Ever since Mikhail Gorbachev became general secretary 25 years ago last week, the world has compared China’s successful economic reforms, which were first set into motion in late 1978 under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping, with the Soviet Union’s and then Russia’s largely unsuccessful attempts to overhaul its economy. The conventional version is that Moscow somehow took the wrong path toward reform and things would have been a lot better had Russia copied the Chinese model. But this is an oversimplified analysis. The two countries are far too different for Russia to have copied China’s reform program in a cookie-cutter fashion.
First, consider the domestic situations in each country. China was embroiled in chaos after the Great Cultural Revolution, which lasted from 1966 to 1976. By 1978, the overwhelming majority of Chinese officials and citizens understood the need to institute fundamental reforms. The situation was quite different in the Soviet Union in 1985. Most Soviets viewed the country in 1985 as a superpower with a relatively functioning economy, social stability and order — particularly when compared with the stagnation years under Leonid Brezhnev and in comparison with the widespread poverty and hunger in China before Deng started economic reforms.
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