The Cultural Revolution, known in full as the "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution," was launched by Mao Zedong, the chairman of the Communist Party of China, as a means of quashing capitalism in China. He wanted to ensure that the desire for a communist government would remain strong in the country long after his death. Like other previous leaders who attempted to continue to rule after their death, his attempt did not work out quite the way he had planned. Over the course of a decade, from the summer of 1966 to 1976, Mao Zedong implemented a number of changes that have led him to be known as one of the most brutal tyrants of the modern age. It is estimated that between 500,000 to two million Chinese people, although numbers can go as high as twenty million, died as a direct result of Zedong's Cultural Revolution. It also resulted in millions of people being imprisoned, displaced, and tortured in an attempt to cement Mao Zedong's reputation as the leader of the communist world.
