Huitzilopochtli [they/them]

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

I think the chauvinism is ultimately much, much more important and frankly deserves more blame for the collapse of the Soviet Bloc than it is given in discussions. The USSR was the lynch pin of the socialist world. Every other country leaned on it intensely, and they were all burned horribly by it when the CPSU internally capitulated (which happened before the USSR actually fell). What are you supposed to do in the face of the USSR just abandoning their mission if you’re an aligned socialist government that depends on them? Both economically and politically, the USSR’s allies were leaned precariously against what they thought was a stable base, a superpower that held itself up as the headquarters of the revolution and an alternative to the west.

The post-WW2 European socialist states followed Gorbachev’s lead in capitulating. Parties in post-colonial states with actual revolutions were faced with economic devastation, ideological abandonment by the superpower that was their beacon, and inevitably had to liberalize and integrate with the global system since there was no longer a Soviet-led alternative.

I would also say that the post-Stalin Soviet union’s unequal attitude towards its allies was in part a result of the party losing ideological focus and getting too deep into the realpolitik of the cold war, but engaging in similar realpolitik after splitting didn’t do Mao any favors. I would actually put forward a sort of “two revisionisms” theory, that post-split China, Albania, and other “anti-revisionists” are fundamentally a second type of revisionist, who has retooled the ideology to center defeating revisionism.

China may be using the sea to hide its submarines.