Communist Party Of The Soviet Union Research Articles

Нетипичный коммунист Леонид Иванченко: советские годы карьеры

This article is devoted to the Soviet period of the biography of a prominent figure in the modern history of the Don, a well–known participant of the left flank of party life in Russia – Leonid Andreevich Ivanchenko (1942–2016). The hero of the publication in the 1980s–early 1990s became one of the leaders of the Rostov region: chairman of the Rostov City Executive Committee (1984–1986), secretary, second secretary of the Regional Committee (1986–1989), chairman of the Regional Executive Committee (1989–1990) and the Regional Council (1990–1991). Ivanchenko throughout his political path was forced to master new technologies of work in power in conditions of competitiveness, glasnost in the discussion of candidates, and publicity. He claimed the position of the First Secretary of the Rostov Regional Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Un-ion (CPSU) in the alternative elections (1990). And after losing, he tried to make the regional council a key re-gional center for political decision-making. In August 1991, due to the support of the State Committee on the State of Emergency (GKChP), he was illegally resigned, which determined his future political path.

Sino-Soviet Relations in the Early 1950s - Late 1960s

From 1950 to 1960, Sino-Soviet relations transitioned from a close alliance to an eventual split. This change was influenced by various factors, including the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Alliance, and Mutual Assistance, as well as the Korean War. Despite sharing communist ideologies, the two countries had fundamental differences in their developmental objectives, which led to irreparable divisions and an ultimate severance of ties. Additionally, the personal characteristics of the leaders further exacerbated suspicions and military tensions between the two nations. In the early 1950s, the Chinese Communist Partys (CCP) policies were primarily focused on safeguarding its domestic interests. Despite underlying suspicions and compromises, China and the Soviet Union formalized their alliance through the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Alliance, and Mutual Assistance. Chinas military involvement in Korea in 1953 further strengthened the relationship, ushering in a honeymoon period for the alliance. However, the CCP harbored a long-term objective of establishing itself as an independent entity free from external control. The underlying motives and imbalances inherent in Soviet aid began to erode the CCPs trust in the USSR. In 1956, the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) marked the onset of ideological divergences between the two nations. Subsequent internal conflicts within the socialist bloc and disagreements on how to resolve them prompted China to scrutinize the Soviet Unions true intentions and its great power chauvinism. These evolving dynamics progressively widened the divide between China and the Soviet Union, accentuating pre-existing tensions and eventually culminating in the dissolution of their alliance.

Learning from Experience: Moscow’s Changing Approaches to ‘Third World’ Revolution

Starting in the 1950s, the Soviet Union, the United States, and China began to compete for the allegiance of the (emerging) post-colonial world. But which newly independent countries were ready for socialism? What paths should aspiring socialist leaders follow? How much room did they need to make for religion, nationalism, or even the market? And how did the USSR go about figuring out whom to support, what to advise, and when to cut its losses? The latter question occupied observers of the USSR during the Cold War era, and, over the last twenty years, many historians who have produced case studies and a few larger, synthetic works. Jeremy Friedman’s Ripe for Revolution: Building Socialism in the Third World, is an important and highly original entry into this discussion. Using well-chosen “episodes of a larger engagement between socialist powers and developing states,” Friedman analyzes the experiences of five revolutionary movements that were supported by Moscow, Beijing, or both (13). Chapter 1 traces the USSR’s support for Indonesia and its involvement with that country’s Communist Party (KPI). Indonesia was one of Nikita Khrushchev’s first targets when he decided to revive the Soviet commitment to anti-colonialism. Moscow’s relationship with Indonesian President Sukarno led it to support his elimination of a parliamentary system in favor of “Guided Democracy.” As Friedman shows, the Soviet involvement with Indonesia also forced Soviet scholars and policymakers to think more seriously about the role of religion (Islam proved to be a powerful mobilizing force not just among the bourgeoisie but also the peasantry and working class), and how to guide a popular communist party which was nevertheless locked out of power, and which refused to follow the Soviet line. Friedman sees the ties between the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and socialist parties in decolonizing countries as neither a patron-client relationship nor an alliance between equals but a “franchise system, in which the local communist leaders were basically licensed to operate the local franchise of the international communist movement, while headquarters in Moscow looked after the interests of the brand as a whole” (74).

The Sino-Soviet Alliance: An International History by Austin Jersild

<i>The Sino-Soviet Alliance: An International History</i> by Austin Jersild

Placing Capitalism at the Service of Socialism: Konstantin Ustinovich Chernenko's Unpublished "Notes on America"

Placing Capitalism at the Service of SocialismKonstantin Ustinovich Chernenko's Unpublished "Notes on America" Donald J. Raleigh (bio) On 8 April 1974, the New York Times reported that Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko and Deputy Premier Deng Xiaoping of China "arrived in New York yesterday for the United Nations General Assembly's special session on raw materials and development."1 The Times made no mention that 62-year-old Konstantin Chernenko (1911–85), head of the all-important yet understudied Obshchii otdel (General Department) of the Central Committee (CC) of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), had traveled with Gromyko. General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev had charged "Kostia"—his close associate, comrade-in-arms, and friend—with making his first transatlantic flight and only trip to America to familiarize himself with automated data processing systems utilized by the US government, American banks and corporations, and the United Nations (UN) and to consider whether the Soviet Union might adopt some of these technological practices to facilitate the management of paperwork in the party and state apparatuses of the USSR. "And on Sunday, 7 April, at 10 AM we departed on an IL-62 for the U.S.A.," wrote Chernenko. "I flew to America for the first time and, needless to say, this left its mark on all of my later impressions [emphasis mine]. [End Page 93] Click for larger view View full resolution Little did Chernenko know in boarding his Aeroflot flight to America that he would find what he was looking for as well as many surprises. Source: "Proekt 'Chernenko,' chast´ 26: Poezdka v Ameriku," LiveJournal, 13 May 2021, https://yapet.livejournal.com/559412.html. The slightest new experience while in transit and while there was intense and unforgettable."2 The General Department could certainly benefit from employing state-of-the-art technologies. Responsible for managing and documenting the activities of the CC apparatus, the department had undergone various name changes since its founding in 1920. Called the "secret" department for much of the prewar period and the "special sector" afterward, it was renamed the General Department following Stalin's death but continued to serve as the linchpin of the link between political power and the control of secret information in the USSR. As Larissa Zakharova observed, Kremlin leaders historically "sought to strengthen systemic trust in bureaucracy and in technology through the enforcement of rules and the search for new technologies."3 Toward that goal, in late 1953, the department revised its instructions for handling classified materials. Central Committee staff members [End Page 94] now could receive documents only after they passed through the department, which oversaw the CC's paperwork, including all KGB materials.4 The department maintained party personnel files. It prepared materials for Politburo meetings, organized party congresses and plenums, and circulated proposals to CC members. It processed citizen complaints to the government. The head of the department and his deputy attended Politburo and Secretariat meetings. When Brezhnev died in 1982, the department was the largest of the CC departments, employing 232 specialists.5 The trip itself went publicly unnoticed, and none of the published works on Chernenko mention it.6 While researching a biography of L. I. Brezhnev, however, in the Russian State Archive of Contemporary History (Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv noveishei istorii) I came across partially declassified fond 83 comprising Chernenko's personal papers, including "The Notes of K. U. Chernenko on His Trip to the USA to Familiarize Himself with the Application of Organizational Technology in Government Institutions of the USA."7 The only other person to have examined Chernenko's notes [End Page 95] as of June 2019, the historian L. V. Maksimenkov, published a short essay about them in the popular journal Ogonek.8 The piece culls some vivid quotes from the materials but makes little effort to contextualize or to analyze the notes and their silences. They need both. Examining them from the perspective of the Soviet Union's obsession over the control of information and within the changing dynamic of détente, I seek in this article to answer several questions. How did Chernenko react to the America he saw and why? What practical impact did the trip...

From State to Society: The Komsomol in Yeltsin’s Russia

From State to SocietyThe Komsomol in Yeltsin’s Russia Kristiina Silvan (bio) In September 1991, Vladimir Elagin, the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Leninist Communist Youth League of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (LKSM RSFSR), was speaking to a sparse audience. It was the first time in the organization’s history that the attendance was so low: only two-thirds of both the Central Committee and the Central Control Committee members had arrived to hear what Elagin had to say about the organization’s future a week after the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) had been outlawed on Soviet territory.1 Contrary to one contemporary interpretation,2 he did not, however, take the floor to confirm the youth league’s liquidation but instead urged his listeners to revive it: “To keep up with the current turbulent time, we need to make serious, responsible, and radical decisions on the transformation of the Union.… We must transform ourselves into a public organization [obshchestvennaia organizatsiia] … [and] say that we will continue to develop and participate in the youth movement and help revive it.”3 Speaking almost three decades after the meeting, one of the members of the organizing committee of the LKSM RSFSR, interviewed for this study, claimed that the dismantling of the Russian Komsomol organization was never even considered. “It was because they were real organizations that genuinely worked with youth. They were real organizations, projects, and programs. The activity was real.”4 [End Page 289] In Russia, the centenary of the Komsomol in 2018 was commemorated by special exhibitions and events.5 It also stimulated discussions of the history and legacy of the Soviet youth league.6 In the 2000s, historians’ interest in the Komsomol has primarily concentrated on the first decades of the youth league’s existence, demonstrated by the publication of a number of in-depth scholarly works that have succeeded in capturing not just the transformation of the Komsomol but also the changes in the Soviet political system as a whole. Juliane Fürst, Matthias Neumann, Seth Bernstein, and others have demonstrated that once the Komsomol changed from a quasi-autonomous association into the party-state’s tool of mass socialization, it “hollowed out” to such an extent that when the time was right, the youth league simply “disappear[ed] overnight, leaving almost no traces.”7 Those examining the youth league in the Khrushchev and Brezhnev eras have followed up on the story of the Komsomol’s erosion, demonstrating that the youth league could generate genuine support among young people only when it downplayed its practices of political education and accommodated its activities to the (cultural) wishes of young people.8 Finally, scholars looking at the last years of the Komsomol’s existence point to the lack of commitment among both the rank-and-file and the officials. They note that once alternative platforms of entertainment and social engagement emerged and binding Komsomol enrollment targets were lifted, both [End Page 290] young people and Komsomol bureaucrats left the youth league en masse.9 As has been demonstrated by the literature on the construction of the market economy in the USSR, Komsomol officials were among the first to become engaged in business activities, and they were quick to appropriate the league’s lucrative enterprises when that became possible.10 Returning to the research on the Komsomol of earlier decades, it is easy to point out why Komsomol officials did not mourn the loss of their constituency: youth upbringing and welfare had become of secondary interest a long time ago. Any lingering hopes of the Komsomol’s reform to overcome the “crisis”—a topic of heated discussions throughout perestroika—were crushed by the failed coup of August 1991. In September 1991, the organization would finally “reach … its logical conclusion,” declaring that “the political role of the All-Union Leninist Communist Union of Youth [VLKSM, Komsomol] as a federation of young communist leagues has been exhausted,” and self-dissolving into oblivion.11 In his case study of the Komsomol’s demise, Steven Lee Solnick convincingly argued that the Komsomol collapsed because of the breakdown of hierarchical control. This article does not challenge that claim...

Editor's Note

Editor's Note

Lessons of the Cold War

Lessons of the Cold War

Ovsei Shkaratan and the Soviet Social Structure after Stalin

Ovsei Shkaratan and the Soviet Social Structure after Stalin James Allen Nealy Jr. (bio) Intellectual history features prominently in the contemporary historiography of imperial and Soviet Russia. Although to date much of this literature has focused on the late 19th and early 20th centuries, scholars interested in intellectual developments in the Soviet Union have recently turned their attention to later decades.1 Perhaps inevitably, this transition has led to a convergence with the rich body of scholarship that interprets Soviet history in a [End Page 77] transnational or global context.2 One important consequence of this conjunction has been the number of works that analyze the relationship between the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), intellectuals, and the West. Slava Gerovitch shows that scholars working in the interdisciplinary—and American-born—field of cybernetics developed a technocratic discourse that transcended party orthodoxy while nonetheless supporting the Party's ambitions.3 Petr Cherkasov posits that Soviet scholars tasked with analyzing the capitalist world were afforded sufficient intellectual freedom to dispute party platitudes.4 Benjamin Nathans argues that reform-minded intellectuals combined insights drawn from Western philosophers with cybernetic methods to challenge the Soviet system to live up to its own juridical decrees.5 Aleksandr Bikbov traces how political and sociological categories—at least some of them imported from Western scholarship—played important social functions in the late Soviet and early post-Soviet periods.6 Finally, Sergei Zhuk demonstrates how some Soviet historians of the United States unwittingly served as conduits for American values.7 This article builds on this literature by considering how the Soviet social structure was analyzed in the scholarship of Ovsei Irmovich Shkaratan (1931–2019), a Soviet historian-cum-sociologist whose work first rose to prominence during the de-Stalinization period.8 First, the article situates Shkaratan in his political and institutional context. This discussion explains the preconditions for Shkaratan's work and intellectual evolution. Next, it demonstrates that, during the post-Stalin reemergence of sociological science, Shkaratan drew on Western scholarship to develop "middle-range" theories to posit a functionalist interpretation of the Soviet working class that challenged, but did [End Page 78] not displace, traditional visions of the Soviet social structure.9 A discussion of Shkaratan's first two monographs, published respectively in 1970 and 1973, shows how field research allowed Shkaratan to develop a composite definition of class that incorporated objective, subjective, and spatial variables. A final section considers whether sociologists influenced Soviet socioeconomic management. It argues in the affirmative. The timeframe under consideration in this article (1962–73) roughly corresponds with the first decade of the rule of CPSU leader Leonid Brezhnev (1964–82). It was once commonplace for scholars to understand this period as an era of "stagnation" of socioeconomic and cultural evolution.10 Although this remains the case for those operating within the "totalitarian" or "neototalitarian" schools of Soviet studies, in recent years some—most significantly, Anna Krylova—have challenged this perception and instead stressed the persistence of change in Soviet history.11 Careful interrogation of the scholarship of Soviet intellectuals charged with studying Soviet society during [End Page 79] the 1960s and 1970s buttresses the latter position. This article demonstrates that Soviet social scientists like Ovsei Shkaratan saw the Soviet social structure as neither "stagnant" nor uniform but rather as a dynamic formation rife with inequality. ________ Ovsei Shkaratan's intellectual trajectory was made possible by the political changes that occurred in the Soviet Union after Stalin's death in 1953. Although typically celebrated in the Anglophone world for its denunciation of Stalin-era repression, Nikita Khrushchev's address at the 20th Party Congress in 1956, which encouraged scholarly reorientation toward a focus on the "people as the creator of history" as well as the correction of "erroneous views … in the spheres of history, philosophy, economy, and of other sciences," also marks a crucial moment in the evolution of knowledge production in the Soviet Union.12 In fact, intellectuals had begun to pursue the goals Khrushchev articulated even before the congress. In 1954, Kommunist published an article that chastised the humanities and social sciences for failing to address social issues.13 The following year in the pages of Voprosy filosofii...

Особенности правовой институциализации народного контроля в СССР во второй половине XX века

The paper aims to identify the basic stages and trends of legal institutionalization of people’s control bodies in the USSR in the second half of the XX century. The article analyzes normative acts, party congresses proceedings representing the formation and development of people’s control bodies in the USSR. Scientific originality of the study involves a comprehensive retrospective analysis of normative-legal foundations of people’s control in Soviet Russia. As a result, it is shown that theoretical and practical implementation of people’s control in the USSR was closely associated with the evolution of state conception: from proletarian dictatorship to public state in which CPSU (Communist Party of the Soviet Union) played a key role. Accordingly, each stage of state development was associated with a certain form of control: state, party, social; a combination of these forms resulted in the formation of a multi-level people’s control doctrine in which people’s control bodies had legal authority. Transformation of conceptual and practical basis of people’s control occurred within the existing legal framework: from “Regulations of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspection” to systemic constitutional legal regulation, which allowed to establish a special form of control aimed to solve urgent administrative problems of socialist society.

Dynamics of Cultural and Educational Processes of National Minorities of Transcarpathia of the Second Half of the 20th Century

The article analyses the dynamics of ethnic composition and ethnic processes in Transcarpathia in the second half of the 20th century, as well as ethno-cultural processes of national consolidation of Ukrainians of the region as part of the Ukrainian nation. The paper evaluates the practice of the Soviet state and the ideology of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) to determine the nature, content and directions of all ethno-national and ethno-cultural policies in Transcarpathia. While researching the consolidation processes of Transcarpathian Ukrainians as part of the Ukrainian nation, the authors showed that the development of the traditions of Ukrainian national culture was seen in the environment of the creative intelligentsia and the majority of the people as an alternative to ideological communication. It is justified that the main goal of the communist authorities in Transcarpathia in 1945-1991 was to establish socialist, economic, political and ideological regime in the region. In order to accelerate this process, a Russian (Russian-speaking) national minority was hastily created in the region by the state authorities, which, having occupied leading political, ideological and economic positions, became a reliable support for the new communist regime. The article analyses the dynamics of ethnic composition and ethnic processes in Transcarpathia in the second half of the 20th century, as well as ethno-cultural processes of national consolidation of Ukrainians of the region as part of the Ukrainian nation. The paper evaluates the practice of the Soviet state and the ideology of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) to determine the nature, content and directions of all ethno-national and ethno-cultural policies in Transcarpathia. While researching the consolidation processes of Transcarpathian Ukrainians as part of the Ukrainian nation, the authors showed that the development of the traditions of Ukrainian national culture was seen in the environment of the creative intelligentsia and the majority of the people as an alternative to ideological communication. It is justified that the main goal of the communist authorities in Transcarpathia in 1945-1991 was to establish socialist, economic, political and ideological regime in the region. In order to accelerate this process, a Russian (Russian-speaking) national minority was hastily created in the region by the state authorities, which, having occupied leading political, ideological and economic positions, became a reliable support for the new communist regime.

Latin America and the Soviet-Chinese Conflict (the 1960s – mid-1970s)

The disagreements and rupture between the Chinese Communist Party and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) were the most important event in the history of the International Communist Movement in the 60s and 70s of the 20th century, which had a huge impact on the fate of communist parties around the world. Latin America has become a place of fierce rivalry between Moscow and Beijing for influence on the political left flank. Moscow&amp;apos;s tough opposition to any attempts by the Chinese Communist Party to increase its influence in the continent&amp;apos;s communist parties without resorting to splitting them caused a backlash and a change in the policy of criticism within the parties to a policy of secession of independent “anti-revisionist” communist parties. Maoist communist parties emerged in all countries of the continent, opposing their policies to the pro-Moscow left parties. Maoism was able to penetrate not only the old communist movement but also the ranks of socialists, leftist nationalists and even Christian democrats. It often became the ideological and political basis for a break with the “traditional” left parties, a kind of transit bridge towards the “new left”. The ideas of Maoism were partly accepted by the trend of the “new left”, which gained special weight among the intelligentsia and students of the continent. This article is devoted to the emergence and development of the Maoist Communist Parties, the reaction of Moscow and Havana in the political circumstances of Latin America in the 60s of the 20th century.

“Repressions Are Necessary; the Newspaper Hype Is Not”: Explaining Terror in Soviet Terms

Ever since Robert Conquest’s pioneering study of Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union first appeared in 1968, the high point of state-sponsored violence in the 1930s has been commonly referred to as the “Great Terror”. The subsequent adoption of the eponymous title by scholars to describe the broader phenomenon of “state terror” in the Stalinist period is similarly now widespread within the field. This terminology is, however, highly problematic. In the language and ideology of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) terror was consistently portrayed as a threat to, rather than strategy of, the state. It formed part of a tightly controlled terminology of terror, rooted in the Party’s experiences of revolution and civil war, and employed by the regime to marginalize and condemn opponents in official propaganda and private discourse. This study will address this key distinction and illuminate an important element of continuity in the tactics, ideology and self-perception of the CPSU, and its satellite parties within the Communist International, when approaching challenges to their authority (both real and imagined), whether they were of a social, political or even international flavour. Deploying a case study approach, this paper will demonstrate the extent to which “terror” and other related language offered a stable characterisation of the “enemy” throughout the interwar period.

Партийный архив Тувы: особенности становления и развития

В статье представлена история партийного архива Тувинского обкома КПСС, в эволюции которого авторы усматривают три этапа: 1945–1960 гг., 1961–1991 гг., 1991–2017 гг.В первые организационные годы подбирались помещение для архива, специалисты, подходящие для данной работы. Требовалось решить научно-методические вопросы по обработке, систематизации и централизации архивных материалов, а также по внутриархивной работе. На втором этапе деятельность партархива заметно улучшилась, так как организации стали руководствоваться специальными правилами, а также инструкцией по делопроизводству. На третьем этапе необходимо было обеспечить учет хранящихся документов на единой организационно-методической основе. Особую роль в успешной деятельности партархива сыграли его руководители. Дан список их имен, хронологии руководства.Особо отмечена востребованность документов партархива в разные годы исследователями — историками. Указаны имена, названия работ, защищенных диссертаций.

Маркеры обско-угорского на страницах газет Ханты-Мансийского национального округа, Омской и Тюменской областей 1930-е – 1945 гг.

Introduction: the 1930–1945s in the history of the USSR were the era of revolutionary changes and shocks, which were reflected, among other things, on national policy. In terms of research, it seems promising to study the Soviet national discourse, its Ob-Ugric component – a kind of reflection of the restructuring realities of Khanty- Mansiysk National Okrug and at the same time their transforming power. Objective: to give characteristic of the historical development of the Soviet «Ob-Ugric» discourse in the 1930–1945s. Research materials: the titles of regional and local newspapers of the 1931–1945s, collection «The Revived People» published for the 10th anniversary of Khanty-Mansiysk Okrug, as well as minutes of meetings of the Okrug Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). Results and novelty of the research: the analysis showed that: 1. In the titles of newspapers the Ob-Ugric markers were usually used in the Soviet context, therefore their symbolic meanings were «muted», «extinguished». 2. This symbolic weakness, as well as the concentration of the most colorful markers (ethnonyms in materials devoted to languages, literature, education and folk art) clearly shows the limited recognition of the national, permissible by the Soviet officialdom in accordance with the Stalinist formula of «national in form» and «socialist in content» culture. 3. Comparison of the newspaper titles pre-war and war time indicates a weakening of positions of the Ob-Ugric. The Okrug newspaper refused to publish materials in the Khanty and Mansi languages, the use of ethnonyms of indigenous peoples, as well as other lexemes denoting the signs that distinguish the Khanty and Mansi from other ethnic groups, significantly decreased. The national theme as a whole did not disappear, but it «sank» directly into the texts, leaving newspaper titles. The national factor of mobilization continued to be used by newspapers during the war period. The novelty of the work is determined by the introduction to scientific circulation the titles of newspapers of Khanty-Mansiysk Okrug in the 1930–1945s, the study of national policy towards the Khanty and Mansi peoples as the Soviet discourse in its officious and propaganda version.

Was Maoist China a Clone of the Soviet Union?

Was Maoist China a Clone of the Soviet Union? Felix Wemheuer Lucien Bianco, Stalin and Mao: A Comparison of the Russian and Chinese Revolutions, translated by Krystyna Horko. 448 pp. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2018. ISBN 978-9882370654. $65.00. Elizabeth McGuire, Red at Heart: How Chinese Communists Fell in Love with the Russian Revolution. 462 pp. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. ISBN 978-0190640552. $34.95. It has become fashionable in Western China studies to write about transnational entanglements between the People's Republic (PRC) and the Soviet Union or to compare the development of both countries. The similarities of Stalin's Soviet Union and Mao's China are obviously many, making it impossible to cover them all in a single text. Two new books approach this comparison from different angles. Lucian Bianco looks at the great leaders and macropolitics in Stalin and Mao: A Comparison of the Russian and Chinese Revolutions, while Elizabeth McGuire uses a focus on personal relations and microhistory in Red at Heart: How Chinese Communists Fell in Love with the Russian Revolution. This review discusses the two monographs within the larger context of Western China studies and with attention to paradigm shifts in Sino-Soviet relations. Paradigm Shifts in Western China Studies Since the mid-1930s, Western scholarship regarding the impact of the Soviet Union on the Chinese Revolution and later the PRC underwent several paradigm shifts. During World War II and under the alliance of the United States and China against the Japanese Empire, Chinese Communists were often considered anti-imperialists and nationalists. The bestseller Red Star over China, written by the American journalist Edgar Snow, contributed to [End Page 442] the view of Mao Zedong as a grassroots revolutionary. The lives of communist leaders in the revolutionary base area in Yan'an were presented by Snow as simple and egalitarian. Therefore, Snow saw Chinese communism as an alternative to bureaucratic state socialism in the Soviet Union.1 When the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) took power in 1949, the Cold War had already started. Anticommunist hardliners in the McCarthy era blamed "liberals" of the former Roosevelt administration and scholars in China studies for underestimating the communist threat and causing the "loss of China." In the 1950s, the newly founded PRC was often seen in the West as a "Soviet satellite state" and "totalitarian dictatorship." Western perception started to change significantly due to the rise of the Anti–Vietnam War movement and the New Left around 1968. Activists and many scholars then saw Maoist China through the lenses of anti-imperialism and Third World liberation movements.2 The New Left considered the Cultural Revolution (1966–76) an experiment in mass participation and rural based-development strategies. Western media reports about the horrors of the Cultural Revolution were often ignored as "anticommunist propaganda"; violence was rationalized, because "revolution is not a dinner party," as Chairman Mao had said. The guerilla fighter and the "barefoot doctor" became poster children for an alternative development model to Western and Soviet modernity. CCP criticism of "Soviet revisionism," and in part Western scholarship, emphasized the "Chinese way" of building socialism.3 From the 1930s until the early 1990s, the history of the CCP was often written as step-by-step emancipation from domination by the Comintern and the Soviet Union. The departure from revolutionary Maoism in China after "Reform and Opening" in 1978 destroyed many dreams and illusions. However, it was only after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the opening of the archives of the Comintern and CPSU (Communist Party of the Soviet Union), that the history of the Chinese Revolution was rewritten again. The new findings from archives deconstructed the myths that the CCP had taken an independent path from the Soviet Union. Stalin's guidance and Soviet support had played [End Page 443] a crucial role in creating the second United Front with the Nationalists (GMD) against Japan in 1937 and in bringing the CCP into power in 1949.4 Archival documents show that Soviet advisers influenced the development of the political and economic system in China in the early 1950s based on the Stalinist model. In the fields of culture, education, agriculture, and policies...

1990 USSR: Reform, Revolution, or Retrenchment (A)

In August 1990, Mikhail Gorbachev, president of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and general secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, confronted one of the most difficult dilemmas of his career: how to improve the country's economic performance. This case set highlights Gorbachev's reform efforts from 1985 to 1990. Numerous measures of economic performance had declined, and the USSR faced serious crises of economics (declining productivity and financial insufficiency), federalism (challenges to the primacy of the Soviet Union), and separatism (ethnic and nationalist agitation). Three groups of advisers offered competing plans. One plan focused on economic revolution toward a market economy; one on reform of the existing centrally planned economy; and a third on economic retrenchment and reinforcement of socialist discipline that had prevailed over the previous 73 years. Students must evaluate the benefits and risks of each alternative and recommend a course of action. Excerpt UVA-F-1969 Dec. 4, 2020 1990 USSR: Reform, Revolution, or Retrenchment (A) In July 1990, Mikhail Gorbachev, president of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (hereafter USSR or Soviet Union) and general secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, confronted one of the most difficult dilemmas of his career. The program of economic and political reform that he had advanced over the past five years had now reached a critical phase. Should he push forward or slow the reform agenda? The situation was urgent: deep recession, high inflation, civil unrest, separatist movements, worsening polarization, and a financial crisis. The Eastern bloc of Soviet-controlled countries was disintegrating. The combination of price controls, mismanagement, and inflation produced alarming shortages, forcing citizens across the Soviet Union to stand in line for hours to obtain such simple essentials as bread and milk. Meanwhile, episodes of looting and ethnic violence had begun, as opportunists sensed cracks in the once-unchallengeable state security apparatus. At the 28th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in the first half of July, opposition leader Boris Yeltsin dramatically resigned in protest against the slow pace of Gorbachev's program. At the other extreme, conservatives opposed the rapid pace of ambitious change. With varying support for his own policies, Gorbachev needed to find a way to absorb his challengers' demands, fend off revolt from the Communist Party establishment, and—most challenging of all—get his nation's government and economy back on stable footing. Three groups proposed competing strategies: . . .

On the Task of Creating a Financial History of the CPSU

The article poses the task of creating a financial history of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). The Communist Party existed from 1898 to 1991. Though communists declared commitment to Marxism, which acknowledged the precedence of material factors over ideology and policy, the role of finances in the party’s history received little attention. After 1991, the situation in this field remained practically the same. The lack of scientific history generates mythology. The author demonstrates that one of such myths is the concept that the revolution of 1917 was a success thanks to the Bolsheviks having “German money”. The article analyzes the issue of Germany financing the Bolsheviks from the banking point of view. The existing hypotheses of how exactly the Bolsheviks were receiving money are considered. The main “anti-Bolshevik” version implies that finances were being transferred to the Bolsheviks under the guise of operations of an import/export firm, whose representative in Russia was Evgeniya Sumenson. The author investigates three cases which are of prime importance for all these hypotheses: Alexander Parvus’s money, the telegrams intercepted by the French counterintelligence, and the so-called “Sisson Documents”. Based on the analysis of the works of Russian and foreign historians and also on the published archive materials, the author concludes that all the documents currently available do not support the “anti-Bolshevik” version. Moreover, they prove that money movement was backwards: the proceeds from the sales of goods imported into Russia were transferred to Europe. Operations carried out by Sumeson were of a purely commercial nature and were quite in line with the banking practice of that period. The true financial history of the Bolsheviks and the CPSU as a whole is yet to be written. One of such successful investigations is John Biggart’s article on the Nikolai P. Shmit bequest.

Editor's Note

October 01 2019 Editor's Note Author and Article Information Online Issn: 1531-3298 Print Issn: 1520-3972 © 2019 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology2019President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Journal of Cold War Studies (2019) 21 (4): 1–3. https://doi.org/10.1162/jcws_e_00904 Cite Icon Cite Permissions Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Search Site Citation Editor's Note. Journal of Cold War Studies 2019; 21 (4): 1–3. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/jcws_e_00904 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter All ContentAll JournalsJournal of Cold War Studies Search Advanced Search This issue begins with an article by Tuong Vu discussing how the Vietnamese Communists pursued a radical transformation of Indochina after World War II as part of their general drive for world revolution. Far from being a strictly “nationalist” movement (as was alleged by many critics of the U.S. role in Vietnam), the Vietnamese Communists were aggressively internationalist in their orientation, often seeing themselves as the vanguard of a global Marxist-Leninist revolution. Drawing on recently declassified archival materials, Vu shows that the ideological radicalism of the Vietnamese Communists was crucial in shaping all stages of the prolonged warfare in Indochina, from the 1950s through the 1980s. The next article, by Katya Drozdova and Joseph H. Felter, uses declassified records of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) to appraise the Soviet Army's withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1988–1989. A significant number of analysts in both Russia and the West have... You do not currently have access to this content.

The History of Explorations of the Arctic Region: the Nuclear-Powered Icebreaker Lenin

The nuclear-powered icebreaker Lenin contributed greatly to the exploration of the arctic regions of the USSR. In the 1950s, the national economy of the USSR made a successful recovery. Jobs related to the development of northern and arctic territories were resumed. For the Soviet Union, expanding exploration of the country’s arctic regions was a top priority. It was presented before research scientists and polar explorers by the country’s highest leaders. Voyages in the Arctic were limited by a short period of navigation due to the thick layer of ice. The movement of vessels in the arctic regions was often impeded by ice, affecting navigation and communication with areas of the arctic and subarctic belts. During this time, powerful icebreakers would come to the aid of the ships. They helped pass communication along the Northern Sea Route from the west to the east of the Soviet Union. The 20th Congress of the CPSU (Communist Party of the Soviet Union) directed the public at working on creating nuclear installations for transportation purposes. The industrial expansion, which could be seen in the growth of the national economy in the arctic and northern territories of the USSR, required the creation of a powerful fleet of icebreakers for escorting caravans of ships and providing navigation along the Northern Sea Route. In this case, the stakes were placed on icebreaking vessels. These were ships which could independently remain in the arctic territories for quite a long time without refueling or ports of call. At the beginning of the design process of the nuclear-powered ship Lenin, the Soviet Union had previous experience in constructing icebreakers and nuclear installations. Thanks to the joint work of scientists, engineers, and technicians came a ship which confirmed the high specifications. It was successfully used in the most difficult conditions of navigation at arctic latitudes.