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A fascinating sidelight is the treatment of the whole episode in the Soviet press. Moscow papers have produced objective, detailed and horrified reports of the way the Chinese are running a Marxist revolution. "The Red Guards beat up a worker because he happened to be in a room where they found a crack in the frame of a portrait of Mao," reported Pravda last week. "They beat people with sticks, rifle butts, chairs and electric wires. One man was tortured a whole night. When he lost consciousness, they poured cold water over him, and kept torturing him until he died." Pravda also told how Red Guards from Peking seized party headquarters in Shanghai and tossed bricks and glass at people in the street below.
Youth on His Side. Provincial and local party headquarters have, in fact, been a major target for Red Guard fury. Apparently Mao wanted to root out a lack of zeal at the local party level. But, according to reports from China, Mao had an even more compelling reason to call the Guards: he was in trouble.
One version has it that Mao during his recent six-month absence from public view was being urged by President Lui Shao-chi to refrain from an other Leap Forward. Mao, so the story goes, enlisted his own wife to whip up support for him. She, in turn, recruited Lin Piao to Mao's cause.
With their aid, Mao created the Red Guards to undercut his opponents.
In preparation, Mao in May closed China's schools. Actually, the students kept on attending classes, but they studied only one subject: Mao's thought. With youth behind him, Mao was able to confront the Party Central Committee in early August with an ultimatum: vote for me, or else.
Conflicting Signs. A trademark of the Red Guards has become the "big-character" wall posters, which are old newspapers on which Guards proclaim new attacks on "revisionists," denounce party members for un-Mao-like behavior, and record news of Guard activities in other cities.
In the past few days, the posters have become symptomatic of the chaos in China's cities. Some criticize the Red Guards. Others report clashes of Guards with workers and peasants. Some even demanded that Mao, who so far has let Lin do the talking at Red Guard rallies, take a greater role in the swirling events.
Uncle Chou. Guard members are drawn almost exclusively from families of party members, workers, peasants or soldiers. So far, the Guard units seem to take orders only from party headquarters in Peking, but a relationship appears to have developed between the Guards and the army. A number of local army commanders have been appointed "instructors" of newly organized Red Guard corps.
Lin Piao is the Guards' command er, but their Dutch uncle seems to be Premier Chou Enlai. He recently ordered cadre leaders to stop beating up Chinese and removing art from public buildings. He also told them to stop pasting up the big-character wall poster that denounced the widow of Dr. Sun Yatsen, the founder of the first Chinese Republic.