Ricerc@Sapienza

Concurring with the fiftieth anniversary of Mao Zedong’s launch of the Cultural Revolution in 1966, a lively debate on this movement arose in 2016, although the CCP kept a low profile in relation to it. This debate presents a very clear orientation, a tendency towards the polarization of the various opinions expressed: on the one hand, the negative evaluation of the Cultural Revolution, with extreme and resolute allegations, on the other hand, its exaltation and praise, up to the point of requesting a revision of the historical verdict on it. In fact, left-wing personalities and neo-Maoist groups are trying to reverse the official interpretation regarding the effects of the Cultural revolution; such a revisionist operation is highly dangerous, because it attempts to overturn the Party’s formal judgment outlined in the Eighties.
In addition to the positions arisen on the fiftieth anniversary, it is worth considering the evaluations expressed on previous occurrences, which widely circulated online in 2016. Precisely on the web, an earlier contribution of Cui Zhiyuan, a well-known scholar from the New Left, had been extensively re-proposed, conceivably in order to lay the theoretical foundation of the current reassessment of the Cultural Revolution