Mao: Greatest Criminal of 20th Century?

Jebus said:
Lazarus Plus said:
They eventually learned, though.

Did they? Are they all that much better off now?

Perhaps from our, Western perspective, yes. Because they seem to be doing better economically. Yet, most values Chinese culture has ever stood for are still being supressed by a regime that is obviously only staying in power for the power itself. Not to mention the bloody opression they still instill on the Tibetans and the students who protested on the Square of Heavenly Peace in 1989; but hey: we all forget about that. They make 9% economic growth a year now, so we lock them in our arms and accept them as one of us.

They might eventually learn, though. Perhaps when we do too.

No no no no no.

Militarily. I wasn't refrencing economics at all. In reality, we aren't so hot on economics ourselves when you consider how screwed we are in 100-150 years thanks to our ancestors and descendents using up all the non-renewable resources.

But yes, I disagree very much with what happened in Tibet. I think China has no right to be there.

[Rusty Chopper said:
]Without Stalin we couldn't have won the war. A proven fact. Stalin developed the country from an agricultural poverty to a nuclear superpower. Never had Russia been so powerful, as it was under Stalin's control. And "I'm pretty sure" it will never be so powerful again. Also. You can't prove the number of people he killed.
Maybe for Europe/America Stalin is as bad or even worse than Hitler, for Russia he is not.

He's a very hated man in Russia, is he not? That's one determinant for good/bad. Not the most quantative, but still.

It's true that WWII would have been different/harder had Russia not been with the Allies (this is assuming either that Hitler beat the Russians or did not attack them) but it's hardly a "no-win" proposition.
 
Without Stalin we couldn't have won the war. A proven fact.

Actually, the exact opposite is true for a number of reasons.

1) Tsarist Russia was at the breakout of European War the most rapidly industrializing nation on the planet, and had economic growth that competes with China in the modern day. Stalin industrialized Russia, true, but at the cost of God knows how many lives, and his industry was largely crap as it was government led. Germany, without Russia's natural rescources or population, managed to outproduce the USSR in terms of steel until 1945.

2)Tsarist Russia would not go through the officer purges, meaning that the leadership of the Russian Army is not idiots and fanatical Stalinists. This means that Russians are able to commit to sane tactics and allow good generals like Zhukov to do sane things like organized retreats without being forced to commit suicide.

3) Tsarist Russia would not have the absurd 'TAKE NO STEP BACKWARD OR WE WILL KILL YOU' tactics that got millions of Russians dead and accomplished absolutley nothing.

Frankly, if Tsarist Russia had continued to exsist, Russia could have quite possibly taken over Germany and the UK and competed with the US for rank of biggest industrial powerhouse, as you do not have millions dead in Russian Civil War and the most educated people in Russia sent to Gulags or killed.
 
Pretty thin line of argument.
Ever seen To Live by Zhang Yimou?

Anyway, it's not thin at all. There would be no Great Leap Forward in Nationalist controlled China. Why? Becaus the Great Leap Forward was a uniquely Maoist idea in that it centered on the idea of Peasents Uber Alles. It was moronic, and Chang Kai-Shek was not a moron.

Also, it's pretty impossible to imagine a Cultural Revolution under Chang, for the simple reason that Chang relied upon the landlords, the intellegentsia and the like for power.

Also, South Korea isn't democratic.
Yes it is.
 
John Uskglass said:
Frankly, if Tsarist Russia had continued to exsist, Russia could have quite possibly taken over Germany and the UK and competed with the US for rank of biggest industrial powerhouse, as you do not have millions dead in Russian Civil War and the most educated people in Russia sent to Gulags or killed.

Good points. Also, the Red Army certainly could have done without Stalin gutting it of 3/4 of it's professional leadership and replacing the purged officers with nearly worthless commanders a scant two years before the outbreak of the War.

The Soviets, it's important to point out, almost lost the war. If Hitler hadn't been so schizophrenic and out-of touch with his troops' actual abilities, it's very possible that Hitler could have taken Moscow, the oil feilds in the Caucasus region, or Leningrad by the end of 1941. All three of which would have been a near-fatal blow.

And, of course, there was the einsatzgruppen. But that's another story entirely.
 
John Uskglass said:
Without Stalin we couldn't have won the war. A proven fact.

Actually, the exact opposite is true for a number of reasons.

1) Tsarist Russia was at the breakout of European War the most rapidly industrializing nation on the planet, and had economic growth that competes with China in the modern day. Stalin industrialized Russia, true, but at the cost of God knows how many lives, and his industry was largely crap as it was government led. Germany, without Russia's natural rescources or population, managed to outproduce the USSR in terms of steel until 1945.

CCR said:
Frankly, if Tsarist Russia had continued to exsist, Russia could have quite possibly taken over Germany and the UK and competed with the US for rank of biggest industrial powerhouse, as you do not have millions dead in Russian Civil War and the most educated people in Russia sent to Gulags or killed.

That's a bit optimistic. In my humble opinion, Russia under the Tsarist regime would've never been able to get out of the semi-periphery. For one, a large part of Russian industry was in foreign hands, much like the industry in Southern America was. This alone already but a big mortgage on Russia as a strong, independant industrialised nation.

Secondly, under the Tsarist regime most of Russia's industry was already government led. Russia already had the lagest state-operated economic system in the world. And it was crap too.
Also, people working in the factories of the Tsar were even worse of than the later communist workers working in the USSR's factories. They were in somewhat the same position as workers in England and France before 1850, thus having it pretty bad.

Thirdly, Tsarist Russia was a very heavy borrower from Europe. You could say that if one half of the industry was in foreign hands, the other half was built and owned by the Tsar with foreign money. This meant that Russia was very, very heavily in debt, and the extremely high taxes the Russian workforce suffered under were a pretty good indication of that. And a country full of poor people isn't really a good basis for a strong, capitalist society.

Fourthly, the reason for the economic backlash after the Russian Revolution is not primarily to be found in communism. The fact that the western world for a large part stopped all trading and economic cooperation with Communist Russia is of course the first, obvious reason. The devastation and chaos during the anti-revolutionary war were the second large reason.

CCR said:
2)Tsarist Russia would not go through the officer purges, meaning that the leadership of the Russian Army is not idiots and fanatical Stalinists. This means that Russians are able to commit to sane tactics and allow good generals like Zhukov to do sane things like organized retreats without being forced to commit suicide.

I wouldn't overestimate the pre-purge officers, either. Just look at WWI - they were pretty poor leaders.

CCR said:
3) Tsarist Russia would not have the absurd 'TAKE NO STEP BACKWARD OR WE WILL KILL YOU' tactics that got millions of Russians dead and accomplished absolutley nothing.

Errr... Yes they did. In fact, communist tactics during WWII were pretty similar to Tsarist tactics in WWI. Heck, perhaps Tsarist tactics were even worse. 1 rifle for 10 soldiers and a completely demoralised army required pretty ruthless order keeping too.
 
John, you are getting into some tricky counter-factuals here. What if Mao hadn't defeated the Nationalists?

I tend to agree with Pajari (oh and with Dirty Dream Designer- Pol Pot would be in my top ten list of shitbags of the 20th century), that Chang Kai Shek was an incompetent administrator and more likely to becomes a weak autocratic ruler than a wise benevolent dictator.

One also has to understand Taiwan as growing in response to China- did the threat of China help encourage investment in industrialization that might not have otherwise occurred? Would China have enjoyed a boom much like did Korea or Japan, which themselves might not have so readily occurred without the Cold War?

That's some deep counterfactual reasoning to assume- Had Mao not won, the country might have gone along other courses.

But remember, in Shanghai the political divides were between the CCP working through labor unions and the KMT working through gangsters. Chang's willingness to deal with warlords and use them as proxies might have frustrated his ability to unify the country. Therefore you'd see a system of weak centralized leadership over a vast country of waring interests- a recurring phenomena of China's history when there exists a failure to centralized power.

Likewise, had Mao been defeated before the Sino-Japanese war, things might have gone very differently.

I tend to think Chang would have been more like a Stalin than a Deng, minus the centralized system. Chang was no Sun Yet Sen- the chances of corruption and decay would have been great with both internal strongmen trying to seize greater autonomy plus foreign interests returning to China for exploitation.


A weak China would have been easy pickings for a Soviet Russia interested in expanding its ideological power, especially if the Russians would have moved into to occupy China after World War 2 and had decided to remain (see North Korea). Consequently, one might replace a rather autonomous Mao with another strongman under greater Soviet control. While I doubt this would have given rise to another Pol Pot, another Nicholae Ceauşescu might have been possible.
 
Huh, interesting argument Welsh. Still, you really think Kai-Shek would have killed as many people as Mao? I mean, Mao killed a lot, and as previously stated in the review simply did not care about human life besides his own.

Still, surley a Soviet dominated China would have liberated in much the same way as the rest of the former Communist states, correct?
 
John- I agree with you that Mao is up there with biggest shitbags of the centure.

As stated before, he didn't die soon enough. I give the guy a lot of credit for frustrating the Japanese in China while Chang Kai Shek was on the run. It was that opportunity that allowed the CCP to seize most of China and defeat the Nationalists in 1949 despite generous US support to the KMT.

After 1949, Mao's meglomaniacal and goes through a great series of terrible mistakes to make his China an autarkical. Had he died earlier, as in 1949, perhaps the guy would have a better reputation.

Give the Chinese Communists some credit in unifying a very large country.

History would have gone much differently without Mao. Better or worse- it's hard to say. One might have seen more civil war, more divisions, greater influence by foreign states and thus a more dangerous Cold War.

One of the things about the Cold War in Europe was that it was generally pretty stable. Except for occassional problems- especially the Berlin Crises, one the borders were determined and the armies settled in, the borders of the Cold War are pretty much fixed. In Asia that's not the case- and thus more conflict- Three Indo-Chinese civil wars, insurgency in Thailand, Burma, Malaya, Philippines, Korean War. Without Mao and with a weak Chang, we probably would have seen a lot of violence in China as well which might have spilled out of control.
 
Placeholder updated, three posts back. It seems kinda stupid now I made a placeholder in the first place, but I figured Welsh would've adress the errors in your analysis of Tsarist Russia too. And I wanted to be first. But he didn't. So it's kinda stupid now.

So yeah.
 
That's a bit optimistic. In my humble opinion, Russia under the Tsarist regime would've never been able to get out of the semi-periphery. For one, a large part of Russian industry was in foreign hands, much like the industry in Southern America was. This alone already but a big mortgage on Russia as a strong, independant industrialised nation.
China and Japan's industry began in foreign hands, largely.

Secondly, under the Tsarist regime most of Russia's industry was already government led. Russia already had the lagest state-operated economic system in the world. And it was crap too.
Did'nt know that. Still, unlike the USSR, the basis of this was not idealogical, thus the Tsar would have been open to economic liberalization without massive backlash like the NEP during the early Soviet days.



Also, people working in the factories of the Tsar were even worse of than the later communist workers working in the USSR's factories. They were in somewhat the same position as workers in England and France before 1850, thus having it pretty bad.
They where in the early process of industrializing, of course they where living in shitty conditions. Still, rapid growth of GDP would have caught up with them, same as with Japan, China or a half dozen other ones.

Okay, I probably don't know as much about late Tsarist Russia as you do Jebus I am forced to admit, but here's how I see it.

1) Unlike Latin America, the foriegn owned buisnesses in Russia where industrial. This means that the populace learns valuable skills and money, thus making it easier for Russian industrial entrepreneurs. A similar process took place in Japan and is taking place now in a hald dozen other industrializing nations, with generally positive results (Thailand, Taiwan, Japan, Malaysia).2

2) As I sated earlier, Tsarists where not bound by ideology to try such moronic things as collectivisation or nationally owned industry, it was simply idiocy. They would be open to liberalization.

Fourthly, the reason for the economic backlash after the Russian Revolution is not primarily to be found in communism. The fact that the western world for a large part stopped all trading and economic cooperation with Communist Russia is of course the first, obvious reason. The devastation and chaos during the anti-revolutionary war were the second large reason.
I'd say you forgot the third. The Bolsheviks loved toying around with totally junk ideas like farm collectivisation and nationally owned industry. These where handicaps on economic growth, handicaps Tsarist Russia would not have. Although it is safe to assume there would still be devestation from the Civil War if the Whites won.

I wouldn't overestimate the pre-purge officers, either. Just look at WWI - they were pretty poor leaders.
True, but a half decade of war against the best officers in the world, a half decade of war fighting along side foreign anti-Communist troops and against Communists would be BOUND to forge some good officers.

As a matter of fact, it already did. Zhukov was an officer during WWI. How many Zhukovs where in the 70,000 out of 80,000 officers Stalin killed?

Errr... Yes they did. In fact, communist tactics during WWII were pretty similar to Tsarist tactics in WWI. Heck, perhaps Tsarist tactics were even worse. 1 rifle for 10 soldiers and a completely demoralised army required pretty ruthless order keeping too.
Two reasons for this.
1) Dardenells controlled by hostile powers makes Americans giving the Russians all thier spare shit impossible. This is not true in WWII. If anything, the Russians controll the Dardenells in WWII if the Whites win.
2) Industry because of problems I stated above.
 
John Uskglass said:
That's a bit optimistic. In my humble opinion, Russia under the Tsarist regime would've never been able to get out of the semi-periphery. For one, a large part of Russian industry was in foreign hands, much like the industry in Southern America was. This alone already but a big mortgage on Russia as a strong, independant industrialised nation.
China and Japan's industry began in foreign hands, largely.

Japan's industry has, as far as I know, never been in foreign hands. Quite the contrary: the main goal of Japan was to rise up to Western technological levels without becoming dependent on said West.
Same as with China. Do not be fooled by the outsourcing-business: very little, if any, companies in China are owned by foreigners. They are basically privates companies renting themselves out to multinational conglomerates, if I remember correctly. I might not, but that would then be because modern Chinese economy is a bit out of my range of interest.
Also, the Japanese technological revolution was pretty unique, and I don't really imagine it could be so easily redone by another country, let alone Tsarist Russia. Completely different values, ideology, and political and geographical realities I'm afraid.

CCR said:
Secondly, under the Tsarist regime most of Russia's industry was already government led. Russia already had the lagest state-operated economic system in the world. And it was crap too.
Did'nt know that. Still, unlike the USSR, the basis of this was not idealogical, thus the Tsar would have been open to economic liberalization without massive backlash like the NEP during the early Soviet days.

I wouldn't know. History has shown that, besides some precious few exceptions, Russian Tsars generally weren't really "open" for anything. Also, the fact that the Tsar wanted to control as much of the economy as he possibly could was/is a pretty inherent feature in Russian political filosophy, same as with the state church etc. At any rate, viewing the Romanovs as flexible, modernistic leaders seems a bit strange to me.

CCR said:
Also, people working in the factories of the Tsar were even worse of than the later communist workers working in the USSR's factories. They were in somewhat the same position as workers in England and France before 1850, thus having it pretty bad.
They where in the early process of industrializing, of course they where living in shitty conditions. Still, rapid growth of GDP would have caught up with them, same as with Japan, China or a half dozen other ones.

As I said before, comparing Tsarist Russia to Japan or other 'Azian Tigers' or modern China doesn't really work. And aside from those handfull of countries, I don't think there's any non-Western country today that doesn't have basically shitty conditions for its working class, nor a strong capitalist economy.

CCR said:
1) Unlike Latin America, the foriegn owned buisnesses in Russia where industrial. This means that the populace learns valuable skills and money, thus making it easier for Russian industrial entrepreneurs. A similar process took place in Japan and is taking place now in a hald dozen other industrializing nations, with generally positive results (Thailand, Taiwan, Japan, Malaysia).

Once again, comparing Russia to the Asian Tigers doesn't really work. And as said before, the shoddy economic policy of the latest Tsars wasn't really making Russia any richer...
Y'know, in a way, the way Russia was reformed to an economical superpower under the communist regime was actually in a way closer to Japans technological spur than the way the economy was progressing under the Tsars... Both (USSR & Japan) wanted to make their country economically and intellectually strong without becoming dependant on the West, and both preferred to only take over certain Western values that they thought would benefit their people, while rejecting others. But then again, there's a lot of differences too.

CCR said:
2) As I sated earlier, Tsarists where not bound by ideology to try such moronic things as collectivisation or nationally owned industry, it was simply idiocy. They would be open to liberalization.
CCR said:
The Bolsheviks loved toying around with totally junk ideas like farm collectivisation and nationally owned industry. These where handicaps on economic growth, handicaps Tsarist Russia would not have

Ahem... Actually, yes the Tsars did. The mir system wasn't all that different from the later communal farms. That's actually one of the main reasons why the intelligensia saw Russia as the most likely candidate to eventually become communist: because the economy was already so close to communism (except for the fact that the economic surplus was used to enrich the Tsar instead of being re-invested in the economy and the people) that it wouldn't be such a major step in the everyday economic life of the common man to change to communism. And it wasn't.


CCR said:
I'd say you forgot the third. .

No I didn't. My third point was the fact that the Tsar wasn't a pretty good economist, and the high taxes were destroying every possibility of a middle class wealthy enough to consider starting a private business themselves, thus severly mortgaging every possibility of Russia becoming a strong, industrialised capitalistic nation.

CCR said:
I wouldn't overestimate the pre-purge officers, either. Just look at WWI - they were pretty poor leaders.
True, but a half decade of war against the best officers in the world, a half decade of war fighting along side foreign anti-Communist troops and against Communists would be BOUND to forge some good officers.
As a matter of fact, it already did. Zhukov was an officer during WWI. How many Zhukovs where in the 70,000 out of 80,000 officers Stalin killed?

Meh, I don't see any point in defending the Great Purge anyway. I was just poiting out that strategic brilliance under the Tsars wasn't really a guarantee either.


Anyway, this whole discussion is based on a 'what-if' scenario, and is therefore pretty shaky either way.
 
Anyway, this whole discussion is based on a 'what-if' scenario, and is therefore pretty shaky either way.
Yup.

Anyway, I openly admit you are probably right. Maybe I've played too many games of Vicky as a liberal dominated Russia. Humph. Still, do you think that Russia was better prepared for WWII because of the Revolution?
 
I would say so.

If the Revolution hadn't artificially destroyed Russia's debts, then the nation wouldn't have been able to commandeer its industry from peacetime to wartime. You can't have a car factory start farting out tanks if the French owner wants you to keep making cars.
 
If the Revolution hadn't artificially destroyed Russia's debts, then the nation wouldn't have been able to commandeer its industry from peacetime to wartime. You can't have a car factory start farting out tanks if the French owner wants you to keep making cars.
I would think this hypothetical French owner would be in no position to do this with Vichy and some manner of hypothetical Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact gives Russia the time to do whatever it wants with it's now ownerless factory. Besides. In war time, why would an owner of a factory NOT want to start farting out equipment?
 
Profit. And that's the key, here. War equipment is purchased by the State to be used by the military. However, if you have a poor state, like the Tsars, you can't afford to pay for all those guns and crap.

Communist industry couldn't even keep up the war demand, and you aren't really paying communist workers.

When everything is owned by the state, you have the prime conditions for maximum production. If you only have to pay your workers the bare minimum determined by the State, and the buyer is also the State, then you have an unlimited production threshold.
 
How would one make a profit creating peace time cars during a war of annihalation against a driven enemy who would not flinch at sending your entire people beyond the Urals, by whatever means nessicary?

If anything, the Tsar's economic transition into wartime would be easier then the Nazis, as the Tsar already owned half the industry in Russia.

And who's to say there would even BE a WWII in the first place? Nazism needed the big angry Soviet threat to provoke the German people into mass insanity.
 
If anything, the Tsar's economic transition into wartime would be easier then the Nazis, as the Tsar already owned half the industry in Russia.

Yes, and the Communists owned ALL of Russian industry.

How would one make a profit creating peace time cars during a war of annihalation against a driven enemy who would not flinch at sending your entire people beyond the Urals, by whatever means nessicary?

And how would you make a profit making tanks for a state that can't pay for your product? If you own a factory in a foreign nation, you assume that you're making a product that the locals can afford to pay for. Populations have more buying power than governments.

That said, though, the Russian peasantry was dirt poor to begin with. How were they going to pay for refined goods like automobiles, and canned food? The infrastructure for war machinery would have never been set in place if Stalin hadn't insisted that the factories start churning out tractors, and that more factories be built to build more crap.

The Communists were able to construct industry from nothing because they didn't have to pay anybody to do it.
 
John Uskglass said:
And who's to say there would even BE a WWII in the first place? Nazism needed the big angry Soviet threat to provoke the German people into mass insanity.
The Nazis rose to power because Germany was economically fucked up by France. The only threat the Soviets posed was during 1941 (or so Hitler thought). I don't understand where you get your facts.
 
Ekarderif said:
John Uskglass said:
And who's to say there would even BE a WWII in the first place? Nazism needed the big angry Soviet threat to provoke the German people into mass insanity.
The Nazis rose to power because Germany was economically fucked up by France. The only threat the Soviets posed was during 1941 (or so Hitler thought). I don't understand where you get your facts.

What? The Nazis rose to power because of the economic chaos caused by the Great Depression, when America had to call in it's loans.
 
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