Stalin and Mao: A Comparison of the Russian and Chinese Revolutions by Lucien Bianco

Author:Lucien Bianco [Bianco, Lucien]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press
Published: 2020-07-07T05:00:00+00:00

Sources: Doudintsev, 1957; Béja and Zafanolli, 1981, pp. 203–293. English translation in People and Monsters. And Other Stories and Reportage from China after Mao, ed. Perry Link, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1983.

After the Purge: The Transformation of the Elite and the Consolidation of Its Privileges

The Great Terror and the Cultural Revolution marked a brutal end to the prosperity and security of the new class, but the death of the two dictators allowed them to raise themselves far higher, quite undisturbed. I have now exceeded (or will shortly) the chronological limit I set for myself!

The most severe criticisms of bureaucracy sometimes came from the leaders themselves. From the mid-1930s the government encouraged citizens to denounce abuses of power by civil servants—which was a risky business for the plaintiff when the very person he or she was denouncing was in charge of the case. Or if not that person then his accomplices, patrons, or clients, for the apparatchiks protected themselves by forming “families” of the faithful, bound together to defend their common interests, if necessary by hiding the failures, difficulties, and abuses from the center in Moscow (and later, in Beijing). Between 1929 and 1937, the efficiency of the barrier erected by his “family circle” allowed the First Secretary of Party in Smolensk to have more or less a free hand in that western oblast. This exploit was facilitated by the difficulties central leaders had in following in detail what was going on from one end to the other of their enormous empire, and the priority they gave to the regional leaders’ political and economic performance. If these were considered satisfactory the central leaders weren’t going to linger on the brutality (or worse) of the methods used to achieve it.34 The gradual consolidation of the hold regional potentates had acquired on their satrapy, was one of the causes of the Great Terror, for wary Stalin soon became aware of the flaws in his (insufficiently docile) bureaucracy.

During and after the war, the control exercised by the apparatus (the Central Committee) on the appointment of officials became even less efficient. Ministries and administrations increasingly selected their cadres without asking the Central Committee, or indeed, even without informing it.35 Faced with the growing independence of a network of well-entrenched bureaucrats, the control procedures established in the 1920s proved to be inadequate. From the top to the bottom of the hierarchy, government representatives plied Party secretaries with gifts and bonuses, so that they in turn allowed them to appoint whoever they wanted (relatives, patrons, or flatterers), or allowed them to be sold to the highest bidder. The reforms carried out by Alexey Kuznetsov in 1947 were an attempt to deal with this growing corruption and the weakening power of the central apparatus, but had little success.

The widespread idea that the Party management systematically recruited a certain type of member who complied with a predetermined model (zealous fanatics, sectarian ideologues little inclined to ask uncomfortable questions) is a legend. Moshe Lewin, my main source for this paragraph, met many an idiot, but also some talented people among a majority of conformist careerists.

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