The East Is Red

To the Editors of The Crimson:

Your recent eulogy of the late dictator of Communist China greatly distresses us. We are well acquainted with the left-wing view of the Harvard Crimson, but your editorial on Mao is too much to take. It reads as if it were lifted verbatim from The People's Daily.

If ever there was an instance of "domination by a small elite over the many," that instance was Communist China under Mao. Moreover, in the last sentence of your editorial you imply that Mao's revolution freed the Chinese people from oppression. We respectfully disagree. As we see it, people who have no freedom of thought are still "oppressed." And to top it off, you conveniently overlook the lives which were lost when Mao established his authoritarian rule, conservatively estimated at ten million.

Mao was a political genius and a military leader of the first order. But we cannot accept the praise you lavish on a man who was guilty of so many crimes against humanity.