The Tragedy Of Liberation A History Of The Chinese Revolution 1945-1957

The Tragedy of Liberation: A History of the Chinese Revolution 1945–1957 is Frank Dikötter’s ground‑breaking account of the violent early years of the People’s Republic of China. Drawing on newly opened Communist Party archives, interviews, and memoirs, he shows how Mao’s “liberation” destroyed the old order and replaced it with a one‑party state that penetrated every aspect of daily life. Land reform, thought reform, mass campaigns, and political purges targeted landlords, “counter‑revolutionaries,” capitalists, intellectuals, and ordinary peasants, creating a climate of terror and sending at least five million civilians to their deaths even before the Great Leap Forward. As the second volume in The People’s Trilogy, the book reveals how policies of utopian transformation, propaganda, and coercion laid the foundations for China’s later catastrophes under Mao.