Tragedy of Liberation

Frank Dikötter's epoch-making classic – The People's Trilogy

The authoritative masterpiece rewriting modern Chinese history, a must-read for understanding 20th-century Chinese history

 

A terrifying history under a totalitarian regime

The cruel truth the Chinese Communist Party doesn't want to reveal

An important masterpiece that speaks for the contemporary Chinese people

 

　　▌Part one of the trilogy: "The Tragedy of Liberation: A History of the Communist Revolution, 1945-1957"

　　〈The Tragedy of Liberation: A History of the Communist Revolution, 1945-1957〉

 

　　★ Sunday Times History Book of the Year, shortlisted for the Orwell Prize ★

　　Jung Chang, bestselling historical biographer: This is a must-read book.

 

　　The latest perspective on the history of the Chinese revolution from the people's point of view!

　　Unmasking Mao Zedong's propaganda and restoring the true story of the CCP's founding!

　　A history where the people speak, a weight of life that official history can hardly bear.

　　A wealth of evidence from Chinese archives uncovers the terrifying truth of the golden age!

 

　　The Chinese Communist Party called its 1949 victory "liberation." At the mention of this word, people usually envision jubilant crowds pouring into the streets to celebrate newfound freedom. However, in China, the story of "liberation" and "revolution" was not about peace, freedom, and justice, but rather full of carefully orchestrated terror and organized violence. After liberation, the vast Chinese people faced "a meticulously designed Auschwitz-style ideological concentration camp." Less than a decade after the establishment of the Communist regime, no one dared to oppose Chairman Mao.

 

　　Landlords were the first to bear the brunt. The land reform initiated by the Communist Party in rural areas was in fact a bloody deal between the Party and the poor, a meticulously planned massacre that led to the liquidation of two million landlords. This was followed by the terrifying campaign to suppress counter-revolutionaries, aimed at eliminating all enemies of the Party. Mao Zedong even set killing quotas. To meet these quotas, cadres often randomly selected victims, resulting in nearly two million deaths. Then came ethnic minorities, religious groups, farmers, artists, entrepreneurs, industrialists and merchants, teachers, scholars, and Party members who questioned various policies...

 

　　The protagonists of "The Tragedy of Liberation: A History of the Communist Revolution, 1945-1957 (The People's Trilogy by contemporary Chinese historian Frank Dikötter)" are the ordinary people affected by this enormous catastrophe. Most of their stories have been submerged by history, because official propaganda reports are filled only with numerous speeches by leaders, which merely describe the society they wished to build, at best serving as design blueprints and not reflecting social reality. Furthermore, they usually only mention exemplary workers and peasants, failing to portray flesh-and-blood ordinary people.

 

　　Frank Dikötter, a contemporary Chinese historian and author of "The Cultural Revolution: A People's History, 1962–1976," draws on archival materials that have only recently become available. The hundreds of previously unclassified archival documents he collected from various Chinese archives include secret police reports, unedited speeches by high-ranking leaders, self-criticism confessions written during thought reform campaigns, investigation reports on rural resistance incidents, detailed statistics on the suppression of counter-revolutionaries campaign, surveys on workers' conditions, and letters of appeal from ordinary people. Supplemented by various memoirs, letters, and diaries, as well as accounts from those who personally experienced these events, he outlines the true stories of the main participants and victims of the revolution.

 

　　The testimonies left by these early eyewitnesses were often overlooked by scholars sympathetic to the Communist regime, but their descriptions can now be cross-referenced with archival data, greatly aiding in uncovering historical truth. Through the stories of these flesh-and-blood ordinary people, readers gain an unprecedented opportunity to penetrate the facade of CCP propaganda and reveal the tragic human cost of the Mao Zedong era.

出版日期/Publication Date：March 20, 2018
出版社/Publisher：聯經出版事業股份有限公司
出品方/Imprint:
页数/Page: 1280