The Cultural Revolution was started in October of 1966 by China's Chairman Mao (pictured to the left). Mao wanted to completely remodel, or 'purify,' China, and he wanted complete and organized control. In the ten years of the Cultural Revolution, he got that.In order to get support for the Revolution, Mao set up the Red Guards, an organization of student supporters. The Red Guard quickly became wildly popular-- in part because Mao, who was greatly admired by most of the people of China, praised it so much-- and almost every young student dreamed of joining it one day.
The Red Guard was one of the main forces of the Revolution, and helped greatly in achieving the Revolution's goal: to destroy the 'four olds.' The four olds were old ideas, habits, customs, and culture. By getting rid of the four olds, they were also getting rid of an old way of thinking-- the Revolution was as much a revolution of the minds of the people as of a country.
But the destruction of the four olds-- and everything to do with them-- was very violent. Anyone suspected of being traitorous of Chairman Mao could be killed. Innocent people were forced out of their homes, fired from their jobs, forced to work without pay 'for the good of the country,' murdered, tortured, publicly beaten, and so on. Public humiliation was another popular process of punishment Some victims were made to kneel without moving for hours on broken glass while their houses were torn apart in a vicious search for any kind of incriminating evidence. Some families that needed to 'rethink' their loyalties were relocated to farms out in the country, where they had to perform back-breaking labor for the nation.
Another goal of the Revolution was complete equality. Mao's government blamed the upper class of doctors, lawyers, teachers, and especially landlords, for the suffering of the poor. So anyone who was in any of those professions, and their relatives-- no matter how distant-- were suddenly criminals. The Red Guard locked up, tortured, and killed China's upper class-- something that was, essentially, the nation's suicide. They were murdering the brightest and most important minds in their country... all in the name of equality.
So despite its initial wild popularity, members of the Red Guard began questioning the ethics of the Revolution. The movement lost momentum, and popularity faded. The official date of the Revolution's end is 1977, one year after Mao's death.
I got most of my information from a book I read several years ago called 'Red Scarf Girl,' which is the true story of a young girl in China during the Revolution. The rest of my information comes from http://acc6.its.brooklyn.cuny.edu/~phalsall/texts/chinhist.html . The picture is from photobucket.com
