The plan was an extreme change and was set to occur in an unfeasible amount of time given the large magnitude of the plan. This was different than the Soviet interpretation of communism, which was slower, more cautious, and created a gap between the urban and rural societies, which was the opposite of what communism stood for. The Great Leap forward was centered around the countryside and far more drastic. Mao Zedong planned to achieve his goals as fast as possible by two main methods, people’s communes, and backyard furnaces. Proposed in early 1958, communes were large farming complexes whose purpose was to allow the population to expand and construct agricultural necessities such as reservoirs or irrigation systems. They had many functions,
