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31INTERNATIONAL SCIENCE JOURNAL / МЕЖДУНАРОДНЫЙ НАУЧНЫЙ ЖУРНАЛ
Брежнев и Сталин в китайской советологии 1990-х гг. Brezhnev and Stalin in 1990s Chinese Sovietology
Цзе Ли I Jie Li
Единбургский университет The University of Edinburgh jielican2009@hotmail.com DOI: 10.24412/2686-9675-1-2021-100-115
АННОТАЦИЯ
Распад Союза Советских Социалистических Республик в 1991 году оказал глубокое влияние на Китаи. Распад Советского Союза имел целыи ряд существенных последствии для китаискои внутреннеи и внешнеи политики и других аспектов. Однако многие мифы о китаиских исследованиях Советского Союза после 1991 года были распространены и увековечены во вторичнои литературе, написаннои западными учеными. Некоторые вопросы были неясны или неправильно поняты в предыдущих исследованиях, и одна из этих неточно-стеи связана с китаискими представлениями о роли последнего советского лидера Михаила Горбачева. Ряд вторичных источников утверждают, что после 1991 года, из-за их влияния на демократические движения Китая 1989 года, как они воспринимались китаиским коммунистическим режимом, большинство китаи-ских наблюдателеи за Советским Союзом считали Горбачева и его либерализацию фундаментальными катализаторами в инициировании распада Советского Союза. В литературе, похоже, сходятся во мнении, что эти китаиские ученые были однозначны в оценке отдельных деиствии и неудач Горбачева и что они преувеличивали значение Горбачева и его либеральных
ABSTRACT
The breakup of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in 1991 has had a profound impact on China. The Soviet dissolution has had a variety of significant repercussions on Chinese politics, foreign policy, and other aspects. However, many myths about post-1991 Chinese research on the Soviet Union have been circulated and perpetuated by a body of secondary literature written by Western scholars. Some issues have been unclear or misunderstood in previous studies, and one of these inaccuracies has to do with Chinese perceptions of the role of the last Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. A number of the secondary sources argue that, after 1991, because of their impact on China's 1989 pro-democracy movements as perceived by the Chinese communist regime, most Chinese Soviet-watchers considered Gorbachev and his liberalization to be the fundamental catalysts in triggering the collapse of the Soviet Union. The literature seems to agree that those Chinese scholars were univocal in assessing Gorbachev's individual actions and failings, and that they overstated the implications of Gorbachev and his liberal programs for China. This research reveals that
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программ для Китая. Это исследование показывает, что с середины 1990-х годов многие китаИ-ские советские наблюдатели проследили корни трагедии до администрации Леонида Брежнева и Иосифа Сталина, утверждая, что консервативные силы и жесткая коммунистическая система были решающими факторами в ее возникновении, а не только фигура Горбачева. Их труды подтвердили и узаконили планы китаиского лидера Дэн Сяопина после Тяньаньмэньского противостояния левизне и спасения китаиского социализма путем ускорения реформ и политики открытых двереи.
Ключевые слова: Дэн Сяопин, китаи ские советские наблюдатели, Пост-Тяньаньмэнь, Леонид Брежнев, Иосиф Сталин
Для цитирования: Цзе Ли. Брежнев и Сталин в китайской советологии 1990-х гг. Современные востоковедческие исследования. 2021; 3(1). 100-115
since the mid-1990s, many Chinese Soviet-watchers have traced the roots of the tragedy back to the administrations of Leonid Brezhnev and Joseph Stalin, arguing that the conservative forces and the rigid communist system were the decisive factors in bringing it about- rather than the figure of Gorbachev alone. Their writings confirmed and legitimized the Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping's post-Tiananmen agendas of opposing leftism and saving Chinese socialism by speeding up the reform and open door policy.
Keywords: Deng Xiaoping, Chinese Soviet-watchers, Post-Tiananmen, Leonid Brezhnev, Joseph Stalin
For citation: Jie Li. Brezhnev and Stalin in 1990s Chinese Sovietology. Modern Oriental Studies. 2021; 3(1). 100-115
Introduction
The breakup of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in 1991 has had a profound impact on the People's Republic of China (PRC). The Soviet dissolution has had a variety of significant repercussions on Chinese politics, foreign policy, and other aspects. However, many myths about post-1991 Chinese research on the Soviet Union have been circulated and perpetuated by a body of secondary literature written by Western scholars. Some issues have been unclear or misunderstood in previous studies, and one of these inaccuracies has to do with Chinese perceptions of the role of the last Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.
A number of secondary sources written by Western scholars (Rozman, 2010: 464-470; Marsh, 2005: 111; Shambaugh, 2008: 48-56; Wilson, 2007:
272) argued that, Chinese Soviet-watchers began making positive comments about Gorbachev immediately after he assumed power in 1985. However, these Soviet-watchers turned against the last Soviet leader soon after the Tiananmen Incident in 1989. The existing secondary literature seems to have exaggerated the impact of Gorbachev on China.
This article will reveal that after the demise of world communism in the early 1990s, many Chinese academic writings appeared to excite debates on the two Soviet leaders - Leonid Brezhnev and Joseph Stalin. Many Chinese Soviet-watchers have traced the roots of the Soviet demise back to the administrations of Brezhnev and Stalin, arguing that the conservative forces and the rigid communist system were the decisive factors in bringing it about - rather than the figure of Gorbachev alone.
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Methodology and Sources
With respect to primary sources, it should be mentioned here that this research is based wholly on the "national core journals" (Guojiaji hexin qikan) published in the PRC, and mainly on the following four categories of journals:
The first are those journals focusing on research in the humanities and social sciences in general (Shehui kexue yanjiu, Shijie jingjiyu zhengzhi). Second are those journals dealing with problems of socialism or communism in the world (Dangdai shijie shehui zhuyi wenti, Shehui zhuyiyanjiu). The third group forms the core of this study; they concentrate on questions and issues relating to the former Soviet Union (later the Russian Federation and other Commonwealth Independent States after 1991) (Sulian dongou wenti, Eluosiyanjiu). Lastly, the research scope also included relevant articles in various university journals (Zhongguo shehui kexueyuan yanjiu shengyuan xuebao, Zhonggong zhongyang dangxiao xuebao).
Moreover, the paper examines the thinking of Chinese Soviet-watchers against the backdrop of political developments in the PRC in the 1990s. Therefore, in order for this research to be successfully located in the rich fabric of intellectual activities and the changing environment of contemporary China, the investigator also consulted China's Party newspapers and journals, such as the People's Daily, Guangming Daily, and Beijing Review (English edition), and the writings and speeches of PRC officials, such as those of contemporary Chinese leaders.
Results
In 1997, Chen Zhihua a researcher
in the Institute of World History at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) and a prominent scholar on Leonid Brezhnev, commented that Chinese research on Soviet history had overwhelmingly focused on the periods of Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, and Gorbachev, while overlooking the 18-year rule of Brezhnev, which was "the time when the Soviet Union started to decline", and "the key to understanding the historical lessons of the Soviet downfall" (Chen, 1997: 12). Chen's remark is not altogether correct. In reality, Chinese research of Brezhnev and his administration had flourished in the 1990s.
In 1992, Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping embarked upon a trip to China's southern provinces, where he repeatedly urged the need for learning from capitalism and rekindling China's all-round economic development - particularly after the setback of Tiananmen, in which the Party conservative force attempted to attack and quash Deng's policies taken after 1978. Deng stressed that it was "the achievements of the reform and the open policy" that had helped China to weather the Tiananmen crisis. He argued that the PRC should "make socialism develop in a healthier direction", in order to overcome the panic caused by the worldwide defeat of socialism. He especially emphasized that he could not tolerate "slow growth" and "stagnation". He pointed out that "it is necessary to fundamentally change the economic structure", and "to establish a vigorous socialist economic structure that will promote their development" (Deng, 1995d: 358). Deng seemed to fully understand that, after having squandered what legitimacy communism had in
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the brutality of 1989 and the Soviet demise, the only resource of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regime was economic performance, which meant putting more food in the shops and improving the living standard of the Chinese people.
Moreover, another important purpose of Deng's 1992 southern tour was to win the factional warfare and succeed in having his reform strategy prevail after the Tiananmen backlash. The fact that his trip at first received no official media coverage and the People's Daily did not publish anything about it until one month later was a testament to the strength of CCP leftist opposition. In his talk, Deng asserted that the reason for the failure of European socialism had little to do with democracy, and more to do with the lack of security and prosperity. During the trip, Deng attempted to make moves against the Party conservatives, saying those insufficiently enthusiastic for reform should go (Deng, 1995d: 363).
In response to Deng's messages, on 4th June 1992, three years after the Tiananmen Incident, the People's Daily published an article saying that China should "give up the highly centralized socialist economic system borrowed from other countries before", and "overcome the problem of the leftist thinking" (People's Daily, 1992: 2). On the same day in 1993, another article in the People's Daily indicated that "leftism is the biggest enemy of socialism" (People's Daily, 1993: 2). In scholarly writings, Wu Xingtang (M^S), vice-president of the Chinese Association of International Communist Movement Studies, praised Deng's speech in early 1992 as "the guiding principle for studies in international relations and the communist movement". Wu sneered at the leftist thinking, which put blame
on "the excessiveness of reforms and insufficient class struggle" as the main factors for causing the Soviet demise. He concluded that the real intention of leftism was for "obstructing Deng's reformist line" (Wu, 1992: 3-4). Gao Fang (S^), a professor of international relations at Renmin University and an expert in the history of world communism, in another article also strongly attacked the leftist tendencies. The author attributed the failure of Soviet socialism to economic, not political, factors. He said that "leftism was the true gravedigger of the USSR, while rightism was only putting a nail in its final coffin" (Gao,1992: 10).
In and after 1992, many pieces of academic work seemed to lavish attention on the Soviet Union under Brezhnev (E, 1992: 27-33; Liu, 1992: 812; Huang, 1993: 39-46; Chen, 1993: 53-57; Ma, 1995: 59-63). Chinese scholars were targeting his obsession with the status quo and ignorance of true reality, which made the Soviet economy lag behind the West more and more. The commentaries meshed with Deng's emphasis on economic growth and antileftism after the Soviet demise. As CASS scholar E Huancheng (fM^) wrote, "Comrade Deng Xiaoping once remarked that the priorities of development are scientific technologies and the productive forces, and such remark inspires us to seek the true reason of Brezhnev's failure." The author concluded that the Soviet problems had surfaced under Stalin and escalated in Brezhnev's time, which he termed as "the long medieval ossified rule". He said that the Brezhnev administration had rendered subsequent reforms launched by Gorbachev insufficient to rescue the Soviet system (E, 1992: 31).
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Another CASS scholar, Liu Guanghui (^tj^ »), described the USSR after the 1970s as "a pool of lifeless and stagnant water". He found that the biggest reason for Brezhnev's unwillingness to take up reforms was his predecessor Khrushchev's rashness in improvising the reform programs that had contributed to the chaotic economic situation — thus causing the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) to become tired of such adventure and to itch for stability. He concluded that the lesson from Brezhnev was that socialism should "persist with reforms forever" (Liu, 1992: 10-11). After criticizing the Brezhnev administration for being "conservative and rigid", Huang Zongliang (m^S), vice-director of the Russian Studies Institute at Beijing University, concluded that a socialist country should always find a balance between reform and stability. While a stable environment could ensure the success of reform, nonetheless reform should always be prioritized in order to maintain stability and prosperity (Huang, 1993: 44-45).
In the late 1990s, CASS senior researcher Xu Kui (ffM) retraced Brezhnev's early life and trajectory to power, and studied his personal attributes and characters, such as "mediocrity, lack of innovation, being pleasure-seeking and vainglorious". He argued that these explained why the Soviet Union since the 1970s had been fraught with personality cults, incorrigible bureaucracy, and economic deterioration. He commented that the era of Brezhnev was "the turning point when the Soviet Union went from prosperity to decline" (Xu, 1998: 27). In late 1998, Chen Zhihua (in his new book funded and published by CASS) re-examined Brezhnev and his time. At the beginning of the book, Chen wrote that his analysis was in accordance with the motif of
Deng's speech in 1992, which was the theoretical framework of the project (Chen, 1998: 1). The author said that the rule of Brezhnev was not only the dividing line for the USSR's turn from strength to weakness, but also "the bane of the final demise in 1991". In his view, "Studying Brezhnev's period is a must in finding out reasons for the downfall" (Chen, 1998: 4-5). He finally contended that the crumbling of the USSR was not historically inevitable. The state under Brezhnev was ripe for reforms, but he slept through it, as it were. Brezhnev might have helped the Soviet Union survive, but he had missed the chance to transform the sorrow into strength in the 1970s (Chen, 1998: 24).
First, the renewed discussion on Brezhnev was a product of a more open political milieu resulting from Deng Xiaoping's 1992 landmark speech. Accordingly, Chinese intellectual debates became, to a limited degree, more lively and animated than the dreary period after 1989. In the wake of Deng's southern tour, the spirit of "seeking truth from facts" was re-emphasized to give a new impulse to the study of socialism (Deng, 1995d: 369-370). Although the general political climate in China was still uncertain, this modest progress had made it possible for scholars to discover more objectively the problems of the USSR, and to diversify the roots of the collapse. It provided encouragement to reinterpret and challenge the prevalent one-sidedly views that were mainly concerned with the cause of Gorbachev.
Second, unlike the post-Tiananmen official and academic analysis, which argued that the peaceful evolution engineered by the West had played a prominent role in jolting Eastern Europe and the USSR, the debate on Brezhnev and the moribund
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economy under his administration marked the termination of the peaceful evolution thesis, which seemed to be an exaggerated accusation that the Soviet collapse was simply a victim of Western subversion. The doctrine of peaceful evolution was more a propaganda trick than a genuine academic argument.1 The Party hard-liners had used the threat of peaceful evolution as the justification to shut down reforms.2 The first PRC leader Mao Zedong once said that "the fundamental cause of the development of a thing is not external but internal" (Mao, 1965: 313). Some Chinese Soviet-watchers also remarked that putting blame for the Soviet downfall on external factors such as the peaceful evolution was either "superficial" (E, 1992: 8) or "one-sided and noxious" (Chen, 1993: 53).
Since 1992 some scholars also concluded that, if the impact of Gorbachev's glasnost (openness) and the peaceful evolution were rational explanations for the collapse, then it was because the inherent weakness of the Soviet socialist system that had made it become unable to resist the restoration of capitalism and democratization (Chen, 1993: 56; Lu, 1997: 14). By dispelling the assertion of peaceful evolution, Deng won the power battle over his Party rivals, ensuring a state-wide consensus to embrace his strategy of faster growth, enhanced economic reform, and greater interaction with the outside world. Similarly, the research on Brezhnev in the 1990s also signalled the return of a down-to-earth and critical approach in studying
the Soviet demise, and the repudiation of seemingly non-scholarly and irrelevant official rhetoric.
Last, there was a distinct change in Chinese writings in the 1990s, from attacking Gorbachev's liberalization to condemning Brezhnev's conservatism. After that, Gorbachev became the lesser of two evils and was rarely seen as the cardinal source of the downfall. 6 In and after 1992, when China had come out of the shadow of Tiananmen and the Soviet demise, and was at the height of campaigning for anti-leftism, the practice of criticizing Brezhnev's orthodoxy instead of attacking Gorbachev's liberalization was instrumental in encouraging more innovation to keep the socialist regime vital. The discussion of Brezhnev played a role in affirming and promoting China's market-oriented path, thereby revivifying the pace of reform that had slowed in the wake of the 1989 repression. Chinese writings intended to take advantage of the study of Brezhnev to give credit to the ethos of Deng's 1992 speech, and to enlist support for his future vision for China in the post-communist world.
Apart from Brezhnev, another Soviet leader Joseph Stalin had become the subject of avid study in 1990s China. After Deng Xiaoping's southern tour in early 1992, China began to reflect on its past inefficient socialist economic system, for the take-off of a new wave of reforms after the backlash of Tiananmen. In late 1992, the new CCP
1 Shambaugh also has a survey on the pre-1992 Chinese short-lived thesis of peaceful evolution, see Shambaugh, 2008: 55.
2 Deng once indicated that the Soviet collapse could not be attributed to the peaceful evolution statement. He said, "Some theoreticians and politicians have used this thesis in an attempt to jettison the economic reform policy. Their thinking is not safeguarding but negating socialism." See Zong, 2007: 42.
6 For details, see Etheridge, 1990.
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Secretary General Jiang Zemin delivered an opening speech at the 14th CCP Congress. He remarked:
This new revolution is not going to change the nature of our socialist system; instead, it is a self-improvement and a further development of socialism. However, it is also not a simple repair to our economic structure, but a fundamental reform of it. The past economic system was born under the special historical circumstances, and it had once played a key role in our socialist construction. However, as time goes on, the system becomes increasingly unfit for the requirement of modernization (Jiang, 2006: 212).
Jiang's words revealed that after Tiananmen and the perdition of European communism, China had no intention to change its political system to adjust to the post-communist world. However, the CCP was eager to tackle its economic institution in order to make the regime more viable after the worldwide crisis of socialism.
Encouraged by the official announcements, Li Zongyu a researcher in the Institute of
Studies of the International Communist Movement at the CCP Central Bureau for the Compilation and Translation, reactivated the attacks on Stalin in late 1992. In his article published in Dangdaishijieyu shehui zhuyi (^{{S^^ii^^.^ Contemporary World and Socialism), the author made the point that all problems of the former Soviet Union had originated from the Stalinist model after Lenin. He contended that such a model had overly excluded the capitalist elements and obstructed the productive forces and economic development, when Soviet socialism was still in its infancy — thus contributing to the subsequent dissolution of the state. In his opinion, both Deng's theory of building social-
ism with Chinese characteristics and the goal of the 14th Congress in establishing a socialist market economy, were "a breakaway from Stalin's formulaic understanding of Marxism and the highly centralized plan economic system founded by Stalin, respectively" (Li, 1992: 23).
In his book published by CASS in 1994, the well-known Soviet historian and independent scholar Shen Zhihua by quoting the classics of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin, pointed out that socialist agriculture needs to be privatized and complemented by capitalist management methods, thereby criticizing Stalin's notion that only collectivization was socialist in nature and the state was the owner of the land (Shen, 1994: 21). Throughout the book, Shen stated unequivocally that building socialism needs to be guided by the line of state capitalism. He argued strongly that Stalin had overturned Lenin's liberal approach to Soviet agriculture initiated during the New Economic Policy (NEP, 1922-1928) period. Such a move paved the path to not only the subsequent disastrous rural famine in the 1930s, but also the final collapse of Soviet economic and political system in 1991 (Shen, 1994).
Afterwards, throughout the 1990s, numerous articles appeared in various academic journals and studied the Stalinist model for helpful lessons in building socialism in China. Most of them resembled the tone of Li Zongyu's article; they were criticizing Stalinism as a distortion of Leninism and socialism, the origin of leftism in the international communist movement, and a fundamental cause of the Soviet demise (Zhao, 1993: 3-9; Yu, 1994: 6469; Zheng, 1995: 7-12; Zuo, 1996: 57-63). In the late 1990s, several articles generated new arguments and went further to attack the Stalinist mod-
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el. Unlike some erstwhile Chinese writings, which justified that the Stalinist economic institution was absolutely essential during the period of war, but not necessary in the time of peace (Wang, 1989: 58; Kong, 1990: 29-34; Zhang, 1990: 188), Wu Kequan a researcher at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, dismissed the historical inevitability of the Stalinist model and concluded that such a highly militarized but inefficient system was by no means a measure of building socialism under any circumstances (Wu, 1998: 13-17).
The post-1991 Chinese re-evaluation and criticisms of Stalin should be analysed in a broad spectrum after Deng's southern tour in 1992. In a book on Stalin's political life published in 1997, the authors Jiang Changbin and Zuo Fen-
grong (^M^) 4 wrote in the Epilogue (Jieshuyu 1 ^in) that the project was inspired by Deng's 1992 talk. It was Deng's remarks on the nature of socialism and the Soviet model that had made the authors "become enlightened". They decided to use Deng's theory as the "guiding principle" in conducting research into Stalin (Jiang and Zuo, 1997: 623). According to them, the Soviet model, which had consigned the country to the ash heap of history, was, in fact, the Stalinist model - and this model should hold the responsibility for the downfall. They contrasted the lethargic and inflexible Stalinist model with the pragmatic Deng model, which focused on combining Marxism with China's peculiar conditions (Jiang and Zuo, 1997: 624-625).
Many Chinese writings after Deng's southern tour also pointed out that the rightist tendencies practised by Gorbachev in the late 1980s were, in fact, an outcome of Stalin's leftism. Gorbachev's restoration of capitalism was a bounce-back to the long history of stagnation and self-seclusion caused by Stalin. At the time, the last Soviet leader had no choice but applied extreme methods to save the falling USSR (Wang, 1993: 38; Ma, 1998: 29; Lu and Jiang, 1999: 142-143). Such a conclusion accorded with the ancient Chinese proverb Wuji bifan ^S), which means when things are forced to become worse they begin to go to another extreme for retaliation. While some 1980s Chinese writings targeting Stalin might in fact be indirectly blaming Mao's political repression in China (Zheng, 1989: 6; Beijing Review, 1989: 7-8), the 1990s criticisms on the ossification of the Soviet model created by Stalin could also be considered as a foil to attack Mao's past leftist economic (not political) policy. This policy was similar to that of Stalin, as both leaders favoured heavy industrialization and exploitative economy as their repertoires. 5
Post-1991 Chinese Soviet research put the Stalinist economic model and the discredited leftism in 1990s China on an equal footing. By arguing that Stalinism was the root of the Soviet demise and retracing its damage on China under Mao, scholars justified Deng's 1992 statement that leftism has done more harm than good to China, and like rightism, it could also destroy socialism (Deng, 1995d: 363). Therefore, they used their writings
3 Jiang Changbin was a professor of international politics at the Central Party School.
4 Zuo Fengrong was a PhD candidate in international politics at the Central Party School under Jiang Changbin's supervision.
5 On the comparison between Mao and Stalin in administering their own economies in China and the Soviet Union, respectively, see Li, 2006.
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to defend China's post-Tiananmen policy of accelerating economic reform and open door policy, and to assist the CCP reformers' efforts to thwart the comeback of the leftist offensive.
Conclusion
The revival of research on Brezhnev and the re-assessment of Stalin's model in 1990s Chinese Soviet research are two sides of the same coin. They are the two components of the principle that argues the decline of Soviet socialism had originated from Stalin and had been exacerbated by Brezhnev's stagnation. The final demise of the country was due to the post-Lenin leaderships' deviation from Lenin's principle of building socialism. Chinese Soviet-watchers tended to highlight the intrinsic relations between the two leaders. While Xu Kui defined the Brezhnev administration as "Neo-Stalinism" (Xu, 1998: 33), Gao Fang described that the USSR under Stalin was already "a patient with early symptoms of cancer", and Brezhnev later aggravated the situation that led the country into "the terminal stage of cancer". As a result, when Gorbachev came to power, the Soviet Union had no hope of recovery at all and it became a totally spent force (Gao, 1998: 79).
Both research trends not only served to checkmate the resurgent leftist thinking after Tiananmen, but their rationales could also be explained in the following ways. First, the research outcomes justified Deng's consistent understanding that the problem was not socialism but the outdated Soviet model (Deng, 1995b: 143; 1995c: 180). The underlying concept of Chinese writings is that there was nothing wrong with socialism itself and the problems lay with the people who operated the system. The Soviet leaders achieved the oppo-
site of what they intended. They had involuntarily destroyed this good system.
Second, after the demise of the USSR, Deng re -emphasized during his southern tour that China is still in the primary stage of socialism and it should make use of any means necessary to build socialism. Therefore, he announced "the more elements of capitalism will be introduced and the more capitalism will expand in China" (Deng, 1995d: 361). The writings of Chinese Soviet-watchers were also pertinent to Deng's call. Through analysis of the rules of Brezhnev and Stalin, a common judgment appeared that argued that self-complacency, sheer immobilism, and rigid economic planning are fatal to socialism. By observing the lessons of Moscow, China should not be constrained by the orthodox mode of development. It should be more open to innovative experiments. It should learn something new from a market economy and replace the problematic Soviet model — developing the so-called "Chinese-style socialism" underscored by Deng (Deng, 1995d: 360).
Third, according to James Etheridge, before 1989, the Chinese leadership attempted to push the price reform, in order to accelerate the process of dismantling the plan economy and establish the market mechanism. Unfortunately, the experiment failed and resulted in skyrocketing inflation, rampant corruption, and an extraordinary sense of uncertainty concerning what the reforms would lead to, which created widespread frustration and fear among the people. Moreover, the economic crisis led to a deep division within the Party leadership. The reform-minded leaders led by Zhao Ziyang were facing fierce challenges from the Party old guards, who believed that the price reform had
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damaged the CCP's control of China's political power and undermined the legitimacy of the Party. These setbacks resulting from the price reform brought all the accumulated societal problems to the surface and piled up the people's resentments. Most seriously, it greatly increased the faith crisis among everyday Chinese by directing it towards the CCP's qualification and capacity to rule the country. After witnessing the rapid rise of pro-democracy tides in Eastern Europe and Gorbachev's promotion of glasnost in the Soviet Union, many Chinese, particularly intellectuals and university students, became increasingly convinced that it was time to shift the emphasis of China's reform project to the political sphere, exploring the prospect of transforming the party-state structure and creating new political institutions with checks and balances. They believed that doing so could ensure the better management of the state economy and a cheerful prospect of Chinese people's livelihood. 6
In sum, the economic situation in the late 1980s was also a factor in touching off the Tiananmen crisis. As such, by holding out the negative example of the Soviet economies under Stalin and Brezhnev and using the discussion to their advantage, Chinese scholars created a rallying point for urging and supporting the CCP's post-Tiananmen efforts, in order to normalize the distressed economy and revive its reform process in the shortest possible time. As we have seen in their discussion above, it was not just an economic issue for the Chinese leadership, but it was also a major political issue concerning the legitimacy of the Party - especially given its unwillingness to implement political reform and its decision to brutally crack
down on the pro-democratic Tiananmen demonstrations. Thus, the CCP would desperately seek to regain its weakened legitimacy in China by fixing the past economic disorder and catalysing a new round of economic take-offs, after the wholesale collapse of world communism.
Fourth, the 3-year period between the Tiananmen Incident and the disintegration of the Soviet Union was an earth-shaking period that nearly convulsed the CCP regime. The Chinese reformist leadership led by Deng Xiaoping understood very well that only by successfully carrying out the reforms would the Chinese communist state be able to regain the legitimacy that it had lost. They were eager to explore a new way of dispelling tough resistance by the hardliners and make a breakthrough. They needed to regenerate the Party that was still in a coma after experiencing a heavy blow by the Tiananmen crisis and the ensuing collapse of communism in Europe.
As seen in this article, it is apparent that Chinese Soviet-watchers were trying to use the reassessments of Brezhnev and Stalin to create new momentum. They intended for this momentum to revive China's reform and open door policies, and to further the cause of socialist modernization that had been championed since 1978. The discussion of the two Soviet leaders was a means to rally support for the forces of pro-reform. Afterwards, China was bolder in embracing economic liberalization while still refusing to transform its quasi-Leninist political system. Especially after Deng's southern tour in 1992, the CCP formally adopted the concept of "socialist market economy" (Deng, 1995d: 361). China then registered unprecedented economic
1 For details, see Etheridge, 1990.
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growth and experienced profound social transformation throughout the rest of the 1990s, a phenomenon that continued in the 21st century. As Chen Jian comments, "The Tiananmen tragedy remains a knot that must be untied and a barrier that must be removed in China's continuous advance towards modernity" (Chen, 2009: 126). The use of Brezhnev and Stalin after Tiananmen was seen to be the best way for China to untie the "knot" and remove the "barrier".
Last, in the 1980s many Chinese Soviet-watchers had thought highly of Gorbachev's inspiration in undertaking political reform for facilitating economic modernization. However, in the 1990s most of them dismissed such an idea as one of Gorbachev's weaknesses and a precipitating cause of the Soviet breakup (Li, 2016). The changing tone of Chinese writings tied in with the shake-up of the CCP in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Incident, when Deng made a comeback and reasserted his supreme position in China. While both Zhao Ziyang and Gorbachev championed the notion that economic reform is a product of political restructuring, Deng consistently remained wary of such a concept and emphasized political stability but not political pluralism. He found it good enough to have economic prosperity under the one-party rule, and felt there was little need to tackle the communist institution (Deng, 1995a: 129-130). This was particularly evident after Tiananmen, when the CCP became simply a delivery vehicle for material progress or a self-preservation machine, claiming the modern mandate of heaven with no greater purpose than to hold on to power.
While stressing reform and open door directions, Deng in his 1992 talk did not forget to defend
"the dictatorship of the proletariat" and "the Four Cardinal Principles" (Deng, 1995d: 367). Chinese examination of Brezhnev and Stalin after 1990 was a response to the return of such Deng's orthodox line, which focused on the sheer survival of the communist regime by economic means. It also disregarded any political demands, while making it clear that the policy of prioritizing political liberalization did not comport with socialism, and was not a future direction of the PRC in the post-communist world. In the 1990s, Chinese Soviet-watchers concentrated on the economic aspects of Brezhnev and Stalin while ignoring their political policies, and such a tendency was in tune with Deng's 1992 guidelines. That the research focused on economic problems suggested that scholars seemed to have believed that the breaking apart of the Soviet Union was mainly due to economic illness but not the deficiency of political institutions. Having observed the economic troubles in the times of Stalin and Brezhnev, the writings appear to suggest that state legitimacy comes from economic results and consumer satisfaction, and socialism would be going down the wrong road if it could not deliver economic benefits to the people. The findings gave credibility to Deng's faith that only a strong one-party rule could ensure the effective implementation of rapid economic development. They justified the post-1991 China's state agenda of taking precedence in economic modernization while downplaying the importance of political restructuring. Their conclusions conveyed a message that it is economic affluence, not political reform, that matters the most for the survival of Chinese socialism after the fall of the USSR.
To conclude, the 1990s Chinese debates about Brezhnev and Stalin revolved around the
ИСТОРИЧЕВКИЕ НАУКИ I JIE LI I JIELICAN2009@H0TMAI L.COM I УДК 94
backgrounds of the aftermath of Tiananmen and the collapse of world communism. The discussion confirmed that Deng Xiaoping's 1992 agendas involved renouncing the past Soviet model of economic development, opposing leftism, and saving Chinese socialism by speeding up the pace of reform and open-door policy.
While ostensibly examining policies of the two Soviet leaders, in reality, Chinese Soviet-watchers were making pointed references to Chinese reality against the Soviet precedent. They not only learned the negative experience of the Soviet 4. past, but also attempted to sum up lessons for China's future direction and the prospect of its communist regime. By depicting Brezhnev's stagnation and Stalin's rigid centralization as the primary causes of the collapse, their writings suggested that 5. state legitimacy comes more from economic results and consumer satisfaction than democratic politics, and socialism would not be attractive to the people if it could not deliver economic benefits to them. As can be seen from the re-assessments of Brezhnev and Stalin in the 1990s, the major conclusion of Chinese Soviet-watchers also reiterated a thesis. Namely, the survival of Chinese socialism lies on
6.
good economic performance and political stability, but not dynamic transformation of the communist ruling institutions.
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Информация об авторе
PhD (история), Цзе Ли Университет Эдинбурга jielican2009@hotmail.com
Information about the Author
PhD in History, Jie Li University of Edinburgh jielican2009@hotmail.com
Статья одобрена рецензентами: 18.02.2021 Статья принята к публикации: 15.03.2021
Reviewed: 18.02.2021 Accepted: 15.03.2021
