1. Setting the scene...Time for Reform
2. The Soviet Union Case- Perestroika (Economic) & Glasnost (Political) Reforms...The Beginning of the End of the Soviet Union
When historians look back on the twentieth century, they will note that the first three-quarters of the century were marked by extreme and violent revolutions on both the right and the left. They may be even more intrigued, however, by the fact that in the last quarter of the century, the governments established by those revolutions shifted to considerably more moderate positions and they did so in a non-violent manner.
The two most notable examples of this phenomenon were China and the Soviet Union, where Deng Xiaoping and Mikhail Gorbachev were engaged in trying to turn their countries away from what was called the 'Stalinist model', with its emphasis on heavy industry, centralised planning and authority, and political and cultural repression.
There were previous efforts to reform the Stalinist model, but what made the Deng and Gorbachev approach different was that they not only acknowledged the need to change, but also seeked to implement changes that challenged the vested interests of their own communist parties. Most of their colleagues, whether high officials or middle-level bureaucrats, seemed willing to recognise the shortcomings of the existing system, but they opposed with all their being its reforms, as the reforms threatened their existing status.
To understand what both leaders had to overcome, it is necessary to recollect what each found when he assumed power. In some ways their situations were similar...
Both countries began serious reform after the passing of a leader (or leadership) that abhorred reform. Deng Xiaoping and his allies succeeded Mao Zedong in 1978 after a brief power struggle with hardliners. Gorbachev succeeded the initial beneficiaries of Stalin’s purges of the 1930s, who rose quickly as young men to replace those who were executed.
At the time of Deng’s return to power at the Third Plenum of the 11th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party in December 1978, and Gorbachev’s selection as General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party in March 1985, both were confronted with stagnant economies that were based on state ownership of the means of production, centralised planning and collectivisation of agriculture. Each man led one-party states that emphasised democratic centralism, meaning that all decisions and administrative appointments flowed from the top down.
2. The Soviet Union Case- Perestroika (Economic) & Glasnost (Political) Reforms...The Beginning of the End of the Soviet Union
These were the 2 key areas of reforms that the seventh and last General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (serving from 1985 until 1991), and the last head of state of the USSR (serving from 1988 until its collapse in 1991) Mikhail Gorbachev introduced as ways of reviving the stagnant Soviet economy.
In 1985, he announced that the Soviet economy was stalled and that reorganisation was needed. Gorbachev proposed a 'vague programme of reforms', which was adopted at the April Plenum of the Central Committee.
Perestroika poster...
'Don't Be Afraid of Work.' Gorbachev's economic changes did not do much to restart the country's sluggish economy in the late 1980s. The reforms decentralized things to some extent, although price controls remained, as did the ruble's inconvertibility and most government controls over the means of production.
By 1990 the government had virtually lost control over economic conditions. Government spending increased sharply as an increasing number of unprofitable enterprises required state support and consumer price subsidies continued.
He soon realised though that fixing the Soviet economy would be nearly impossible without also reforming the political and social structure of the Communist nation.
Glasnost poster...
'Be Bold, Comrade! Openness: Our Strength!'
While glasnost is associated with freedom of speech, the main goal of this policy was to make the country's management transparent and open to debate, thus circumventing the narrow circle of apparatchiks who previously exercised complete control of the economy.
Through reviewing the past or current mistakes being made, it was hoped that the Soviet people would back reforms such as perestroika. However, relaxation of censorship resulted in the Communist Party losing its grip on the media. Before long, much to the embarrassment of the authorities, the media began to expose severe social and economic problems which the Soviet government had long denied and covered up.
Through reviewing the past or current mistakes being made, it was hoped that the Soviet people would back reforms such as perestroika. However, relaxation of censorship resulted in the Communist Party losing its grip on the media. Before long, much to the embarrassment of the authorities, the media began to expose severe social and economic problems which the Soviet government had long denied and covered up.
In Summary...
What Gorbachev did not realise was that by giving people complete freedom of expression, he was unwittingly unleashing emotions and political feelings that had been pent up for decades, and which proved to be extremely powerful when brought out into the open.
By the late 1980s, the Soviet government came under increased criticism and members of the Soviet population were more outspoken in their view as Gorbachev's policy of economic reform did not have the immediate results he had hoped for and had publicly predicted. Glasnost did indeed provide freedom of expression, far beyond what Gorbachev had intended, and changed citizens' views towards the government, which played a key role in the collapse of the Soviet Union.
3. The Chinese Case- From Mao Zedong's 'The Great Leap Forward' & 'Cultural Revolution' to Deng Xiaoping's 'Economic Reforms'
During the 1950s, Soviet-guided China followed the Soviet model of centralised economic development, emphasising heavy industry, and delegating consumer goods to secondary priority; however, by the late 1950s, Mao Zedong had developed different ideas for how China could directly advance to the communist stage of Socialism (per the Marxist denotation), through the mobilisation of China’s workers. These ideas progressed into the 'Great Leap Forward'.
The 'Great Leap Forward' of the People's Republic of China (PRC) was an economic and social plan used from 1958 to 1961 which ostensibly aimed to use China's vast population to rapidly transform the country from an agrarian economy into a modern communist society through the process of agriculturalisation, industrialisation, and collectivisation.
The 'Great Leap Forward' is considered as a major humanitarian and economic disaster, effectively a 'Great Leap Backward' that affected China in the years that followed. Industries went into turmoil because peasants were producing too much low-quality steel while other areas were neglected.
Furthermore, uneducated low-income farmers were poorly equipped and ill-trained to produce steel, partially relying on backyard furnaces to achieve the production targets set by local cadres. Meanwhile, essential farm tools were melted down for steel, reducing harvest sizes. This led to a decline in the production of most goods except substandard pig iron and steel. To make matters worse, in order to avoid punishment, local authorities frequently exaggerated production numbers, thus hiding and intensifying the problem for several years.
On the other hand on May 16th 1966, Chairman Mao launched 'The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution' or simply the 'Cultural Revolution' to stem what he perceived as the country's drift away from socialism and toward the 'restoration of capitalism'. The campaign, which was euphorically described at its inception by its progenitors as 'a great revolution that touches people to their very souls' and which inspired radical students across the world, was again another major catastrophe that created a nation-wide chaos and economic disarray and stagnation that only ended officially with Mao's death in 1976.
The origins of the Cultural Revolution can be traced to the mid–1950s when Mao first became seriously concerned about the path that China's socialist transition had taken in the years since the CCP had come to power in 1949.
Mao concluded that the source of China's political retrogression lay in the false and self–serving view of many of his party colleagues that class struggle ceased under socialism. On the contrary, the chairman concluded, the struggle between proletarian and bourgeois ideologies took on new, insidious forms even after the landlord and capitalist classes had been eliminated. The principal targets of Mao's ire were, on the one hand, party and government officials who he felt had become a 'new class' divorced from the masses and, on the other, intellectuals who, in his view, were the repository of bourgeois and even feudal values.
The Cultural Revolution is now referred to in China as the 'decade of chaos' and is generally regarded as one of the bleakest periods in the country's modern history. The movement's ideals were betrayed at every turn by its destructive impulses. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of officials and intellectuals were physically and mentally persecuted. The much–vaunted initiatives that were to transform the nation often had disastrous consequences for China's education and cultural life. Economic development was disrupted by factional strife and misguided 'ultraleftist policies'.
Enter Deng Xiaoping...to be continued
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