Maybe it is a controversial opinion here on lemmygrad, but I don’t think the impact of the Great Purge was entirely positive and was, in many ways, a worse version of the Cultural Revolution. The Stalin Model was not sustainable. Legitimate critics of it like Bukharin were killed off, so post-Stalin, you didn’t have Deng-like figures who wanted reform while also genuinely believing in maintaining the socialist project. You either had people who wanted to conserve the Stalin Model dogmatically, or opportunists who were just in office to enrich themselves. As it became more and more clear that the model was unsustainable, the proportion of the latter increased over the former.
By the time it became obvious that reform was necessary or they could not go on, the only people in power to actually reform were people who did not believe in the system anyways. I mean, Gorbachev was a self-described social democrat, yet was put in charge of the most powerful communist party on earth. There is clearly something wrong there that was much more deep than one man himself. Many of his “reforms” were intended to try and make the USSR more similar to a liberal social democracy, such as bringing back the separation of powers, which directly paved the way for Yeltsin to overthrow the whole system.
I view the Stalin Model as something that was born out of necessity given the circumstances at the time rather than something that was intended to be the most optimal in the long run. The fascist invasion was telegraphed well in advance, and at the time there was no guarantee that the entire industrialized world wouldn’t gang up on the USSR to crush communism. The USSR under Stalin had no choice but to start building as much heavy machinery and weapons factories as they could ASAP, and the Stalin Model was optimized for that. Same goes for the purges, doing it wasn’t ideal but they had to root out turncoats before the Axis invasion began, Joseph Goebbels himself lamented that the USSR had done the purges in his dairy and believed it ruined their plans.
China under Deng by contrast had loads more breathing room. The US had just been defeated in Vietnam a few years prior reliving China of the possibility of US troops on it’s immediate border, and the West as a whole was still occupied with the USSR as it’s main enemy. When the US otherwise would of started messing with China under the George Bush Jr. administration the US’s attention got diverted again by the War on Terror, giving China even more time.
I think the problem with the purge was not necessarily those who were purged, but that there was no next generation to replace them.
Yes in China Deng survived, but honestly from what ive seen of Bukharin im not sure if the two are entirely comparable. But the crucial thing is that there was a generation of CPC members that could survive the turbulence of reform and opening up, the June 4th incident, etc.
This wasn’t just the purge of course, given ww2 took more CPSU members, but if you look at China, the DPRK, and Vietnam compared to the USSR and eastern Europe, id say its the people’s ability to have faith and interact with the system that led to their survival compared to eastern Europe’s downfall.
I’m not so sure that the “Stalin model” was inherently unsustainable. I think this kneejerk dismissal of the planned economy simply because China succeeded with a different model is premature.
Maybe it is a controversial opinion here on lemmygrad, but I don’t think the impact of the Great Purge was entirely positive and was, in many ways, a worse version of the Cultural Revolution. The Stalin Model was not sustainable. Legitimate critics of it like Bukharin were killed off, so post-Stalin, you didn’t have Deng-like figures who wanted reform while also genuinely believing in maintaining the socialist project. You either had people who wanted to conserve the Stalin Model dogmatically, or opportunists who were just in office to enrich themselves. As it became more and more clear that the model was unsustainable, the proportion of the latter increased over the former.
By the time it became obvious that reform was necessary or they could not go on, the only people in power to actually reform were people who did not believe in the system anyways. I mean, Gorbachev was a self-described social democrat, yet was put in charge of the most powerful communist party on earth. There is clearly something wrong there that was much more deep than one man himself. Many of his “reforms” were intended to try and make the USSR more similar to a liberal social democracy, such as bringing back the separation of powers, which directly paved the way for Yeltsin to overthrow the whole system.
I view the Stalin Model as something that was born out of necessity given the circumstances at the time rather than something that was intended to be the most optimal in the long run. The fascist invasion was telegraphed well in advance, and at the time there was no guarantee that the entire industrialized world wouldn’t gang up on the USSR to crush communism. The USSR under Stalin had no choice but to start building as much heavy machinery and weapons factories as they could ASAP, and the Stalin Model was optimized for that. Same goes for the purges, doing it wasn’t ideal but they had to root out turncoats before the Axis invasion began, Joseph Goebbels himself lamented that the USSR had done the purges in his dairy and believed it ruined their plans.
China under Deng by contrast had loads more breathing room. The US had just been defeated in Vietnam a few years prior reliving China of the possibility of US troops on it’s immediate border, and the West as a whole was still occupied with the USSR as it’s main enemy. When the US otherwise would of started messing with China under the George Bush Jr. administration the US’s attention got diverted again by the War on Terror, giving China even more time.
I think the problem with the purge was not necessarily those who were purged, but that there was no next generation to replace them.
Yes in China Deng survived, but honestly from what ive seen of Bukharin im not sure if the two are entirely comparable. But the crucial thing is that there was a generation of CPC members that could survive the turbulence of reform and opening up, the June 4th incident, etc.
This wasn’t just the purge of course, given ww2 took more CPSU members, but if you look at China, the DPRK, and Vietnam compared to the USSR and eastern Europe, id say its the people’s ability to have faith and interact with the system that led to their survival compared to eastern Europe’s downfall.
I’m not so sure that the “Stalin model” was inherently unsustainable. I think this kneejerk dismissal of the planned economy simply because China succeeded with a different model is premature.