It has now been one-half century, at least, since one of the most bizarre political movements in history was unleashed upon the civilization of China, home to one-quarter of mankind.
The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was conceived by one man, Mao Zedong, has several plausible start dates, which is to say no certain start date, but when "unleashed" is the term used there can be no doubt that the year 1966 was the year, that unleashed is the appropriate verb and that Mao unleashed it, the concept, and the proletarians as the revolutionaries, with considerable direction from Mao at first, somewhat less with the years as what and who Mao unleashed got ahead of him and he could not entirely get it back, upon the culture and the leadership, bewildered, unsuspecting and unprepared, of the People's Republic of China, to the destruction of all but two, and to 1.5 million-2 million others besides, and to the perplexity of those on the outside.
This was the year. We will remember the several major incidents as they occurred on the dates that they occurred, in the year 1966, in the People's Republic of China, when the Cultural Revolution was unleashed.
