Compare/Contrast Russian and Chinese Communism

The Communist regime was a strong political power during the majority of the twentieth century. Its main principle aim was to create a society where all people would be equal and the property would be shared equally among the population. First, the main principles of communism were described in the book The Manifesto of the Communist Party, which was written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and became a breakthrough in the political thought both of the nineteenth and the twentieth century. Marx and Engels wrote a very argumentative work, persuading people that the ideal model of the society is the proletarian society where there is no oppression and division of people into classes. Due to the equalization of rights and the centralization of certain spheres of life in the hands of the State, the proletarian society would not have had any struggle for power and authority.  Later on two great countries, China and the USSR, tried to implement their ideas, however it resulted in absolutely different consequences.

In 1912 Vladimir Lenin together with the Bolshevik Party established the Communist regime in Russia and created the Union of Soviet Socialistic Republics. However, in the USSR all the principles of the communism were realized trough tyranny and total control of people and their activity. Thus, all the ideas, preached by Karl Marx were taken to an extreme. The peak of totalitarianism was under the rule of Joseph Stalin, who controlled each and every sphere of people’s life, not leaving any freedom of choice to them. All these measures were supposed to lead people to the bright future, but instead its tough policy cornered soviet people.

The communist regime came to China much later than to the Soviet Union, in 1949.  The founder of communism in China was Mao Zedong, who was absolutely loyal to the communist principles reigning in the USSR. His policy remembered much Stalin’s methods.

Neglect of personalities and individuals, oppression of other ideas, attempts to make the country highly industrialized and modern within a short period of time was characteristic of both Stalin and Mao. However, scholars claim that “the constructive part of the Communist program lied in measures to achieve national reintegration and to build a new ethos, a new value system, new patterns of social organization and human relationships, a new sense of identity, and new skills commensurate with the tasks of modernization” (Hsiung 91).

It is evident that Mao’s reforms differed in a number of tendencies from Stalin’s ones. Thus, for example, while Stalin organized land in the USSR by collectivization and the peasants gave all the products of their work to the proletariat, in China farmers had an incentive to work as they had the right to use the surplus of product as they wanted. In the USSR, Stalin held forced industrialization and constrained people to move to cities. In China, Mao supported rural economy. Moreover, one of the most remarkable differences between two communist models resulted in the involvement of these countries into the global economy. While China became an active participant in world trade as a consumer and a manufacturer, the USSR remained aside global economy for a long time, only being a resource exporter (Balzer).

Therefore, after the collapse of the USSR the leaders of Russia had to take much effort to become a full-fledged participant of global economy.

To make a conclusion, though both countries implemented communist principles and for a long time China and the USSR were the greatest Communist states, there were many differences in the policies of their leaders. Having analyzed them, we might sum up that in China Communist regime had more positive results and in contrast to the Soviet regime did not destruct the country.