(This is the translation of a part of interview with Prof. Chaitanya Mishra, compiled for its relevance to the theme of this issue. The complete interview can be read in Nepali here).
Regardless of their vices and virtues, the fact is that when the communists throughout the world today look for a model of the state they would lead, USSR and China inevitably come into picture. Marxism gives a philosophical and theoretical framework but for practical issues they have to depend on the model of communist regimes that were once viable.
At the time of
formation of USSR itself, Rosa Luxemburg had argued that one-party state was likely to promote
absolute centralism and not democratic centralism. Without doubt, she was
right. When all the power is concentrated in the party, the dissenting
voices become fewer and fewer for fear of retribution from the high
command. When some people in the party dare question the leadership,
they are suppressed, often brutally. This process had taken hold during
the tenure of Lenin himself but it was amplified and perpetuated
throughout the long tenure of Stalin. Things went so far that the
central committee of Soviet Communist Party did have to order killings
of people. That process is the result of a system in which
democratic ethos are absent. That was a situation in which the society
was dominated by a party for a long time and the party was in turn
dominated by a single leader who ruled the state until his death.
