Current Varieties of Red

In the days of Stalin’s monolith, it was so simple: bar the occasional ripple, you knew in advance what position this or that Communist party was going to take on this or that issue. Nowadays, it is more complicated. From this change, which is undeniable, many uninformed or merely optimistic observers have inferred that the “world Communist movement” has ceased to be a problem.

Try as it may, however, no Communist party can escape the heavy legacy of the Leninist past—not even the Chinese, which early last year launched an intensive drive to teach Leninism at school, at a time when Deng Xiaoping was promoting limited foreign capitalism.

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Brian Crozier

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In the days of Stalin’s monolith, it was so simple: bar the occasional ripple, you knew in advance what position this or that Communist party was going to take on this or that issue. Nowadays, it is more complicated. From this change, which is undeniable, many uninformed or merely optimistic observers have inferred that the “world Communist movement” has ceased to be a problem.

Try as it may, however, no Communist party can escape the heavy legacy of the Leninist past—not even the Chinese, which early last year launched an intensive drive to teach Leninism at school, at a time when Deng Xiaoping was promoting limited foreign capitalism.