Terms History

Proletariat

Working class.

Bourgeoisie

Wealthy middle/upper class.

Vladimir Lenin

Leader of Bolsheviks; adapted Marxism in Russia.

The Communist Manifesto

1848 call for workers' revolution.

Nationalized

Government takeover of private property.

Bolsheviks

Lenin's radical Marxist group.

Mao Zedong

Leader of Chinese Communist Party; 1949 PRC founder.

CCP

Chinese Communist Party, founded 1921.

Nationalist People's Party (Guomindang)

Sun Yat-sen's party; later led by Chiang Kai-shek.

Sun Yat-sen

First leader of Republic of China; nationalist revolutionary.

Northern Expedition

Nationalist campaign to unite China (1926).

Chiang Kai-shek

Leader of Nationalists after Sun Yat-sen.

May Fourth Movement

1919 nationalist protest; rise of anti-imperialism.

Indoctrinated

Taught to accept ideas without question.

Revisionist

One who changes or challenges traditional ideas.

Peasant

Poor farmer; key to Mao's revolution.

National bourgeoisie

Middle-class business owners in China.

Land-to-the-tiller policy

Land reform giving peasants ownership.

Hundred Flowers Campaign

Mao's brief encouragement of free speech.

Great Leap Forward

Mao's failed industrial/agricultural push.

Backyard furnaces

Small home steel production units.

People's communes

Huge collective farms under Mao.

Red Guards

Youth who enforced Mao's Cultural Revolution.

Little Red Book

Collection of Mao's sayings.

Cultural Revolution

Mao's 1966-76 purge of old ideas and rivals.

Gang of Four

Mao's wife Jiang Qing's political group.

Jiang Qing

Mao's wife; Gang of Four leader.

Deng's Four Modernizations

Post-Mao reforms: farming, industry, defense, science.

Fifth modernization

Demand for democracy in China.