Quick questions on The Mao cult of personality: HSC Modern History Personality

The Yan'an period saw the construction of the cult. The Rectification Campaign of 1942 to 1944 disciplined the CCP into ideological uniformity. The Seventh CCP Congress (23 April to 11 June 1945) elected Mao Chairman of the Central Committee, the Politburo, and the Secretariat. Liu Shaoqi's report "On the Party" (Lun dang) constructed the doctrine of Mao Zedong Thought (Mao Zedong sixiang) as "Sinified Marxism-Leninism" and wrote it into the Party Constitution.

The Eighth CCP Congress (15 to 27 September 1956) removed Mao Zedong Thought from the Party Constitution. The change reflected the post-Khrushchev anxiety about cults of personality. Liu Shaoqi delivered the political report, with Deng Xiaoping presenting the new Constitution. Mao did not visibly object but resented the move.

Lin Biao replaced Peng Dehuai as Defence Minister in September 1959. Lin used the cult of Mao as the instrument of PLA loyalty, in part to consolidate his own power against the old marshals. Lin's slogan "the four firsts" prioritised man over weapons, political work over other work, ideological work over routine, and "living ideas" over book ideas.

The Cultural Revolution, from May 1966, produced the apotheosis. Features included:

Mao distinguished the "correct cult" of true leaders from the "incorrect cult" of Stalinist exaggeration. In his October 1970 conversation with Edgar Snow, Mao called himself "a monk holding an umbrella, alone with neither hair nor sky" (a Chinese pun: wu fa wu tian, "no law no heaven", but also "no hair no sky"). The remark, characteristically obscure, may have been a self-deprecating reflection.

After the arrest of the Gang of Four (October 1976) and Deng Xiaoping's accession at the Third Plenum (December 1978), the CCP confronted the cult problem. Deng's solution was to repudiate the late-Mao errors while preserving the Party's foundational figure. The Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party Since the Founding of the People's Republic (Guanyu jianguo yilai dang de ruogan lishi wenti de jueyi), adopted at the Sixth Plenum of the Eleventh CC on 27 June 1981 after two years of drafting under Hu Qiaomu, found:

Daniel Leese (Mao Cult, 2011) gave the canonical study, with detailed reconstruction of artefacts, rituals, and tensions.

Lin Biao and the propaganda apparatus constructed it.

Liu's "On the Party" report wrote Mao Zedong Thought into the Constitution.

It was a controlled rehabilitation.