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When the Chinese communists came to power in 1949, they promised to
'turn society upside down'. Efforts to build a communist society
created hopes and dreams, coupled with fear and disillusionment.
The Chinese people made great efforts towards modernization and
social change in this period of transition, but they also
experienced traumatic setbacks. Covering the period 1949 to 1976
and then tracing the legacy of the Mao era through the 1980s, Felix
Wemheuer focuses on questions of class, gender, ethnicity, and the
urban-rural divide in this new social history of Maoist China. He
analyzes the experiences of a range of social groups under
Communist rule - workers, peasants, local cadres, intellectuals,
'ethnic minorities', the old elites, men and women. To understand
this tumultuous period, he argues, we must recognize the many
complex challenges facing the People's Republic. But we must not
lose sight of the human suffering and political terror that, for
many now ageing quietly across China, remain the period's abiding
memory.
When the Chinese Communist Party came to power in 1949, Mao Zedong
declared that "not even one person shall die of hunger." Yet some
30 million peasants died of starvation and exhaustion during the
Great Leap Forward. Eating Bitterness reveals how men and women in
rural and urban settings, from the provincial level to the
grassroots, experienced the changes brought on by the party
leaders' attempts to modernize China. This landmark volume lifts
the curtain of party propaganda to expose the suffering of citizens
and the deeply contested nature of state-society relations in
Maoist China.
An authoritative study of food politics in the socialist regimes of
China and the Soviet Union During the twentieth century, 80 percent
of all famine victims worldwide died in China and the Soviet Union.
In this rigorous and thoughtful study, Felix Wemheuer analyzes the
historical and political roots of these socialist-era famines, in
which overambitious industrial programs endorsed by Stalin and Mao
Zedong created greater disasters than those suffered under
prerevolutionary regimes. Focusing on famine as a political tool,
Wemheuer systematically exposes how conflicts about food among
peasants, urban populations, and the socialist state resulted in
the starvation death of millions. A major contribution to Chinese
and Soviet history, this provocative analysis examines the
long-term effects of the great famines on the relationship between
the state and its citizens and argues that the lessons governments
learned from the catastrophes enabled them to overcome famine in
their later decades of rule.
When the Chinese communists came to power in 1949, they promised to
'turn society upside down'. Efforts to build a communist society
created hopes and dreams, coupled with fear and disillusionment.
The Chinese people made great efforts towards modernization and
social change in this period of transition, but they also
experienced traumatic setbacks. Covering the period 1949 to 1976
and then tracing the legacy of the Mao era through the 1980s, Felix
Wemheuer focuses on questions of class, gender, ethnicity, and the
urban-rural divide in this new social history of Maoist China. He
analyzes the experiences of a range of social groups under
Communist rule - workers, peasants, local cadres, intellectuals,
'ethnic minorities', the old elites, men and women. To understand
this tumultuous period, he argues, we must recognize the many
complex challenges facing the People's Republic. But we must not
lose sight of the human suffering and political terror that, for
many now ageing quietly across China, remain the period's abiding
memory.
Nach 1968 brach in der Neuen Linken Europas ein regelrechtes
Mao-Fieber aus. Der Weg derjenigen, die der maoistischen Utopie ihr
Leben widmeten, fuhrte an der gesellschaftlichen Realitat vorbei
und hinterliess, wie Gerd Koenen es ausdruckt, ein "schwarzes Loch"
in der eigenen Biographie. Tausende Akteure, einige von ihnen heute
Teil der gesellschaftlichen Eliten, waren und sind von diesem
Scheitern betroffen und mussen bei der Rekonstruktion ihrer
Lebenslaufe damit umgehen. Dieser Band untersucht, warum sich in
den 1970er Jahren so viele Menschen fur die chinesische
Kulturrevolution begeisterten. Wie unterschiedlich konstruierten
sich die Linken im deutschsprachigen Raum ihren Maoismus und ihre
Kulturrevolution? Warum konnte der chinesische Sozialismus sowohl
in der Kommune I, als auch den K-Gruppen oder der fruhen RAF
uberhaupt zum Bezugspunkt werden? Wie erinnern sich Zeitzeugen
heute an ihre maoistische Vergangenheit? All diese Fragen verfolgt
dieses Buch.
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