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A beloved fairy tale, retold for young children in classic picture book format. Arriving at Granny's cottage, Little Red Riding Hood can't help but wonder why Grandma has such big eyes, ears and teeth. Could it be something to do with the wolf her mum told her not to talk to on the way?

Little Red Riding Hood Reviews | Toppsta

• ISBN: 9781409551690
• Pub Date: 1st January 2013
• Publisher: Usborne Publishing Ltd
• Imprint: Usborne Publishing Ltd.
• Format: Paperback
• Number of Pages: 24

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About Susanna Davidson

Susanna Davidson (Author)
Zanna Davidson enjoyed riding a Shetland pony called Jampot as a little girl, but deep down, she's always preferred dreaming up her own adventures. Zanna worked on a farm, and as a builder in Zimbabwe, before becoming a writer. She is the author of over forty books. Zanna currently lives in North London.

Seo Kim (Illustrator)
S

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About Mike Gordon

Carmela LaVigna Coyle lives out west in Colorado with her husband, Mike, their two college-age children, and her lovable, cuddly, precocious pup that gangly answers to the name of lulu.  Mike Gordon's award-winning illustrations span fiction, non-fiction, entertainment, and educational books worldwide. He lives in Santa Barbara, California.

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• Goldilocks and the Three Bears
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Little Red Riding Hood

by

Susanna Davidson

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Mike Gordon

• Pub Date: 1st January 2013
• Format: Paperback
• ISBN: 9781409551690

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Little Red Riding Hood

This story is featured in Favorite Fairy Tales and Short Stories for Children.
You may want to compare it to The Brothers Grimm version, Little Red-Cap.

Once upon a time there was a dear little girl who was loved by every one who looked at her, but most of all by her grandmother, and there was nothing that she would not have given to the child. Once she gave her a little cap of red velvet, which suited her so well that she would never wear anything else. So she was always called Little Red Riding Hood.

One day her mother said to her, "Come, Little Red Riding Hood, here is a piece of cake and a bottle of wine. Take them to your grandmother, she is ill and weak, and they will do her good. Set out before it gets hot, and when you are going, walk nicely and quietly and do not run off the path, or you may fall and break the bottle, and then your grandmother will get nothing. And when you go into her room, don't forget to say, good-morning, and don't peep into every corner before you do it."

I will take great care, said Little Red Riding Hood to her mother, and gave her hand on it.

The grandmother lived out in the wood, half a league from the village, and just as Little Red Riding Hood entered the wood, a wolf met her. Little Red Riding Hood did not know what a wicked creature he was, and was not at all afraid of him.

"Good-day, Little Red Riding Hood," said he.

"Thank you kindly, wolf."

"Whither away so early, Little Red Riding Hood?"

"To my grandmother's."

"What have you got in your apron?"

"Cake and wine. Yesterday was baking-day, so poor sick grandmother is to have something good, to make her stronger."

"Where does your grandmother live, Little Red Riding Hood?"

"A good quarter of a league farther on in the wood. Her house stands under the three large oak-trees, the nut-trees are just below. You surely must know it," replied Little Red Riding Hood.

The wolf thought to himself, "What a tender young creature. What a nice plump mouthful, she will be better to eat than the old woman. I must act craftily, so as to catch both." So he walked for a short time by the side of Little Red Riding Hood, and then he said, "see Little Red Riding Hood, how pretty the flowers are about here. Why do you not look round. I believe, too, that you do not hear how sweetly the little birds are singing. You walk gravely along as if you were going to school, while everything else out here in the wood is merry."

Little Red Riding Hood raised her eyes, and when she saw the sunbeams dancing here and there through the trees, and pretty flowers growing everywhere, she thought, suppose I take grandmother a fresh nosegay. That would please her too. It is so early in the day that I shall still get there in good time. And so she ran from the path into the wood to look for flowers. And whenever she had picked one, she fancied that she saw a still prettier one farther on, and ran after it, and so got deeper and deeper into the wood.

Meanwhile the wolf ran straight to the grandmother's house and knocked at the door.

"Who is there?"

"Little Red Riding Hood," replied the wolf. "She is bringing cake and wine. Open the door."

"Lift the latch," called out the grandmother, "I am too weak, and cannot get up."

The wolf lifted the latch, the door sprang open, and without saying a word he went straight to the grandmother's bed, and devoured her. Then he put on her clothes, dressed himself in her cap, laid himself in bed and drew the curtains.

Little Red Riding Hood, however, had been running about picking flowers, and when she had gathered so many that she could carry no more, she remembered her grandmother, and set out on the way to her.

She was surprised to find the cottage-door standing open, and when she went into the room, she had such a strange feeling that she said to herself, oh dear, how uneasy I feel to-day, and at other times I like being with grandmother so much.

She called out, "Good morning," but received no answer. So she went to the bed and drew back the curtains. There lay her grandmother with her cap pulled far over her face, and looking very strange.

"Oh, grandmother," she said, "what big ears you have."

"The better to hear you with, my child," was the reply.

"But, grandmother, what big eyes you have," she said.

"The better to see you with, my dear."

"But, grandmother, what large hands you have."

"The better to hug you with."

"Oh, but, grandmother, what a terrible big mouth you have."

"The better to eat you with."

And scarcely had the wolf said this, than with one bound he was out of bed and swallowed up Little Red Riding Hood.

When the wolf had appeased his appetite, he lay down again in the bed, fell asleep and began to snore very loud. The huntsman was just passing the house, and thought to himself, how the old woman is snoring. I must just see if she wants anything.

So he went into the room, and when he came to the bed, he saw that the wolf was lying in it. "Do I find you here, you old sinner," said he. "I have long sought you."

Then just as he was going to fire at him, it occurred to him that the wolf might have devoured the grandmother, and that she might still be saved, so he did not fire, but took a pair of scissors, and began to cut open the stomach of the sleeping wolf.

When he had made two snips, he saw the Little Red Riding Hood shining, and then he made two snips more, and the little girl sprang out, crying, "Ah, how frightened I have been. How dark it was inside the wolf."

And after that the aged grandmother came out alive also, but scarcely able to breathe. Little Red Riding Hood, however, quickly fetched great stones with which they filled the wolf's belly, and when he awoke, he wanted to run away, but the stones were so heavy that he collapsed at once, and fell dead.

Then all three were delighted. The huntsman drew off the wolf's skin and went home with it. The grandmother ate the cake and drank the wine which Little Red Riding Hood had brought, and revived, but Little Red Riding Hood thought to herself, as long as I live, I will never by myself leave the path, to run into the wood, when my mother has forbidden me to do so.

It is also related that once when Little Red Riding Hood was again taking cakes to the old grandmother, another wolf spoke to her, and tried to entice her from the path. Little Red Riding Hood, however, was on her guard, and went straight forward on her way, and told her grandmother that she had met the wolf, and that he had said good-morning to her, but with such a wicked look in his eyes, that if they had not been on the public road she was certain he would have eaten her up. "Well," said the grandmother, "we will shut the door, that he may not come in."

Soon afterwards the wolf knocked, and cried, "open the door, grandmother, I am Little Red Riding Hood, and am bringing you some cakes."

But they did not speak, or open the door, so the grey-beard stole twice or thrice round the house, and at last jumped on the roof, intending to wait until Little Red Riding Hood went home in the evening, and then to steal after her and devour her in the darkness. But the grandmother saw what was in his thoughts. In front of the house was a great stone trough, so she said to the child, take the pail, Little Red Riding Hood. I made some sausages yesterday, so carry the water in which I boiled them to the trough. Little Red Riding Hood carried until the great trough was quite full. Then the smell of the sausages reached the wolf, and he sniffed and peeped down, and at last stretched out his neck so far that he could no longer keep his footing and began to slip, and slipped down from the roof straight into the great trough, and was drowned. But Little Red Riding Hood went joyously home, and no one ever did anything to harm her again.

You may enjoy reading a "fractured fairy tale" version of this story in rhyme, How Little Red Riding Hood Came to Be Eaten, and our collection of Favorite Fairy Tales.

The true story of Little Red Riding Hood

© Tatyana Vorontsova

190 years ago, on October 18, 1812, two young scientists, the brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, put the final point in the book bestseller of German-language literature. The book was called “Children's and Household Tales”, and it was from it that the world became known

“Once upon a time there was a little, sweet girl. And whoever looked at her, everyone liked her, but her grandmother loved her more than anyone and was ready to give her everything. So she once gave her a cap of red velvet, and because this cap suited her very well and she didn’t want to wear any other, they called her Little Red Riding Hood ... ”Who in childhood was not fascinated by this seemingly naive, artless text? Nevertheless, the story of Little Red Riding Hood is not so simple: it is tortuous and intricate, just as human consciousness is tortuous and intricate.

The first literary version of this old folk tale was published by Charles Perrault in 1697 in Paris - in the book "Tales of my mother Goose, or Stories and tales of bygone times with teachings", dedicated to the princess of the French royal house. In those days, the story of a girl who went to visit her grandmother and met a wolf on the road was told all over Europe - both in the homes of commoners and in the castles of the nobility. The tale was especially popular in the Tyrol and the foothills of the Alps, where it had been known at least since the 14th century. Actually, it was a lot of stories: in the north of Italy, the granddaughter brought fresh fish to her grandmother, in Switzerland - a head of young cheese, in the south of France - a pie and a pot of butter; in some cases, the wolf was the winner, in others, the girl ... Perrault took one of the options as a basis, dressed up the nameless girl in a “companion” cap of scarlet velvet and bestowed the name - Little Red Riding Hood. I must say that in France at the turn of the 17th-18th centuries, when social differences in clothing were strictly regulated, only aristocrats and middle-class women wore such headdresses. A simple village girl, who easily walked in a velvet cap of a defiant color, and even - contrary to her mother's orders - entered into a conversation with a stranger, obviously understood a lot about herself, which the harsh era of the Enlightenment did not encourage. In the finale, the wolf taught a cruel lesson to all the windy young ladies: he "attacked Little Red Riding Hood and swallowed her."

The gallant author crowned the “cute trifle” (as he called his fairy tale) with a moral:

Little children, not without reason

(And especially girls, beauties and spoiled girls),

Encountering all kinds of men on the way,

No speeches

Otherwise, the wolf might eat them...

The popularity of Perrault's book was amazing, although the 69-year-old author himself, a prominent royal official and member of the French Academy, fearing ridicule, at first did not dare to put his own name on the collection, therefore for the first time, "Tales of Mother Goose" was published signed by the 11-year-old son of the writer - D'Armancourt.

But the “canonization” of the text did not end there. From the pages of a French book, Little Red Riding Hood returned to oral stories, and a hundred years later reappeared in a literary version - in German Kassel. This time, the philologists brothers Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm acted as authors, who saw in fairy tales by no means “trifles”. Grimms perceived folk tales as a necessary link in the unification of the fragmented German principalities-electors, who spoke different dialects, into a single national state. The goal of the Grimms was to collect and voice "living folk poetry", to preserve the authenticity of folk art. They believed that the “German pramith” was contained in fairy tales, and in their book “Children's and Household Tales” they selected only those stories that were popular in the territory of German settlement. Grimm's fairy tales were considered as pantries in which a single memory of the mythological ideas and beliefs of their ancestors was preserved, and they saw their task in revealing the “authenticity”, the true nationality of the plot. Based on the idea of ​​the unity of the people, the Grimms did not distinguish between written and oral sources, as well as the belonging of authors to different social and cultural strata, believing that in any of the options there is both truth and artificiality. They presented their own version of Little Red Riding Hood, combining oral stories, the fairy tale of Charles Perrault, as well as the verse play “The Life and Death of Little Red Riding Hood”, written in 1800 by the German romantic writer Ludwig Tiek (it was Tiek who introduced the hunter who saves the girl and grandmother from the belly of a wolf).

A feature of the fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm is the abundance of details, sometimes seeming nonsense, sometimes everyday life, sometimes just rudeness and cruelty. The girl's grandmother does not live in another village, but in the forest itself. Little Red Riding Hood brings her a piece of cake and a bottle of wine in her apron, and her mother sternly admonishes her: “Go modestly, as you should; don’t turn aside from the road, otherwise you’ll fall and break the bottle, then grandmother won’t get anything. And when you enter her room, do not forget to say hello to her, and not only to look back and forth in all corners first. The wolf reproachfully tells the girl that she is going, “as if she is in a hurry to go to school”, offers to “have fun in the forest”, and Little Red Riding Hood, succumbing to persuasion, enters the forest thicket and begins to collect flowers. Having eaten the grandmother, the wolf not only lays down in her bed, but first puts on a dress and cap. At the same time, he leaves the door wide open. Having swallowed the girl, the wolf snores so loudly throughout the forest that the hunter passing by the hut thinks if he needs to help the old woman. Seeing the wolf, the hunter takes the scissors and rips open the sleeping belly: “As soon as he made the first incision, he sees that the little red cap is visible inside. He quickly made a second incision, and a girl jumped out of there and screamed:

— Oh, how scared I was! It was so dark in the wolf's belly!

Grandmother also got out after Little Red Riding Hood, barely alive - she could not catch her breath.” Then the wolf is punished: his belly is stuffed with large stones. Waking up, he wants to run away, but heavy stones are pulled down, and the wolf falls dead. Each of the winners receives his reward: the hunter takes home the skin taken from the wolf, the grandmother, after eating a cake and drinking wine, gets better, and Little Red Riding Hood learns a life lesson: “From now on, I will never turn off the highway alone without my mother’s permission” . Soon the girl meets another wolf in the forest, and this meeting turns out to be fatal for him: Little Red Riding Hood and Grandmother drown the stupid villain in the trough without anyone's help.

The first publication of "Children's and Household Tales" did not arouse much enthusiasm. The Brothers Grimm's book was seen as a cross between a scientific document and children's fun, the publication was not bought up - readers demanded fabulous romantic short stories. However, after some time, either the authors successfully finalized the material, or the public got used to a strange mixture of archaic oral folk tradition and its literary fixation - the book began to diverge with a bang. Numerous translations were also not long in coming...

Since then, "Little Red Riding Hood" has become the most popular folk book fairy tale in Europe, and then in the world - always relevant and full of hidden meaning, which many tried to comprehend, sometimes crossing all sorts of boundaries in their conclusions.

So, since the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm came out in the year of the victory over Napoleon, in 1812, and were collected at a time when the lands of the Rhine were under the French heel, some researchers saw the French “intruder” in the wolf, and the suffering German people in Little Red Riding Hood , and in the hunter - the expected disinterested liberator. And a century later, the ideologues of the Third Reich, who declared "Children's and Household Tales" by the Brothers Grimm a sacred book, wrote in all seriousness that Little Red Riding Hood embodies the German people, persecuted by the wolf of Jewry.

The Grimms themselves, deeply religious people, saw in Little Red Riding Hood a single symbol of rebirth - a descent into the darkness and transformation. A hundred years later, Christian researchers who developed this idea declared Little Red Riding Hood the personification of human passions: vanity, self-interest and hidden lust. In the wolf, these same passions are embodied clearly and definitely. Only freed from the wolf's belly, as if born again, the girl is transformed.

Neo-mythologists, supporters of the so-called “wolf-solar theory”, who also considered themselves followers of the Grimms, argued that the fairy tale reflects the change of natural phenomena: the grandmother living in the forest in a house “under three large oaks” is mother nature, Little Red Riding Hood is the sun , the wolf is winter, and the hunter is the new year. Neo-pagans (there were some) considered the wolf to be the most positive character in the fairy tale. The red color of the girl's headdress seemed to them the embodiment of danger, and the grandmother, living in a dense forest, evoked associations with Baba Yaga and the goddess of death of the ancient Germans (by the way, pies and wine were a common sacrifice for the dead and other representatives of the underworld among all Indo-Europeans). So the wolf seemed to them to be something like an ancestor hero, who was trying to free the world from death and fell victim in an unequal struggle.

Initially, in the oral tradition of the fairy tale about Little Red Riding Hood, the wolf was not just an animal, but a werewolf (this is where his ability to speak in a human voice and successful attempts to disguise himself as a grandmother come from). The Grimms, like Perrault, did not advertise it, but implied it. At the end of the 20th century, interest in mysticism provoked a number of relevant interpretations of Little Red Riding Hood, among which the most famous interpretation of the British "Oscar" Neil Jordan - he turned this story into a love thriller about werewolves "In the company of wolves".

People of the 19th century saw a pure image in Little Red Riding Hood. A fan of "Children's and Household Tales" Charles Dickens in his "Christmas Stories" shared naive childhood reflections: "I felt that if I could marry Little Red Riding Hood, I would know true happiness. " And the Grimms themselves, who dreamed of returning to their national roots, generally believed that before the world was asexual, and “people produced children with just one look (as God acts only with a thought)” - only “then they needed kisses for this and, finally, hugs and carnal intercourse." “Teutonic religious neurotics” (so the brothers were dubbed by little-believing psychoanalysts of the 20th century) when preparing fairy tales for publication, they expelled from them all to any extent erotic scenes and expressions, because they believed that “old poetry” was “innocent”.

The 20th century made Little Red Riding Hood a brand and a diagnosis. So, in the 30s, supporters of Freud's student Erich Fromm declared that Little Red Riding Hood is a fully matured girl, and her headdress is a symbol of physiological maturity. The mother's warnings to stay on the road and beware of breaking the bottle are warnings against casual relationships and loss of virginity. The main characters of the tale are three generations of women. The wolf, embodying the masculine principle, is a “ruthless and treacherous animal”, and the hunter is a conventional image of Little Red Riding Hood's father (which is why he is not among the despised men). In general, the story tells about the triumph of the female half of humanity over the male and returns the reader to the world of matriarchy.

In the 1960s, the era of the sexual revolution and the rise of feminism, researchers began to talk about swallowing as rape, a symbolic description of uncontrollable sexual appetite. At the same time, the girl herself provokes the wolf to active actions: she wears a bright hat, talks to a stranger, has fun in the forest ... At the same time, the wolf turns out to be a transvestite and secretly envies the woman's ability to become pregnant. That is why he swallows his grandmother and granddaughter whole, making an attempt to put living beings in his stomach. At the end of the wolf, stones are killed - symbols of sterility, which is a mockery of the desire to play childbirth . ..

There were not so many of those who remembered that Little Red Riding Hood was a fairy tale for children. They timidly pointed to the educational aspect: an innocent child should beware of life's dangers and obey mother's orders. The initial “innocence” of the story was also indicated by the fact that the wolf did not die when the hunter cut open his stomach in order to free the girl and grandmother.

The story of the second wolf was forgotten in the 20th century, it is not mentioned in all modern editions of the Brothers Grimm's fairy tales. In essence, this is a sequel, a story about a completely different girl - more experienced, correct, who has learned the lessons of the “previous series”. And Little Red Riding Hood, who has lost her innocent naivety, is not interesting to the world - even if it has comprehended everything and survived all possible revolutions ...

source: Everything for the teacher of literature

Read online "Little Red Book", Mao Zedong - LitRes

© Shapinov V. , Kagarlitsky B., compile, foreword, comments, 2020

© Rodina Publishing House LLC, 2020

countries with bizarre creatures with two heads or one eye, giants or, conversely, midgets. The country of history, by the will of modern storytellers, turns out to be inhabited by such creatures, often having little in common with people who actually lived. The difference is that for ancient storytellers, distant lands were just a way to speak about their neighbors, without directly touching on the affairs of shahs, viziers and other powerful people of this world. For modern storytellers, armed with the latest PR technologies, history turns out to be a fertile field for exercises in pleasing the powerful of this world, in protecting their power, wealth and authority from the illegal encroachments of some Ali Baba or from the poisonous witticisms of Khoja Nasreddin. Their instructive stories are aimed at unconditionally proving that the existing order of things is the best and most reasonable possible, and any attempts to change it lead only to the bloody madness of terror, the power of the darkest and basest instincts of the crowd, a gloomy dictatorship.

Heroes who laid down their lives in the struggle, such as Ernesto Che Guevara, who was shot in the jungles of Bolivia by CIA agents, still have a chance to receive a condescending pat on the shoulder from the modern masters of discourse. Like, they sought to make life better, their good intentions are worthy of respect, etc., etc. But as soon as the revolutionaries win and start, for good or bad, but transforming the world in the interests of those very disadvantaged, over whose misfortunes they shed decalitres of tears liberal humanists, then a condescending pat on the shoulder turns into annihilating blows. They can accept the great martyrs of the revolution, the dead heroes, but they will never accept the victorious living revolution.

Liberals, accustomed to giving the people material and spiritual benefits as alms, and accustomed to receiving due gratitude from the people for this, are indignant when the people themselves begin to take what they need without asking permission and permission. Then the people, in the eyes of a highly educated public, turn from a suffering lamb into a monster that has swung at the foundations of the foundations of civilization, and the leaders of this people appear as monsters in the square. The only remedy for the repetition of such "tragedies" is seen by the liberal humanists as a stronger frightening of the people with great upheavals, and especially their organizers. And now there are no bad means left to smear with black paint the historical portrait of those who swung at the old order - all the revolutionaries from the Jacobins to the Bolsheviks became victims of such processing, the basest goals and the most terrible means were attributed to them.

The moralizing denunciators of the revolution continue their work, despite the fact that, as Mikhail Lifshits once noted, if there hadn't been a revolution, they would probably still be standing with a tray behind the back of their master's chair ...

To a child who appeared on the light in Hunan province on the twelfth day of the eleventh month of the year of the Snake, or December 26, 1893, was destined to become one of the favorite targets of attack by professional supporters of "moderate progress within the bounds of legality" and enemies of leaps and revolutions.

Myths and legends are tenacious, especially when behind them stands the strength and power of modern media, multiplied by the prejudices of modern educated philistinism. It is not easy to fight against the demonic power of this well-organized ignorance. However, let's try to overturn some of the myths surrounding the name of the great Chinese revolutionary Mao Zedong. This must be done so that the reader has the opportunity to read the Chairman's texts not through the multi-layered prism of these myths, but with their own eyes.

The figure of Mao Zedong in the history of the 20th century is so significant that it is difficult to find an event of the second half of the last century where his influence would not be felt. In the 60s and 70s of the 20th century, a portrait of Mao could be seen not only in China, but also above the columns of rebellious students in Paris, found in duffel bags of Latin American partisans, he hung in the office of Jean-Paul Sartre and the shack of an Indian peasant who rebelled against the landowner. Mao was quoted by members of the American Negro rebel Black Panther Party, Peruvian Indians, and even the recently deceased President of the Congo, Laurent Desiree Kabila, wrote his political program, turning to the writings of the Chairman for advice.

However, in the 1920s, when Mao was just beginning his revolutionary "career", nothing seemed to indicate the role he was destined to play in the history of China and the world. When, on July 1, 1921, delegates from Beijing, Canton, Jinan, Changsha, Tokyo and other places gathered at the women's college in the French concession in Shanghai, the founding congress of the Communist Party of China, there was also a humble delegate from Hunan Province - Mao Zedong.

Orders of the factory barracks in the city, plus the omnipotence of the landowner, the purchase of brides, faith in spirits, periodic famine in the countryside - this was the last word of the “thousand-year-old civilization”, the foundations of which were supposedly forcibly broken by the communist revolution.

Only a few fragments of Mao's work on organizing workers clearly demonstrate that this man was not at all the Chinese version of Emelyan Pugachev.

Until 1920, the only form of workers' organization in Hunan, where Mao worked as party secretary, was the professional guilds inherited from the Middle Ages. However, on November 19In 2020, two anarchist students, Huang Ai and Pang Renquan, founded the Hunan Workers' Association, the province's first workers' union, with about 2,000 workers a year later. Huang and Pan soon joined the Socialist Youth League under the influence of Mao. Mao paid great attention to the organization of the labor movement, emphasizing the need for the political struggle of the workers. He wrote in the newspaper "Working weekly": " The organization is needed not just to force the employer to shorten the working day and raise wages through strikes. The organization must awaken class consciousness and fight for the interests of the entire class of employees ".

In 1922, a strike broke out in the city of Huashi at a cotton-spinning factory, the administration of which refused to pay workers an annual remuneration. Governor Zhao summoned strike leaders Huang and Pang to talks, during which he promised to pay the workers what was owed. But then both young people were executed. Zhao's treachery shocked all of China. President Sun Yat-sen himself demanded to punish the governor. The actions of the governor led to the activation of the labor movement, which allowed Mao to expand the work even more widely. He creates a network of evening schools in which party members worked as teachers, writes a textbook that not only allows you to master writing, but also acquaints the reader with socialist ideas. On September 19For 22 years, railway workers, demanding higher wages and better working conditions, took to the rails and blocked traffic. Troops sent to restore order opened fire on the strikers. Six people were killed and many, including women, were injured. Mao called for a fight: “ Comrades! Only the working class is subjected to such cruel, inhuman humiliations. Is there a limit to our anger? Can our hatred be measured? How strong will our rebuff be? Revenge, revenge! Workers of the whole country, rise up to fight the enemy! "- such an appeal was sent by Mao to the workers' organizations.

At Mao's suggestion, the coal miners with whom he had worked since September 1921 joined the strike. The strike expanded, and under the threat of its development into a nationwide one, the authorities agreed to comply with the demands of the strikers. It was a big win. In September 1922, Mao created the Union of Masons and Carpenters, which included more than a thousand people. On October 5, the Union went on strike to raise wages. After 12 days, the authorities created a conciliation commission and sternly warned the workers: “Stubbornness will not lead to good. Think before it's too late." The commission offered prices that were higher than the old ones, but did not satisfy the demands of the strikers.

On 23 October it was decided to hold a protest march. The authorities banned the march. Many activists hesitated. But Mao persuaded the workers to fight to the end. The next day, a column of four thousand masons and carpenters took to the streets. Among them, in the clothes of a simple worker, was Mao. The governor's adjutant came out to the workers. “ When I was walking along Square at about ten in the evening,” a casual witness of the events wrote, “ my attention was attracted by an interesting sight ... I see how an official climbs onto a bench and calls on those gathered to return to their families. One of the workers invites his comrades to express their opinion by voting, but not a single hand is raised to the question of whether there are those who want to go home. “Here is our answer to you,” the worker turned to the official ". The worker who spoke to the governor's adjutant was Mao. The strike achieved its goal. Rates were raised, moreover, the governor decided that pricing issues would be resolved on an equal basis by agreement of the parties, and not through medieval guilds, as before. Thus Mao put an end to the rule of the guilds, that legacy of hundreds of years of feudalism, in Changsha.

However, the revolution in China did not really go along the classical European path "from the city to the countryside", but vice versa - "from the village to the city". Mao Zedong was one of the first to understand this. At 19In 27, after the bloody defeat of the workers' uprising in the cities, the Communist Party of China proceeds to create a peasant Red Army, which, guided by Mao's teachings about a protracted people's war, defeated the troops of the Kuomintang - the party of the Chinese bourgeoisie in 1949 and established the People's Republic of China.

But the revolutionary war and the victory of the army of poor peasants were not the end of the revolution for Mao. On the contrary, this is just the beginning. The peasant army is a way to overthrow the old power, but the transformation of society is the work of organized workers.

However, the "peasant war" that led to victory in 1949 was not a simple peasant war, it was waged under the leadership of a party that was brought up by the struggle of urban workers and whose theoretical basis was Marxism - proletarian, not peasant, theory.

“ In the national liberation movement it is necessary to uphold the hegemony of the proletariat, ,” wrote Mao Zedong ^[1] . - Only the working class is the most far-sighted, disinterested and consistently revolutionary class. The entire history of the revolution testifies that without the leadership of the working class, the revolution suffers defeat, and with it, it wins.0060 » ^[2] .