Брежнев и Сталин в китайской советологии 1990-х гг.

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 First, the research outcomes justified Deng’s consistent understanding that the problem was not socialism but the outdated Soviet model (Deng, 1995b: 143; 1995c: 180).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 opposite 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 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.