Leninist Regimes Research Articles

China's Leninist State and strategic relations with the United States: Chiang's KMT in Nanjing Decade and implications for the Chinese Communist Party after 1949

AbstractThis article revisits Chiang Kai‐shek's Kuomintang (KMT) party‐state during the Nanjing Decade (1927–37) of the Republic of China (ROC) and assesses how the actions and ideological propensities of the Nationalist regime affected prewar China's external relations with the United States. While both the KMT and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) were constituted as Leninist parties in the 1920s, due to the Soviet Union's military and economic aid for Sun Yat‐sen's republican revolution, they had very different political objectives and socioeconomic perspectives on China's state/nation‐building. Consequently, the KMT's and CCP's respective attitudes towards the United States also differed. Though Leninism is an antithesis to Western liberal democracy, it is not inevitable for a Leninist dictatorship to engage in confrontations with Washington, as the central leadership's inclinations and actions would determine how China approaches America. Chiang's Confucian Leninism opened up the friendly ties with the United States in 1928, which eventually consolidated into a strong U.S.‐ROC alliance during WWII and beyond, despite the KMT's autocracy. The essay will contrast briefly with the post‐1949 People's Republic of China (PRC), as the CCP experienced from Mao Zedong's radical Leninism, Deng Xiaoping/Jiang Zemin/Hu Jintao's consultative Leninism, to Xi Jinping's expansionist Leninism today. The evolving CCP positions have also affected the extent of cooperation and hostility between Beijing and Washington and illustrated how the changing attributes of the Chinese Leninist regime are crucial in determining U.S.‐PRC strategic trajectories.

How Politics ‘Messed up with’ Institutionalization: A Case Study of the Investigation into the Death of Li Wenliang during the Initial Months of COVID-19

ABSTRACT This research offers a timely examination of the functioning of China’s National Supervisory Commission (NSC) in Dr. Li Wenliang’s case. Based on the normative analysis and empirical study, this research identifies two flaws of the NSC preset by particular features of a Leninist state, which make it vulnerable to politicization in the initiation and the course of this investigation: (i) Overreliance on certain factional power distribution; (ii) Twofold identity as an anti-corruption agency and a party disciplinarian concurrently. By challenging both the institutionalization and deinstitutionalization arguments with a critical case, this research advances new theoretical knowledge on the self-defeating mechanisms compromising institutionalization in the Leninist regime and highlights the significance of differentiating subtypes of authoritarianism in the comparative study of institutionalization.

The Fall of the Old Guards: Explaining Decentralization in China

In the absence of a credible constitution, what mechanism can commit authoritarian leaders to preserving local economic autonomy? We explore the political origin of the puzzling economic decentralization in China, which persisted for two decades. Through a detailed analysis of the composition of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, we find that the Cultural Revolution radically reoriented the composition of the elite selectorate from one favoring central agencies to one favoring local interests. Due to relatively lower turnover in subsequent years, this realigned elite incentive to favor decentralization policy, thus committing the Chinese leadership in the 1980s to a path of decentralization. In addition, the association between the party elite composition and policy orientation also emerged in other Leninist regimes, particularly Taiwan under Kuomintang (KMT)’s rule and the Soviet Union. The re-population of central officials in the Central Committee in the 1980s and the 1990s led to robust economic centralization into the 2000s, making decentralization an unlikely path of reform in the near future.

The developmental state: can it travel from East Asia to Eastern Europe?

The demise of Leninist regimes was accompanied by the hegemonic rise of the free market ideology with neoliberalism being its most ideal-typical embodiment. Yet, the decades of the neoliberal hegemony on both global and regional sales have not removed the state and its role in promoting development from research and policy agendas. Moreover, neoliberalism has produced a string backlash in forms of nativist and populist reaction. Thus, the article sets out to trace the genealogy of the state within the framework of the late Leninist regimes and post-Leninist period, asking a question about the relevance of the East-Asian developmental state experience to post-Soviet conditions. The article discusses the experience of Japan and South Korea, while exploring theoretical underpinnings of the sociological discourse of the state and its role in the development. Thus, the article comes up with a condensed narrative of the history of the developmental state both as an institutional arrangement and sociological discourse. It discusses and evaluates the contribution to the sociology of the developmental state of such scholars as Alice Amsden, Peter Evans, Bruce Cumings. The article conceptualizes the relations between the developmental state and neoliberalism. It also identifies the causes of the developmental state crisis and evaluates the Easter-European experience with constructing such a state. The article defines the stumbling blocks on the way of building the developmental state in Ukraine. It is argued that given Ukraine’s proximity to the EU as well as pluralistic nature of the Ukrainian society the authoritarian option is not viable for Ukraine. At the same time, Ukraine is unlikely to succeed in building the developmental state, being caught in a struggle with a kleptocratic polity which has been unable so far to produce a long-term developmental polices.

The Ukrainian Response to Sykes: Prisoner Hierarchy and Self-Rule—Power, Legitimacy, and Dynamics

Although the political and economic bankruptcy of the erstwhile Leninist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe has triggered radical societal transformations, the effect on daily prison life remains largely uncharted. This semi-ethnographic study, one of the first of its genre in the region, documents a prisoner hierarchy in post-Soviet Ukraine. Originating in the slums and prisons of the Russian Empire and solidifying in communist gaols and labour camps, the Ukrainian prison underworld continues to evolve. In this article, I argue that the post-independence shifts in penal policies and prison practices, combined with changes in prisoner demographics, have been altering the Ukrainian prisoner power structure. I contend that while functional and deeply institutionalized, the prisoner hierarchy is facing serious challenges, not least a legitimacy deficit, and I discuss the potential repercussions for internal power dynamics and prison order.

Appropriation and Subversion

Twenty-five years after the collapse of communism in Europe, few scholars disagree that the past continues to shape the democratic trajectories of postcommunist states. Precommunist education has featured prominently in this literature’s bundle of “good” legacies because it ostensibly helped foster resistance to communism. The authors propose a differentcausal mechanism—appropriation and subversion—that challenges the linearity of the above assumptions by analyzing the effects of precommunist literacy on patterns of Communist Party recruitment in Russia’s regions. Rather than regarding precommunist education as a source of latent resistance to communism, the authorshighlight the Leninist regime’s successful appropriation of the more literate strata of the precommunist orders, in the process subverting the past democratic edge of the hitherto comparatively more developed areas. The linear regression analysis of author—assembled statistics from the first Russian imperial census of 1897 supports prior research: precommunist literacy has a strong positive association with postcommunist democratic outcomes. Nevertheless, in pursuing causal mediation analysis, the authors find, in addition, that the above effect is mediated by Communist Party saturation in Russia’s regions. Party functionaries were likely to be drawn from areas that had been comparatively more literate in tsarist times, andparty saturation in turn had a dampening effect on the otherwise positive effects of precommunist education on postcommunist democracy.

THE POLITICS OF CRIME IN TAIWAN, HONG KONG AND MACAO

THE POLITICS OF CRIME IN TAIWAN, HONG KONG AND MACAO

Veterans, Organization, and the Politics of Martial Citizenship in China

This article examines the organizational origins of political vulnerability among Chinese military veterans between 1949 and 2006. Recently declassified sources from urban and rural archives show that many veterans, even as they were officially considered core members of the ruling elite and hailed as the “flesh and blood of the revolution,” nevertheless experienced frequent humiliation and discrimination; few citizens sympathized with their plight. The argument here is that much of this mistreatment can be traced to the failure of the state to provide veterans with the opportunity to organize in the context of either fraternal organizations or quasi-autonomous federations. In this respect, their predicament is notably different from their counterparts in democratic, fascist, or corporatist systems, or in other Leninist regimes. Why have veterans in Taiwan, Vietnam, and the former Soviet Union been allowed to form veterans organizations but veterans in the PRC—to their misfortune—have not? This article explains this anomaly.

North Korean Market Vendors: The Rise of Grassroots Capitalists in a Post-Stalinist Society

A communist utopia, the professed goal of all Leninist regimes, is incompatible with a monetary economy or commercial activities of any kind. Hence, the gradual displacement of commerce is seen as an important part of the transition to full-fl edged communism. However, no communist state has ever been able to eradicate private economic activities completely and despite their persistent efforts, all Leninist regimes have had to tolerate the existence of a “second economy.” In North Korea this “second economy” was originally treated with unusual harshness. The economic collapse of the 1990s, however, was marked by a powerful revival of the “second economy” and a boom in private commercial activities, known to the North Koreans as changsa (the literal translation is “dealings in the marketplace”). While comprehensive statistics on market activities in North Korea are not available (and perhaps do not exist at all), one is now able to obtain a wealth of information about this sector from North Korean defectors in South Korea. This article traces the changes as experienced by a group who were directly involved in market activity in the late 1990s. The authors have conducted in-depth interviews with North Korean defectors who now reside in Seoul. All interviewees can be described as fullor part-time market vendors whilst in North Korea. The unstructured interviews have allowed us to concentrate on issues with which a particular interviewee may be most familiar. However, refugee interviews can be biased, as Jung and Dalton have recently noted.1 Hence, this paper uses other material to corroborate the interviewees’ data—largely publications in the South Korean press. To protect the refugees’ identities, we refer to them using only their numbers. Some relevant information in regard to our interviewees is summarized in the following table.

Attraction Without Networks: Recruiting Strangers to Unregistered Protestantism in China

Social movements research points to the role of networks in recruiting intimates and public spaces in recruiting strangers. But for Chinese Protestants, creative outreach strategies can be a substitute for existing relationships and initiate recruitment. In China, public proselytizing is forbidden, religion is rarely mentioned in the media, and direct contact with potential converts is discouraged. To attract strangers, evangelists in China rely on door-to-door proselytizing in the countryside, cultural performances embedded with religious messages in the cities, and one-on-one conversations when the opportunity arises. By contacting targets in the ordinary flow of life and fashioning appeals using resonant language, Protestant recruiters have become adept at attracting non-networked individuals in "safe-enough" spaces that appear in the creases of a reforming Leninist regime. At a general level, the analysis suggests that networks sometimes play a smaller role in recruitment than is commonly thought, at least at first, and that social bonds may be as much a result of recruitment as a precondition for it.

Social Theory and Postcommunism by William s> Outhwaite Larry Ray (review)

REVIEWS 171 testimony of Tat'iana Velikanova and JuliiaVoznesenskaia, describes what daily life was like for women in the dissidentmilieu from about I970 to I985 when, of course, hardly anybody except Solzhenitsyn and Amal'rik had any hope of outlivingthe Soviet regime. Their cause seemed to most people to be absolutelypointless. It should be stressedthat although Stephan never uses the phrase vrat'kak ochevidets (to tell fibs like an eyewitness),she is well aware, in her reading and in her numerous personal interviews with participants, of the inevitable presence of self-censorship.She is never unduly credulous, and periodically reminds us (e.g., on pp. 500-oi) of how our memory and memories change over time as we reinvent ourselvesand try to find ways of giving at least some meaning and pattern to our lives. She also steerswell clear of the concept of Gesetzmdssigkeit (zakonomernost', historical 'regularity').What is strikingis that the pre-dissidentperiod of the lives and experiences of the book's heroines (and this goes for most of the male dissidentsas well)were remarkablysimilar to those of tens of millions of other Soviet citizens who never engaged in 'anti-Soviet'activities.Perhapswisely, but disappointinglyfor her readers,the author does not try to explain why so few people steppedout of line. Do all or most of the dissidentsshare any one particularand uncommon psychological characteristic? Soviet dissidentscan, I think,be divided fairlysuccessfullyinto two categories :single-issueprotestors(e.g., Baptists,Crimean Tatars, etc.) and the much smaller number of multi-issueprotestors,mainly to be found in Moscow and Leningrad (like all the main protagonists in this book). But just at the time when the demdvizhenie almost became the damdvizhenie, a small single-issue feminist movement came into being in the northern capital, and chapter seven, based to a considerableextent on the testimony of Galina Grigor'eva, is devoted to this group, which quicklysplitbut left behind some publications that are still of interest and relevance today, when much is said about the patriarchal nature of Russia but where women are undoubtedly still the strongersex. Sovietologists with at least a reasonably good reading knowledge of German will enjoy and learn much from this volume. Those not so blessed should at least still look through the excellent bibliography (pp. 507-57) which, inter alia, has referencesto many out-of-the-waysourcesin a varietyof languages. The book contains a fair sprinklingof minor mistakes, misprints and mistransliterations,and the copy sent for review lackspage 326 (page 236 is printed twice). Department of Slavonic Studies MARTIN DEWHIRST University of Glasgow Outhwaite, Williamand Ray, Larry.Social7heogy andPostcommunism. Blackwell Publishing, Malden, MA and Oxford, 2005. viii + 256 pp. Notes. Bibliography.Index. ?50?.?; f 5.99. THE theoretical analysis of post-Communism needs to address the institutional , political, social and cultural-psychologicaldimensionsof the transitions I72 SEER, 85, I, 2007 from statesocialism.This book offersan insightfuland refreshingly jargon-free examination of the majordilemmasfaced by post-Communistpolities in their search for constructingdemocratic communities. The authorsdiscussat great length the implicationsof the fall of Leninist regimes in East-CentralEurope and the former USSR for social theory. Unlike most of the literaturecoming from the growing body of 'transitology'and area studies, they insist on the need to link the revolutionsof I989 and their consequences to the greatsociological tradition and the study of class, solidarity, anomie, community and society. Creatively blending sociological and psycho-cultural perspectives on modernityand its discontents,they arguethat post-Communismis a gigantic laboratory for social and political imagination. At the same time, they highlightthe illusionsthatprevailedduringthe firstpost-Leniniststageregarding the presumablyprivilegedpath defined by free marketand liberaldemocracy . Many other scenarios could have been imagined, the authors seem to argue. How the 'capitalistparadigm' achieved its undisputed, hegemonic status remains a mystery, for example. Unlike other authors who regard post-Communism as a transitional, relatively short phase, Outhwaithe and Ray see it rather as a contradictorystage which presents social theory with unprecedented challenges. The book is organized in nine chapters. The firstdeals with the impact of the fall of Communism on social theory. The authors draw on an impressive number of contributions regarding the great transformation.Chapters two, three and four focus on the relevance of Marx, Weber, Durkheim and theorists of modernization to the understandingof post...

The Roots of Illiberal Nationalism in Romania: A Historical Institutionalist Analysis of the Leninist Legacy

This article is a study of the dynamics behind “illiberal nationalism” in post-Leninist Romania. It seeks to provide a historical institutionalist explanation for the extent to which universalist liberal political principles have proven compatible with nationalist projects in post-Leninist Romania. The author's hypothesis is that the “illiberal” character of nationalism in contemporary Romania can be traced back to the nation-building project adopted by the Leninist regime in Romania. This nation-building project sought to engineer the reconciliation between nationalism and the universalist ideology of Leninism in much the same way that nationalism and liberalism have been reconciled in the West. Paradoxically, the more successful this Leninist nation building was, the more difficult it would be for post-Leninist elites to define a liberal variant of nationalism, given how deeply Leninist principles became embedded or fused with the nation's self-image. This counterintuitive logic partially accounts for the illiberal features of nationalism in post-Leninist Romania.

The Post-Soviet Political Mind

The review is a critical analysis of an important book of conversations between two major figures of 20th century communism: former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and Prague Spring ideologue Zdenek Mlyn�r. The review examines Gorbachev's illusions about the possibility of reconciling Leninism and democracy, his efforts to liberalize the Soviets system, as well as his gradual separation from the Bolshevik exclusive and intolerant worldview. Gorbachev still believes that Leninist regimes could democratize as a result of reforms from the top and underestimates the role of civil society movements from below. His break with the communist party came too late and this explains his political defeat. Altogether, this is a significant document highlighting the limits of Marxist revisionism and its role in the dismantling of communism.

Framing Democracy: Civil Society and Civic Movements in Eastern Europe

At the close of the twentieth century, democracy appeared to have overcome the Cold War partition of the world, as countries across the globe had deposed autocratic regimes and held free elections. Nowhere were these developments dramatized more brightly than in Eastern Europe in 1989, as newly formed civic movements replaced long-standing Leninist regimes with democratic governments. Yet it is clear that the waves of democracy that initially seemed similar have led to widely varying outcomes. While some countries in Eastern Europe were invited to join NATO and the European Union, others were excluded. Former communists were elected to power in post-communist Poland and Hungary, but were largely absent in the Czech Republic and were transformed into populists in Slovakia. These differences have led the author to address several questions, including: How similar actually were the Leninist regimes before their dissolution, and how similar were their demises? How did the way communism fell affect the founding of democratic states in Eastern Europe, notably in Poland and Czechoslovakia? This book offers a critique and reformulation of existing theories of democratization, as well as of earlier understandings of the fall of communism. By contrasting the negotiated pact in Poland with the collapse of the regime in Czechoslovakia, it provides a theoretical framework to explain how different paths of democratization affected the prospects for sustainable democracy. The book goes beyond the explanation that a Gorbachev effect determined events in the late 1980s by contrasting mobilization against Leninist regimes with negotiations for democratic institutions. It highlights competition between aspiring leaders, reconceptualizing the notion of civil society as a master frame within which movements and leaders sought to mobilize popular support. The book also emphasizes the transformation of networks associated with the birth of a democratic nation, such as the Catholic Church in Poland and the theater strikes in Czechoslovakia. Finally, it analyzes how paths of change structured political competition in new democracies in both the short and the medium term.

Age cohort voting effects in the breakdown of single-party rule

This article examines age cohort voting differentiation in the breakdown of the Leninist regimes in terms of the effects of rapid social change. The strong relationship found between age and conservative voting and the disproportionate vote of youth for all types of change-oriented parties in the “first” competitive elections (1989/1990) in Belarus, Bulgaria, Romania, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, and Moscow is a product of cohort–period interaction with youth at the vanguard of social change. Taken together, a dramatic period effect (the rapid introduction of economic and political change), the skewing of younger groups in favor of more rapid social change, the generational socialization of the aged under communist values, and a greater investment of the elderly in the status quo explain age cohort voting in the breakdown of Leninism.

Unobtrusive Practices of Contention in Leninist Regimes

Unobtrusive Practices of Contention in Leninist Regimes

UNOBTRUSIVE PRACTICES OF CONTENTION IN LENINIST REGIMES

This article broadens understanding of the mobilization- repression relationship by drawing on materials from eastern European Leninist regimes. It identie es unobtrusive practices of contention as an important yet understudied and undertheorized element of political con- tention in repressive regimes. Three general forms of unobtrusive practices are identie ed. First, oppositional speech situations are settings in which participants use tacitly understood rules about what can and cannot be said to criticize the regime and tell the truth. Second, duplicitous groups and organizations are ofe cially recognized associations where oppositional speech tends to cluster. This allows for denser and more continuous inter- action that imparts to them a mildly oppositional milieu. Third, dissident circles are the most contentious and least unobtrusive form of opposition. They blur the public-private distinction by emphasizing innovative public tactics such as samizdat press and access to foreign media. All three forms are precursors to public protest and the appearance of movement organiza- tions during white-hot mobilization phases.

Claim "Radicalization?" The 1989 Protest Cycle in the GDR

While commonly observed, the process of claim transformation or, as it is sometimes called, “claim radicalization,” is seldom described or explained systematically in contemporary social movement theory. In this article, I describe claim transformation in the 1989 protest cycle of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) following the most systematic model available, Tarrow's analysis of the 1965–1975 Italian cycle. Despite the aptness of Tarrow's (1989b) categories for analyzing claims, the lack of fit between a model developed from protest cycles in democratic systems and that of a disintegrating Leninist regime are readily apparent. The sharp contrast between the two offers an opportunity to explore different uses of the “radical” family of concepts and the implications for protest cycles and claim radicalization of the constraints posed by authoritarian regimes. Following earlier examples of protest event analysis, I rely primarily on coded data from two West German newspapers, the Suddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) and the Frankfurter Allgemeiner Zeitung (FAZ). Data on event participation, violence, and arrests are a composite from these and four English language papers.

Escape from the GDR, 1961–1989: Hybrid Exit Repertoires in a Disintegrating Leninist Regime

Leading theorists contend that "exit" and its many manifestations do not fit the "contentious collective action" model. This article argues, however, that exit is frequently the only collective action available to average people in authoritarian regimes. In such regimes, collective exit may take a variety of forms, hybridized here from the elements of traditional and modern repertoires under varying conditions of opportunity and framing. Descriptions of hybrid exit episodes from the German Democratic Republic, 1961–89, are based on annual reports by Amnesty International, on secondary sources before 1989, and, primarily, on accounts from six international presses for 1989.

From Post-Maoism to Post-Marxism: The Erosion of Official Ideology in Deng's China (review)

Reviewed by: From Post-Maoism to Post-Marxism: The Erosion of Official Ideology in Deng's China John A. Rapp (bio) Kalpana Misra. From Post-Maoism to Post-Marxism: The Erosion of Official Ideology in Deng's China. New York and London: Routledge, 1998. xviii, 270 pp. Paperback $21.99, ISBN 0-415-92033-7. Kalpana Misra, an associate professor of political science at the University of Tulsa, makes use of an elegant model to summarize succinctly the large and widely varying intellectual debates and controversies in the Deng years in China, despite the serious shortcomings and blind spots of the neo-Marxist theoretical underpinnings of her model. Intellectual discourse in China is not as strictly limited as advocates of the "totalitarian" model of communism would suggest, though, of course, as Misra shows, it is limited according to the needs and interests of the Leninist regime. As Misra notes, "the intellectual dynamism and vitality that accompanied the ideological reorientation effort belies the claim that the regime's theorists were merely articulating and legitimating the existing socioeconomic order" (p. 8). In her model, which the author herself restates throughout the book at convenient moments, the regime called upon intellectuals to construct a new ideological basis that would justify a change of course from the Maoist-era emphasis on equality and antipathy for material incentives to the Deng-era stress on the buildup of a commodity economy. Nevertheless, intellectuals have their own varying interests depending on their status and location within the Party-State elite, which led at times to diverging interests between some of them and their superiors. Misra's thesis is that this tension of interests ultimately led to a failure to find an ideological basis for the regime's changes in policy. One consequence of this failure may have been the pervasive cynicism and apathy in China noted by many observers after 1989. Drawing a distinction between "moderate" and "radical" reformers of the Deng era (both of whom tried, to different degrees, to repudiate and replace the "Maoist radical intellectual discourse" of the earlier era), Misra nicely examines the shifts and changes in positions on all sides over the Deng years. Examining the debates on the "Criterion of Truth," the nature of revolutionary praxis, discussions on feudalism versus capitalism as the key negative legacy of the past, and the stages of socialism, among other controversies, Misra finds that some intellectuals were radicalized over time to the point that the Party leadership came to see their positions as politically unfeasible. Even as it repressed those intellectuals who would not conform to the merging post-Tian'anmen "neo-conservative" line, the Party failed to achieve a new ideological consensus and thus undermined the utility of any official Marxism as either an analytical tool or a legitimating ideology. For all their courage in finding new openings to call for political reform, [End Page 504] even "radical-reformist" intellectuals themselves were inconsistent and fuzzy in their own thought, Misra claims. Even if, as she notes (unfortunately only in one reference), these radical reformists "wrote in a political atmosphere that was not always conducive to frank and forthright expression" (p. 194), their fuzziness was a necessary consequence of "their failure to assess the long-term political and socioeconomic consequences of economic liberalization" (p. 196). Her assessment of the radical reformers shows the neo-Marxist theoretical underpinnings of her model. Misra wants to believe that the Marxism of the Mao era, whatever deep anti-democratic tendencies it led to in practice, was genuinely concerned with "considerations of equity and social justice" in which Mao and his followers "linked the transformative 'means' of socialism to the 'end' of a classless communist society" (p. 125). As part of this supposed genuine socialist concern for economic equality, Mao developed a "new class" critique that was not a departure but firmly based on the views of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Trotsky (Mao of course took pains to deny influence from the latter) of the dangers of the bureaucracy of the workers' state backsliding into a new capitalist elite. Misra notes throughout her book that despite the early attempts of Dengist intellectuals to deny the "new class" argument and to...