Repressive movements and the politics of victimization: Patronage and persecution during the Cultural Revolution

This dissertation offers a sociological explanation for the politics and the massive victimization which occurred during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Particularly, it focuses on the interaction between the elite and the grassroot politics, between the party authorities and the mass organizations. The introductory essay represents an effort to construct a descriptive definition of a "repressive movement"--a social movement manipulated from above, and where the role of the state authorities is essential. Part one, which consists of three chapters, emphasizes questions of how and why such large-scale mass movements were organized, as well as examining the origins and the dominant ideologies of these movements. There is a discussion of how challenging groups at the grassroots level were nourished by certain figures in authority, how social discontent was manipulated and utilized by the elites, how the repressive capacity of the bureaucratic system was paralyzed, and how new patronage relationships between the elites and the grassroots organizations were established; in general, how social disorder was politically constructed in order to cultivate mass movements to perform political persecution. Each of the four chapters in part two deals with a certain type of mass movement: the high-school Red Guards, the rebels, the conservatives, and the failures. It is argued that success for a movement depended on its association with its patrons among the power elites; victimization against the enemies designated by the patrons became the main ingredient for collective actions. This thesis concludes with a discussion of "political opportunity structures," arguing that ideological conformity was the basic means of survival, while patronage was the crucial element for success, for the mass movements during the Chinese Cultural Revolution.