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Prestige, Manipulation, and Coercion: Elite Power Struggles in the Soviet Union and China after Stalin and Mao
How succession in authoritarian regimes was less a competition of visions for the future and more a settling of scores
“Joseph Torigian’s stellar research and personal interviews have produced a brilliant, meticulous study. It fundamentally undermines what political scientists have presumed to be the way Chinese Communist and Soviet politics operate.”—Dorothy J. Solinger, University of California, Irvine
The political successions in the Soviet Union and China after Stalin and Mao, respectively, are often explained as triumphs of inner‑party democracy, leading to a victory of “reformers” over “conservatives” or “radicals.” In traditional thinking, Leninist institutions provide competitors a mechanism for debating policy and making promises, stipulate rules for leadership selection, and prevent the military and secret police from playing a coercive role. Here, Joseph Torigian argues that the post-cult of personality power struggles in history’s two greatest Leninist regimes were instead shaped by the politics of personal prestige, historical antagonisms, backhanded political maneuvering, and violence. Mining newly discovered material from Russia and China, Torigian challenges the established historiography and suggests a new way of thinking about the nature of power in authoritarian regimes.
“Joseph Torigian’s stellar research and personal interviews have produced a brilliant, meticulous study. It fundamentally undermines what political scientists have presumed to be the way Chinese Communist and Soviet politics operate.”—Dorothy J. Solinger, University of California, Irvine
The political successions in the Soviet Union and China after Stalin and Mao, respectively, are often explained as triumphs of inner‑party democracy, leading to a victory of “reformers” over “conservatives” or “radicals.” In traditional thinking, Leninist institutions provide competitors a mechanism for debating policy and making promises, stipulate rules for leadership selection, and prevent the military and secret police from playing a coercive role. Here, Joseph Torigian argues that the post-cult of personality power struggles in history’s two greatest Leninist regimes were instead shaped by the politics of personal prestige, historical antagonisms, backhanded political maneuvering, and violence. Mining newly discovered material from Russia and China, Torigian challenges the established historiography and suggests a new way of thinking about the nature of power in authoritarian regimes.
256 pages, Hardcover
First published April 26, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
May 29, 2022
this book is so goooooood
January 2, 2023
Already a book of the year contender on day 1. Makes me think differently about Leninist CIV-mil relations and a LOT more. Huge implications for Xi. A MUST read.
August 18, 2023
This is a really useful study of power and politics and succession in the Soviet Union and China following the demise of Joseph Stalin and Mao Tse Dong.
The biggest lesson that comes from this book is that we cannot rely on the strength of institutions to buffer the struggle for power in Leninist regimes, but also perhaps for the successor to it in Russia.
It is most distressing — if not entirely surprising — to be reminded that control over hundreds of millions of people rest in the hands of butchers and assassins. In many cases, these leaders’ claim to office consisted of their eagerness to consign entire communities and regions to starvation, torture, and death.
Even amongst themselves these leaders agree on febrile policies based on guesswork, then turn to compromat to finish off each other.
Interestingly, Putin, who derives from this same lineage, relies heavily on polling to to take his next step. This is how leadership operates not only in the east but in the west as well. This is accountability in modern politics. Especially since elections — democratic or not — seem like staged affairs.
For a while, Khrushchev overwhelmed the old guard — or at least the members of the old guard Stalin hadn’t already murdered. He and his colleagues — including Malenkov, Molotov and war hero General Giorgi Zhukov — took care of Lavrentiy Beria right away with a sift arrest, a kangaroo court and a bullet to the forehead. Beria was Stalin’s last head of the secret police.
Deng remarkably sidelined the new Left in China while he consolidated control. We associate Deng with economic reform and reorienting the new China to capital accumulation. It turns out there was little disagreement on these policies between Deng and China’s other Party rulers. Deng was better at pushing aside his competitors — like Hua Guofeng. Guofeng engineered the disgrace and ultimate imprisonment of the so-called Gang of Four including Mao’s last wife and other leaders of the brutal Cultural Revolution, then Deng returned the favour.
Although neither struggle — Soviet nor Chinese — succession was called a military coop, neither succession could have been accomplished bloodlessly without the control of the military, which both Khrushchev and Deng had.
The biggest lesson that comes from this book is that we cannot rely on the strength of institutions to buffer the struggle for power in Leninist regimes, but also perhaps for the successor to it in Russia.
It is most distressing — if not entirely surprising — to be reminded that control over hundreds of millions of people rest in the hands of butchers and assassins. In many cases, these leaders’ claim to office consisted of their eagerness to consign entire communities and regions to starvation, torture, and death.
Even amongst themselves these leaders agree on febrile policies based on guesswork, then turn to compromat to finish off each other.
Interestingly, Putin, who derives from this same lineage, relies heavily on polling to to take his next step. This is how leadership operates not only in the east but in the west as well. This is accountability in modern politics. Especially since elections — democratic or not — seem like staged affairs.
For a while, Khrushchev overwhelmed the old guard — or at least the members of the old guard Stalin hadn’t already murdered. He and his colleagues — including Malenkov, Molotov and war hero General Giorgi Zhukov — took care of Lavrentiy Beria right away with a sift arrest, a kangaroo court and a bullet to the forehead. Beria was Stalin’s last head of the secret police.
Deng remarkably sidelined the new Left in China while he consolidated control. We associate Deng with economic reform and reorienting the new China to capital accumulation. It turns out there was little disagreement on these policies between Deng and China’s other Party rulers. Deng was better at pushing aside his competitors — like Hua Guofeng. Guofeng engineered the disgrace and ultimate imprisonment of the so-called Gang of Four including Mao’s last wife and other leaders of the brutal Cultural Revolution, then Deng returned the favour.
Although neither struggle — Soviet nor Chinese — succession was called a military coop, neither succession could have been accomplished bloodlessly without the control of the military, which both Khrushchev and Deng had.
January 8, 2023
We're really in a wave of (long overdue) historical revisionism on Deng's legacy as the "chief architect"... Brilliant book.
November 29, 2022
In this self-described "revisionist historical approach," Joseph Torigian, assistant professor at the School of International Service at American University, shows how two of the most important successions in the twentieth century — the post-Stalin Soviet Union and post-Mao China — were not the products of deliberation between cleanly-drawn political factions of “reformers,” “conservatives," or "radicals," but rather the spoils of shrewd political figures with Machiavellian instincts. Torigian reveals in these two historical cases that, for jockeying prospective political successors, policy differences, adherence to norms of deliberation and exchange, and agency to dispense patronage all mattered less than their ability to draw on interpersonal forms of authority, leverage incriminating personal information against rivals, and settle scores using explicit or implicit threats of force. "The winners," writes Torigian "were not those individuals best able to co-opt potential challengers but the ones with the most aggressive political styles."
In his first case study, Torigian examines the defeat of Lavrentii Beria in his bid for power in the wake of Stalin's death, finding that, despite Beria having no real policy disagreements with his opponents, he was still coercively arrested by the military. In subsequent years, Nikita Khrushchev employed similar machinations to outflank the opposition party, despite having minimal policy differences with them, with the support of Marshal Zhukov and the military. Torigian then turns to China in the aftermath of Mao's death to show how the Gang of Four clique was undermined and arrested by insiders and the military, paving the way for Mao-hardliner Hua Guofeng to assume the mantle of Mao. Torigian concludes with Deng Xiaoping's defeat of Hua, showing how Deng drew on his "prestige" as a revolutionary-figure, political adroitness in drawing up conspiracy theories and manipulating ambiguous rules, and strategic control of the military to weaken Hua's political standing. In each of these examples, Torigian shows how political hopefuls leveraged their own forms of "prestige, manipulation, and coercion" to outmaneuver rivals in their quests for power.
In his first case study, Torigian examines the defeat of Lavrentii Beria in his bid for power in the wake of Stalin's death, finding that, despite Beria having no real policy disagreements with his opponents, he was still coercively arrested by the military. In subsequent years, Nikita Khrushchev employed similar machinations to outflank the opposition party, despite having minimal policy differences with them, with the support of Marshal Zhukov and the military. Torigian then turns to China in the aftermath of Mao's death to show how the Gang of Four clique was undermined and arrested by insiders and the military, paving the way for Mao-hardliner Hua Guofeng to assume the mantle of Mao. Torigian concludes with Deng Xiaoping's defeat of Hua, showing how Deng drew on his "prestige" as a revolutionary-figure, political adroitness in drawing up conspiracy theories and manipulating ambiguous rules, and strategic control of the military to weaken Hua's political standing. In each of these examples, Torigian shows how political hopefuls leveraged their own forms of "prestige, manipulation, and coercion" to outmaneuver rivals in their quests for power.
December 28, 2022
Terrific book. Only complaint felt short. Like it needed another 100 pages or so. But great book
August 17, 2023
Not my type of book to read. Found it to be a yawner. Not sure how it got on my to read list.
July 2, 2024
The first chapter on theory was fascinating, but the specifics of the cases are lost on me. I am not well versed enough in these time periods to appreciate this book, which reads like the dissertation it is based on. It's a solid refutation of the economic theory I suppose, but it downplays how this is still clearly a factor.
July 18, 2023
Look inside the "black box" of power politics of Leninist states and succession, with a focus on the Stalin-> Khrushchev and Mao -> Hua -> Deng transfers in particular.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews