S2 Ep2: Maoism, the Great Leap Forward / Famine and the Sino-Soviet Split
In the Shadows of Utopia: The Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian Nightmare
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The War on Nature and Maoism
Mao was in a good position to see the human cost of the irrigation campaign. The figures that Mao was being fed about how many acres of earth had been moved by however many millions of people, well, it largely had been greatly exaggerated. Richard Baum uses the phrase, a bubble of unreality to describe China during the Great Leap. As all levels of the country fall victim to something he also calls target fever and this willingness to lie in order to appease those above.
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