(CRG). History The history of the Cultural Revolution can generally be categorized into two main periods: (1) spring 1966 to summer 1968 (when most of the key events took place), and (2) a tailing period that lasted until fall 1976. Early stage: mass movement (1966–68) The early phase of the Cultural Revolution was characterized by mass movement and political pluralization. Virtually anyone could create a political organization, with or without party approval. Known as Red Guards, these organizations originally arose in schools and universities and later arose in factories and other institutions. After 1968, most of these organizations ceased to exist and their legacies were a topic of intense controversy in the latter part of the Cultural Revolution. May 16 Notification In May 1966, an "expanded session" of the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party was called in Beijing. The conference, rather than being a joint discussion on policy (as per the usual norms of party operations), was mainly a campaign to mobilize the Politburo into endorsing Mao's political agenda. The conference was heavily laden with Maoist political rhetoric on class struggle and filled with meticulously prepared 'indictments' on the recently ousted leaders such as Peng Zhen and Luo Ruiqing. One of these documents, released on May 16, was prepared with Mao's personal supervision and was particularly damning: Those representatives of the bourgeoisie who have sneaked into the Party, the government, the army, and various spheres of culture are a bunch of counter-revolutionary revisionists. Once conditions are ripe, they will seize political power and turn the dictatorship of the proletariat into a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Some of them we have already seen through; others we have not. Some are still trusted by us and are being trained as our successors, persons like Khrushchev for example, who are still nestling beside us. This text, which became known as the "May 16 Notification" (), summarized Mao's ideological justification for the Cultural Revolution. Effectively it implied that there were enemies of the Communist cause within the Party itself: class enemies who "wave the red flag to oppose the red flag." The only way to identify these people was through "the telescope and microscope of Mao Zedong Thought." While the party leadership was relatively united in approving the general direction of Mao's agenda, many Politburo members were not especially enthusiastic, or simply confused about the direction of the movement. The charges against esteemed