Page "Cultural Revolution" Paragraph 122

Virtually all English-language books paint a highly negative picture of the movement.

Historian Anne F. Thurston wrote that it " led to loss of culture, and of spiritual values ; loss of hope and ideals ; loss of time, truth and of life ..." Barnouin and Yu summarized the Cultural Revolution as " a political movement that produced unprecedented social divisions, mass mobilization, hysteria, upheavals, arbitrary cruelty, torture, killings, and even civil war ...", calling Mao " one of the most tyrannical despots of the twentieth century.

" In Mao: The Unknown Story, Chang and Halliday attributed all the destruction of the Cultural Revolution to Mao personally, with more sympathetic portrayals of his allies and opponents.

A small number of scholars continue to hold positive views about the Cultural Revolution.

Mobo Gao, writing in The Battle for China's Past: Mao and the Cultural Revolution, asserts that the movement benefited millions of Chinese citizens, particularly agricultural and industrial workers, and sees it as egalitarian and genuinely populist, citing continued Maoist nostalgia in China today as remnants of its positive legacy.