Neo-Communist and Neo-Soviet Regimes Both Descend from Soviet System But, Despite Similarities, are Fundamentally Different, Savvin Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 30 – Many observers currently use the terms “neo-communist” and “neo-Soviet” as if they were interchangeable; but in fact, Dimitry Savvin says, although both kinds of regimes have their origins in the Soviet system and share much in common, they are fundamentally different.

            Savvin, editor of the Riga-based conservative Russian portal Harbin, continues his effort to promote a more serious form of Sovietology and thus contribute to the understanding of post-Soviet states by discussing the genesis, similarities and differences of these two regimes (harbin.lv/neokommunisticheskie-i-neosovetskie-rezhimy-genezis-skhodstva-i-razlichiya).

            Both neo-communist and neo-Soviet regimes share much of the pattern of rule they inherited from the Soviet Union, but their “main difference is that “the first have officially declared their rejection of Marxist-Leninist fiction … while the second retains this fiction in one or another form.”

            This is obvious if one considers some examples, Savvin sys. The “classical” case of a neo-Soviet system is Turkmenistan which has kept the same elite in power, remains committed to authoritarian rule, uses the Stalinist model of the peoples democracies, and fills the vacuum left after the rejection of Marxism-Leninism with “populist demagogy and mythological notions.”

            “The Turkmenistan model,” Savvin continues, is typically viewed as something exotic; but in fact, it is one shared by the Russian Federation, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan, set apart only because it made that tradition far faster than they did from Soviet to neo-Soviet forms.

            In Turkmenistan and all these other cases, “we see authoritarian regimes, the nucleus of which is the Soviet ruling stratum and apparatus of power, a political system arranged in the way of Stalinist peoples democracies … gradual re-statification of the economy, and the elaboration of neo-Soviet mythology.”

            The chief model of a neo-communist regime is that of China. It has not rejected Marxism-Leninism and the changes it has made in economic arrangements are nothing more than an updated of the New Economic Policy which Lenin himself introduced when the application of Marxist principles failed.

            North Korea which is often lumped together with China as neo-communism is in fact a combination of neo-communism and neo-Sovietism, with elements of both rather than being as more or less clear choice as is the case elsewhere. according to the conservative Russian commentator.

              Except on the question of the continuing centrality of Marxism-Leninism, both neo-communist and neo-Soviet regimes are “in fact identical. They are each aware of this commonality, view liberal and law-based societies as their natural enemy, and now are in the process of forming a coalition against this enemy” and seek global dominance.