Headline, May 05 2022/ ESSAY : ''' '' SOME BOOKS SORT '' '''

ESSAY : ''' '' SOME

 BOOKS SORT '' '''

 

"CAPITALISM LEADS TO SOCIALISM - SOCIALISM LEADS TO COMMUNISM and a communist society must still be transformed; it will also have a beginning and an end.'' That's the great Mao at his brilliant best.

''THE ENEMY ADVANCES - WE RETREAT. The enemy halts and encamps, we harass. The enemy seeks to avoid battle, we attack. The enemy retreats, we pursue.''

Of the many predictions Mao made, one is a reality while another is on the verge of a spectacular dawn. I leave the rest to your master imaginations.

His fond hope that is about to be realised must be noted : ''The era in which the Chinese people were regarded as uncivilised is now ended. We shall emerge in the world with an advanced culture.''

About this archipelago that is Japan, I have only one book : emperor Hirohitos's biography by Edward Behr, who also wrote The Last Emperor, which was about China and made into a film with Peter O' Toole in the cast.

On Mongolia, I have some books, centring mostly on Temijin's [Changez Khan] conquest. A Former colleague gifted me a three-volume set on Khan by British author Conn Iggulden, who specializes in historical novels, especially about empires.

The first volume is both fascinating and highly informative in terms of details of Mongol social life, especially their dietary habits and lack of hygiene. It begins rightly with the consolidation of Khan's power in the Mongolian wilds and ends with the conquest of China.

But the second volume tired me out halfway because of endless dialogue and little action, even though Khan is now on the outskirts of Khwarazm, where he truly meets his equal in Jalaluddin.

About Russia, my knowledge is extremely limited, and a voluminous 'official' history of the Russian revolution, and of Joseph Stalin's empire, left me as ignorant about it as before, because ideologically awkward facts had to be camouflaged in prosaic and repetitive party jargon.

One book that I valued, but lost, was The Great Terror : Stalin's purge of the 30s, a biography by British author Robert Conquest, an expert on Russia.

On China I have, relatively speaking, a good collection, but a tome somebody pinched was priceless : Stanley Karnow's Mao and China : From Revolution to Revolution.

I read American author Edgar Snow's classic Red Star over China only to get the right quotations for a thesis I was working on. Another valuable biography I have lost is Mao : The People's Emperor, by British journalist Dick Wilson, who also wrote a biography of former Chinese premier Zhou Enlai.

Many aspects of Mao Zedong's life are extraordinary. According to Wilson he was China's Mustafa Kemal Ataturk as well as Vladimir Lenin, and governed for a quarter of a century.''

Like all great men he could see the future. What he said when the Chinese Communist Party [CPC]  hadn't even come into being shows his power of Prescience.

In 1921, as a mere delegate enroute to a secret rendezvous in Shanghai where the [CPC] was to be formed, Mao said : ''If we work hard, in about 30 to 40 years time the [CPC] maybe able to rule China.'' Note the astonishing bit of crystal gazing.

As Mao began his struggle against the system he ultimately destroyed, tragedy struck when the militia supporting Chiang Kai Shek's Kuomintang [KMT] nationalist government executed many of Mao's family, including his wife, Yang Kai-hui.

LIKE all great men dedicated to their mission, Mao lived a simple life, hated sumptuous food, used the same quilt from 1942 to 1962 and ordered the removal of a spring bed that some militiaman had put in his bedroom. He then slept on his bedding and laid out a wooden board.

Mao's many sayings range from philosophical dictums to cynical musings in later years when he was firmly in power and faced the truth about the country and the people, especially their poverty.

He tired out the KMT army by tactics that were suited to Chinese conditions and have been recognised for their ingenuity and brilliance.

The basic strategy was to surround the cities by capturing villages, besides the much quoted ''The enemy advances, we retreat. The enemy halts and encamps, we harass. The enemy seeks to avoid battle, we attack. The enemy retreats, we pursue.''

We can also detect traces of cynicism common among great men in their twilight years, especially when faced with new leaders brimming with ideas that, to them, sound blasphemous. It was perhaps during the disaster that was the Culture Revolution that Mao said 

''The more books one reads, the more stupid one gets.''

The Honour and Serving of the Latest Global Operational Research on Great Books, Leaders and the World, continues. The World Students Society thanks author Muhammad Ali Siddiqi. 

With respectful dedication to the Leaders, Students, Professors, and Teachers of the world. See Ya all  prepare and register for Great Global Elections on The World Students Society : wssciw.blogspot.com and Twitter - !E-WOW! - The Ecosystem 2011 :

Good Night and God Bless

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