In addition to reading works by Mao Tse-tung and Deng Xiaoping, members of the Chinese Communist Party usually watch, on the way to ideological indoctrination, a documentary on the disintegration of the USSR and the collapse of its social structure. power. The film joins Xi Jinping’s efforts to justify the pillars of his regime: a personalist, centralized and unchallenged leadership at the top of the regime, allied with the iron fist of the military and an appreciation of the history and role of organizations. party.
The fate of the Soviet Communist Party symbolizes a ghost that haunts Zhongnanhai, seat of government in Beijing, and corresponds to an episode carefully studied by Xi and his strategists. Following the analyzes, he follows the opposite path to that of Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the USSR and architect of the so-called “glasnost” reforms (transparency, in Russian).
In 2000, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, directly subordinate to the government in Beijing, formed study groups to examine the debacle of the empire on the model of Vladimir Lenin, from 1917. The work also included the participation of other segments of the CP and they were called a “national and fundamental research topic”.
Academic and partisan findings support the Xi Jinping era, which began in 2012. In December of the same year, a few months after coming to power, the Communist Party’s secretary general visited Guangdong province, the dynamo industry, to affirm its commitment to reform and, in close meetings with party members, stressed the need to avoid the Soviet shipwreck, as reported by the New York Times at the time.
The preaching warned of the importance of canceling “political rot, ideological heresy and military disloyalty.” Xi has been applying the anti-Gorbachev booklet to the letter in recent years, with the elimination of rivals, the concentration of power, signs of perpetuation of power, and an increase in social control and the armed forces.
On the issue of uniforms, the focus of Chinese scholars has focused on the failed coup of August 1991, when Orthodox Communists attempted to stop “glasnost” by announcing Gorbachev’s dismissal, of power and the sending of troops to the streets of Moscow. The attempt failed because Boris Yeltsin, then leader of Russia, the tallest of the 15 members of the Soviet Union, succeeded in mobilizing resistance to the coup and fractured the Armed Forces by gaining the support of the generals in favor of reforms.
The events following the failed coup have woven a plot of terror for Xi. Yeltsin, defender of the acceleration of “glasnost”, emerges stronger from the crisis and, supported by the anti-communist and nationalist wave sweeping over Soviet territory, leads the process of disintegration of the USSR, brings independence to the Soviet Union. Russia and claims the political career of rival Gorbachev, accusing him of having hesitated to implement the reforms.
On November 6, 1991, Yeltsin signed Decree 169 to ban the Communist Party from the USSR. In a speech to party activists early in his reign, Xi presented an analysis of the party’s demise used as a historical model. “One important reason is that their ideals and beliefs have been shaken,” he argued. “And in the end, there wasn’t a man brave enough to resist, no one came to challenge [o fim do partido]. “
In the opinion of Zhongnanhai strategists, Gorbachev made a fundamental error in letting a challenger emerge in the party structures, since Yeltsin, beginning the quest for control of the Kremlin, was part of the leadership of the CP of the USSR, before breaking with the past Communist. This perception is reflected in Beijing in the concentration of power in Xi’s hands, unprecedented since the days of Maoist orthodoxy.
And, according to the strategy, the current Chinese leader breaks with the traditions of the party, does not signal the choice of a successor and shows an appetite for, in 2022, to obtain a third five-year term at the head of the Communist Party. These are unmistakable reflections of the so-called “Soviet lessons”.