Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, and other mass-murdering 20th-century dictators are considered to be some of the worst human beings who ever lived. Any supporters they have today are members of a fringe, dismissed by the rest of society as idiots or blind fanatics. Mao Tse-tung, however, is still respected in many quarters and even revered in his home country. His brutal rule over China from 1949–76 led to the deaths of an estimated 50–75 million people, making his reign the bloodiest in human history.

Mao was ruthless and tolerated no opposition, so few members of his government questioned his disastrous Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution programs. The policies of the Great Leap Forward, which ran from 1958–61, attempted to achieve rapid economic growth and industrialization, but it only ended up in widespread catastrophe, causing horrific violence and a famine that killed millions of people. The Cultural Revolution, which was Mao’s plan to purge the country of his enemies, caused millions more deaths from 1966 until Mao’s own death in 1976. Mao’s legacy has been very controversial. While some say he was a simplistic brute who cared only about holding onto power, others see him as a complicated visionary who ultimately transformed China for the better.

10 He Came from A Peasant Family Against the State: An ... Rockwell Jr., Llewelly... Best Price: $5.02 Buy New $5.52 (as of 11:35 UTC - Details)

For a man whose impact on the history of his country would be the greatest in centuries, Mao Tse-tung came from very humble and unremarkable origins. Mao was born on December 26, 1893, to a family of farmers in Shaoshan, a small village in the province of Hunan. His mother Wen Qimei was a kind and loving Buddhist, while his father Mao Yichang was a strict, hard-working Confucian. Although born poor and stuck with the debt that his own father Enpu had left after his death, Yichang had become a self-made man by lending money and buying the land of other impoverished peasants. The Maos were one of the richest families in the village, and they lived in luxury compared to their neighbors, who lived in a state of intense poverty and constant fear of starvation.

Unlike most peasant families, the Maos could afford to send their son to school, and the young boy dearly loved to read and learn. Although Mao was a sharp student, he was rude and hostile. He refused to obey the rules and was kicked out of school on three separate occasions by the time he was 13. He would go back to school when he was 16, this time in Xiangxiang, 27 kilometers (17 mi) away from his home village. Though he was made fun of for his battered peasant clothes, Mao made friends with a few other students and got along well with his teachers. Shaoshan was an extremely isolated, backward village that didn’t have a single newspaper, but Mao learned a heap of information at his new school, including that the emperor had died two years earlier and had been succeeded by a two-year-old relative named Puyi.

9 He Was First Married At Only 14 Years Old

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Mao Tse-tung was married four times through his life, and his first marriage took place when he was only 14 years old in 1908. The bride, an 18-year-old cousin named Luo Yigu, had been picked for Mao by his father and Luo’s father Helou. Mao didn’t meet Lou until the day of their wedding, and by all accounts, he wasn’t happy with the marriage. His granddaughter Kong Dongmei has said that Mao wanted to marry a different cousin, a girl named Wang Shigu. Mao’s proposal, however, was rejected because Wang’s horoscope didn’t match with his. Swords Into Plowshares... Paul, Ron Best Price: $4.00 Buy New $15.99 (as of 11:36 UTC - Details)

Mao regarded his new wife with disgust and, surprisingly for a teenage boy, refused to even sleep with her. Although she moved into his family’s house, he wouldn’t share a room with her, either. In the young man’s view, Luo would only get in the way of his studying. Shortly after the wedding, a disgruntled Mao left home to go live with his friend, a move which ended up causing a scandal in his village. Luo, disgraced and humiliated, continued to stay at the Maos’ home, supposedly as Yichang’s concubine. The poor woman ended up dying of dysentery shortly before her 20th birthday in February 1910. Mao showed no signs of regret or remorse and later told American journalist Edgar Snow in the 1930s that, “I do not consider her my wife.”

8 He Was An Accomplished Poet

Although we normally wouldn’t expect a mass-murdering psychopath to have an artistic side, Mao Tse-tung is also well-remembered in his home country for his poetry and writing style. Even some Western scholars have been impressed with his poetry, although others, like the first English translator of Journey to the West, have said it was, “not as bad as Hitler’s painting, but not as good as Churchill’s.”

In contrast to his radical political views, Mao preferred classical literature and wrote his poetry only in classical styles. Mao began writing poetry when he was a child, but his first book of poems wasn’t published until January 1957. His poems became extraordinarily popular in the years that followed, no doubt because they were also taught and memorized in schools. Whether genuine or the result of propaganda, the fervor for his poetry during the Cultural Revolution inspired devotees to carve lines from his verses, or entire poems, onto everything from grains of rice to mountain walls.

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