Mao's ideological victory over his Party opponents enabled him to tighten his control of the Party overall. The communism that Mao developed at Yanan was fundamentally oppressive. Discipline and obedience were required of all those living under it. Mao advanced the notion of revolutionary correctness, asserting that, unless the Party maintained a constant struggle against wrong thinking, it would be betrayed from within. To prevent this he launched a 'rectification of conduct' campaign which lasted from 1942 to 1944. Party members were to engage in public self-criticism. To assist them in their search for revolutionary truth, they were obliged to study prescribed texts, among which Mao's own writings figured prominently. On the grounds that they had become infected by revisionist ideas, over a thousand Party members were imprisoned and tortured to extract confessions.
Sixty Communist Party officials committed suicide rather than undergo public humiliation. Mao dismissed suggestions that the campaign was too harsh. In 1942, he wrote: 'Some comrades see only the interests of the part and not the whole. They do not understand the Party's system of democratic centralism; they do not understand that the Party's interests are above personal or sectional interests.'
Consequences
The Rectification Movement enhanced Mao's authority over the CCP:
• He had rid himself of opposition and consolidated his position as leader.
• He had finally triumphed over the pro-Moscow wing of the Party.
• He had begun to move towards cult status in Yanan.
• Chinese communism was now so closely identified with him personally that it had become Maoism.
• Mao's election as Chairman of the Central Committee of the CCP in 1943 was a formal recognition of his dominance over the Party.
• By 1945, when the Japanese war came to an end, Mao was being regularly referred to as 'the great helmsman'.
World History
