The Great Leap Forward
Sound Source: Crash Course World History (31 sec.)
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*NOTE: USSR = Soviet Union*
(Click "off" button on Top Left to hear sound)
*NOTE: USSR = Soviet Union*
Hundreds of millions of ordinary villagers [are] compelled to work for weeks on end on remote projects, often without sufficient rest and food...as an unsuccessful and rash experimental attempt to modernize China."
-Frank Dikötter, Mao's Great Famine
Now that we have communes, with the exception of a chamber pot, everything is collective, even human beings."
-Party Secretary Zhang Xianli
"...to create a giant army...with brigades, with commanders, with small armies, that could tackle on task after the other...He herded people in the countryside in giant collectives called people's communes and...everything was collectivized..."
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"...The food...was distributed by the spoonful in collective canteens...Every single incentive...is being stripped away from ordinary villagers..."
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