ramana wrote:Looks like CPC did root cause analysis of the collapse of Soviet union and decided the Soviet Army was nationalist and after World War II had developed nationalistic thinking independent of the Communist Aprty. The Soviet army launched the coup and when it was opposed it got into a moral crisis as to how could it be opposed when it acted in national interest, and folded. That ended the Soviet Union.
So CPC has ensured since 1992 that PLA is subservient to the CPC and not the PRC.
This makes PRC and the head of state more like the Empire and Empire has its own flaw of folly.
Folly is acting against self-interest as defined by Barbara Tuchmann.
Most communists see the French revolution as their spiritual ancestor. Word “communism” is itself French in origin. Most Euro communists I met told me that the French revolution ended with the rise of Napoleon. Napoleon represented the military that was not controlled by the communist party. Napoleon caused all the gains made by the revolution to be lost. The lesson to be learnt in this case was that in future revolutions, the military had to be completely controlled by the party. Lenin, Stalin and Mao followed this completely. Winning was less important than keeping the military under party control. Napoleon gave victory many times, but this did not make the party victorious. The purges under Stalin prove that complete control of the army was needed for the party to survive the war. Remember the Soviet army may have been led by the generals, the control was always with the political commissars. The Chinese army has followed this system.
Gautam