But unlike in the days of founding leader Mao Zedong, commemorating Lenin appears to be off the agenda for China’s propaganda authorities.
Yuan Yuhua, a self-taught leftist scholar and academic lecturer, said Lenin and the 1917 October Revolution, which led to the creation of the Chinese Communist Party four years later, have been neglected in recent years.
A mainland political scientist, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the disparate treatment was due to the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union and disputes over Leninism.
The stain on Lenin’s legacy includes the massacre of his political opponents, the “Red Terror” of 1918-1922 carried out by his Bolshevik party, the famines of the early 1920s and 1930s, and his successor Joseph Stalin. Includes atrocities committed during totalitarian rule.
“Russian leaders also reconsidered Leninism after the collapse of the Soviet Union.” [Union of Soviet Socialist Republics] Late 1980s. “In the following years, Lenin did not focus on the government’s propaganda agenda as China was busy with market reforms and opening up to the outside world,” said the political scientist.
Thousands of Lenin statues have also been removed around the world since the collapse of the Soviet Union, most famously in the mass removals in Ukraine over the past decade.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has been a sharp critic of Lenin, but his statements about the founder of the Russian Communist Party have been inconsistent. He also rejected calls to bury Lenin’s body, which remains on display in Moscow’s Red Square.
Associate Professor Alfred Wu of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore said that while formal commemorations may be lacking, Leninism runs deep in the political fiber of China’s ruling party.
“Leninism is embedded in the DNA of the Chinese Communist Party. Examples include the structure of the party and party-state,” he said.
Leninism stipulates that the Communist Party, as the “vanguard party,” should establish a one-party socialist state called the “dictatorship of the proletariat.”
In a party state, every aspect of life, from politics, economy, and society to cultural and intellectual life, will be tightly regulated by the Communist Party.
In the 1990s and 2000s, the Chinese Communist Party maintained one-party rule while delegating responsibility for actual policy formulation and implementation to the government and focused on providing general direction.
This trend has reversed under Mr. Xi, who has integrated party organs and government departments in a major reorganization since the 19th National Party Congress in 2017.
Xi urges loyalty from courts and law enforcement to ‘mitigate’ social and economic risks
Xi urges loyalty from courts and law enforcement to ‘mitigate’ social and economic risks
An anonymous political scientist said the reorganization signals a return to Leninism. “The party-state in recent years has its roots in Leninism,” the analyst said.
Wu said Leninism also influenced Sun Yat-sen and the early days of the Kuomintang Party (KMT), which was founded in 1912 on the structure of a Leninist state.
The Kuomintang was defeated by the Communists in the civil war and retreated to Taiwan in 1949. It maintained one-party rule in its early decades until it lifted martial law and legalized opposition parties in the 1980s.
In mainland China, although Lenin remains a familiar name to many young people as a familiar figure in school textbooks, there is little interest in Lenin or his achievements.
Jade Song, 27, an employee at a public research institute in southern Guangdong province, said her impressions of Lenin came from politics and history classes at school.
“When you hear his name, words like proletarian revolution and the Soviet Union come to mind, giving you the strong impression that he was a pioneer of the revolution, a spiritual leader, and a person who had a great influence on China. He is also commonly associated with Marxism. It gets mentioned,” she said.
But, she added, the topic of Lenin rarely came up among her friends. “So, like me, I feel like there are many people who still mainly learn about him from textbooks and only have a simple impression, but don’t have a deep understanding of his thought.”
For Beijing university student Wu Yuning, Lenin is a complex historical figure criticized for political repression. But “history books portray him more positively as a revolutionary and theorist,” the 19-year-old said.
Yuan, a left-wing academic, said young Chinese people were more interested in Mao Zedong than Lenin.
“So many young people gathered at Shaoshan.” [the birthplace of Mao] In commemoration of the 130th anniversary of his birth [last December]. Young people are paying more attention to Mao Zedong. ”