ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that both the tendency to institutionalize revolution as a recurrent phenomenon due to the Utopian impulses of Communist ideology, and the necessity for the revolutionary process to exhaust itself due to the requirements of economic modernization, are inherent in Communist Party regimes. In China, the struggle for or against continuing the institutionalized revolution started at the time of the Great Leap Forward and the inauguration of the People's Communes. The chapter deals with a difference between Communist Party regimes and fascist regimes, with which the rule of Stalin and that of Mao Zedong have been frequently compared. Communist regimes, being run by highly centralized parties organized from the top downward, also depend for their functioning on a single leader; but their ideology does not proclaim that. The Chinese Communists can no longer accuse the Soviets of having abandoned their revolutionary principles, and the Soviets can no longer blame the Chinese for utopianism and adventurism in domestic affairs.
