Shortly after the founding of the PRC in 1949, land reform, according to Mao biographer Philip Short, "lurched violently to the left" with Mao Zedong laying down new guidelines for "not correcting excesses prematurely." Beatings, while not officially promoted by the party, were not prohibited either. While landlords had no protection, those who were branded "rich peasants" received moderate protections from violence and those who were on the lower end were fully protected. In this vein, Mao insisted that the people themselves, not the security organs, should become involved in enacting the Land Reform Law and killing the landlords who had oppressed them, which was quite different from the Soviet practice. Mao thought that peasants who killed landlords would become permanently linked to the revolutionary process in a way that passive spectators could not be.