Ivan Zuenko: Why Do China’s Elites Pay so Much Attention to the Collapse of the USSR and the Soviet Communist Party? (RT.com)

Note: An interesting read into the psyche of China’s leadership.

• Among the main reasons for the collapse, according to the Chinese studies, were those associated with the weakening of the party. Namely, the pervasive corruption, the detachment of the its elite from the common people, the emerging consumerism, and the formalism and bureaucratic tendencies of party ideologues and agitators, which led to a total disbelief in the policies imposed from above.
• Chinese scholars have been rather harshly critical of the structure of the Soviet economy, above all its centralization, which dates back to the position of Mao Zedong in the 1950s. Another problem for the USSR was the bias towards the military-industrial complex and heavy industry, which led to acute shortages of consumer goods. Although there is little criticism of the economic content of the perestroika agenda in Chinese authors, it is noted that the efforts of Soviet reformers were belated and ill-conceived, and thus failed to address numerous social problems. READ MORE

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