Word: communist
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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When the Cultural Revolution subsided, so many political jobs had been left vacant as a result of the struggle that by 1969 military officers held 40% of the Communist Party's key posts. By this time, though, Mao had a new threat to contend with: the ambition of Defense Minister Lin Biao, then his designated successor. The impatient Lin laid plans to oust Mao via the euphemistically named "571 Engineering Project," but his coup plot was discovered, and Lin died when the plane in which he escaped from Beijing crashed in Mongolia. After Lin's death, that most deft...
Revolutionary true believers used to call Deng a "capitalist roader." They were right in their accusation, but he was right in his perception that the Communist road was a dead...
...while Deng subordinated ideology to the goal of "modernization," he did not downgrade the role or diffuse the power of the Communist Party. Quite the contrary; he has remained an absolutist in defense of the institution that Marx and Engels aptly called the "dictatorship of the proletariat." Farmers could work their own plots and profit from the sale of their produce at market, but under Deng, the People's Daily remained very much an organ of instruction rather than information, to say nothing of debate. The doors of the Great Hall of the People were shut, figuratively and often literally...
...wrong. In all Communist societies, the principal purpose of the party -- and the only thing it does well -- has always been the preservation and enforcement of its own power. But that naked truth has traditionally been disguised with Marxist economics and ideology. To the extent that he de- Communized the economy and discredited ideology, Deng diminished the party's claim to legitimacy. He left the party all the more vulnerable to the flood of discontent that has so stunned the world in recent days. An improvement in living standards is not enough to meet the needs of the people...
Deng also made himself vulnerable to the supreme, and probably final, irony of his roller-coaster career. He carefully, patiently, skillfully set the scene for Gorbachev to visit China two weeks ago. The Soviet leader was coming on Deng's terms to end the 30-year schism between the Communist giants. Yet not only was this diplomatic triumph overshadowed by the more spectacular events in Tiananmen Square, but the demonstrators there carried banners in Russian demanding glasnost and saying IN THE SOVIET UNION THEY HAVE GORBACHEV. IN CHINA, WE HAVE WHOM...