About this Item
A compelling example of Chinese Cultural Revolution propaganda in French, printed in comparatively small numbers. Within the context of the ideological fissure between Moscow and Beijing, such items played directly on the activist spirit of the sixties in order to win gains for the Maoist ideological cause world-wide. France was a natural target when it came to exporting Maoism abroad. On the one hand, several members of the Chinese Communist Party's leadership hierarchy had cut their Marxist teeth in France in the early 20th century, and the Cultural Revolution drew inspiration from the Paris Commune. On the other hand, the mass politics of the Cultural Revolution dovetailed with the counter-cultural left-wing activism that permeated France in the 1960s. By 1967, the French Left was much taken with developments in China and, in Paris, "signs of Maoism's popularity abounded" (Wolin, p. 114). Clothing boutiques sold copious Mao suits - "les cols Maos" - and booksellers experienced runs on copies of the "Little Red Book" translated into French. In elite intellectual circles, Louis Althusser's students at the Ecole normale supérieure "were planning trips to China, copiously citing the Little Red Book, and praising the virtues of a "war of position" against the bourgeois enemy" (ibid., p. 118). By distributing posters such as the present exemplar, Peking Foreign Languages Press deepened China's ideological offensive abroad with the goal of drowning out the Soviet Union's rival brand of communism. Beginning in the late 1950s, private and then public cracks appeared in the socialist world, with Mao's China becoming increasingly opposed to the policy direction of the Soviet Union. Geopolitical tensions between Moscow and Beijing, combined with China's increasing military strength, eventually overflowed into public exchanges of vitriolic criticism and diplomatic ruptures, with Soviet diplomats expelled from China after the beginning of the Cultural Revolution. In this climate, Chinese propaganda focused as much on attacking the Soviet Union as it did on lambasting the United States. Having already widely disseminated the 'Little Red Book', more ephemeral items such as posters could take their place at French rallies, in schools, and on the walls of other organisations. This poster's anti-imperialist theme taps into discontent within certain elements of Western society with the Cold War great powers and their efforts to maintain spheres of influence, with China's vehement hostility to the Soviet Union simmering under the surface of the quote's anti-Americanism. Posters such as this aimed to win over converts to China's ideological side of the communist world and simultaneously weaken what Mao called Moscow's "revisionist" and "imperialist" distortion of Marxism-Leninism. Richard Wolin, The Wind from the East: French Intellectuals, the Cultural Revolution, and the Legacy of the 1960s, Princeton University Press, 2010. Poster (380 x 530 mm), with a three-quarter portrait of Mao and a quotation printed in red on a yellow panel with a gold border. Small chip to upper left corner, not affecting image, margins a little creased and nicked, couple of faint marks, light vertical crease at the centre, colours and text sharp and bright. In very good condition. Seller Inventory # 149255
Contact seller
Report this item
