In this article, the author, who visited China seven times between 1956 and 1977, outlines the driving forces behind the cultural revolution and underlines its most significant developments. This is not a chronology of the cultural revolution but rather an attempt to see it as a whole, within the overall context of the maoist conception of revolution. Whatever specific examples are given serve to illustrate how the cultural revolution evolved. The author also raises the question of the meaning of the cultural revolution both as related to maoisme and to léninisme. The author concludes by stating that the cultural revolution was the last attempt by Mao to create a situation of « revolutionary disorder », and that this amounts to a rejection of Lenin's concept of an elitist party.