http://blogs.rediff.com/mkbhadrakumar/2013/10/25/what-china-can-learn-from-ussrs-fall/
What China can learn from USSR’s fall
Those of us who lived and worked as diplomats and foreign correspondents in Moscow in the final years of the era of Mikhail Gorbachev in the late 1980s are bound to carry a life-long intellectual curiosity about the dialectics of reform and democratic transition in authoritarian political systems. This partly explains, speaking for myself, the curiosity I have about the prospects of how China is going to make the grade.
In China itself, the most frequent comparison being drawn is with the Gorbachev era of Soviet history and the dissolution of the former Soviet Union. I say ‘dissolution’ deliberately because it was a conscious, unilateral, personal act by Boris Yeltsin that had no inevitability about it. The ‘dissolution’ suited Yeltsin. Period. He didn’t consult others seriously nor would his peer group in the former Soviet republics have agreed.
Thus, to begin with, the comparison with the Soviet experience is a flawed one, empirically speaking. There was no ‘Soviet fall’ as such, as the Chinese discourses keep imagining. In the last Party Congress, the new Chinese leadership openly spoke about it. The debate continues, especially now that the crucial 3rd “plenum” of the CCP is due to take place in November with the focus on reform in its agenda.
In August, Xinhua carried a commentary on this topic by one Wang Xiaoshi (a pseudonym, presumably), which triggered a lot of excitement in China and abroad. The main argument was that Gorbachev provided “weak” leadership and, thus, the reform got out of control. It took the view that the post-Soviet turmoil in Russia in the early 1990s should be an “alarming warning” for China as to what all terrible things can happen if China were to descend into unrest or anarchy.
Interestingly, it negatively portrays Yeltsin’s legacy of democratizing Russia for the first time in history, while commending Vladimir Putin’s achievements in steering the country toward “prosperity” without losing sleep over “democratization”, although as a diminished power on the world stage.
Again, the Chinese communist party tabloid Global Times today featured an interview with the famous Soviet dissident historian Roy Medvedev drawing on the ‘lessons’ of the Soviet experience. He more or less endorses the thinking that seems to be going down well in China, namely, China should be wary about stepping the pedal on political reform and should confine itself to economic reforms.
Yes, by all means, focus on economic reforms at the forthcoming “Plenum”, but for God’s sake leave alone democratization, let time and tide work on it — that’s roughly what Medvedev says. It will be what China wants to hear.
I am surprised. Medvedev could and should have pointed out that the comparison between Soviet Union and China — except the notional one that both were ’socialist’ countries in name — is not quite in order. Even if Gorbachev wanted to practice the Chinese example of economic reform and leave ‘glasnost’ on the back burner, it wouldn’t have worked for him. That’s the honest truth.
The point is, China’s economic growth could be so dynamic primarily because it could exploit ‘globalization’, whereas, the Soviet Union lived in an altogether different world, despised by the West and disowned by much of the East. It was ostracized.
Do not forget that the West boycotted the 1980 Moscow Olympics. The remnants of the Jackson-Vanik Amendment still haunt the Russian-American relations. Thus, the latitude from the ‘international community’ that China enjoyed through the 1970s and 80s and the 90s and into the post-cold war era in optimally exploiting the opening up of its economy was a luxury not available for Gorbachev.
Second, there was no way the stagnant Soviet system could have been energized other than by churning up the cesspool, which was what Gorbachev’s ‘glasnost’ intended. As he once plaintively put it, the Soviet manager was like a bird afraid to fly and take to the skies although the cage was open.
Also, Medvedev is partial in saying that the alienation of the Soviet citizen with the system began with Gorbachev. To my mind, Gorbachev inherited the crisis of credibility of the Soviet communist party.
Clearly one full decade before the era Gorbachev, in 1975 when I first arrived in the Soviet Union to work in the embassy in Moscow as a diplomat, the thing that struck me was the profound disconnect between the Soviet system and the Soviet citizen and how the citizen enveloped himself with a surreal world dripping with cynicism.
It came as a shock to me, frankly, because this was not what I had expected. (By the way, I am not sure if the phenomenon of Soviet cynicism ended even with the dissolution of the Soviet system. Who were the ‘oligarchs’?)
A third major difference is the nature of the Chinese economy, which is vastly unlike the Soviet (and Russian) economy that is critically dependent on the income from oil exports. It’s useful to remember that probably Gorbachev wouldn’t have had to go down on his knees and beg for financial bailout from the West if the oil was selling at, say, $15 per barrel instead of $8 at that critical point.
Again, Soviet Union had no manufacturing industry churning out export products for the world market. To add to it, the Soviet Union carried the burdens of ‘proletarian internationalism’ — wheat flour and oil for Najibullah’s socialist government in Afghanistan and so on.
China, on the other hand, has preferred to call itself a ‘developing country’, which absolves it of the need to be a net provider for humanity. China is not promoting socialism abroad, either. In fact, it clinically makes sure that it almost always puts its surplus money only where the mouth is — be it in Africa or in Sri Lanka.
Again, something must be said about the ’social formation’. The USSR was way ahead of China in social development and even now Russia has a far higher standard of living than what the Chinese people have in per capita terms. The point is, the human mind needs to be motivated.
The well-educated, intellectually aware Soviet citizen wouldn’t have settled for what passes for economic reform. This is where China is enjoying an advantage. But what happens when the social development in China progresses and expectations begin to rise and, of course, if the market is to be genuinely unleashed?
I happened to live and work in Seoul in the late 1970 and early 1980s. As the society began to get better educated, more prosperous, more opinionated, the old paradigm failed to work — namely, that as long as the regime performed on the economic front and as long as the export-oriented growth strategy worked, politics would be irrelevant.
I witnessed the assassination of President Park Chung-hee in October 1979 (father of the incumbent democratically-elected president Park Geun-hye) and the bloody ‘Kwangju incident’ in May 1980. In retrospect, they were the birth pangs of democracy in South Korea.
China cannot benefit much out of studying the Soviet Union’s fall — except, perhaps, the perils of a new Cold War. All said, Soviet Union formed part of the western intellectual tradition, whereas, China’s historical consciousness and cultural moorings are vastly different. Which is, arguably, why the West sets a much higher bar of democracy for Russia today than what it is willing to settle for China
What China can learn from USSR’s fall
Those of us who lived and worked as diplomats and foreign correspondents in Moscow in the final years of the era of Mikhail Gorbachev in the late 1980s are bound to carry a life-long intellectual curiosity about the dialectics of reform and democratic transition in authoritarian political systems. This partly explains, speaking for myself, the curiosity I have about the prospects of how China is going to make the grade.
In China itself, the most frequent comparison being drawn is with the Gorbachev era of Soviet history and the dissolution of the former Soviet Union. I say ‘dissolution’ deliberately because it was a conscious, unilateral, personal act by Boris Yeltsin that had no inevitability about it. The ‘dissolution’ suited Yeltsin. Period. He didn’t consult others seriously nor would his peer group in the former Soviet republics have agreed.
Thus, to begin with, the comparison with the Soviet experience is a flawed one, empirically speaking. There was no ‘Soviet fall’ as such, as the Chinese discourses keep imagining. In the last Party Congress, the new Chinese leadership openly spoke about it. The debate continues, especially now that the crucial 3rd “plenum” of the CCP is due to take place in November with the focus on reform in its agenda.
In August, Xinhua carried a commentary on this topic by one Wang Xiaoshi (a pseudonym, presumably), which triggered a lot of excitement in China and abroad. The main argument was that Gorbachev provided “weak” leadership and, thus, the reform got out of control. It took the view that the post-Soviet turmoil in Russia in the early 1990s should be an “alarming warning” for China as to what all terrible things can happen if China were to descend into unrest or anarchy.
Interestingly, it negatively portrays Yeltsin’s legacy of democratizing Russia for the first time in history, while commending Vladimir Putin’s achievements in steering the country toward “prosperity” without losing sleep over “democratization”, although as a diminished power on the world stage.
Again, the Chinese communist party tabloid Global Times today featured an interview with the famous Soviet dissident historian Roy Medvedev drawing on the ‘lessons’ of the Soviet experience. He more or less endorses the thinking that seems to be going down well in China, namely, China should be wary about stepping the pedal on political reform and should confine itself to economic reforms.
Yes, by all means, focus on economic reforms at the forthcoming “Plenum”, but for God’s sake leave alone democratization, let time and tide work on it — that’s roughly what Medvedev says. It will be what China wants to hear.
I am surprised. Medvedev could and should have pointed out that the comparison between Soviet Union and China — except the notional one that both were ’socialist’ countries in name — is not quite in order. Even if Gorbachev wanted to practice the Chinese example of economic reform and leave ‘glasnost’ on the back burner, it wouldn’t have worked for him. That’s the honest truth.
The point is, China’s economic growth could be so dynamic primarily because it could exploit ‘globalization’, whereas, the Soviet Union lived in an altogether different world, despised by the West and disowned by much of the East. It was ostracized.
Do not forget that the West boycotted the 1980 Moscow Olympics. The remnants of the Jackson-Vanik Amendment still haunt the Russian-American relations. Thus, the latitude from the ‘international community’ that China enjoyed through the 1970s and 80s and the 90s and into the post-cold war era in optimally exploiting the opening up of its economy was a luxury not available for Gorbachev.
Second, there was no way the stagnant Soviet system could have been energized other than by churning up the cesspool, which was what Gorbachev’s ‘glasnost’ intended. As he once plaintively put it, the Soviet manager was like a bird afraid to fly and take to the skies although the cage was open.
Also, Medvedev is partial in saying that the alienation of the Soviet citizen with the system began with Gorbachev. To my mind, Gorbachev inherited the crisis of credibility of the Soviet communist party.
Clearly one full decade before the era Gorbachev, in 1975 when I first arrived in the Soviet Union to work in the embassy in Moscow as a diplomat, the thing that struck me was the profound disconnect between the Soviet system and the Soviet citizen and how the citizen enveloped himself with a surreal world dripping with cynicism.
It came as a shock to me, frankly, because this was not what I had expected. (By the way, I am not sure if the phenomenon of Soviet cynicism ended even with the dissolution of the Soviet system. Who were the ‘oligarchs’?)
A third major difference is the nature of the Chinese economy, which is vastly unlike the Soviet (and Russian) economy that is critically dependent on the income from oil exports. It’s useful to remember that probably Gorbachev wouldn’t have had to go down on his knees and beg for financial bailout from the West if the oil was selling at, say, $15 per barrel instead of $8 at that critical point.
Again, Soviet Union had no manufacturing industry churning out export products for the world market. To add to it, the Soviet Union carried the burdens of ‘proletarian internationalism’ — wheat flour and oil for Najibullah’s socialist government in Afghanistan and so on.
China, on the other hand, has preferred to call itself a ‘developing country’, which absolves it of the need to be a net provider for humanity. China is not promoting socialism abroad, either. In fact, it clinically makes sure that it almost always puts its surplus money only where the mouth is — be it in Africa or in Sri Lanka.
Again, something must be said about the ’social formation’. The USSR was way ahead of China in social development and even now Russia has a far higher standard of living than what the Chinese people have in per capita terms. The point is, the human mind needs to be motivated.
The well-educated, intellectually aware Soviet citizen wouldn’t have settled for what passes for economic reform. This is where China is enjoying an advantage. But what happens when the social development in China progresses and expectations begin to rise and, of course, if the market is to be genuinely unleashed?
I happened to live and work in Seoul in the late 1970 and early 1980s. As the society began to get better educated, more prosperous, more opinionated, the old paradigm failed to work — namely, that as long as the regime performed on the economic front and as long as the export-oriented growth strategy worked, politics would be irrelevant.
I witnessed the assassination of President Park Chung-hee in October 1979 (father of the incumbent democratically-elected president Park Geun-hye) and the bloody ‘Kwangju incident’ in May 1980. In retrospect, they were the birth pangs of democracy in South Korea.
China cannot benefit much out of studying the Soviet Union’s fall — except, perhaps, the perils of a new Cold War. All said, Soviet Union formed part of the western intellectual tradition, whereas, China’s historical consciousness and cultural moorings are vastly different. Which is, arguably, why the West sets a much higher bar of democracy for Russia today than what it is willing to settle for China
