New Left Review I/37, May-June 1966
Joan Robinson
The Communes and the Great Leap Forward
The Great Leap Forward in China in 1958, the set-back that followed and the recovery now accomplished form one of the most dramatic episodes in economic history that this dramatic age has seen.
In 1958, in an atmosphere of heady enthusiasm, the agricultural communes were formed; in the ‘bitter years’ that followed they were thoroughly put through the wringer and reorganized into the practical and flexible form which exists today. Of all that has been written on this subject, I find the most enlightening the study by David and Isabel Crook [1] Isabel and David Crook. The First Years of Yang yi Commune. Routledge and Kegan Paul. 42s of one commune, concentrated upon one village within the commune. Not that it is possible to generalize from one case; each district, even each village, has its own peculiarities; but it is enlightening to have an account of one small sample of experience in minute concrete detail. The authors revisited a neighbourhood of which they had already made a study (Revolution in a Chinese Village: Ten Mile Inn) so that they were well prepared to gauge the changes that the commune introduced there.
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