HarryLime [any]

  • 74 Posts
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Joined 4 years ago
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Cake day: July 27th, 2020

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  • One explanation I’ve heard is that the experiences of the immense changes of the Cultural Revolution, followed by its sudden end and Reform and Opening Up have given the CPC a unique flexibility. It can experiment with new policies, learn from the experiments, both from failures and successes, and freely admit failure. The CPSU arguably had a similar kind of flexibility early on- they emerged from the civil war to experiment with the NEP, something which seemed like heresy to a lot of socialists, and then radically changed policy again several years later with Stalin’s five year plans- but they lost this flexibility over the years. The CPSU also had a difficult time publicly admitting problems and doing self-criticism. You basically had to wait until the old leader died or was replaced to get a full accounting of his mistakes.