Mao Zedong (1893-1976) was born in Shaoshan, Hunan Province, into a relatively prosperous peasant family. He attended the First Provincial Normal School in Changsha, graduating 1918, and worked briefly as assistant librarian at Peking University, where he encountered Marxist texts and became one of the thirteen founding delegates of the Chinese Communist Party in 1921. Over the following two decades he rose through the CCP hierarchy through a combination of rural guerrilla warfare expertise (the Long March of 1934-35, in which Mao's leadership emerged during the CCP's retreat from Nationalist encirclement), theoretical writing ('On Contradiction' 1937, 'On Practice' 1937, 'On New Democracy' 1940), and factional politics (the 1942-44 'rectification campaign' at Yan'an that disciplined the Party and installed Maoism as orthodoxy). The Chinese Communist Party victory in the 1945-49 Civil War brought Mao to power as Chairman of the new People's Republic of China (proclaimed October 1, 1949). The first decade of PRC rule consolidated Party power, launched agrarian reform that killed perhaps 2-5 million landlords in rural Chinese, established nationalized economic planning, engaged in the Korean War (1950-53), and cautiously experimented with limited political liberalization (Hundred Flowers Campaign 1956-57, quickly reversed as Anti-Rightist Campaign purged criticizing intellectuals). The Great Leap Forward (1958-62) was Mao's catastrophic attempt to industrialize rapidly through backyard steel furnaces and collectivized peasant labor. The resulting famine killed an estimated 30 million people — one of the largest man-made disasters in human history. In the aftermath, Mao lost day-to-day administrative control to pragmatists (Liu Shaoqi, Deng Xiaoping). The Quotations compilation project began in this period, as Lin Biao and other Mao loyalists worked to maintain Mao's ideological preeminence despite his weakened administrative position. Mao launched the Cultural Revolution in 1966 as a political counterattack against the Party bureaucracy, mobilizing young Red Guards against established authority. The Little Red Book became the movement's scripture. A decade of mass persecution and factional violence followed. Mao's health deteriorated through the 1970s; he died September 9, 1976. Within a month his widow Jiang Qing and the other members of the Gang of Four were arrested, ending the Maoist political era as political practice even as the Party continued to venerate Mao officially. Lin Biao (1907-1971), the book's compiler-sponsor, was born in Huang'an, Hubei Province. He attended the Whampoa Military Academy (class of 1925), fought in the Northern Expedition, and joined the CCP. During the Civil War he commanded the Fourth Field Army, which won decisive battles in Manchuria and northeastern China (Liaoshen and Pingjin Campaigns 1948-49). He became Minister of Defense in 1959, supported Mao during the Cultural Revolution, and was named Mao's official successor in the 1969 Party constitution. His fall came in 1971 when, according to the official Chinese account, he attempted to assassinate Mao and fled toward the Soviet Union, dying in a plane crash at Öndörkhaan, Mongolia, September 13, 1971. The circumstances remain contested.

How the Era Shapes the Book

The book is a product of the Sino-Soviet split and the Cultural Revolution's ideological atmosphere. The split required China to differentiate Maoism from Soviet Marxism-Leninism as a distinct doctrine for export; the Cultural Revolution required an accessible scripture for mass mobilization. Both circumstances shaped the book's form. The ideological contrast with the Soviet Union justified the book's emphasis on peasant revolution, mass mobilization, and guerrilla strategy — all areas where Mao's analysis diverged from Soviet orthodoxy. The Cultural Revolution's need for mass-usable political material determined the book's pocket format and aphoristic compression.