'China's Cultural Revolution under Chairman Mao was one of the most staggeringly brutal events in recent human history. Tom and Dominic are joined by historian Rana Mitter, who specialises in the history of Republican China.'

'Michael Wood explores the origins and rise of the Chinese Communist Party, and the significance of Mao Zedong in the process.

The Communists resisted the Nationalists by escaping to Yan'an on the Long March in 1934 - and the future looked very bleak for Mao.

A divided China, and invasion by Japan in 1937, created the conditions for a successful revolution, despite the violent opposition of the Nationalists led by Chiang Chiang Kai-shek.

After 1945 Civil War between the Nationalists, supported by the West, and the Communists, led to success for Mao. But was the People's Republic of China, declared in 1949, a success, or did Mao make mistakes?'

'Ed Vulliamy and Andres Schipani on the Cuban revolutionary's career of constant struggle. This article first appeared in the Observer in January 2007.'

'If you grew up in China in the 1950s and ’60s, as Jung Chang did, the last thing you aspired to be was a writer. “Writing was the most dangerous profession,” she told me recently.'

'In 1917, a young American journalist was sent to Russia to report on the revolution. In Petrograd, John Reed witnessed as much of the turmoil as he could and kept detailed records, which eventually become his famous book Ten Days That Shook the World. But the socialist dream turned sour, and Reed's life was as brief as it was brilliant.'

'The Bolsheviks wanted to recreate society completely, creating an ideal world where all people were equal. This notion of equality included women, who up until this point, were limited to domestic work. Now women were expected to be a part of the workforce outside of their homes. Their roles within the family also changed with new Soviet policies. According to the Bolsheviks, women would gain independence from the traditional roles they had played in the past.'

'The west has assumed that Maoism, like Soviet communism, has been left in the dust: no European rebels these days carry a Little Red Book. But the ideology is resurgent in China and remains hugely influential elsewhere.'

'China's Cultural Revolution was a golden age for propaganda posters if nothing else. Paul Crook, who was a teenager living in the capital Beijing during the 1960s, takes us through his collection from the time.'

'Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history and symbolism of the Chinese Red Army's escape from the Kuomintang in 1934/5 and Mao Zedong's emergence from it as the future leader.'

Stephen Kotkin of Princeton University on Stalin's rise to power (aka the consolidation of the authoritarian Soviet regime).

'The history of the century-old party is far more interesting than its sanitised propaganda would suggest, says Rana Mitter, author of China’s Good War.'

Frank Dikotter on The Cultural Revolution

Rana Mitter on China's war with Japan.

'Mr. Rittenberg, who was 98 when he died Aug. 24 at a nursing center in Fountain Hills, Ariz., became one of a handful of Americans who lived behind the lines of a country that developed into a bitter Cold War enemy. He was widely considered one of the most powerful Westerners advising the Chinese government in the 1950s and ’60s, but he paid a steep price for his front-row vantage point. Mr. Rittenberg was twice imprisoned and spent 16 years in solitary confinement, swept up in the fickle tyranny and convulsive whims of his friend Mao Zedong.'

'This [French] documentary, woven out of exceptional archives, follows the birth of Russian revolution step by step. It shows a Lenin tossed by the waves of history, rather than its maker.'

'On February 21, 1972, China's leader Mao Zedong and US President Richard Nixon met to normalize relations between their two countries. Their meeting in Beijing was brief but it set the scene for what has become the most important economic relationship in the world. CGTN's Owen Fairclough looks back on the historic encounter.'

China Blog by Stephen McDonell. How China remembers the Cultural Revolution. 

Stephen Kotkin of Princeton University on Stalin's rise to power (aka the consolidation of the authoritarian Soviet regime) - Part 2