Communism in Chinese versus Communism in the Soviet Union - Case Study Example

Name Tutor Title: Larceny: Case Study Institution Date Synopsis China and the Soviet Union are the two significant states in the global history that practiced communism. Nevertheless, the Soviet Union communism collapsed while it still subsists in China. This collapse was results of Soviet Union’s failure properly execute reforms, its miscalculations of state identity, and presence of leader who endorsed Western democracy more than communism. Introduction Both the Soviet Union and Russia established command economies as a result of communists’ revolution based upon the Karl Marx ideas. These revolutions established communist part as the leading economic and political life of both countries. The 1917 Russian Revolution generated a communist autocracy under Vladimir Lenin, and later under Joseph Stalin. The 1947 Chinese Revolution resulted to a communist autocracy under Mao Zedong. At the core of communist philosophy was the belief in the communal or state ownership of capital and land. The communist parties in China and the Soviet Union viewed themselves as the representatives of the peasantry and the proletariat or the working class. On the basis of Marxist-Maoist and Marxist-Leninist doctrines, the communists envisaged the scheme as the predictable successor to capitalism, a scheme they deemed was plunged by interior contradictions emerging from private ownership of land and capital. However, communism in the Soviet Union collapsed while China has been able to reform it and it still survives. Communism in Chinese versus Communism in the Soviet Union The Soviet Union Communism overlooked fundamental human aspirations such as the wishes to own property and the freedom to express personal opinions freely. Under communism there lacked freedom of thought, freedom of speech and free elections. Communism was bound to develop a surreal community whereby individuals could keep their personal ideas to themselves while being bound to the official beliefs in public. As a result human freedom and desires were repressed. On the opposite, the Soviet Union communism was aimed at increasing the gratification of human aspirations. In the previous Soviet Union all means of production were owned by the state and all things produced and everything that people did belonged to the state. The Communists in the Soviet Union were flawed by the idea that abolition of private ownership of capital and land could result to increased economic growth. Yet, if individuals don’t own their means of production, they do not have incentive to be innovative or efficient. Therefore, several sectors in the Soviet Union reflected ineffective utilization of labor force and thus labour productivity was low down and labor discipline was weak. There was greatly low level of inequality and all individuals obtained the same pay in spite of how proficient they were. People did not see the need for then being efficient in their work because they did not benefit from this sufficiency. In addition, the Soviet Union could not develop technologically because people were not interested in developing or trying a new technology when all obtained the same wages and with undeveloped technology, the processes of industrialization could not go on. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics fell behind information technology and begun to fall behind Western powers. Gorbachev identified that the Soviet Union was falling apart and the entire system had to be modified quickly so as to catch up with West ( Sakwa, 1999). However, the pace of Gorbachev reforms were too swift and were not adjusted to political actualities. Gorbachev didn’t realize that through offering people comprehensive freedom of expression, he was unknowingly unleashing political and economic feelings that had been repressed for a long time and which verified to be immensely powerful when brought out into open. In addition, his strategy of economic transformation didn’t have the instant outcomes he had anticipated and publicly predicted. The Soviet citizens subsequently utilized this newly allocated freedom of speech to condemn Gorbachev for his malfunction to promote the economy. Chinese communism still survives because it was very diverse from Soviet Union communism. Lenin believed that revolution must come from proletariats and this from the cities. Mao Zedong relied on the support of peasantry which was a radical class and the foundation for a novel society. Mao believe that, unlike Gorbachev of Soviet Union, revolution must emerge from the least developed region of the community, and then extend to urban regions. Subsequently, the Soviet Union peasantry was wiped out, whilst peasants in China were capable to increase production. In addition, the Chinese communists had the ability to obtain more support, particularly from peasantry, the Soviet Union communists who emerged to power more swiftly via an urban revolution (Shaoguang, 2001). Factors that led to collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and its survival in China Association of communism and Maoism with national liberation The association of communism and Maoism with national liberty led to survival of communism in China. Unlike, in Soviet Union, there has subsisted a political idea against imperialism to flee China from its dependency from outsiders. With Mao’s Cultural Revolution, the country could implement its values and traditions in the communist scheme. After Mao’s death, his descendant Deng Xiaoping took over and introduced a free market in order to both lift the country out of poverty and keep communist party in China in power. The Chinese industrial reform has been successful because the free market policy introduced by Deng had enabled all factories to gat great benefits. Deng reforms resulted to a great rise in both the quantity and quality of goods available in stores. Whilst China has developed significant economic zones, Russians were apprehensive that Western firms were attempting to exploit then through turning the Soviet Union some form of a colony from where they could obtain raw materials. As a consequence, the political legality of Chinese communism was strengthened the economic development of the country. On the other hand the collapse of communism in Soviet Union was unavoidable because of economic decline and very quick political change. China succeeded in associating communism and Maoism, Chinese nationalism and their enduring values and traditions. Additionally, China could gratify desires through adopting the free market policy to communist party state and making effective industrial and economic development. Manner in which communism came to power The introverted manner in which communism came to power in the Soviet Union led to its eventual collapse. The way in which Soviet Union communist party rose to power was less emotional that the Chinese communist party did. The individuals who were against Tsarist Empire were mainly upper class educated nationals, who were brought up in Russian organizations of higher learning in 1860. Unlike in China, majority of citizens were not engaged in bringing communist party to authority. Actually, Soviet communists officially came to authority after the great October socialist revolution under the lead of Vladimir Lenin. According to Johnson, (1999) the Bolshevik revolution which was led by Lenin and Bolshevik party, which was created by Lenin, resulted to communist party, and fundamentally never changed. Unlike the Chinese communist party, a single individual created the Soviet Union communist party. The Chinese communist party had numerous founders, with founders being the total set of citizens, the peasants and with peasants the party could have never come to power. National identity Communism collapsed in Soviet Union because of the inability of the country to establish a national identity. Whilst the Soviets lacked an efficient way of setting up national identity in their country, The Chinese utilized their comprehensive Confucius and mindset ideology to develop a national identity that every person could relate to. Whilst there were several ethnicities in China such as the incorporations of Tibetans, Uyghur’s, and Mongols in the seventh century, the government of China was able to maintain these ethnicities under a single ideology, known as Confucianism (Suny, & Terry, 2001). On the contrary, in the Soviet Union there were greatly numerous ethnic minorities in the country and what the nation tried to accomplish was a classless nationwide identity through limiting every individual to a single class, the Proletariats. Other than identifying that there were numerous ethnicities, like China did, Soviet Union rejected these ethnicities and instead the firmly and systematically incorporated non Russian ethnics into Soviet Union through the support of the proletariat class mentality. The Soviet didn’t possess any form of unity, since within the Soviet blocs and ethnic minorities, diverse languages were spoken, a dissimilar history applied for every state, and cultures differed between every ethnicity. The major reason for Soviet Union’s effort to categorize all people under proletariat class was because the country lacked one. As Karl Marx had apparently stated, communism wouldn’t be accomplished unless there would be a global revolution of Proletariat class. Apparently, the attempt of Soviet Union to spark a global Proletariat did not succeed resulting to collapse of communism. The current communist government in China is more of patriotism than a product ideology like communism and Marxism. Nationalism was a major element utilized by the Communist Party of China that acted as glue in sticking people to the party. Therefore, compared to China, the Soviet Union lacked a universal history to which the Soviet nationalism could arise (Carr, 2002). The Soviet Union political and economic reforms Even though the Soviet Union wasn’t able to develop a patent national identity with its components, and communist party didn’t have the approval of majority as it emerged to power, the major incidents that resulted to the downfall of communism Soviet Union and survival of Chinese communism were the reforms. When he became the Soviet Union leader in 1885 Mikhail Gorbachev, introduced several reforms in an effort to modernize the economy and make the Chinese communist party highly democratic. He established to introduce the reforms after identifying that the Soviet Union economy was falling apart. Gorbachev therefore set out to initiate political and economic restructuring, along with Glasnost and began introducing modifications in several ways, with the hope of modernizing the economy so that it could grow at a self-effacing rate of four percent each year. He conducted the reforms in four stages but lacked proper planning. In spite of Gorbachve’s reforms being aimed at aiding economic growth and development, they in the real sense caused an economic breakdown, leading to a series of strikes. This was as a result of the reality that the factories reduced production of all consumer goods as they began concentrating on more costly goods, thus leading to absence of consumer goods (Brown, 1997). This led to an increase in the price of consumer goods and therefore money became highly useless. This in turn led to increased printing of money which led to inflation and did not solve the problem of economic downfall, but rather aggravated it. Therefore, the country was delved into an economic disaster and necessitating food rationing which caused great frustration among the citizens and strikes were carried out to object to the state government.Under openness, several republics within the Soviet Union began to express their views towards being integrated into the Soviet Union during the Second World War as a consequence of the 1939 Nazi-Soviet Pact. People resented this integration and during the era of openness, it became very clear to the state government. Stuart (2001) notes that after a long duration of time of being repressed, these republics utilized the newly acquired freedom to push for increased control over their own economies and the right to articulate their national identity. This was because they were ill treated by central government and their concerns and interests ignored merely because the central state government possesses the entire regulation over them. These shoot their demands which became increasingly high, like detachment and complete independence from central government. This shaked unity and stability in the Soviet Union which would ultimately result to the collapse of the Iron Curtain and communism. By 1991, Gorbachev was ready to negotiate a settlement whereby the republics would go into a new union, which would be ruled by central government only in certain regions, whilst member republics would be liable for other issues. Nevertheless, several hardliners were disgusted by the looming breakup of the Soviet Union and they were already against the economic reforms of Gorbachev which had failed and made the economic situation worse. Thus, on August 18, 1991, the hardliners initiated a coup to overthrow Gorbachev, whereby he was placed under arrest and authority was taken over by a committee of eight members. Nevertheless, Yelstin who became the president criticized this coup and called on Soviet people to resists plotters. Yelsti’s actions caused the citizens to resist the rebellion resulting to failure of the coup. By this period, Gorbachev went back to Moscow and had become highly powerless with Yelstin being the famous politician. Gorbachev resigned as the coup clearly displayed another successful outcome of his modification programme. In the Soviet Union, Yelstin together with the republican government ended the power of communist part by banning and suspending the party and confiscating all their possessions and this signified the collapse of communism in Russia. In December 1991, the Soviet republics gathered to discuss a novel type of relationship, which ultimately led to birth of commonwealth of independent states. The replacement of USSR by commonwealth of independent states signified the complete collapse of communism as well as Iron Curtain in Russia (Suny, 1998). Reforms in China China concentrated more on economic restructuring other than on political restructuring. By putting less influence on control of the nation, Chinese people remained satisfied with government. Additionally, the economic reforms that were introduced by Deng Xiaoping offered more economic freedom to Chinese people. In 1978, a sequence of reforms called reform and opening up, which were aimed at jumpstarting the Chinese economy and led to swift economic growth and development in China. Deng didn’t share the utopian vision of Mao of an ultimate communist economy whereby individuals would toil for the benefit of the society and financial incentives would only play a minor role (Barnett, 2008). Instead, he recognized that profit incentives of a market economy could increase the living standard of China and also recognized that only a slow transition to this economy could conserve the political control of communist party in China. Key causes of economic growth in China included the termination of commune scheme in farming, an expansion in private ownership of business and an increase in overseas investment in China. The late 1970s and early 1980s saw a breakup of the Mao-period communal farming scheme. During Mao period, farms were categorized into commune of laborers that were obliged to offer extra production to the nation. When Deng restructuring began, communes were regressed into conventional family fashion farms and this led to immense economic growth as it generated incentives for the farmers to manufacture more consumer goods. The excess produce generated high revenues and permitted rural dwellers to take part in small scale pastoral enterprise. One of the main causes of economic growth in China was the loosening up of the restrictions on privately owned businesses. Private firms started to sprout up, particularly in 1990s and swiftly outperformed the state owned enterprises in China. Private firms were propelled by a profit purpose other than a political motive and were greatly effective contrasted to the aging state owned enterprises. The end of commune system in 1980s and the expansion of private business ownership were significant causes of Chinese economic growth since 1978. Zhang (2000) argues that, these were highly aided by an immense influx of overseas investment during Xiaopang period. Xiaopang opened a door to foreign investment beginning in late 1970s. Foreign investment generated the necessity of infrastructures in the type of facilities such as factories and numerous production centers and this meant rising incomes and jobs for a large number of Chinese citizens. Also, foreign investment generated opportunities for technology transfers together with increased exports. The setbacks of central planning led to market reform in China, but resulted to collapse of the Soviet economy and communism. The collapse of communist regime in Soviet Union was more than a political occurrence. The powerful connection between politics and economics was the fundamental feature of the state socialist scheme generated a situation that was exclusive for successor states of Soviet Union. China has managed to avoid problems that Soviet Union faced and that Rusiaa faces The communist system was so embedded in all elements of Soviet life that the Russian citizens were left with petite democratic tradition. Russia faces the apparently impracticable undertaking of democratization and economic liberalization. This is merged with the reality that the novel administration should deal with human rights matters, like living conditions and supply of consumer goods in this novel type of government has rendered the scene of a complete switch apparently impossible. On contrast, China has taken a diverse route to its shift to market economy t o avoid problems that Soviet Union and that Russia faces. It has sought the economic reform upon the strong path of its communist party. The view of china is that the disturbance of the political scheme would result to an infinite debate, rivalry for power, and the eventual failure and stagnation of its economic transformations. Unlike Russia, China has a feeling that communist autocracy and the market economy are attuned. China has conserved sever of its state owned enterprises whilst at the same time encouraging the development of competing private firms (Maurice, 2007). Conclusion Reforms were the major factors that led to collapse of communism in Soviet Union and its survival in China. China embarked on plans of economically liberal reforms which included abolition of commune scheme, expansion of ownership of business by private enterprises and increased overseas investment. All this led to immense economic growth and communism in China which still continues today. On the contrary, Soviet Union economic reforms were aimed at modernizing the economy and making the Chinese communist party more democratic. However, instead of the reforms leading to economic growth, they caused to an economic breakdown and worsened the economic situation and since liberal reforms of Glasnost had given people the freedom of speech, they protested against the failure of the government to revive the economy and this eventually resulted to collapse of communism in China. Bibliography Shaoguang, W, 2001, 'New Trends of Thought' on China's Cultural Revolution. Journal of Contemporary China, 8:21, 3. Maurice, M, 2007, Mao’s China and After: A History of the People's Republic. The Free Press, New York. Barnett, T, 2008, “Deng Xiaoping,” Esquire no. 4: 146. Zhang, W, 2000, Ideology and Economic Reform under Deng Xiaoping, Kegan Paul International, New York. Suny, R, & Terry, M, 2001, A State of Nations: Empire and Nation-Making in the Age of Lenin and Stalin, Oxford University Press, New York. Johnson, C, 1999, Peasant Nationalism and Communist Power: The Emergence of Revolutionary China 1937-1945, Stanford University Press, and Stanford. Suny, R, 1998, The Soviet Experiment: Russia, the USSR, and the Successor States, Oxford University Press, New York. Carr, E, 2002, Socialism in one country, Promoting national Identity Based on Class Identification, New Left Review, no. 100 (1976): 151. 18 Sakwa, R, 1999, The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Union, 1917–1991: 1917–1991, Routledge, London. Brown, A, 1997, The Gorbachev factor, Oxford University Press: Oxford. Stuart, 2001, Soviet Society under Perestroika, Routledge, London. Read More