Teaching Comparative

Political effects of "openness"

Every comparative textbook that uses Russia as a case mentions that the effects of glasnost on the Gorbachev government were unexpected. Philip Taubman of the New York Times suggests a comparative case study. His cases are Gorbachev's Russia, post-earthquake China, and post-cyclone Myanmar (Burma).

I particularly noted Taubman's last topic: nationalism. Did you read yesterday's blog entry or read other accounts of nationalism in China? And if China's leaders do "not take comfort" in the example of glasnost, think of the generals in Myanmar, anxious to preserve their own power. In six months or a year, there may well be enough evidence to begin making comparisons about the effects of openness and disasters on closed regimes.

When the Kremlin Tried a Little Openness

"A dash of openness can be a dangerous thing in an autocratic state.

"Mikhail Gorbachev discovered this two decades ago when his campaign to inject some daylight into Soviet society doubled back on him like a heat-seeking missile.

"Now China’s leaders are playing with the same volatile political chemistry as they give their own citizens and the world an unexpectedly vivid look at the earthquake devastation in the nation’s southwest regions. The rulers of cyclone-battered Myanmar, by contrast, are sticking with the authoritarian playbook, limiting access and even aid to the stricken delta region where tens of thousands of people were killed by the storm...

"Chinese leaders are well aware of the Soviet experience. The bloody crackdown against the democracy movement in Tiananmen Square in 1989 seemed motivated in part by fears that a relaxation of repression would lead to a replay of Soviet turbulence in China...

"The collapse of the Soviet empire and dissolution of the Communist Party were not exactly what [Gorbachev] had in mind when he took power in 1985 and launched his twin policies of glasnost (greater openness) and perestroika (political reform)...

"[He] realized his country was rotting from within, paralyzed by repression and ideological rigidity, a backward economy and a deep cynicism among Russians about their government. 'We can’t go on living like this,' he told his wife, Raisa, hours before he was named Soviet leader, he recalled in his 1995 memoirs...

"As glasnost gathered force in the years that followed, it ripped away the layers of deceit that were the foundation of the Soviet state. Each step undermined the authority of the party and the government...

"But resistance to the accelerating change grew as the rivets that held together Soviet society started to snap...

"A striking moment of glasnost came with the killer earthquake in Armenia in December 1988. Faced with the deaths of tens of thousands of Soviet citizens, and desperate for outside aid, the Kremlin lifted restrictions on travel to Armenia...

"As the old regime frayed, Mr. Gorbachev wasn’t prepared for the assault of long-repressed political forces let loose by his reforms. The most potent was nationalism...

"Once uncorked, nationalism essentially overwhelmed Mr. Gorbachev, who, to his credit, choose not to try to hold together the Soviet empire by force...

"Russia today, despite the restoration of authoritarian rule by Vladimir Putin, enjoys a degree of freedom that was inconceivable at the height of Communist rule. Glasnost helped make it that way.

"China’s leaders may not take comfort in that thought..."

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Labels: China, Russia, transparency

posted by Ken Wedding @ 9:30 AM