Stalin, Mao, Communism, and their 21st-Century Aftermath (Part VI)—A Commentary by Adam R. Bogart, PhD

Part VI is a wrap-up, which examines current issues in modern Russia and China. In this section, we see how Communism still influences Russian and Chinese thinking and policy. China is still brutally communist, but not in the same way it was when Mao ruled. Since Mao it has undergone some progressive changes.

         We could not possibly have known during the time of Glasnost (the policies of Mikhail Gorbachev in the mid to late 1980’s) that introducing liberalizing reforms into the governance of the USSR was not meant to weaken the grip Marxism had on the country, but rather to tighten it by deluding the Soviet people into thinking Marxism didn’t have to feel so bad! Of course, I see Gorbachev as a noble person, and if he had saved the USSR this way, I don’t think he would have withdrawn the increased personal freedoms he had implemented.

         In some ways, this is similar to the NEP introduced by Lenin in 1922. He was well aware of the general enrichment this brought to the countryside and that just the tiny measure of capitalism he infused was vastly improving the Soviet economy, which at that point wasn’t even equal to the Russian economy in late Tsarist times. We can’t be sure that if he hadn’t died so early in his life how long he would have allowed the NEP to continue. As it was, his death gave Stalin the leeway he needed to halt the NEP. Stalin didn’t like the NEP, because if the peasants weren’t producing enough, he could apply harsh punishments to obtain greater quotas, without needing any capitalism. Why introduce that hated economic ideology of the decadent West, if you could beat or shoot a few peasants, and see superficial improvements in the economy? Stalin was not as pure a Marxist as he thought though, because they were already going against Marx who stated the types of countries a communist revolution would be successful in. He never thought it would be Russia.

         Boris Yeltsin had a better idea. He understood that Marxism would never work, and he simply wanted to abandon it. That is not to say Gorbachev was a cruel man; rather he wanted Soviet citizens to live better lives but thought they could still do so in a communist country. Yeltsin was the president of a much freer democratic Russia from 1991–1999, and though these early days could be quite hard on the country, it was a massive transition, and there was no way to speed it up. Dr. Faria is right when he said, “Yeltsin has not received the proper credit he deserved for bringing peace, freedom, self-government, and eventual prosperity to the Russian people.” Yeltsin died in 2007, so it may be a long time before his endeavors are recognized as heroic. They were and are not, because of the hardships which occurred during early transition from Communism to Democracy which I alluded to above.

         Russia is not as nice a place now as it was 25 to 30 years ago. The rise of authoritarianism under Putin has seen to that, but as Dr. Faria notes, the Russian population enjoys looking back to earlier eras where their might was respected, and communism was seen as a strong and decisive ideology. If this mentality had not given Putin so much leeway, he would not have become increasingly aggressive and dictatorial. I don’t think Putin was sorry to see communism go, but that doesn’t mean he can’t apply authoritarian tactics of which the communists would have approved.

         I don’t agree with what Dr. Russell Blaylock (an eminent neurosurgeon and noted political scholar) has proposed—that we have been deceived into thinking the USSR is gone and the Cold War is still in force. I would agree with him that the dissolution of the USSR hasn’t ended Marxist governments worldwide, but that’s precisely the point. Soviet Russia isn’t needed to keep the torch of communism alight. Communists and socialists are all over the world, even in Democratic non-communist Western countries. If the United States ever fell to Marxism, it would fall without the physical presence of the USSR. Plus, the USSR had already started destructive social and psychological programs in the USA and Europe, which could eventually lead to the collapse of Western civilization. These treasonous programs are like self-replicating prions, in that they can continue propagating themselves even in the absence of their origin. Dr. Blaylock is absolutely right in his agreement with Yuri Bezmenov, who revealed to the West that the KGB was actively promoting activities of U.S. citizens, which in the long run, would destroy the country. That was always the goal of Lenin, who knew he didn’t have to fire a shot in order to smash the Democratic countries. I only disagree with Bezmenov concerning the origin of these implanted destructive ideologies. While the KGB was no doubt implementing these programs, they seem to have also be originating from the Frankfurt school. The Frankfurt school was a collection of German intellectuals who were essentially Marxist ideologues. The school seems to have been founded about 1923 at Goethe University but moved its base to the Columbia University in New York in 1935, because the rise of Adolf Hitler would have spelled the end for its members, who were Marxist and/or Jewish. Hitler could never tolerate anything like that. This becomes interesting when we realize the Cloward-Piven strategy came out of Columbia in 1966. This was a Marxist driven ideology that stated by overloading the welfare system via an increase in welfare claims, it would force the creation of a system of guaranteed minimum income and “redistributing income through the federal government.” It was far from the only destructive program that came out of the Frankfurt school after it merged with Columbia. So Bezmenov and Dr. Blaylock are right, except in the sense that the KGB was not the only source for the ideas which have progressively weakened the Western Democracies.

Stalin, Mao, Communism, and their 21st-Century Aftermath in Russia and China (January 2024) by Dr. Miguel A. Faria was published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing in Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom. You can order the book from Cambridge Scholars Publishing. It is a beautiful hardback book, fully illustrated with over a hundred illustrations, including an insert with glossy color prints. For a 25% discount, enter code PROMO25 to redeem during your online purchase. Or email Cambridge Scholars Publishing at orders@cambridgescholars.com.

Reviewed by Adam Bogart, PhD

Adam Bogart, PhD, is a Behavioral Neuroscientist at the Sanders Brown Center for Aging University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY. Behavioral Neuroscience Kent State University Kent, OH. Post-doctoral fellow at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Gruss Magnetic Resonance Research Center Bronx, NY. MS Immunology conjointly Adelphi University/Mount Sinai Medical Center New York City, NY.

This article may be cited as: Bogart, A.R. Stalin, Mao, Communism, and their 21st-Century Aftermath (Part VI)—A Commentary by Adam R. Bogart, PhD. HaciendaPublishing.com, July 20, 2024. Available from: https://haciendapublishing.com/stalin-mao-communism-and-their-21st-century-aftermath-part-via-commentary-by-adam-r-bogart-phd/.

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