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Quote by Sigrid Schmalzer

“A former Red Guard relates, “I believe many little girls and boys of my generation dreamed of being a geological prospector… Propaganda for recruiting young people to work in this area was very effective. When my neighbor’s daughter was accepted by the geology department of a prestigious university, we all envied her for her future prospects of an adventurous life.”

Quote by Sigrid Schmalzer

Book:Maoism at the Grassroots: Everyday Life in China’s Era of High Socialism
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Maoism at the Grassroots: Everyday Life in China’s Era of High Socialism

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Sigrid Schmalzer

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“At Hongguang Commune, a roadside area of more than 2,000 mu was cleared of more than 180 dwellings. At least 12,000 homes were dismantled throughout the county. Unrelated families were obliged to share quarters, sometimes with domestic fowl. Cadres burst into homes without notice, tossed out belongings, and reduced a house to rubble in an instant. Commune members returning from deployment elsewhere wept upon finding their homes, wives, and children gone. Some families relocated seven times in a year. Cadres ransacked homes, often snatching desirable goods. Some commune members retaliated by hiding snakes in their rice jars.”

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“This new idea that the movement has to be completely transparent to everyone as a principle, especially to people whom we don't trust, to me this is an unconscious influence from liberal culture. That no one should be held back from knowing everything that any part of the movement is up to? This is an idea that has come about from the current distortion of the left as part of the cultural zone of "play nice" middle-class reformism. As though bourgeois civil liberties mindsets developed in part by interaction with cops and courts should define how we in the struggle relate and work with each other. As though we aren't outlaws and rebels. This didn't exist in earlier eras when the movement was primarily made up of oppressed working people fighting to survive, guarded in their trust, and for good reasons. 'Necessity know no laws'.”

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“Revolutionary Islam is linked to the Koran, to be sure, just as Stalinism and Maoism were linked to Das Kapital, but to explain the horrors of China's man-made famines or the Soviet gulag solely by invoking the writings of Karl Marx would be to miss the main point. Messianic violence can attach itself to any creed.”

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“Bio je to još jedan sunčan dan, počinjalo je bablje ljeto, najljepše i najtragičnije oba godine, kada se svaki lijep dan čini posljednjim. Mogu ti posljednji dani potrajati sve do kraja listopada, 1970, sjećao se, produžili su se do petnaestog studenoga, ali time se ne mijenja dojam kako je svaki dan posljednji, i treba ga odživjeti sa sviješću o tome. Kada bi cijeloga života trajalo bablje ljeto, svi bi ljudi vjerovali u Boga.”

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