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The Anatomy of Collapse
In Moscow, 1991, as in Beijing in 1989, eight hard liners made alast-ditch stand to preserve communism. Yet in both cases, the Communist partywas left on the sidelines and no appeal was made for support in the name ofCommunist doctrine. Politics and persuasion were thrust aside in favor offorce. The big difference in the two cases was that in Beijingin 1989, the chief reformer, Deng Xiaoping, sided with the hard liners. Hisauthority was just sufficient to overcome divisions in the military and toengineer the bloody crackdown in Tiananmen Square.Conceivably, if Gorbachev had gone over to the Moscowplotters last month, the Communist system might have been preserved in the Soviet Union.
The collapse of communism in the motherland of the revolution is adevastating political and psychological blow to the gerontocratic leaders ofthe Chinese Communist Party (CCP). But while the Communist Party of the SovietUnion (CPSU) seems on the verge of extinction, the CCP has survived thechallenge to its existence and has regrouped. Histories, chronologies, memoirs,documentary collections, and picture books have been streaming off Beijing’s presses to mark its seventieth birthday inJuly. Having made it past the second anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre onJune 4 with only a few covert campus protests to justify their paranoidpreparations, the ruling gerontocrats are celebrating their glory as neverbefore.[sup]1[/sup] A visit to China this summer revealed acountry unaffected by Soviet-style confusion and upheaval. The demonstrators of1989 are imprisoned, silent, or abroad. Reform-minded intellectuals, resentfulor resigned, are keeping silent as the regime attempts to track down and punishthe last sympathizers of the student rebels. In strong contrast even topre-coup Moscow, where the CPSU washemorrhaging badly, Beijing has announced anincrease in Party membership to over fifty million people. The CCP seems immuneto the biblical mandate of “threescoreyears and ten.” What accounts for the resilience of the CCP when East European Communistregimes have disintegrated and the CPSU, having already ceded much power tonon-Communists, now seems to be on its last legs? The essential difference between Chinaand Eastern Europe is that China’s Communistregime is indigenous, the product of a domestically led military victory, notimposed by Soviet arms.[sup]2[/sup] Many Chinesedislike their government; the desire of intellectuals for democracy apart,dissatisfaction in urban China over corruptionand inflation was clearly very high in 1989. But national liberation was not anissue as it was later that year in Poland, East Germany, Hungary,and Czechoslovakia. China’s aged leaders were offered a peaceful revolution by the students in theuprising of 1989, but they feared the emergence of an independent workers’movement like Solidarity. They could have followed the inclinations of somesenior colleagues and refrained from military suppression, as the East Germansdid. Instead they chose what could be called a Romanian solution, but made itstick. Why did they not follow Gorbachev in trying to turn political democracy totheir own purposes? Here the explanation seems to depend on generations.Gorbachev is a fourth- or fifth-generation leader, who was not yet born whenthe Bolsheviks carried out their coup in 1917. He came to power to find thatthe Soviets had lost the sixty-year competition with the West, a competitionwhich began with Stalin’s Five-Year Plans and Roosevelt’sNew Deal. Without drastic economic reform, the regime that he had inheritedwould run down, and without political reform there was no hope of breakingthrough bureaucratic inertia and popular apathy that seventy years of Sovietrule had produced. Even when the going became rough, he knew that turning backwould be even worse. In China, by contrast, Deng was able togive new impetus to the economy during the 1980s by unleashing the peasantryfrom the burdens of Soviet-style collectivization. By 1989, despite seriousproblems with industrial reform, he could reasonably hope that a Communist-led China could be transformed into a powerful, modern state,without fundamental concessions being offered to political reformers. In thisapparently promising situation there was no way that a first-generationrevolutionary, who had been political commissar of one of the CCP’s victoriousarmies in the Civil War, and then further hardened by struggle during Mao’sCultural Revolution, would hand over the fruits of a lifetime’s work to unarmedyoung people demonstrating peacefully in the streets. What still needs explaining is why the monolithic Communist parties, from Berlin to Beijing, thatwere almost universally thought to be iron-disciplined, tightly organized, andself-perpetuating, nevertheless cracked. It is not difficult to identify theevents—like the sudden death of the popular one-time general secretary HuYao-bang in China—that set off the challengefrom below to the hitherto unchallengeable ruling parties. But why did theygive way? The model Stalinist state can be depicted as a totalitarian triangle, witha second triangle within it. At the apex of the outer triangle is thecharismatic leader, the source of official inspiration and the person owedobedience. One side of the triangle supporting the apex is the bureaucracy ofthe Party-state, which executes the leader’s commands. The other side of thetriangle is the doctrine of Marxism-Leninism (plus Mao Zedong Thought, in theChinese case), which provides the leader’s legitimacy and is constantlysupplemented by his ideas. The base of the triangle is the military, theultimate guarantor of the entire structure. Inside this outer triangle is aninner one made up of the various police systems, which reinforce the ability ofthe outer triangle to keep society penned in. In Eastern Europe, the domestic politicalstructures contained alien elements. At the true apex of the triangles were notlocal satraps such as Honecker or Jaruzelski, but Gorbachev; it was he, notthey, who interpreted Marxism-Leninism. And the ultimate guarantor of theregime was not the national army but the occupying Soviet Red Army. This was demonstratedmost forcibly in the Soviet suppression of the Hungarian revolution in 1956,when the Communist premier Imre Nagy led an abortive attempt to take hiscountry out of the Communist bloc in response to domestic nationalism.Satellite rulers never had a free hand in dealing with their societies, andwere also subject to the overall policy concerns of Moscow.Brezhnev’s desire to pursue détente in the1970s encouraged social groups in Eastern Europe to take the initiative underthe umbrella of the Helsinki accords; Western credits became available toPoland but only in exchange for domestic liberalization, which encouraged theferment that eventually produced Solidarity.[sup]3[/sup] When Gorbachevdecided he had no choice but to abandon the Soviet empire, and, in particular,when it became clear that the Red Army would no longer bail out the Sovietsatraps in trouble as it had in 1953, 1956, 1968, and 1979, the inner trianglealone proved insufficiently strong to keep on suppressing dissatisfiedcitizens. In the Soviet Union, glasnost weakenedthe doctrinal side of the outer triangle, while perestroika weakened thebureaucratic side. Intellectuals, professionals, workers, ethnic minorities,even dissident members of the nomenklatura seized the chance toobtain greater freedom by taking advantage of the cracks in the monolith. MostSoviet citizens seemed agreed that anything is better than life within thetriangular system. Their reaction to the coup proved this, and here was wherethe hard liners miscalculated. But both in Eastern Europe and in the Soviet Union,the nationalist or intellectual dissidents seized opportunities that in alllikelihood would not have existed without Gorbachev. Gorbachev’s decisions werethe crucial ones: to allow Marxist-Leninist doctrine to be questioned, toencourage the bureaucracies to be attacked, and to withhold the use of force.[sup]4[/sup] While onerespects the courage of, for instance, the Polish workers who spontaneouslyrose in 1970, 1976, and 1980, indicating the latent power of civil society, themonolithic triangles of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union did not explode asa result of intolerable social pressures from within; rather, they wereshattered by blows delivered to them from the apex. It is here that thesimilarity with China emerges. “Spiritualpollution” from the West may have been among thefactors that inspired the Tiananmen demonstrators, as the octogenarians ofBeijing allege. But Western ideas were able to penetrate only because Mao andDeng had already weakened China’s totalitarian structure from above. In 1966,Mao unleashed popular social forces in the form of the student Red Guardsagainst the bureaucrats of the Party-state. For several years afterward, theCCP had no institutional life, other than the fevered machinations of a fewcabals of high-level officials. When the history of the period was rewrittenafter Mao’s death, it was even suggested that the CCP’s Ninth Congress beexpunged from the record because some of the appointed delegates were not Partymembers. In effect, Mao at the apex used two sides of the triangle—the weapon ofhis “Thought” andthe support of the People’s Liberation Army—against the third, proposingultimately to substitute the best of the Red Guards for the old Partybureaucracy. When internecine student warfare forced him to suppress the RedGuards, the PLA took over the Party’s functions. Mao and subsequently Deng hadto struggle hard to get the PLA to relinquish its political power and allow asupposedly reborn Party to occupy its normal position. But despite its formal rehabilitation and restoration, the CCP neverrecovered the authority and legitimacy it had before the Cultural Revolution,and it is not difficult to see why. In one of his most famous articles, writtenin 1927 during his rural revolutionary years, Mao wrote: “Crowning” the landlords and parading them through the villages…. A tall paper-hat is stuck on the head of one of the local tyrantsor evil gentry, bearing the words “Local tyrantso-and-so” or “So-and-so of theevil gentry.” He is led by a rope and escorted with bigcrowds in front and behind. Sometimes brass gongs are beaten and flags waved toattract people’s attention. This form of punishment more than any other makesthe local tyrants and evil gentry tremble. Anyone who has once been crownedwith a tall paperhat loses face altogether and can never again hold up hishead.[sup]5[/sup] Anyone who saw the film The Last Emperor and remembers how theprison governor was paraded through the streets with other “counter-revolutionaries” in theCultural Revolution sequence will recognize the tactic Mao describes. It was not just disgraced leaders like Deng Xiaoping who lost face duringthe Cultural Revolution of the 1970s; it was the CCP itself. Mao may havebelieved that he was simply purifying the Party of “counter-revolutionaries,” but tothe “broad masses” thedistinction between disgraced leaders and the organization they served was hardto perceive. If most US senators and congressmen were suddenly convicted ofcorruption and sent to federal prisons, the institution of Congress couldhardly survive untarnished. 1 So far they have had no nasty surprises suchas Snow White, Blood Red, a strikingly honest history published in 1989,which caused its author Lieutenant Colonel Zhang Zhenglong to be imprisonedlast year because he exposed CCP ruthlessness in one triumphant but ferociouscivil war campaign in the late 1940s.↩ 2 Of course, the Comintern was heavilyinstrumental in forming and guiding the fledgling CCP, but once the Party hadshifted to guerrilla warfare and especially after the rise of Mao, Moscow'sinfluence was marginal. However, the Soviets did give valuable assistance inManchuria after World War II, at the outset of the Chinese civil war. SnowWhite, Blood Red has something to say about this, and the best source inEnglish is Steven I. Levine, Anvil of Victory: The Communist Revolution inManchuria, 1945–8 (Columbia University Press, 1987).↩ 3 See Timothy Garton Ash, The PolishRevolution: Solidarity (Macmillan, 1984), p. 19.↩ 4 Force has of course been used within theSoviet Union under Gorbachev, and not just interposed between interethnicviolence, but directly against nationalists in Georgia and the Baltics. The differencewas that, unlike in the past, its use was no longer assumed as inevitable, andtherefore it no longer restrained dissidents as before.↩ 5 "Report of an investigation of thepeasant movement in Hunan," Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung(Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1965), I, p. 37.↩ · 1 So far they have had no nasty surprises such as SnowWhite, Blood Red, a strikingly honest history published in 1989, whichcaused its author Lieutenant Colonel Zhang Zhenglong to be imprisoned last yearbecause he exposed CCP ruthlessness in one triumphant but ferocious civil warcampaign in the late 1940s.↩ Of course, the Comintern was heavily instrumental informing and guiding the fledgling CCP, but once the Party had shifted toguerrilla warfare and especially after the rise of Mao, Moscow's influence wasmarginal. However, the Soviets did give valuable assistance in Manchuria afterWorld War II, at the outset of the Chinese civil war. Snow White, Blood Redhas something to say about this, and the best source in English is Steven I.Levine, Anvil of Victory: The Communist Revolution in Manchuria, 1945–8(Columbia University Press, 1987).↩ See Timothy Garton Ash, The Polish Revolution:Solidarity (Macmillan, 1984), p. 19.↩ Force has of course been used within the Soviet Unionunder Gorbachev, and not just interposed between interethnic violence, butdirectly against nationalists in Georgia and the Baltics. The difference wasthat, unlike in the past, its use was no longer assumed as inevitable, andtherefore it no longer restrained dissidents as before.↩ "Report of an investigation of the peasant movementin Hunan," Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung (Beijing: ForeignLanguages Press, 1965), I, p. 37.↩
Although virtually all of Mao’s Cultural Revolution victims wererehabilitated (sometimes posthumously), the CCP itself could not be restored toits former eminence. Deng himself contributed to its further de-legitimization,albeit with very different methods. When he finally reemerged as Mao’ssuccessor in late 1978, he told his colleagues that the quality of leadership given by the Party committee in an economic unitshould be judged mainly by the unit’s adoption of advanced methods ofmanagement, by the progress of its technical innovation, and by the margins ofincrease of its productivity of labour, its profits, the personal income of itsworkers and the collective benefits it provides. The quality of leadership byParty committee in all fields should be judged by similar criteria.[sup]6[/sup] In other words, the criterion for Party leadership and thus membership waseconomic efficiency. This is not surprising after what Deng and his colleaguessaw as the wasted decade of the Cultural Revolution; but it is a far cry fromStalin’s concept of the Party as “theonly organization capable of centralizing the leadership of the struggle of theproletariat” and Liu Shaoqi’s assertion that theproletarian character of the CCP was determined by “ourparty’s political struggles and political life, its ideological education andits ideological and political leadership.”[sup]7[/sup] By stressing managerial skills and economic leadership and insisting thatthe mandate of power was based on competence, Deng undermined the right of theCCP to rule by virtue of its being the proletarian vanguard. He compounded theParty’s difficulties by putting into question the principal role ofMarxism-Leninism—Mao Zedong Thought, to give the party its legitimacy. AlthoughDeng continued to describe Mao’s thought as a “cardinal principle” which could not bequestioned, he also decreed that “practice is the solecriterion of truth.” Taken to its logical conclusion,this left little room for ideological guidance. Deng even disarmed his own position at the apex of the leadership byrefusing to accept any of the top positions that Mao had held, except thechairmanship of the military affairs committee. To his credit, he took thisline because of the high-level consensus that never again should any Partyleader be able to dominate his colleagues as Mao had done. But it meant thatwhile Deng was known to be the ultimate arbiter, the triangle had becomeblurred at the top and cracked on the sides. Only the military base seemed asfirm as ever. Deng weakened the inner triangle, too, by playing down classstruggle and proclaiming the equality of all before the law. Simultaneously, Deng emboldened the three large penned-in forces ofChinese society: the peasants, by removing the CCP control exercised throughthe collectives and allowing them to farm as families; the urban residents, byencouraging the growth of private factories and service trades; and, above all,the intellectuals and students, by “openingup” the country to the outside world and allowingforeign travel and the relatively free flow of ideas. Each of these groupsbecame restlessly aware of how far behind China had fallen under the CCP;particularly galling was the way in which war-devastated countries and defeatedenemies—Japan, South Korea, Taiwan—had demonstrated that China did not need tobe backward. The death of Hu Yaobang happened to be the spark that lit a prairie fireof social protest. Whether or not the students had a clear notion of democracywas irrelevant: they and their fellow citizens, in Beijing and the many othercities where demonstrations occurred, knew they wanted freedom from oppression.Bureaucrats, propagandists, and even Party leaders began to support thestudents; the end of Party ideology as an effective force was underlined by theerection of the “goddess of democracy” opposite the portrait of Mao in the square. Unsupported from theoutside, the inner triangle of police power proved ineffective. To restrainsociety once more, Deng’s only recourse was to the PLA, which became the innerand outer triangles for a time. The critical common factor, then, that contributed to similar upheavalsthroughout the Communist bloc has been assaults from above, not pressure fromwithin. Totalitarian systems can withstand pressure from social forces; theytend to fall apart when their leaders, out of a desire for radical changeignited by some external challenge,[sup]8[/sup] take actions thathelp to destroy the system.[sup]9[/sup] “Democraticcentralism” has been the cover for a hierarchicalsystem based on unquestioning obedience. Without genuine popular roots, localParty cells have no capacity for independent survival. They are sustained bythe powers granted to them from above, not support from below. When the supremeleader has used his position to destroy his subordinates, the characteristicreaction has been petrified acceptance, as in the Soviet Union in the late1930s, China in the 1960s, and in most of the Eastern European countries in the1980s. The difference between Stalin on the one hand, and Mao, Deng, andGorbachev on the other is that Stalin never unleashed society against thebureaucracy; he used one part of the state apparatus to destroy another. For atime, the secret police took over important aspects of the Party’s job in theSoviet Union, while simultaneously carrying on its normal tasks of socialcontrol. At no stage was the man in the street allowed to think that theParty’s destruction presented him with an opportunity to act on his own. Can such an interpretation of the collapse of Communist systems tell usanything about their future in the USSR and the PRC? Even before the August coup, leading Russian politicians like BorisYeltsin had resigned from the CPSU and indicated their intention of forming newpolitical organizations. Marxism-Leninism was widely scorned and even thelegitimacy of the Bolshevik revolution and Lenin himself were in question. Hadthe coup succeeded, its leaders could not have rehabilitated these discreditedelements of the Soviet system; rather, they would have had to erect a militarydictatorship, the Bonapartist regime long dreaded by Soviet politicians. Thecollapse of the coup revealed that even the base of the Soviet totalitariantriangle, the Red Army, had been undermined by internal divisions resultingfrom glasnost ant perestroika. A similar fate has befallen the mainstay of theinner triangle, the KGB; and the toppling of Dzerzhinski’s statue symbolizesits future. Deprived of the traditional props of Party, doctrine, and military, andlacking a territorial base, Gorbachev’s position as Soviet leader is extremelytenuous. Despite his ill-judged if understandable reaffirmation of theimportance of the CPSU and the Bolshevik revolution on his return to Moscow,Gorbachev’s own actions during the past six years have ensured that the onlytrue source of legitimacy in the USSR today is a popular mandate. But it was Boris Yeltsin who grasped this and who transformed hispolitical status by getting himself democratically elected as president of theRussian Republic. With his position enormously strengthened by his courageousstand during the coup, it is Yeltsin who will in the end decide if there is anyvalue in retaining a Soviet presidency as a link between the Russian and otherrepublics and, if so, how much real power it should have. Yeltsin’s post-coup announcement of his desire to form a military forcefor the Russian Republic, and the restrictions placed on the CPSU in Moscow andelsewhere, indicate that the complete dismantling of the Soviet totalitariantriangle is now only a matter of time. In China, also, the rot has gone too far. Totalitarianism is kept shakilyin place only by the united determination of the octogenarians under Deng. Onlytheir historic roles as revolutionary heroes, and not the CCP or Mao ZedongThought or, after Tiananmen, the PLA—all now discredited—can provide the regimewith tattered shreds of legitimacy and some semblance of continuity andimpregnability. They will not be around to do so much longer. Indeed the political situation in China in the last decade of thetwentieth century looks strangely like that in the first decade. Then, too, thetraditional ideology that once conferred legitimacy on rulers was discarded, asthe nation sought to modernize its institutions. Then, too, the bureaucracybased upon that ideology lost its authority, and new officials with new skillswere sought. Then, too, despite popular unrest, a bankrupt regime was kept inplace by the determination of a paramount ruler from behind the scenes. Butwith the death of the Empress Dowager in 1908, the traditional triangle lostits last and most powerful element, and within four years the imperial systemhad disappeared. In the power vacuum left behind by the Empress Dowager, only the militaryproved capable of using power. The leading general of the day, Yuan Shikai,acted as broker in arranging the abdication of the last emperor; he thenoverthrew the successor republic and made an abortive attempt to restore theold system under his own rule, succeeding only in precipitating the decade ofwarlordism. Eighty years later, part of that may be reenacted. As a result of theTiananmen events, the military seems destined to take a crucial part in shapingthe arrangement of power after Deng leaves the scene. A likely general, YangBeibing, is already in place, though recent events in Moscow have exposed theweaknesses of military leaders who preside over divided armed forces as thetotalitarian triangle crumbles. It remains to be seen if the bitter politicalexperiences of the twentieth century and the unprecedented liberation of thepast decade have produced social forces willing to cooperate to bring about amore hopeful outcome than that of 1911. Certainly the Communist system in China cannot survive. The elements thatkept it in place have been destroyed by its leaders, and the CCP has lost itspurpose. When it was born seventy years ago, it sought to reunite the country,avenge its humiliation at foreign hands, develop the economy, and transform thesociety. The 1949 revolution led in fact to reunification of almost all the oldimperial territories, and China “stoodup” as a world power more formidably than it had forover a century. But in the succeeding forty-two years, after a series of disastrouseconomic and social experiments, Deng initiated a reform program thatrepresented an admission that Communist economics did not work and that theCommunist social transformation was a disaster. At seventy, the CCP, like theCPSU, survives only in order to retain the power it seized at the revolution.As younger Chinese leaders take over from the founding generation, other causesbesides maintaining Party power will come to seem more important in thenational interest, as they have to Gorbachev. About the normal human life span, the Psalms say: The days of our years are three-score years and ten; and if by reason ofstrength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labor and sorrow; forit is soon cut off, and we fly away. The CCP, too, may linger with labor and sorrow; after all, inertia is oneof the most powerful political forces. But if the Tiananmen events of 1989 provedthat society can challenge the totalitarian state too soon, the failed Moscowcoup of 1991 proved that there comes a time when the totalitarian state can nolonger save itself. Indeed, the Tiananmen massacre can now be clearly seen as aPyrrhic victory. Two years ago, I suggested in these pages thatcommunism in China would not long outlast its founding generation.Two weeks after the events in Moscow, even that prediction may be overcautious.In the not-too-distant future, the CCP will follow the CPSU into the dustbin ofhistory, along with the system it spawned. —August 29, 1991 6 "Emancipate the mind, seek truth fromfacts and unite as one looking into the future," Selected Works of DengXiaoping (1975–1982) (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1984), p. 162;emphasis added.↩ 7 Stalin, Leninism (InternationalPublishers, 1933), p. 78; Liu Shaoqi, Three Essays on Party-Building(Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1980), p. 181. Liu's characterization wasmade at the CCP's 7th Congress in 1945 when he and Mao were close allies, so itclearly also reflected Mao's views.↩ 8 Romania seems an exception in which not theleader but the party and the army brought about self-destruction by failing tosupport the leader. But what the Romanian case probably proves is that, despiteCeausescu's independent line, his country was no more outside the Sovietimperial system than Albania proved to be. Even Yugoslavia, free of Moscow'sdomination for forty years, has not been immune to the seismic shocks withinthe Soviet Union.↩ 9 In Mao's case, the negative challenge of a"revisionist" Soviet Union; in Deng's case, the positive challenge ofthe flourishing East Asian economies and the negative example of the Sovieteconomic model; and in Gorbachev's case, the realization that the Sovietcommand economy was no match for the capitalist system.↩ · 2 "Emancipate the mind, seek truth from facts and uniteas one looking into the future," Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping(1975–1982) (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1984), p. 162; emphasis added.↩ Stalin, Leninism (International Publishers, 1933),p. 78; Liu Shaoqi, Three Essays on Party-Building (Beijing: ForeignLanguages Press, 1980), p. 181. Liu's characterization was made at the CCP's7th Congress in 1945 when he and Mao were close allies, so it clearly alsoreflected Mao's views.↩ Romania seems an exception in which not the leader butthe party and the army brought about self-destruction by failing to support theleader. But what the Romanian case probably proves is that, despite Ceausescu'sindependent line, his country was no more outside the Soviet imperial systemthan Albania proved to be. Even Yugoslavia, free of Moscow's domination forforty years, has not been immune to the seismic shocks within the Soviet Union.↩ In Mao's case, the negative challenge of a"revisionist" Soviet Union; in Deng's case, the positive challenge ofthe flourishing East Asian economies and the negative example of the Sovieteconomic model; and in Gorbachev's case, the realization that the Sovietcommand economy was no match for the capitalist system.↩ |
发表于 2013-4-28 03:59:25