1970 by the overthrow of cyanuk's government in phnom penh by a pro-american coup d'etat the khmer republic was now established with prime minister lon nall as its head cyanuk fled the country but it was certainly not the end of his role in cambodian politics null honored his commitments to washington and the khmer republic ordered the viet cong to leave cambodian territory but it was unable to affect this and in the months that followed the viet cong with pol pot and his khmer rouge as their allies effectively established control over as much as one third of cambodia constituting the bulk of the north and east of the country in the process the cambodian civil war shifted from one which had been initiated to overthrow cyanuk and his regime to one which sought to capture cambodia for the khmer rouge from lon nol and his pro-american pro-western government in phnom penh five years of bloody conflict would follow between pol pots khmer rouge and lon noll's khmer republic with one backed by the viet cong and the chinese and the other aided by the u.s pol pot's cause also benefited in the early 1970s from a bizarre reconciliation between his communist party and cyanuk who had fled to china following the coup of 1970. this brought the disparate rebel groups within cambodia who were opposed to null's government in phnom penh into alliance with each other then as the war intensified in the early 1970s many thousands of pro-monarchy rebels joined the ranks of the khmer rouge in the jungles of northern and eastern cambodia few of them having any real affinity with communist thought but willing to support pol part's struggle if they felt it aided the cambodian monarchy the ranks of the rebels soared to nearly 50 000 armed cambodians by 1972 simultaneously the communist party began to develop a more sophisticated party bureaucracy and the rudimentary basics of a revolutionary government where responsibilities were delegated according to who would fill what ministerial brief if and when the party was able to seize power in phnom penh in the years ahead as with so much of cambodia's history since the end of the second world war the civil war's outcome was broadly determined by events in wider southeast asia from the late 1960s the u.s had adopted a policy of exiting the vietnam war in such a way that would preserve the independence of south vietnam from its northern communist neighbor or peace with honour as president nixon termed it as the u.s began its long withdrawal from vietnam in the early 1970s its support for lon knoll's regime in phnom penh diminished in particular the bombing raids on the viet cong the actions of the khmer rouge in northern and eastern cambodia were temporarily ended by late 1972 and then in january 1973 lon knoll declared a ceasefire in the hopes that the civil war would be ended amicably but it was not to be pol pot and his militants continued their push westwards towards phnom penh and it was clear by the spring of 1973 that they were in the ascendant london had to introduce conscription in order to have enough troops to defend the capital but even so the khmer rouge reached the outskirts of the city by april they were prevented from seizing the seat of power at this time only through the intervention of the u.s nixon ordering a huge bombing campaign which drove paul potts insurgents back into the jungle it was however only a limited reprieve as the months rolled by and usaid dried up knolls government found itself increasingly unpopular and confined to a city the population of which had swelled to nearly two million people nearly three-quarters of them refugees by march 1975 the khmer rouge and the vietcong had surrounded phnom penh with nearly 400 000 troops and it was no surprise to anyone when the city finally surrendered the pole pot and his insurgents on the 17th of april 1975. the cambodian civil war was over the capital of south vietnam saigon fell to the vietcong just 13 days later on the 30th of april 1975 as western efforts to stop the spread of socialist regimes in southeast asia ended in dismal failure in the spring of 1975. the cambodian civil war was over approximately a quarter of a million cambodians had been killed in nearly eight years of conflict but few knew what the future now held in store for the country despite being the main rebel organization during the civil war the khmer rouge was something of an unknown quantity in international circles pol pot and his party were viewed as something of an ancillary to the vietcong presence in cambodia few though knew what they would do once in power nor could they have predicted the scale of the brutality which would now be unleashed throughout the country even pol pot himself was a relatively shadowy figure of whom the world knew little in 1975 but that would all change in the years that followed having seized power the khmer rouge unleashed a savage assault on cambodian society itself the horrors of which have been eclipsed by few regimes in human history at the heart of the nightmare which unfolded in the months and years after the end of the civil war was the ideological platform the communist workers party of kampuchea with pol pot as its leader it had grown and developed in the 10 years or so since they first began building up their strength in the jungles of northeast cambodia in the mid-1960s the party was wedded to the idea of building an agrarian revolution one in which rural peasants would form the basis of their communist state as we saw earlier pol pot had little understanding of communist thought himself and this ideology that the khmer rouge developed had little to do with the writings of karl marx indeed they were directly antithetical marx had envisaged a revolution driven by the urban proletariat of oppressed factory workers conversely pol pot and the khmer rouge viewed urban workers as dangerous subversives and wanted to encourage cambodians to return to the countryside from the cities in order to create an almost exclusively agrarian society this utopian dream of theirs would soon become a nightmare for the cambodian people as soon as phnom penh had been seized in april 1975 pol pot quickly made his way to the city he entered the capital on the 20th of april and by may had established his government at the silver pagoda an opulent 19th century royal palace which had once been home to the monarchy it was not at once clear that pol pot and the communist party would be the primary power in the new cambodia not least because a number of regional military leaders commanded their own power bases throughout the country there was even an effort made to unseat pol pot in the autumn of 1976 but ultimately the party prevailed and solidified its power then the name of the country was officially changed to democratic kampuchea in january 1976 and it was governed by a standing committee of the khmer rouge's leading figures who were named as brothers paul pott was brother number one and served as prime minister for a time the former king cyanuk was even brought into the government in an effort to prevent him becoming a focus of opposition to the new regime but he resigned from his position in the spring of 1976 and was subsequently kept under house arrest by the regime which is how the khmer rouge kept their control of the country in the first 12 months after the end of the civil war the policies pursued by pol pot and the khmer regime in the second half of the 1970s have become infamous as we have seen the regime constructed itself around the idea of creating an agrarian revolution with a kind of rural proletariat pot and his allies were inspired by the great leap forward which chairman mao had attempted in china 20 years earlier whereby he had attempted to drastically increase china's food production and industrial output in just a few short years the great leap forward failed spectacularly and is now understood to have resulted in the deaths of as many as 50 million chinese people in the space of five or six years but undeterred by this appalling record pol pots and the khmer rouge now sought to use similar methods to exponentially increase cambodia's agricultural and manufacturing capacities the ultimate goal was to make cambodia self-sufficient and reliant on no other state for the goods which it needed in particular pol pot wished to avoid having the country fall under the influence of its more powerful neighbor to the east in vietnam cambodian self-sufficiency was to be achieved through collectivization whereby farms throughout the country were brought under state ownership and then run collectively or communally by farmers the goal was to have the country's agricultural output increased substantially by forcing cambodians to work as hard as possible to this end pol pot on the khmer rouge immediately began forcing the population to leave cambodia's cities and relocate to labor camps in the countryside to work on collective farms conditions in these were brutal often amounting to little more than slave labor workers were beaten and tortured if they did not work sufficiently hard enough they were fed poorly often so the camp overseers could report on high production yields and malnutrition was soon rife giving way eventually to death through starvation as conditions in kampuchea's work camps deteriorated during the course of 1976 and 1977 disease became rife in them also exacerbating the level of mortality workers who refused to work hard enough or resisted directives were executed the barbaric conditions of the labour camps in the countryside were not the seoul theater in parts cambodia where mass murder was occurring the khmer rouge established itself as a highly autocratic xenophobic classist and totalitarian regime people from the middle and upper class were murdered in large numbers simply for having the most tenuous links to the ruling elites of past years or being seen as bourgeois subversives all this despite pol pot's own upper middle class family background foreigners were targeted also for instance a quarter of a million cambodians of chinese ethnicity were killed between 1975 and 1979 with perhaps as many as 100 000 muslims also murdered the state also established itself as an atheistic regime and buddhism was savagely repressed anyone who was seen to resist the government became the victim of arrest and execution and over 150 torture and execution centers were established throughout the country the most notorious being s-21 a converted secondary school through which as many as 20 000 prisoners passed between 1976 and 1979 as the months went by paranoia came to dominate every aspect of cambodian society children were indoctrinated into the regime's atrocities and forced to engage in killings in other instances the children of political dissenters or ethnic minorities who were killed were also murdered the rationale of pole pot and the regime being that they wanted to avoid these children growing up and seeking to avenge their parents all of this took place in the killing fields sites throughout cambodia where mass executions were carried out in the years following pole parts are sent to power at these sites individuals were sometimes killed using sharpened bamboo scythes and pickaxes to save bullets some victims were forced to dig their own graves before being executed often poor farmers and peasants were forced to carry out these executions in order to avoid punishment themselves by the regime such was the barbarity of the khmer rouge and the unmitigated terror and destruction of life which it unleashed that by the end of the 1970s somewhere between 1.7 and 2.2 million of cambodia's population of approximately 8 million people had been killed the cambodian genocide overseen by pol pot and orchestrated by the khmer rouge was one of the most heinous and vicious genocides ever undertaken it is hard to look beyond the genocide to try to find any coherent policies which might have been implemented by pol pot's regime and it is perhaps unsurprising to find that these were in any event dictated by the ideological brutality and totalitarianism of the khmer rouge as well for instance the party's approach to education was mired in a highly repressive and paranoid approach to learning and the role of teachers in society upon the fall of phnom penh in 1975 several thousand educators were executed across the city a new curriculum was devised which sought to teach little more than basic mathematics and literacy and thereafter was focused on instilling the regime's political ideology into the minds of students consequently some children were fashioned into enthusiastic contributors to the state's atrocities the health system also effectively collapsed under pol pot's reign of terror with many physicians executed on class grounds on the economic front currency was abolished and a barter system was introduced along with the state-run distribution of goods as a result cambodians were soon trading their few personal possessions in order to acquire basic goods foreign trade almost completely dried up but most strikingly the goal of drastically improving agricultural output was a catastrophic failure the reverse famine was endemic as the months and years passed by on the foreign policy front polpart's approach mirrored his desire to make cambodia self-sufficient isolationism was favored consequently pol part and the khmer rouge spurned the western powers including the us with which the previous administration imp nom pen had been so closely associated those states which pol pot established good relations with were usually headed by fellow autocrats such as nikolai chaucescu of romania the soviet union was rejected as a source of support despite being the ostensible head of the communist bloc in favor of aligning kampuchea with china chairman mao committed over one billion dollars of beijing's money in aid to help rebuild and develop cambodia in the aftermath of the civil war and many civil and military advisors were sent to southeast asia to provide advice on how to develop the cambodian economy although the relationship cooled considerably from 1976 onwards with the death of mao that year and the cambodian regime's increasingly hostile approach to ethnic chinese cambodians but the most consequential relationship of the khmer regime was with its neighbor to the east with whom its recent history had been so entangled following the end of the civil war relations between cambodia and a united vietnam quickly deteriorated and in the summer of 1976 negotiations to resolve some border disputes between the two countries failed thereafter relations thawed considerably little could cambodians have known at that time but the communist regime in vietnam would soon provide a kind of salvation for the people of pole pots cambodia relations between cambodia and vietnam were in terminal decline by 1978. the previous december the vietnamese had sent tens of thousands of troops over the border to contested regions and broke off relations with phnom penh although it soon withdrew in the first weeks of 1978 paul part responded by ordering raids along the border region war was not officially entered into at this point but the unrest was the spark to see resistance to pol pot and the khmer rouge begin to emerge within cambodia such was the anarchy and brutality that prevailed throughout the country that several regional military commanders were now moving through the country to distance themselves from the regime in a desperate bid to bolster his support pol pot courted cyanuk who was still under house arrest to throw his support behind the regime a sign of his increasing desperation and then in december 1978 the inevitable war broke out the vietnamese cambodian war began on christmas day 1978 when the vietnamese launched a full-scale invasion of cambodia over 150 000 vietnamese troops many of them hardened veterans from the long vietnam war and led by seasoned military commanders streamed over the border the invaders quickly overran the country northeast cambodia had been captured by the end of 1978 and then on new year's day the main vietnamese forces began their approach to phnom penh as the cambodian army's resistance melted away in the opening days of 1979 pol pot and the khmer rouge regime began evacuating the capital many senior members fled to thailand while pot himself headed for the city of batambang the regional capital of the northwest phnom penh fell on the 7th of january 1979 to the vietnamese who now established a new people's republic of kampuchea headed by cambodian exiles who had fled to vietnam in recent times to avoid the purges of pol pot and the khmer rouge the war seemed to have been won in a matter of days and pol pot and his regime utterly defeated but then foreign powers yet again intervened in cambodia's affairs following the initial flush of victories the vietnamese and their cambodian allies were stopped in their advances when china invaded northern vietnam in mid-february 1979. although the sino-vietnamese war which ensued lasted less than a month and a ceasefire had been agreed by mid-march the attack was sufficient to give the khmer rouge and many other militant groups in cambodia time to regroup and organize their resistance to the vietnamese-backed government in phnom penh during this period pol pot and his khmer rouge allies took advantage of the distraction offered by china's intervention to establish control over parts of the northwest of the country along the border with thailand armed with financial and military aid from china and the united states part was trying in the summer of 1979 to reinvent the khmer rouge efforts were made to disavow the party's former socialist past and actions while pot tried to position himself as the leader of a new patriotic democratic front an alliance of disparate political and military groups which opposed the vietnamese-backed regime in phnom penh the leader of the khmer rouge even attempted to reinvent himself by dropping his pseudonym pol pot and adopting the name pem after his father incredibly these actions won him some credibility on the international stage and in november 1979 the united nations chose to recognize the khmer rouge as the government of cambodia over the administration in phnom penh despite the appalling crimes the regime in recent years the full extent of which was admittedly still unknown to the world in 1979 thus by the end of the first year of the cambodian vietnamese war the stage was set for an extended showdown between the vietnamese and their puppet regime in phnom penh and the many militant groups which controlled much of the country and of which the khmer rouge was just one this was effectively a new civil war in cambodia it would last as long as that which had first brought pol pot and the khmer rouge to power in 1975. the cambodian vietnamese war lasted for another 10 years the khmer rouge was just one of the militant groups fighting against the people's republic of kampuchea and vietnam in these years foremost amongst these other groups was the national united front for an independent neutral peaceful and cooperative cambodia or fansinpeg which was formed in 1981 by the stalwart of cambodian politics the former king cyanuk then in an effort to win over more support for the khmer in response to the formation of cyanuk's funsimpak polpart officially dissolved the communist party in 1981 and proposed a new nationalist movement an indication of his ongoing ideological flexibility then as the fighting wore on in an interminable series of guerrilla attacks in the jungles and foothills of cambodia in the mid-1980s polpot began moving away from the forefront of the movement and in september 1985 he resigned as the military commander of the khmer rouge in part owing two reverses the previous year when the vietnamese had pushed the khmer forces into thailand from cambodia and in part owing to his own declining health in 1983 he was diagnosed with hodgkin's lymphoma a relatively severe type of cancer which required him to spend extensive periods of time in bangkok and beijing receiving medical treatment as the war dragged on interminably into the late 1980s pol pot began to make it known to political elements within cambodia and abroad that he would not seek to return to power should the war end rather his sole wish was to see the vietnamese removed from cambodia or at least that is what he claimed as ever this statement came about largely owing to wider geopolitical circumstances by the end of the decade the communist bloc worldwide was in decline and the cold war was drawing to an end as it did vietnam which had been largely ostracized from the global community since the 1970s determined to bring its role in cambodia to an end also in 1988 it began withdrawing the nearly 100 000 troops which it had in cambodia and instituted a series of political and economic reforms designed to prop up the people's republic of kampuchea and to fully disentangle itself from the country and by september 1989 it had withdrawn the last of its troops from the country once a ceasefire was proclaimed in 1990 peace negotiations began between the various groupings within cambodia to find a workable way forward in establishing the country despite its crimes while in power between 1975 and 1979 the khmer rouge with pol pot as its leader would play a part in these negotiations in the talks which followed pol pot remained in an obscure location near the border between thailand and cambodia and instead dispatched his close associate in the khmer rouge kusampan to phnom penh to represent the party here negotiations largely centered around sampan siounok and the head of the pro-vietnamese faction hun sen sampang struck an antagonistic pose in the capital declaring that the khmer rouge refused to disarm its troops in western cambodia in response sen and cyanuk proved similarly recalcitrant as a result sporadic fighting continued throughout the early 1990s even as negotiations continued in phnom penh eventually it was agreed that national elections would be held in the early summer of 1993. the results were a sharp rebuttal of pol pot and his khmer rouge with sen and cyanux parties cumulatively winning nearly 80 percent of the vote it was the beginning of the end for the khmer rouge and for paul part two cyanuk now negotiated a coalition with sen and the new combined government launched an offensive against the khmer rouge in western cambodia while the initial gains made by the government were pushed back by a counter-offences launched by pot in the course of 1994 the party was nevertheless witnessing increasing desertion of its forces in cambodia in the months that followed on his last legs from this point onwards it had little more than a few thousand troops occupying a small segment of the border region with thailand but despite its weakness it would take until 1999 for the cambodian government to fully defeat the party which had so terrorized its own country in the 1970s however pol pot would not live to see the final defeat of the khmer rouge the man who had been born as salazar in the 1920s and who had created such immense human suffering in his homeland eventually met his end in 1998 but his downfall had come shortly before that with the khmer's fortunes at their lowest ebb ever the husk of a party which remained turned against its leader in 1997 paranoia and internal disputes plagued the leadership in the wilds of western cambodia by this time and in a party coup in the summer of 1997 pol pot and his family were placed under house arrest by a rival faction led by one tar mock by that time pol pot did not have long to live in any event he suffered from a heart condition and a stroke had left him partially paralyzed and needing regular oxygen moreover his cancer remained and without access to effective medical care he was deteriorating rapidly such was the wreckage of a man whom the khmer rouge put on trial in july 1997 in a remarkably hypocritical act he was sentenced to life in prison by the party which he had himself led for over 30 years but that life would end shortly thereafter on the 15th of april 1998 pol pot died in his sleep as his heart gave out those suspicions have since arisen that he committed suicide to avoid being handed over to the united states for trial on the 21st of april 1998 six days after his death he was cremated in a buddhist ceremony thus died one of the 20th century's most brutal dictators he left behind a country which today is littered with landmines and a scarred history and a largely authoritarian state there is no doubting that pole parts was one of the true monsters of the 20th century a century in which such figures abounded throughout the world but what perhaps marks paul pot out is the enormous brutality with which he and the khmer rouge carried out the cambodian genocide between 1975 and 1979. during these years the regime turned against everyone within its borders foreigners and political dissenters were targeted above others as is usually the case with totalitarian societies but pot and his followers even turned entirely against their own people murdering hundreds of thousands of cambodians in mass labor camps in a crazed pursuit of agricultural productivity which only succeeded in creating a famine as a result pol pot's regime murdered and killed nearly one out of every four cambodian citizens in less than half a decade during the late 1970s it is hardly any surprise that as a result the united nations and the red cross were already declaring by 1979 that pol pot and his regime were bringing about the near destruction of cambodian society only the intervention of the vietnamese that year stopped the crazed horrific killing that is pol pot's legacy there is nothing approaching any rationalizations which can be made for it what do you think of paul part was he perhaps the most tyrannical dictator of the entire 20th century please let us know in the comments section and in the meantime thank you very much for watching [Music] the man known to history as fidel castro was born on the 13th of august 1926 in biran in oriente the easternmost province on the island of cuba his father was angel maria bautista castro yargeth who was born in 1875 in the galicia region of northern spain angel was conscripted into the spanish army in the early 1890s and subsequently was sent to cuba which at the time was one of spain's few remaining american colonies to contribute to the effort to crush a second war of independence which had erupted there in 1895 unlike previous independence movements in cuba this one proved successful due to the intervention of the united states and as a result cuba broke away from spain in 1898 the nature of its independent struggle meant that it now fell under the geopolitical sway of the us a relationship which would cast a long shadow over the country's history during the 20th century angel castro briefly returned to spain but emigrated to cuba through the port of havana in 1905 amongst a succession of jobs in the 1900s and 1910s he worked as a labourer for the american united fruit company and by the 1920s he had established his own agricultural business hiring out men to work for the sugar plantations at one point he had over 300 employees and strong business connections with american companies in cuba thus fidel was born into a relatively affluent family in 1911 angel castro married maria argotta irelas and the couple had five children after the collapse of this marriage angel went on to have seven more children with lena russ compalis a farm servant who became his mistress and later his second wife they included fidel and his younger brother raul who would become his closest political ally throughout his life fidel's childhood was a curious one as he was born out of wedlock at a time when there was still a very considerable stigma surrounding illegitimacy angel castro had fidel raised using his mother's surname and amongst the children of sugar plantation workers many of these were haitian and other caribbean workers who lived difficult poverty-stricken lives fidel's later views on the role of american business on the island's economy and workers might well have been substantially shaped by his experiences living amongst his father's workers during his youth when he was just six years of age fidel and his elder brother and sister ramon and angela were sent to santiago de cuba to begin their education here they lived in poor conditions with a tutor who could barely afford the bare necessities curiously for an island where roman catholicism predominated castro was not baptized until he was eight years old in 1934. this seems to have been for the purpose of ensuring that he could attend the la salle boarding school he was then sent to the privately funded jesuit run dolores school in santiago and then on to el colegio de belen in havana despite having an interest in history and geography fidel never excelled academically but he was a good athlete in 1943 and 1944 he was named havana's most outstanding sportsman of his age excelling in baseball basketball the high jump and middle distance running castro was growing up during a period when cuban society was in chaos in the decades which followed the country's war of independence in 1898 the island experienced profound political instability and poor economic development the country's political system was highly corrupt with the republic's politicians from the very top downwards engaging in rampant bribery and corrupt activity much of this was driven by american business interests controlling large parts of the cuban economy and the island had also become a haven for the italian mafia and other criminal organizations based in america to operate in meanwhile the economy of the country remained underdeveloped and based on resource exploitation of basic goods such as bananas coffee and above all sugar the net result of this was that a small elite profited massively while ordinary cubans remain trapped in desperate poverty then in the 1930s the cuban military increasingly began to intervene in the country's politics particularly so following the so-called revolt of the sergeants in 1933. as a result of this the overall leader of the military element sergeant fulgencio batista would begin to play a major role in cuban politics serving as president between 1940 and 1944 after this he left to live in florida in the united states but he would later return into the fray of cuban politics with striking consequences in 1945 fidel castro began studying law at the university of havana here his political instincts first began to manifest themselves as he became involved in several student protest movements against the outward corruption of cuban politics and the elites which ran the country it was a highly contentious time on the campuses of the island nations universities where armed gangs were common and engaged in widespread criminal behavior a reflection of the wider breakdown of law and order across cuban society at this time castro's anti-american stance first manifested itself when he joined the committee for the independence of puerto rico a body which had been set up to advocate for the neighboring caribbean island to be given its independence from the united states puerto rico had effectively become an american colony following the spanish-american war of 1898 but it was never given statehood status a situation which persists to the present day castro and his fellow student agitators in havana were opposed to this situation continuing and viewed it as a symptom of america's continuing strategy to dominate the americas and oppress the states of the caribbean central america and south america it was also during these years in havana that castro first earned a reputation within wider cuban society for his dissident actions in the winter of 1946 he appeared in the pages of several newspapers following his criticisms of the government and its corruption and violence he subsequently developed extensive connections with numerous left-wing political groups within the country notably the uneon insurrectional revolutionaria or insurrectional revolutionary union at the time police suspected him of the murder of a rival student leader although nothing was ever proven and whilst he regained a reputation for powerful oratory he never became a prominent student leader himself and on several occasions he was defeated in campus elections in the summer of 1947 castro left university briefly to join a campaign to overthrow the right-wing government of rafael trujillo in the dominican republic trujillo like batista in cuba was a military governor who was supported by the united states in late july of that year castro was one of the leaders of a band of about 1 200 rebels who set off from cuba for the dominican republic with the goal of overthrowing trujillo the effort though was quickly snuffed out by a combination of us cuban and dominican forces many were arrested although fidel escaped after he reputedly jumped overboard from the ship he was on into shark-infested waters carrying a gun above his head this event is noteworthy for being the first occasion on which the future cuban leader engaged in direct armed rebellion in the caribbean following the abortive expedition to the dominican republic castro entered into a period in which his revolutionary activities expanded he was increasingly prominent within student protest circles against the government in havana while during the course of 1948 he undertook a number of trips to panama venezuela and colombia to meet with left-wing revolutionary groups there in particular in the capital of colombia bogota in the late spring of 1948 he was central to efforts to set up a pan-american students conference which would act in opposition to right-wing governments across latin america meanwhile back in cuba later that year he married mirta diaz-balart a philosophy student it was regarded as an unlikely union as balart came from a prominent cuban family which had extensive connections with the country's political elites the very individuals and groupings whom castro was increasingly appearing to be an outright opponent of the couple even received extensive gifts on their wedding day from some individuals whom castro had protested against and they honeymooned in the united states despite these curious contradictions the marriage lasted for seven years and fidel and mirta had a son called fidelito before divorcing in 1955. in the early 1950s castro established a law firm with two associates named jorge as piazzo and rafael resende however these were fellow leftists and in reality the firm was engaged in pro bono work to defend workers who had been mistreated or dismissed from their employment moreover castro was developing his knowledge of leftist thought during these years reading widely the works of karl marx and friedrich engels the two pioneers of communism and other more recent political thinkers such as vladimir lenin and leon trotsky at this stage castro was leaning towards changing cuba from within and in 1952 he stood for election to the cuban congress in the national elections as a member of the partido del pueblo cubana ortodoxos party a cuban catch-all left-wing populist party founded by eduardo chibas in 1947. this was actually the beginning of the end of castro's peaceful approach to changing cuban politics in the same year 1952 folgencio batista returned to the political scene in cuba and within months had established a new military dictatorship in the island nation following a brief military coup he would henceforth rule cuba as a one-party military dictatorship with the backing of america castro now set out on a path to overthrow the batista regime through violent means within weeks of the return of batista to power in cuba castro was working on a new revolutionary project which he and his followers such as his younger brother raul castro called the movement the first action came within months and was a significant moment in the cuban revolution on the 26th of july 1953 castro and around 100 others attacked a cuban army barracks at moncado in santiago de cuba the attack was a complete failure nearly half of the militants were killed by the 400 strong man garrison and most of the remainder were taken captive with just a few escaping altogether fidel was amongst those who were captured and he was subsequently sentenced to 15 years in prison for leading an insurrection against the state during his trial he delivered a lengthy defense in what would become his most famous speech la istoria me absolvera in which he attacked batista's regime and outlined his own political and economic ideas castro served his sentence on the island of pinos the second largest island in the cuban archipelago while in captivity he rebranded the movement as the 26th of july movement in honor of the date on which the attack on moncado barracks had been carried out despite this continuing incendiary behaviour batista took the decision to release castro from prison in the summer of 1955 after having served less than two years of his sentence it was a decision the dictator would soon come to regret after his release in 1955 castro was exiled to mexico city where he and his brother raul began organizing action against batista here they met a fellow latin american revolutionary an argentinian medical doctor by the name of ernesto guevara more widely known by his nickname shay guevara gevara had travelled through south america during his youth and had been radicalized by the appalling poverty which he had witnessed there poverty which he attributed to american neo-imperialism in the months that followed the castros gevara and their followers trained and planned in mexico for their return to cuba meanwhile the batista regime back home was becoming increasingly oppressive thus it was that in the summer of 1956 castro and just over 80 followers left mexico on board a large yacht called the grandma said to have been named after a previous owner's grandmother after a series of misadventures they ran aground at playa las coloradas close to los caguelos in cuba and were attacked by batista's forces who drove them into hiding in the sierra maestra mountains only 19 of the original party survived at this point it was an inauspicious beginning to their armed rebellion but one which would bear surprising fruit in the months and years that followed from their relatively safe position within the sierra maestro mountains fidel and his followers now launched a guerrilla war against batista's regime organizing bombing campaigns against government forces their numbers soon expanded with more and more individuals joining the insurrectionists in the mountains attacks were undertaken against government barracks to attain additional weapons and explosives and by 1957 castro was leading a small army in the rural regions of cuba soon further militant groups were emerging with a desire to overthrow batista's regime as a consequence of all this by 1958 batista's forces were under increasing pressure from the revolutionaries by the summer the conflict began to tip in favor of castro and the 26th of july movement as many of batista's own soldiers began to desert their posts appalled at the crimes against civilians which they were being ordered to carry out in order to combat the revolutionaries eventually on the 31st of december 1958 batista resigned and fled the country for the dominican republic bringing with him 300 million dollars in stolen money on the 2nd of january 1959 castro's forces occupied moncado barracks in a symbolic act and six days later on the 8th of january they entered havana the cuban revolution despite its inauspicious beginnings just over two years earlier was victorious castro did not immediately seize power himself instead the moderate lawyer manuel uruthir yayo was proclaimed as the president of the country in a provisional government however castro and his followers dominated the cabinet of this new interim regime fidel's military power was given formal acknowledgement in his appointment as representative of the rebel armed forces of the presidency the new government effectively ruled by decree without recourse to any parliament and given castro's influence over urotia the leader of the 26th of july movement was the de facto power within the country following batista's overthrow within weeks the situation became clearer as the prime minister jose miro cardona resigned and went into exile in the united states fidel now took office as his successor in mid-february 1959. this was a position he would hold until 1976 when a new constitution was introduced following which he became the president of the council of ministers of cuba castro would eventually hold this until 2008 ensuring that he held high office in cuba for 49 years following his first appointment as prime minister in 1959 it had always been assumed that castro would be the most influential member of the new regime when it came to power an altogether more controversial issue was the country's future relationship with its neighbor and batista's former supporter the united states castro was a proclaimed leftist but for time figures such as the republican candidate for president of the us in 1960 richard nixon believed that castro could be won over to the american cause it was a delusional view castro quite quickly moved his country towards an alliance with the soviet union and like-minded left-leaning regimes throughout latin america moreover his promotion of radical leftists such as guevara to senior government offices clearly indicated which way the regime wished to drive the country relations with the u.s were further soured in the first year or so of the new regime's life when castro ordered the nationalization of american business interests located in cuba tensions further escalated when castro attended a united nations general assembly in new york city in september 1960 where he openly associated himself with regimes opposed to the u.s the growing antagonism soon resulted in an effort to intervene militarily in cuba by the united states government already under the administration of dwight eisenhower millions of dollars of funding had been allocated towards efforts to destabilize castro's regime by the time that president john f kennedy was elected as president late in 1960 the u.s government was already working extensively with cuban exiles who had left their homeland and settled in florida and other parts of america since 1959 many of these cuban exiles had formed themselves into a counter-revolutionary unit called brigade 2506 and a political wing called the democratic revolutionary front these were collaborating with the us central intelligence agency by early 1961. however to avoid suspicion at home and to ensure that the kennedy regime could dissociate itself from the group they were training in central america in guatemala here by the spring of 1961 a plan had been formulated for some 1400 of these cuban paramilitaries to launch a naval invasion of cuba aided by advanced u.s military hardware including b-26 bomber planes and m-41 tanks but despite all their planning and support from the us government the initiative would result in utter failure and would fatally damage u.s cuban relations for the remainder of castro's life the invasion force set off from nicaragua and guatemala by boat on the 16th of april 1961 the previous day the u.s had bombed several sites in cuba then on the morning of the 17th of april the 1400 cuban paramilitaries began landing along the coast within an inlet of the gulf of gazones or bay of pigs on the southern coast of cuba within hours brigade 2506 were engaged in a shootout with a local militia this provided a sufficient delay for castro and his government in havana to respond to the landing fidel now ordered captain jose ramon fernandez to initiate a counter-attack in the hours that followed bombings commenced to destroy the invaders fleet with this accomplished and the brigade 2506's escape route blocked castro's forces moved in with fidel taking personal control of the operation himself at this stage the initial plans for the invasion had involved significant air support from the us but this was dropped by kennedy's administration without it and with their escape route cut off the invasion force was doomed on the 20th of april just over three days after their initial landing brigade 2506 surrendered having already lost 118 men and hundreds more having suffered wounds accordingly over 1 200 cuban paramilitaries were captured by the castro regime the reaction to the disastrous bayer pigs invasion was multi-faceted for castro he could now claim a great victory over the american imperialists which his regime vilified as oppressing and trying to control latin america conversely the abortive invasion of the country was a foreign policy disaster for kennedy's regime not only was it exposed as having conspired to overthrow a foreign government but the botched nature of the invasion looked poor from a military perspective though kennedy's government did manage to negotiate the release of over 1 000 of the cuban paramilitaries in 1962 in return for over 50 million dollars of food and medicine for cuba this aside the most significant consequence of the attempted bay of pigs invasion of cuba was that it propelled the country further towards the soviet union in the cold war camps within weeks more intense negotiations were underway between moscow and havana as castro sought greater trade and military ties with the soviet union and the countries within its communist bloc then in december 1961 castro publicly affirmed that he was a communist essentially throwing his country into the soviet camp in response the kennedy administration promoted the idea that the organization of american states should expel cuba a showdown appeared imminent the bay of pigs was just the first act in a much more volatile situation which was to develop in cuba in the course of 1962 the infamous cuban missile crisis the crisis is broadly understood to have been the point at which the cold war came closest to evolving into a full-blown nuclear conflict the events of the bay of pigs in the spring of 1961 had quickly led castro to begin moving even closer to the soviet union it was increasingly believed after the events of 1961 that a new american attack or plot would eventually materialize and that the only way to protect the revolution and maintain the castro regime in power was to allow the soviet union to set up military defenses in cuba itself consequently in the months following the bay of pigs fidel castro had negotiated an arrangement with the russian premier nikita khrushchev whereby the soviet union would install its advanced ballistic missiles at sites in cuba this would ensure that the country would be protected against a possible invasion by the united states or american-backed counter-revolutionaries it was a fateful decision one which would create one of the foremost political crises in modern history on the 14th of october 1962 major richard hayes the pilot of a us u2 spy plane was undertaking a reconnaissance mission over cuba when he spotted and photographed a site on the island where russian ss4 medium-range ballistic missiles were being assembled two days later the american president john f kennedy was briefed about the russian missile sites being established in cuba this was the beginning of the so-called 13 days of what has become known as the cuban missile crisis kennedy immediately convened a meeting of the national security council and several other key advisors it was decided that these sites were or would soon be capable of launching russian nuclear missiles and that these missiles would be capable of striking every major american city on the east coast in minutes or hours in the course of this initial meeting kennedy was advised by several individuals to immediately move to directly bomb the missile sites in cuba and to perhaps then commence a direct invasion of the island to overthrow castro's regime and ensure that no further threats of this nature will be directed against america however kennedy opted for a less aggressive action but one which nevertheless opened a period of intense political crisis in the days that followed the crisis which now developed largely played out between washington and moscow despite the fact that the nuclear warheads which were causing the crisis were located on cuban soil and involved castro's regime explicitly nevertheless the political gambit that was playing out here was that russia would provide cuba with extensive financial and military aid in return for castro's regime allowing the soviets to locate their missiles on cuban soil it should be noted that the soviets viewed this as a strategically acceptable thing to do by 1962 the united states had had its own ballistic weapons and their nuclear weapons stationed for many years in regions which were just as geographically close to russia as cuba was to the united states notably turkey on the soviet union's southern border khrushchev and the principal members of the soviet government in moscow believed that they could install nuclear weapons in cuba in a similar way to which the u.s had earlier stationed them in turkey after all if the united states had their warheads trained on moscow and other soviet cities from close by then why should russia not do the same but if this was their rationale they were soon to be proved wrong although in a way which would serve russian ends in the long run the crisis deepened in the days that followed the initial meeting on the 16th of october on the 22nd of october after initial diplomatic exchanges failed kennedy's government ordered what was referred to as a quarantine of any shipping entering or leaving cuba the word blockade was avoided as under certain legal definitions this would have constituted a declaration of war with castro's cuba american planes and ships were quickly dispatched to the western caribbean to monitor all ships attempting to enter cuba and to assess whether their contents included war material that evening kennedy delivered a live televised address to the nation in which he affirmed that any attack initiated against any country in the western hemisphere from cuba would be considered as an attack on the united states by the soviet union he then explained that the purpose of the quarantine which had just been introduced was to ensure that no further russian military hardware arrived in cuba however kennedy maintained that the purpose of the quarantine was not to shut off all goods entering the country in the same manner in which the russians had cut off all supplies by land into west berlin during the berlin blockade of 1948 the next step now lay with the wider international community and khrushchev's government in russia in the days that followed the crisis deepened as america's allies and those of the soviet union intensified their rhetoric and willingness to come to their respective allies aid if the crisis developed into an outright war on the 24th of october pope john xxiii issued a plea for both sides to consider the implications of their actions throughout these days castro continued to insist that the installation of the weapons was a defensive action rather than offensive but the response which mattered was that which came from moscow the first signs were not good on the 24th of october soviet news agencies broadcast a telegram from khrushchev to kennedy stating that the soviet union considered the quarantine to be an act of military aggression and requesting that they cease activities in the waters around cuba with immediate effect this effectively signaled a further escalation in the crisis thus on the 24th of october and during the hours which followed the world stood perhaps as close to the outbreak of a nuclear war as it ever has all caused by the installation of the nuclear ballistic missiles in castro's cuba in the hours that followed the us requested a meeting of the united nations security council while also sending hundreds of bomber planes including nearly two dozen b-52 bombers carrying nuclear warheads which were put into the air around cuba and also near soviet airspace the world stood on the brink of nuclear war the 25th 26th and 27th of october witnessed the most intense period of the cuban missile crisis as diplomatic negotiations continued between russia and the united states ships heading to cuba continued to be checked for nuclear warheads by the american quarantine negotiations did open between moscow and washington on the 26th but these were nearly compromised by the shooting down of an american plane by a surface-to-air missile launched from cuba khrushchev subsequently stated that this attack had been ordered by fidel's brother raul rather than being a directive of the soviet union in washington a decision was now taken to invade cuba if another plane was shot down but cooler heads prevailed by the end of the 27th of october negotiations were advanced for the russians to withdraw their missiles and cease developing the launch sites in cuba in return for kennedy's government removing its own nuclear warheads from turkey additionally kennedy wrote to khrushchev stating that the u.s government would respect the sovereignty of cuba henceforth and not attempt another intervention such as had been attempted with the invasion of the bay of pigs this arrangement was enough that both the us and the soviet union could save face and cuba's independence would henceforth be preserved thus the cuban missile crisis came to an end after 13 days on the 29th of october 1962. in the aftermath of the crisis an arrangement was reached to establish better communications between the u.s government and the soviet regime in moscow the cold war also gradually entered a period of de-escalation one which saw tensions reduced gradually through the 1960s and especially in the 1970s before a fresh escalation in the 1980s for fidel's cuba the impact of all this was that the island nation would not be directly interfered with by the united states again castro continued to move the country closer within russia's sphere of influence within the cold war during the early 1960s visiting moscow and several other soviet cities in 1963. as a result of this state visit he initiated a number of reforms of cuban society and its economy and politics in the years that followed which mirrored those which prevailed throughout the soviet union thus cuba would continue to act as an antagonistic country opposed to the united states on its doorstep meanwhile america for its part while never again interfering directly in cuban affairs continue to impose wide-ranging economic diplomatic and trade sanctions against castro's regime and cuba ones which would have considerable implications for the country's economy in the years and decades ahead the subsequent period of cuba's development under fidel's rule brought mixed and ambiguous results owing to a combination of factors some of which were associated with the american economic sanctions imposed on the island and some of which were the result of poor economic planning by castro's government itself the country entered into a major economic decline in the 1960s much of the country's economy continued to be reliant on the sugar industry much as that of the wider caribbean had been since the 17th century but other developing industries such as the casino and tourist sector which had been growing in the pre-revolution period now declined exponentially as a result the country was increasingly reliant on subsidies from the soviet union throughout the 1960s which at one stage amounted to nearly 40 percent of cuba's gdp however thereafter things improved while the state was the main player the cuban economy nevertheless improved considerably in the 1970s and the 1980s even during periods of general international economic stagnation but as we will see the decline of the soviet union in the 1980s and the eventual end of the cold war ushered in a renewed period of economic difficulties for the cuban economy in the late 20th century one of the most significant achievements of the castro regime must surely be the health care system which was built up in the decades under fidel's rule cuba's healthcare system was already one of the most successful in latin america prior to the cuban revolution but these successes were expanded from the 1960s onwards universal healthcare became free and equally accessible to all cuban people under the castro regime significant investment commenced in the 1960s in response to an exodus of cuban doctors to the united states in the early years of the regime the government's commitment to the health care system was also underpinned specifically in article 50 of the cuban constitution issued in 1976 as a consequence the ratio of doctors to patients in the country increased from a low of 9.2 doctors for every 10 000 individuals in 1958 to a high of nearly 60 doctors for every 10 000 citizens in 1999 as a result cuba has a lower rate of infant mortality than the united states and life expectancy at birth is 79 years of age the country was also highly successful in the 1990s and 2000s in eliminating and reducing the spread of hiv and has developed numerous innovative medical interventions in recent decades ahead of the more developed western world notably a groundbreaking lung cancer vaccine the country's education system similarly flourished during fidel castro's time as ruler of the country all educational institutions were brought under state ownership and management following the revolution the education system was along with the healthcare system made a priority by the administration and was invested in heavily in recent decades the castro regime spent as much as 10 percent of the country's gross national product on the education system roughly twice the amount spent by neighbouring developed countries on average immediately after the revolution a campaign was undertaken to eradicate illiteracy in the country by 2000 over 97 percent of cubans in their young adult years were literate moreover a study in 1998 by unesco found that cuban students had a considerably higher level of education than their contemporaries in much of the developed world this extended to third level institutions such as the university of havana which were also nationalized in 1961. additionally the country was highly progressive in how it has facilitated equal access for women to higher education as well as men perhaps the foremost indication of the success of both this education system and the castro regime's healthcare policy is that institutions such as the university of havana have become attractive options for international students despite the manner in which cuba had become the central theatre of the cold war in the years immediately following the cuban revolution in the 1970s castro moved the country to a more neutral stance in the global conflict between the united states and its allies in nato and the soviet union this focused on the non-aligned movement a forum or informal union of developing nation-states which had emerged in the 1950s as an alternative to siding with either of the two major power blocks in the cold war the driving force behind the non-aligned movement had initially been india under its prime minister jawaharlal nehru and communist yugoslavia under yoseptito at first castro's appearance at the fourth summit of the non-aligned movement in algeria in 1973 had aroused criticism from nation-states who believed that cuba was too closely associated with moscow however in the years that followed castro managed to pull cuba away from russia politically and in the late 1970s he served as president of the non-aligned movement economic practicalities and the continuing sanctions imposed on the country by the united states ensured that the soviet union remained cuba's major trading partner but under castro in the 1970s the country pulled back dramatically from the front lines of the cold war castro's decision to reduce its partisan ties with the soviet union was not based on a general unwillingness to engage in foreign wars indeed the 1970s saw cuba become a major actor in numerous international conflicts in latin america and africa particularly the latter castro had always been influenced by che guevara in his belief that cuba was just one actor in a wider effort at international revolution thus from its earliest days the cuban government under castro had provided support to numerous left-wing and revolutionary movements throughout the southern hemisphere additionally in the 1960s guevara with castro's approval had set up a guerrilla movement known as the andean project with the goal of fermenting left-wing revolutions in peru bolivia and argentina this particular scheme was abandoned when gevara was captured and killed by the u.s central intelligence agency in bolivia in october 1967 despite this setback which came as a strong blow to fidel on both a political and a personal level castro continued to act as a supporter of revolutionary movements in the years that followed throughout latin america and the caribbean in the 1970s it was africa where castro became most active on the world stage and in his support for other revolutions in the mid-1960s he and gevara had supported rebels in the congo against an american-backed regime this strategy was expanded in the 1970s with castro referring at the time to africa as the weakest link in the imperialist chain consequently in 1975 hundreds of military advisers were sent to angola in south west africa where a civil war had just broken out following the country's independence from portugal castro's advisers were sent to aid the communist people's movement for the liberation of angola against the western-backed national union for the total independence of angola it was the start of an enormous role which cuba played in a bloody angolan civil war which would drag on in one shape or another for 27 years by 1991 over 370 000 cuban military troops and a further 50 000 cuban civilians had served in angola as doctors nurses and in other roles this means that nearly five percent of the cuban population served in angola in some capacity during the first 15 years of the civil war there nor was this the only front in which cuba fought in africa at the time fidel castro also involved the nation in civil wars and revolutionary engagements in countries such as somalia and madagascar in the late 1970s despite the country's increasing role in fermenting and supporting revolutionary movements across africa in the 1970s cuba's relationship with the united states and its allies improved slightly in the latter part of the decade this occurred as a coalition of leaders including president luis echeverria of mexico prime minister pierre trudeau of canada and the u.s president jimmy carter combined to offer to improve relations with the island nation in particular carter was willing to abandon the antagonistic stance which had been favored by his predecessors in the white house notably john f kennedy and richard nixon and while carter continued to criticize many aspects of castro's regime he also entered into meaningful negotiations with a view to improving relations between the two neighbouring countries castro agreed to release numerous political prisoners and put in place measures which would allow cubans who had fled the united states following the revolution 20 years earlier to temporarily visit family back in cuba albeit under strict conditions for his part castro hoped that the united states would end its economic embargo on the country while this did not happen the more punitive measures were watered down providing some financial respite despite certain successes at home within cuba in developing the country's education and healthcare system the country was blighted throughout fidel's long tenure as head of state by an oppressive authoritarian government as elsewhere globally the communist regime did not accept challenges to its authority and there was little scope for political dissent press censorship and efforts to root out bourgeois or counter-revolutionary elements within cuban society were rife throughout the period of the cold war though especially so during the so-called grey years a period of nearly a decade during the 1970s when castro's regime was particularly oppressive during this period there was widespread cultural censorship of poets and artists and harassment of intellectuals and academics the homosexual community suffered in particular during these years the net result of all of this was a growing swell of individuals seeking to illegally leave from cuba to head to the united states the state of florida being just a small boat ride away from the country the grey years began to taper off following the establishment of a new constitution in 1976 and a loosening of some state control over the arts but political dissent remained anathema to castro's regime for years to come the persecution of individuals within cuba for opposing fidel's authoritarian rule led to a major development in 1980 which has shaped much of the cuban community in the united states after years of oppression and efforts by tens of thousands of individuals to leave cuba castro's regime decided to temporarily open a port in order to allow individuals to leave the country this was the port of marielle and its harbour lying some 40 kilometers to the west of havana for over six months between the 15th of april 1980 and the end of the following october the port was open for anyone who wanted to leave cuba for the united states in total before it was closed again just over six months later approximately 120 000 cubans left for the us what has become known as the marielle boatlift became a political issue in america where the administration of president jimmy carter was unsure what to do with the arrivals if they continued to come to the u.s in such numbers by the time that mariel harbor was closed again the huge influx of cubans into florida and the city of miami in particular had changed the demographics of the sunshine state in ways which have had implications down to the present day particularly so as the cuban-american vote are a large group with their own political lobby in a state which is consistently a swing state in american presidential elections the 1980s brought considerable change to cuba under fidel's rule the country's economy yet again declined owing to a global fall in the price of sugar the country's main export commodity unemployment rose sharply as a consequence cuba which had successfully rested itself away from soviet influence to some extent in the 1970s found itself drifting back towards a reliance on russian subsidies and the russian export market again yet this was a time limited strategy in 1985 mikhail gorbachev had succeeded as general secretary of the communist party of the soviet union a reformer he began to initiate a series of new policies which aimed to modernize the soviet union and bring an end to the cold war which had entered a more intense period again since ronald reagan had entered office as u.s president in 1981 but gorbachev's reforms had unintended consequences and by the late 1980s the eastern bloc of communist countries stretching from east germany to the borders of russia were agitating for wide-ranging political reforms in november 1989 the berlin wall fell reuniting the city the division of which had become a symbol of the cold war nearly half a century earlier and two years later the soviet union collapsed bringing an end to the conflict between capitalist america and communist russia the implications of the collapse of the soviet union were profound for castro and cuba for 40 years fidel had fashioned himself as the arch nemesis of america on the country's very own doorstep one who had been an ally of the soviet union moreover the country had been resoundingly reliant on moscow for financial support to help its economy at various times between the early 1960s and the late 1980s but now as the soviet union collapsed and the cold war came to an end communist regimes such as castros were being overthrown rapidly in countries such as poland and elsewhere across eastern europe there was a strong possibility that the same would happen in cuba but fidel quickly moved to ensure a continuation of his rule he strengthened his control over the cuban military to prevent any revolt from within the armed forces and temporarily allied the country with other regimes across latin america which were fellow antagonists of the united states through such mechanisms castro was able to ensure a continuation of the communist regime in cuba beyond the end of the cold war though the united states indicated its intention to continue to apply pressure on castro's government by securing a vote to the united nations human rights commission accusing his regime of widespread human rights abuses the survival of castro's regime beyond the end of the cold war ushered in an era which fidel referred to as a special period in time of peace but despite castro's assertion of this being a special time the raw truth of the 1990s for most cubans was one of increasing destitution the country was now continuing to face economic sanctions from the united states and was cut off from the funding and support which it had long received from moscow gorbachev's successor as head of the new russian state baris yeltsin possessed a deep antipathy for fidel and the country offered virtually no support to its former ally thus despite some piecemeal efforts to improve relations with some western powers cuba's economy collapsed in the early 1990s by 1992 economic activity had declined by nearly 40 percent on the level it had been in 1990 electricity shortages were widespread across the island nation petrol to run cars and for other purposes was in short supply while imports of essential goods such as russian manufactured cars completely dried up over time there was a domino effect as increasing shortages of raw materials saw cuban factories being shut down further driving unemployment and economic decline thus the special period was actually one of economic free fall in cuba the economic crisis of the early 1990s did produce a response within broader cuban society there was a clear undercurrent of unrest at the difficulties ordinary people were experiencing in response the regime sought to ameliorate the economic situation before it led to efforts to overthrow the government as had happened across eastern europe accordingly from late 1991 onwards piecemeal plans were being initiated to allow private industries to operate in cuba and to permit the use of american dollars as an alternative currency in addition some political reforms were initiated which aimed to make the country's government more representative of the people and to bring in younger political leaders to replace many of the senior figures who like castro had risen on the back of their involvement in the revolution back in the 1950s inward and outward travel were also relaxed and this contributed greatly to the rejuvenation of the country's economy as tourism with most visitors arriving from spain and latin america quickly replaced sugar production as the most important sector of the cuban economy as a result by 1996 the country's budget deficit had been nearly eliminated and foreign investment was increasing though with criticisms abounding that the socialist ideals of the revolution were being betrayed despite this deregulation of parts of the cuban economy fidel himself continued to present himself on the world stage as the inveterate opponent of capitalism and sided with many regimes around the world which were antagonistic towards the united states and the western capitalist powers in general some of this was retrospectively statesmanlike for instance castro had long been a firm opponent of the policy of apartheid practiced by the south african government and indeed cuba's long-running involvement in the angolan civil war had partially been to provide aid to south african dissidents as a long-standing friend of the leading anti-apartheid campaigner nelson mandela castro was asked to attend mandela's inauguration as the first black president of south africa in 1994. perhaps more controversial was castro's leadership of a new alliance of latin american states which espoused an anti-american stance and favored socialism in this fidel was most closely aligned with hugo chavez of venezuela with castro providing healthcare expertise from cuba in return for venezuelan oil other countries such as bolivia would associate themselves with the pink tide as this movement became known but the subsequent collapse of venezuela politically and economically has considerably tarnished the reputation of this initiative it was also in the post-cold war period that castro's personal life became a subject of some attention this followed from the defection of his daughter to the united states in 1993 when she sought asylum there after which she widely criticized her father's regime castro's wider private life was a closely protected thing and also substantially unconventional he married at least twice but also had several long-running affairs his marriage to his second wife dalia soto del valle resulted in five sons but he also had numerous other children from his other relationships his closest relationship though was with his younger brother raul his associate in power since the late 1950s generally though castro was known to be taciturn and private and despite being the head of the communist regime fidel did not astute having more material wealth than the average cuban and in addition to a large estate called punto cerro in havana he had several other large residences and often travelled by limousine despite this the public image of the man who was referred to as the commandante or the commander throughout his long reign was carefully manufactured and controlled and castro rarely appeared in public wearing anything other than a green military uniform in 2003 the cuban national assembly granted castro a further five-year term as president of the country however just three years later in july 2006 fidel transferred power on a provisional basis to his long-standing ally and brother raul castro initially this hiatus was intended to allow fidel sufficient time to recover from surgery which he had undergone for a serious intestinal problem which had led to internal bleeding it was the first time since the cuban revolution success and the victorious entry into havana in 1959 that fidel was not effectively at the head of the state this retirement was made permanent a year and a half later by february 2008 the comandante had not been seen in public for over 19 months and when the national assembly met to determine who would serve as president for the next five years it was possibly unsurprising for cuba and the wider international community to learn that fidel who was 81 years of age at the time would not stand for another term instead power would devolve to his brother raul who was elected as president of the national assembly on the 24th of february 2008 bringing to an end his brother's 49 years as head of the communist regime in cuba castro's retirement was spent largely out of the spotlight as his health deteriorated he continued to publish articles in grammar the official newspaper of the cuban communist party and occasionally gave public lectures he composed his memoirs the first volume of which appeared as the strategic victory and provided an account of the war against batista's regime in the 1950s in 2011 he relinquished his last major position in politics when he stepped down as secretary-general of the communist party of cuba in favor of his brother raul yet he continued to play something of a role on the international stage in his final years becoming an advocate of nuclear non-proliferation and warning of the risks of a war between the united states and a nuclear power such as north korea however he did not meet with the u.s president barack obama when in march 2016 he became the first american head of state to visit the country since the revolution just over half a year later fidel died on the 25th of november 2016 of an undisclosed illness a funeral procession was undertaken along the route through which the revolutionaries had traveled across cuba in 1958 and early 1959 before his ashes were interred in santa iwikenia cemetery in santiago de cuba the cuba that fidel left behind after his nearly half a century as its dictatorial ruler is one of mixed legacies today the country continues to be ruled by the communist party of cuba as a one-party authoritarian state in much the same way as other communist regimes such as china survived the end of the cold war however like china the country has been forced to move away from a strict adherence to socialist ideas since 1991 though cuba had remained a strong advocate of left-wing latin american socialism as such there is still a planned or controlled economy there one though which does allow limited private enterprise and which has become increasingly reliant on tourism the growth of the latter sector has opened cuba up to the outside world in the last 20 years in ways which were unthinkable for most of castro's tenure as head of the regime however there are many things which continue to blight the lives of cubans the country has a poor human rights record and one of the worst records in terms of freedom of the press meanwhile the economy remains markedly underdeveloped and continues to have some economic sanctions imposed on it by other countries and yet a series of political and economic reforms in recent years offers the prospect of a more open society and economy developing in the near to medium future fidel castro was an individual with a lengthy political career which it is difficult to assess he started as a latin american revolutionary one who wished to remove american influence from cuba and reform the country's politics there is no doubting that when he led the cuban revolution in the 1950s that the island was bedeviled by appalling corruption and misconduct in government epitomized by fulgencio batista thus there was a considerable legitimacy to anyone reacting against the government in cuba at this time however owing to the manner in which the cuban revolution occurred during the 1950s it quickly drew the new cuban government into the political influence of the soviet union as a result the country became a central agent in the cold war in the early 1960s and was infamous for being the environment in which the united states and the soviet union came closest to nuclear war however the most long-lasting impact of this was that cuba was and continues to operate under economic sanctions which the united states has maintained for over 60 years the economic problems which this created cast a long shadow over cuba and its economic development during the near half century that fidel castro ruled the country whatever the circumstances of the cuban revolution and the island's role in the cold war in the late 1950s and early 1960s there were several decades thereafter during which castro's reign over cuba can be evaluated based on these years it must be viewed as a fairly mixed legacy some reforms and innovations which were introduced into cuban society were very positive and the country enjoys an education and healthcare system which is accessible to all and which would be the envy of the average american who has to pay high fees to access the best universities or shop around for jobs which offer private health insurance as a result cuba has been able to make remarkable medical breakthroughs for a country of its small size and is a net contributor to global medical aid efforts but contrasted with this is the fact that castro's cuba was a highly oppressive authoritarian regime which persecuted much of its population over the last half century in order to maintain castro and his followers in a position of unchallenged power in havana castro may be regarded as a man who oversaw a regime which demonstrated how communism could benefit many of its citizens in the realms of education and healthcare but whose rule was ultimately sullied by his repressive actions and authoritarianism what do you think of fidel castro was he a nationalist patriot who liberated the cuban people from an oppressive dictatorial regime or was he simply another dictator himself who in turn oppressed the cuban people please let us know in the comment section and in the meantime thank you very much for watching the man known to history as mao zedong or chairman mao was born on the 26th of december 1893 in the village of shao shan in the province of hunan in southern china his father was maui chang who had been raised in a family of poverty-stricken peasants however after serving in the xiang army for a few years in his youth yi chang had returned to his native region and began working as a farmer he soon acquired enough money to become a lender in the district and this combined with his agricultural work allowed him to become one of the more prosperous farmers in the shaoxin area eventually coming into possession of about 20 acres of land mao's mother was wun chime a devout buddhist who had a troubled upbringing her father was a poor shoemaker who drank heavily and her mother had been his concubine mao's childhood was less than ideal his father was a strict disciplinarian whose method of parenting primarily involved beating mao and his three siblings if they did not do as they were told their mother tried to temper his outbursts but with little effect young mao developed an interest in his mother's buddhism when he was younger though he soon became disenchanted with religion and when he was just eight years old he was sent to the local primary school in chaoshan just as the 20th century was dawning his education there was a mixture of traditional chinese learning centered on confucianism combined with the centuries-old values of the far east along with a sprinkling of influences from the encroaching western world which could not be avoided in china by the 1900s additionally the young mao developed an interest early on in history and politics when he was 13 years old his father arranged for him to be married to luoyishio the 17 year old daughter of another prosperous local farmer but mao demonstrated his rebellious streak at a young age and refused to honor the arranged marriage causing something of a controversy in the shaoshan area and as a result of this disagreement the teenaged mao temporarily left his father's farm although he returned before very long mao was growing up at a time when china was experiencing momentous change like korea and japan to the east china had first come into contact with european traders and religious missionaries in the 16th and early 17th centuries and like them the chinese had quickly become wary of the newcomers and had restricted their contacts with them to one or two ports in the south east of the country but a tiny amount of trade was conducted it continued like this for nearly two centuries with china remaining largely closed to a world which was modernizing without it it remained highly conservative in its religious social and political values changing little and continuing to be ruled by an emperor and a closed government of imperial rituals and administrators as it had been for centuries but by the mid-19th century china again like japan and korea could no longer prevent the europeans with their modern warships guns and industrial power from interfering in their countries with the opium wars of 1839 to 1842 and 1856 to 1860 britain forced china to end its self-imposed isolation following which china experienced a flood of european contact and with it came not just british opium but ideas about different types of government new economic development and all manner of technological innovation perhaps the most striking and revolutionary of these new ideas which arrived into china from the mid-19th century onwards was the knowledge that the europeans and the americans were not ruled by powerful monarchs and emperors anymore many lived under republics governed by the people and even where some of these countries still had emperors or empresses such as queen victoria in britain she was essentially a figurehead and it was parliament that actually ruled the british empire moreover these democracies were not all alike some were very conservative some were more liberal and some had different degrees of economic development and there were also competing ideas about how they should be reformed and developed with some wanting the wealthy to hold a great amount of power and others who believed that power and wealth should be distributed equally throughout society and there were more extreme ideas again one of these developed in particular by the german political scientist karl marx in the mid 19th century argued that all wealth and goods should be held in communal ownership he called this communism in early 20th century china these ideas would soon lead to great change as many began questioning why they were still ruled by the emperor of the nearly 300 year old qing dynasty as mao entered his teenage years he was already reading about these political ideas he was particularly interested in calls for a democracy to be established in china to replace the imperial government and also the republican writings of sunyat sen who had become a figurehead for the republican movement within china he would soon see these desires confirmed just as mao was starting at a new school in changsha the country was entering into a period of rapid change regional famines had struck parts of china in the late 1900s and early 1910s and this combined with numerous regional uprisings throughout the country and growing calls for a more representative government led to an army revolt in october 1911. at first the imperial government of emperor puji who was just a six-year-old child tried to address the grievances of the dissenters but it soon became apparent that a more drastic shift would be necessary after weeks of negotiations it was determined in february 1912 that the emperor would abdicate and a new republic of china would be established with the imperial officer yuan shikai serving as its first president of a national government thus an empire which had been in existence for centuries had ended it was however very unclear in the mid-1910s exactly in what direction china's politics would now head these were striking developments and ones which mao had not been entirely removed from when the conflict erupted late in 1911 he had enlisted in the rebel army as an 18 year old recruit now in the spring of 1912 he simply returned to school and it was around this time that he first started reading about the idea of socialism and communism as more radical forms of government yet he remained unconvinced that this was the best approach for china at that time meanwhile his education continued he determined at some point around 1913 that he would become a teacher and so he enrolled in the first normal school of hunan widely regarded at the time as the best in the province here he became a popular and accomplished student reading widely being elected secretary of the student society and eventually finishing as one of the highest ranked students in the school more pivotally in terms of his later activities mao was increasingly exposed to the socialist ideas he had first encountered a few years earlier and over time he began to find that he agreed more with what he read particularly so as the environment of the first normal school was one of radical political thought especially during china's first forays into representative government in 1917 mao moved to peking now beijing where one of his main influences at this time young chung-ji had taken a job at the peking university here mao also took a job as a library assistant but he was increasingly moving in circles of individuals who favored socialism and communism or marxism as a solution to china's political woes even with the establishment of the republic in 1912 the country had continued to experience turbulence as conservative and liberal forces fought amongst each other and regional warlords and power groups exercised quasi-regional independence throughout the country marxism appealed to many at this time because the bolsheviks a branch of russian communism had secured control of the russian government in the autumn of 1917 just months after the fall of the autocratic tsarist government there perhaps many thought communism was also suitable for china which had just done away with its own fossilized autocratic imperial government mao was increasingly leaning towards that viewpoint himself in 1918 and 1919 an outlook which was compounded when he experienced the bourgeois hostility of the beijing upper and middle class towards a country boy like himself it was in beijing that mao's awakening as a political radical fully occurred china was drifting ever further into political anarchy in the late 1910s as a buoyant nationalist movement led by sunyat sen sought to rejuvenate the republic in its infancy which the nationalists perceived as being governed by a weak conservative regime with too many links to the old imperial past in parts of the country the government could exercise its authority but in others it was little more than a government in name only this instability was augmented when the chinese government failed to secure the former german concession of shandong at the versailles peace negotiations in paris following the end of the first world war the nationalists considered it an affront to national pride when this piece of mainland china was instead granted to japan a nation which had been exercising its strength across east asia since the late 19th century when it had modernized in a far more successful manner than china and the shandong controversy was a direct cause of a major student protest which occurred in beijing on the 4th of may 1919 this was driven by a younger generation of political activists like mao who were tired of china's seeming impotence on the world stage and disordered internal politics the movement would continue afterwards and lead indirectly to the chinese civil war many years later the may 4th movement the awakening of china's younger generations to radical politics is generally seen as the origins of the communist party of china the events of 1919 led many young chinese people who were interested in politics to increasingly turn their backs on the western liberals of britain france and america who had betrayed them on shandong and increasingly to turn towards the marxism and leninism that was gradually winning the russian civil war and cementing its control over russia as we have seen mao was already interested in communism by 1919 but it was only in the months following the may 4th protests that he began to fully commit himself to it and that summer he organized several student organizations into an umbrella body to protest against the japanese presence in shandong this is the first clear sign of his abilities as an organizer and his writings around this time and into 1920 began to speak of the army of the red flag and to the victories won by the communists in russia by the time that the communist party of china was formally established in the summer of 1921 mao had proclaimed himself to be a communist believing that the ideology would be the basis for the coming revolution in china it would be a slow ascent towards that revolution however in the meantime mao married again in 1920 to yang kaihuei the daughter of one of his former teachers then in july 1921 he attended the first congress of the communist party of china a decision was taken early on by the new party to accept aid from russia but also to establish an alliance with sunyatsen's nationalist party the kwamin tang which would soon be led by a younger nationalist by the name of chiang kai-shek mao was one of the first of the chinese communists to also join the nationalist party in the belief that the conservative chinese political establishment would only be overthrown if the nationalists and the communists worked in league with each other as such he spent much of the 1920s living in the nationalist stronghold of guangzhou province and working as an organizer and propagandist for both the communists and the nationalists simultaneously and throughout this period mao was gaining a greater appreciation of the struggles of the chinese peasantry throughout the country and the strength in sheer numbers which they had if they were won over to the communist cause as such the early and mid-1920s were formative if somewhat unremarkable years in mao's career this all began to change in 1926 with the death of sunyat sen in 1925 chiang kai-shek had taken over the leadership of the nationalists by this time his party the kuomintang had control over large parts of southern china but the country was still highly fragmented with the conservative government of the republic holding beijing and much of the north and quasi-independent chinese warlords who were vestiges of the imperial past holding other parts of the country in 1926 chang determined to force the issue and launched a nationalist military campaign to seize beijing the northern expedition as it has become known was a major success and during the course of 1926 and 1927 the nationalists seized power in many of the major cities but the very success of the northern expedition also led to civil war now the loose alliance which the chinese communists and the nationalists had been in since 1921 was effectively ended by chiang kai-shek who had grown wary of the expanding power of the communists and the role russia wished to play in china once the conservative regime in beijing was done away with the result was a split itself within the nationalist party in 1927 between zhang's right-leaning nationalists and a left-leaning faction which wished to accommodate the communists these events are typically seen as the beginning of the chinese civil war which would last for over 20 years in the summer of 1927 chiang kai-shek's newly ascendant komintang began a crackdown on communists throughout china thousands were killed and the party was suppressed in many places mao's reaction to this major setback and the inception of civil war between the nationalists and the communists was to retreat with several hundred followers into the wilderness around the jingang mountains on the border of hunan province it was the beginning of a long period of guerrilla warfare during which the communist party with tacit aid from russia sought to disrupt the rule of the nationalists in anticipation of mass urban revolts by workers throughout the country against the new government these were often tough years for mao his wife and sister were beheaded by the nationalists in 1930 though in his new life as a guerrilla fighter in rural china he had formed a relationship with her turjan whom he married soon after yang kaiwei was killed it was also around this time that he determined on a new course instead of waiting for a revolt of the chinese urban proletariat he would attempt the same strategy as had brought the chinese nationalist to power building up a territory which he would control and expand outwards in february 1930 mao who by now was one of the senior commanders of the chinese communist movement established the southwest jiangxi provincial soviet government in jiangxi province although the nationalists controlled most of the country for a few years here in the early 1930s mao established a chinese soviet state in jiangxi with him serving as the chairman the red army had also expanded and was now under the overall control of joan lai with the wider chinese communist party focusing attentions on jiangxi as a safe base for them in the early 1930s indeed mao in lai and the red army saw off several efforts by chiang kai-shek to rest control of the province back from them in the early 1930s by encircling jiangxi however this military response was limited by the nationalists in part because it had found itself embroiled in a conflict on the other side of china in the early 1930s as the empire of japan invaded the northeastern chinese provinces of manchuria and established a puppet state called manchu there it was just the beginning of heightened japanese involvement in china in the 1930s but once the initial ferrari concerning manchuria died down chang set his sights on finally reclaiming jiangxi province from mao and the communists in the mid-1930s in september 1933 the chinese nationalists began the fifth encirclement of mao and the communists in jiangxi province this effectively involved an enormous siege by the nationalists and one which would prove too large for the red army to repulse by the summer of 1934 it was clear that mao and his followers would either have to surrender or break out of the besieged area they chose the latter and the resulting events have become part of communist party law in october 1934 communist forces consisting of 86 000 troops 15 000 personnel and 35 women broke through nationalist enemy lines and began an epic retreat from their encircled headquarters in southwest china the long march as it became known lasted 368 days and covered six 000 miles they crossed 24 rivers and 18 mountain ranges weapons and supplies were born on the backs of fighters or in horse-drawn carts and at times the line of marchers stretched for 50 miles only 4 000 troops completed the journey enduring starvation aerial bombardment and almost daily skirmishes with nationalist forces mao eventually halted his columns at the foot of the great wall of china the long march is regarded as the longest continuous march in the history of warfare and marked the emergence of mao zedong as the undisputed leader of the chinese communists the months after the long march saw a curious drift in chinese politics towards the rapprochement between the communists and the nationalists for years the nationalist government of chiang kai-shek had been dealing with problems on multiple fronts as well as the communists there was the perhaps greater problem posed by the empire of japan and its ambitions to dominate the far east politically and militarily this had already resulted in the invasion of manchuria and the establishment of the puppet state of manchu in the early 1930s but as the years went by it was clear that the emperor's government in tokyo had ambitions for an even greater land grab in china accordingly many within the nationalist movement believed it would be best to put aside their differences with the communists for the foreseeable future and form a coherent opposition to the impending japanese attack and for their part mao and his followers were encouraged to do the same by moscow thus during the course of 1935 and 1936 mao's communists and chiang kai-shek's nationalists were once again drifting towards an alliance of convenience the drive towards doing so was accelerated in july 1937 when the japanese again invaded china and proceeded to militarily occupy many of the major cities along its eastern coast massacring tens of thousands of chinese civilians in cities such as nanjing in the process the chinese civil war now morphed into the second sino-japanese war and in turn that would become a constituent part of the second world war in later years by the end of 1937 the communists and the nationalists were formally allied with each other again after chiang kai-shek caved in to pressure to do so from within his own ranks and mao also married again around this time to zhang ching an actress who would become his fourth and final wife as an example of his growing ruthlessness his former wife her turjan was packed off to the soviet union where she was placed in a mental asylum meanwhile the nature of the struggle against japan which would play out for the next several years was beginning to become clear the nationalists moved inland towards central china as the japanese occupied the rich cities and farmland of the coastal regions of eastern china here in the inland provinces the nationalists and the communists would wage a war of attrition with the japanese to the east for the next few years and these were significant years in terms of the support mao and the communists enjoyed in the course of the late 1930s and early 1940s mao's red army ballooned in size from approximately 50 000 to nearly half a million fighters thus the war with japan was finally creating the kind of countrywide support for the communist party which mao and the other leaders had failed to acquire in the late 1920s and early 1930s already by 1940 there were signs of mao's communists being able to win considerable victories against the japanese occupation forces during a campaign which became known as the hundred regiments campaign in august 1940 the 400 000 strong red army moved against the japanese in simultaneous attacks against five of the coastal provinces attacks which resulted in the deaths of upwards of 20 000 japanese troops as well as a severe disruption to japanese supply routes late 1941 and early 1942 brought setbacks although the japanese made a series of sweeping conquests across the western pacific notably seizing singapore and burma from the british and the philippines from the united states following the declaration of war on the us in december with the surprise attack on the american pacific fleet at pearl harbor in hawaii while these conquests initially put the japanese in the ascendancy in eastern asia the entry of japan into the wider second world war also ensured that the nationalists and the communists now had allies in the shape of the british and americans with increased military financial and logistical support being received they were able to ensure that the japanese occupation of eastern china was never comfortable during the second world war as the war was grinding onwards throughout the first half of the 1940s the chinese communist party continued to grow in power and so did mao as its leader the nature of the war of resistance against the japanese favored the communists over the nationalists for starters the communists were more attuned to how to wage guerrilla war having done so for many years against the nationalist government in the late 1920s and early 1930s as a consequence they were better prepared for doing so against the japanese and as they won a series of victories against the japanese the red army became the more attractive option for chinese people seeking to oppose the foreign occupation moreover chiang kai-shek's kuomintang seemed to many to simply be the chinese manifestation of the right-wing movements which had brought japan into china to begin with and as the chinese communist party or cpc expanded in size mao also consolidated his control in 1943 he acquired the chairmanship of both the party secretariat and the politburo of the party for the first time it was also during these war years that he began affirming that chinese communism would have a distinctly different shape than that which had developed in russia beijing would be no puppet of moscow in future years the nature of the war against the japanese changed from 1943 onwards as japan suffered a series of severe setbacks in its struggle against the united states while its european allies germany and italy were also fighting an increasingly doomed war against russia britain and the us once the allies were victorious there all their resources would be employed against the empire of japan consequently in the final years of the war thoughts once again turned to china's politics and who would hold power once the country had been freed from the japanese as early as 1940 there were serious cracks in the alliance between mao's communists and chiang kai-shek's nationalists and by 1942 open fighting between the two had broken out yet again as the chinese civil war resumed it would fully erupt again following the end of the pacific war on the 6th and 9th of august 1945 the united states dropped two atomic bombs on the cities of hiroshima and nagasaki in japan simultaneously the soviet union invaded manchuria which japan had occupied all the way back in 1931 as a result within weeks the empire of japan had formally surrendered to the allies the second world war was over and the chinese civil war once more commenced between the nationalists and mao's communists mao was in a far more advantageous position in 1945 than he had been 10 years earlier after the long march if the long march had kept the chinese communist movement alive then the japanese invasion of china in 1937 and the eight years of war with japan allowed the communists to strengthen their position immensely in a curious twist of history the japanese invasion of china indirectly led to the communists seizing power in the country early in 1946 mao was handed an extra advantage when stalin handed over manchuria to the chinese communist party yet it would take three years of further intense fighting between the communists and the nationalists before a breakthrough was made in september 1948 the communists secured full control of east central china in the region south of beijing with the capture of shandong province in the hawaii high campaign then in the winter of 1948 mao launched the ping jin campaign against chiang kai-shek's forces in northern china over a two-month campaign over a half a million nationalist troops were killed captured or wounded and the north of the country was left in communist hands with northern china largely secured by early 1949 mao and the red army commanders took the decision that spring to drive south of the yangtze river into the heartland of nationalist held territory this was done despite the efforts of the soviet leader joseph stalin to encourage mao to form a coalition government with the nationalists stalin did not want a rival for power amongst the communist leaders but he would soon have one on the 23rd of april 1949 the red army seized the nationalist capital of nanjing a series of further striking gains saw chiang kai-shek retreat south with his remaining supporters to guangzhou by the autumn of 1949 just weeks later he and the remaining nationalists decided to make a strategic retreat from the chinese mainland to the island of formosa more commonly known today as taiwan here the nationalists formed a government which they proclaimed as the continuation of the republic of china which had been established back in 1911 meanwhile back on the mainland mao had proclaimed the founding of the people's republic of china on the 1st of october 1949 the chinese civil war between the communists and the nationalists was at an end after more than 20 years of conflict mao now entered office as the first chairman of the central people's government the first measure to be taken was to tidy up the loose ends of the war in the spring of 1950 the red army launched a campaign against the island of hainan off the southeast coast of china within weeks the 100 000 strong nationalist forces there were forced to surrender the international community now expected that mao would proceed with an invasion of taiwan and indeed even the american government a long-time supporter of chiang kai-shek and the kuomintang had decided not to recognize his new regime in taiwan in the belief that it would soon be defeated by mao and the communists but no invasion came and despite numerous crises between the two sides taiwan remains self-governing to this day and this period immediately after the conclusion of the civil war also saw mao head to moscow in the winter of 1949-1950 here he secured large injections of russian financial support for china as well as technological advisors although the agreement came with a tacit admission by mao of stalin's primacy within the communist world mao would have to wait several years before he could attempt to go his own way the post-war years in china saw the initiation of wide-ranging political social and economic reforms firstly a massive land reform campaign was initiated to transfer agricultural land out of the hands of large-scale farmers and landlords and into the hands of poorer peasants while this reduced economic inequality it was not without violence and there were many many instances of the former landlords being attacked or even murdered across china in the early 1950s in tandem a huge drive was initiated to crack down on opium production and consumption across the country a habit which was partly a legacy of british meddling into the chinese economy in the 19th century in the 1950s millions of opium addicts and habitual users were prescanned into labor reform camps they were joined in these by the hundreds of thousands of individuals who mouse regime branded as counter-revolutionaries many of them being former members of the kwamintang and mao also launched the new people's republic onto the world stage by entering into the korean war which broke out in the summer of 1950 between a communist north and an american-backed south massive chinese aid ensured that the conflict ended in a stalemate three years later it also led to a split of relations between mao's new regime and the united states one which involved a trade embargo which lasted for over 20 years in the 1950s mao had formed a clear idea of how he believed communism should develop in china it would be incorrect to assume that maltodon was simply a power manga who used communist ideology to secure authority in china certainly he was a brutal autocrat a fact which would become strikingly clear as his long chairmanship continued on into the 1960s and 1970s but he had also read widely on marxist leninist thought and had a vision for how communism would develop in china in the early 1950s that vision involved the industrial capacity of china's burgeoning cities of the east coast and its great rivers leading the country away from its reliance on agriculture as mao described it the communists had come to power by the red army encircling the cities occupied by the nationalists and the japanese and then absorbing the cities when they were strong enough now the direct opposite was needed china's cities would need to expand outward and bring the country closer to achieving communism as marx had intended it to that end in 1953 the first five-year plan was initiated in china in imitation of the five-year plans which the soviet union had begun employing in russia in the 1920s the first five-year plan of 1953-1957 was geared primarily towards reducing the reliance of the chinese economy on agricultural output and moving towards becoming a global power through the creation of an industrial economy with soviet financial support and expertise provided through russian advisors new factories were built across the country during the plan farms were collectivized across china and placed under state management and billions of yen were spent in total on completing 595 large and medium-sized infrastructural and economic projects including railways major roads and new dams often linking parts of china with each other in ways which had never been possible before as a result chinese industrial productivity increased by 128 percent and steel production alone jumped from 1.35 million tons in 1953 to over 5 million in 1957. coal extraction doubled during the five years while in agriculture yields of grain and cotton rose by over 30 percent during the same time period overall the first five-year plan under mao was a tremendous success in pure economic terms but in its success were sown the seeds of destruction for a hubris now entered into mao and his colleagues thinking a hubris which would be injected with catastrophic consequences into the second five-year plan or as it is more commonly known the great leap forward on the 22nd of may 1957 the soviet leader nikita khrushchev who had succeeded stalin on his death in 1953 delivered a speech at a regional meeting of soviet representatives in the course of which he proclaimed that it was his goal that the soviet union should catch up and overtake america in economic output by 1980. a few months later in november 1957 at a gathering in moscow of international communist leaders to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the october revolution which had brought the soviets to power in 1917 he repeated his claim only now he was even more ambitious the soviets would now eclipse the americans within 15 years mao who wished for china to rival the soviet union and whose relationship with khrushchev was more antagonistic than it had been with stalin began pondering this goal in the aftermath of the soviet leader speech not to be outdone he quickly determined to make similar claims and made it known that it was china's goal to catch up with britain's economy within 15 years and exceed their production of steel and other core industrial outputs with this goal in mind in 1958 the chinese communist party initiated the second five-year plan or what was soon referred to as the great leap forward for the country's economy it would result in the most catastrophic famine the world has ever seen mao believed that the key indicators of how china's economy was progressing would be seen in grain and steel production if these could be increased rapidly it would show the soviets in moscow and the world in general that china was asserting itself on the world stage accordingly all of the instruments of the state were deployed in 1958 to begin increasing the rate of grain and steel production by establishing new smelting factories and turning ever greater amounts of agricultural land over to grain production massive amounts of farmland were collectivized into giant state farms towards this end and millions of workers were redeployed to different parts of the economy than they were trained for huge amounts of state funding were also given out to aid in the effort and party officials were sent out into the countryside and the towns charged with maximizing production however many of these initiatives were potentially hazardous to begin with as the state was employing experimental farming methods in some instances and in others was turning over land to grain production which was more suited to other crops in other instances workers were being sent into steel factories with little or no training in what they were doing it was an inauspicious beginning in 1958 but one which would get much worse over time despite these structural issues there were some initial signs of progress steel and iron production did increase in the initial stages of the great leap forward perhaps by as much as 30 to 40 percent in 1958 but the mechanism whereby it was being increased would prove catastrophic in some instances in their eagerness to show good results local party cadres throughout the country were often resorting to unimaginably short-sighted and brutal tactics the more cruel methods involved overworking their labourers in the factories to try to have larger amounts of steel produced but within a few months party officials throughout the country were also setting up what became known as backyard furnaces the use of which mao had actually encouraged these were essentially makeshift steel furnaces which were often set up in the yards of people's homes scrap metal was used to produce pig iron which was almost totally useless but the worst thing was that farming tools and other instruments which were needed for producing food throughout the country were often being thrown into these backyard furnaces and melted down so that local party officials could record higher outputs of alleged steel production in their areas the result was a lack of basic tools for farming as the months went by the effect of all this between 1958 and 1961 was catastrophic with millions of farmers being press ganged into working in factories in the cities and towns there was not enough people available to produce food throughout china in a country which was often on a subsistence food level anyway added to this was the practice of party officials destroying basic farming equipment to inflate the amount of steel they were producing in their areas furthermore the party had begun trying to use experimental irrigation methods which had rendered large amounts of farmland temporarily unusable in some areas given all this it is unsurprising that even by the autumn of 1958 just months after the great leap forward had started there were major food shortages in some parts of the country and this was further compounded by the fact that the government continued to export grain and other agricultural products in order to increase its revenue and also keep up the appearance that productivity was increasing by late 1958 people in certain parts of the country were beginning to start foraging for wild foods in the countryside and others were starving to death this was just the beginning though and by 1959 grain production had fallen by roughly 15 to 20 percent in total across the country there is considerable debate as to how much mao knew about what was unfolding across china as a result of the great leap forward it is quite possible that in late 1958 and early 1959 he was unaware of the famine conditions but evidence has been uncovered which suggests he knew by at least the late spring of 1959 and yet did not do enough to change course by 1960 when he delegated control of certain parts of the great leap forward program to others the central party members were actively trying to prevent the worst but by then it was too late the forces which were unleashed in 1958 and 1959 reverberated into 1960 and 1961 and famine struck china over each of these years with varying degrees of severity there have been many different estimates of the number of people who died in recent years as the opening of certain archives in china has allowed for more accurate assessments but scholars are generally agreed that at least 25 million people died in a country the population of which was approximately 660 million in 1958 frank decotta who studied the period in detail and who saw the great leap forward as mao's great famine in the title of his study of these events suggested the death toll was as many as 55 million people others would suggest somewhere between 30 and 45 million making this the most catastrophic famine in human history in terms of sheer numbers of deaths the second five-year plan advertised as the great leap forward came to an end in 1962. curiously it was relatively underreported internationally as much of the information concerning it was transmitted through the republic of china's government in taiwan or the british enclave of hong kong and many foreign services believed they were exaggerating the extent of the suffering caused for political purposes internally however it had badly compromised mao's leadership on the 27th of april 1959 mao's term as chairman of the people's republic of china came to an end although he retained his position as chairman of the communist party and of military affairs he was succeeded by leo xiaoqi and by january 1962 the great leap forward was being wound down at this time leo made a speech at what was to become known as the seven thousand carter's conference in which he denounced the great leap forward it was a very thinly veiled public rebuke of mao the likes of which would have been unimaginable five years earlier nevertheless while mao had lost some of his authority for now he was still very much in charge he would however have to govern in a more collective fashion with figures such as xiao qi and deng xiaoping who had done much to recover the economic situation in the wake of the disastrous policies of the late 1950s the 1960s also saw china increasingly isolated on the world stage tensions had been brewing between mao and the soviet premier nikita khrushchev ever since the latter succeeded stalin in the mid-1950s mao was particularly perturbed by khrushchev's denunciation of stalin's brutal authoritarianism and more moderate stance towards the western powers he also found himself increasingly at loggerheads with moscow about the two regime's interpretation of orthodox marxism relations were bad by the late 1950s but they became particularly acute in the early 1960s especially once the cuban missile crisis inspired khrushchev to begin working more closely with the us government of john f kennedy to defuse the cold war in ways which mao opposed a sign of the split was seen in 1961 when mao denounced the soviet regime as revisionist traitors for his part khrushchev was increasingly wary of mao's attitude towards the possibility of a nuclear war with the west mao once worryingly suggested that if 300 million chinese people died in a nuclear war the other half would still be alive to secure victory and so the russian leader must have been concerned in 1964 when the chinese successfully tested their first nuclear bomb but by then the sino-soviet split was complete while much is known about the political life of the man who oversaw this split with russia and the catastrophes of the great leap forward the more private mao remains something of an enigma his fourth marriage that to jiang ching in 1938 lasted for the remainder of his life omao engaged in a string of extra marital affairs including most controversially in his later life with a private secretary zhangyu fung who was in her early 20s when she first entered mao's employ he had at least 10 children several of whom had been born in the 1920s and with whom he had very little relationship as he had had to leave them with others during the long civil war years he spent much of his private time writing and was a prolific composer of political writings and poems while his reading habits tended to favor traditional chinese literature by temperament he would become aggressive when challenged but his demeanor was certainly not genuinely unhinged like stalin had been in russia during the 1930s and 1940s for mao state violence was engaged in for political rather than personal purposes but a great deal about his other personal motivations and inclinations are shrouded behind the public image which was closely managed during his lifetime the sino-soviet split and the catastrophic consequences of the great leap forward with the background against which mao initiated what has today become known as simply the cultural revolution but the full name of which was the great proletarian cultural revolution launched in 1966 the cultural revolution was designed to be a political and social movement which aimed to purify chinese society and chinese communism by removing any of the vestiges of chinese traditionalism which remained and the capitalist and bourgeois elements within it mao claimed that a bourgeois bureaucracy had developed within the chinese communist party that was leading china in the wrong direction and this along with communist revisionists such as those who were now in power in russia needed to be stopped and a renewed dedication to the communist cause developed in particular mao called on the younger generations of china those which had been born after the second world war and who had never known life in china before communist rule to bombard the headquarters to purify chinese society of these bourgeois capitalist elements and to reinvigorate the communist movement there has been a widespread debate as to what mao's motivations for launching the cultural revolution were some historians have argued that he genuinely believed that the chinese communist party and the huge administration which operated under it throughout china had been compromised by nearly 20 years in power and that a cultural reawakening was necessary to stop the bureaucratic degeneration of the country however while this might have been a motivating factor for mao there is no doubt that the cultural revolution was primarily conceived as a way for the chairman to resuscitate his control over the communist party and the country as a whole by its very nature the movement allowed mao to use the party's apparatus and wider organs of the state to purge the government of his opponents and competing factions these had multiplied in number in the early 1960s as the catastrophic impact of the great leap forward was felt across the country now mao would eliminate those who had dared to cross him in the most brutal purges seen within the chinese communist party the result would be years of unrest which turned ordinary chinese people against each other and created an environment of fear and suspicion the cultural revolution was initiated in may 1966 with mao urging the people and students in particular to act to purify the party ranks within weeks gangs of students were attacking their teachers intellectuals government officials and even people who were deemed to be wearing bourgeois clothing these attacks could range from being mild to moderately violent such as when teachers were attacked by gangs of students and had their heads shaved to truly bloody acts such as when government officials were actually murdered or driven to commit suicide as the frenzy built up in the summer of 1966 official party newspapers stoked the flames by calling on the masses to clear away the evil habits of the old society and attack the monsters and demons by now students in classrooms and on college campuses across china were organizing themselves into bands of so-called red guards committed to preserving the communist revolution and rooting out what were termed the four olds old ideas old customs old habits and old culture by the early autumn gangs of teenagers wearing red armbands roamed the streets of cities such as beijing and shanghai and the unrest was so visceral that august became known as red august soon the initial student-led violence spread to other groups and factory workers and labourers on collectivized farms began joining what was termed the red terror meanwhile mao was directing these groups as best they could be directed against his enemies within the government and the wider party apparatus but as a means of purging the party of his opponents this was a very unstable method by 1967 radical elements were threatening to move beyond mao's ability to control them but the cultural revolution nevertheless continued in 1968 mao initiated the down to the countryside whereby the children of supposed middle class bourgeois urban families were forced into what were effectively re-education camps in the countryside meanwhile the chairman was building up an ever greater culture personality around himself in part led by the publication of his little red book a collection of his sayings and writings which became central to the concept of maoism in china around this time the violence continued unabated through the late 1960s but by 1971 even mao was aware of the need to scale things back and though the cultural revolution is deemed by some to have only ended with mao's death in 1976 the worst of the unrest subsided in the early 1970s as with the enormous famine created by the great leap forward ten years earlier historians have found it difficult to precisely identify how many people died as a result of the cultural revolution estimates tend to vary between five hundred thousand and two million people having lost their lives as a result of the violence which swept through china between 1966 and 1971 many of these were killed by the red guards and other groups triggered into fanaticism by mao's injunctions however probably the greater proportion of these lost their lives in instances where the army was called in to quell the unrest or by the army and the communist party being directed to purge certain groups by mao himself just as damaging was the psychological pain inflicted on a society where people were effectively turned against each other by the state perhaps the most glaring example of this occurred in guangxi province in the south of the country where between 100 000 and 150 000 lives were lost during the cultural revolution people here even resorted to burying the persecuted alive or boiling or disemboweling them and there was systematic cannibalism engaged in in guangxi as the frenzied masses sought to literally devour their enemies in their further ultimately the cultural revolution scarred chinese society in ways which are hard to quantify the early 1970s witnessed a major event in china's relations on the international stage which has had important implications down to the present day chinese involvement in the korean war had seen diplomatic ties between the people's republic and the united states government effectively shut down with trade sanctions imposed on china by washington however with the passage of 20 years both sides were cautiously investigating the possibility of re-establishing diplomatic ties during the course of the 1968 u.s presidential election the republican candidate richard nixon had proposed making overtures to china to that effect and after he entered office negotiations commenced in 1971 nixon's national security adviser henry kissinger went on a secret diplomatic mission to beijing and this was followed in february 1972 by an official state visit in china by nixon during the course of which he met mao the first meeting between a chinese and american head of state since the second world war which has grown ever greater in importance since and which is now regarded by many as the most significant international relationship between two states in the world despite the veneer of normality which was lent to u.s chinese relations by the official state visit of nixon in 1972 at home the chinese government continued to operate in an extreme fashion by the time nixon visited mao was nearly 80 years of age and owing to years of chain smoking he was suffering from numerous physical ailments it was due to this and the cult of personality which he had built up around himself that he allowed a number of senior communist party members to become immensely influential in china in his final years these were known as the gang of four which consisted of mao's wife jiang ching zhang chung chiao an ultra maoist writer who had come to prominence during the 1960s for his denunciation of bourgeois elements within chinese society a close ally of chun chaos yao won yen and wang hong wen a younger political figure who had risen from within the shanghai branch of the chinese communist party to become one of its highest ranking figures during the cultural revolution the gang of four had done much to promote the worst excesses of the cultural revolution between 1966 and 1971 but even after the most extreme period of the purges ended in the late 1960s their influence over mao's government continued the last years of mao's life and his primacy in the politics of china are hard to characterize as competing forces were at work in the halls of power in beijing certainly mao remained wedded to the idea of clinging to power until the very end as a result he continued to allow the gang of four and their supporters to hold considerable influence in the country however separately there was a growing clique of individuals who coalesced around other older stalwarts of the party such as the former head of the red army and premier johan lai and the former general secretary of the party deng xiao ping who wish to break from some of the more traditional ideological values of the party espoused by mao and introduce a greater degree of professionalism into the running of the government and the economy there was also much bitterness within the party establishment at the damage wrought by the cultural revolution as individuals who had fought the japanese and the nationalists in the 1930s and 1940s had often been purged from the party in the late 1960s only to be gradually rehabilitated in the 1970s acrimony between all these groups characterized the politics of china in the final years of mao's life and it was he himself who was largely responsible for creating this situation the political uncertainty of the post-cultural revolution period was still unresolved as mao entered the final stages of his life his health had further deteriorated in the mid-1970s and he was suffering from several heart and lung ailments the latter aggravated considerably by his chain smoking while there were unconfirmed rumors of a considerable reliance on sleeping pills which had developed over the years on the 27th of may 1976 he met the prime minister of pakistan visit at which the last known photo of mao was taken but by then he had already suffered the first of several heart attacks that occurred between the spring and autumn of 1976 and which left him increasingly incapacitated the final one on the 5th of september left him largely unable to move and he died four days later a state funeral lasting a week followed between the 11th and the 18th of september 1976 during which one million chinese people filed past his body today the enormous mausoleum of mao zedong housing his embalmed body stands in the middle of tiananmen square in central beijing on the site where the gate of china the southern gate of the old imperial city between the 14th and the 20th centuries used to stand before its destruction in 1954 it is perhaps fitting as a statement of where ancient china ended and modern china began mao's death occurred at a time when the older leadership of the entire chinese communist party the generation who had come to political consciousness during the may 4th movement all the way back in 1919 was fading from chinese life the old leader of the red army and a possible successor to mao jo and lai had pre-deceased mao by just a few months consequently mao had appointed the minister for public security hua guo fung as his successor shortly before his death he succeeded as chairman of the chinese communist party in 1976 but he would not last long gwafang was outmaneuvered in the years that followed by dongxiao ping who became the de facto leader of china in 1978 though gwafang's brief period as leader was significant in arresting and charging the gang of four as being responsible for the excesses of the cultural revolution in all but one instance they subsequently were sentenced to life in prison under dang xiaoping's leadership elsewhere despite his impeccable communist credentials deng xiaoping quickly moved china away from its planned economy and the more authoritarian aspects of mao's reign setting term limits on the holding of office it was during dung's tenure as mao's successor that the roots of china's economic miracle can really be found as he opened the country up to foreign investment and expertise thus in the end mao proved to be the impediment to china's growth rather than the deliverer of it mao zedong is one of the most contentious individuals in chinese history and indeed the history of the modern world to some he was a brutal tyrant and a mass murderer under whose rule between 1949 and 1946 over 50 million people and perhaps as many as 80 million died prematurely whether as a result of the catastrophic failures of the great leap forward the waves of violence unleashed during the cultural revolution or government orchestrated disasters such as the ban chao dam failure of 1975 which by some estimates resulted in the deaths of over 200 000 people however to many others he is one of the great heroes of modern day china the man who ensured that the cause of chinese communism survived during the long march of the 1930s the commander who led chinese resistance to the japanese occupation during the second world war and the individual who thereafter led the red army to victory over the nationalists many who focus on his achievements will also point towards the fact that life expectancy rates and living standards in china increased dramatically between the 1940s and the 1970s and argue that mao laid the basis for china's economic miracle which began in the late 20th century it is indeed striking that one individual can provoke such widely diverging opinions there is no doubting mao's critical role in ensuring the ascent to power of the communist party in china without mao the movement might not have survived the 1930s and his leadership was also critical in the post-war period but once he secured power this individual who was clearly possessed of a considerable intellect and ability became obsessed with retaining and expanding his control of china at the expense of lives and social stability it was his desire to not play second fiddle to khrushchev and the russians which drove china into the disastrous great leap forward and his unwillingness to accept how badly things had gone wrong which saw the famine which the second five-year plan created drag on for years and kills somewhere between 30 and 50 million chinese people it was mao's pathological desire to reinforce his position as head of the chinese state in the mid 1960s which led to the violence and instability of the cultural revolution the mao of the 1950s and 1960s was a different one to the individual who first joined the party in 1921 and initiated the long march in 1934. those who knew him over the course of his life often confirmed that he changed considerably over the years what do you think of mao zedong do you think he was actually committed to the idea of communism please let us know in the comments section and in the meantime thank you very much for watching you

Channel: The People Profiles

Views: 187,292

Keywords: Biography, History, Historical, Educational, The People Profiles, Biography channel, the biography channel

Id: 9Qh1QycOauo

Length: 175min 2sec (10502 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 29 2022