--- Marvin Gandall <marvgandall at videotron.ca> wrote:
>
> These revolutions moved hundreds of millions of
> hopeful, courageous, often
> hungry but not always critical-minded people
> worldwide. Intellectuals in the
> West and elsewhere mostly identified with them for
> good and sound reasons.
> In both cases - and certainly in their immediate
> aftermath, during their
> "heroic phase" - they brought social justice, honest
> government, land
> reform, advances in social welfare and the cultural
> level of the people, and
> national sovereignty. China's impressive growth
> today owes much to the
> reforms introduced into the country after 1949.
>
[WS:] I guess people read into those events whatever suits their views. I happen to live through Mao's cultural revolution (in a safe bubble of a foreign post, to be sure) and I've seen enough of witch hunt, intellectual bashing, brainwashing and intimidation to develop a point of view that markedly differ from the one that you describe.
Furthermore, if Taiwan is any indicator, China's impressive growth that you refer to would be far more impressive if it were not for Mao and the rural idiocy that he and his thugs imposed on China.
And how do you view Mao's backstabbing of Vietnam and supporting the genocidal thug Pol Pot, in cahoots with Nixon, to spite the Russians?
Revolutionary? He was not even "our thug."
Wojtek