They were stripped of the thousands of documents

MAO, THE UNKNOWN STORY

by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday

Gallimard, 864 pages, 28 euros.

Thirty years after his death, on September 9, 1976, Mao Zedong, who for twenty-seven years detained "absolute power over a quarter of the population of the globe", is still an object of worship in the world. In their long biography comes out in France, Jung Chang, who was fourteen years a Red Guard at the beginning of the "cultural revolution", then the author of the bestseller "Wild Swans", and the British historian Jon Halliday engage in a unbolting systematic of the image that the great helmsman had patiently, built. Nikita Khrushchev had, as early as the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1956, violently criticized the methods of Joseph Stalin and the cult of personality, Mao largely escaped criticism in China. A silence to the Chinese. To be sure to preserve, Beijing has, of course, banned the book, or even his simple critical, in the people's Republic.

Verdict without appeal

Because, to reopen the record Mao, the authors are delivered to a patient research of nearly twenty years, performing more than 360 interviews in 38 countries, including those of two former Presidents, dictators like Mobutu Sese Seko, of relatives of Mao, or even of a washerwoman of sub-

clothing of the President. They were stripped of the thousands of documents. And, unlike many of biographers who as Philip Short ("Les Echos" on February 9, 2006) denounce its mistakes, his murder, his coldness, his taste for luxury and lust, but he let still a role of theorist of the revolution and a defender of the poor peasantry, Jung Chang and Jon Halliday him leave almost nothing. If it is his extraordinary ability to remain in power to and against all.

A verdict without appeal: Mao was responsible for the death of at least 60 million people "in time of peace", which is higher than any other leader in the 20th century. In this field, it could be said that it was worse than Hitler and Joseph Stalin, the latter being the main responsible, according to the authors of the 1949 accession of Mao in power on the whole of China. They describe before all a cold opportunistic and without compassion especially for the fate of farmers, a "Homo sanguinarius", according to the expression of "The Economist", which is reached to implement a totalitarian system, and the abuses go back to well before 1949. The "great leap forward", initiated in May 1958 before the terrible "cultural revolution" (1966-1969), would alone cost the lives of some 38 million Chinese.

Beyond an encrypted record, the two authors apart a number of myths as that of the "long March" whose trips were, according to the authors, "aberrant" from the military point of view and that Mao was conducted largely in porters Chair. The "glorious" battle of the Luding bridge over River Dadu would have won during the winter of 1935 Mao's army and who is presented as one of the turning points of the "long March", glorified in China but also in the United States by the famous American journalist Edgar Snow mythical ("red star on the China"), is a pure invention, the two authors.

"Mao, the unknown story" already arouses controversy. Some critics questioned the difficulty of verifying all the sources advanced to support its conclusions. Remains that the authors have published more than 120 pages of notes, references archives, interviews and bibliographies prior to advancing their theses. An "unknown history" which reads as a questioning of Mao or even a condemnation. But also as the incredible story of a revolutionary period.