The next event on the RNH calendar is a lecture which Professor Hannes H. Gissurarson is giving on the invitation of the Northern Light Confucius Institute at the University of Iceland Friday 2 November 2012 in Room 207 in the main building of the University. The topic is “Mao: The Story Which Was Told in Iceland”. There he will discuss the monumental biography, Mao: The Unknown Story, by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, published in an Icelandic translation in 2007. He will defend it against criticisms by Chinese-speaking philosopher Geir Sigurdsson, former director of the Confucius Institute, and historian Sverrir Jakobsson. Professor Gissurarson will discuss the controversy over the battle of the Luding bridge; the real number of victims in the mass executions and famines instigated by Mao; the comparison of Mao and Hitler; and other interesting historical questions.
In 2009, Professor Gissurarson translated the Black Communism of Communism into Icelandic, and in 2011 he published a 624 pp. history of the Icelandic communist movement, with several chapters about the relationship between Icelandic and Chinese communists. Jung Chang and Halliday’s biography of Mao is still prohibited in China. While the meeting is held by the Confucius Institute, his lecture, offering a comparative perspective on communism, forms a part of the project “Europe of the Victims”, organised jointly by RNH and AECR, the Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists.
