ABSTRACT

The People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) Stalinist order has been basically no different from that of the Soviet Union, but in its attempt to abandon the Stalinist centrally organized and poverty-producing command economy, the PRC temporized with economic experiments in agriculture, the largest section of its economy. Chinese communist leaders thought they had found a middle way by contracting land units—usually about 1 acre—to peasant families. Soviet communism lacked a final policy when Lenin died in 1924. It remained for Lenin’s successor, Stalin, to establish the communist order that would prevail not only in the Soviet Union but in all communist countries. In 1985, when the contract system in agriculture seemed a success, the Chinese communists began to apply it in urban industry and services. The communist promise to permit some prices to find their own levels in a free market caused inflation and panic buying and led to postponement of further reforms until “stability” had been achieved.