why comunism didn't collapse

WHY COMMUNISM DIDNT COLLAPSE: EXPLORING REGIME RESILIENCE IN CHINA, VIETNAM, LAOS, NORTH KOREA AND CUBA Martin Dimitrov Assistant Professor of Government, Dartmouth College An Wang Post-Doctoral Fellow, Fairbank Center, Harvard University [email protected] [email protected] November 1, 2005Abstract: Almost two decades after the momentous events of 1989, political science has not provided clear answers to a key question: why Communism collapsed in some countries but survived in others. Of the 15 Communist countries that existed prior to 1989, 10 experienced regime collapse. However, China, Vietnam, Laos, North Korea, and Cuba managed to maintain regime stability. While numerous studies of individual cases of both collapse and survival exist, currently we do not possess a unified theory of the factors that lead to Communist regime collapse and resilience. This paper argues that two variables explain the collapse of Communism: lack of economic growth and ideological vacuum. In turn, Communist regimes that survived were able to do so by providing either high economic growth or by appealing to the masses with a coherent ideology (or both). As Marxism-Leninism became bankrupt in the mid-1980s, the only regime-sustaining ideology Communist countries could develop was externally-oriented nationalism. This paper explains why this type of nationalism was not available to the countries that collapsed but was successfully mobilized by the countries that survived. On a theoretical level this paper argues that in Communist countries both economic conditions and ideas contribute to regime stability. The paper also argues against theories that stress that Communism fell due to contagion, leadership unwillingness to repress opponents, or inherent flaws in communist institutions.

I would like to thank Lisa Baldez, Mark Beissinger, John Carey, Jorge Domnguez, Linda Fowler, Yoshiko Herrera, Nahomi Ichino, Nelson Kasfir, Ned Lebow, Misagh Parsa, Elizabeth Perry, Philip Roeder, Robert Ross, Anne Saadah, and William Wohlforth for useful conversations about this project. Participants in a joint Davis Center-Fairbank Center seminar and a Post-Communist Politics and Economics Workshop seminar (both at Harvard) provided helpful comments on earlier versions of this argument. All errors are my own.

Dimitrov Why Communism Didnt Collapse

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Almost two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, social scientists have not provided satisfactory answers to the question why Communism collapsed in some countries but survived in others. In 1988, there were 15 Communist regimes in the world. Over the next couple of years, 10 of them collapsed, yet 5 remain in power until the current day.1 In terms of population size, the 5 surviving communist countries constituted 74% of the former Communist world.2 Even if the remaining 5 Communist regimes were all to collapse tomorrow, it would still be important to understand why they have survived when 10 other regimes of the same type collapsed. The answer to this question can shed more light on the conditions that enhance the durability of different regime types. In addition, a comprehensive explanation of the collapse and non-collapse of Communist regimes has implications for our approach to theory building in comparative politics. The literature on the collapse of communism is immense. One might expect, then, that it will have already answered the question that motivates this paper. Yet, despite the presence of some excellent studies of collapse and non-collapse, prior research does not help us to understand what accounts for the resilience of Communist regimes. Most of the literature is devoted to single-country studies, usually of the collapse of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia or of one of four well-known Eastern European countries (the German Democratic Republic, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland).3 Single-country studies of collapse in more obscure places like Bulgaria, Romania, and Albania are much rarer.4In chronological order, the regimes that collapsed are Hungary, Poland, East Germany, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Mongolia, Albania, the Soviet Union, and Yugoslavia. The resilient communist regimes include China, Vietnam, Laos, North Korea, and Cuba. There are some borderline cases which I have decided do not merit inclusion in the group: Cambodia, Ethiopia, Angola, Mozambique, GuineaBissau, Tanzania, Benin, and Nicaragua (more on definitions and case selection in Section I below). 2 Calculations based on population data obtained from the World Development Indicators (various years). The total population of all 15 Communist countries in 1988 was 1.625 billion, while the 10 that collapsed had a population of 428 million. 3 For excellent examples of single-country studies, see a) on the Soviet Union: Philip Roeder, Red Sunset: The Failure of Soviet Politics (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1993); Ronald Suny, The Revenge of the Past: Nationalism, Mobilization, and the Collapse of the Soviet Union (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993); Mark Beissinger, Nationalist Mobilization and the Collapse of the Soviet State (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Symposium in the Slavic Review 63: 3 (Fall 2004): 459554; Yoshiko Herrera, Imagined Economies: The Sources of Russian Regionalism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005); b) on the GDR: Timur Kuran, Now Out of Never: The Element of Surprise in the East European Revolution of 1989, World Politics 44: 1 (October 1991), 7-48; Suzanne Lohmann, The Dynamics of Informational Cascades: The Monday Demonstrations in Leipzig, East Germany, 1989-1991, World Politics 47: 1 (October 1994), 42-101; Charles Maier, Dissolution: The Crisis of Communism and the End of East Germany (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1997); Anne Saadah, Germanys Second Chance: Trust, Justice, and Democratization (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998); c) on Poland: Timothy Garton Ash, The Polish Revolution: Solidarity (New York: Vintage Books, 1985); Josep Colomer and Margot Pascal, The Polish Games of Transition, Communist and Post-Communist Studies 27: 3 (1994) 275-294; Wiktor Osiatynski, The Roundtable Talks in Poland in Jon Elster, ed. The Roundtable Talks and the Breakdown of Communism (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1996), pp. 21-68; d) on Hungary: ONeil, Patrick, Revolutions from Within: Institutional Analysis, Transitions from Authoritarianism, and the Case of Hungary, World Politics 48:4 (July 1996): 579-603, Andrs Saj, The Roundtable Talks in Hungary in Elster, ed. (op. cit.), pp. 68-98; d) on Czechoslovakia: Bernard Wheater and Zdenk Kavan, The Velvet Revolution: Czechoslovakia, 1988-1991 (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1992); Milo Calda, The Roundtable Talks in Czechoslovakia in Elster, ed. (op. cit.), pp. 135-177. 4 Of the three countries, Romania has received the most sustained attention thanks to the investment scholars like Ken Jowitt and Vladimir Tismaneanu have with it. See Vladimir Tismaneanu, Stalinism for1


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Finally, the reasons for regime collapse in faraway Mongolia are virtually ignored.5 When it comes to cases of non-collapse, while scholars have explored the reasons for the durability of Communism in China, North Korea, or Cuba, the cases of Vietnam and especially Laos have received much less attention. In short, important lacunae exist in those single-country studies. Similarly, the small number of explicitly comparative studies that exist examine a few cases of communist regime collapse6 or, much less often, compare two cases of regime resilience,7 but they never examine all 10 cases of collapse or all 5 cases of non-collapse. Moreover, there is as yet no comprehensive theory that can account for both collapse and non-collapse in all 15 communist countries. What explanations for the collapse of communism are provided by the existing theories? The extensive literature centers around two different questions. A number of studies explain how Communism collapsed. Those explanations usually focus on the period immediately preceding the collapse of the regime and outline three different dynamics: the regime can fall due to elite splits and pacts, because of a push from below,

All Seasons: A Political History of Romanian Communism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003). Also see a very thorough account of the 1989 events in Peter Siani-Davies, The Romanian Revolution of December 1989 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004). No book length studies of the revolutions in Bulgaria and Albania exist in English, though some monographs and edited volumes devote individual chapters to them. On Albania, see Elez Biberaj, Albania in Transition: The Rocky Road to Democracy (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998) and Nicholas J. Costa, Albania: A European Enigma (Boulder: East European Monographs, 1995). On Bulgaria, see Emil Giatzidis, An Introduction to post-Communist Bulgaria: Political, Economic, and Social Transformation (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002) and R. J. Crampton, A Concise History of Bulgaria (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 5 Morris Rossabis Modern Mongolia: From Khans to Commissars to Capitalists (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005) is the first book by an established Mongolia specialist that devotes a chapter to the transition in 1989-1990. Prior studies in English have been confined to journal articles: Richard Pomfret, Transition and Democracy in Mongolia, Europe-Asia Studies 52:1 (January 2000), 149-160, Verena Fritz, Mongolia: Dependent Democratization, Journal of Communist Studies & Transition Politics 18:4 (2002), 75-100. 6 Among the best comparative studies of collapse are: Gale Stokes, The Walls Came Tumbling Down: The Collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), Grzegorz Ekiert, The State Against Society: Political Crises and their Aftermath in East Central Europe (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1996), Jacques Lvesque, The Enigma of 1989: The Soviet Union and the Liberation of Eastern Europe (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), Vladimir Tismaneanu, The Revolutions of 1989 (New York: Routledge, 1999), and Valerie Bunce, Subversive Institutions: The Design and the Destruction of Socialism and the State (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999). See also the Schmitter/Karl-Bunce Slavic Review debate on transitology, reprinted in Archie Brown, ed. Contemporary Russian Politics: A Reader (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 459-498. While written contemporaneously with the events, Timothy Garton Ashs The Magic Lantern: The Revolutions of 89 Witnessed in Warsaw, Budapest, Berlin and Prague (New York: Random House, 1999), Misha Glennys The Rebirth of History: Eastern Europe in the Age of Democracy (New York: Viking, 1990), and Robert Kaplans Balkan Ghosts: A Journey through History (New York: St. Martins Press, 1993) have not lost their value as the finest examples of journalistic writing on the subject. 7 Anita Chan, Benedict J. Tria Kerkvliet, and Jonathan Unger, eds., Transforming Asian Socialism: China and Vietnam Compared (St. Leonard, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 1999); John Weeks, A Tale of Two Transitions: Vietnam and Cuba in Claes Brundenius and John Weeks, eds. Globalization and Third World Socialism (New York: Palgrave, 2001), pp. 18-40.


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or due to a combination of a push from below and splits above.8 While often illuminating, those studies do not address the analytically prior question why Communist regimes got to the point where they were ripe and ready for collapse. In other words, what longerterm conditions were conducive to the regimes decline? Studies concerned with why communism collapsed highlight several variables. Most explanations stress the Gorbachev factor, arguing that were it not for him and his revolutionary ideas of glasnost (openness or political reform) and perestroika (restructuring or economic reform), communism would not have collapsed.9 When it comes to how specifically Gorbachevs ideas undermined communism in individual countries, several versions of a contagion argument are given. A different set of explanations argues that communism fell because governments were unwilling to use repression against regime opponents. Finally, some stress that the moribund state of communist institutions led to the collapse of communist regimes. This paper takes issue with most arguments offered about the reasons for the collapse of communism. Contagion theories do not specify the conditions under which some countries become immune to contagion. A further limitation of contagion theories is that due to their excessive vagueness and refusal to elaborate a clear mechanism for how contagion works, they cannot explain why there were at least 5 different modes of regime collapse in the 10 countries where communism ended (see Table 1 in Section IV below). Repression theories also have limited applicability to understanding regime resilience, as we have contradictory examples of the effects of use of repression: sometimes it seems to prop up the government (e.g. China), while other times it leads to either imminent regime collapse (Romania) or to more protracted but irreversible regime decay (Albania). In addition, claims that Communist regimes continue to rule through the fear of repression have no credibility in 2005, given that repression has been falling down across all remaining communist countries. Finally, institutional rigidity theories have some appeal, but they cannot explain why identical institutions proved reformable in some communist countries, but not in others. The argument that ideas mattered (Gorbachev factor) has the most appeal. However, I maintain that while ideas were important, they didnt matter in the way that Gorbachev factor theories suggest they did. Some claim that Gorbachevs ideas led to the collapse of the Soviet Union by creating a space within which orthodox (doxic) and heterodox interpretations of communism could compete, and, over time, the power advantage that supporters of heterodox ideas got over the doxic interpreters of communism led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union.10 I see the role of ideas somewhat differently. I argue that to stay in power, communist regimes need a unifying ideology. What regime opponents in the Soviet Union and elsewhere could offer to potentialFor a good review of that literature, see Michael McFaul, The Fourth Wave of Democracy and Dictatorship: Noncooperative Transitions in the Postcommunist World, World Politics vol. 54 (January 2002): 212-244. 9 Moshe Lewin, The Gorbachev Phenomenon: A Historical Interpretation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988, 1991); Archie Brown, The Gorbachev Factor (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996); George Breslauer, Gorbachev and Yeltsin as Leaders (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002). 10 Herrera (fn. 3), ch. 3.8


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followers was not an ideology, but rather the diffuse idea of being anti-Communist, antiregime, and anti-establishment. As appealing as it might have been, anti-Communism was not an ideology in 1988-1992; it was just an option for expressing protest, a subversive idea. Thus, this paper argues that Communism ended, in part, because Gorbachevs ideas exposed the bankruptcy of Marxism-Leninism and did not offer a constructive ideology that could supplant it. In brief, this paper makes the following claims as to why communism collapsed in some countries but survived in others. Communist regimes were able to ensure their survival in two ways. First, like all authoritarian regimes, they had to deliver high growth. Second, unlike other authoritarian regimes, they had a strong ideological basis. Ideological indoctrination and ideologically-derived legitimacy were key ingredients in their unusually long lifespan.11 When economic growth faltered and Marxism-Leninism became bankrupt as an ideology, communist countries found themselves in a precarious position. They had to devise a strategy for regaining economic growth and creating a new ideology that could appeal to the masses. The only constructive ideology that could be used was externally-oriented nationalism. Yet, US-Soviet rapprochement and the Sinatra Doctrine made both the US and the Soviet Union look much less intimidating enemies for 9 out of the 10 countries where communism fell.12 Some of the regimes that did collapse engaged in destructive ethnic nationalism, pitting minorities against majorities; this type of nationalism only sped up their demise, as it further eroded the possibility of creating a unified ideology that could elicit broad regime support.13 All regimes that survived managed to develop externally-oriented nationalism that could supplant the bankrupt Marxist-Leninist ideology. Some of the surviving regimes (China, Vietnam, and Laos) also delivered high economic growth but others didnt (Cuba and North Korea), thus testifying the importance of both objective economic factors as well as ideas in communist societies. This paper is organized as follows. Section I defines what communism was, outlines a mechanism for Communist single-party rule, and enumerates the universe of cases where it existed. Section II provides case studies of Communist collapse. Section III focuses on case studies of Communist survival. Section IV offers alternative explanations for collapse, such as contagion, repression, and institutional failure. Section V concludes and provides two possible extensions of the argument.

Single-party Communist regimes have the longest lifespan of any type of authoritarian regime. Barbara Geddes identifies this phenomenon, but excludes most Communist countries from her analysis of the factors that lead to regime survival, arguing that those regimes were foreign maintained. See Barbara Geddes, Paradigms and Sand Castles: Theory Building and Research Design in Comparative Politics (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003). 12 For the Soviet Union itself the only external enemy was the US. When the enemy became a friend, externally-oriented nationalism was no longer available as an ideological option. 13 See Beissinger (fn. 3), Philip Roeder, Soviet Federalism and Ethnic Mobilization, World Politics 43:2 (Jan. 1991), pp. 196-232, and Suny (fn. 3) on the Soviet Union and Bogdan Denitch, Ethnic Nationalism: The Tragic Death of Yugoslavia (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996) and V. P. Gagnon, Jr., The Myth of Ethnic War: Serbia and Croatia in the 1990s (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004) on Yugoslavia.

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Section I: Mechanism for Single-Party Communist Rule and the Universe of Cases In this section, I will define two contested concepts that will be used repeatedly in the study: what makes a regime communist and how do we know that it has collapsed. By strictly defining the terms of the study, we can then turn our attention to sketching out a mechanism for communist rule. Finally, this section defines the universe of cases to which this argument applies. Definitions Communism: What makes a regime communist? The literature on communism is extensive, and like all social scientific concepts, the term is contested. In this paper, I adopt a minimal definition: communist regimes are special types of single-party regimes, where the single party in power adopts Marxism-Leninism and governs through noncompetitive elections. Thus, it is important to understand that communism is a distinct subtype of totalitarianism (which includes fascist, communist, and, potentially, theocratic regimes) but differs from authoritarianism (which has semi-competitive elections and allows for opposition parties to be present in parliament).14 Also, communist regimes should be distinguished from sultanistic regimes, which center around the charisma or suppressive ability of the leader, yet are not necessarily ideologically driven.15 What makes a party Communist? At a minimum, to be classified as Communist a party has to have consolidated its power over the entire country16 based on a doctrine that has several classical building blocks: land collectivization and nationalization of industrial property, class equality (usually demonstrated by the lack of wide pay differentials), deep penetration within society (mass inclusion and exclusion of civil society), and some commitment to international socialism. In short, communist regimes have a well-articulated, messianic vision of the present and the bright future of developed socialism. While some differences existed amongst individual communist countries on those dimensions,17 they all exhibited each one of them. A further requirement is that the party should not be the tool of an individual dictator, but should rather have some control over the person at the top.18 This is a key distinguishing feature of the 15 communist regimes examined in this paper, which is absent in Africa, where the late creation of a communist party allowed those regimes to evolve into personalistic military dictatorships, with the top man ruling by wielding the power of the gun and distributingJuan Linz, Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publisher, 2000). H. E. Chehabi and Juan Linz, eds., Sultanistic Regimes (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998). 16 Countries like Cambodia where Communists ruled over only part of the country between 1975 and 1993 cannot be classified as communist. See Russell R. Ross, ed. Cambodia: A Country Study (1990); Ben Kiernan, The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power, and Genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, 19751979 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002); Philip Short, Pol Pot: The History of a Nightmare (London: John Murray, 2004). 17 An important difference among communist countries is the degree of private property that they allowed prior to the 1980s. 18 This rule was violated by Stalin, Mao, Kim Il-sung, and Ceauescu. However, those deviations (especially in the Soviet Union and Russia) were temporary and the party eventually exercised control over the individual.15 14


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patronage rather than by party-led ideologically-based mass mobilization.19 A final requirement for classifying a regime as communist is that it should rule through mobilization (voluntary compliance) rather than through coercion. As coercion is very costly, it can be sustained only temporarily by Stalinist regimes (a subtype of communist regimes). Thus, in the end a resilient communist regime can only govern by relying predominantly on mobilization and only occasionally on coercion.20 While a regime needs to implement a Communist doctrine at the point of consolidating power, over time it can evolve almost unrecognizably from its initial form. To illustrate this point we need not look any further than contemporary China. In 2005, the only thing that is communist about China is the fact that it is ruled by a party which calls itself communist and wins uncontested elections. The commitment to a communist ideology is largely gone land has been de-collectivized, private property is now constitutionally protected, class inequality is rising, civil society has re-emerged, and international socialism has collapsed. In addition, the Chinese and Vietnamese communist parties decided in 2002 to admit private entrepreneurs in their ranks. Strikingly, the Cuban Communist Party decided to accommodate religious devotees, going against some classical Marxist notions on the relationship between socialism and religion. While those parties may be communist in name only, the regimes are nevertheless usefully classified as Communist (rather than authoritarian), as they still do not allow competitive multiparty elections and have not ceased to attempt to make ideological appeals to the masses (with an ideological mix of market socialism and externally-oriented nationalism). Collapse: When can we say that a communist regime has collapsed? As the minimal definition of a communist regime hinges only on the existence of a single communist party that wins uncontested elections and bases its rule on an ideology, I argue that the a decision to strike down constitutional language proclaiming the communist party the leading party in society and the introduction of contested multi-party elections represent the end of the communist regime. Analytically, it makes sense to distinguish between theThis is a main reason for excluding Ethiopia, Angola, and Mozambique from the universe of communist countries. Ethiopias first political party (the Workers Party of Ethiopia) was not founded until 1984, a full decade after the start of the revolution (Marina and David Ottaway, Afrocommunism (Second Edition), (New York: Africana Publishing Company, 1986), pp. 233-234; Akademiia Nauk SSSR, Rasprostranenie marksizma-leninizma v Afrike: voprosy istorii, teorii i praktiki (Moskva: Nauka, 1987), pp. 211-214). The Angolan Communist party (MPLA Workers Party or MPLA-PT) was not founded until 1977 (Branko Lazitch, Angola 1974-1977: Un chec du communisme en Afrique (Paris: Est & Ouest, 1988), p. 17). While Mozambiques FRELIMO had more of a claim to approximate a political party prior to decolonization, it also transformed itself into a Marxist-Leninist party only as late as 1977 (Ottaway & Ottaway, Afrocommunism, 76-81; Bertil Egero, Peoples Power: The Case of Mozambique, in Barry Munslow, ed. Africa: Problems in the Transition to Socialism (London: Zed Books Ltd., 1987), p. 125). 20 The reliance of the Pol Pot regime entirely on coercion and terror to maintain power is one of the reasons I dont classify it as Communist. Ben Kiernan, The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power, and Genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, 1975-1979. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002, p. 458. Kiernan estimates that 21% of Cambodias total population of 7.89 million perished between 1975 and 1979. On genocide in Cambodia, see also Benjamin Valentino, Mass Solutions (2004), Alexander Laban Hinton, Why Did they Kill? Cambodia in the Shadow of Genocide (2005), and Philip Short, Pol Pot: The History of a Nightmare (2004). For a harrowing first-hand account of life and survival at a Khmer Rouge prison, see Franois Bizot, Le Portail (Paris: La Table Ronde, 2000).19


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beginning and the end of collapse. The beginning is a point when there is even a minimal uncertainty as to whether the communist party will continue to stay in power. The precise event that defines this beginning moment varies in Poland it was a decision by General Jaruzelski to hold talks with the opposition and form a Round Table, in Bulgaria it was a bloodless palace coup, in the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia it was the introduction of republican competitive multiparty elections.21 The end of regime collapse is the point at which there is great uncertainty about the ability of the communist party to stay in power. In most countries this moment was the holding of the first competitive multiparty elections; in the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia the dissolution of the federation signified the end point of collapse. While judgments of the start and end of collapse are somewhat subjective, I have attempted to identify those moments as clearly as possible. Specific beginning and end point for individual countries are presented in Table 1 in Section IV below. A Theory of Communist-Party Rule In an important article, Stathis Kalyvas laments the lack of a theory of single-party rule.22 While it may be correct that we dont have a general theory of single-party rule, we have accumulated enough data about the communist subtype of single-party regimes to be able to have a theory of how they stay in power. We have known for a long time that Communist regimes are ideologically driven,23 and are therefore quite distinct from authoritarian regimes. We have also recently become aware that authoritarian regimes are very good at delivering economic growth. The two building blocks of economic growth and ideological legitimacy have not, however, been linked in a theoretically coherent explanation as the basis of communist rule. Classic communist regimes rule differently from reformed communist regimes.24 A classic (unreformed) communist regime (e.g. the Soviet Union under Stalin, North Korea under Kim Il-Sung, China under Mao) rules through a mix of ideology and sticks (repression). By contrast, a reformed communist regime (e.g. the Soviet Union under Gorbachev, China under Hu Juntao) stays in power through a mix of ideology and carrots (political freedoms). Under both regimes, economic growth is a paramount goal, as theThe justification for designating competitive republican multiparty elections as the beginning rather than the end of collapse is the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia is that in the absence of competitive federal multiparty elections there was not sufficient uncertainty as to whether the communist party would step away from power. 22 Stathis Kalyvas. 1999. The Decay and Breakdown of Communist One-Party Systems. Annual Review of Political Science 2: 323-343. 23 Carl Friedrich and Zbiniew Brzezinski, Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1956). While others have noted that ideological crisis was a contributing factor to the collapse of communism (see especially Daniel Chirot, ed. The Crisis of Leninism and the Decline of the Left: The Revolutions of 1989 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1991) and Stephen Hanson, Time and Revolution: Marxism and the Design of Soviet Institutions (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), the comparative angle of ideological crisis has not been explored. Also, the literature has not theorized what ideology could supplant Marxism-Leninism when it is bankrupt. 24 Linz (fn 14), Mark R. Thompson, To Shoot or Not to Shoot: Posttotalitarianism in China and Eastern Europe, Comparative Politics 34:1 (October 2001), 63-83, Mark R. Thompson, Democratic Revolutions: Asia and Eastern Europe (New York: Routledge, 2004).21


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bread riots in Poland in the 1950s and 1970s and much more recent ongoing contention in China demonstrate.25 When there is an economic and ideological crisis, the regime is threatened by collapse, as it cannot mobilize popular support. However, classic and reformed communist regimes have very different possible solutions to the impending collapse. A classic communist regime is more likely to try to suppress the opposition, while a reformed regime is much less likely to be able to do so (due to its weaker repressive ability). Thus, reformed communist regimes are much more fragile than unreformed communist regimes. For examples, when Ceauescu tried to suppress the protesters in the square, he failed because he had miscalculated how much control he had over the security apparatus (Securitate).26 Ramiz Alia suppressed the demonstrators and managed to stay in power for several months after the first competitive multiparty elections because Albania was much farther from reformed socialism than was Romania, and because he maintained full control over the feared Segurimi.27 However, the repressive ability of all remaining communist regimes is weakening (see details in Section III), and a repeat of Tiananmen is unlikely, as it will be politically too costly. The regimes that stay in power do so through a mix of lots of carrots (economic growth and an appealing nationalist ideology, and, increasingly, greater personal freedom) and only occasionally have to wield their sticks against particularly irksome political activists. Why do ideology and economic growth matter so much? The reason has to do with the way in which communist regimes originally derived legitimacy: ideology reigned supreme at the time when they were established and high growth was just one necessary condition for reaching the utopian socialist-communist bright future of mass equality. Although the utopian element disappeared from communism rather quickly, the importance of high economic growth remained. Similarly, when economic growth falters or ideological legitimacy is lost, the regime has to make both up or else risk losing power, as its foundations will be undermined. This paper advances the argument that the five resilient communist regimes have found in nationalism a new ideology through which they can appeal to the masses (see details in Section III). Nationalism, however, is not sufficient to supplant MarxismLeninism. With the exception of North Korea, the remaining communist regimes have engaged in two additional measures restraining the reign of government officials and increasing the political rights of ordinary citizens. The Universe of Cases With those criteria in mind, what cases should we examine? The core of the universe is well-established: the six Eastern Bloc countries (German Democratic Republic, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, and Romania), the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Albania, Mongolia, China, Vietnam, North Korea, and Cuba. In addition, I count Laos25

William Hurst and Kevin OBrien, Chinas Contentious Pensioners, The China Quarterly 170 (June 2002): 345-360; Kevin OBrien and Li Lianjiang, Rightful Resistance in Rural China (New York: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2006). 26 Siani-Davies (fn 4). 27 Miranda Vickers, The Albanians: A Modern History (London: I. B. Tauris, 1999).


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among the cases of communist regimes, even though the regime was foreign-maintained until the late 1980s; as explained in section III, Laos is not different enough from other Communist countries to merit exclusion from the group. Similarly, while I do think there are important differences between groups of communist countries, they are not sufficient enough to classify Asian communism as different in kind from European communism.28 Section II: Explaining Regime Collapse Why did 10 communist regimes collapse between 1988 and 1992? There were two factors at work: low economic growth and inability to articulate a new ideology to supplant communism, which was bankrupt as a belief system by the mid-1980s. Economic Performance in Collapsed and Resilient Regimes: Why Only Some Can Grow? Why can some regimes deliver growth while others cannot? Apart from the debilitating effects of military expenditures (see Wohlforth and Books 2003), there are two very important differences between the regimes that fell and those that survived. With the exception of Albania, the other 9 communist countries where collapse occurred had urbanization levels higher than 50% and had achieved high levels of industrialization. North Korea and Cuba looked much more similar to those 9 countries in terms of their levels of urbanization (58% and 73%), industrialization, and per capita GDP than to agricultural states of China, Vietnam and Laos, none of which had an urbanization rate higher than 20% in the year that they undertook reforms. Economists have established that growth is easier to achieve in agricultural economies than in heavily industrialized economies. Thus, unlike China, the Soviet Union could not achieve economic growth by modernizing agriculture first; it had to begin reform by tackling the messier and politically more explosive industrial sector first. Growth Rates among the 10 Regimes that Collapsed Statistical analysis reveals that all regimes that collapsed experienced either negative economic growth or had growth rates close to 0% in the year(s) when collapse began and ended (see Figure 1 below). Negative growth rates ranged from relatively benign in Bulgaria (-0.5% in 1989) to severe in the Soviet Union (-12% in 1990; -17% in 1991) to disastrous in Yugoslavia (-7.5% in 1990 and -29% in 1991). The countries with positive growth rates during the period of collapse were Poland (0.2% GDP growth rate in 1989), Czechoslovakia (1% GDP growth rate in 1989) and Germany (1.2% GDP growth rate in 1989). Many may take issue with the fact that some Eastern European countries were growing (albeit at close to 0%). However, the growth registered by those Eastern European countries was negligible in comparison with what they were used to historically: East German GDP grew at rates well over 5% for most of the 1949-1985The classic formulations of the difference are in Donald W. Treadgold, ed. Soviet and Chinese Communism: Similarities and Differences (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1967) and Stuart R. Schram, comp. Marxism and Asia: An Introduction with Readings (London: Allen Lane, 1969). For precursors, see Karl A. Wittfogel, Oriental Despotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1957).28


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period, after which it began to precipitously slow down in every successive year.29 Another factor that made even smaller economic declines more palpable in the GDR, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Hungary is that their citizens were allowed to travel to Western Europe much more freely than citizens of other communist countries (with the exception of Yugoslavia) and were therefore aware of the disparities in income between people in the East and the West. This was especially true for East German citizens, who could travel to West Germany or West Berlin and see how much better the Wessies lives.30 More important, most East Germans could get West German TV and even if they never got to West Germany could still see how different the two halves of the ein Volk had become over the previous four decades.31 Thus, for countries with easy external reference points, relative declines in growth rates mattered more than absolute declines. Figure 2 below presents aggregate data for the growth rate of all regimes that collapsed and all regimes that proved resilient for the period from 1985 to 1991; it is clear that resilient regimes outperformed those that collapsed in terms of GDP growth.Figure 1: Collapsed Communist Regimes GDP Growth Rates (1980-1991)15

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0 Growth Rate (Percentage) 1980 -5 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991

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Albania Bulgaria Czechoslovakia GDR Hungary Mongolia Poland Romania Soviet Union Yugoslavia

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-30

-35 Year

Klaus Schrder, Der SED-Staat: Partei, Staat, und Gesellschaft 1949-1990 (Mnchen: Hanser, 1998); see also Maier (fn. 3) and Jeffrey Kopstein, The Politics of Economic Decline in East Germany (Chapel Hill: University of California Press, 1997). 30 West German per capita GDP in 1989 was 3.5 times higher than that in East Germany. See Won Bae Kim, Inter-Korean Cooperation in Infrastructure Development and Territorial Integration in E. Kwan Choi, E. Han Kim and Yesook Merrill, North Korea in the World Economy (London: Routledge Curzon, 2003), p. 119. 31 A number of sources make this point, but it is perhaps most eloquently stated in Wolfgang Beckers film Good-Bye, Lenin! (2003).

29


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Figure 2: Average GDP Growth Rate, Collapsed v Resilient Communist Regimes (1985-1991)15

10

5 Growth Rate (Percentage)

0 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 collapsed resilient

-5

-10

-15

-20 Year

The Role of Ideology The other pillar of a communist regime is ideology. Communism as an economic and political ideology was bankrupt by the early 1980s throughout all countries that were formally governed according to the principles of Marxism-Leninism. Economically, countries like Hungary, Yugoslavia, and China had all abandoned the doctrines of Marxism by 1980 and were implementing something that could best be described as market socialism.32 With the rise of Gorbachev and his ideas of perestroika (economic restructuring), it became clear that the socialist economic model was no longer viable. Politically, too, communism was in crisis. Prior to Gorbachevs articulation of the idea of glasnost (political openness), there already had been signs that civil society existed in Czechoslovakia (Charter 77),33 Poland (Solidarity), and Hungary (various informal movements) despite violent repression in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. With the advent of glasnost, magazines like Novy Mir and Ogonyok were running story upon story of the excesses of communism; in addition, Rybakovs Deti Arbata and Solzhenytsins writings were published in the Soviet Union, sensitizing the public to the excesses of Stalinism and the current problems with communism. Civil society movements like Memorial and Pamyat began to emerge as well. What glasnost and perestroika did was to expose to the public that communism was moribund both as an economic and as a political system. All of a sudden, ideology was dead. There was a vacuum that had to be filled.32

The Chinese official term (socialism with Chinese characteristics ) eschews the word market. 33 John Keane, ed. The Power of the Powerless: Citizens against the State in East-Central Europe (Armonk, N. Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1985).


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Why were the 10 regimes that collapsed unable to supplant communism with a new ideology? After all, for much of the post-WWII period in all of those countries nationalism existed alongside communism and was a very powerful legitimating force for the national government. For most of the 10 regimes, there were two convenient external enemies: the West (usually personified by the US, but with local variations: West Germany for the East Germans, Turkey and Greece for the Bulgarians34, etc) and the Soviet Union (especially for the GDR, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia, and Albania).35 One may think that elites scrambling to stay in power would attempt to ensure popular support by mobilizing nationalism and thus filling the ideological vacuum. However, due to Gorbachevs new thinking and his pro-active policy of rapprochement with Western countries, the US could no longer be portrayed as an external enemy to the Soviet Union and to the other communist countries.36 Similarly, while during the era of the Brezhnev doctrine, the Soviet Union was a convenient external enemy in Eastern Europe, with the advent of the Sinatra Doctrine (let each country go its own way) this particular trope was no longer believable either. The 10 regimes thus found themselves without an external enemy that could serve as a focal point around which the pro-regime forces could rally and demonstrate their support for the leadership. A different solution came to the mind of the leaders of some countries with ethnically heterogeneous populations, like Bulgaria, Romania, the Soviet Union, and Yugoslavia.37 They either actively fomented internally-directed anti-minority nationalism or (in the Soviet case) did not try to prevent the emergence of nationalist mobilization in the peripheral republics.38 In Bulgaria, the regime undertook a destructive Regeneration Process in 1985-1989, changing the Turkish-Arabic names of members of the Turkish minority to Bulgarian names and, finally, expelling ethnic Turks from the country;39 in Romania, Ceauescu limited the religious freedom of ethnic Hungarians. This tactic was suicidal in terms of regime resilience: ethnic unrest sped up regime collapse in all countries that engage in anti-minority nationalism. As we will see in the next section, three of the surviving five communist regimes (China, Vietnam, and Laos) all can face potential challenges in interethnic relations.40Vurban Angelov, Gurtsiia i Turtsiia v lagera na imperialistite: politiko-stopanski ocherk (Sofia: BAN, 1964). 35 Bulgaria and Mongolia were exceptionally friendly to the Soviet Union, both having applied to become a 16th Soviet republic and having been turned down by the big brother. See Mikhail Gorbachev, Zhizn i reformy (Moskva: Novosti, 1995), vol. 2. 36 Mikhail Gorbachev, Perestroika i novoe myshlenie dlia nashei strany i dlia vsego mira (Moskva: Izd-vo polit. lit-ry, 1987). See also Gorbachev (fn. 35), vol. 2. 37 Of the cases of collapse, only the GDR, Poland, and Albania were ethnically homogeneous; Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Mongolia were quite heterogeneous, yet did not attempt to pit ethnic majorities and minorities against each other. 38 On the Soviet case, see Beissinger (fn 3), Roeder (fn. 13), Suny (fn 3); on Yugoslavia, see Denitch (fn 13) and Gagnon (fn 14). 39 For details see Martin Dimitrov, Ethnic Parties as Guarantors of Minority Rights: The Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF) in Bulgaria, 1989-2005 (Mimeo, 2005). 40 Of the three countries, China has done the most to integrate minorities into a vision of a great Chinese nation that is not ethnically based. On minorities in China, see Katherine Kaup, Regionalism versus Ethnic Nationalism in the Peoples Republic of China, The China Quarterly 172 (December 2002): 863-884;34


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Section III: Explaining Regime Resilience: China, Vietnam, Laos, North Korea and Cuba Why did some communist countries survive while others failed? Two factors are at work: high economic growth and successful mobilization of externally-oriented nationalism as a substitute for Marxism-Leninism. Some countries with stunningly levels of development and large peasant majorities succeeded in achieving both high levels of growth and nationalist mobilization (China, Vietnam, and Laos). Highly industrialized and urbanized countries like Cuba and North Korea weathered very bad economic times (several successive year of negative economic growth in the 1990s) thanks to their successful mobilization of very potent anti-imperialist nationalism. Thus, the experience of the surviving communist countries shows that while having both economic growth and nationalism make a regime more stable, a coherent ideology that can ensure mass support for the regime may be more important for survival than economic growth. Long-term, however, no regime can survive with negative economic growth; even Cuba and North Korea have slowly begun implementing economic reform measures that will, one hopes, lead to growth higher than the modest 2-3% GDP increases that both countries have registered since 2000. Specific data on GDP growth in all five countries for 1985-2004 are presented in Figure 3 below.Figure 3: Resilient Communist Countries GDP Annual Growth Rate (1985-2003)20

15

10

Growth Rate (percentage)

5 China Cuba Nkorea Lao PDR Vietnam

0 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 -5

-10

-15

-20 Year

Dru Gladney, Dislocating China: Muslims, Minorities, and Other Subaltern Subjects (2004), as well as the China Quarterly June 2003 special issue on religious freedom in China. China implements a type of affirmative action towards members of ethnic minorities, giving them preferential access to higher education and jobs, as well as relaxed (and laxly enforced) family planning quotas. Minorities are also overrepresented in the National Peoples Congress, constituting 13.9% of the 2002 NPC, while they only make up 6-8% of the overall population (2004, p. 873).


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Economic Reform Of all remaining communist regimes, China has gone the farthest in terms of economic reform. In the aftermath of the political and economic chaos engendered by the Cultural Revolution, Deng Xiaoping decided to initiate a series of economic reform and opening ( gaige kaifang) policies. Prior to Tiananmen, the reforms focused on agricultural de-collectivization, re-invigorating markets, and legalizing private entrepreneurial activity.41 After 1989, the much more sensitive activity of restructuring inefficient state-owned enterprises (SOEs)42, helping banks eliminate the bad loan problem,43 and introducing some competition in government monopoly sectors, such as telecommunications began. After Chinas entry to the WTO in 2001, the economic reforms have been revitalized thanks to WTO-compatibility requirements for various industries, most importantly services and manufacturing. A retrospective look at the last quarter century of reform shows they have been very successful, with GDP growth rate averaging 9.5% during 1978-2004.44 However, the reform period brought about a number of problems, such as rising urban-rural and inter- and intra-provincial inequality,45 a crisis of the social insurance system,46 a disenfranchised mass of at least 100 million rural migrants, and rising crime. Vietnams reform experience shows many similarities to that of China. The reform era in Vietnam began with the 1986 doi moi (renovation) policy.47 Initially, doi moi went through many setbacks. The pace of reforms seems to have quickened in the late 1990s and especially after the 2001 election of reform-minded Nong Duc Manh to the post of General Secretary of the Vietnamese Communist Party. Though Vietnam has enjoyed average GDP growth rates of 6.8% for the 1986-2004 period,48 reform has brought about many of the same problems as in China: rising inter- and intra-provincial inequality,49 a growing number of migrants,50 daunting difficulty of state-ownedJean Oi, State and Peasant in Contemporary China (1989), Terry Sicular, Redefining State, Plan, and Market: Chinas Reforms in Agricultural Commerce, China Quarterly 144 (Dec. 1995): 1020-1046, Barry Naughton, Growing out of the Plan (1995). 42 Edward Steinfeld, Forging Reform in China (1998). 43 Nicholas Lardy, Chinas Unfinished Revolution (1998) 44 2004, p. 55. 45 Angang Hu and Shaoguang Wang, The Political Economy of Uneven Development (1999). 46 Elizabeth J. Croll, Social Welfare Reform: Trends and Tensions, The China Quarterly 159 (September 1999), 684-699; Jane Duckett, State, Collectivism, and Worker Privilege: A Study of Urban Health Insurance Reform, The China Quarterly 177 (March 2004), pp. 155-173. 47 Adam Fforde and Stefan de Vylder, From Plan to Market: The Economic Transition in Vietnam (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996). 48 Calculation based on World Development Indicators Online. We should stress that were it not for oil exports, Vietnams growth rate might have been a lot less impressive, especially during stages when there were setbacks to doi moi. Oil is Vietnams biggest export (21% of exports in 2004) and the biggest single source of revenue for the central government (27.4% of revenue in 2002). EIU, Vietnam Country Profile 2005, pp. 37, 55. 49 Tuong Lai, The Issues of Social Change after Ten Years of Doi Moi in Adam Fforde, ed. Doi Moi Ten Years after the 1986 Party Congress (Canberra : Department of Political and Social Change, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, the Australian National University, 1997), pp. 181-199; Melanie41


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enterprise (SOE) restructuring, and inefficient banks mired in bad debt. Social problems, such as increased numbers of migrants, rise in prostitution and crime are by-products of the reform experience that plague the regime. Despite some problems, however, the reform period in Vietnam has been a success, as demonstrated among other indicators by the very high FDI per capita that the country has received,51 its ability to amass $7 billion in foreign reserves and to keep its foreign debt/GDP ratio at 40%.52 Were it not for economic reform, the regime would find itself in a much shakier position than it is now. Laos, a country alternatively labeled a feudal-criminal narco-communist state53 and a Buddhist kingdom-Marxist state,54 has also undertaken economic reform. While not an unquestionable success story like China or Vietnam, this landlocked country with a population of only 6 million has managed to withstand various challenges to regime stability and to achieve an average GDP growth rate of 5.6% over the last two decades (1986-2004). How was this possible? As soon as the Marxist-Leninist Lao Peoples Revolutionary Army came to power in 1975, it attempted to carry out land collectivization. After achieving a collectivization rate of 25% by 1979, the regime abandoned the project amidst a falling harvest, threat of internal unrest, and a growing realization that it was impossible to get popular acceptance of the idea.55 By 1986, when Vietnam undertook doi moi, the Lao Peoples Revolutionary Party decided at its congress that it would implement pean pang mai (New Economic Mechanism) policy as well. In addition to encouraging greater freedom in agricultural production, the regime allowed foreign direct investment and private ownership of small businesses. Tourism also slowly became a major source of foreign currency.56 While achievements have been reached, especially keeping in mind the extremely low level of development of the country in 1975, the Laotian leaderships lack of resolute embrace of the reforms has led to consistent problems: high inflation, currency devaluation, an external debt representingBeresford, Economic Transition, Uneven Development, and the Impact of Reform on Regional Inequality in Hy V. Luong, ed. Postwar Vietnam: Dynamics of a Transforming Society (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), pp. 55-80. 50 Andrew Hardy, State Vision, Migrant Decisions: Popular Movements since the End of the Vietnam War in Luong, ed. (fn 49), pp. 107-137. 51 Vietnams 2004 per capita implemented (v. contracted) FDI was US$32, while Chinas per capita implemented FDI was $37. Calculation based on EIU and UNCTAD Handbook of Statistics 2004 data. 52 Chinas foreign reserves were estimated at $412 billion in 2003; its external debt in 2002 was 13.2% of GDP. EIU, China Country Profile 2005, p. 57. 53 Massimo Lensi and Bruno Mellano, Indocina libera: Il caso Laos trentanni dopo dove la democrazia reato (Firence: Liberal Libri, 2002). According to Zasloff, Laos was the third biggest producer of opium in the world in the late 1980s (Joseph J. Zasloff, American Political Research on Laos, 1954-1993, In Jacqueline Butler-Diaz, ed. New Laos, New Challenges (Tempe, AZ: Program for Southeast Asian Studies Arizona State University, 1998), p. 228. Opium acreage has dropped dramatically in recent year (EIU, Laos Country Report 2005, p. 14.) 54 Martin Stuart-Fox, Buddhist Kingdom Marxist State: The Making of Modern Laos (Bangkok: White Lotus, 1996). Post-1975 Laos initially had red prince Souphanouvong as president, yet the real power even then lay with Kaysone Phomvihane, the Secretary General of Lao Peoples Revolutionary Party. 55 Grant Evans, Lao Peasants under Socialism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990). See also Martin Stuart-Fox, Buddhist Kingdom Marxist State: The Making of Modern Laos (Bangkok: White Lotus, 1996), pp. 109-127. 56 Laos welcomed 894,806 foreign tourists in 2004 (Economist Intelligence Unit, Laos Country Report August 2005, p. 20).


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165.2% of GDP,57 and dwindling foreign direct investment.58 Those are danger signs for the continued economic legitimacy of the regime. North Korea and Cuba are laggards in economic reform when compared to successful cases like China and Vietnam and even to moderately successful cases such as Laos. Nonetheless, both countries have initiated halting economic reforms. North Korea began establishing the Rajin-Sonbong special economic zone in 1991, the Mt. Kumgang resort in 1998, the Kaesong industrial zone in 2000, and the Sinuiju Special Administrative Region (SAR) in 2002.59 Other strategies of economic reform included resolving the ideological conflict over farmers markets,60 as well as allowing the won to float. Finally, the regime sought foreign aid and courted foreign governments to establish diplomatic relations with Pyongyang and bring in businesses from their native countries to North Korea.61 Those measures seem to have produced some moderate gains, with North Korea registering an average GDP growth of 2.8% for the 1998-2003, a marked advance over the -4.5% growth for 1991-1994 and the -3.8% growth for 1995-1998.62 For an internationally isolated country that has had to deal with a string of natural disasters and has been unwilling to implement rapid economic reform, such growth figures are signs of a modest achievement. In Cuba, too, there have been cautious attempts at economic reform in the late 1990s and early 2000s.63 Cuba has gone much further than North Korea in diversifying its economy away from state ownership, effectively having three different economies: the old state economy, the export-oriented state-foreign sector (consisting mostly of joint ventures, with some wholly foreign-owned enterprises), and the private sector economyEconomist Intelligence Unit, Laos Country Profile 2005, p. 44. 2003 FDI was $69 million, twice lower than in 1996. EIU, Laos Country Profile 2005, p. 29. 59 The Koreans hired the Chinese-Dutch chrysanthemum millionaire Yang Bin to manage it. Yang Bins arrest in China for tax evasion, as well as poor planning, dashed the grand designs for the SAR, which was supposed to operate outside North Korean law, enjoy great economic and political freedoms (including the issuance of special passports) and serve as a laboratory for the introduction of capitalism to the DPRK. See Marcus Noland, Korea after Kim Jong-il, (Washington, DC: Institute for International Economics, 2004), pp. 46-57. 60 Farmers markets had been sanctioned by Kim Il-sung in 1969, but Kim Jong-il attacked them as unsocialist in 1996. See Andre Natsios, The Great North Korean Famine (Washington, DC: US Institute of Peace, 2001), pp. 98-99. 61 For many years, the Swedish embassy had been the only Western embassy in Pyongyang (Eric Cornell, North Korea under Communism: Report of an Envoy to Paradise (London: Routledge Curzon, 2002). In 2001, Germany established an embassy as well (Wolfgang Rhr, Establishment of Diplomatic Relations between Germany and North Korea, in Choi, E. Han Kim and Yesook Merrill, eds. North Korea in the World Economy, (London: Routledge Curzon, 2003), pp. 16-17). On attempts to court EU countries, see Alain Destexhe, Core du Nord: voyage en dynastie totalitaire, (Paris: LHarmattan, 2001). Currently, the EU, Australia, and Canada have all normalized relations with the DPRK. 62 Economist Intelligence Unit, North Korea Country Profile 2005, p. 18. North Korea seems to be establishing itself as niche producer of magnesia clinker and inexpensive business suits for the Japanese market (Myong Chol Kim, Significance of Chinese Economic Success to North Korea, in Choi and Merrill, eds, op. cit., pp. 18-23). 63 Cubas cautious economic reforms have been labeled segmented marketization, due to the fact that only some sectors like exports and tourism were marketized. See Consuelo Cruz and Anna Seleny, Reform and Counterreform: The Path to Market in Hungary and Cuba, Comparative Politics 34: 2 (January 2002), 211-231.58 57


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(small businesses, such as private restaurants known as paladares).64 As a result of economic reform, state employment accounted for 73.2% in 2003, down from 95% in 1989.65 Agricultural reform centered on the introduction of cooperatives in 1993 (Unidades Bsicas de Produccin Cooperativa (UBPC), which supplanted the typical communist agricultural collectives. As a consequence, state farm land ownership has been reduced from 78% in 1989 to 33% in 1998.66 Another consequential measure was legalizing the possession of foreign currency in 1993. Unlike North Korea, Cuba now has two large and ready sources of foreign currency, which can cushion the hardship created by economic recession: extensive tourism and foreign remittances.67 Although Cuba hasnt pursued economic reform with Chinas zeal (wide-ranging reform measures in 1993-1995 were followed by retrenchment),68 it has been much bolder than North Korea. Overall, Cuba experienced a much shorter (though more severe) period of negative economic growth (1990-1993) than North Korea (1990-1998). Overall, Cubans enjoy a higher standard of living and greater political freedoms than North Koreans.69 As we can see, economic performance has fluctuated across the remaining 5 communist countries. Nonetheless, all of them are currently implementing some version of the Chinese model of piecemeal economic reform that can deliver growth and thus bring much-needed legitimacy to the regime. However, economic growth is not a sufficient basis on which regime legitimacy can be established. In societies where individuals are born and bred among ideology, the regime has to be able to base its legitimacy on a certain widely-accepted belief system; in 2005, the only remaining ideology that communist countries can mobilize is externally-oriented nationalism. Externally-Oriented Nationalism Section II if this paper argued that Marxism-Leninism was bankrupt in the entire communist camp by the early 1980s and that the countries that eventually collapsed were unable to articulate a new ideology to fill the void created by the demise of MarxismLeninism. By contrast, the 5 communist countries that endure to this day successfully substituted externally-oriented nationalism for Marxism-Leninism. Why didnt all 15 countries resort to this type of nationalism and thus avert regime collapse? The main difference between the two groups of communist states is that the countries that collapsed had no credible external target for their nationalism after 1985, while for the remaining 5 countries credible targets existed. Although nationalism varied in intensity from country to country, it was a credible ideological platform in all 5 remaining communist states, thus providing an important source of legitimacy for the regime.64

Javier Corrales, The Gatekeeper State: Limited Economic Reform and Regime Survival in Cuba, 19822002, Latin American Research Review 39: 2 (June 2004): 35-65. 65 Economist Intelligence Unit, Cuba Country Profile 2005, p. 15. 66 Ibid., p. 29. 67 Susan Eckstein, Dollarization and the Its Discontents: Remittances and the Remaking of Cuba in the Post-Soviet Era Comparative Politics 36: 3 (April 2004): 313-330. 68 Carmela Mesa-Lago, Economic and Ideological Cycles in Cuba in Archibald R. M. Miller, ed. The Cuban Economy (2004), pp. 25-41. 69 Per capita GDP in 2003 was $2699 in Cuba (EIU, Cuba Country Profile 2005, p. 23) and $818 in North Korea (EIU, North Korea Profile 2005, p. 16).


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Nationalism is strongest in Cuba and North Korea, the two remaining countries that face the highest probability of external attack.70 In North Korea, the memory of Japanese colonialism and the horrible suffering of ordinary civilians at American hands during the Korean War (1950-1953) are carefully preserved and exploited by the regime.71 In an information-poor environment (the internet is tightly controlled, as are foreign media), the regime has found it possible to ensure continued mass support for resistance to the isolate-and-stifle policy against socialism and the DPRK of imperialists and their stooges.72 Similarly, the misjudged US blockade against Castro has served as a focal point for rallying popular support for his regime.73 The passage of the 1992 Cuban Democracy Act and the 1996 Helms-Burton Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity (LIBERTAD) Act have done much more to solidify the regime than can be achieved by repression and control of information. Nationalist anti-American discourse has always been quite believable in Cuba, as the US has historically been cast in a very negative light as a colonizer and supporter of the brutal Batista regime. However, the continued blockade, the invasion of Iraq and the human rights abuses in Guantnamo only increase popular support for Castro, who is seen to be leading a Manichean struggle with the evil forces of imperialism.74 In Vietnam and Laos nationalism is less strong, as the likelihood of external attack is lower than in North Korean and Cuba. Nonetheless, nationalism is quite powerful in Vietnam. The historic enemy is China, which ruled Vietnam until AD939 and then treated it as a tributary state until the establishment of the Nguyen dynasty in the late 18th century. The two countries fought a brief border war in 1979 (which Vietnam won), and have engaged in occasional later spats over outlying islands like the Spratleys and the Paracels. Similarly, anti-American feelings run deep and can be easily reinforced, especially given recent US anti-dumping measures taken against Vietnam (catfish and shrimp). It should be noted, however, that in 2004, China was Vietnams biggest source of imports, and the US was its biggest export destination, thus making the government wary of spontaneous anti-Chinese or anti-American popular mobilization. In Laos, in the words of a Vientiane intellectual, Marxism-Leninism, while still officially retained, is being replaced by nationalist rhetoric as the partys source of legitimacy. This is evident in seminars and oral lessons, rather than in written documents.75 Over time, the external target of nationalism changed. In the mid-1970sAs of 2005, the Bush administration considers North Korea part of the axis of evil and Cuba an outpost of tyranny and is committed to regime change in both. 71 Glorious 50 Years (Pyongyang: Korea Pictorial, 1995). 72 Jo Am and An Chol Gang, Korea in the 20th Century: 100 Significant Events (Pyongyang: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 2002), p. 196. Also see America: The King of Terrorism (Pyongyang: Foreign Languages Press, 2003) (.--.:,92(2003). 73 Daro L. Machado, Cuba: Ideologa revolucionaria (La Habana: Editora Poltica, 2000). 74 Fidel Castro, Cuba es una prueba de que los pueblos pueden luchar, resistir y vencer (La Habana: Oficina de Publicaciones del Consejo de Estado, 2004). 75 Joseph J. Zasloff, The Foreign Policy of Laos in the 1990s, in Jacqueline Butler-Diaz, ed. New Laos, New Challenges (Tempe, AZ: Program for Southeast Asian Studies Arizona State University, 1998), p. 142.70


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and the 1980s, Laos was effectively a puppet state of Vietnam, which meant that it took Vietnams side in international relations and declared itself pro-Soviet and anti-Chinese. As the 40,000-strong Vietnamese army withdrew from Laos in the late 1980s76 and the Soviet Union collapsed, Laos found new external enemies. Thailand proved to be a good choice, as the two countries had fought a brief border war in 1988, and Thailand harbored anti-regime insurgents and remnants of the Lao royal family.77 Unlike North Korean or Cuban nationalism, modern-day Chinese nationalism is not a reaction to the possibility of external attack, but is rather driven by a victimization narrative (century of national humiliation) and a desire to restore China to its former glory.78 The main tropes used by regime-sponsored think tanks to stoke nationalist passions in the wake of Tiananmen were the Japanese atrocities in the 1930s and 1940s, Taiwanese moves towards independence, and American hegemony. With government encouragement, blockbuster publications like China Can Say No appeared.79 Individuals were also allowed to engage in organized anti-Japanese or anti-American protests.80 From the governments perspective, this was a win-win strategy, as people were allowed to vent off, yet they were not protesting against the regime. When it comes to the 2000s, there is some contention among China specialists on the ability of the regime to control mass nationalism: some see the government as creating and manipulating nationalist sentiments,81 while others argue that from the mid-1990s onwards, the regime has been more reactive to mass nationalism, rather than pro-actively encouraging it.82 While we do have evidence that the regime did initiate and manipulate the rise of anti-Japanese rhetoric by sponsoring research on the Nanjing massacre, creating the Beijing War of Resistance Museum,83 and by sensitizing the public to the Japanese textbook issue,84 China-based academics seem to agree that the most recent round of anti-Japanese protests was not regime-organized and the government saw it more as a nuisance than as

To put the size of Vietnamese troops in perspective, we should note that the Laotian army currently consists of 29,100 troops (EIU, Laos Country Profile 2005, p. 8). 77 Gerald W. Fry, The Future of the Lao PDR, in Butler-Diaz, ed. (fn 75), pp. 147-179. 78 For a careful assessment of the realpolitik elements in Chinese nationalism see Thomas Christensen, Chinese Realpolitik: Reading Beijings Worldview, Foreign Affairs 75: 5 (1996), pp. 37-52. 79 ,,:( : ,1996). 80 While Japan and the US are the main targets of externally-oriented nationalism in China, anti-Japanese feelings run much deeper than anti-American feelings amongst the Chinese population. See Alastair Iain Johnston, Chinese Middle Class Attitudes towards International Affairs: Nascent Liberalization?, The China Quarterly 179 (September 2004), pp. 603-628. See Zhao Dingxing on the 1999 student protests. 81 Suisheng Zhao, Nation-State by Construction: Dynamics of Modern Chinese Nationalism (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004). 82 Peter Hays Gries, Chinas New Nationalism: Pride, Politics, and Diplomacy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004). See also Peter Hays Gries, Nationalism and Chinese Foreign Policy, in Yong Deng and Fei-Ling Wang, eds. China Rising: Power and Motivation in Chinese Foreign Policy (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005). 83 Rana Mitter, Behind the Scenes at the Museum: Nationalism, History and Memory in the Beijing War of Resistance Museum, 1987-1997, The China Quarterly 161 (1), pp. 279-293. A later example of the role of museums in spurring nationalist sentiment is the creation of the Unit 731 museum in Harbin in 2001. 84 Yinan He, The Clash of Memories: National Myth-Making and the Sino-Japanese History Issue. Mimeo: Fairbank Center for East Asian Research Harvard University, 2005.

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something that was desirable.85 In April 2005, there was palpable potential that antiJapanese protests might turn into anti-government protests, which led to quick and successful moves by the regime to check them. The Chinese experience illustrates the two main potential pitfalls in the instrumental use of nationalism. First, nationalist activity not controlled by the regime can backfire and turn into anti-regime protests thus serving to undermine government legitimacy rather than supporting it. Second, though externally-oriented nationalism can be the glue that keeps people together and ensures greater regime support, as the experience of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia shows, it can easily evolve into antiminority nationalism. This is not a serious concern in Cuba and North Korea, which each have about 1% ethnic minorities, yet in China (6-8% geographically concentrated minorities), Vietnam (15% minorities), and Laos (40% minorities), efforts have to be made to avoid the time bomb triggered by anti-minority nationalism in the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. So far, China seems to have been quite successful in minority integration, incorporating all ethnic groups into a notion of a great non-Han-Chinese antiJapanese anti-American China. Therefore, while a useful short-term measure to fill the ideological vacuum left after the demise of Marxism-Leninism, nationalism can be a dangerous strategy for gaining long-term regime legitimacy. At best, nationalism is a stopgap measure that has to be supplanted by another ideological trope. In China, where the process of replacing nationalism is most advanced, the discourse of choice is that of civil and political rights. Chinese citizens can now elect local officials (at the village level, but also in some townships), create NGOs and other organizations (but not political parties), practice religion (with the exception of unauthorized religions and cults like Falun Gong), have access to a range of relatively free media, and, most importantly, sue government officials for abuse of discretion. The putatively non-litigious Chinese have embraced their rights to legal protection enthusiastically, bringing 89,919 cases against government officials in 200386 and winning at a rate greater than that in the US.87 Realizing that a more accountable government is a more legitimate government, the CCP has encouraged both vertical and horizontal accountability of its officials. Vertical accountability is accomplished through local elections, administrative litigation, and government-tolerated riots.88 In terms of horizontal accountability, a number of agencies exist tasked with identifying, prosecuting, and sentencing corrupt officials.89 While China is clearly not a democracy, there is no basis for the classical conception of a regime that rules throughPersonal interviews in Beijing with Gao Hong (April 28, 2005), Jin Xide (April 28, 2005), and Pan Wei (May 5, 2005). 86 2004, p. 889. 87 Randall Peerenboom, Globalization, Path Dependence and the Limits of Law: Administrative Law Reform and the Rule of Law in the Peoples Republic of China, Berkeley Journal of International Law, vol. 19:2 (2001), fn. 301 (on p. 217). 88 OBrien and Li (fn 25). 89 Melanie Manion, Corruption by Design (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004); Yan Sun, Corruption and Market in Contemporary China (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004); Andrew Wedeman, The Intensification of Corruption in China, The China Quarterly 180 (December 2004), pp. 895-921.85


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coercion rather than through mass mobilization. Recent survey research shows that while Chinese citizens may be dissatisfied with specific actions of government officials, there is widespread diffuse support for the regime, indicating that it has managed to regain sufficient legitimacy post-Tiananmen.90 Some seedlings of a civil society, such as NGOs, religious organizations, and a semi-free press have been allowed to operate in Vietnam as well.91 As of 2004, direct elections were held for commune, district and provincial officials, with non-communist party members making up 40% of the 500,000 candidates.92 In addition, attempts to prosecute corruption have been made (Thai Binh province protests, sentencing of Truong Van Cam, and spectacular sacking of agriculture minister Le Huy Ngo in 2004). Finally, there has been a debate over legalization, with laws supplanting bureaucratic fiat.93 By contrast, in Laos political rights seem to be in their infancy, civil society is non-existent, and elections do not represent any meaningful choice. In Cuba, regime support is aided by increased religious freedom,94 attempts to tackle corruption,95 toleration of some opposition activities,96 and the 1993 introduction of direct elections to the National Assembly (Asamblea Nacional de Poder Popular) and to provincial and municipal assemblies.97 While some have attributed regime resilience to repression and tight control of information,98 various opinion polls demonstrate that the Cuban regime enjoys significant genuine support and does not have to rule through coercion.99 No information of increased human and political rights in the DPRK is available at this time. The trend, however, is clear: over time, the regime has to expand political and civil rights. Still, as with nationalism, the question whether a single-party regime with a90

Jie Chen, Popular Political Support in Urban China (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2004). 91 Benedict J. Tria Kerkvliet, Authorities and the People: An Analysis of State-Society Relations in Vietnam in Luong, ed. (fn 49), pp. 27-53; Shaun Kingsley Malarney, Return to the Past: The Dynamics of Contemporary Religious and Ritual Transformation in Luong, ed. (fn 49), pp. 225-256; David G. Marr, A Passion for Modernity: Intellectuals and the Media in Luong, ed. (fn 49), pp. 257-295. 92 Economist Intelligence Unit, Vietnam Country Profile 2005, p. 9. 93 Zachary Abuza, Renovating Politics in Contemporary Vietnam (2001), pp. 75-130; John Gillespie, Concept of Law in Vietnam: Transforming Statist Socialism in Randall Peerenboom, ed. Asian Discourses of Rule of Law: Theories and Implementation of Rule of Law in Twelve Asian Countries, France, and the US (New York: Routledge, 2004). 94 Restrictions on religious organizations have been relaxed. Also, religious worshippers are now allowed to become members of the Communist Party. See Mark Falcoff, Cuba the Morning after: Confronting Castros Legacy (Washington, DC: AEI Press, 2003), pp. 181-216. 95 Jorge F. Prez-Lpez, Corruption and the Cuban Transition in Archibald R. M. Miller, ed. The Cuban Economy (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2004), pp. 195-217. 96 The decision of the Cuban government to allow the organization of a major dissident congress on May 20-21, 2005 may signal an important advance in freedom of expression on the island (Economist Intelligence Unit, Cuba Country Report August 2005, p. 12). 97 There is only one candidate per seat (usually but not always a Communist Party member) and constituents vote either for or against him. Economist Intelligence Unit, Cuba Country Profile 2005, p. 7. 98 Taylor Boas, The Dictators Dilemma? The Internet and US Policy toward Cuba, Washington Quarterly 23: 3 (2000): 57-67. 99 Jorge Domnguez, The Secrets of Castros Staying in Power, Foreign Affairs 72: 2 (Spring 1993), 97107. See also Darren Hawkins, Democratization Theory and Nontransitions: Insights from Cuba, Comparative Politics 33:4 (July 2001), 441-461.


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ruling party whose members are not fully accountable to law can guarantee civil right for the broad public will eventually arise and may thus undermine this strategy for regime survival as well. Section IV: Rival Explanations: Contagion, Repression, and Institutional Failure Several rival theories of the collapse of communism have been articulated. In the main, those are contagion theories, repression theories, and institutional failure theories. As I explain below, those theories do not help us understand why communism collapsed in some countries but not in others. Contagion Theories of contagion have limited usefulness, as they tend to be underspecified. There are two problems with those theories. First, they are factually incorrect: only some countries seem to have been stricken by contagion, while others have resisted it. This goes contrary to contagion theories, which assume the universality of infection.100 Second, contagion theories do not specify the nature of the infection, its transmission mechanism, and its target. More specifically, contagion theories fail to distinguish between the contagiousness of Gorbachevs ideas of glasnost and perestroika and the contagiousness of regime collapse. While Gorbachev ideas might have had a contagious quality to them (at least in the 10 countries that collapsed),101 there is no evidence that regime collapse operated on a contagious basis. As Table 1 below demonstrates, the 10 regimes collapsed in 5 different ways: a) leadership change without street protests (Poland, Hungary, and Bulgaria), b) leadership change with non-violent street protests (GDR, Czechoslovakia, and Mongolia), c) leadership change with violent street protests (Romania) d) street protest without leadership change (Albania), and e) exit of countries from the federal union (Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union).102 As there is no universal mode of regime collapse, contagion theories in their current state of development cannot be used to understand why communism collapsed.

Barbara Wejnert, Diffusion, Development, and Democracy, 1800-1999, American Sociological Review 70 (February 2005), pp. 53-81. 101 Some of Gorbachevs ideas were not new. For example, economic reform (perestroika) took place in Hungary and China long before Gorbachev began talking about it, thus raising the possibility that Gorbachev himself was infected by processes unfolding elsewhere. On the China-Hungary comparison, see the contributions to Andrew Walder, ed., The Waning of the Communist State (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995), and the work of David Stark, Lazslo Brust, Victor Nee, and Anna Seleny. 102 If we think of the Chinese case as a failed collapse, then we have a sixth mode: violent suppression of non-violent protests without leadership change and without regime collapse.

100

Dimitrov Why Communism Didnt CollapseTable 1: Chronology of Communist Collapse Country Collapse Start Start Event Hungary Poland China (noncollpse) GDR Bulgaria Czechoslovakia May 1988 Summer 1988 April-June 1989 October 18, 1989 Nov 10, 1989 Nov 17, 1989 leadership change; no protests Round Table talks decision; no protests no leadership change; largescale non-violent protests leadership change; largescale non-violent protests leadership change; no protests

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Collapse End March 25, 1990 June 4, 1989 June 4, 1989 March 18, 1990 June 10, 1990 June 8-9, 1989 May 20, 1990 July 29, 1990

End Event Multiparty elections multiparty elections violent protest suppression multiparty elections multiparty elections

multiparty elections leadership change; large scale non-violent protests Romania December multiparty elections leadership change; large1989 scale violent protests Mongolia December leadership change; limited multiparty elections 1989 non-violent protests (rock bands) Albania Winter multiparty elections no leadership change; large- March 31, Spring 1990 1991 scale violent protests USSR Spring 1990 republican Supreme Soviet December dissolution of the multiparty elections; non25, 1991 Soviet Union Russian republics protest Yugoslavia Spring, republican multiparty June 1991 Slovenia & Croatia Summer, Fall elections; non-Serbian exit the federation 1990 republics protest Sources: Bugajski, Political Parties of Eastern Europe: A Guide to Politics in the Post-Communist Era (2002), Elster, The Roundtable Talks and the Breakdown of Communism (1996), EIU country database.

A variant of contagion theory argues that the regimes that collapsed were part of the Soviet empire and were thus susceptible to change radiating from the core.103 As the center of the empire began to wither away, this argument goes, its periphery collapsed; the countries that remained communist were not part of empire and were thus immune from the centripetal forces unleashed by the waning of the center. The empire was held together by force (the Warsaw Pact) and by complicated economic exchanges between the periphery and the core carried out through the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA or Comecon).104 Yet, what were the members of the Soviet empire? Strict membership criteria (a country has to belong to both the Warsaw Pact and to Comecon) would limit it to 5 European countries;105 more relaxed criteria (not a memberValerie Bunce, correspondence with the author, September 17, 2005. Also see Rene de Nevers, Comrades No More: The Seeds of Political Change in Eastern Europe (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003). 104 The standard wisdom on Comecon was that the Soviet Union imposed strict restraints on the actions of the other CMEA members. A recent study of the Eastern European CMEA member-countries argues that those 6 countries were a lot more independent of the USSR than was previously thought (Randall Stone, Satellites and Commissars: Strategy and Conflict on the Politics of Soviet-Bloc Trade (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996). Stones excellent study does not include the non-European CMEA members (Mongolia, Cuba, and Vietnam). 105 The 5 countries that were simultaneously members of the Warsaw Pact and of Comecon include the GDR, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, and Bulgaria (Romania did not participate in Warsaw Pact activities after 1968).103


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of the Warsaw Pact but a member of Comecon) would expand the periphery of the empire to 9 countries (adding Romania, Mongolia, Cuba, and Vietnam). However, this variant of contagion theory is also unable to account for some inconvenient facts: while not members of the Soviet empire, Albania and Yugoslavia collapsed; Cuba and Vietnam survived despite being members; and North Korea, though not a member was economically much more dependent on the USSR than most members, yet it survived nonetheless. As Table 2 below demonstrates, there was a range of integration with the Soviet Union across members of Comecon (e.g. Romania and East Germany traded more with the West than with the Soviet Union), yet there is no clear link between level of dependence on the Soviet Union and regime collapse.Table 2: Level of Economic Dependence on the Soviet Union (None, Low, Medium, High) Country Year CMEA Imports Imports CMEA Exports Exports CMEA Member USSR (minus USSR) USSR (minus USSR) Albania (N) 1987 No 0% 29.8% 0% 30.7% Bulgaria (H) 1988 Yes 53.5% 23.2% 62.5% 22.1% Czechosl (M) 1979 Yes 35.7% 30.6% 35.8% 29.3% GDR (L) 1989 Yes 22% 17.4% 23.8% 19.4% Hungary (M) 1986 Yes 30.9% 19.9% 33.9% 20.1% Mongolia (H) 1986 Yes N/A 96.7% (incl. USSR) N/A 94.2% (incl. USSR) Poland (L) 1988 Yes 23.3% 11.4% (GDR/CSSR) 24.5% 10.4% (GDR/CSSR) Romania (L) 1980 Yes N/A 33.7% (incl. USSR) N/A 33.7% (incl. USSR) USSR 1989 Yes N/A 56.3% N/A 55.2% Yugoslavia (L) 1988 Associate 13.3% 6.7% (Czechsl&Pol) 18.7% 8.1% (Czechsl&Pol) Member China (L) 1986 No 3.4% --4% 1.5% (Poland only) Cuba (H) 1983 Yes 68.3% 15.5% 70% 11.6.% Laos (L) 1988 No N/A 36.3% (incl. USSR) N/A 51.9% (incl. USSR) North Korea (H) 1988 No 60.7% 2.5% 49.6% 4.8% Vietnam (H) 1986 Yes 70.8% 70.8% Sources: See Appendix to this paper.

A sub-version of the empire thesis is the argument that communism survived in countries where it was indigenous, yet it failed in countries where it was imposed.106 There are two further versions of this argument: a) Soviet troops guaranteed communism in countries where it was imposed (such as Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and the GDR), and, once they left, it fell; and b) communism survived in places where first generation leaders (who either have more charisma/legitimacy or are more willing to use repression) were in command. As Table 3 below demonstrates, while communism survived in all places where it was indigenous, it fell both in countries where it was imposed and in countries where it was indigenous, thus making us doubt there is a strong relationship between indigenousness and regime durability. Similarly, Soviet troop size presence was immaterial: Gorbachevs December 7, 1988 UN General Assembly promise to withdraw 2% of the over 500,000 Soviet troops stationed in the GDR, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary was never realized prior the collapse of those regimes. Counterintuitively,Adam Przeworski, correspondence with the author, August 24, 2005. For a related argument on the cultural affinity of some countries for Communism, see Jacques Rupnik, On Two Models of Exit from Communism: Central Europe and the Balkans in Sorin Antohi and Vladimir Tismaneanu, eds. Between Past and Future: The Revolutions of 1989 and Their Aftermath (2000), pp. 14-24.106


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many IR theorists seem to believe that despite the lack of troop withdrawal this decision had the greatest causal impact on the collapse of communism, as it made it harder for those regimes to issue credible threats of suppressing dissent.107 We should note, however, that the role of Soviet troops tends to be exaggerated. Some regimes where no promise was made to withdraw Soviet troops (e.g. Poland) were already well on their way of undoing the communism by 1988 and it was quite doubtful that troops could have been used to suppress protest there anyway. Similarly, with or without Soviet troops, by the end of summer 1988, the Hungarian regime was evolving in a democratic direction. This argument only makes some sense for non-reformers like the GDR and Czechoslovakia, but it would be significantly strengthened had the even miniscule 2% planned Soviet troop withdrawal taken place there before collapse began. Table 3 below contains numerical data on the size of Soviet troops in different countries.Table 3: Indigenous v. Imposed Communist Regimes Country Regime Warsaw Regime Beginning Pact Imposed Year Member v. Indigenous Number of Soviet Troops in 1989 None Indigenousness Check: Did Communists Win the First Democratic Elections? Yes Yes No No No Yes No Yes Yes (1990) Yes (Milosevic) N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A

Albania Bulgaria Czechoslovakia GDR Hungary Mongolia Poland Romania USSR Yugoslavia China Cuba Laos

1944 1946 1948 1949 1948 1924 1948 1947 1917 1945 1949 1960 1975

None 75,000 370,000 50,000 55,000 30,000 None N/A None None 11,000 40,000 Vietnamese 1948 No None North Korea Indigenous 1956/1975 No 15,000 advisers Vietnam Indigenous Source: Library of Congress Country Study series; Lvesque, The Enigma of 1989 (1997). Semi-indigenous Imposed Impos

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