Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. xvi, 287 pp. (Figures.) US$27.99, paper. ISBN 978-1-107-66564-4.
This thought-provoking global history of Maoism focusses on the circulation and reception of the book of Mao Zedong’s quotations, the Little Red Book, and of the ideas of China’s Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) both in China and elsewhere. Cook concludes that “the Little Red Book is what people made of it” (xvi). In the first, second, and third worlds—into which the volume, suitably for the time period it covers, categorizes the world—the Little Red Book embodied the rebelliousness that helped people tackle local problems. Mao’s China influenced the world in which we live now, from shaping neo-Marxism in France (Bourg) and contributing to the erosion of universalism, which ultimately led to the collapse of the Soviet Union (McGuire), to setting the agendas of ethnic studies in American academia and African and Asian American activism (Mullen) and spurring a cultural turn in the humanities (Bourg).
This volume is an enjoyable read. It incorporates the wide range of perspectives necessary to understand this complex phenomenon both in China and globally. Rich sources are well fleshed out. Sources include publications by those who responded to the Little Red Book, from embassies to students and intellectuals influenced by Maoism: these include official speeches, pamphlets, Communist Party treatises, oral histories, online publications from state newspapers, dissidents’ blogs, and Mao’s texts. The various theoretical perspectives include those which are inspired by Mao’s critique of the Naxalite and Shining Path movements (Chakrabarti, Palmer); national histories, including China’s (Guobing Yang, Lanjun Xu); and theoretical approaches to pop culture, music, and propaganda (Jones, Ban Wang).
Among these fifteen well-sequenced chapters, China-centred essays highlight those aspects of Maoist cultural production which help the reader understand the appeal of the book beyond its original cultural context. From the historical origins and syncretism of the format of the Little Red Book (Leese); to the translation and technologies of its circulation outside China (Lanjun Xu); the meaning of metaphors (Cook); musical and performative aspects of the pop culture of the Cultural Revolution (Jones); the book as the “sacred script of revolution,” which set in motion its “incantatory power” and the unity of performance and reality in the Cultural Revolution (Guobin Yang, 61, 67); and, last but not least, Ban Wang’s provocative essay on the rituals and religiosity of the Cultural Revolution, which argues for the democratism of the Little Red Book—all these shed light on the rationale and traction points for the responses to the book worldwide, described in other chapters.
This volume will interest a wide audience of specialists in national histories, as well as those interested in global history. A thread running through most essays is well elucidated by Reill, who states that “Cold War explanations do not clarify domestic receptions” (204). Various local circumstances provoked enthusiastic responses in the world outside the Iron Curtain, from the alternative “shared imaginary” of the nation in Tanzania; to the student activism of the 1960s in Germany; “Orientalist” admiration in West Germany, Italy, and France; the pop-cultural appeal of catchy melodies and chanting to youth and the mundane reason that the book’s small format was fashionable in Europe, as well (Leese, 34).
These findings diversify our understanding of the Cold War. The book’s negative reception behind the Iron Curtain in the context of the Sino-Soviet split is not counterintuitive and the general dread that communist ideology incited by the 1960s among the population of the socialist bloc is not unknown. Yet, when examined within the context of the book’s strategic use as political leverage in Albania (Mëhilli) or of the personal experiences of people from the DDR and the Soviet Union during the Cultural Revolution, the findings advance our understanding of post-socialist spaces. The volume’s global outlook reveals once again the problematic use of such labels as “left” or “dissident” without contextualization. While French communist dissidents were Maoists, for Soviet dissidents, Maoism was the symbol of feared re-Stalinization (154). While Maoism appealed to communist youth because of its pop-cultural circulation and because it resonated with the postwar social experiences in Italy, such as intergenerational conflict (while also echoing the Sino-Soviet split), the Little Red Book was not used by communists only but also by ultra-right wing groups (192). Another takeaway is the importance of laughter, irony, and metaphor in the multilayered Cold War culture both in and outside China. For example, the book “acted as the textual equivalent of a tomato” to be thrown to express protest among belligerent students in West Germany (215).
All in all, this excellent volume demonstrates that Maoism, like Marxism-Leninism, was used by local actors strategically. The reception of the Little Red Book was mostly coded in the cultural codes of receiving cultures (including the social context and the structure of labour and communist movements), something we need to keep in mind in studies of other topics. Last but not least, a work of global history that centres on the circulation of an Asian intellectual product, this volume is a reminder that we need to account for global and non-Western histories to adequately understand familiar national narratives of our own.
Anna Belogurova
Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany
pp. 643-645