Mao Zedong

…The methodical organization man who had been Mao's own designated heir, the very figure who had dared to describe the great campaign as a human made disaster, was now denounced as the country's leading traitor, stripped of all his positions, brutally persecuted, and left to die, neglected and alone, in detention in nineteen sixty nine.…

…Together with a small circle of radical allies, these figures became the engine of the chaos, directing the storm against their enemies while wrapping themselves in the mantle of Mao's authority.…

…Meanwhile, Mao's wife, a former actress with a fierce ideological streak and a long list of personal grievances, seized control of the cultural sphere, dictating what could be performed, published, and shown, and reducing the country's once rich artistic life to a handful of approved revolutionary works.…