Publisher's Synopsis
By the Seventh Party Congress in 1945, Mao Zedong's position as the pre-eminent leader of the Chinese Communist Party was fully consolidated and the "Thought of Mao Zedong" was enshrined in the new Party constitution as an integral part of the official ideology.;This monograph elaborates the growth of Mao's authority and power in the late 1930s and early 1940s, and analyzes the key factors involved in this process. It also examines the broader phenomenon of the formation of the entire Maoist leadership which emerged at the Seventh Congress and continued to rule the Chinese Communist Party with relatively few disruptions over the next 20 years.