Cav's Reviews > The Tragedy of Liberation: A History of the Chinese Revolution 1945-1957
The Tragedy of Liberation: A History of the Chinese Revolution 1945-1957
by
by
![73029907](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1725383135p2/73029907.jpg)
Cav's review
bookshelves: asia, communism, culture, history, military, politics, real-life-saga, sociology, war, favorites, russia
Dec 11, 2020
bookshelves: asia, communism, culture, history, military, politics, real-life-saga, sociology, war, favorites, russia
It would not be accurate to say I enjoyed this book, as I'm not sure anyone could enjoy subject matter this brutal and harsh... I did find this book very informative, as well as historically interesting and important, though.
Author Frank Dikötter is a Dutch historian who specializes in modern China. Dikötter has been Chair Professor of Humanities at the University of Hong Kong since 2006, according to his Wikipedia page.
Frank Dikötter :
The Tragedy of Liberation is the second volume of Dikötter's The People’s Trilogy, after his 2010 book Mao's Great Famine, which looks at the man-made catastrophe that claimed tens of millions of lives between 1958 and 1962. Dikötter's third and final volume The Cultural Revolution details the 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution.
The book opens with an excellent prelude, followed by a chronological summary of the events that are to be covered. I always appreciate super-effective communication like this.
Author Frank Dikötter writes with an easy and engaging style that holds the reader's attention effectively, making this one very readable. A welcome change from many of the history books I've read.
Dikötter makes a note on the source material here:
The stories told here, as well as in Mao's Great Famine are more horrible than can be imagined. The levels of wholesale human misery, death and destruction told in these pages read worse than the most dystopian novel...
The bigger picture told here of how China fell to Communism will be one of the most horrifying tales the reader will ever encounter.
As such, works like this book series should be on the shelf of every armchair historian.
The Tragedy of Liberation is full of quotes that detail the horror that unfolded before, during, and after the Chinese Communist Revolution:
Mao Zedong had instilled a system of killing quotas, in an effort to purge his vision of a modern Communist China of "capitalist", "nationalist", and "landlord" influences:
Although the book doesn't specifically mention these by name, the Chinese Communist Revolution is a historic examplar of pathological groupthink leading to ideological purity spirals. That is; the pro-social wiring all humanity innately possesses can (and often does) lead a society to absolutely disastrous consequences, if left unchecked.
The writing here makes an excellent case study in social psychology and the pathology of mob mentality.
The Maoist " struggle sessions " that swept through Chinese society during this period are absolutely terrifying...
The Tragedy of Liberation should be required reading for the young, impressionable minds (often in academia) who live comfortably in Western Civilization, while paradoxically advocating for socialism/communism.
Indeed, this is one of the most brutal and hardcore books the average reader will ever come across. Words alone cannot convey the mass dysfunctionality and horror of everyday life in Maoist China written about in these pages...
This was an exceptionally well researched, written, and delivered book. I would definitely recommend it to anyone interested. I look forward to starting Volume 3 of this series shortly.
5 stars, and a spot of my "favorites" shelf
Author Frank Dikötter is a Dutch historian who specializes in modern China. Dikötter has been Chair Professor of Humanities at the University of Hong Kong since 2006, according to his Wikipedia page.
Frank Dikötter :
![111111-frank-dikotter-maos-great-famine](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1607621433i/30502422._SX540_.jpg)
The Tragedy of Liberation is the second volume of Dikötter's The People’s Trilogy, after his 2010 book Mao's Great Famine, which looks at the man-made catastrophe that claimed tens of millions of lives between 1958 and 1962. Dikötter's third and final volume The Cultural Revolution details the 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution.
![fghjkjhg](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1607712681i/30508308._SX540_.jpg)
The book opens with an excellent prelude, followed by a chronological summary of the events that are to be covered. I always appreciate super-effective communication like this.
Author Frank Dikötter writes with an easy and engaging style that holds the reader's attention effectively, making this one very readable. A welcome change from many of the history books I've read.
Dikötter makes a note on the source material here:
"...The bulk of the evidence presented in this book comes from party archives in China. Over the past few years vast amounts of material have become available, and I draw on hundreds of previously classified documents, including secret police reports, unexpurgated versions of important leadership speeches, confessions extracted during thought-reform campaigns, inquiries into rebellions in the countryside, detailed statistics on the victims of the Great Terror, surveys of working conditions in factories and workshops, letters of complaint written by ordinary people, and much more.
Other sources include personal memoirs, letters and diaries, as well as eyewitness accounts from people who lived through the revolution. Sympathisers of the regime have unjustly discarded many of the claims of these earlier eyewitnesses, but these can now be corroborated by archival evidence, giving them a new lease of life.
Taken as a whole, these sources offer us an unprecedented opportunity to probe beyond the shiny surface of propaganda and retrieve the stories of the ordinary men and women who were both the main protagonists and the main victims of the revolution..."
![fghjkgfgfgf](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1607712866i/30508319._SY540_.jpg)
The stories told here, as well as in Mao's Great Famine are more horrible than can be imagined. The levels of wholesale human misery, death and destruction told in these pages read worse than the most dystopian novel...
The bigger picture told here of how China fell to Communism will be one of the most horrifying tales the reader will ever encounter.
As such, works like this book series should be on the shelf of every armchair historian.
![dfghjkl](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1607712866i/30508320._SY540_.jpg)
The Tragedy of Liberation is full of quotes that detail the horror that unfolded before, during, and after the Chinese Communist Revolution:
"...By the end of June, some 30,000 people were caught in the area between the communists, who would not allow them to pass, and the nationalists, who refused to let them back into the city. Hundreds died every day.
Two months later, more than 150,000 civilians were pressed inside the death zone, reduced to eating grass and leaves, doomed to slow starvation. Dead bodies were strewn everywhere, their bellies bloated in the scorching sun. ‘The pungent stench of decomposition was everywhere,’ remembered one survivor..."
"...Soon the nationalist soldiers turned on the civilians, stealing their food at gunpoint. They slaughtered all the army horses, then dogs, cats and birds. Ordinary people ate rotten sorghum and corncobs before stripping the bark from trees. Others ate insects or leather belts. A few turned to human flesh, sold at $1.20 a pound on the black market.8
Cases of collective suicide occurred all the time. Entire families killed themselves to escape from the misery. Dozens died by the roadside every day.
‘We were just lying in bed starving to death,’ said Zhang Yinghua when interviewed about the famine that claimed the lives of her brother, her sister and most of her neighbours. ‘We couldn’t even crawl..."
Mao Zedong had instilled a system of killing quotas, in an effort to purge his vision of a modern Communist China of "capitalist", "nationalist", and "landlord" influences:
"...Like steel production or grain output, death came with a quota mandated from above. Luo Ruiqing could not possibly oversee the arrest, trial and disposal of the many millions who became the targets of terror, so instead Mao handed down a killing quota as a rough guide for action. The norm, he felt, was one per thousand, a ratio he was willing to adjust to the particular circumstances of each region.
His subordinates kept track of local killing rates like bean counters, occasionally negotiating for a higher quota. In May 1951 Guangxi province, for instance, was told to kill more, even though a rate of 1.63 per thousand had already been achieved. Guizhou province, destabilised by popular uprisings, requested permission to kill three per thousand, and the Liuzhou region five per thousand. ‘The provincial party committee of Guizhou requests a target of three per thousand, that too is too much, I feel. This is how I look at it: we can go over one per thousand, but not by too much.’
Once a death rate of two per thousand had been achieved, the Chairman opined, people should be sentenced to life imprisonment and sent to work in labour camps..."
![fghjknnn](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1607713576i/30508389._SX540_.jpg)
Although the book doesn't specifically mention these by name, the Chinese Communist Revolution is a historic examplar of pathological groupthink leading to ideological purity spirals. That is; the pro-social wiring all humanity innately possesses can (and often does) lead a society to absolutely disastrous consequences, if left unchecked.
The writing here makes an excellent case study in social psychology and the pathology of mob mentality.
The Maoist " struggle sessions " that swept through Chinese society during this period are absolutely terrifying...
The Tragedy of Liberation should be required reading for the young, impressionable minds (often in academia) who live comfortably in Western Civilization, while paradoxically advocating for socialism/communism.
Indeed, this is one of the most brutal and hardcore books the average reader will ever come across. Words alone cannot convey the mass dysfunctionality and horror of everyday life in Maoist China written about in these pages...
This was an exceptionally well researched, written, and delivered book. I would definitely recommend it to anyone interested. I look forward to starting Volume 3 of this series shortly.
5 stars, and a spot of my "favorites" shelf
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Reading Progress
July 21, 2020
– Shelved
July 21, 2020
– Shelved as:
to-read
December 10, 2020
–
Started Reading
December 11, 2020
– Shelved as:
asia
December 11, 2020
– Shelved as:
communism
December 11, 2020
– Shelved as:
culture
December 11, 2020
– Shelved as:
history
December 11, 2020
– Shelved as:
military
December 11, 2020
– Shelved as:
politics
December 11, 2020
– Shelved as:
real-life-saga
December 11, 2020
– Shelved as:
sociology
December 11, 2020
– Shelved as:
war
December 11, 2020
– Shelved as:
favorites
December 11, 2020
– Shelved as:
russia
December 11, 2020
–
Finished Reading