Zhao Hong: Lessons and Insights from the Failure of the Soviet Model of Socialist Modernization
From the perspective of world historical development, since the 16th century and particularly since the Industrial Revolution, modernization has become the primary thread running through the development of both East and West. The modes of realizing modernization manifest different characteristics and forms across different countries, nations, or regions. Qian Chengdanholds that modernization possesses different "modes," and to study modernization, one must study the issue of "modes." Based on differences in national conditions, the American scholar Barrington Moore outlined three different modes of modernization: the Western democratic mode represented by Britain, the United States, and France; the fascist mode represented by Germany, Italy, and Japan; and the socialist mode represented by the Soviet Union and China. Moore argued that these three modes not only succeeded one another in developmental sequence but also progressed through a chain of causality. The Western democratic path opened the door for the German, Italian, and Japanese fascist mode, and the failure of fascism in Russia and China directly ignited socialist revolutions. Undoubtedly, the Soviet mode was the world's first exploration of a socialist modernization mode that sought to transcend capitalism. During its 74 years of existence, it achieved great successes that drew world attention: "In the 1950s and 1960s, many Third World countries praised the Soviet mode as the best and fastest way to modernization and social justice." Looking at the entire process of Soviet socialist modernization, one could say it provided a complete template of experiences and lessons for Chinese-path modernization. Of course, when evaluating and analyzing the Soviet mode of socialist modernization, one cannot unilaterally negate it simply because of its failure; rather, one should dialectically internalize its experiences and lessons.
I. The persistent failure to break free from the shackles of historical and cultural traditions
As the world's first socialist state, the Soviet Union formed the first systematic plan for socialist modernization—the Soviet mode—through arduous exploration in the transition to and construction of socialism. The Soviet mode was a comprehensive political, economic, and social transformation implemented from the top down on the basis of a successful political revolution. It was a catch-up modernization development mode, dominated by heavy industry, in which the state allocated resources and distributed wealth primarily through command planning. From an economic perspective, the Soviet mode was indeed different from the Western modernization mode, but if analyzed from a cultural perspective, as a link in the entire chain of Russian modernization, the Soviet mode never managed to break free from the shackles of Russian historical and cultural traditions.
Russia’s pursuit of modernization began with the reforms of Peter I. Thereafter, the theme of Russian historical development was always to catch up with developed Western countries, following a catch-up modernization path aimed at achieving the status of a great military power. Becoming a strong state and expansion became the main axis of Russian modernization. According to statistics, from the late 13th century to the early 14th century, the land area of the originally formed Principality of Moscow was only 1,300 square kilometers; by 1457, when Ivan IV claimed the title of Tsar, the Russian territory had reached 2.8 million square kilometers. In the 370 years from Ivan IV to the accession of the last Tsar, Nicholas II, Russia's territory expanded from 2.8 million to 22.8 million square kilometers—a more than sevenfold increase, with an average annual expansion of 540,000 square kilometers. Stalin maintained an approving attitude toward the territorial expansion of successive Tsars and expressed dissatisfaction with Marx and Engels for their criticism of Tsarist expansion. Molotov wrote in his memoirs: "As Foreign Minister, I considered my task to be to expand our Motherland's territory as much as possible. It seems that Stalin and I did not perform this task badly."
From Peter I, through Ivan III, until Brezhnev, the goal of Russian (Soviet) modernization—with the strong state and expansion as its main axis—was not only a continuous line of descent but also deepened step by step. According to Gorbachev's memoirs, the proportion of Soviet military spending in the national budget was not the publicly announced 16% but as high as 40%. The output value of the military-industrial system as a proportion of the gross social product was not the publicly stated 6% but 20%. Out of a total research budget of 25 billion rubles, nearly 20 billion rubles were used for the development of military equipment. In 1945, the United States possessed six atomic bombs while the Soviet Union had none; by 1978, the Soviet union possessed 25,393 nuclear warheads and corresponding delivery vehicles, while the United States had only 24,424. From the results of modernization, Russia did indeed become a military power, but its foundation remained a backward and conservative way of life. The autocratic political system, landed estates, and peasant communes [1] remained unchanged, and these were precisely the factors that hindered the country's modernization. In 1921, Lenin wrote with lament in his article "On the Levy in Kind": "Look at the map of the Russian Federation. North of Vologda, south-east of Rostov-on-Don and Saratov, south of Orenburg and Omsk, and north of Tomsk, there are boundless areas big enough to contain dozens of civilized states. And yet patriarchalism, semi-savagery and real savagery reign over all these boundless areas. And what about the peasant backwoods of the rest of Russia? Everywhere scores of versts [2] of country track—or rather of trackless country—separate the villages from the railways, i.e., from the material links with civilization, with capitalism, with large-scale industry, with the big cities. Is it not like this everywhere? Do not patriarchalism, Oblomovism [3] and semi-savagery also predominate in all these places?" Consequently, as Russia entered the 20th century, it was not only backward but its future was uncertain. Ultimately, the exploration of modernization was driven into a dead end through the form of radical political revolution.
Soviet socialist modernization possessed similarly obvious catch-up and military-political characteristics. Up until the dissolution [of the USSR], many problems left over from classical modernization were never resolved. For example, it failed to establish a commodity market, capital market, or labor market in the full sense; it failed to provide people with space for free development, which is an important guarantee for achieving results; and it failed to establish a mechanism for self-development. Entering the 1970s, faced with the challenge of the world's new technological revolution, the Soviet Union, like other socialist countries, faced the task of how to break free from the constraints of the traditional mode and explore a new path to modernization. At almost the same time, China placed its policy focus for responding to the challenge on solving the people's livelihood issues, whereas the Soviet Union chose to focus its policy on revitalizing its national prestige, continuing to place the development of the heavy industry and military-industrial complex in the most important position. By this time, however, the inherent advantages of the Soviet mode were gradually being exhausted.
Medushevsky believes that Soviet socialist modernization belonged to a conservative mode characterized by: the combination of modernization with military expansion, particularly linked to the goal of maintaining a "Great State"; modernization always linked to primary goals while relatively neglecting the improvement of the people's standard of living; and modernization primarily pursuing the superficial forms of modernization rather than its deep content. Setting military development as the goal often led to economic imbalances; pursuing "Great State" status often meant ignoring the people's lives, or even proceeding through large-scale, ultra-coercive methods, resulting in suffering for the people.
Throughout the process of Russian modernization from Peter I to Yeltsin, one can find that Russian modernization always suffered from insufficient development driven by internal economic factors. This catch-up modernization was dominated by state power and directly pushed by coercive means; therefore, progress in the economic and social exterior was often achieved at the cost of stagnation in the political sphere and enormous social losses.
In short, the Soviet mode of socialist modernization not only failed to break free from the shackles of historical and cultural traditions but was deeply influenced by them. This was manifested in the fact that whenever developmental bottlenecks were encountered during the modernization process, just like the Tsarist Empire, the Soviet Union could not resolve them through internal reform. It either sought rescue in external expansion or in internal political upheaval, yet always remained unable to explore a path of gradual modernization.
II. The persistent failure to properly resolve the relationship between socialist practice and the essence of socialism
"What is socialism, and how should we build it?" This primary and fundamental question of socialism remained one that the Soviet Union never fully clarified. As the first country in the world to explore a socialist modernization path different from capitalism, the Soviet Union was subject to two major constraining factors from its very birth. One was the historical limitation of the developmental level of scientific socialist theory; the other was the domestic impact of the international struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie—that is, the struggle between "socialism in one country" and the encirclement by capitalist powers. Consequently, Soviet socialist modernization always failed to properly handle the relationship between socialist practice and its essence, a failure most prominently seen in the way modernization was severely detached from the reality of Soviet economic and social development.
Deng Xiaoping once said: "What socialism really looks like, the Soviet Union did it for many years and never fully figured it out. Perhaps Lenin’s thinking was better—he implemented the New Economic Policy—but later the Soviet mode became ossified." Why say Lenin's thinking was better? Primarily because Lenin's New Economic Policy (NEP) was the exploration and attempt at a "socialist modernization mode" that most closely fitted the national conditions of the time, considering Russia's backward state. This exploration underwent a transformation from "direct transition" to "indirect transition" within a short period.
From 1918 to 1921, the nascent Soviet regime was forced to adopt a series of extraordinary measures to cope with the war, namely the policy of War Communism. In terms of theoretical origins, War Communism reflected the classic Marxist view that a socialist society would have no commodity production. Proceeding from this view, the Bolshevik Party led by Lenin attempted to realize communism in Russia through a method of direct transition. However, because it was severely detached from national conditions, it met with strong resistance from the peasantry. Lenin quickly recognized the problems inherent in the policy itself, clearly noting: "We planned (or perhaps it would be more correct to say we presumed without sufficient calculation) to regulate the state production and distribution of products on communist lines in a small-peasant country by direct orders of the proletarian state. Life has exposed our error." In 1921, Lenin decisively ended War Communism and turned to the New Economic Policy, which centered on restoring the market and the commodity economy. This policy shift was made based on changed circumstances—that is, no longer treating Marxist theory as dogma. Lenin emphasized: "We do not regard Marx’s theory as something completed and inviolable; on the contrary, we are convinced that it has only laid the foundation stone of the science which socialists must develop in all directions if they wish to keep pace with life." In Lenin’s view, "The whole meaning of the New Economic Policy is this with us now, and this alone: that we have found the form of link between the new economy, which we are building with such great effort, and the peasant economy." From then on, Lenin’s thought on socialist modernization gradually developed through the implementation of the NEP, forming a socialist modernization construction mode based on the reality of Russia as a small-peasant country and the promotion of the worker-peasant alliance.
Looking back today, had the Soviet Union continued along the path of Lenin’s New Economic Policy, it would have explored a socialist modernization mode suited to its national conditions, and socialist practice would have better reflected the essential requirements of socialism. Regrettably, this exploration faced a series of difficulties and challenges due to Lenin’s premature death. In the 1920s, a fierce debate erupted within the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) around "whether socialism could be built in the Soviet Union and how to build it." The question of modernization was at the center of this struggle, even if the participants were not fully aware of it at the time. After intense debate, the modernization thought represented by Stalin—which advocated for high-speed heavy industrialization as the strategic priority, total agricultural collectivization as the strategic foundation, class struggle as the developmental driver, and a highly centralized political and cultural system as the strategic guarantee—gained the upper hand within the Party.
In contrast to Lenin, who proceeded from the reality of a backward, small-peasant country and advocated building socialism through the New Economic Policy, Stalin proceeded from a one-sided logic of building a strong state, ensuring the development of heavy industry by sacrificing rather than protecting the interests of the peasantry. Beginning with Stalin, the broad masses of peasants, who should have been the beneficiaries of socialist modernization, were instead forced to shoulder a heavy burden for its realization. By 1936, when Stalin announced that the Soviet Union had basically completed the building of socialism, the primary criteria he relied upon were not related to the productive forces, but rather to the "abolition of private ownership" within the relations of production. In Stalin's view, the "most important thing" in building socialism was that "capitalism has been completely expelled from the sphere of our industry, and the socialist form of production is now the system that holds exclusive dominance in our industry." Regarding agriculture, he claimed that "the kulaks [4] have also been eliminated," forming an "all-encompassing system of collective and state farms," while "the individual small-peasant economic component holds only a tiny position." He asserted that "the phenomenon of man exploiting man has been eradicated and abolished, and socialist ownership of the tools and means of production has been established as the unshakable foundation of our Soviet society." Taking this as his standard, Stalin, in the process of leading Soviet socialist modernization, frequently departed from the actual level of development of the productive forces. He one-sidedly pursued socialist relations of production that were "larger in size, higher in the degree of public ownership, and purer in nature" [5]. Consequently, he clung to many things that actually fettered the development of productive forces and lacked the essential attributes of socialism as "socialist principles," while opposing many things that favored the development of productive forces, commercialization, socialization, and modernization under socialist conditions as "capitalist restoration."
In terms of outcomes, although Stalin's "strong state" policy created a socialist great power, the living conditions of the broad masses of working people did not see fundamental improvement. This was manifested in several ways: economically, the commandist planned economy system suppressed individual initiative and could not sustain healthy economic development over the long term; politically, power was excessively concentrated and the legal system was undermined; culturally, a monolithic cultural apparatus not only excluded pluralistic thought but also led to the prevalence of a cult of personality; in the social sphere, there was a departure from being people-centered, as livelihood issues stagnated and the balance of fairness and justice was lost. All of this resulted in a severe disconnect between socialist practice and theory.
After Stalin's death in 1953, his successor Khrushchev began reforms. However, until the early period of Gorbachev’s administration, no matter how they reformed, Soviet modernization never fundamentally broke free from the shackles of the Stalinist model. The reason lay in the fact that they all, to varying degrees, inherited Stalin's metaphysical and dogmatic ideology—substituting the superficial features of socialism for the essence of socialism—and thus remained unable to achieve any breakthrough in reform.
In summary, the Soviet path to modernization was a brand-new exploration initiated within the context of a socialist system, yet it pursued one-sided modernization goals. This rendered it incapable of responding to the people’s aspirations for a better life over the long term, eventually resulting in a departure from the essence of socialism and the ultimate loss of the people's trust and support.
III. The persistent failure to properly handle the absorption and borrowing of capitalist modern civilization
In the historical process of global modernization, capitalist countries were the first to initiate the modernization process. According to Marxist theory, socialist modernization emerges from the contradictory development of capitalist modernization; it is not only the antithesis of capitalism but also the heir to the modern civilization created by capitalism. Furthermore, because socialism was first born in countries with backward economies and cultures, there has always been a question of how to absorb, borrow from, and transform capitalist modern civilization during the process of advancing toward socialist modernization. Whether this issue can be handled correctly has, in a sense, become a vital matter determining whether socialist modernization can persist over the long term to achieve lasting results.
In fact, after the victory of the October Revolution, Lenin not only clarified the necessity of opening up socialist countries to the outside world from a theoretical perspective—emphasizing that "the Socialist Republic cannot exist without having ties with the rest of the world, and under current conditions must link its existence with capitalist relations"—but also formulated a series of opening-up measures in policy, proposing to develop state capitalism through forms such as the concession system. Proceeding from the actual economic and cultural reality of a relatively backward Russia, Lenin proposed "to take what is good from abroad: Soviet power + Prussian railway order + American technology and trust organization + American national education, etc., etc., ++ = the sum total = socialism." Lenin’s late-life reflections continued this line of thought, emphasizing that in the cultural revolution and institutional reforms, one must learn to utilize the achievements of capitalist modern civilization, its advanced technology, and management experience.
In the early period of his rule, Stalin also attached great importance to utilizing advanced Western technology. During the implementation of the First Five-Year Plan, coinciding with the Great Depression of 1929–1933 in the capitalist world, the Soviet government utilized this historical window to import a vast amount of advanced technology, equipment, and talent, while sending large numbers of personnel to the West to study. It can be said that the success of the two Soviet Five-Year Plans was inextricably linked to the active utilization of Western technology and talent.
However, starting from the latter half of the 1930s, Stalin believed that the Soviet Union had solved its cadre and technical problems and that socialism had achieved victory in the USSR. He thus began to contract economic relations with the West. In 1939, the Soviet Union’s foreign trade volume dropped from 1.643 billion rubles in 1930 to 270 million rubles; simultaneously, foreign-invested enterprises were gradually eliminated, and foreign technical personnel returned home. After the end of the Second World War, the Soviet Union further squeezed the economic ties with the West that had seen some increase before the war. Soon, the Cold War, lasting over forty years, began. Against the backdrop of the Cold War, Stalin proposed the theory of "two parallel world markets," making an entirely incorrect assessment of postwar capitalist and socialist economic development and their mutual relations. This was concentrated in Stalin’s 1952 book, Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR. In this work, Stalin argued that "the most important economic result of the Second World War and its economic consequences must be considered the disintegration of the single, all-encompassing world market" and the formation of "two parallel and mutually opposed world markets." He believed that "the sphere of exploitation of world resources by the major capitalist countries (the US, UK, France) will not expand but shrink; the conditions of the world sales market for these countries will deteriorate, and the phenomenon of under-capacity operation of enterprises in these countries will increase." Conversely, he argued that socialist countries, due to "high-speed industrial development," would "soon reach a point where these countries not only will not need to import goods from capitalist countries but will themselves feel the necessity to export their surplus products to other countries." Stalin even erroneously believed that a characteristic of modern bourgeois science was that its entire schools had become pseudo-science, such as Weismann-Morganist eugenics, pedology, and racial theory. This erroneous perception even touched upon physics and chemistry; as late as 1953, cybernetics was still being categorically rejected under the label of serving the reactionary bourgeoisie. Subsequent practice in socialist modernization proved that Stalin’s erroneous assessment led to the self-closure of the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc countries and their isolation from the capitalist world economy, which in turn led these countries to blindly reject the development of science and technology in capitalist nations.
Under the guidance of Stalin’s aforementioned ideas, a distinct feature of modernization in the Soviet Union and Eastern European socialist countries was "innovation behind closed doors." This not only led to the increasing closure and ossification of the Stalinist model but also caused the socialist system to lose its competitiveness and appeal. Particularly starting from the 1950s and 60s, as the world scientific and technological revolution developed rapidly and world economic integration accelerated, the volatile and pluralistic world increasingly disproved Stalin’s assertions. Yet, subsequent leaders of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) continued to repeat these assertions out of habit. Internally, the Soviet Union continued to cling to the Stalinist model and its development strategy, which had been formed under the specific conditions of "war and revolution" as the theme of the era. This led to reforms by successive CPSU leaders that merely revolved around "perfecting the system." Externally, the Soviet Union remained resistant to opening up and failed to integrate with the development of the world economy. Meanwhile, by engaging in a massive arms race and contending for global hegemony with the United States, the Soviet Union’s economic structural imbalances became increasingly severe. By the eve of the collapse of the Soviet Union, among all sectors, only the military-industrial complex appeared prosperous; in the broad fields of civilian industry and civilian technology, the Soviet Union remained quite backward compared to Western countries.
Theoretically, socialism should be built upon the foundation of developed capitalist countries. However, history presented itself in the form of bypassing the "capitalist Caudine Forks" [6]. It was this unique historical background that determined that the Stalinist model was born in a form of confrontation with the capitalist modernization model, manifesting a firm political design and value orientation against capitalist ownership and international capital encirclement. Therefore, it is understandable that for a period, learning from capitalism was rejected. The problem was that the CPSU remained trapped in this mode of thinking for a long time, unable to extricate itself, even believing at one point that "reform" and "socialism" were mutually exclusive. Consequently, it consistently failed to correctly handle the relationship with capitalist countries during its modernization. As the process of world economic integration deepened, the contradictions between the singular, monolithic Soviet economic model and the diversity and pluralism of economic globalization became increasingly prominent. The introverted and closed nature of the Soviet economic model became increasingly mismatched with the open environment required by economic globalization. The war-preparedness of the Soviet model became increasingly discordant with the themes of peace and development in the era of globalization. Ultimately, it was defeated in the contest against the capitalist modernization model. Deng Xiaoping once said, "If socialism is to win the advantage over capitalism, it must boldly absorb and borrow all the achievements of civilization created by human society, and absorb and borrow all advanced business forms and management methods from all countries in the world today, including developed capitalist countries, that reflect the laws of modern socialized production." This is a profound summary of the lessons from Soviet socialist modernization.
IV. Revelations from the failure of the Stalinist model of socialist modernization
To be sure, both the "Soviet path" and the "Chinese path" are socialist modernization paths, and both present themselves as non-Western paths to modernization. As Lenin said, they both involve "creating and developing civilization using methods different from all other Western European countries." Although the Soviet exploration failed, it left behind precious lessons, experiences, and revelations for those countries continuing to explore the path of socialist modernization.
First, the governing party leading socialist modernization must always put the people's interests first.
The CPSU—a proletarian party with a 93-year history and a membership of 19 million, accounting for one-tenth of the Soviet population—had overcome countless difficulties and achieved incomparable and great feats while leading the Soviet people in socialist modernization. Yet, it lost its governing status overnight. While there were many reasons, the most fundamental was its loss of the masses' trust and support. Before the collapse of the Soviet Union, the CASS conducted a questionnaire survey. Respondents who believed the CPSU still represented the workers accounted for only 4%; those who believed it represented all the people accounted for only 7%; while those who believed it represented the bureaucracy, cadres, and institutional staff accounted for as much as 85%. A governing party that no longer represents the interests of the people is destined to be "blown away by wind and rain" [7].
"Three feet of ice are not formed by one day of cold" [8]. The reason the CPSU lost the people's trust and support is closely related to the fact that the party "rested on its laurels" for a long time and failed to emphasize strengthening its own building. Combined with "bureaucracy" and "corruption," this led to the gradual loss of its core role, planting the seeds for the collapse of the Soviet Union and the drastic changes in Eastern Europe. The reason Chinese-path modernization can persist over the long term to achieve lasting results is closely related to our Party’s persistent spirit of self-revolution. Self-revolution is the most distinctive character of our Party and the source of its formidable confidence in its struggle. At the opening ceremony of the 20th National Congress of the Party on October 16, 2022, General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out: "The Party’s self-revolution is always a work in progress. We must never succumb to the mood of relaxing, taking a breather, or growing weary of the struggle. We must persist in comprehensively and strictly governing the Party, continue to advance the great new project of Party building in the New Era, and lead social revolution through the Party's self-revolution." Therefore, the most fundamental lesson from the rise and fall of the CPSU is that a Communist Party must always stand at the forefront of the times, realize its own modernization, and keep pace with the requirements of the times in terms of governing philosophy, intra-Party democracy, and institutional innovation. Only then can it lead the cause of socialist modernization toward comprehensive success.
In short, as a Marxist party, if the cost of temporary economic development is the depletion of the relationship between the Party and the masses and the loss of the citizens' trust and identity, the party will still find it difficult to avoid the fate of failure.
Secondly, the construction of socialist modernization cannot be detached from national conditions. Engels pointed out: "Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past." In constructing socialism in a country with backward productive forces, one should have proceeded from the actual backward national conditions. However, the Soviet-model construction of socialist modernization proceeded solely from Marx's classical socialist principles, completely dogmatizing Marxism without truly understanding the conditions under which these principles apply. Some of Marx's assertions regarding future socialist construction were originally proposed by Marx and Engels for developed capitalist countries after a successful revolution. These cannot be simply copied by a backward country in its modernization process. Yet, from Stalin onwards, successive Soviet leaders failed to see the spatio-temporal dislocation between actual Soviet society and the communist society described by Marx and Engels. Instead, they were keen on copying certain assertions, believing this was "adhering to Marxism" and "adhering to socialism." Consequently, various problems arose because they "had not fully cleared up" what socialism was. This dogmatism, detached from national conditions, not only made the Soviet model of socialist modernization difficult to reform but also plunged the Soviet Union into a severe ideological crisis in its later period. This led to an inability to solve the question of "what is socialism" in theory, and even more so, the question of "how to build socialism" in practice.
General Secretary Xi Jinping has pointed out: "In adhering to Marxism and socialism, we must have a developmental perspective. We must center our efforts on the practical problems of our country's reform and opening up and modernization, and on the things we are currently doing. We must focus on the application of Marxist theory, on theoretical reflections regarding practical problems, and on new practices and new developments." Furthermore, "the more the cause develops, the more new situations and new problems will arise, and the more we need to engage in bold exploration in practice and continuous breakthroughs in theory."
In summary, the principles of historical materialism and scientific socialism demonstrate that socialism cannot be built on a foundation of small-scale production [9]. However, blindly attempting to leapfrog the stage of small-scale production to engage in socialism also cannot succeed. By implementing a state-led planned economic system on a foundation of small-scale production, the Soviet Union violated the law that the relations of production must adapt to the level of development of the productive forces. General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out that regarding the Soviet model: "Due to disrespect for economic laws and other factors, its defects became increasingly exposed over time, becoming a serious institutional obstacle to economic and social development."
Finally, the construction of socialist modernization must persist in advancing through the mutual learning among civilizations. In the course of modernization, socialism is actually quite resilient. The key lies in the fact that socialist modernization must be integrated both with a country’s actual conditions and with the specific era. So-called integration with the era means merging into the broad avenue of the development of world civilization and actively drawing upon the outstanding achievements of human civilization, particularly capitalist civilization. In fact, modernization is a broad historical process of progress for both society and national development. It encompasses not only the modernization of industry, agriculture, national defense, and science and technology, but also modernization at the institutional and spiritual levels. It is a progressive developmental process that requires handling various complex relationships, such as those between workers and peasants, urban and rural areas, peripheries and centers, and the upper and lower strata. The Soviet-model modernization, however, insisted on building behind closed doors on a foundation of small-scale production. This ensured that the state planned economic system to which it adhered was never able to bring vitality to the market, let alone promote the modernization of the entire Soviet society in accordance with the requirements of equality and the rule of law inherent in a market economy. As a result, until the end of its model, the Soviet Union's socialist modernization construction always presented a picture of discoordination: on the one hand, a relatively advanced level of heavy industry, with a degree of modernization comparable to that of the most developed United States; on the other hand, the relatively backward living standards of the people, with a degree of modernization significantly lower than that of Western capitalist countries. Furthermore, the development of Soviet heavy industry was built by relying on an underdeveloped agricultural sector; in the late 1920s alone, the contribution of peasants to the national income was close to 50%.
Since the 18th CPC National Congress, the Party Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core has revolved around the fundamental question of "what is socialist modernization and how to build socialist modernization." By organically unifying idealistic guidance, critical reflection, and normative correction, they have achieved a series of fruitful innovative results within a more open and inclusive framework. Of course, while affirming our achievements, we must also clearly recognize that both Chinese-path modernization and the Soviet model of socialist modernization belong to the category of "catch-up modernization." Catch-up modernization itself contains various sharp contradictions and imbalances. How to resolve these imbalances is one of the primary contradictions that modernization construction must solve.
(About the Author: Zhao Hong, Department of Scientific Socialism, Party School of the Central Committee of the CPC (National Academy of Governance))
Network Editor: Tong Xin Source: Scientific Socialism 2023(02)