this post was submitted on 07 May 2025
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Been saying this for years now, on sino-Soviet split issues always side with the Soviets. (Not an absolute rule but I've yet to stumble on something where the Soviets were on the wrong side and the pre-21st century PRC was on the right side)
The PRC even ended up on the same side as Taiwan, backing the contras to spite the soviets.
I like your quality commie-posting new guy, I'm gonna remember your name
oh fuck now there's pressure. I'm gonna fuck this up, but I promise to do so in a new and interesting way
Just to let you know we've already had annoying leftcoms and shitheel patsocs bits play out so I'm excited for some new lore to add to the hexbear iceberg
Shoutout to when Haz briefly had an account here and said that weed makes you trans
Also a few other of the shitheels that would become their "executive council" they got bullied nonstop for their bullshit
It seems to me that China's one and only W from this era was surviving to become the 21st century PRC.
At what costs
History proves them right then 🤷
The world being resubjugated by the imperial core, millions dead, anti-colonial movements largely stopped in their tracks is not something that I would call 'history proving them right'. That also ignores the fact that having a privatised economy does have significant negative consequences for working-class people, including the lack of guaranteed housing - something that disturbingly many people like to ignore.
The CPSU is the one that built a world where all socialism revolved around and depended on their support and then just sort of gave up. It was a catastrophic error on the part of the Soviets to place themselves incontestably at the helm, and the fruit of that error is the near-instant collapse of the entire second world. If China had remained aligned with the USSR, it wouldn't have stopped the party's internal issues. China would most likely end up just like Vietnam, forced to implement market reforms.
Okay, so, the PRC is not doing that. Now, the presence of socialist and anti-colonial movements in the world is much weaker (which the PRC did contribute to directly). You do understand how this is worse, right?
The Soviet Union's colossal fuckup created the world we're in now. China's efforts one way or the other have been tiny, and while I'm largely not a fan it is absolutely nothing compared to the way the Soviet Union squandered the strongest position socialism has ever been in globally, and ushered in a period of utterly unchallengeable American dominance.
I can only pray that we get another revolutionary moment as big as postwar decolonization and that whatever exists at that time doesn't waste it again.
The USSR helping socialist and anti-colonial movements of the world doesn't seem to have been a contributing factor in either its fall or NATO becoming stronger.
The PRC is yet to contribute to international socialist and anti-colonial struggle to the extent the USSR did.
Helping socialist and anti-colonial movements largely benefitted the Soviet Union and it was in a perfect place to do so. The problem is that, especially post-Stalin, it did not treat them as equal partners or set them up for independent success. It created dependants, and this was great for its own position in the cold war game, but left the whole socialist world in shambles without it. This was an issue with most of their allies, and caused a number of major geopolitical rifts.
Internationalism doesn't mean shit if you build it in a manner where it all falls apart almost instantaneously, and in fact I think the way the USSR lost pretty much all the ground gained in the biggest decolonial moment in modern history is an unforgivable sin.
I do wish the PRC would do more, and I think that most of its post-split policy can be summed up as stupid anti-soviet realpolitik, but I also don't think there's really been many viable moments (outside of Palestine) where the PRC's support would leave a lasting impact since before the fall of the USSR. I want more, but resources shouldn't be wasted on hopeless projects that turn China into a pariah in the meantime.
The USSR itself was also extremely sparing and strategic with its international efforts prior to the second world war, because it was in a vulnerable position. This was the basis for the concept of socialism in one country. Time will tell if the opportunity arises again.
Notably, the PRC is not taking any better action in this regard, and no alternatives from the 'the USSR helping anti-colonial liberation movements of the world was somehow bad' camp seem to be produced.
Also, what would be your solution when it comes to those movements not becoming dependent on the USSR in a world where NATO exists? Do you think that the USSR had the power to instantaneously make those countries as powerful as itself?
It did not 'fall apart almost instantaneously', and it did not 'lose pretty much all the ground gained'. They are still better off than before their liberation.
It's also silly how you pretend as if the USSR helping those movements is an 'unforgivable sin', while the PRC helping NATO, such as by aiding the Mujahideen and fighting Vietnam, is somehow not.
Okay, so, you expect the USSR to make other countries as capable in terms of economics and military as itself in the blink of an eye, but you also want to make excuses for the PRC being either unable or unwilling to do much more realistic things?
Apply the same standard to both, and either admit that the PRC has not only not produced independent/equal anti-colonial powers and should be criticised for that, or admit that the USSR having the liberated countries depend on it was better than what the PRC has been doing.
I'm not sure why you think I'm arguing that helping these movements was bad? I'm arguing that the USSR was chauvinistic and deliberately set up its allies as dependants ideologically and economically. I would never suggest that they should be made magically as strong as the USSR, but that it simply not deliberately subordinate them to itself. If it were just one ally of the USSR that accused them of that it would be one thing, but it was visibly structurally true and was a major fracture point for their relations with several other socialist countries.
Are you really going to suggest that the socialist bloc didn't disintegrate almost immediately in the late 80s-early 90s? Post-colonial states typically fared better, but very firmly regressed and were almost all forced to re-enter the imperialists economic sphere.
Also, I'm not saying any of the things about China that you are claiming. If you're going to argue entirely past me at some strawman I'm going to ask to disengage.
What do you mean? What is an 'ideological' dependence in this context?
Okay, how else were they to be made independent from the USSR in a world with NATO in it?
Wait, are you talking about the European states that are now engaging in literal colonialism, and not about any of the states/countries from Africa, Asia, or the Americas?
I am going to suggest that the countries like Korea, Vietnam, Mozambique, Cuba, etc. did not immediately fall back under the same sort of subjugation they were suffering from before their liberation.
Okay, what things do you think the PRC has been doing in a better way than the USSR regarding their allies?
I mean two things by that. First that the USSR was positively upheld as a the leader of the world revolution (which I don't think could be avoided) and when it capitulated it did a lot to discredit communism globally. The second, which I think is more important to the argument I'm making is that allies of the USSR were generally expected to accept a level of ideological influence and stay somewhat consistent with the CPSU line. This included de-Stalinization, the implementation of Libermanism, certain geopolitical positions, etc. There was immense pressure to conform to and copy the USSR's example, and this often led to poor outcomes like the East German NES. The effect this had was to weaken the local party's own flexibility and ideological development. This, along with other forms of chauvinism and more direct meddling, was the impetus behind Kim Il-Sung developing Juche.
It's hard to say exactly what a post-USSR world would look like were they to have behaved differently, but the socialist world was never even given an opportunity to try. Outside of avoiding direct military conflict with NATO they could at least have been given economies that wouldn't collapse the instant Soviet policy changed.
No, I'm talking about a variety of countries, some of them in Europe. I also really don't think it is fair or a good faith argument to claim that the communist governments of these countries (which made these critiques) should have to answer for the colonialism of the governments that overthrew them. Ultimately China, Albania, Romania, and the DPRK all faced and critiqued these issues, and it was more broadly responsible for the overall unproductivity of comecon. More to the point, this was an issue structurally in socialist countries all over the world. The USSR did not foster effective multilateral trade between socialist countries other than itself, and it's method of aid through subsidized trade effectively disincentivized it, as well as creating economies that could not even momentarily stand on their own without a benefactor giving them an unreasonably good deal in exchange for their alignment. Cuba is a very simple example of this: it benefited massively from these policies while the USSR still existed, but built up an economy that wholly relied on buying fuel and manufactured goods at way below market value by exchanging them for mostly sugar and tobacco at an absurdly inflated price. This grew Cuba's economy incredibly quickly, but that growth was structured around an arrangement whose benefit for the USSR was power and strength for its own Communist bloc. When the USSR reduced their trade subsidy in the mid 80s, Cuba entered economic crisis and began defaulting. When the USSR ceased to exist, the special period happened. This is true of pretty much all of the USSR's allies. They all began to suffer horribly in the Gorbachev-era, followed by economic collapse around 1991. In most cases they were forced into brutal loan terms and economic liberalization to survive.
No, they certainly didn't, but they absolutely did suffer and were forced into either isolation and starvation or to accept some level of subjugation to capital. Cuba and the DPRK held out and suffered immensely for it. Every ruling communist party in Africa formally abandoned communism, privatized large swathes of their economies, and entered into deals with imperialist powers. Their economies simply could not function, even briefly, without Soviet subsidy. Mozambique was forced into the Bretton Woods structural adjustment trap starting in 1986, war torn and faced with Gorbachev discontinuing their trade subsidy and cutting their aid. It has been trapped in extreme poverty and imperialist exploitation (with most of the economy being foreign-owned) since then. Đổi Mới also began in 1986 because Vietnam faced a similar crisis. I absolutely think the USSR's help in their struggles was valuable and important, but the structure of the assistance subordinated them to the USSR, which then abandoned them.
My answer to that is honestly not much (though they at least aren't currently repeating this mistake). I hope for more in the future but I can't say whether that will come to pass. I just think that the way the USSR structured its internationalism isn't critiqued enough in these discussions, and as a result of their collapse has done more harm to international socialism than China's weird sectarian realpolitik did. I don't think that internationally backing communist movements is bad at all, in fact I would point to all it accomplished in spite of the lopsided structure of Soviet aid, but I think it is important to be strategic and avoid their errors in carrying it out.
I don't think it's that simple. It's impossible to say now how much or if any of their mistakes were actually necessary to that survival.
If losing four decades of progress while waiting for the PRC to reach parity with the US and establish multipolarity when the USSR was already at near parity, then china sacrificed the interests of humanity in service of its own, full stop
We passed 1.5C ffs
The USSR built a socialist world around and wholly dependent on itself, and then capitulated internally (due to the utter decay of the party as a revolutionary institution), destroying that order almost all at once. I don't know what China could have done to prevent that. An unsplit China would have been significantly more dependent on the USSR and at best would most likely have been forced into a similar position to Vietnam after the collapse anyway.
One could argue letting the US have a unipolar moment induced a terminal delusion in the minds of it's ruling class and untethered them a lot from reality,and now we're beginning to see the payoff
The soviets,by doing those things,kept the western world on its toes and made it necessary to boot out any cranks or truly incompetent people
fuck off, china did what they thought it was best for them, and now they're positioned as beacon for the global south while the USSR got dismantled by a freaking drunkard, that's a clear sign that they were not even close to near parity with the west.
The ones responsible for the misery in the world are primarily the western working class, the privileged henchmen of the bourgeoisie, not china ffs.
"supporting the Khmer Rouge was good, actually"
-literally you
So does NATO with things like colonialism. So did Germany, Britain, France, the US before the formation of NATO.
Doing what's best for you, or what you think is best for you does not, in fact, make those actions good.
What does being a 'beacon' entail here? Other countries are not in a position to do what the PRC did (make itself the most attractive option for foreign investments at the exclusion of other countries (including the imperial core)), and the PRC does not seem to be supplying arms or anything like that to them to fight off NATO, nor is the PRC taking military action to help anti-colonial and socialist movements around the world.
The successes of the PRC, while very significant, do not seem to play much of a role outside of the PRC.
It's primarily the western bourgeoisie, and the western treatlerite aristocracy comes after, but sure.
Not exactly an excuse to do stuff like literally supporting NATO (and, by extension, the western bourgeoisie), including by doing stuff like helping the Mujahideen against socialists in Afghanistan and fighting against Vietnam.
I agree, but still they have stood the test of time where as the USSR failed miserably. Which is ultimately what really matters.
Perhaps the Biafra conflict?
This is a completely uneducated guess based off of the vibes in the chart below. I have literally zero knowledge on the topic and this spitball assertion should not be taken remotely serious.
Things had to be so fucked up there to say that Colonialist France, fascist Portugal, post-6-day-war Israel, Apartheid South Africa, and the fascist settler statelet Rhodesia were on the right side of history with the PRC.
Darn I just posted something like that. The Biafra conflict is complicated. Because the Igbo people absolutely were persecuted prior to the war, and it's hard to argue that Yakubu Gowon wasn't a ridiculously corrupt dictator or that the charges of genocide against him aren't at least credible. But the conflict was also on behalf of every non Nigerian/Igbo person involved nakedly a proxy war over the future of post-colonial africa (With the UK joining the Nigerians solely because their oil companies ran the Nigerian oil trade)
Yeah that sounds like a nobody wins scenario
That's what I was thinking too. Foreign support for Biafra looked a lot like what Belgium did with Katanga aka divide and rule.
The Biafra conflict was in part france trying to regain a sphere of influence at the expense of the UK. Thats why the sides fell the way they did.
Yeah as if them getting their asses beat in Vietnam at the same time wasn't enough for them the fuckjng frogs
France also did the same thing in the Congo, which was the reason for soviet support for Nigeria, despite the Igbo's having a leftist element and having "global sympathy".
Also what anglo wikipedia omits is that israhell supported both sides:
The Biafra conflict was (And remains) complicated and I'm not going to be the one who solves the moral issues of it. But it does bear remembering that the anti-Nigerian side included Rhodesia, Apartheid South Africa, and Israel for a reason.
Israel supported both sides.
Not really. They sold guns to the Nigerians before the conflict began but they provided aid (Including guns) to the Biafrans. They were very much interested in a Biafran victory, since the Nigerian government was aligned with Egypt and therefore Palestine.
I provided a source further down in the thread.