Supreme Directives

The Quotations was a valuable and vitally important summary of Mao Zedong Thought, but it was never intended as a guide to the conduct of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution - it contained no quotations later than 1964. From the outset Red Guards and other factional groups collected directives (zhongfa) and other significant utterances by Mao (sometimes taken out of context), and distributed them as typewritten and mimeographed copies. During the later half of 1968 some of these collections were published as Supreme Directives in the same red vinyl-covered format as the smaller editions of the Quotations. In the fast evolving landscape of the Cultural Revolution these supplementary Little Red Books rapidly became highly desirable items. The authorities appear to have responded by publishing an officially approved version of the Supreme Directives in the same small format but with completely different contents.