Page 117 - Communism in Ambush

RED TERROR IN ASIA

hough born in Europe, Communism's first revolution
took place farther east, in Russia. In the first half of the
20th century, it moved even farther to eastward until
1949, when China—the world's populous country—fell
T to guerillas led by Mao Tse-tung. For ten years, Mao's
militants engaged in attacks against government forces across China to
bring about the world's second largest Communist revolution. The re-
sults of this second revolution were the same as in the original Bolshevik
revolution: criminal assaults, mass murders, torture, famine, impove-
rishment, degeneration, resulting in an introverted, depressed society of
fear.
After Lenin, Mao brought the second important change to
Communist theory, bringing innovations to Marxism in three important
areas:
1) Marx and the Communist ideologues following him laid great
importance on the idea of the " "working class" proletariat. But Mao be-
lieved that the peasant class was the true leaders of the revolution and
proposed the idea of "peasant socialism."