Axel Berkofsky’s talk examines the GDR’s perception and interpretation of Mao’s Great Leap Forward. Probably the most disastrous and ill-fated man-made economic campaign in reported human history. That however, as it turned out, did not keep the regime in East Berlin from initially liking everything about it, including Mao’s infamous People’s Communes which disowned and dehumanized millions of Chinese peasants and their families in the late 1950s and early 1960s. East Berlin and its mouthpiece state-controlled newspapers, including their correspondents on the ground in China, believed and repeated Chinese propaganda on the leap’s alleged results in parrot-fashion when it in reality resulted in a nationwide famine, 40 million casualties, violence and the near-collapse of the Chinese economy. The leap’s disaster was there for all to see from the very beginning. ‘All’ as in minus the SED Politburo in East Berlin, as it turned out.

HBC Berkofsky 2023 03 29 (436 Kb)

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