The Root Causes, Lessons and Revelations of the Soviet Union’s Party Collapse and State Disintegration (Part One)

2022 marks the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and also the 31st year since the Soviet Union’s party collapse and state disintegration. The Soviet Union’s party collapse and state disintegration was a great tragedy and great twist in human history, and even more so a great disaster and great regression in the history of world socialist development.

Comrade Mao Zedong and General Secretary Xi Jinping have attached extreme importance to the study of the Soviet Union’s evolution and degeneration from socialism to capitalism.

In February 1965, when the Soviet economy, science and technology, military and other aspects were still at their peak, Mao Zedong keenly detected and foresaw the great disaster that might and even would inevitably befall the Soviet Party, state and people, and instructed the entire Party to strengthen research on the Soviet question, and to take this as a mirror to improve China’s Party and socialist modernization. The World Affairs Publishing House, in the publication notes of the third collection of *Khrushchev’s Speeches*, quoted Mao Zedong’s following words: “Revolutionary parties and revolutionary people always have to repeatedly receive education from both positive and negative aspects, and only through comparison and contrast can they be tempered to maturity and have the guarantee of winning victory. We Chinese Communists have positive teachers, namely Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin. We also have negative teachers.” “If there were only positive teachers and no negative teachers, the Chinese revolution would not have won victory. To belittle the role of negative teachers is not to be a thoroughgoing dialectical materialist.”

General Secretary Xi Jinping has repeatedly made profound expositions on the experience and lessons of the Soviet Union’s party collapse and state disintegration. On January 5, 2013, shortly after taking office, General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out with profound meaning: “Why did the Soviet Union disintegrate? Why did the Soviet Communist Party collapse? An important reason was the extremely fierce struggle in the ideological sphere, the wholesale negation of Soviet history and the history of the Soviet Communist Party, the negation of Lenin, the negation of Stalin, the practice of historical nihilism, the confusion of thinking, the fact that Party organizations at all levels had almost no function, and the army was no longer under the leadership of the Party. In the end, the Soviet Communist Party, such a large party, scattered like birds and beasts, and the Soviet Union, such a large socialist state, disintegrated. This is a lesson from the overturned cart ahead!”

On October 16, 2022, the 20th National Congress of our great, glorious and correct Communist Party of China is about to be successfully convened. It is a congress of extreme importance held at a critical moment when the entire Party and the people of all ethnic groups across the country are embarking on a new journey of comprehensively building a modern socialist country and marching toward the second centenary goal. [n1] Around the time of the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict in 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin successively pointed out that Russia had never lost to a foreign country, that the disintegration of the Soviet Union was caused by internal betrayal, and that Russia cannot do without socialism. Against this background, further scientifically understanding the root causes and lessons of the Soviet Union’s party collapse and state disintegration, and drawing historical revelations from it for governing the Party and rejuvenating the country, has special importance, necessity and urgency. This is of significant practical and historical significance for adhering to the Party’s self-revolution, breaking out of the historical cycle of the rise and fall of political parties and regimes, uniting the people of all countries, solving the serious and harsh major issue that the international communist movement has raised but not yet fully resolved, forever maintaining the Party’s revolutionary nature, advanced nature and purity, and leading the Chinese people in their united struggle to comprehensively build a great modern socialist country, comprehensively advance the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, create a new form of human civilization, and build a community with a shared future for mankind.

I. The Degeneration and Transformation of the Leadership Group from Khrushchev to Gorbachev in Ideology and Politics Was the Root Cause of the Soviet Union’s Party Collapse and State Disintegration

Degeneration and transformation is the root cause of the Soviet Union’s party collapse and state disintegration. The causes of the Soviet Union’s party collapse and state disintegration are multifaceted, inevitably the result of a confluence of historical forces. However, among them there must be one that plays a decisive role as the root cause. As Comrade Mao Zedong pointed out, “If there are multiple contradictions in any process, one of them must be the principal contradiction, playing a leading and decisive role.” Among the many causes of the Soviet Union’s party collapse and state disintegration, which one is the principal, playing a leading and decisive role?

Even before the founding of New China, Mao Zedong paid close attention to the major issue of how to ensure that the Party and the political power would never change their nature. This gave rise to Mao Zedong’s “Jiashen Dialogue” in 1944, his “Cave Dialogue” in 1945, and his “Examination Dialogue” in 1949. [n2] After the founding of New China, Mao Zedong racked his brains over breaking the historical cycle of the rise

On June 16, 1989, after quelling the political turmoil that erupted in the spring and summer of that year, Deng Xiaoping pointed out: “As long as there is a good Political Bureau, especially a good Standing Committee,” “any disturbance that arises can be blocked”; “but if the Central Committee itself loses its composure, then it is hard to say. This is the most crucial issue.” In early 1992, shortly after the tragedy of the Soviet Union’s collapse and the fall of its party, Deng Xiaoping said during an inspection tour of Shenzhen: “If China runs into trouble, it

On January 5, 2018, General Secretary Xi Jinping profoundly pointed out: "We often say, if the foundation is not firm, the earth will shake and the mountains will move. If faith is not firm, the earth will also shake and the mountains will move. Is this not the logic of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the collapse of the Soviet Communist Party, and the upheaval in Eastern Europe? When the Soviet Communist Party had 200,000 members, it seized political power; when it had 2 million members, it defeated Hitler; but when it had nearly 20 million members, it lost political power. I have said that in that turmoil, there was not a single man [1]1 There are currently three relatively common views on the duration of the CPSU’s existence. The first is the “93-year theory,” counting from the founding of the CPSU’s predecessor, the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (1898). The second is the “88-year theory,” counting from the convening of the Second Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (1903), at which the party program and constitution were adopted, the central leading organs of the party were elected, and *Iskra* was designated as the party’s central organ. The third is the “86-year theory,” counting from the convening of the Third Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (1905), which was the first Bolshevik congress held under Lenin’s leadership; it revised the party constitution, adopted Lenin’s proposed first article of the party constitution, elected the Central Committee as the party’s sole leading center, determined the tasks of the proletariat as the revolutionary vanguard, and formulated the party’s strategic line, etc. — Author’s note., no one came out to resist. What was the reason? It was that ideals and convictions had already vanished without a trace." On January 12, 2016, in his speech at the Sixth Plenary Session of the 18th Central Commission for Discipline Inspection of the Communist Party of China, General Secretary Xi Jinping further profoundly pointed out: "There are careerists and conspirators within the Party, eroding the Party's governing foundation from within. We cannot refrain from taking action for fear of injuring the whole, or look the other way and adopt an ostrich policy [2]2 The 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1956), at which First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev delivered a “secret report” denouncing Stalin’s personality cult and repressions, initiating a process of de-Stalinization.. This must be made clear." Further in-depth study of the major historical event of the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the collapse of its Party and the drawing of scientific conclusions will inevitably help to clarify, from the combination of theory and practice, the major issue and major subject raised by General Secretary Xi Jinping, namely, "there are careerists and

The Russian people have been deep in thought. After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the demise of its ruling party, the reflections of various circles in Russia also fully demonstrate that the root cause of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the demise of its ruling party lay in the degeneration and deterioration of the Party, especially of its leading group. Aleksandr Zinoviev, a well-known Soviet dissident who later changed his views, said that in 1979, when he was living abroad, someone asked him: which parts of the Soviet system were most vulnerable to attack? His answer was: “Those places that were considered impregnable, namely the organs of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, its Central Committee, its Politburo, and finally its General Secretary… As long as one places one’s own people in these positions,” “it would take only a few months to destroy the Party apparatus… Then, a chain reaction of disintegration would begin in the entire system of power and administration.”

(I) The Ideological and Political Degeneration of the Leading Group from Khrushchev to Gorbachev

In August-September 1970, in response to the struggle against the Lin Biao counter-revolutionary clique at that time, Mao Zedong clearly pointed out: “Correctness or incorrectness of the ideological and political line decides everything. If the Party’s line is correct, then everything is possible; if there are no people, people can be found; if there are no guns, guns can be obtained; if there is no political power, political power can be won. If the line is incorrect, even what one has can be lost.” Mao Zedong repeatedly emphasized the above ideas in his later years. This important, even major, idea has universal regularity. General Secretary Xi Jinping has repeatedly stressed the need to “strengthen top-level design” and “pay more attention to the systemic, holistic and coordinated nature of reform.” Strengthening top-level design means that the ideological line must be correct and the political line must be correct, ensuring that reform and opening up always adhere to the correct direction and advance along the correct path. Therefore, the fundamental embodiment and manifestation of the Party and its leadership lie in the Party’s ideological line and political line. The root cause of the demise of the CPSU and the disintegration of the Soviet Union, to put it bluntly, was the ideological and political degeneration of the leading group from Khrushchev to Gorbachev.

There are various theoretical systems in the world, but only Marxism-Leninism is the scientific theoretical system concerning the complete liberation of the proletariat and all of humanity, a truth that is universally applicable. In a certain sense, such a scientific, open and continuously developing theoretical system has become an objective reality since its creation by Marx and Engels. The line includes the ideological line, political line, organizational line, mass line, etc., collectively referred to as the line. The ideological line and political line are the direct manifestations of the exertion of the subjective initiative of a given political party or individual under the guidance of a certain theoretical system. Mao Zedong pointed out, “Correctness or incorrectness of the line is not a theoretical question, but a practical one.” According to Mao Zedong’s view, the relationship among the eight aspects of belief, theory, politics, economy, organization, work style, diplomacy, and outlook on life is not one of mutual coordination, but one of mutual intersection with a relationship of command and being commanded. The three aspects of belief, theory, and outlook on life belong to the ideological line, referring to the actual state of integration of a given class, political party, or even individual with the scientific theoretical system of Marxism; but this is not a theoretical issue, but a practical issue in the realm of thought. The five aspects of politics, economy, organization, work style, and diplomacy are essentially practical issues in the realm of the political line. In a certain sense, among these five aspects, the economy is the foundation, while politics, like the aforementioned thought, is the soul and commander; the various tasks of organization, work style, diplomacy, etc., within these five aspects also belong to the concrete manifestations of broad professional work under the political line. In the relationships among the above eight aspects, politics and economy, politics and professional work are all relationships of the unity of opposites. Ideological and political work is the guarantee for completing economic, technical, and professional work, and serves the economic base. Thought and politics are also the commander, the soul, the “ruler” (君), while economic, technical, and professional work are the “subjects” (臣); political work is not only the lifeblood of all economic work, but also the lifeblood of all technical and professional work; if ideological and political work is relaxed even slightly, economic, technical, and professional work will inevitably go astray. These are the main viewpoints. Mao Zedong said, “The key to all problems lies in politics.” General Secretary Xi Jinping has repeatedly stressed the need to take a clear stand on politics and continuously improve political judgment, political understanding, and political execution ability. This means consciously and fully exerting the subjective initiative of the Marxist political party and every Communist, confidently striving to realize the Party’s current-stage goals and the ultimate grand goal, i.e., to fulfill the original aspiration and founding mission, while taking fewer detours. This has extremely significant practical significance and far-reaching historical significance.

Marxism-Leninism, the ideological line, and the political line are both highly organically unified and mutually distinct. Marxism-Leninism is the theoretical foundation guiding our thought; the ideological line is the state of our Communists’ ideological cognition after studying and mastering Marxism and integrating it with specific conditions; the political line is the principles, policies, and specific strategies we formulate after integrating Marxism with concrete practice, unifying the maximum program and the current program.

The root cause of the degeneration of the Soviet leading group was that, starting from the qualitative change initiated by the Khrushchev leading group to the complete betrayal of socialism by the Gorbachev leading group, they implemented erroneous and even reactionary ideological and political lines. The Gorbachev leading group was bred and grew out of the ideological and political line of the Khrushchev leading group. At that time, although the Soviet Party and state had accumulated a large number of serious problems, the collapse of the Party and state was not inevitable. In a certain sense, before the Gorbachev leading group came to power, the Soviet Union was still a superpower with strong national strength. It was only because Gorbachev led reform onto the capitalist evil path and a dead end that the Party and state lost all the legitimate and just foundations for their existence and development. Thus, it is extremely important for the Party and the people to correctly choose leaders and for leaders to provide correct leadership. Clarifying this issue has a strong warning effect and practical significance, and can help us avoid making the same mistakes; clarifying this issue also makes it clearer that the Chinese Communist Party’s choice of Com

From the Khrushchev to the Gorbachev leadership groups, the degeneration and qualitative change in ideology and politics manifested mainly in the following eight aspects.

1. In faith: from wavering, deviating, and abandoning to completely betraying the ideal and conviction of socialism and communism.

The faith of Communists spoken of here refers primarily to the recognition of and adherence to the laws governing the development of human society and history. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (the Party’s name underwent several changes, from the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union; hereinafter referred to as the CPSU) existed for 93 years from its founding in 1898 to its dissolution in 1991. [1]1 There are currently three relatively common views on the duration of the CPSU’s existence. The first is the “93-year theory,” counting from the founding of the CPSU’s predecessor, the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (1898). The second is the “88-year theory,” counting from the convening of the Second Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (1903), at which the party program and constitution were adopted, the central leading organs of the party were elected, and *Iskra* was designated as the party’s central organ. The third is the “86-year theory,” counting from the convening of the Third Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (1905), which was the first Bolshevik congress held under Lenin’s leadership; it revised the party constitution, adopted Lenin’s proposed first article of the party constitution, elected the Central Committee as the party’s sole leading center, determined the tasks of the proletariat as the revolutionary vanguard, and formulated the party’s strategic line, etc. — Author’s note. During the periods of Lenin and Stalin, the CPSU underwent the baptism of war in the October Revolution, foreign armed intervention, domestic counter-revolutionary rebellion, and the invasion of German fascism. In harsh circumstances it withstood the severe test of consolidating the socialist political power and developing the socialist cause, enjoyed high prestige among the Soviet people and the peoples of the world, and possessed strong cohesion, appeal and combat effectiveness. However, after Stalin’s death, the ideals and convictions of the CPSU’s top leadership began to waver. By the time of the Gorbachev leadership group, it had ultimately abandoned Marxism-Leninism, abandoned the nature, purpose and goals of a proletarian party, and the Party, the state, the army and the people became a heap of loose sand, collapsing without a fight in the face of the frenzied offensive of hostile forces.

Looking back over history, the wavering of the CPSU’s ideals and convictions began during the period when Khrushchev was in power. As the leader of the Soviet Communist Party, Khrushchev lacked a basic grounding in Marxist-Leninist cultivation. Mao Zedong once evaluated Khrushchev as follows: “He does not understand Marxism-Leninism and is easily deceived by the imperialists.” U.S. President Nixon, speaking of Khrushchev, said: “He believed in the communist cause and the inevitability of its victory, but he only went to church at the altar of theory on Sundays.”

Regrettably, Khrushchev used the method of a “double-faced man” to obtain Stalin’s promotion. While Stalin was alive, he eulogized Stalin as “the father who gave me life,” “the wise leader,” and “a genius”; shortly after Stalin’s death, in his “secret speech” at the 20th Congress of the CPSU, he attacked Stalin as a “persecution maniac” and “megalomaniac,” who “studied domestic and agricultural conditions only from films,” and “drew up operational plans with a globe,” saying that “the leadership practices formed in Stalin’s later years became a serious obstacle on the path of Soviet social development.” In 1961, under Khrushchev’s direction, the 22nd Congress of the CPSU passed a resolution to move Stalin’s body out of Lenin’s Mausoleum. Thereafter, acts of destroying Stalin’s statues and monuments appeared in various parts of the Soviet Union, and the Soviet Union once again set off a wave of negating Stalin.

Stalin represents an important period in the history of the Soviet Party and state, and is an important symbol of the Soviet Party and state. Therefore, the evaluation of Stalin’s merits and faults is not a simple question of evaluating Stalin as an individual, nor is it a question of one party or one country. Although Stalin had errors of one kind or another, failing to scientifically analyze Stalin’s errors in a historical manner, failing to distinguish the mainstream from the tributary in the period of the CPSU and the Soviet Union under his leadership, and failing to carry out effective education and guidance, would produce very serious consequences. Wholesale negation of Stalin not only negated the achievements of the CPSU and the Soviet Union during this period, seriously damaged the image of the CPSU and the Soviet Union, and shook people’s ideals and convictions in socialism and communism, but also impacted the worldview and values of the younger generation, giving rise to a group of “gravediggers” of the proletarian political power who yearned for Western capitalism, causing ideological turmoil in society. Gorbachev, Yakovlev and Yeltsin were the main representatives among them. Gorbachev said after the dissolution of the Soviet Union that the 20th Congress of the CPSU’s great anti-Stalin campaign “had great significance,” that “this criticism discredited totalitarianism morally,” and that it was “the first attempt to move our society toward democratization.” Practice has already proven that the direction of “democratization” Gorbachev spoke of was, in essence, the naked dictatorship of domestic capital and Western countries united against the Soviet people and the Russian people.

Reviewing history, during the period of the Sino-Soviet debate, the two parties had serious differences over how to evaluate Stalin and the practice of Soviet socialism. The Chinese Communists, with Comrade Mao Zedong as their main representative, firmly defended Stalin’s historical status and historical achievements, demonstrating the profound insight and political foresight of Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communists. If people at that time could not yet fully see the serious consequences of wrongly treating Stalin and Soviet socialism, nor fully understand the far-reaching significance of the Chinese Communist Party’s advocacy of scientifically evaluating Stalin and fully affirming the achievements of Soviet socialism, then the tragedy of the Soviet Union’s party collapse and state disintegration 35 years after the 20th Congress of the CPSU, and the world-renowned achievements of socialism with Chinese characteristics more than 30 years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, provide us with positive and negative experiences and lessons for re-understanding that period of history and distinguishing right from wrong. Recalling the past and comparing it with the present, who is right and who is wrong — history and reality have already rendered a verdict.

Khrushchev’s relationship with major theoretical issues of Marxism went through a process from half-understanding to vague distortion and ultimately to deviation. At the 20th Congress of the CPSU, he made “peaceful coexistence,” “peaceful transition” and “peaceful competition” the general line of the foreign policy of socialist countries, believing that this could deliver a “devastating blow” to all capitalist relations and achieve socialism throughout the world. At the 22nd Congress of the CPSU, he put forward the theories of the “party of the whole people” and the “state of the whole people,” beginning to transform the CPSU from a party of a proletarian nature into a “party of the whole people” of a bourgeois nature. The program adopted at the 22nd Congress of the CPSU abolished “dictatorship of the proletariat,” the core idea of Marxism, replacing it with abstract so-called “humanitarianism.” In 1959, he proposed that the Soviet Union had entered “the period of comprehensive construction of communist society,” and in 1961 he declared that the Soviet Union would “basically build a communist society in 20 years,” calling on “our generation of Soviet people will live under communism.” These lines and programs, which seriously departed from the international struggle situation and the actual conditions of Soviet society at the time and seriously violated the principles of scientific socialism, threw the thinking of the broad masses of CPSU members and the Soviet people into confusion, causing the Soviet Union to begin to deviate from the correct direction of socialist development, planting the seeds of disaster for the later collapse of the CPSU and the disintegration of the Soviet Union.

During the Brezhnev period, although the Soviet leadership corrected some practical errors of the Khrushchev era and implemented certain new policies that brought a degree of development to Soviet society, it stubbornly clung to the erroneous theories of the 20th Congress of the CPSU [n2] presided over by Khrushchev. Socialist and communist ideals and convictions had already vanished entirely among the Soviet privileged stratum represented by Brezhnev and others. Brezhnev himself was complacent, indulged in pleasure, and relished flattery from others; Marxism and communism were merely empty phrases he constantly mouthed, falsehoods even he himself did not believe. Brezhnev’s niece Lyuba disclosed in her English-language memoir *The World I Left Behind: Pieces of the Past*, published in the United States, that Brezhnev once said to his own brother: “What communism? It’s just empty talk to fool the common people.” [n3] When those above do so, those below follow suit. At that time, Soviet social mores followed a practice of “saying one thing and doing another”; corruption was rampant. Many joined the Communist Party not to devote themselves to the cause of socialist construction or the communist ideal, but to secure an official post, ultimately making the pursuit of greater personal and clique interests their highest goal. On the surface, they appeared as revolutionaries and leaders of socialist construction, playing the role of defenders of the people’s and the state’s interests, but in reality they had lost all Marxist faith and all socialist and communist ideals and convictions, focusing solely on safeguarding their own privileges.

Of course, during the Khrushchev and Brezhnev periods, the vast majority of Soviet Party members and the masses still held socialist and communist ideals and convictions and were sincerely building socialism. The fundamental reason why the Soviet Union truly became a superpower rivaling the United States in the 1970s and 1980s lies precisely here. However, the political beliefs of the principal leaders—Khrushchev, Brezhnev, and others—had already completely changed.

If Party cadres under Brezhnev could at least outwardly uphold Marxist and communist faith, then under Gorbachev they simply tore off the disguise and openly denied it. Gorbachev had already begun to doubt the scientific nature of Marxism as early as his university years. After graduation, Khrushchev’s “secret report” at the 20th Congress of the CPSU accelerated his ideological transformation. After becoming General Secretary, he raised the banner of so-called “humane, democratic socialism”—a slogan that could both deceive people and achieve his goals—and began step by step to destroy the Soviet socialist system. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Gorbachev frankly admitted that communism was “a practically unrealizable slogan,” and that Russia’s tragedy lay in the fact that “the already dead ideas of Karl Marx’s later years were chosen in early 20th-century Russia and introduced into real society—this was a mistake.” He also said that as early as his student days he had discovered that “the reality of socialism was a million miles away from the ideal,” and that he felt “very honored” to have been able, during the years of reform, “to clear away from people’s consciousness the many evil consequences caused by the influence of communism.” American economist Lester C. Thurow once said: “Just before and after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, I happened to be in Moscow. The root cause of the Soviet Union’s dissolution was Gorbachev’s loss of faith in Marxism and communism. Imagine if Pope Paul II announced today that God does not exist—what would the Christian world look like tomorrow?”

Yakovlev, who served during the Gorbachev period as a Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee and head of its Propaganda Department, and was called “Gorbachev’s chief brain trust,” had already advised Gorbachev in December 1985: “In our country’s practice, Marxism is nothing but a new religion, subordinated to the interests of autocratic power and its arbitrary demands.” “The dogmatic interpretation of Marxism-Leninism is dangerous enough to destroy any creative thinking, even classical thinking.” On August 2, 1991, he publicly stated in an interview with TASS: “Our misfortune stems from the dogma of Marxism,” “I oppose taking Marxism as a guide to action, and I conclude that socialism will fail.” After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, he admitted: “In essence, not a single one of the concrete economic conclusions on which Marx built the entire edifice of his worldview of ‘scientific socialism’ has been verified in practice.” Moreover, Yakovlev was full of praise and worship for capitalism: “Capitalism has brought a pragmatic ethic. In the capitalist slogans of freedom, equality, and fraternity, a lofty idealism is embodied…”

Another key assistant of Gorbachev, Soviet Foreign Minister Shevardnadze, also spoke about his own ideological transformation. In 1991, answering a question from a French television reporter, he said: “For a period we had communist ideals and fought for their realization. Later I slowly realized that what I firmly believed in was impossible to achieve, and that this situation had to be changed. One day in the early 1990s, I said to Gorbachev: our system has rotted; it must be completely destroyed and thoroughly reformed from top to bottom.”

2. In theory: from not studying, not understanding, and deviating, to ultimately abandoning and betraying Marxism-Leninism

What is referred to here as “in theory” mainly concerns the actual state of studying and mastering the basic principles of Marxism and integrating them with concrete practice. The Soviet leaders after Stalin, from not reading, not understanding, and deviating, to ultimately abandoning and betraying Marxism-Leninism, could neither respond to the challenges of the times nor counter the imperialist strategy of peaceful evolution.

Khrushchev received no systematic education in his early years, nor did he seriously study Marxist theory after entering politics. Molotov once commented that he had never had much interest in what Leninism or Marxism was, nor had he thought about it; he was utterly ignorant in theory. Former U.S. President Nixon also said: “I find it hard to imagine whether he actually read Marx’s three thick volumes of *Capital*. In this respect, he differed from Stalin, who read widely and wrote a great many books on communist theory.” It was precisely for this reason that Khrushchev recklessly put forward erroneous theories such as the “three peaces and two alls.” [n4] The fundamental error of the theories of the “party of the whole people” and the “state of the whole people” lay in completely discarding the Marxist-Leninist theory of the essence of “party” and “state,” confusing the boundaries between the Party’s class base and its mass base, and elevating what was originally the Party’s mass base to its class base. He believed that under socialism the exploiting classes had been eliminated, and that in Soviet society, aside from a very small number of criminals, there existed only the entire people united on the basis of fundamental identity of interests—that is, a broad political alliance of workers, peasants, and intellectuals. Therefore, the CPSU was no longer the party of a particular class but had become a “party of the whole people” representing the interests of all Soviet people; the CPSU became a “political organization of the whole people.” Khrushchev ignored the fact that class struggle still existed within a certain scope in Soviet society and could intensify under certain conditions; he ignored the complex and acute class struggle between socialism and capitalism internationally; he ignored the possibility and danger of socialist states being subverted by hostile forces at home and abroad. By propagating the “theory of the extinction of class struggle,” he led the broad masses of Party members and the people to mistakenly believe that class struggle no longer existed in Soviet society, that there were no longer anti-communist or anti-socialist forces, and thus they lost the necessary vigilance against the restoration of capitalism.

When Brezhnev was young, he worked as a worker and engineer, possessing professional knowledge in agriculture and metallurgy, but he lacked theoretical cultivation, was uninterested in social science theory, and had even less systematic understanding of Marxism. After becoming the supreme leader of the CPSU, he spent much of his time and energy on hunting, driving for pleasure, and other activities. In 1965, while discussing the draft report commemorating the 20th anniversary of the victory in the Great Patriotic War, he said: “I find it very difficult to understand all this. Frankly speaking, I am not engaged in this kind of work (referring to theoretical work—author’s note). My strengths lie in organizational work and understanding people’s psychology.” He also told his assistants: “Write it simply; don’t portray me as a theorist. Otherwise, no matter what, no one will believe I wrote it; they will laugh at me.” He sometimes demanded the deletion of quotations from Marxist classics, explaining: “Who would believe that I have read Marx’s works!” According to relevant archival materials, there was no record whatsoever of CPSU top leaders engaging in the study of Marxist works during the 1970s. If the top leaders were like this, the state of theoretical study among other Party members and cadres can well be imagined.

Brezhnev did not attach importance to the study of Marxist theory, nor could he scientifically grasp the essence of Marxist theory. Therefore, he not only failed to fundamentally overcome the theoretical errors of the Khrushchev period but instead perpetuated Khrushchev’s erroneous views. For example, the new Soviet Constitution adopted in October 1977 still included the concepts of the “state of the whole people” and the “party of the whole people” invented by Khrushchev. He also put forward the slogan of “developed socialism,” emphasizing the “highly developed” nature of Soviet social productive forces and the “powerfulness” of the material-technical base, stressing the “maturity” of Soviet social relations and the “deepest” nature of socialist democracy, and highlighting the unity and harmony of the Soviet republics and nationalities, while concealing the serious problems latent or manifest in the Soviet economy, politics, and nationality policies. This denied the existence of contradictions between the productive forces and relations of production, and between the economic base and superstructure in Soviet society, thereby ideologically, theoretically, and practically negating the necessity and inevitability of profound reforms in Soviet society. Brezhnev often said: “What is there to reform? Just do the work well.” During Brezhnev’s 18-year tenure in power, Soviet society accumulated increasingly numerous and deeper contradictions beneath its surface prosperity, with both exposed and unexposed crises lurking everywhere, laying extremely serious hidden dangers for the subsequent great upheaval in Soviet society and the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Regarding Gorbachev’s cultivation in Marxist theory, his chief of staff, Valery Boldin, commented as follows: “He was very familiar with the history of the Party and Lenin’s works, and often applied this knowledge… However, Gorbachev was also unfamiliar with the works of Marx and Engels.” He had received higher education and, after graduation, had long been engaged in Party affairs, possessing rich work experience. This young General Secretary, whom Andrei Gromyko called “erudite” and “quick-witted and profound,” due to the evolution of his worldview and values, completely abandoned his Marxist faith and ultimately leaned toward democratic socialism. In June 1988, the 19th All-Union Conference of the CPSU formally proposed building “humane, democratic socialism.” In 1990, the CPSU Central Committee’s February Plenum held that the ideal of the CPSU was “humane, democratic socialism.” In March 1990, Gorbachev, in his article “The Future World and Socialism,” pointed out that “between socialists and communists, there no longer exists the chasm that once divided them,” and that on the basis of “humane, democratic values,” their “political positions” and even “worldview positions had drawn closer”; the “genuine socialism” to be achieved through reform “contained the basic values originally endorsed by other currents of the socialist movement.” In July 1990, the 28th Congress of the CPSU adopted the programmatic document “Towards Humane, Democratic Socialism,” which marked a fundamental change in the nature of the CPSU. Although the CPSU did not change its name, it existed in name only. Gorbachev later admitted: “During those years of reform, we wanted to turn the Soviet Communist Party into a social democratic party. A corresponding plan for the scheduled 29th Congress of the CPSU had already been drafted. However, the putsch (Gorbachev’s term for the August 1991 events—author’s note) and Yeltsin’s policy of effectively banning the CPSU made it impossible to hold this congress.”

The so-called “humane, democratic socialism” originated from Bernstein’s revisionism and the social democracy of the right wing of the Second International, as well as the democratic socialism of the Socialist International. The essence of Gorbachev’s so-called “humane, democratic socialism” was to use the deceptive banners of “humanity,” “democracy,” and “socialism” to comprehensively implement a capitalist system in the Soviet Union through so-called reform. Transforming the CPSU and Soviet society according to the theory of so-called “humane, democratic socialism” meant replacing the theoretical foundation of Marxism with the old theories of Western social democratic parties, abolishing the CPSU’s ruling status, establishing a multi-party system, parliamentary democracy, separation of powers, and a presidential system in the Soviet Union, implementing the “de-partification,” “de-politicization,” and “nationalization” of the military, and carrying out economic privatization and a free market economy, thereby completely changing Soviet socialism into capitalism.

This set of theories and propositions by Gorbachev did not emerge all at once; its ideological and political origins can be traced back to the Khrushchev period. A leading comrade of our Party once pointed out: “Khrushchev’s secret report at the 20th Congress of the CPSU completely negated Stalin, negated the Marxist-Leninist theory of class struggle and the dictatorship of the proletariat, trumpeted the so-called ‘party of the whole people’ and ‘state of the whole people,’ and confused the thinking of the Party and the people. The evolution of the Soviet Union today began with various crises already planted during the Khrushchev period.” Specifically: First, Khrushchev’s complete negation of Stalin at the 20th Congress of the CPSU was in essence a comprehensive slander and attack on the Soviet Communist Party and the socialist system, and negating the Party’s history and the existing socialist system was the prerequisite for the emergence and spread of “humane, democratic socialism.” Second, Khrushchev proposed that “everything for man, everything for the happiness of man” was the Party’s programmatic goal; here “man” referred to an abstract person without class distinctions, which in effect made humanitarianism, an idealist view of history, the guiding ideology of the Party, and this precisely constituted the theoretical core of “humane, democratic socialism.” Third, Khrushchev’s revisionist view of the “party of the whole people” and “state of the whole people,” which negated class struggle and opposed the dictatorship of the proletariat, was the theoretical foundation of the “humane, democratic socialism” line. Fourth, Khrushchev’s theory of nuclear terror, which denied the existence of international contradictions under conditions of nuclear weapons and advocated international class cooperation, also constituted the theoretical basis for Gorbachev’s “new thinking” in foreign policy. When Khrushchev put forward revisionist views in 1956, it was difficult to imagine that after more than 30 years of spread, these revisionist views would form a complete “humane, democratic socialism” line, ultimately leading to the collapse of the Soviet Party and the dissolution of the state.

3. Politically: From Weakening and Distorting to Completely Negating and Betraying the Party’s Leadership and the Marxist-Leninist Principles of Party Building

What is referred to here as the political aspect mainly concerns the Party’s various major policies, programs and actions in the process of its own building and governance. The Soviet leaders after Stalin failed to formulate and implement a correct political line; in practice they diluted, weakened and distorted the Party’s leadership, until they ultimately negated it, betrayed the Marxist-Leninist principles of Party building, admired and copied the bourgeois democratic system, and finally brought about the collapse of the regime. Khrushchev and Brezhnev, to a certain extent, turned the power entrusted to them by the Party to serve the people into a tool for pursuing personal and privileged-stratum interests, thereby damaging and undermining the Party’s centralized and unified leadership.

In the early period of his rule, Khrushchev, out of the political need to oppose Stalin, advocated separating the top Party and state leadership posts and implementing collective leadership. But once his power position was consolidated, he began to undermine democratic centralism, sidelining and suppressing political opponents. By 1958, with Beria executed and Malenkov, Kaganovich, Molotov, Bulganin and others branded an “anti-Party group” and purged from the political stage, Khrushchev exercised personal arbitrariness on many issues while building up his own authority and fostering a new personality cult.

In 1961, the 22nd Congress of the CPSU decided to establish a system of cadre rotation, but rigidly stipulated that at each regular election, at least one-quarter of the Central Committee and Presidium members must be replaced, at least one-third of the members of the central committees of the republic-level Party organizations, territorial committees and regional committees must be replaced, and at least half of the members of city committees, district committees, and primary Party organization committees or branch committees must be replaced. There were also limits on the number of consecutive terms various-level cadres could serve: members of the CPSU Central Committee Presidium could serve three consecutive terms of four years each; secretaries of territorial committees, regional committees, city committees and district committees could serve three consecutive terms of two years each; while secretaries of primary Party organizations could serve only two consecutive terms of one year each. The frequent rotation and reassignment of cadres deprived leading cores at all levels of continuity and a sense of security, adversely affected the continuity of work, and aroused discontent among cadres at all levels.

In November 1962, Khrushchev decided to reorganize the Party’s organizational structure and leading organs at the local level, dividing the Party organizations in oblasts and krais into those leading industry and those leading agriculture, independent of and not subordinate to each other. At the same time, corresponding reorganizations were carried out in the organizations and leading bodies of the Soviets, trade unions and the Komsomol. Practice proved that dividing the Party organizations into industrial and agricultural branches was inappropriate; far from producing the expected results, it caused serious harm, severed the close ties between industry and agriculture, undermined the Party’s unified leadership, and created chaos.

After Brezhnev came to power, he abolished the division of Party organizations into industrial and agricultural branches, re-established unified Party organizations and leading organs on a territorial basis, and at the same time adjusted the top leadership system and abolished the system of frequent cadre rotation. However, Brezhnev overemphasized the stability and continuity of the cadre corps, resulting in a system of life-long tenure for leading posts and an aging cadre corps.

By the Gorbachev period, the Party’s supreme power was openly negated, a highly centralized presidential system was established, the essence of the socialist regime—the people being the masters of the country—was completely abandoned in both content and form, and the Party’s power was turned into a tool for overthrowing the Party’s leadership and the socialist system.

Gorbachev directly inherited Khrushchev’s mantle, advocating that the CPSU should “exclude the dictatorship of any class.” He also attacked the dictatorship of the proletariat as “despotism” and “dictatorship,” claiming it “led to arbitrariness and lawlessness.” He trumpeted so-called “general, all-people democracy,” praised Khrushchev’s theory of the “state of the whole people,” and asserted that “the ultimate goal of reform is to fully enrich human rights,” to make the state system achieve “complete all-people character,” believing this conformed to “the political conclusion of the state of the whole people.”

Gorbachev criticized Soviet socialism as “totalitarianism,” arguing that the Soviet “totalitarian socialism” had caused “the alienation of people from politics and political power, from the means of production and property, and from culture,” resulting in political monopoly, economic monopoly and spiritual monopoly. To overcome alienation and eliminate monopoly, he argued, the CPSU’s “monopoly” on political power must first be ended. In February 1990, the CPSU Central Committee Plenum decided to amend Article 6 of the Soviet Constitution and abolish the CPSU’s leading role. One month later, the Congress of People’s Deputies of the USSR adopted the “Law on the Establishment of the Post of President of the USSR and on Amendments and Additions to the Constitution (Fundamental Law) of the USSR,” which abolished Article 6 of the Soviet Constitution stipulating the CPSU’s leading role, stating that “citizens of the USSR have the right to form political parties,” and the USSR began to emulate Western countries in implementing a multi-party system.

Gorbachev also completely betrayed the Marxist-Leninist principles of Party building. He abandoned the guiding role of Marxism-Leninism, advocated the diversification of guiding ideologies, and called for a “free competition” of various ideas, which in essence replaced Marxist scientific socialism with so-called “humane, democratic socialism.” He abandoned the lofty ideal of communism, declaring that the CPSU was an “autonomous political organization” and a “voluntary union of like-minded people,” that the CPSU was “prepared to engage in open competition and cooperation with other political parties and movements” and “to strive to maintain its ruling party status within the framework of elections.” He discarded democratic centralism, promoted “the principle of universal democracy” and “rejected the rule of the majority over the minority,” allowed the legal existence of factional organizations within the Party, and permitted lower-level Party organizations to refuse to implement decisions of higher-level Party organizations. He abandoned the CPSU’s leadership over mass organizations, declaring that the CPSU was an equal “cooperator” with the Komsomol, trade unions and other mass organizations, and that the CPSU would not interfere in their internal affairs. Guided by these ideas, the CPSU completely lost its character as the vanguard of the proletariat and transformed from a Marxist ruling party into a parliamentary party organizing presidential and parliamentary elections.

4. Economically: from “the higher the degree of public ownership, the better” to abandoning socialist public ownership and implementing full-scale privatization

The highly centralized planned economic system based on socialist public ownership during the Stalin period played a huge role in rapidly developing the Soviet Union’s social productive forces and boosting its comprehensive national strength, and provided a powerful material guarantee for victory in the anti-fascist war. After the end of the Second World War, in the peaceful construction environment, as economic exchanges became increasingly complex, the original ownership structure and economic operation mechanism increasingly could not meet the requirements of the Soviet Union’s further development, and their drawbacks in the economic and social fields became increasingly evident. In his later years, Stalin began to reflect on socialist economic issues such as commodity production and the law of value, and half a year before his death he realized that reform of the Soviet Union was inevitable.

After coming to power, Khrushchev attempted to reform the then highly centralized economic system. However, he fundamentally failed to see the essence of the Soviet Union’s economic problems; instead, he believed that “the higher the degree of public ownership, the better,” and, disregarding the stage of social development and the level of development of the productive forces, he rushed towards the transition to communism on the issue of ownership. Under Khrushchev’s direction, the “Program of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union” adopted by the 22nd CPSU Congress in 1961 explicitly stated: “As the transition to a single, all-people communist ownership and a communist system of distribution proceeds, commodity-money relations will economically become obsolete and wither away.”

Brezhnev took it for granted that the Soviet Union’s productive forces had become “highly developed,” its relations of production “highly mature,” and its politics “highly democratic,” and that “new, harmonious relations—relations of friendly cooperation—had emerged among all classes, social groups, and large and small nationalities” in the Soviet Union. This assessment was clearly too high.

By the time of Gorbachev, it swung to the other extreme. Gorbachev attacked the dominant position of public ownership as “economic monopoly,” claiming it hindered people’s free choice of forms of ownership of the means of production, “severed people’s connection with the means of production,” and shackled people’s labor initiative. He argued that the Soviet Union’s state ownership “is the foundation of the administrative-command system, a system that binds our entire society; without breaking this system, the country can never be revived or renewed,” and that reform’s “main and urgent task is to comprehensively reform ownership relations through the de-nationalization of property and the elimination of monopoly.”

Gorbachev also advocated for a free-market economy based on de-nationalization and privatization. In October 1990, in his report *Basic Guidelines for Stabilizing the National Economy and Transitioning to a Market Economy* delivered to the Supreme Soviet, he proposed a four-stage reform task: in the first stage, the “extraordinary measures plan,” it was necessary “to de-nationalize and privatize property and carry out land reform”; in the second stage, the “price formation mechanism,” it was necessary “to expand the scale of de-nationalization and implement the privatization of small enterprises”; in the third stage, “forming a market economy,” it was necessary “to support business activities, de-nationalization, privatization, and develop competition,” and “to free most enterprises from state control as quickly as possible and implement privatization”; in the fourth stage, the “completion stage” of “stabilizing the market,” “it is necessary to take great strides forward in de-monopolizing, de-nationalizing, and privatizing the economy.” It is evident that the essence of Gorbachev’s proposed transition to a market economy was to gradually lead the Soviet economy toward comprehensive privatization. Russian economist Oleg Pchelintsev pointed out that Gorbachev’s “de-nationalization is privatization, that is, capitalization. It can be said that de-nationalization is the primary form of privatization, and privatization is the advanced form of de-nationalization. At first they talked about de-nationalization, later they all talked about privatization.”

In April 1991, the Soviet government proposed an anti-crisis program that “stipulated comprehensive measures for de-nationalization and privatization of property,” including the de-nationalization of super-large enterprises of special significance to the entire country. On July 1 of the same year, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR passed the Law on Privatization. According to this law, state-owned enterprises were to be transformed into leasehold or collective enterprises, restructured into joint-stock companies, or sold by tender or auction. Under the policies and laws of the time, even if the Soviet Union had not disintegrated a few years later, its state-owned enterprises would have ceased to exist, and the socialist economic foundation would have completely collapsed.

After the “August 19” Incident [n20] in 1991, the “shock therapy” implemented by Russia and other newly independent states basically followed the direction set during the Gorbachev period, with severe consequences. In the later period of Gorbachev’s rule, the Soviet economy experienced negative growth, with an average annual economic growth rate of -9.6% from 1989 to 1991, reaching a record -13% in 1991. The “shock therapy” under Yeltsin openly allowed oligarchs to plunder and carve up state property. Gennady Zyuganov, leader of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, once pointed out that at that time a “big bourgeoisie that frantically plundered the people’s property and shipped it to the West” had formed in Russian society; this comprador class “controlled the basic industrial sectors, monopolized natural resources, banks, newspapers, television stations, radio stations, etc., and held state power; they are the main scourge that caused Russia to lose its great-power status and the people to become impoverished.” History textbooks from the Putin period refer to “shock therapy” as “a big scam” that robbed citizens.

5. Organizationally: From abandoning the Party’s nature as the vanguard of the working class, practicing cronyism and forming factions, to openly usurping the Party’s leadership

A specific organizational line always serves a specific political line; the political line determines the organizational line. The organizational line implemented by Soviet leaders after Stalin gradually became a political tool for forming cliques and organizing the destruction of the socialist system. From Khrushchev to the Gorbachev leadership group, the selection and appointment of cadres degenerated into cronyism, factionalism, and the formation of personal inner circles, becoming an instrument of sectarianism and a domain of family rule.

After Stalin’s death, with the criticism of the personality cult and arbitrary personal power, the CPSU Central Committee emphasized the implementation of collective leadership. However, collective leadership lasted only a few years before Khrushchev, through the execution of Beria and by branding CPSU leaders who defended Stalin’s historical status—such as Molotov, Malenkov, and Kaganovich—as an “anti-Party group,” eliminated dissenting opinions within the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee. With the fall of the “opposition” and the rise of Khrushchev’s personal power, collective leadership gradually became nominal. It was precisely for this reason that Khrushchev’s personal arbitrariness and authoritarian command were able to establish themselves, and many of his capricious, reckless, and impetuous decisions were implemented.

During the Brezhnev period, the criterion for selecting and removing members of the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee was simply whether they were personal confidants. Brezhnev graduated from the Dneprodzerzhinsk Metallurgical Institute and had long worked in Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine, as well as in Moldavia and Kazakhstan. The group of confidants who gathered around him, many of whom lacked both virtue and talent, were often former subordinates and friends from the places where he had studied and worked, known as the “Dnepropetrovsk Clique.” [n21] Nikolai Tikhonov, mediocre in both virtue and talent, was appointed Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR solely because he was Brezhnev’s fellow townsman and schoolmate. Deputy Chairmen of the Council of Ministers of the USSR such as Vladimir Novikov, Leonid Smirnov, Veniamin Dymshits, and Ivan Bodiul; First Deputy Chairman of the KGB Semyon Tsvigun and Deputy Chairmen Viktor Chebrikov and Georgy Tsinyov; Minister of Internal Affairs Nikolai Shchelokov; and First Secretary of Kazakhstan Dinmukhamed Kunayev—all were Brezhnev’s schoolmates, fellow townsmen, or former assistants and subordinates. The “Dnepropetrovsk Clique” held great power and enjoyed prominent status, virtually monopolizing all important power departments. For an official seeking promotion, the primary issue was not his own ability, but how to establish a connection with this “Dnepropetrovsk Clique.” Those Brezhnev did not trust, such as Alexander Shelepin, Nikolai Podgorny, Petro Shelest, Alexei Kosygin, and Gennady Voronov, were one by one squeezed out and then disappeared from the scene. Soviet diplomat Andrei Gromyko once privately lamented: “Our Politburo is like the Bermuda Triangle; some people suddenly appear here, and some people suddenly disappear here.”

Brezhnev’s son, Yuri Brezhnev, became Deputy Minister of Foreign Trade at 43 and was promoted to First Deputy Minister at 46; at the 26th Congress of the CPSU he was elected an alternate member of the Central Committee. Brezhnev’s son-in-law, Yuri Churbanov, rose from a low-ranking officer to the rank of General of the Army in just ten years, later becoming First Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs and being elected an alternate member of the Central Committee at the 26th Congress of the CPSU. Brezhnev’s four assistants — Andrei Alexandrov-Agentov, Anatoly Blatov, Viktor Golikov and Georgy Tsukanov — all entered the Central Committee at the 26th Congress of the CPSU. During the Brezhnev period, the promotion of cadres’ children was primarily due to their status and social connections, not to any outstanding talent. One insider revealed, “They live, receive treatment and rest in isolation, and within this stratum they often form their own family and clan relations — for the children of this stratum spend time together, know each other, and often intermarry.” Thus a new step was taken: “an attempt to establish a system of power transfer, or a system of privilege inheritance. That is, through the establishment of an educational system that exclusively admits these children, and then through a system of appointments and promotions, the goal of inheriting power is achieved.” Brezhnev also did not act in accordance with the Party’s democratic centralism. The 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was decided by just four people — Brezhnev, Defense Minister Dmitry Ustinov, Andrei Gromyko and Mikhail Suslov — who then informed the Politburo. On the surface, the Brezhnev leadership collective met regularly and acted according to rules, but in reality there was insufficient democracy and full discussion; basically, a few individuals or Brezhnev alone had the final say.

In order to rapidly evolve toward capitalism, Gorbachev started by adjusting organizational and personnel policies, scheming to push out those who adhered to the socialist path or were relatively upright. In March 1985, as soon as he came to power, he expelled Grigory Romanov, who posed the greatest potential threat to his position, from the Politburo; replaced Gromyko with Eduard Shevardnadze as Minister of Foreign Affairs; replaced Gorbachev’s most stubborn opponent, Nikolai Tikhonov, with Nikolai Ryzhkov as Premier; replaced Viktor Grishin with Boris Yeltsin as First Secretary of the Moscow City Committee; and promoted Yegor Ligachev, who at the time appeared to support him, to full member of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee. In the short year before the 27th Congress of the CPSU in February 1986, Gorbachev made one major personnel change after another. Of the 12 full members of the Politburo at the 27th Congress, only four remained from the 26th Congress, including Gorbachev himself and Gromyko, who had nominated him for the Party’s highest leadership post. During this period, senior leading cadres in various localities and departments also underwent large-scale replacement. By February 1986, among the 14 union republics (excluding the Russian Federation), 19 principal leaders of the republic-level Party Central Committees, Supreme Soviets and Councils of Ministers had been replaced, and over 40% of full Central Committee members were new faces. At the January 1987 Plenary Session of the CPSU Central Committee, Gorbachev, in his lengthy report “On Restructuring and the Party’s Cadre Policy,” proposed five criteria for selecting and appointing cadres, the primary one being attitude toward “restructuring.” That is, only those who supported his “restructuring” proposals could be promoted and given important posts. Thereafter, he repeatedly emphasized this personnel standard on various occasions. Guided by this cadre selection and appointment ideology, Gorbachev removed a large number of cadres. By early 1988, 66% of the personnel on the rolls in various ministries had been dismissed, transferred or laid off. All ministers, heads of Central Committee departments, and leaders of various committees were replaced, dismissed or shifted posts several times, with a cadre turnover rate exceeding 100%.

As a result, a large number of senior leading cadres within the CPSU who dared to uphold principles were successively removed, while those adept at flattery, trimming their sails, believing in so-called “humane, democratic socialism,” and viciously attacking Marxism and the socialist system — careerists and anti-communist, anti-socialist elements — were promoted and given important posts. For example, Ligachev, early in his tenure, received high praise from Gorbachev and was assigned to lead the CPSU’s ideological work, ranking second only to Gorbachev. But when Ligachev began to question or even express dissatisfaction with Gorbachev’s “restructuring” words and deeds that deviated from the socialist direction, Gorbachev changed his attitude completely, attacking Ligachev as a “conservative” opposing “restructuring” and a “hidden enemy of restructuring.” Under Gorbachev’s orchestration, after the “Andreyeva affair” [22]22 The “Andreyeva affair” refers to the publication in March 1988 of a letter by Leningrad teacher Nina Andreyeva in the newspaper *Sovetskaya Rossiya*, defending Stalin and criticizing Gorbachev’s reforms, which sparked a fierce ideological struggle within the CPSU., Ligachev was soon removed from his post overseeing the Central Committee’s ideological work, replaced by Alexander Yakovlev, who had completely sided with Gorbachev. In a commentary published after Gorbachev’s death, Gennady Zyuganov, Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, pointed out: “Since he (Gorbachev) came to power, nearly a hundred first secretaries and ministers have been expelled from the CPSU Central Committee. Gorbachev gathered around himself a group of utter traitors, such as Yakovlev, Shevardnadze, Yeltsin and Vadim Bakatin.”

Under the suppression of Gorbachev, Yakovlev and others, those like Ligachev and Ryzhkov, who out of loyalty to the cause of the Party and the people dared to speak frankly and offer remonstrance, were almost completely deprived of their right to freely express their views as Party members and cadres, let alone the right to criticize and supervise the Party’s leaders and leading bodies. This explains a question once raised by the American scholar David Kotz. In June 1991, a U.S. social survey agency conducted a survey on ideological issues in Moscow, targeting high-ranking Soviet Party and government officials wielding power. The results showed: approximately 9.6% held communist ideology, explicitly supporting the pre-“restructuring” socialist model; 12.3% held democratic socialist views, endorsing “restructuring” and hoping for the country’s democratization; and 76.7% believed that capitalism should be implemented. David Kotz thus asked: “As the longest-existing and most influential socialist state in the world, the Soviet Union, it is truly shocking that so many within the Party’s cadre ranks advocated taking the capitalist path.” The emergence of such a result is clearly directly related to Gorbachev’s use of organizational means to promote a large number of his confidants to important leading posts within the CPSU.

6. In work style: from formalism and bureaucracy to betraying and abandoning the fundamental interests of the masses

The construction of the Party’s work style is an important component of Party building. The mass line within the construction of the Party’s work style embodies the Party’s nature and purpose. The CPSU once attached great importance to the construction of its work style. The Party under Lenin’s period was a party of a truly Marxist nature. At that time, the CPSU, as the vanguard of the proletariat, adhered to the purpose of striving wholeheartedly for the liberation and happiness of the people, maintained close ties with the masses, firmly believed in and relied on the masses, united and led the broad masses of the people to achieve the great victory of the October Socialist Revolution, while simultaneously opening the great prelude to socialist construction and establishing immortal historical merits. During Stalin’s period, although the CPSU also had some problems such as being divorced from reality, the CPSU at that time generally inherited the fine traditions of the Party from Lenin’s period, maintained the Party’s distinct proletarian nature and the purpose of serving the people wholeheartedly, and carried forward the Party’s fine work styles such as integrating theory with practice, maintaining close ties with the masses, and criticism and self-criticism, thus achieving great accomplishments in socialist construction. However, the Soviet leaders after Stalin destroyed the Party’s work style, all embarking on the path of becoming divorced from the masses, suppressing the masses, and even becoming enemies of the people.

The most egregious manifestation of the CPSU’s work style under Khrushchev’s period was not only the incitement of anti-Stalin sentiment with many fabricated and exaggerated details, but also the brutal suppression of the masses who criticized his “secret report.” On March 4, 1956, the masses in Tbilisi, enraged by Khrushchev’s “secret report,” took to the streets to demonstrate, shouting “Long live Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin!” Khrushchev ordered the troops to open fire on the crowd, resulting in a bloody incident. From 1956 to 1957, under Article 58 of the Criminal Code, on charges of “anti-Soviet agitation,” as many as 3,380 people who were dissatisfied with Khrushchev were arrested, which was almost half of the total number of people arrested under this charge from 1953 to 1988.

Khrushchev himself often worked based on experience, acting on impulse, issuing coercive orders, and even acting on a whim, handling matters on the spur of the moment, thus doing many rash and absurd things. His copying of American agriculture’s large-scale corn planting was a big joke. He did not conduct investigation and research, but merely relied on administrative orders to blindly expand the corn planting area. Because the northern climate was unsuitable for corn growth, yields were very low, and the gains did not offset the losses. Kosygin later commented that this was a measure imagined and imposed by a leader, causing huge losses to the national economy. He also blindly advocated large-scale land reclamation, leading to tens of millions of mu of land being abandoned. He also interfered in the specific activities of agricultural production, groundlessly putting forward the slogan of agricultural leapfrogging in May 1957. Khrushchev’s arbitrary command, coercive orders, and policy mistakes led to drastic ups and downs in Soviet agricultural production. In the later period of his administration, agricultural growth was slow, and a serious food crisis emerged. From then on, the Soviet Union changed from a traditional grain exporter to a grain importer.

During Brezhnev’s period, the CPSU’s work style deteriorated day by day, and the problems of being divorced from reality and from the masses became increasingly serious. Bureaucratism was rampant, and cadres indulged in pleasure and lacked the drive to make progress became the norm. The bond between the Party and the masses became even more fragile, and the Party’s prestige continuously declined. Many masses developed political distrust towards the Soviet political institutions and Party-government officials, leading to the phenomenon of “night people” [23]23 “Night people” (夜间人) refers to those who publicly conformed to official ideology during the day but lived a private, dissident life at night, reading underground literature and criticizing the regime in private circles. The term was coined by Soviet dissidents in the Brezhnev era. — so-called “night people” refer to those who, during the day, publicly conform to official propaganda in every way, but at night live their own lives: reading underground publications, exchanging political jokes, discussing current affairs with friends and family, attacking the powerful, and venting their dissatisfaction with reality. — Author’s note.

The estrangement between the Party and the masses led to the decline of the Party’s vanguard role and combat effectiveness, the gradual fading of the masses’ sense of being masters of the country, the waning enthusiasm of the Soviet people for labor and construction, and the increasingly serious phenomena of absenteeism, work stoppages, and slowdowns. The unhealthy tendencies within the Party also polluted the whole society. Corruption, embezzlement, bribery, and graft became prevalent in society, and some disappointed people went along with the tide. This kind of behavior by superiors being imitated by subordinates led to a decline in public morals. A Russian scholar pointed out: “In the late 1970s, especially in the early 1980s, falsifying indicators, practicing fraud, stealing public property, and offering and accepting bribes had actually become mass phenomena.” The crime rate in the Soviet Union remained high, and many people regarded acquiring wealth as their sole goal, regardless of whether the means were legal.

The CPSU’s work style under Gorbachev’s period completely deviated from the nature, purpose, and goals of a Marxist political party. On the one hand, Gorbachev played a double-dealing game; on the other hand, he practiced a “one-man rule,” [24]24 “One-man rule” (一言堂, literally “one-word hall”) is a Chinese political term for a leadership style in which a single person monopolizes decision-making and suppresses dissenting views, in contrast to collective leadership. tolerating no dissenting opinions or voices. His political views were often inconsistent with the views of some people within the CPSU Politburo, and he did not exchange information with them. Many of his initiatives and promises were only learned by Politburo members from the newspapers. Even during meetings, he “was not good at, did not like, and was unwilling to listen to others’ opinions; he was only good at, only liked, and only willing to talk endlessly, just he alone rambled on and on, playing with words, painting a rosy picture of inherently empty and stereotyped ideas.” In the later period of Gorbachev’s reforms, the principle of collective leadership was further undermined. The Politburo did not meet for months on end, and everything was decided by him alone. Ryzhkov said that he “always liked to practice ‘one-man rule’.” Roy Medvedev also said that Gorbachev was “very autocratic,” “lacked democratic style in all the meetings he chaired,” and “often lost control when he heard opposing opinions or critical remarks.”

After copying the Western multi-party system and parliamentary democracy, representatives who opposed communism and socialism, representatives of ethnic separatist forces, and various opportunists and speculators were elected as CPSU delegates or people’s deputies at various levels in the Soviet Union. When the CPSU held its 27th Congress in February 1986, among the 5,000 delegates, there were still 1,705 worker delegates. However, by the time the CPSU held its 28th Congress in July 1990, among the 4,683 delegates attending the congress, there were only 543 worker delegates, less than one-third of the total worker delegates at the previous congress, accounting for only 11.6% of the total delegates; there were only 225 peasant delegates; and about 60% of the delegates were so-called “All-Union People’s Deputies” elected during Gorbachev’s “democratization” or “People’s Deputies” elected by the union republics and autonomous republics. These so-called “deputies,” while claiming to represent the people, were in fact engaged in activities that harmed the people’s interests. Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Director of the Institute of Socio-Political Research, Gennady Osipov, said that the Democratic Platform faction that emerged during Gorbachev’s tenure, “its representative Gavriil Popov said: ‘We do not consider the people; we deliberately want to create a state of total shortage.’”

Gorbachev’s severe corruption of the CPSU’s fine work style not only destroyed the Party’s cohesion but also further disintegrated its class foundation and mass base, causing the masses to completely lose trust in the Party. Ryzhkov once said with pain that the CPSU “by 1990 was slowly approaching death.” During Gorbachev’s tenure, the CPSU witnessed a rare wave of resignations from the Party. When the CPSU held its 27th Congress in February 1986, the total number of Party members was 19 million. By July 1, 1991, only 15 million CPSU members remained, falling back to the level of 1973. Even among those who did not leave the CPSU, their ideals and beliefs were generally shaken. They lacked trust in the CPSU and its leaders and felt confused about the future of the Party and the country. At that time, the director of an editorial department of a Moscow television station said: “I was once a glorious Communist Party member, always actively participating in various activities of the Party organization. However, Gorbachev and his ilk, under the banner of reform, were actually fighting for power and the presidency, never considering the wishes and demands of the broad masses of Party members and the people. They had long become a special bureaucratic stratum high above everyone else. With such leaders and such a bad Party work style, how could they possibly expect us to continue following them?”

7. Diplomacy: from fear of and rivalry with the United States to pandering to and capitulating before US-led Western imperialism

Foreign relations are an extension of domestic politics. Ever since socialist countries appeared on the earth, there have been various contradictions and conflicts between the two social systems of capitalism and socialism. The ruling party of a socialist country must be adept at seizing opportunities and adjusting policies to steer international relations as far as possible toward peace, development, and the progress of human civilization; at the same time, it must maintain a sober mind and fully recognize that various contradictions and struggles still exist between the two ideologies, the two social systems, and the two development paths on the international stage, with some contradictions being exceptionally acute.

After the end of the Stalin era, Soviet leaders, in handling relations with the United States, went through three stages: attempting to dominate the world through Soviet-US cooperation, vying with the United States for world hegemony, and capitulating to the United States while betraying the interests of the nation and its people.

On the question of the forms of transition of different countries to socialism, Khrushchev particularly emphasized the possibility of using the parliamentary road to transition to socialism. He said that in the world today, “the working class, as long as it unites the working peasantry, the intelligentsia, and all patriotic forces around itself, and resolutely strikes at those opportunist elements who cannot abandon the policy of compromise with capitalists and landlords, can defeat the reactionary, anti-popular forces, secure a stable majority in parliament, and transform parliament from an instrument of bourgeois democracy into a tool that truly represents the will of the people.” He added that with such a stable parliamentary majority, “it would be possible to create conditions for the working class of a series of capitalist countries and former colonial countries to carry out fundamental social transformation.”

Khrushchev’s theory of the “three peaces”[26]26 The “three peaces” (三和) refer to Khrushchev’s policy of “peaceful coexistence, peaceful competition, and peaceful transition” between socialist and capitalist systems, articulated at the 20th Congress of the CPSU in 1956., while recognizing that the two social systems had a side of mutually beneficial cooperation and proposing enhanced dialogue and peaceful coexistence, which helped stabilize the international situation at the time, nevertheless had a critical problem: the key issue was not whether a socialist country wanted peace or whether it should pursue “peaceful coexistence” and “peaceful competition” with capitalist countries, but whether the conditions and possibilities for realizing such aspirations existed at that time. Against the backdrop of the West having already launched and intensified its peaceful evolution strategy against the Soviet Union, Khrushchev’s proposal of “peaceful coexistence” and “peaceful competition” was nothing more than a wishful fantasy. And when fantasy turned into impractical practice, harm became unavoidable. Although Khrushchev restrained himself somewhat after encountering setbacks, this diplomatic line largely served to disarm the ideological thinking of the CPSU, thereby lacking necessary vigilance against the West and providing a breakthrough for hostile forces to implement their peaceful evolution strategy. An even more serious harm was that the CPSU thereafter failed to thoroughly recognize the essence of Khrushchev’s erroneous thinking, so much so that this erroneous thinking revived during the Gorbachev era.

Khrushchev’s enthusiasm for the parliamentary road also drew criticism and even opposition from most communist parties in other countries. The Communist Party of China held that Khrushchev only mentioned peaceful transition, not non-peaceful transition, and moreover described peaceful transition as “winning a majority in parliament and transforming parliament from an instrument of bourgeois dictatorship into a tool of genuine people’s power,” which in effect replaced the October Revolution road with the so-called “parliamentary road” of the Second International opportunists, distorting the fundamental principles of Marxism-Leninism on the state and revolution. It should be pointed out that the proposal of Khrushchev’s “peaceful transition” theory had a serious negative impact on the international communist movement at the time. Communist parties in the capitalist world split into two opposing camps along the line of whether to persist in armed struggle or take the parliamentary road, weakening their own strength. Moreover, from then on, more and more communist parties became enthusiastic about parliamentary struggle, treating those communist parties that still insisted on armed struggle as aliens, making them objects of ridicule and even attack. This was also a highly abnormal phenomenon.

7. Diplomacy: from fear of the United States and hegemonic rivalry to pandering to and capitulating before US-led Western imperialism

Foreign relations are an extension of domestic politics. Ever since socialist countries appeared on the earth, various contradictions and conflicts have existed between the two social systems of capitalism and socialism. The ruling party of a socialist country must both be adept at seizing opportunities and adjusting policies to steer international relations as far as possible toward peace, development and the progress of human civilization, and at the same time maintain a sober mind, fully recognizing that various contradictions and struggles still exist between the two ideologies, two social systems and two development paths on the international stage, with some contradictions even being exceptionally acute.

Gorbachev’s advocacy of the “humanization” of international relations objectively catered to and coordinated with the imperialist strategy of peaceful evolution. Soviet foreign policy gradually shifted from seeking cooperation with Western powers to submitting to the United States and its allies. In relations with the United States, the Soviet Union initially abandoned confrontation and sought cooperation, but as its domestic crisis deepened and pressure from the United States and other Western countries increased, Gorbachev made repeated major concessions, gradually becoming dependent on the United States and its allies. On issues such as disarmament, reduction of military spending, arms control, and nuclear weapons reduction, Gorbachev fully accepted U.S. demands, and even exceeded them to demonstrate “sincerity,” for example, by announcing in September 1991 the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Cuba. In negotiations between the Soviet Union and the United States on nuclear arms reduction, Gorbachev repeatedly violated the Soviet Union’s established negotiating bottom line, making unprincipled “impromptu” concessions to the United States. On April 14, 1987, Gorbachev held talks with U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz in the Kremlin on reducing intermediate-range missiles. The Soviet Union’s more than one hundred new CC-23 missiles, with a maximum range of less than 400 kilometers, did not fall within the category of intermediate-range missiles and were therefore not covered by the treaty to be signed. However, Shultz insisted on reducing the CC-23 missiles, and both the Soviet negotiators and military experts opposed this. When the talks reached an impasse, Gorbachev changed his position at the last moment and agreed to the U.S. demand. Shultz’s aides described Gorbachev’s sudden step at the last moment as “manna from heaven.” Similar incidents occurred repeatedly in U.S.-Soviet nuclear disarmament negotiations, to the extent that Shultz proudly reported to the U.S. government: “We made no concessions, yet what we obtained was unexpectedly abundant.” In its policy toward Eastern European countries, Gorbachev also adopted a completely hands-off approach. On the one hand, he stood by idly or even connived at anti-communist and anti-socialist activities within these countries; on the other hand, he tacitly accepted the demands of “democratic forces” in these countries to condemn and investigate the Soviet Union’s “historical crimes” and to reassess major events in their relations with the Soviet Union. This led to the collapse of the socialist camp formed by the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries. On July 1, 1991, the Warsaw Treaty Organization (commonly known as the Warsaw Pact) was formally dissolved. Ironically, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the opposing military bloc, not only did not dissolve with the Warsaw Pact but instead strengthened its military functions, becoming a military tool for Western powers to bully weak and small countries and pursue hegemonism and power politics after the Cold War. The military conflict that broke out between Russia and Ukraine on February 24, 2022, although having complex causes, undoubtedly originated from NATO’s breach of faith after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Ignoring Russia’s national security concerns and serious warnings, NATO expanded eastward five times. From 1999 to 2020, NATO not only admitted former Eastern European countries such as Hungary, the Czech Republic, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Slovenia, Montenegro, and North Macedonia, but also incorporated Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, which were originally part of the Soviet Union, under its command. NATO also planned to make Ukraine a member state without delay, extending its defense system to the Russia-Ukraine border. The North Atlantic Treaty stipulates that an armed attack against any member state shall be considered an attack against all member states. Ukraine’s accession to NATO would pose an unprecedented threat to Russia’s national security. After Ukraine refused to commit to abandoning NATO membership and declaring neutrality, and after Putin’s hopes for such commitments were dashed, he made the decision to send troops into Ukraine, having no other choice. The root cause of the Russia-Ukraine military conflict is that the hegemonic forces led by the United States, taking advantage of Russia’s decline after the collapse of the Soviet Union, kicked it when it was down and continuously compressed Russia’s strategic space. This also shows that NATO, going against the tide of history, continues to uphold Cold War thinking and pursue hegemony, becoming a source of trouble and a chief culprit affecting the security and stability of Europe and even the world.

In a commentary article after Gorbachev’s death, Gennady Zyuganov, Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, reviewed the process of Gorbachev’s dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, angrily condemning Gorbachev’s compromise and capitulation to the West and his betrayal of Soviet national interests. He pointed out: “In December 1989, Gorbachev met with U.S. President George H. W. Bush and Secretary of State James Baker in Malta… Gorbachev said to Bush for no reason: ‘We have decided to dissolve the Warsaw Pact and withdraw from Eastern Europe.’ Baker later recalled that after Gorbachev’s statement, the U.S. delegation even began to sweat, thinking that Gorbachev would immediately make higher demands, such as demanding that the United States dissolve NATO. But then Gorbachev surprised the U.S. side again, saying, ‘No, we are now promoting new thinking, so we dissolve the Warsaw Pact, and you can do whatever you want.’ The entire security system of the Soviet Union, for which 27 million of the motherland’s finest sons and daughters had fought bloodily, was thus buried. During the Great Patriotic War, almost every Soviet family had suffered losses.” [27]27 The Great Patriotic War (1941–1945) refers to the Soviet Union’s war against Nazi Germany during World War II, in which an estimated 27 million Soviet citizens died.

In May 1987, Mathias Rust, a young West German, flew his private plane to “visit” the Soviet Union and landed safely on Red Square in Moscow. This incident shocked the world, causing the superpower Soviet Union to lose face completely, and Soviet Defense Minister Sergei Sokolov was dismissed as a result. However, based on facts exposed by those involved after the collapse of the Soviet Union, it can be affirmed that Sokolov was unjustly wronged. The safe flight of Rust through Soviet airspace was tacitly approved by the Soviet “supreme leadership,” whose real purpose was to create a pretext to attack senior Soviet military commanders who opposed Gorbachev’s unilateral disarmament, thereby clearing the way for the future dissolution of the Warsaw Pact. According to Russian Colonel-General Leonid Ivashov, in February 1987, when Gorbachev summoned Defense Minister Sokolov, he withheld two air defense maps of the northwestern Soviet Union. Evidence suggests that these top-secret maps were provided at Gorbachev’s request, and Gorbachev illegally kept them, never returning them. Existing evidence shows that Rust’s flight path indicated he had precise knowledge of the locations of radio-location tracking stations in the northwestern Soviet Union. From this, it can be basically concluded that in the Rust incident, the senior Soviet leadership, headed by Gorbachev, was involved in a large-scale political conspiracy. Vladimir Kryuchkov, then Deputy Chairman of the KGB, stated that, on Gorbachev’s instructions, he ensured Rust’s flight to Moscow was carried out.

To win Western support and aid, Gorbachev also did his utmost to satisfy the demands of the United States and the West on domestic issues of the Soviet Union. During a visit to London in December 1984, Gorbachev showed Thatcher a Soviet military map marked with classified identifiers and indicating Soviet missile targets in Britain, and assured her that “all this must end, and must end as quickly as possible,” hinting that once in power he would take major “destructive” actions against his own country. Thatcher was pleasantly surprised and called Gorbachev “a man we can do business with.” This was even more evident on the issue of allowing the independence of the three Baltic states. The two US-Soviet summit meetings in Reykjavik in October 1986 and in Malta in December 1989 had already touched on the sensitive issue of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia seceding from the Soviet Union. According to official Soviet reports, the Gorbachev-Reagan Reykjavik summit ended without result, but Valery Ivanov, a Lithuanian law enforcement officer, confirmed that in 1989 he saw a pamphlet in Lithuanian published by the Vatican. According to its contents, among the four issues discussed in the secret Gorbachev-Reagan talks at Reykjavik, the third was the secession of the three Baltic republics from the Soviet Union. As for the US-Soviet summit in Malta in 1989, the memoirs of Jack Matlock Jr., the last US ambassador to the Soviet Union, state that during the talks “Bush called Gorbachev’s attention to the fact that the United States had never recognized and still did not recognize the Soviet annexation of the Baltic states.” The US president clearly implied that Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia were not inherent territories of the Soviet Union, and that he stood on the side of the forces struggling for secession. Gorbachev offered no rebuttal whatsoever to the US president’s words that interfered in Soviet internal affairs, merely lightly “explaining to the US president the special nature of the Soviet situation,” and even assured him that the handling of the issue of these three states would be limited to non-violent means. This indicates that Gorbachev and Bush reached a secret oral agreement at Malta: Gorbachev promised not to use force, while Bush promised that the United States would not create more problems for Gorbachev. After the Malta meeting, separatist forces in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia accelerated their pace of secession from the Soviet Union. Anatoly Gromyko, son of Andrei Gromyko, believed that Gorbachev had completely lost at Malta, and that the Malta meeting was “the Munich of the Soviet Union.” [28]28 The “Munich of the Soviet Union” refers to the 1938 Munich Agreement, in which Britain and France appeased Nazi Germany by ceding the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia, a byword for a shameful capitulation to an aggressor.

When the Soviet Union was beset with difficulties both at home and abroad, Gorbachev even stooped to begging the West at the cost of national dignity. In July 1991, Gorbachev attended the G7 summit in an informal capacity. Before his departure, Gorbachev hastily sent a 23-page Soviet “reform plan” to the G7 leaders, hoping that Western countries would increase investment in the Soviet Union, provide large quantities of consumer goods, and cancel or postpone the Soviet Union’s $65 billion foreign debt. Submitting a country’s internal affairs to discussion by Western countries was in itself an act of surrendering sovereignty and humiliating the nation. However, faced with this humiliating plan (then called the “begging plan”), the Western bigwigs answered, “No money!” US President Bush was even more blunt, saying that the leaders attending the summit “will not do anything that suggests we are neglecting the development of democratic institutions in Eastern Europe in order to aid the Soviet Union. This is not the time for a blank check.”

Gorbachev’s “new thinking” in foreign policy essentially completely negated the Marxist theory of class struggle, abandoned the basic Marxist views on international issues, forfeited autonomous power, and caused the Soviet Union to tie its own hands and willingly concede defeat when facing the offensive of the international bourgeoisie. Even bourgeois politicians saw this with perfect clarity.

Jack Matlock Jr. pointed out: “The theory of class struggle was the central concept underlying the Leninist view of state evolution and the Cold War with the West. Without it, the rationale for the Cold War would no longer exist, and the theoretical basis for one-party dictatorship would also disappear.” “Until this theory [referring to the theory of class struggle — author’s note] was truly officially abandoned, any changes indicating an improvement in our relations could be illusory, at best temporary.” “As long as the Soviet Union did not abandon the ideological core of its system — the concept of class struggle — the Cold War would never end. And once it did abandon it, the system itself would no longer have any theoretical basis.” He also specifically mentioned: “If the Soviet leaders really were willing to discard this concept [referring to class struggle — author’s note], then it would not matter whether they continued to call their guiding ideology ‘Marxism.’ This would be a different kind of ‘Marxism’ practiced in a different kind of society. This different kind of society is one that we can all recognize.”

Another famous American politician, Zbigniew Brzezinski, had already identified the essence of Gorbachev’s “reform” as early as 1989. He said: “The new Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, has gradually embarked on a revisionist path in the process of reform… He intends not only to change the Soviet economic structure, but also to modify the ideological foundations of the Soviet system, and even to alter the Soviet political process to a certain extent.” “The impact of a revisionist General Secretary appearing in the Kremlin is enormous.” “Its particularly grave danger lies in undermining the common Marxist-Leninist theory of world communism.” One day, the CPSU would “lose its monopoly control over society,” and “the Soviet Union could disintegrate at any time.”

8. In terms of outlook on life: from individualism pursuing personal advancement and privileged enjoyment for one’s small family to careerists and conspirators who subvert the Party and state

The essence of the outlook on life and values is the question of “for whom.” We often speak of world outlook, outlook on life, and values. In a certain sense, among these “three outlooks,” the outlook on life is decisive. The outlook on life connects world outlook on one side and values on the other, just as General Secretary Xi Jinping said about buttoning the first button when putting on a shirt. [29]29 Xi Jinping’s metaphor about buttoning the first button of a shirt refers to the importance of getting the initial step in life correct, especially for young people in forming their values. If Party members and cadres only consider personal advancement and a good life for their own small families, pursuing material enjoyment, then under specific conditions this will inevitably lead to forming cliques for selfish interests, and even developing into careerists and conspirators. The internet once disclosed a piece of news: Khrushchev’s son, Leonid Khrushchev, during a battle in 1943, lost contact with his unit while piloting his aircraft, and was later confirmed to have been captured by the Germans and surrendered. After Stalin learned of this, he ordered Leonid to be escorted back to the Soviet Union, and the Soviet counterintelligence forces carried out their mission. After Leonid returned to the country, on the issue of sentencing, Stalin demanded discussion within the Soviet leadership. Beria pointed out that Leonid’s criminal facts had already been established, and that he had been pardoned twice before, so he could no longer be pardoned now. Malenkov, Kaganovich and others all agreed to sentence Leonid to death. The Moscow military court quickly issued a death sentence, and Leonid was executed. Some believe that Khrushchev harbored a grudge over this, and after coming to power, he not only launched the “de-Stalinization” campaign but also took revenge on Beria, Malenkov and others who had agreed to Leonid’s death sentence.

After becoming General Secretary of the Party, Brezhnev let out a long sigh and said: “I’ve finally made it to this day!” When his mother came from the countryside to visit him, he proudly showed her his fine furniture and luxurious villa, looking thoroughly content. “Brezhnev’s lifestyle, words and deeds had an impact on those around him and on the entire Party leadership.” Brezhnev used his position to enjoy privileges no one else could match. His passion for hunting, living in luxury villas and collecting high-end cars was well known. Brezhnev also liked all kinds of expensive gifts; the presents he received could be said to be “countless.” These were not his personal property and should have been turned over to the state, but Brezhnev kept most of them for himself. Brezhnev’s granddaughter, recalling her grandfather’s life, once mentioned that the collection of high-end cars he owned numbered as many as a hundred. Brezhnev believed that “the ‘shadow economy,’ the plundering of public facilities, and bribery among cadres were all normal.”

Brezhnev’s connivance and indulgence toward the corruption of his close associates and relatives was even more widely known. In the late 1970s, KGB head Yuri Andropov prepared to launch a campaign against graft and corruption, but Brezhnev opposed it. He would not allow Andropov to investigate the serious corruption within the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which was controlled by Shchelokov. When Andropov submitted a report reflecting the domestic corruption situation to Brezhnev, Brezhnev was very displeased. He changed his previously warm relationship with Andropov, refusing to meet with him for three full months and even declining to take his phone calls. Only after Andropov revised the report’s content into a cheerful bulletin announcing that all was well did Brezhnev restore good relations with him.

On the one hand, Brezhnev and his close associates constantly increased the types of privileges; on the other hand, they rarely stopped, and even indulged and encouraged, the pursuit of privileges by cadres at all levels. This led to a growing number of Party and government officials enjoying privileges, gradually forming a privileged stratum. Gorbachev’s wife, Raisa Gorbacheva, later recalled: “After moving to Moscow in 1978, I made many discoveries. One of them was this: certain state leaders, including Party leaders, in addition to possessing state-supplied dachas, had also built private villas, and built private villas for their children and grandchildren at the same time. This extravagance and audacity shocked me.”

The pursuit of a privileged life by the top leadership of the CPSU, headed by Brezhnev, served as a kind of “role model” that encouraged corruption within the Party. After Gorbachev came to power, his first thought was to seek benefits for himself and his family; the first family lived an extravagant and ostentatious life. As soon as Gorbachev took over as General Secretary, he instructed his subordinates to build new luxury villas and other vacation facilities by the seaside. The six-room official residence of Gorbachev on Lenin Hills was particularly eye-catching; pedestrians could see it from a distance, and it became a tourist attraction in Moscow.

According to the recollections of Boldin, a secretary of the CPSU Central Committee and head of Gorbachev’s office, from January 1991 onward, people were constantly discussing the difficulties facing the country. The country was in political and economic crisis. Some warned that the national economy was sliding and that the Union itself might collapse. However, “the President was thinking about other things: he was frantically trying by every means to raise his currently very low approval rating, preparing to publish his new book, and helping his wife publish her autobiography. Someone had already promised to pay Raisa a large sum of cash immediately for this book, and work on publishing their other writings was also underway. Raisa’s book was to be published and distributed in the Soviet Union; she often called me to ask which publishing house would be most suitable for her debut work.” Although “the President’s family would also face difficult times, they had hard currency deposited in banks. The royalties from Gorbachev’s works, plus the copyright fees paid to him by the Union Copyright Agency, had already funneled over one million US dollars into his account. He had received many gifts made of precious metals, various hard-currency awards, and he had other property besides. I became vigilant, wanting to know whether the President cared about the fate of the country, whether he could find time to deal with the affairs of state and the economic and social predicaments facing the people.”

The rulers of the Gorbachev period, taking advantage of the privatization reforms, damaged public interests for private gain, turned public property into private property, and voraciously devoured public assets. The fruits of several generations’ hard struggle in the Soviet Union were, in an instant, turned into wealth in the pockets of a few. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, more than 40% of Russia’s business elite came from former CPSU bureaucrats. Among the owners of the 100 largest private enterprises in Russia in 1992–1993, former Party and government elites, entrepreneurs, bankers and their families accounted for 62%.

The new bourgeoisie spawned by the reforms became the class base that destroyed the CPSU and disintegrated the Soviet Union. In analyzing the reasons for the Soviet Union’s dissolution, Ligachev remarked with emotion that no objective reasons for the Soviet Union’s collapse existed; it was basically subjective reasons. First and foremost was the degeneration of the top leadership. They were primarily concerned with enriching themselves and their families, wanting to rule the people without limit; they later all became millionaires, multi-millionaires, or even billionaires. These were people represented by Gorbachev and Yeltsin. This wealth was obtained by plundering the people’s wealth. They had a strong, desperate desire to possess private wealth, but at that time the Soviet Party and people would not allow it.

Osipov said: “From Khrushchev’s time onward, the leadership of our Party began to rot. What was the main purpose of these people who infiltrated the Party and constantly sought to rise higher? After joining the Party, it meant they could go hunting in Africa, arrange things for their sons and grandsons, and take care of their own families. The degeneration and eventual disintegration of the Communist Party actually occurred at the most basic level—the family.”

David Kotz analyzed profoundly: “Although the material interests of the Soviet elite had greatly increased, compared with the elites of Western capitalist countries, the privileges they enjoyed in material terms paled in comparison”; “Under the Soviet system, the income gap between the upper and lower strata of society was much smaller than under the capitalist system”; “Under the Soviet system, the salary of the top leader was 8 times that of an ordinary industrial worker”; “the compensation of a general manager of a large enterprise was about 4 times that of an ordinary industrial worker”; while the income of top American elites was 150 to over 400 times that of ordinary workers; “Under the Soviet socialist system, accumulating material wealth through legal channels was almost impossible. Soviet leaders who had accumulated material wealth were always fearful, afraid that one day they would be discovered or prosecuted.” Therefore, “the collapse of the Soviet system” “originated from the pursuit of personal interests by its own ruling elite.”

Once extreme individualists climb to high positions in the Party and state, they inevitably degenerate into careerists and conspirators, becoming the most important and most dangerous enemies within a Marxist ruling party. It is precisely for this reason that Comrade Mao Zedong, in his struggle against the Lin Biao counter-revolutionary clique [30]30 Lin Biao was a former Vice Chairman of the CPC and designated successor to Mao Zedong. He died in a plane crash in 1971 after an alleged failed coup attempt, and was subsequently denounced as the head of a counter-revolutionary clique., repeatedly admonished senior Party cadres: “Practise Marxism, not revisionism; unite, don’t split; be open and aboveboard, don’t intrigue and conspire.” [31]31 This is a famous three-part slogan Mao Zedong used during the Cultural Revolution to denounce Lin Biao and other political opponents.

Some domestic scholars claim that Khrushchev’s “secret report” at the 20th Congress of the CPSU in 1956 was entirely in accordance with organizational procedure. This claim is not factual. The Russian historian Nikolai Barsukov, as early as 1996, on the basis of a careful study of the complete recordings of Khrushchev’s memoirs and declassified archival materials, reached the following conclusion: when the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee made the decision to submit a report on the cult of personality to the Congress and to announce this decision to the Central Committee plenum, what had been prepared at that time was only the investigative report drafted by Pyotr Pospelov; much of the content of the report later delivered at the closed session was added privately by Khrushchev and a few others. Moreover, the session at which the “secret report” was delivered was not presided over by the Presidium of the 20th Congress of the CPSU but by the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee. Afterwards, many people asked: was this a continuation of the 20th Congress or some other meeting? The renowned Russian theorist Richard Kosolapov stated that Khrushchev’s “secret report” “was concocted by a small handful of people and brought to the Congress without collective consent,” and that “his actions were in essence an anti-Party act,” therefore “strictly speaking, the so-called ‘line of the 20th Congress’ or ‘spirit of the 20th Congress’ that was later loudly proclaimed never acquired legal status within the Party.” Many people at home and abroad primarily remember Khrushchev for the crude, candid image of banging his shoe on the podium at the United Nations, but know little of his other side as a conspirator. For example, in March 1939, during his roughly twenty-minute speech at the 18th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), Khrushchev warmly praised Stalin 32 times and ended with the shout: “Long live the greatest genius of humanity, the teacher and leader who guides us victoriously toward communism, our dear Stalin!” In December of the same year, in an article written to celebrate Stalin’s 60th birthday, he flattered: “The peoples of the Soviet Union regard Stalin as their friend, father, and leader.” On Stalin’s 70th birthday in 1949, Khrushchev “extolled” Stalin thus: “Glory to our own biological father, the wise teacher, the genius leader of the Party, the Soviet people, and the working people of the whole world, Comrade Stalin!” He changed “father” to the cloying “biological father.” But after Stalin’s death, in the 1956 “secret report,” Khrushchev denounced Stalin as a “tyrant,” “executioner,” and “inhuman.” Stalin certainly bore important, even primary, leadership responsibility for the excesses of the purges of those years, but Khrushchev and others, at least in order to claim personal merit and rewards, bore important, even primary, direct responsibility for those excesses. In 1937, when Khrushchev was serving as Moscow city party secretary, he called the Moscow Internal Affairs Directorate every day to press for arrests: “Moscow is the capital; it cannot lag behind Kaluga or Ryazan.” He also said: “We must destroy these scoundrels… without so much as a tremor of the hand, stepping over the corpses of enemies to advance for the sake of the people.” By the end of 1937, 35 of the 38 Moscow oblast and city party secretaries had been purged, and 136 of the 146 district and city party secretaries had been arrested. The Russian historian Yuri Zhukov verified in Soviet archives that during his work in Moscow, Khrushchev approved the shooting of 8,500 people, and after being transferred to Ukraine, he requested the shooting or imprisonment of 30,000 people. Even harder to imagine is that after coming to power, Khrushchev used his authority to instruct his confidants to directly destroy documents and materials concerning his involvement in the repressions; the destroyed materials filled as many as eleven paper bags. While Khrushchev desperately tried to whitewash himself, he equally desperately blackened Stalin. In 1937, in light of the evolving situation, Stalin pointed out: “The more victories we achieve, the more vicious the remnants of the defeated exploiting classes will become, and the more they will resort to sharper forms of struggle.” Here, Stalin was speaking of “remnants of the exploiting classes” and “sharper forms of struggle,” but Khrushchev distorted this into Stalin’s so-called absurd theory that “the closer to socialism, the more enemies” and “class struggle will become increasingly acute.” Many people, without checking Stalin’s original text, have spread this falsehood fabricated by Khrushchev.

Gorbachev was likewise a conspirator. At the April 1985 plenum of the CPSU Central Committee, he solemnly declared that Lenin’s doctrine “was and remains for us a guide to action, a source of inspiration, and a reliable compass for determining strategy and tactics in our advance.” Thereafter, on various occasions and in different settings, he repeatedly and deliberately expressed his loyalty to Lenin. In 1987, in his just-published *Perestroika and New Thinking*, Gorbachev was still compelled to say: “The works of V. I. Lenin, Lenin’s ideas on socialism, remain for us an inexhaustible source of dialectical creative thought, theoretical wealth, and political far-sightedness”; “Lenin continues to live in the hearts of hundreds of millions of people.” He also said: “We measure all our achievements and mistakes by the yardstick of socialism. Whoever hopes that we will leave the socialist path will be deeply disappointed.” But at the very same time, he used Lenin to attack Stalin, claiming that everything he did was to restore Leninist principles and traditions. Gorbachev’s aide Vadim Zagladin said: “At that time Gorbachev could not speak frankly and tell the truth; he knew that the majority of the Politburo and the Central Committee did not support his position. Gorbachev himself admitted this. He had to become something like a cunning fox, unable to say everything, sometimes having to say one thing while doing another.” And so Gorbachev did. In July 1990, when the 28th Congress of the CPSU was convened, Gorbachev considered the time ripe and no longer emphasized the guiding role of Marxism-Leninism, but merely stressed freeing it from “dogmatic interpretation” and “creatively developing” it. In fact, what Gorbachev constantly enriched, perfected, and developed was nothing other than his so-called “humane, democratic socialism,” whose philosophical foundation was abstract humanitarianism, and which in essence was merely an attack on Marxism-Leninism as being neither humane nor democratic.

The descent from extreme individualism into careerists and conspirators is by no means merely an expression of trivial personal desires; it is equally the political representation of a particular decadent class and its ideological tendencies. Lu Xun once said: “Playing tricks has its art, and it can be effective, but only to a limited extent.” Throughout history, at home and abroad, all careerists and conspirators who betray the people have ultimately been, or will be, nailed to the pillar of historical shame. This is the confidence of our history and our people. This confidence is as calm, natural, strong, and resolute as the sun and moon crossing the sky and rivers flowing across the earth.

Shortly before the collapse of the CPSU, the results of a survey conducted by relevant institutions showed that 85% of respondents believed the CPSU mainly represented the interests of bureaucrats, cadres, and functionaries. When the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was no longer the vanguard of the Soviet working class, no longer the representative of the interests of the Soviet people, it becomes understandable that CPSU members did not step forward to defend the interests of the Party and the state, but looked on with indifference as the CPSU gradually headed toward its death.

(II) A Brief Analysis of Twelve Other Views in the Study of the Causes of the Soviet Union’s Party Collapse and State Disintegration

In the more than thirty years since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, political and academic circles at home and abroad have explored and studied the causes of the CPSU’s collapse and the Soviet Union’s disintegration from multiple perspectives and dimensions. Opinions are numerous and conclusions varied; a detailed list would yield over fifty. Here, we select only the following twelve for brief analysis.

1. “The Original Sin of the October Revolution”

Some so-called scholars at home and abroad argue that the October Revolution was a forcibly manufactured revolution, not only a "premature birth" but also filled with "original sin" from the day of its birth. The essence of this view is to question and deny, from the very source, the historical inevitability of the Russian October Socialist Revolution, and to question and deny the historical legitimacy of the existence and development of Soviet socialism. In fact, the October Revolution was by no means, as some with ulterior motives claim, a revolution deliberately "manufactured" by the Bolsheviks. It was the product of extremely acute class contradictions in Russian society and the maturation of the subjective and objective conditions for revolution in Russia. It was the result of the active choice of the Russian people under the guidance of Leninism, the choice of history, and the choice of the people.

2. The "Stalin Model Rigidity" Thesis

Some scholars attribute the main cause of the Soviet Union's disintegration to the Stalin model. In their view, the highly centralized political and economic system formed in the Stalin era severely suffocated the vitality and dynamism of Soviet socialism, severely hindered the display of socialism's superiority, and ultimately led to the outcome of the CPSU's demise and the Soviet Union's disintegration. This view exaggerates the problems of the Stalin model and its role in the collapse of the Soviet Union and the demise of the CPSU, confuses the superiority of the socialist system with specific institutional and mechanistic shortcomings, and denies the historical achievements of the Stalin model and its socialist nature. On the one hand, the socialist practice of the Stalin era achieved great successes, and the highly centralized political and economic system played a huge role; on the other hand, the problems existing in the original Soviet system and mechanisms only indicated the necessity of carrying out reforms, and did not mean that the Soviet Union was inevitably doomed to collapse and the CPSU to demise. Among the scholars holding the aforementioned view, some attempt to completely negate the Soviet socialist system and absolve Gorbachev of his crimes.

3. The "Ethnic Conflict Determinism" Thesis

Some scholars believe that the principle of national self-determination and the federal state form proposed by Lenin strengthened national consciousness and ethnic sentiments, while the Soviet Constitution retained the right of each constituent republic to freely secede from the Union, thus laying the groundwork for the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Putin also believes that Lenin's idea of national autonomy, by granting constituent republics the right to secede from the Soviet Union, ultimately led to the Soviet Union's disintegration, stating that "it was like a nuclear bomb placed under the 'Russian' building, and later this nuclear bomb exploded." He also considers this "Lenin's biggest mistake," arguing that "Lenin's principle of state-building was not only a mistake, but worse than a mistake." The implication is that the disintegration of the Soviet Union began with Lenin's idea of national self-determination and the Soviet Constitution that left a loophole. The above view does not conform to the facts. First, the basic spirit of Lenin's thought on the right of nations to self-determination was to uphold the rights of oppressed nations and oppose the imposition of the will of large nations, especially the Russian nation, on other weaker and smaller nations. During the process of the October Revolution, the Bolshevik Party, precisely by upholding the slogan of the right to national self-determination, supported the national liberation struggles of non-Russian ethnic groups against the autocratic system of Tsarist Russia, and created the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. On this basis, in 1922, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (abbreviated as the Soviet Union) was formed according to the principle of voluntariness. The 1924 Soviet Constitution affirmed that "the Union is a voluntary union of equal nations" and stipulated in Article 4 that "each Union Republic retains the right to freely secede from the Union." This was based on the right to national self-determination and the historical facts of the Soviet Union's formation, and was also intended to prevent the resurgence of Great Russian chauvinism from destroying the new union state. Second, during the Stalin period, including the Khrushchev and Brezhnev periods, although there were many contradictions and frictions among the various ethnic groups within the Soviet Union, sometimes some contradictions were quite acute, overall they were united, fraternal, and full of centripetal force. The West only had doubts about the sovereignty of the three Baltic states annexed into the Soviet Union in 1940, but recognized the Soviet Union formed in 1922. Finally, the intensification of ethnic contradictions in the Soviet Union and the increased centrifugal tendencies of the constituent republics occurred during the Gorbachev period. This was caused by Gorbachev's erroneous reforms and mistaken ethnic policies, because the fundamental bond uniting the Soviet Union's various ethnic groups—the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Marxism, and socialism—was dismantled by the Gorbachev leadership group. The ideological, political, and economic foundations on which the Union depended for its existence were completely destroyed. Against this backdrop, ethnic separatist forces, using the name of the people and the constitutional right of constituent republics to freely secede from the Union, openly disintegrated the Soviet Union. In fact, the Soviet Constitution also contained basic principles for maintaining the unity of all ethnic groups and the unity of the union state; however, these principles were cast aside by Gorbachev and the ethnic separatist forces.

4. The "Arms Race Dragged Down" Thesis

Some scholars attribute the disintegration of the Soviet Union to the arms race between the Soviet Union and the United States, arguing that the arms race increased the burden on the Soviet people, intensified contradictions within the Soviet Union, led to economic depression and national exhaustion, and ultimately dragged down the Soviet Union. The arms race with Western military blocs did indeed bring certain difficulties to the Soviet Union's economic and social development. However, this was generally a matter of national strategy, which could have been addressed by adjusting strategic goals, reducing military spending, and other measures to align the country's military strength with the level of national economic development, ensuring that national defense construction did not exceed the affordable limits of human and financial resources. In fact, by the Gorbachev period, the Soviet Union had completely abandoned its strategy of competing for hegemony with the United States and other Western military blocs, and had fully withdrawn its troops from Eastern Europe and other countries. Not engaging in the arms race did not save the Soviet Union from its fate of collapse.

5. The "Economy Not Managed Well" Thesis

Some scholars, ignoring the enormous achievements the Soviet Union made over a long period in developing its economy and raising the living standards of its people, one-sidedly attribute the disintegration of the Soviet Union to the socialist economic system, arguing that the rigid economic system of the Soviet Union led to economic stagnation and low living standards for the people. This view fails to recognize that the Soviet economy only experienced a slowdown in growth after the mid-1970s. Even in the early period of Gorbachev's rule, the Soviet economy still had a growth rate of no less than 2%. The severe recession and collapse of the Soviet economy occurred in the later period of Gorbachev's rule, that is, starting from 1989, the Soviet economy experienced negative growth, and by 1991, the negative growth rate reached 13%. This was clearly not caused by the rigid Soviet economic system, but rather by the serious consequences of Gorbachev's erroneous reform line, including his mistaken economic reform policies.

6. The "Communist Utopia" Thesis

This view attributes the disintegration of the Soviet Union to the guiding ideology of the CPSU, arguing that communism is an impossible "utopia" to realize, and therefore the Soviet Union was inevitably headed for collapse. This view was mainly put forward by Gorbachev and Western anti-communist forces. It fundamentally denies that communism is the goal of the Marxist scientific worldview and the trend of human social development, instead viewing the disintegration of the Soviet Union as an abandonment of the communist "utopia" and a return to a "normal society."

7. The "People Abandoned" Thesis

Some scholars believe that the people's distrust of the CPSU caused it to lose its ruling legitimacy, and this was the main reason for the CPSU's loss of power. In fact, the Soviet people's abandonment of the CPSU was the result of the degeneration of the leadership group from Khrushchev to Gorbachev, not the cause of the CPSU's demise and the Soviet Union's disintegration. One must clearly recognize the nature of the CPSU during the Gorbachev period. At this time, although the name of the CPSU had not changed, it was no longer the CPSU that believed in Marxism-Leninism in the original sense, but a CPSU that believed in so-called "humane, democratic socialism." At this point, the CPSU had essentially become a social democratic party that did not represent the fundamental interests of the broad masses of the Soviet people but only the interests of a tiny minority. Its abandonment by the Soviet people was entirely reasonable and expected. The degeneration of the leadership group from Khrushchev to Gorbachev in ideology and politics was the root cause of the Soviet Union's collapse and the CPSU's demise. That such a party was ultimately abandoned by the people was an inevitable result. When analyzing root causes, one must not reverse cause and effect.

8. The "External Factors Determinism" Thesis

Some scholars regard the long-term peaceful evolution strategy [35]35 “Letting a hundred flowers bloom and a hundred schools of thought contend” (双百方针) is a policy for promoting progress in the arts and sciences, first proposed by Mao Zedong in 1956. pursued by the US-led Western hostile forces against the Soviet Union as the fundamental cause of the Soviet Union’s disintegration. This view one-sidedly emphasises the role of external factors while ignoring that external factors take effect through internal ones. Without the betrayal and collaboration of the top echelons of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) represented by Gorbachev, and without the fanning of flames by the “democratic” separatist forces in Soviet society represented by Yeltsin, the Western strategy of peaceful evolution against the Soviet Union could never have been realised.

9. “The One-Party Dictatorship Theory”

Some scholars believe that the real reason for the collapse of the CPSU and the disintegration of the Soviet Union was the CPSU’s long-term one-party rule and monopoly of political power. This view completely reverses right and wrong. The CPSU had been in power for nearly 70 years without suffering the tragedy of the collapse of the Party and the state. It was precisely during the Gorbachev period, through amending the constitution to abolish the CPSU’s ruling status and introducing a multi-party system, separation of powers, parliamentary democracy, and a presidential system in the Soviet Union, that the collapse of the CPSU and the disintegration of the Soviet Union were ultimately brought about.

10. “The Gorbachev Traitor Sole Responsibility Theory”

Some people place all the blame for the collapse of the CPSU and the disintegration of the Soviet Union solely on Gorbachev, arguing that the Soviet Union’s disintegration was not a historical inevitability, and that the fundamental cause was the emergence of Gorbachev as a traitor to Marxism, socialism, communism, and the fundamental interests of the masses. This does not conform to the basic viewpoint of historical materialism, and it objectively absolves the leadership groups of Khrushchev and Brezhnev of their responsibility in the collapse of the CPSU and the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Engels clearly pointed out: “The main characters are representatives of definite classes and tendencies, and hence of definite ideas of their time, and their motives do not arise from trivial personal desires but precisely from the historical currents in which they are situated.” [36]36 Historical nihilism (历史虚无主义) is a term used by the CPC to criticise approaches to history that it considers to deny the progressive nature of the Chinese revolution and the leadership of the CPC. With the Khrushchev leadership group’s complete negation of Stalin and its beginning to deviate from and abandon Marxism, socialism, communism, and the fundamental interests of the masses, it was, in a certain sense, inevitable that the Gorbachev leadership group would grow as the “seedling” of a traitor and bear this poisonous fruit. Under the historical conditions of the time, even if Gorbachev had not appeared, a similar figure would have emerged.

11. “The Soviet Disintegration Progress Theory”

Some scholars, completely taking the standpoint of Western hostile forces, ignore the catastrophic consequences of the Soviet Union’s disintegration for the Russian people and for the world at large, and instead regard the Soviet Union’s disintegration as a “historical progress,” claiming that it allowed the Soviet Union to emerge from “historical errors” and return to the “correct track of civilisational development.” Other scholars believe that the Soviet Union’s disintegration alleviated the military pressure China faced and improved China’s security environment. This view only sees the impact of the Soviet Union’s disintegration in certain individual aspects and fails to comprehensively and holistically analyse its impact and harm from the perspective of world socialism and the cause of human progress. Even with regard to Sino-Soviet relations, there was the possibility that the Soviet Union could have corrected its mistakes and brought bilateral relations back onto the right track. The history of interactions among socialist states fully demonstrates this. Moreover, after Gorbachev came to power, there were already signs of a thaw in Sino-Soviet relations. It is not difficult to see that resolving the contradictions and conflicts between China and the Soviet Union and eliminating the threat to China from the north did not require

12. “The Theory of a Confluence of Various Factors”

Some scholars believe that the collapse of the Soviet Union was not the result of a single factor, but the outcome of the mutual influence and combined effect of multiple factors. This “theory of a confluence of various factors” synthesises the various factors that caused the collapse of the Soviet Union, and has its rationale and merits. However, it is far from sufficient merely to list the various factors behind the collapse of the Soviet Union without distinguishing the primary from the secondary. One should delve into research and analysis to identify the most important and decisive factor that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union, namely, the principal contradiction, and especially the principal aspect of the principal contradiction and its transformation. The qualitative determination of any thing is decided by the principal contradiction within that thing, and especially by the principal aspect of the principal contradiction. Of course, one must also further study what the adhesive is that causes the various factors to form a “confluence”. The CPSU and the Soviet Union were originally dominated by a leadership group of Marxists with Lenin and Stalin at the core; later, they gradually evolved into being dominated by a leadership group of revisionists with Khrushchev and then Gorbachev at the core. This is the essence of the demise of the CPSU and the collapse of the Soviet Union.

As academic research, the exploration and analysis of the “fundamental cause of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the demise of its ruling party” must adhere to the principle of “letting a hundred flowers bloom and a hundred schools of thought contend”[35]35 “Letting a hundred flowers bloom and a hundred schools of thought contend” (双百方针) is a policy for promoting progress in the arts and sciences, first proposed by Mao Zedong in 1956., and reveal the truth and gradually build consensus through solid and painstaking research. At the same time, the exploration of “causes” has never been a purely academic issue. Especially when historical nihilism[36]36 Historical nihilism (历史虚无主义) is a term used by the CPC to criticise approaches to history that it considers to deny the progressive nature of the Chinese revolution and the leadership of the CPC. is rampant, a prominent manifestation is the use of denying and distorting the history of the CPSU, completely negating Stalin and even attacking Lenin, in order to attack the CPC, smear the historical choice of the Chinese people, and insinuate, attack and deny Mao Zedong, the great leader recognised by the Chinese people. “Hitler, Stalin and Mao Zedong are the three great demons of the 20th century”; “From ‘learning from the West’ to ‘taking the Soviet Union as teacher’ is a departure from the mainstream of human civilisation” — such once-fashionable “political slogans” have indeed changed superficially after the 18th National Congress of the CPC[37]37 The 18th National Congress of the CPC, held in 2012, marked the beginning of the Xi Jinping era and the launch of the anti-corruption campaign., but one must remain highly vigilant against practices that use academic discourse to convey political demands. On the major issues of right and wrong involved in interpreting the fundamental cause of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the demise of its ruling party, one must unequivocally uphold the correct political stance. If an accurate and scientific conclusion cannot be drawn or reached regarding the fundamental cause of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the demise of its ruling party, it may directly or indirectly impact and shake the origins and foundations of our CPC and the socialist People’s Republic of China. (To be continued)

(Project: This article is a phased achievement of the National Social Science Fund special commissioned research topic “New Changes in Capitalism, the Essence and Development Trends of Imperialism, and Our Strategic Response”.)

(Leader of the Research Group: Li Shenming, Honorary Dean of the School of Political Science and Public Administration, Zhengzhou University, Director of the Research Centre for World Socialism, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences)

(Members of the Research Group: Liu Shulin, Wang Tingyou, Li Ruiqin, Zhang Shuhua, Fan Jianxin, Zhao Dingqi)