{"id":5852,"date":"2010-10-21T11:37:02","date_gmt":"2010-10-21T15:37:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/?p=5852"},"modified":"2010-10-21T11:49:42","modified_gmt":"2010-10-21T15:49:42","slug":"5852","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/2010\/10\/21\/5852\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

\u017di\u017eek<\/a> in the Kasama project.<\/p>\n

On Khrushchev\u2019s speech in 1956 denouncing Stalin\u2019s crimes:<\/p>\n

The speech so undermined the dogma of infallible leadership that the entire nomenklatura sank into temporary paralysis. A dozen or so delegates collapsed during the speech, and had to be carried out and given medical help; one of them, Boleslaw Bierut, the hardline general secretary of the Polish Communist Party, died of a heart attack. The model Stalinist writer Alexander Fadeyev actually shot himself a few days later. The point is not that they were \u2018honest Communists\u2019: most of them were brutal manipulators without any illusions about the Soviet regime.<\/p>\n

What broke down was their \u2018objective\u2019 illusion, the figure of the \u2018big Other<\/strong>\u2019 as a background against which they could exert their ruthlessness and drive for power. They had displaced their belief onto this Other<\/strong>, which, as it were, believed on their behalf. Now their proxy had disintegrated.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Chinese learned the lesson of Gorbachev\u2019s failure: full recognition of the \u2018founding crimes\u2019 brings the entire system down: they must be disavowed. True, some Maoist \u2018excesses\u2019 and \u2018errors\u2019 were denounced (the Great Leap Forward and the widespread famine that followed it; the Cultural Revolution), and Deng\u2019s assessment of Mao\u2019s role (70 per cent positive and 30 per cent negative) is enshrined in official discourse. But Deng\u2019s assessment functions as a formal conclusion that makes any further discussion or elaboration superfluous. Mao may be 30 per cent bad, but he continues to be celebrated as the founding father of the nation, his body in a mausoleum and his image on every banknote. In a clear case of fetishistic disavowal<\/strong>, everyone knows that Mao made errors and caused immense suffering, yet his image remains magically untainted. This way, the Chinese Communists can have their cake and eat it: economic liberalisation is combined with the continuation of Party rule.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u017di\u017eek in the Kasama project. On Khrushchev\u2019s speech in 1956 denouncing Stalin\u2019s crimes: The speech so undermined the dogma of infallible leadership that the entire nomenklatura sank into temporary paralysis. A dozen or so delegates collapsed during the speech, and had to be carried out and given medical help; one of them, Boleslaw Bierut, the … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-zizek"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5852"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5852\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5854,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5852\/revisions\/5854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}