Joseph Torigian

This is a really useful study of power and politics and succession in the Soviet Union and China following the demise of Joseph Stalin and Mao Tse Dong.

The biggest lesson that comes from this book is that we cannot rely on the strength of institutions to buffer the struggle for power in Leninist regimes, but also perhaps for the successor to it in Russia.

It is most distressing — if not entirely surprising — to be reminded that control over hundreds of millions of people rest in the hands of butchers and assassins. In many cases, these leaders’ claim to office consisted of their eagerness to consign entire communities and regions to starvation, torture, and death.

Even amongst themselves these leaders agree on febrile policies based on guesswork, then turn to compromat to finish off each other.

Interestingly, Putin, who derives from this same lineage, relies heavily on polling to to take his next step. This is how leadership operates not only in the east but in the west as well. This is accountability in modern politics. Especially since elections — democratic or not — seem like staged affairs.

For a while, Khrushchev overwhelmed the old guard — or at least the members of the old guard Stalin hadn’t already murdered. He and his colleagues — including Malenkov, Molotov and war hero General Giorgi Zhukov — took care of Lavrentiy Beria right away with a sift arrest, a kangaroo court and a bullet to the forehead. Beria was Stalin’s last head of the secret police.

Deng remarkably sidelined the new Left in China while he consolidated control. We associate Deng with economic reform and reorienting the new China to capital accumulation. It turns out there was little disagreement on these policies between Deng and China’s other Party rulers. Deng was better at pushing aside his competitors — like Hua Guofeng. Guofeng engineered the disgrace and ultimate imprisonment of the so-called Gang of Four including Mao’s last wife and other leaders of the brutal Cultural Revolution, then Deng returned the favour.

Although neither struggle — Soviet nor Chinese — succession was called a military coop, neither succession could have been accomplished bloodlessly without the control of the military, which both Khrushchev and Deng had.… (meer)