by Norman Lowe
However, Putin decided to use much of the cash to build up a large reserve fund to protect against a fall in oil prices. This meant less government investment and stagnation in the economic reform programme. To make matters worse, Russia was hard-hit by the 2008–9 world financial crisis, which cut off the flow of cheap credit and investment from the West. Fortunately Putin’s $90-billion reserve fund helped Russia to cope, and by the end of 2009 the economy was growing again. On the downside, the National Priority Projects suffered. Under the Soviet system, universities and academies were well financed, as were the arts – orchestras, theatres, film studios and publishers. Admittedly, there was a price to pay in the form of strict censorship, but following the 1998 economic crisis, this funding had been drastically reduced – for example, the budget for higher education had been slashed to only 12 per cent of the 1989 level. By 2008, in spite of its promises, the government had largely failed to reverse these cuts. Average wages of lecturers and teachers were only two-thirds of the national rate. Even the Ministry of Education reported that only 20 per cent of institutions of higher education had retained the high standards that were the norm under the Soviet system. The state now provides less than a third of their funding. The same is true of the health service: although this is still free, the care is far inferior to that provided under the communists. To get the best and quickest treatment, patients must pay. Probably worst affected are the elderly; although prices have rocketed, pensions have not increased. In most Russian towns and cities, old people can be seen on street corners trying to sell bits of produce, fruit and vegetables, as they struggle to make ends meet. Understandably, many ordinary Russians look back on post-Stalinist Soviet times with nostalgia, in spite of its drawbacks.
During 2007 there were a number of protest demonstrations, known as Dissenters’ Marches, in Moscow, St Petersburg, Nizhny Novgorod and Samara, but later demonstrations were met by police, and overt public support soon dwindled. Although by the end of 2008 there was much hostility to the Putin regime, most of it was in private, and there was very little public criticism. This was partly because the government kept tight control of the media, and journalists and writers were afraid of meeting the same fate as Anna Politskovskaya and Alexander Litvinenko. There was another reason too: according to Perry Anderson:
it is the knowledge, which can only be half-repressed, that the liberal intelligentsia is compromised by its own part in bringing to being what it now so dislikes. By clinging to Yeltsin long after the illegality and corruption of his rule were plain, in the name of defence against a toothless Communism, it destroyed its credibility in the eyes of the population, only to find that Yeltsin had landed it with Putin.
The constitution did not allow Putin to stand for a third consecutive term, so he chose his close friend and ally, Dmitri Medvedev, as the United Russia presidential candidate. Before the election, Medvedev announced that if he won, he would choose Putin as his prime minister. Their election slogan was ‘Together We Win’. In March 2008 Medvedev won a sweeping victory, taking around 70 per cent of the popular vote. His nearest rival, the Communist leader, Gennady Zyuganov, received just under 18 per cent. In spite of the dissatisfaction with falling living standards, it seemed that Putin’s personal popularity was still sufficient to win elections. Whatever his faults, he and his United Russia party were still more attractive than any of the alternatives.
(i) Putin and Medvedev, 2008–12
The day after he became president in May 2008, Medvedev duly appointed Putin as prime minister. The State Duma approved the appointment by 392 votes to 56; only the communists voted against. Clearly Putin would continue to be extremely influential, and journalists soon labelled the new government the ‘tandemocracy’. They were soon faced with a crisis – The South Ossetia War. When the USSR broke up, Georgia became independent. But South Ossetia and Abkhazia soon declared themselves independent of Georgia, and were supported by Russia. Georgia refused to accept this, and the conflict dragged on. In August 2008 Georgian troops suddenly invaded South Ossetia. Medvedev reacted swiftly – Russian forces counter-attacked and after five days of heavy fighting, the Georgians were driven out. Russia officially recognized South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states. Medvedev’s decisive handling of the crisis was popular with most Russians, though the Western media, especially in the USA, sided with Georgia. Towards the end of 2008 Russia began to feel the effects of the world financial crisis (see Section 27.7). Fortunately the government was able to use the large surplus accumulated earlier to bail out any banks that were in difficulties, and to help struggling companies with generous loans. Even so GDP fell by around 10 per cent in 2009, and the economy only began to move forward again in 2010. The reserve fund had been emptied and this delayed various reform and modernization programmes. Medvedev’s main aim was to reduce Russia’s dependence on income from oil and gas exports by diversifying into nuclear technology and pharmaceuticals, and by further developing information technology and software production. In January 2011 Medvedev admitted that one of his other key policies – to eliminate corruption – had so far been a failure. As the time approached for the next Duma and presidential elections, there was great speculation as to whether Medvedev would stand for re-election or step down in favour of Putin. There had been rumours of a breach between the two. However, in September 2011, Medvedev announced that he would not stand again and he officially proposed Vladimir Putin as the United Russia party candidate. In the Duma elections held on 4 December 2011, United Russia suffered something of a setback. Their share of the vote was below 50 per cent for the first time; it actually fell from 64 per cent in 2007 to 49 per cent, and the party lost 77 seats, down from 315 to 238, out of a total of 450. The Communists took 37 of these seats, going up from 57 to 92. Of the two smaller parties, Just Russia won 64 seats and the Liberal Democrats 56. Putin and Medvedev’s party had lost their two-thirds majority, although they still had a small overall majority. The election was followed by protest demonstrations in Moscow and St Petersburg claiming widespread electoral fraud and demanding annulment of the results. These were followed by even larger demonstrations in support of the government. In March 2012 the presidential election brought a decisive victory for Putin, who took 63 per cent of the votes, against 17 per cent for Gennady Zyuganov, the Communist leader, who came second of the five candidates. On 7 May 2012, Vladimir Putin was inaugurated as president for the third time. Although there were more protests about irregularities at polling stations, there could be no doubt that Putin was still remarkably popular. He defended what he called his ‘managed democracy’ on the grounds that this was the most suitable type of democracy for Russia, because the country had no history of Western-style democracy. And a majority of people evidently agreed. Putin was set to continue in power, either as president or as prime minister, for the foreseeable future. No matter what the state of the nation, and in spite of numerous protest demonstrations, he seemed to be unassailable.
FURTHER READING
Anderson, P., ‘Russia’s Managed Democracy’, London Review of Books (25 January 2007).
Aron, L., Boris Yeltsin: A Revolutionary Life (HarperCollins, 2001 edition).
Brown, A., The Gorbachev Factor (Oxford University Press, 1996).
Brown, A., Seven Years That Changed the World: Perestroika in Perspective (Oxford University Press, 2008).
Brown, A., The Rise and Fall of Communism (Vintage, 2010).
Goldfarb, A. and Litvinenko, M., Death of a Dissident: The Poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko (Simon & Schuster, 2007).
Kozlov, V., Sedition: Everyday Resistance in the Soviet Union under Khrushchev and Brezhnev (Yale University Press, 2011).
Lowe, N., Mastering Twentieth Century Russian History (Palgrave Macmillan, 2002).
McCauley, M., The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Union, 1917–1991 (Longman, 3rd edition, 2007).
Medvedev, R., Post-Soviet Russia: A Journey Through the Yeltsin Era (Columbia University Press, 2000).
> Politkovskaya, A., Putin’s Russia (Harvill, 2004).
Sakwa, R., The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Union, 1917–1991 (Routledge, 1999).
Sakwa, R., The Quality of Freedom: Khodorkovsky, Putin and the Yukos Affair (Oxford University Press, 2009).
Sakwa, R., The Crisis of Russian Democracy: The Dual State, Factionalism and the Medvedev Succession (Cambridge University Press, 2010).
Service, R., Comrades: A World History of Communism (Macmillan, 2007).
Taubman, W., Khrushchev: The Man and his Era (Free Press, new edition, 2005).
Tompson, W. J., Khrushchev: A Political Life (Macmillan, 1995).
Tompson, W. J., The Soviet Union Under Brezhnev, 1964–1982 (Longman, 2003)
Triesman, D. S., The Return: Russia’s Journey from Gorbachev to Medvedev (Simon Spotlight, 2010).
QUESTIONS
Khrushchev believed that communism in the USSR could be reformed and modernized and made more efficient. How far had this been achieved by 1970?
‘The USSR remained politically and socially stable in the years 1964 to 1982 despite the policies of the Brezhnev era.’ How far would you agree with this view?
Consider the view that if Gorbachev had followed different policies, the USSR could have survived, in the same way that communism survived in China.
‘It was Gorbachev’s reluctance to commit himself to sufficiently radical changes that led to the break-up of the Soviet Union.’ Assess the validity of this view.
Explain why the collapse of the USSR was followed by serious economic and political problems.
‘Putin’s Russia may well have been a police state, but at least he rescued the country from the chaos of the Yeltsin years.’ How far do you think this is a fair comment on both presidents?
There is a document question about Khrushchev’s promises for the future on the website.
Chapter 19
China, 1900–49
SUMMARY OF EVENTS
China had a long history of national unity and since the mid-seventeenth century had been ruled by the Manchu or Ch’ing dynasty. However, during the 1840s, the country moved into a troubled period of foreign interference, civil war and disintegration, which lasted until the communist victory in 1949.
The last emperor was overthrown in 1911 and a republic was proclaimed. The period 1916 to 1928, known as the Warlord Era, was one of great chaos, as a number of generals seized control of different provinces. A party known as the Kuomintang (KMT), or Nationalists, was trying to govern China and control the generals, who were busy fighting each other. The KMT leaders were Dr Sun Yat-sen, and after his death in 1925, General Chiang Kai-shek. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was founded in 1921, and at first it co-operated with the KMT in its struggle against the warlords. As the KMT gradually established control over more and more of China, it felt strong enough to do without the help of the communists, and it tried to destroy them. The communists, under their leader Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung), reacted vigorously, and after escaping from surrounding KMT forces, they embarked on the 6000-mile Long March (1934–5) to form a new power base in northern China.
Civil war dragged on, complicated by Japanese interference, which culminated in a full-scale invasion in 1937. When the Second World War ended in defeat for the Japanese and their withdrawal from China, the KMT and the CCP continued to fight each other for control of China. Chiang Kai-shek received help from the USA, but in 1949 it was Mao and the communists who finally triumphed. Chiang and his supporters fled to the island of Taiwan (Formosa). Mao Zedong quickly established control over the whole of China, and he remained leader until his death in 1976.
19.1 REVOLUTION AND THE WARLORD ERA
(a) Background to the revolution of 1911
In the early part of the nineteenth century China kept itself very much separate from the rest of the world; life went on quietly and peacefully with no great changes, as it had done since the Manchus took over in the 1640s. However, in the mid-nineteenth century China found itself faced by a number of crises. The prolonged period of relative peace had led to a rapid increase in the population – between 1741 and 1841 the population rose from 140 million to 410 million. This made it difficult to produce enough food for subsistence, forcing many peasants to turn to robbery and banditry as a means of survival. The ensuing chaos encouraged foreigners, especially Europeans, to force their way into China to take advantage of trading possibilities. The British were first on the scene, fighting and defeating the Chinese in the Opium Wars (1839–42). They forced China to hand over Hong Kong and to allow them to trade at certain ports. Other western nations followed, and eventually these ‘barbarians’, as the Chinese regarded them, had rights and concessions in about 80 ports and other towns.
Next came the Taiping Rebellion (1850–64), which spread all over southern China. It was partly a Christian religious movement and partly a political reform movement, which aimed to set up a ‘Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace’ (Taiping tianguo). The movement was eventually defeated, not by the Manchu government troops, which proved to be ineffective, but by newly-formed regional armies. The failure of the government forces was a serious blow to the authority of the Ch’ing dynasty. It left them dependent on regional armies that they did not control. This began the process in which provinces began to assert their independence from the central government in Beijing (Peking), culminating in the Warlord Era (1916–28).
China was defeated in a war with Japan (1894–5) and forced to hand over territory, including the large island of Formosa. By the end of 1898 Britain, Germany, France and Russia had leased large areas of land from the Chinese government which they proceeded to treat as if they were no longer Chinese territory. There was a story in circulation that outside a British-run park in Shanghai, there was a sign reading NO DOGS OR CHINESE. The sign never actually existed, but the story showed the outrage felt by ordinary Chinese people at the intrusive foreign presence in their country. A Chinese uprising – the Boxer Rising – against foreign influence took place in 1898–1900, but it was defeated by an international army, and the Empress Tz’u-hsi was forced to pay massive compensation for damage done to foreign property in China. More territory was lost to Japan as a result of the Japanese victory in the Russo-Japanese War (1904–5), and China was clearly in a sorry state.
In the early years of the twentieth century thousands of young Chinese travelled abroad and were educated there. They returned with radical, revolutionary ideas of overthrowing the Manchu dynasty and westernizing China. Some revolutionaries, like Dr Sun Yat-sen, wanted a democratic state modelled on the USA.
(b) The 1911 revolution and the Twenty-One Demands (1915)
The government tried to respond to the new radical ideas by introducing reforms, promising democracy and setting up elected provincial assemblies. However, this only encouraged the provinces to distance themselves still further from the central government, which was now extremely unpopular. The revolution began among soldiers in Wuchang in October 1911, and most provinces quickly declared themselves independent of Beijing.
The government, ruling on behalf of the child emperor Puyi (who was only 5 years old), in desperation sought help from a retired general, Yuan Shikai, who had been commander of the Chinese Northern Army, and still had a lot of influence with the generals. However, the plan backfired: Yuan, who was still only in his early fifties, turned out to have ambitions of his own. He did a deal with the revolutionaries – they agreed to his becoming the first president of the Chinese republic in return for the abdication of Puyi and the end of the Manchu dynasty. With the support of the army, Yuan ruled as a military dictator from 1912 until 1915.
Meanwhile the Japanese sought to take advantage of the upheaval in China and the outbreak of the First World War. A few days after the war began they demanded that Germany should hand over all their rights in the Chinese Shantung peninsula to Japan. This was followed up in January 1915 by Japan’s Twenty-One Demands to China. These were divided into five groups. First the
y wanted Chinese approval of Japan’s concessions in Shantung (seized from the Germans), including the right to build railways and to begin new mines; similar rights in south Manchuria; in Hanyehping, the right to continue developing the coal mines at Wuhan; similar rights in Fukien province; and finally the demand that China should accept Japanese ‘advisers’ in political, economic and military matters, and must allow the police forces in some large cities to be jointly organized by Japanese and Chinese. As soon as the demands became public there was a wave of anti-Japanese feeling and a boycott of Japanese goods. Yuan delayed accepting the demands until the Japanese eventually agreed to drop the final group. An agreement accepting the rest was signed on 25 May 1915. In fact the agreement made very little difference to the situation: it simply restated the concessions that Japan already had. It was group five of the demands that revealed Japan’s motives. Acceptance of those would have reduced China almost to a colony or a protectorate of Japan. However, Japan had another strategy in mind: they knew that Yuan had developed a desire to become emperor, and in return for his acceptance of the demands, they secretly promised that they would support him in his ambitions. A new emperor who owed his position to Japanese support would be an excellent alternative method of controlling China. In December 1915 it was announced that there was to be a return to the monarchy in the person of Yuan himself, who would become emperor on 1 January 1916. This turned out to be a fatal mistake: most people saw the ending of the new republic as a backward step, and his support dwindled rapidly. The army turned against him and forced him to abdicate. He died in October 1916.