In April 1957 the Central Committee launched a Party-wide rectification movement against bureaucratism, sectarianism and subjectivism. Taking advantage of this, a handful of bourgeois Rightists attacked the Party and the newly installed socialist system in an attempt to supplant Communist Party leadership. In June the Central Committee issued a directive calling for a counterattack. This was necessary. But a serious mistake was made in that the struggle was expanded to include as targets many persons who were not, in fact, Rightists. In 1978 the Central Committee decided to reexamine the cases of those who had been designated as Rightists and to exonerate those who were found to have been wrongly labelled as such.