From the man's own mouth
Mistakes began to occur in the late fifties -- the Great Leap Forward, for instance. But that wasn't solely Chairman Mao's fault either. The people around him got carried away too. We acted in direct contravention of objective laws, attempting to boost the economy all at once. As our subjective wishes went against objective laws, losses were inevitable. Still, it is Chairman Mao who should be held primarily responsible for the Great Leap Forward. But it didn't take him long -- just a few months -- to recognize his mistake, and he did so before the rest of us and proposed corrections. And in 962, when because of some other factors those corrections had not been fully carried out, he made a self-criticism. But the lessons were not fully drawn, and as a result the ``Cultural Revolution'' erupted. So far as Chairman Mao's own hopes were concerned, he initiated the ``Cultural Revolution'' in order to avert the restoration of capitalism, but he had made an erroneous assessment of China's actual situation. In the first place, the targets of the revolution were wrongly defined, which led to the effort to ferret out ``capitalist roaders in power in the Party''. Blows were dealt at leading cadres at all levels who had made contributions to the revolution and had practical experience, including Comrade Liu Shaoqi. In the last couple of years before Chairman Mao's death he said that the ``Cultural Revolution'' had been wrong on two counts: one was ``overthrowing all'', and the other was waging a ``full-scale civil war''. These two counts alone show that the ``Cultural Revolution'' cannot be called correct. Chairman Mao's mistake was a political mistake, and not a small one. On the other hand, it was taken advantage of by the two counter-revolutionary cliques headed by Lin Biao and the Gang of Four, who schemed to usurp power. Therefore, we should draw a line between Chairman Mao's mistakes and the crimes of Lin Biao and the Gang of Four.
