The Cultural Revolution and its legacies in international perspective

This article explores the rhetoric and reality of the Cultural Revolution as an international phenomenon, examining (through published and oral histories) the ways in which it was perceived and interpreted beyond China. It focuses in particular on the diverse impact of Maoist ideas and practice on the counter-culture movement of western Europe and North America during the late 1960s and 1970s. Within Europe, Cultural Revolution Maoism galvanised Dadaist student protest, nurtured feminist and gay rights activism, and legitimised urban guerrilla terrorism. In the United States, meanwhile, it bolstered a broad programme of anti-racist civil rights campaigns, and narrow Marxist-Leninist party-building. Despite Mao’s hopes to launch a global permanent revolution, it appears that over the long term, enthusiasm for the Cultural Revolution in western Europe, the United States and parts of southeast Asia helped splinter the radical left and assisted the right in consolidating its power through the 1980s and beyond