Page 11 - SELECTED WORKS OF MAO TSE-TUNG Volume I.indd

PUBLICATION NOTE

This edition of the Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung includes
important articles he wrote in the different periods of the Chinese
revolution. A number of Chinese editions of his works have appeared
in various places, but none of them had been gone over by the author;
their arrangement was haphazard, there were errors in the text, and
certain important writings were omitted. The contents of the present
edition are arranged in chronological order and according to the main
periods in the history of the Communist Party of China since its
foundation in 1921. The present edition includes a number of im-
portant writings not included in the earlier editions. The author has
read all the articles, made certain verbal changes and, in isolated
cases, revised the text.
The following points need to be made clear in connection with
the publication:
1. The present selection remains incomplete. As revolutionary
records were destroyed by the Kuomintang reactionaries or dispersed
and lost over the long years of war, we cannot collect all the writings
of Comrade Mao Tse-tung, and particularly his numerous letters and
telegrams which form a considerable part of his writings.
2. Some articles which have been widely circulated (e.g., Rural
Surveys) were omitted in compliance with the author’s wishes, and
for the same reason only Chapter 1 of Economic and Financial Problems
(“A Basic Summing-Up of Our Past Work”) was included.
3. Explanatory notes are added to this selection. Some explain-
ing the titles are placed at the bottom of the first page of each article,
while the rest, political or otherwise, come at the end of each article.
4. The present Chinese edition is available in a single volume
or in a set of four volumes. The first volume of the set covers the
periods of the First Revolutionary Civil War (1924-27) and of the
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