Fractured Rebellion: The Beijing Red Guard Movement (review)

Mao Zedong's Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution endured for ten long years, yet the first months of the Cultural Revolution, characterized by extreme Red Guard violence, have come to symbolize the decade. Focusing largely on these critical months during the summer and autumn of 1966, Andrew G. Walder has produced a rich, nuanced investigation into one of the most dramatic and complex moments during Mao's rule. Walder's major contribution is to dispel the myth of "conservative" and "rebel" Red Guard factions. In the early months of the Cultural Revolution, Red Guards continually divided along shifting factional lines. Because similar factional conflict would become a hallmark of the Cultural Revolution, these early factional divides among Red Guards have been imbued with great significance. Factional conflicts among Red Guards have been traditionally understood as products of social and political inequalities under the Maoist state. Groups that would benefit from the maintenance of the status quo have been classed with the "conservative" label.

Walder's close reading of Cultural Revolution documents demonstrates, however, that Beijing university and high school students were a largely homogenous group composed of students closely tied to school and party power networks. Walder instead traces the growth of Red Guard factions to the interactions between students and the work teams sent to manage the Cultural Revolution on Beijing campuses. For the most part, these teams attacked university administrations, thus shattering the networks that had previously united staff, faculty, and students. Most students followed the directives of their work team, but a minority of students clashed with and were subsequently punished by the visiting teams. These punished students, now facing an uncertain political future, would become radical "rebel" Red Guards, intent on seeking revenge against work teams and eventually the ministry officials behind the teams as they sought to clear their names and secure their futures. Walder thus corrects a long-standing misunderstanding about the relationship between class status and Red Guard factions, a misunderstanding that can in part be traced back to Red Guard Tan Lifu, a son of a revolutionary and a poster boy for the majority (pro-work team) faction. Tan Lifu claimed that his opponents were blinded by suspect class loyalties, but Walder notes that Tan Lifu's opponents were in fact from revolutionary backgrounds.

Walder also brings into his narrative the distinct Red Guard movement emerging from the capital's high schools. High school work teams, staffed by lower-level cadres, typically did not dare to criticize the offspring of the party elite, and the interactions between students and work teams did little to create factions. High school Red Guards focused on bringing the Cultural Revolution to the streets of Beijing, invading homes and vandalizing museums. These experiences raised questions about the use of violence, and it was over this critical issue that high school Red Guards found themselves divided, with some forming "picket corps" to curb violence and attacks on ministries. This would bring them into conflict with the minority faction "rebel" Red Guards, who were invading ministries in an attempt to clear their names.

As summer turned to fall in 1966, disparate Red Guard groups scattered throughout the capital began to link up in city-wide networks, a process Walder traces both at the university level and through the actions of Zhang Chunqiao and other leading figures in the Cultural Revolution. Despite early fame for the high school Red Guards, the actions of the "picket corps" in defending ministries from attacks made them expendable. Once Mao had indicated his support for the minority "rebel" Red Guard faction, his followers oversaw the toppling of the leadership of majority faction and high school Red Guards. Observing this process, Walder argues that the Red Guard rebellion of the minority "rebel" Red Guards, directed as it was from above, was essentially bureaucratic in nature.

Walder's study is richly sourced, drawing on a diverse set of Cultural Revolution documents including handbills, wall posters, and Red Guard recollections. In particular, his...