CHINESE CULTURAL REVOLUTION.

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Guanghui de 'Wu qi zhishi' wan sui ("Long Live the Great 'May Seventh Directive'"). First edition, first printing, of this deluxe photobook celebrating Mao's directions to his heir apparent Marshal Lin Biao, given at the genesis of the Cultural Revolution, to turn the People's Liberation Army into "great school" of socialist learning and agricultural and industrial production. Four months after Long Live the Great 'May Seventh Directive' was published, Lin was dead, having perished in a plane crash while attempting to flee to the safety of the Soviet Union.The illustrations combine photographs with reproductions of propaganda paintings. It opens with two full-page portraits of Mao, including one of him in military dress on the Tiananmen rostrum, followed by two double-page photographs of the Chairman and Lin, "his closest comrade in arms". Staged shots of soldiers and civilians capture the spirit of collaborative productivity, progress, and self-reliance that Maoist economic policy ardently desired to foster.

• Printing: first

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