Reasons for failure of the Great Leap Forward Flashcards
(11 cards)
anti-Rightist campaign
Silence critism
intellectuals
Intellectuals had learnt from the anti rightists campaign and the Hu Fung campaign to not criticise Mao
anti-Rightist campaign
Silence critism
peasants
Peasants following The Eight Point Agricultural Constitution not speak out against Lysenko’s flawed practices scientists described as pseudoscience
Members in the politburo not willing to challenge Mao’s belief in mass mobilisation following purge of Peng Dehuai
party
Members in the politburo not willing to challenge Mao’s belief in mass mobilisation following purge of Peng Dehuai
Practices
‘walking on two legs’
‘walking on two legs’ backyard furnaces to smelt from students with no training, melted all kinds of metal and burnt furniture for fuel, much left to rust as unusable. BUT had some promise as 100,000 people were working on them by 1958
Practices
Four Nose Campaign
Four Nose Campaign, flawed not let sparrows land eventually die rom exhaustion, actually meant caterpillar ate the crops
Practices
Military activity
Military activity organised by People’s communes took men away from work in fields same as walking on backyard furnaces BUT it put children in kindergarten so women could work
Cadres
decentralised planning
Planning became decentralised to distance itself from Ussr and Mao just told cadres to find ways to meet targets
Cadres
targets
Lied about meeting targets following Anit rightist c so Mao thought everyone should ‘eat five meals a day’
Cadres
communes
People’s communes run by cadres
Unprepared, Over estimated peoples will, not want to pool resources, killed own animals , hoard grain
practices
experts
Break relations 1560 withdrew experts but still had to pay grain exports
go against technichal advise saying would take decades
weather conditions
1959 weather, floods south and doubt north
