Civil-military relations in changing communist societies: A comparative study of China and the Soviet Union

Abstract

The events that happened in 1989 in different parts of the communist world-in Yugoslavia’s Kosovo, in Soviet Georgia and Azerbaijan, in China’s Tiananmen Square, and in Bucharest, Romania-all have one thing in common; the conspicuous role played by the military. Indeed, as communism crumbles from Europe to Asia, it appears that the only force that might be able to stop the process is the armed forces controlled by the communist party. Suspicion and speculation of a possible Red Army coup against Mikhail Gorbachev and his reforms have existed both inside and outside the Soviet Union since Gorbachev came to power. Could and will the Tiananmen massacre be repeated in the Soviet Union? Why did the People’s Liberation Army act as it did in the spring of 1989? What factors facilitate the use or non-use of military force in the process of systematic change in communist societies? Have reforms produced different army behavior and divergent civil-military relations in the Soviet Union and China? If so, why? These important questions, surprisingly, have been addressed inadequately by Western academics. Before June, 1989, there was a general lack ofattention by Western analysts to internal developments within the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Consequently, the PLA’s action in Tiananman Square on June 4 shocked China-watchers in the West as well as the rest of the world.’ Research on the Soviet military in the last five years has, by and large, focused on disarmament, military strength, military doctrine and strategy, and issues related to East-West security. Few studies have concentrated on changes within the Soviet army and its relations with the communist party and with civilian society.? This study analyses internal developments in the armed forces and civil-military relations, and assesses the changing nature of the military in the PRC and the USSR. On the theoretical level, an effort to evaluate past theories under new circumstances is long overdue. From the late 1960s through the 1970s an extensive literature on civil-military relations in communist states, especially in the USSR and China, became available after many scholars rejected the totalitarian model of communist studies.3 Of