The Great Leap Forward
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I. Policy Debate Within PRC  

 A. Mao: moral incentives, inspiration, & mass campaigns  

 B. Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping: material incentives

II. Sino-Soviet Rift  
 A. Mao and Stalin 

 B. 1956 Nikita Khrushchev--20th Soviet Party Congress 

  1. Stalin denounced before delegates  

  2. Zhu De had just praised Stalin in another speech  

  3. "de-Stalinization" campaign caused tensions  

  4. Mao still praised Stalin as a "Great Revolutionary" 

 C. Nov. 1957 Mao's 2nd Visit to the USSR  
  1. Sputniks and ICBM--USSR scientific, technological, and 
         military advances created impression of superiority  

  2. Mao: Soviets promised "a sample atomic bomb" and 
        technical information in their 1957 Secret Agreement
 
  3. Mao's propaganda proclamations  

   a. "East Wind prevails over the West wind"  

   b. China would triumph in a nuclear war 

 D. Khrushchev denied Mao's account of 1957 Secret Agreement  
  1. called for Leninist principle of peaceful coexistence 

  2. reminded Chinese of Bandung Conference  

  3. declared principle of "inevitable war" obsolete 

III. The Great Leap Forward  
 A. Mao proclaims faith in "Permanent Revolution" (Jan. 1958)  
  1. similar to Leon Trotsky's "Permanent Revolution" 

  2. expects "Red & Expert" from PRC--ideology & 
        technology  

  3. "Great Leap Forward" a Maoist strategy of economic,  
         agricultural, and industrial progress  

   a. gaps between urban & rural, peasants and 
          bureaucrats, masses and elite to be eliminated  

   b. "backyard furnaces" for peasantry; factory  
           workers to plant crops in available farmland  

   c. Mao's Mass-line: learn from the Masses and  
           return to them to teach  

   d. Mao celebrated the poverty and blankness of 
           peasants, to make new, selfless Socialist people 

 B. Agricultural Producers' Cooperatives formed in mid-1950's 
  1. 20-30 families pooled labor & land to max. efficiency  

  2. rural peasantry organized into "cooperatives" by 1956  

  3. increased productivity--individual plots not efficient 

 C. 1958 Cooperatives merged into "People's Communes"  
  1. communes averaged 4,600 households  

  2. supposed to increase efficiency 

 D. Figures fabricated to create the impression of success  
  1. mid-1959 PLA Marshall Peng Dehuai criticized statistics  

  2. Mao had Peng removed as Minister of Defense
 
  3. admitted mistakes, but even Confucius, Marx, and Lenin 
           had made mistakes  

  4. Mao insisted on furthering People's Communes  

  5. 1959-62 20 million deaths in famine  

   a. 1963 1/2 of all deaths under 10 years old  

   b. GLF devoured China's youth 

 E. 1959 Khrushchev met Eisenhower at Camp David  
  1. peaceful coexistence affirmed  

  2. Khrushchev then travelled to Beijing 

 F. The Break  
  1. Sept. 1960--all Soviet advisors left China  

  2. Nov. 1960 USSR calls for meeting of Communist parties 
         from 81 nations--but Mao refused to attend  

  3. China attacked Soviet revisionism--encouraged violent 
         struggle with capitalists  

  4. Oct. 1961 Zhou Enlai walked out of Congress of the Soviet 
        Communist Party after Khrushchev attacked Stalin