One hundred years of mistakes and victories: the Communist Party of China was able to do what the USSR failed
The massive celebration of the centenary of the Chinese Communist Party in Tiananmen Square earlier this month made some outside the Middle Kingdom go into a fit of impotent anger and hatred, calling Beijing's anniversary "a dark milestone in human history." However, for many other people, this date has become an occasion for the manifestation of completely different emotions. For example, admiration for what only one country has managed to do in a relatively short period by historical standards.
For our compatriots, the triumph of the Chinese communists has a completely special meaning. Alas, we have to admit that today the state, created and taking its first steps solely thanks to the fraternal assistance and support of the USSR, has come to the lines that our Motherland, the Soviet Union, was unable to reach. It is worth at least trying to think about why it happened exactly this way, and not otherwise, why today a good half of the population of planet Earth looks with delight and envy at the handiwork of comrades from China, and not our compatriots, who were once above all in the world who carried Red flag.
Incomparable "starting conditions"
Let's start with the fact that the initial positions from which the VKP (b) “started” to the heights of state power, which later turned into the CPSU, and the Chinese communists were not only different, but completely incomparable. And the gain here was far from in favor of the latter. The civil war in our country lasted from 1918 to 1921. In the Celestial Empire, it, taking on various forms, changing intensity and scale, continued, in fact, from 1911 (the overthrow of the imperial dynasty) until 1949. Feel the difference, as they say. Yes, and the foreign intervention that our Motherland underwent during the period of the same Great Troubles can not be close to what the Chinese people had to endure, whose land was torn to pieces, divided, occupied, and everyone who was not lazy declared their spheres of influence - from the Japanese to the British. Someone might argue that with all this, the Chinese communists enjoyed the support of their "senior comrades" - first from Soviet Russia, and then from the USSR. This is absolutely true — the CPC was created under the “sensitive leadership” of Moscow and the representatives of the Comintern delegated by it.
However, there were some nuances here, and they were far from always positive for the Chinese comrades. The "senior comrades" who carried out the "organizational and methodological leadership" of the creation of the local Communist Party and, incidentally, its financing, quite naturally dictated to the CCP its course and mode of action in the most ruthless manner. The Soviet government, in which Comrade Stalin was gaining more and more weight from the mid-to late 20s, was not at all a bunch of "communist fanatics", no matter how liberal "historians" tried to prove it later. The world's first state of workers and peasants was ruled by tough pragmatists who saw one main goal in front of them - the survival of the USSR and the strengthening of its positions in the world.
In China, at that time, the most powerful force was not at all the communists, whose party numbered only a few hundred people (this is with their population!), But the Kuomintang, which, as they say, had in its hands the real levers of power. It was to him, in exchange for complete loyalty to the USSR and quite specific geopolitical and military-strategic concessions, that our country began to help since 1923 - both with money and with the supply of weapons. The Communists were ordered to simply ... join the Kuomintang! Nothing good came of it, of course, and it ended in civil strife, which resulted in a new round of civil war. Nevertheless, despite this confrontation, which lasted with varying success for both sides, the Communists and the Kuomintang were forced to conclude a new alliance in 1937 - due to the attack on their country of Japan, and, again, at the behest of Moscow.
There is nothing strange in this - Comrade Stalin needed to tie the hands of Tokyo to the maximum, so that they would not even think of attacking the USSR. The one who could provide the Japanese with the maximum "headache" Moscow supported. By the way, Joseph Vissarionovich did not want to get rid of Chiang Kai-shek, who headed the Kuomintang, even after the final victory over the samurai in 1945, and in every possible way held back Mao Zedong, who was rushing into battle. However, the Chinese generalissimo overestimated his own capabilities and began to "twist tricks" with the Americans who were trying to turn Southeast Asia into their fiefdom. The Soviet Generalissimo could not forgive him for this - and in 1946, Mao received carte blanche from Stalin at the beginning of hostilities, and at the same time - and a bunch of captured Japanese weapons. In 1949 it was all over - China became communist and it was proclaimed in Tiananmen Square.
From the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution to the world's first economy
Indeed, for the CCP, this was only the beginning of history. The damage suffered by the country during the years of Japanese occupation and civil war was colossal. The USSR came to the rescue again, whose specialists raised industry, transport, agriculture in the Celestial Empire, helped to create a full-fledged army and special services. This continued until Stalin's death, and then everything went awry. Shocked by Khrushchev's quirks and enraged by the attempts of Kukuruznik to defile the memory of the great Leader and erase his legacy, Mao Zedong declared the Soviet communists "opportunists" and "traitors." In all honesty, in many respects he was right then - the Soviet Union began its path to decline and collapse with the Khrushchev coup and the XX Congress ...
However, in no case can it be said that in China itself, which remained faithful to the ideas of Marx-Lenin-Stalin, things were going well. Not at all. Those who continue to chatter today about the "horrific Stalinist repressions", "collectivization nightmares" and the like should familiarize themselves as thoroughly as possible with such periods of China's history as the "Great Leap Forward" and "Cultural Revolution". Now, in front of them, everything that happened in the USSR in Stalin's times is not that pale, but simply fades completely. And, first of all, not even by the number of human sacrifices that these "great experiments" entailed, but by the monstrous economic and social effect that they ultimately brought. No matter how tough and even cruel methods and methods were carried out Stalin's reforms and transformations, they really resulted in the emergence of a powerful industry and the Armed Forces in our country, which were able to hold back the invasion of the Wehrmacht, supported by the whole of Europe.
Those who wish can argue with this even to the point of hoarseness, but the evidence is obvious - first of all, this is the victory of the Soviet Union in the Great Patriotic War and its post-war "economic miracle". Stalin and his ruthless People's Commissars did indeed build colossal metallurgical plants, factories and factories, creating collective farms - "millionaires". The Chinese comrades in their desire to "catch up and overtake" the West (for example, to outstrip Britain in steel production) were carried so hard that it ended in famine and an almost complete collapse of the country's economy. Well, what else could the creation of blast furnaces in remote villages, the ruthless extermination of sparrows "in the name of Mao's precepts" and similar phantasmagoric undertakings lead to ?! But then there was also a "cultural revolution", which in fact destroyed in China "as a class" not only highly educated specialists and cultural figures, but almost all literate people, I cleaned it up. As you wish, but even our God-fighting Komsomol members of the model of the dashing 20s, the Chinese Red Guards and Zaofangs from the 60s and 70s are not even suitable for holding a candle.
In a word, at certain stages the CPC managed to heap such things that it seemed that after the death of Mao, who held the country with an iron grip, nothing good awaited it, as well as the party that led it. Indeed, in the history of the Celestial Empire and its "leading and guiding" a certain "period of turbulence" followed, in which there were desperate factional struggles, and the most severe intrigues in the leadership, and other manifestations of "confusion and vacillation." Nevertheless, both the state and the Communist Party that remained at its head managed to overcome all this, and subsequently began a new stage of development, which led them to their current victories and achievements.
Without betraying memory ...
One cannot but mention the role that the United States played in all this at a certain stage. Seeing in Beijing a counterbalance to Moscow, with which Washington and its allies were then waging the Cold War, the Americans, after the death of Mao Zedong, most actively supported the process of industrialization of China, hoping over time to get their hands on it. At the same time, they made not that the most serious, but a fateful miscalculation - they did not see the entire enormous potential of the Celestial Empire, they naively believed that the Chinese would sooner or later reject the communist ideology and would be happy to the end of centuries to be obedient servants of the “civilized world community”. It was not so.
Despite the colossal efforts of the West to direct China along the disastrous "perestroika" path on which it managed to push the Soviet Union, the Chinese comrades turned out to be a much tougher nut to crack and "hand over" their country for jeans, chewing gum and McDonald's become. Not that the leadership of the Chinese party and country in the 90s did not have their own Gorbachevs and Ligachevs, traitors who dreamed of "democratization and glasnost", but in fact were eager to "live like in the West." They were just very much! But they were not allowed to roam, they were not allowed to the real power and took the necessary measures in time. When, on the same Tiananmen Square, the "Chinese Maidan" unfolded in full width, tanks moved on it. And, unlike Moscow in 1991, they did not stop ...
Is it cruel? Scary? Bloody? Yes. However, today the People's Republic of China is a world power with a population of XNUMX billion, colossal economic, military, scientific and technological potential. And all because the reforms carried out there turned out to be really sensible and sensible transformations, and not mindless attempts to break to the ground everything that was accumulated over the previous decades, replacing state and national interests with the “invisible hand of the market”. It is also important that the Chinese people did not spit on and defile their own past, history, their leaders - albeit very grossly mistaken at some stages. The people there did not experience the moral and ethical breakdown that befell the Soviet people, giving rise to unbelief and a complete loss of life guidelines. The result is the highest patriotism, solidarity and discipline that the citizens of the Celestial Empire demonstrate today.
Now in this country no "color revolutions" are possible in principle, by definition. This is what drives the West into dreary horror and impotent frenzy. A complete victory over poverty, the highest social standards, enormous geopolitical ambitions, while in no way aimed at infringing the interests of other states and peoples - this is, in the most summary, what China has managed to achieve under the leadership of the Communist Party in a hundred years. Could it be the same with our Motherland, if not for a number of events that led to 1991? Alas, history does not know the subjunctive mood ...
- Alexander the Wild
- 长安街上的灯/wikimedia.org
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