Revolutions, Catastrophes, and the Dictators: A Review of Stalin and Mao by Lucien Bianco

Comparing major revolutions in the modern era is a daunting scholarly undertaking that few scholars have dared (and are qualified) to tackle. Few have succeeded at it. A noteworthy contribution of this sort is the political sociologist Theda Skocpol's States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China (1979), a sweeping sociopolitical interpretation of the state building and social transformations launched by French, Russian, and Chinese revolutionaries.¹ Inspiring as it is, Skocpol's book is often long on sociological generalizations and short on specific historical evidence. The eminent French sinologist Lucien Bianco's important new book Stalin and Mao: A Comparison of the Russian and Chinese Revolutions takes this uncommon academic route of cross-national comparison of revolutions and does so with authority. The book is, nevertheless, not without its limitations. Bianco does mention the 18th-century French Revolution, but only in passing (p. xxiii). His primary aim, as the book title indicates, is to explore the momentous decisions (and ensuing catastrophes) taken by Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong in building their respective socialist states during the turbulent 20th century.

A comparative study inevitably raises questions of methodology. First, how are a set of variables essential to the countries under investigation selected? Second, are these variables sufficient to arrive at a credible conclusion? These questions are particularly pertinent when scrutinizing vast countries such as Russia and China that differ markedly in history, culture, and geography, despite adopting similar guiding principles of Marxism-Leninism. Rather than addressing these questions of methodology directly, Bianco divides his book into nine categories concerned primarily with the political and social consequences of the two revolutions—"The Laggards," "Catching Up," "Politics," "The Peasants," "Famines," "Bureaucracy," "Culture," "The Camps," and "Dictators"—intentionally omitting such topics as ideology, foreign relations, society, and urban life. This topical approach, which uses shared themes as explanatory hypotheses, fails to address the selection of topics and how their importance was determined.

Stalin and Mao is primarily a political study of the two revolutions. In the opening chapter, "The Laggards," Bianco wisely situates the discussion in the larger context of the world Communist movement and underscores the key difference in goals of the early revolutionary leaders in Russia and China. Lenin and Trotsky, following orthodox Marxism closely, were concerned with the liberation of humanity as a whole, while Mao and his close comrades, because of imperialist encroachments since the late Qing dynasty, were concerned primarily with the survival of their nation. This major difference in fundamental aims is one of the principal reasons that the two countries came into conflict in the late 1950s.

Chapter 2, "Catching Up," provides a brief historical account of the two nations' paths of transformation from being backward countries to modern socialist states after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and the founding of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1949. It focuses on Stalin's First Five-Year Plan (1929–1933) and Mao's Great Leap Forward (GLF, 1958–1960). With the aim of modernizing their countries rapidly, these programs centralized industry and forced collectivization of agriculture. Mao was critical of the imbalanced growth between industry and agriculture resulted from the Soviet-inspired First Five-Year Plan (1953–1957). Bianco argues that although Mao soon insisted on a "Chinese way" (p. 32) of development independent of the Soviet model, he continued to prioritize heavy industry over agriculture by repeatedly revising upward the steel production target.

In Chapter 3, "Politics," Bianco discusses the close ties between the Soviet Union and China in the 1950s. The Chinese slogan "The Soviet Union today is our tomorrow!" was popular at the time, and the Stalinist bible, The History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks): Short Course (1938), became a must-read for Chinese cadres and students. Bianco contends, however, that despite strong Soviet influence, Mao's...