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00:00Picture a walk through central Berlin, across the areas earlier separated by the Berlin Wall.
00:25In the years before 1989, this stroll would have been impossible, our way barred by multiple barriers, fences, guard towers, and barbed wire.
00:37But after 1989, the very structure of the Wall steadily melted away.
00:43First, it was chipped away by souvenir hunters.
00:46Months after the Wall was first breached, I had the chance to visit Berlin and rented, for a few Deutschmarks, a sledgehammer from an enterprising young man to use for a few minutes to bang away at the hated Wall and to carry away chunks of it.
01:01I can personally testify that it was hugely satisfying.
01:04Then, in following years, more and more sections of the Wall were removed by redevelopment of some of the world's most expensive real estate, until only a few sections were preserved.
01:17Today, you have to look very closely to notice historical markers set into the pavement showing where the deadly wall once ran.
01:26So now we can imagine ourselves, say, around the year 2000, walking past the famous Brandenburg Gate with its classical columns, headed eastwards along the splendid boulevard called Unter den Linden, which means Under the Linden Trees Street.
01:44Off in the distance, we can see the looming, futuristic television tower in the massive square called Alexanderplatz.
01:52We were in the former East Berlin, capital of a state that celebrated its 40-year anniversary and then collapsed.
02:00Near the Spree River, we approached the massive Palace of the Republic, built by the GDR in 1976.
02:08It was the site of the country's rubber-stamped parliament and housed auditoriums, art galleries, eateries, and other entertainment facilities,
02:18earning it the additional name of People's Palace.
02:23Jokers instead called it Honneker's Lamp Store because of the huge chandeliers inside.
02:29As we walk by, its big bronze-tinted windows send out blinding flashes of reflected light.
02:37The building has been closed since 1990 because of the quantity of asbestos inside, which needs safe removal.
02:45We continue to the other side of the structure, to a wide-open square called the Marx and Engels Forum.
02:53Two larger-than-life statues in bronze occupy the center.
02:58Marx sits decorously upon an abstract block, and Engels stands behind him.
03:04Both figures are heavily bearded, frozen with no hint of motion, and really resemble Egyptian pharaohs.
03:11The sculpture was unveiled in 1986, just a few years before the collapse of the GDR.
03:19No sooner had it been put up than witty East Berliners joked that Marx was sitting on his suitcase
03:25and called the sculpture Marx and Engels waiting to emigrate.
03:29Others called them the retirees.
03:32It's actually possible to scramble up onto Marx's lap.
03:36I did so, and my wife Kathleen kindly photographed the scene.
03:40Besides the advent of irreverent American tourists, other changes keep sweeping onwards.
03:47The Palace of the Republic was demolished by 2008 and replaced by a reconstruction of the
03:53old Prussian royal palace that had stood there originally.
03:58The New Berlin is a picture in miniature of the enormous changes that swept across the former
04:03Soviet bloc.
04:04What did the fall of the Berlin Wall and the implosion of the Soviet Union mean for communism?
04:11There were multiple possible routes forward, and none of them involved that simple formula
04:16of fairy tales, and they lived happily ever after.
04:21Worldwide, the collapse of the Soviet bloc produced repeated waves of change.
04:27Eastern Europeans faced the challenge of transitioning away from repression and argued fiercely about the
04:33best politics of memory, how to recall and make sense of the ordeal of decades past.
04:39The results of these debates proved highly varied, ranging from surprising stability to Yugoslav
04:46slaughter.
04:48Russia, after a brief interval of democratic transition, lapsed back into authoritarian patterns that drew on
04:55nostalgia and fantasies of revenge.
04:58China, North Korea, Vietnam, Laos, and Cuba retained a ruling elite who invoked communism, but had to
05:06contend with a new correlation of forces worldwide.
05:10And in fact, the reverberations are still with us in the present day, and likely will recur for decades
05:16to come.
05:18In Eastern Europe, the first impulse was to topple statues of Lenin and Marx.
05:23Of course, the Stalin statues were long gone.
05:26Throughout the bloc, statues came down, but not everywhere.
05:31In Moscow, crowds looked on as the Iron Felix statue, memorializing Felix Zerzhinsky as the
05:37founder of Lenin's Chekhov secret police, was removed from in front of the Ljubljanka,
05:42the KGB headquarters.
05:43But in towns throughout Russia and Ukraine and Belarus, other Lenin or Marx monuments remained,
05:52having become so ubiquitous in the past that they seemed nearly invisible.
05:56What was to be done with the statues that were taken down?
06:00In Lithuania, a park was established for them in the countryside, Gruto Parkas.
06:06Lenins and Stalins, some lying on their side, now congregate there, next to picnic tables and a
06:13fenced enclosure with baby boars.
06:16The scene is ambivalent.
06:17What is the message?
06:19Are these artifacts that are being preserved?
06:21Or idols that have been demoted from their earlier positions of honor?
06:26In Moscow, debates surged about whether Lenin's mummy should be removed from display or not.
06:33Some suggested that the symbolic ramifications of either removing or retaining him, either way,
06:39could be huge.
06:41But then inertia set in.
06:43Lenin remains today in the mausoleum in Red Square.
06:47On a larger scale, no full legal reckoning followed after the collapse of these regimes.
06:53The Russian dissident, Vladimir Bukovsky, had urged a trial, like the Nuremberg trials of 1945
07:00to 1946, to hold Soviet officials to account, but no response followed.
07:06In Eastern Europe, urgent questions involved how to transition away from communist practice
07:13in politics, economics, and society.
07:16While ordinary people often spoke of their desire to live normally, democracy was not inevitable.
07:23This was especially true in Yugoslavia, which had earlier been hailed as a maverick socialist state
07:29making its own way, until the death of the leader Tito in 1980.
07:34As economic strains and national contentions took their toll, Yugoslavian communist leaders
07:40morphed into ethnic chauvinist leaders with alarming speed.
07:46Extreme nationalism was their answer to the ideological vacuum they felt,
07:50and they invoked especially the memory of mutual atrocities of World War II,
07:55claiming that they would prevent their recurrence.
07:59The result was a splintering of Yugoslavia.
08:02While Slobodan Milosevic championed the Serbs,
08:05Franjo Tudjman led the Croatians in their split from the federal state.
08:10War ensued from 1991 until 2001,
08:14as the state shattered into six independent countries.
08:18The world witnessed on television images of brutality,
08:22concentration camps, mass graves, and ethnic cleansing.
08:26Yet this grim outcome was not inevitable.
08:30In the same period, the former state of Czechoslovakia split apart without violence
08:35in what was called the Velvet Divorce of 1992 to 1993.
08:40The dissident-turned-president, Václav Havel, resigned in protest at the split,
08:47which he had opposed.
08:48But the bloodless nature of the dissolution showed that many courses were possible.
08:54Economic transitions proved wrenching,
08:58producing changes in the move to capitalism and private enterprise.
09:02With the closure of large state enterprises,
09:05which once had been hailed as the wave of the future and a badge of modernity,
09:10belching smokestacks and all.
09:13Poles grimly joked that it was
09:15much easier to turn an aquarium into fish soup
09:18than to reverse direction and go the other way.
09:21The full toll of the environmental damage also came into view,
09:25wrought by the relentless emphasis on heavy industry at all costs.
09:30In politics, the past casts a shadow over new beginnings.
09:36Many elites from the communist period simply reconfigured
09:39or renamed their parties to compete in the new political landscape.
09:45In response to the shadowy persistence of communist figures,
09:48policies called lustration, meaning to make something transparent, were proposed.
09:54Lustration laws made it imperative to examine the past activities of political leaders
09:59or candidates to exclude those who were party to abuses of power under the earlier regime.
10:05In the 1990s, different Eastern European countries handled these policies differently
10:10and applied them with varying intensity.
10:14Waves of revelations upended political careers
10:17in a process that would continue until new generations arrived on the scene
10:22free of any potential taint.
10:25The former East Germany stands out for multiple reasons.
10:28Its unification with West Germany afforded it special advantages
10:33in subsidizing its transition, or what's called die Wende in German, the turn.
10:39And then there is its remarkable record of striving to come to terms with the past,
10:45which in German is called Aufarbeitung, working through.
10:49The tormented psychological dimensions of that process
10:52are eloquently recorded in a 2002 book entitled Stasi Land,
10:58Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall by Anna Funder.
11:02I recommend this book most highly, as it is tremendously well-written
11:06and captures the personal experience of a society-wide process.
11:12When East Germany fell, Stasi employees feverishly burned or tried to shred documents
11:19in their offices, with KGB officer Vladimir Putin helping in Dresden.
11:24Amid the chaos, overworked shredding machines actually broke down.
11:29Crowds broke into the Stasi offices to halt the purge.
11:32In spite of this attempt at last-minute destruction,
11:36the Stasi left behind huge numbers of files, some 111 kilometers of records.
11:43After 1992, German laws gave people the right to see their own files,
11:49to discover who had informed on them.
11:52Since then, about 7 million people have read their files.
11:56Would you do so if you were in their position?
11:58The work of reconstruction also goes on.
12:0215,000 sacks of shredded paper were found in the Stasi headquarters
12:07at Normannenstrasse in Berlin in 1990.
12:11And since then, a crew of archivists is working on reconstructing them
12:16at a laborious pace, piecing the parts together.
12:20One estimate is that the task will take them 375 years.
12:25Few perpetrators were held to account in court.
12:29Stasi boss Mielke was convicted, but for an old murder in the 1930s.
12:34To avoid trial, at the end of 1991,
12:37Eric Honneker had fled to the Chilean embassy in Moscow,
12:41seeking asylum, but he was extradited back to Germany.
12:45He was put on trial for deaths caused by his orders in the GDR in 1992.
12:50When Honneker's liver cancer was advanced, the trial was abandoned,
12:55and he departed for Chile, where he died in 1994.
13:00After 1989, over 90,000 Stasi employees now had to seek new jobs.
13:06A joke at the time claimed that ex-Stasi officers who became cab drivers in Berlin
13:11were really the best, because you only had to tell them your name,
13:15and they would know immediately where you live.
13:17In fact, some former Stasi officials were well-positioned to use their earlier ties in
13:23business, such as insurance or telemarketing or real estate.
13:28Some became private detectives.
13:29Older, unrepentant Stasi officers formed insider clubs to decry the negative image of their
13:37earlier work and to get together to recall the good old days.
13:42Nostalgia wafted up, quickly, as a volatile factor.
13:47In East and West, one heard people saying that they missed the Cold War's alleged moral clarity
13:53of an us versus them.
13:55This was actually a deep distortion, as there had never been simple unanimity in East or West.
14:02Even though the physical wall was down, Germans still spoke of an abiding Mauer im Kopf,
14:08a mental wall that persisted.
14:11In West Germany, there were some who resented having to subsidize the new Eastern states
14:16that had been reunified.
14:18They ridiculed new citizens under the label Aussie or Easterner.
14:22Some wore a T-shirt that read,
14:25Ich will meine Mauer wieder haben.
14:26I want to get my wall back again.
14:29Dark humor indeed.
14:31Some East Germans experienced what was called Ostalgie, a longing or nostalgia for the East,
14:38after the disappointing difficulties of the Wende.
14:41In 2009, 57% of surveyed East Germans defended the earlier state.
14:4749% said, quote,
14:50The GDR had more good sides than bad sides.
14:53There were some problems, but life was good there.
14:56End quote.
14:57A more radical group, 8%, said it was all mostly good.
15:01Life there was happier and better.
15:04Similar sentiments were registered in other Eastern European countries.
15:08I recommend a subtle book on precisely this topic,
15:13Witold Shablovsky's Dancing Bears,
15:15subtitled True Stories of People Nostalgic for Life Under Tyranny,
15:20published in 2014.
15:22The journalist reflects on the complicated and painful move to freedom
15:27taking place in what he calls a kind of freedom laboratory.
15:31He uses as a metaphor the bears of Bulgaria,
15:36who for generations had been forced to dance.
15:39But now that that practice has been banned,
15:41are housed in wildlife preserves,
15:44where they cannot adjust to a life in the wild they have never known.
15:49Nostalgia can be a political force,
15:51but longing for the past can also be a shared universal human trait.
15:56I've met people who were imprisoned in Siberia
15:59who spoke of those years as wonderful.
16:02And if you're astonished and you ask why,
16:05the answer is,
16:07because then I was young.
16:09This response is either inspiring or scary, I guess,
16:13but it's human.
16:15Nostalgia and inertia proved powerful encumbrances,
16:19perhaps most vividly in post-Soviet Belarus,
16:22another model for a failed or stalled transition.
16:25After 1991, Belarus drifted into a time warp.
16:30Its dissident movement in Soviet times came later
16:33and proved weaker than that of surrounding republics.
16:36As an additional burden,
16:38the Chernobyl disaster in nearby Ukraine
16:40contaminated about a fifth or a quarter of the country's area,
16:45leaving a crushing psychological burden
16:47that encouraged a sense of fatalism.
16:50In 1994, a communist functionary named Alexander Lukashenko
16:55was elected president,
16:57promising closer ties with Russia and unreformed economics.
17:02In the next few years, he extended his term
17:05and instituted authoritarian rule,
17:07restoring Soviet symbols.
17:10In 2011, young protesters demanded Lukashenko's resignation
17:14and a shift to democracy in mass protests
17:18where they clapped rather than shouting slogans.
17:21Henceforth, most public clapping was declared illegal.
17:26Lukashenko brought Belarus ever closer to the new Russia
17:29under Vladimir Putin.
17:31There, in the aftermath of the dissolution of the Soviet Union,
17:36the Russian Federation took over Soviet embassies around the world,
17:39the USSR's United Nations Security Council seat,
17:44and the Soviet nuclear forces and spy networks.
17:48In inheriting these,
17:49Russia did not take on responsibility for the invasions,
17:53occupations, and associated damage of the Soviet period.
17:57Nor did Russia take on responsibility
17:59for the great losses Russians had suffered
18:02as subjects of the entire Soviet experiment from the first.
18:06Thus, a lack of clarity ensued
18:10about the very identity of the successor state
18:12and its harrowing history over the past century.
18:17An estimated 25 million ethnic Russians
18:19found themselves outside the borders of the Russian Federation
18:22without their earlier status or identity.
18:26In her brilliant and unique oral history work,
18:29the Belarusian-born Nobel Prize-winning writer,
18:32Svetlana Alexeyevich,
18:34captures forlorn voices,
18:37nostalgic for earlier status.
18:40Throughout her interviews with ordinary Russians,
18:43one refrain consistently repeats,
18:46we used to be a great nation.
18:49To miss above all the pride in being feared by others
18:52is an imperialist hangover.
18:55No huge national monument or vast museum,
18:59commensurate with the full scale of the tragedy,
19:02was built to memorialize the gulag
19:04or other victims of Stalin
19:06or other stages of Soviet rule.
19:08There are smaller monuments and museums,
19:11but nothing really vast.
19:13A 2012 book by David Satter,
19:16entitled,
19:17It Was a Long Time Ago,
19:19and It Never Happened Anyway,
19:21subtitled,
19:22Russia and the Communist Past,
19:24searingly charts the emergence
19:26of a dangerous amnesia
19:28or denial of the past.
19:31The history of the gulag is ignored,
19:33mass graves forgotten,
19:35and a society emerges where
19:37former interrogators and guards
19:39are paid higher pensions
19:41than their surviving victims.
19:43After 1991,
19:46Gorbachev was reviled in his own homeland,
19:48associated with the loss of the Soviet Empire.
19:51His great rival, Yeltsin,
19:53continued as president of Russia
19:54from 1991 to 1999.
19:58Yeltsin's initial energy for reform was spent.
20:02As the economy tumbled,
20:03while oligarchs thrived,
20:06a confrontation with the parliament
20:07ended with Yeltsin ordering tanks
20:09to attack the parliament building,
20:11and massive force was used against Chechnya,
20:14which sought independence.
20:16Yeltsin's health declined,
20:18worsened by alcoholism.
20:20At the end of 1999,
20:22he resigned
20:22and appointed an obscure figure
20:25as his successor,
20:26Vladimir Putin.
20:28Putin decreed that Yeltsin
20:30could not be prosecuted in the future,
20:32which seemed to be his besetting fear.
20:35Yeltsin died in 2007.
20:38Putin,
20:39on his return from Germany in 1989,
20:41had resigned from the KGB
20:43with a rank of lieutenant colonel
20:45and went into politics.
20:47Joining the Yeltsin administration,
20:49he became director of the KGB's successor,
20:53the Federal Security Service,
20:55the FSB,
20:56before being appointed prime minister
20:58and then acting president in 1999.
21:02Soon thereafter,
21:03Putin won elections
21:04amidst apartment building explosions
21:07officially blamed on Chechens,
21:10although many suspect
21:10Putin's FSB played a role.
21:13While in power,
21:15Vladimir Putin's historical explanations
21:16explanations for his own role
21:19framed his project for Russia
21:21as a reaction to Soviet collapse.
21:24Putin declared
21:25that the collapse of the Soviet Union
21:27in 1991
21:28was the greatest geopolitical tragedy
21:31of the 20th century.
21:33Reflecting on the notorious Nazi-Soviet pact,
21:36in which both parties agreed
21:37to non-aggression
21:38and a division of Eastern and Central Europe,
21:42his views have been ambivalent
21:43or evolving.
21:44Putin condemned it in 2009,
21:48but by 2014 suggested
21:50the pact was not bad
21:51and added that
21:52perhaps it was all Britain's fault anyway.
21:55Obviously,
21:56versions of history,
21:58even caricatured ones,
21:59espoused by leaders
22:01take on great importance
22:02if they offer hints
22:04about future policy.
22:05But they can produce
22:06astonishing denials of reality.
22:09In 2007,
22:11the Putin government
22:12revised high school history lessons
22:14to show Stalin
22:15as a strong leader
22:16who took, quote,
22:18rational decisions
22:19in the interest of the state.
22:21In 2008,
22:23when Russian TV conducted
22:24a vote for
22:25greatest Russian ever,
22:27Stalin came in third.
22:29In 2009,
22:31Putin declared about Stalin,
22:33we should refrain
22:34from a general assessment.
22:35In 2012,
22:38about 30% of Russians polled
22:40had a positive opinion of Stalin,
22:42but only 3% would want to live
22:44under Stalin now.
22:46About a quarter of Russians
22:48had a positive view of Lenin,
22:50while about a third said
22:51he took Russia down the wrong path
22:53or was cruel.
22:55Amnesia about your own past
22:57can be very dangerous,
22:59as it allows falsehoods to thrive.
23:02Earlier,
23:02when communist regimes
23:04rewrote the past,
23:06it was joked
23:06that in the Soviet Union,
23:08the future was certain,
23:10but the past
23:11was constantly changing.
23:13This present-day
23:14perilous amnesia
23:15is different.
23:17In just discarding
23:18the past entirely,
23:19or replacing it
23:20with cartoon figures,
23:22in favor of a shallow,
23:23everlasting present.
23:25The oldest Russian
23:27human rights organization,
23:29called Memorial,
23:29founded in the 1980s,
23:32bravely tried for years
23:34to convince society
23:35to unflinchingly face its past,
23:38especially by seeking
23:39to locate mass graves
23:41of the Stalinist period.
23:43But under Putin,
23:44the organization was persecuted,
23:46and then in early 2022,
23:48Memorial was banned.
23:50Officials and parliamentarians
23:52have even suggested
23:53restoring the Iron Felix statue
23:55to its earlier perch.
23:57Putin's historical affinities
23:59are eclectic.
24:00And in his rhetoric,
24:01he emphasizes
24:02not a Marxist worldview,
24:04but a mythology
24:05of Russian power
24:06that mixes and combines
24:08Tsar Ivan the Terrible,
24:10Peter the Great,
24:11the Czechists,
24:12and Stalin
24:12with Putin
24:13as their culmination.
24:16Seeking fame
24:16as a leader
24:17who again set Russia
24:18on an expansionist course,
24:20Putin ordered
24:21the invasion of Ukraine
24:22in 2014,
24:24seizing Crimea
24:25and parts of eastern Ukraine.
24:27He invoked
24:28the Second World War
24:29and claimed
24:29he was saving the region
24:31from revived Nazism.
24:33At this point,
24:35we witnessed
24:35the twists and turns
24:36of the communist legacy
24:38and delayed reactions to it
24:40in the Ukrainian response.
24:42In addition to armed resistance,
24:45Ukrainians also toppled
24:47many of their remaining
24:48Lenin statues,
24:49some 700 still in the country.
24:52This move came to be called
24:53the Leninopod,
24:54or Lenin avalanche
24:56of 2014.
24:58It came over a decade
24:59after those elsewhere
25:01in Eastern Europe
25:02had already overturned
25:04and disposed
25:04of their own Lenin statues.
25:06So,
25:07after standing firmly
25:08for a decade,
25:09suddenly,
25:10Ukraine's Lenins
25:11came to be identified
25:12with Russian aggression
25:13and were removed.
25:16Then,
25:16in February 2022,
25:19Putin ordered
25:20a full-scale invasion
25:21of Ukraine,
25:22seemingly confident
25:23that the government
25:24in Kiev would fall
25:25and Russian troops
25:27would be welcomed
25:27as liberators.
25:29It's fascinating
25:30to speculate
25:31about how this venture
25:32might have fared
25:33if launched
25:34a decade or more earlier,
25:36but in the interval,
25:37new generations,
25:39less moved by nostalgia,
25:41reacted quite differently
25:42and surprised the world
25:44with determined resistance.
25:47Nostalgia was also at work
25:49in other ways in China,
25:50focusing on a revival
25:52of associations
25:53with the era of Mao
25:54and the Cultural Revolution.
25:56Now,
25:57longing for a chaotic period
25:59that may have seen
26:00two million dead
26:01clearly requires explanation.
26:04Tanya Brannigan,
26:05journalist for The Guardian,
26:07wrote a fascinating
26:082023 study
26:09called
26:10Red Memory,
26:11The Afterlives
26:12of China's Cultural Revolution.
26:15She ably shows
26:16how decades of silence
26:17about that period
26:18brought us to today.
26:20Even as former victims
26:22have often been quiet,
26:24advertising campaigns
26:26for clothing
26:26celebrate Red Guard style
26:28as chic.
26:30Restaurants
26:30used the Cultural Revolution
26:32as a backdrop
26:33with waitresses
26:33dressed in Red Guard uniforms.
26:36Pensioners
26:37grow misty-eyed
26:38at hearing songs
26:39that remind them
26:40of their youth
26:41in that time.
26:43Brannigan also analyzes
26:44the astonishing appeal
26:46of Mao impersonators,
26:48of whom she found dozens
26:49who perform
26:51at parties for hire.
26:53She writes that they,
26:54quote,
26:55seemed almost as prevalent
26:56in China
26:57as Elvis's were
26:58in the West,
26:59end quote.
27:00And their ranks
27:01even included
27:02a female Mao impersonator
27:03who's said to be
27:04among the very best.
27:06Brannigan observes
27:07of this strange phenomenon,
27:09quote,
27:10what was not permissible
27:11as history in China
27:13was allowed
27:14as entertainment,
27:15end quote.
27:15Nostalgia
27:17can even be transmuted
27:18into supernatural belief
27:20as well.
27:21Journalists relate
27:22anecdotes
27:23of being in cabs
27:25whose drivers
27:26have pinned
27:26Mao portraits
27:27to the dashboards
27:28as talismans
27:29protecting against accidents
27:31and of villages
27:32where Mao is venerated
27:34alongside local deities.
27:37Since taking office
27:38in 2012
27:39as the General Secretary
27:41of the CCP,
27:42Xi Jinping
27:43became the most important
27:44communist leader
27:45in the world,
27:46Xi's family suffered
27:48under Mao's
27:48cultural revolution.
27:50But instead of reacting
27:51by becoming a reformer,
27:53Xi has emulated
27:54Mao's model.
27:56Xi was born in 1953,
27:58the year Stalin died,
28:00in Shaanxi province.
28:01Xi is among
28:02the second red generation,
28:04as it is called,
28:05a member
28:05of the nomenclatura elite.
28:08His father,
28:09Xi Jinping
28:10was an early
28:11and firm comrade
28:13of Mao's,
28:14but was sidelined
28:15for criticizing
28:15the cultural revolution
28:17and then tortured.
28:19Xi's half-sister
28:20was tormented
28:20until she took her life.
28:23As a teenager,
28:24Xi was sent
28:25to the countryside
28:25in 1969
28:26for six years
28:28to work
28:29as an agricultural
28:29laborer
28:30on a commune.
28:31He became
28:32a party member
28:33in 1974
28:34at the age of 21.
28:36He went on
28:37to study
28:37chemical engineering
28:38at Beijing University.
28:40Afterwards,
28:42Xi worked his way up
28:43through ever-higher
28:45party and government posts.
28:47As governor
28:48of Fujian province,
28:49his reputation
28:50was different
28:51from his contrarian father.
28:53He was seen
28:54as a disciplined,
28:55even rigid,
28:56problem solver.
28:58In commenting
28:59on the Soviet collapse,
29:00Xi blamed
29:01Soviet leadership
29:02and said
29:03a real man
29:04at the helm
29:05could have prevented it.
29:07Xi advanced
29:08to the nine-member
29:09Politburo,
29:09or political office
29:11of the CCP,
29:12then became
29:13vice president,
29:14then vice chairman
29:15of the Central
29:16Military Commission,
29:17and then president
29:18by 2013.
29:20Instead of following
29:21the earlier
29:22post-Mao models
29:23of collective leadership,
29:25Xi set about
29:26re-centralizing power,
29:29taking on
29:29multiple offices
29:30for himself
29:31and personal command
29:33of the armed forces
29:34and abolishing term limits
29:36on his own post.
29:38Xi announced
29:39that he wanted
29:39to restore
29:40party discipline
29:41to eliminate corruption
29:42and the damage
29:43it was doing
29:44to the image
29:45of the Communist Party.
29:46He launched
29:47a mass-line campaign
29:49of political orientation,
29:51a term which was
29:52a throwback
29:52to Mao's
29:53rectification campaigns.
29:55This campaign
29:56would stamp out
29:57the four decadences,
29:59that is,
30:00formalism,
30:01bureaucratism,
30:03hedonism,
30:03and extravagance.
30:05This was coupled
30:06with a big crackdown
30:07on dissent
30:08within the country,
30:09especially throttling
30:10of bloggers
30:11and tightened control
30:12of the internet
30:13using the Great Firewall
30:15of China.
30:16China blocked Facebook
30:17and YouTube.
30:18Foreign ideas
30:19were denounced,
30:20including specific
30:21banned topics
30:22that were known
30:23as the
30:23seven don't mentions.
30:26They were
30:26universal values,
30:29civil society,
30:30citizens' rights,
30:31freedom of the press,
30:32mistakes made
30:34by the Communist Party,
30:35the privileges
30:36of capitalism,
30:37and the independence
30:38of the judiciary.
30:40Criticisms of Mao
30:41were prosecuted,
30:43and he again
30:43was venerated.
30:45Xi has stated
30:45that Mao's achievements
30:47really should be held
30:48equal to those
30:49of reforms
30:50since 1978.
30:52It's been suggested
30:53that Xi has even
30:54modeled his public
30:55appearance on Mao,
30:57the same haircut,
30:58motionless solidity,
31:00and calm.
31:00Secrecy and control
31:03remain hallmarks
31:04of the government.
31:05Back in 2003,
31:07when the SARS virus
31:08was identified
31:08in southern China
31:10and then spread
31:11to Beijing
31:11and Hong Kong,
31:13the government
31:13tried to stifle
31:14information about it.
31:16Only international
31:17pressure forced
31:18then-president
31:19Hu Jintao
31:19to reveal
31:20the extent
31:21of the disease.
31:22In 2019,
31:24COVID-19
31:25began to spread
31:26from Wuhan.
31:27Many experts
31:28now believe
31:28it could have
31:29originated
31:29in a virology
31:31lab there,
31:31but the government
31:32has steadfastly
31:33denied this.
31:35Xi's state
31:35reacted to the outbreak
31:36by imposing
31:38lockdowns
31:38of great severity,
31:40including locking
31:41people into
31:42their apartments,
31:43in a bid
31:44to demonstrate
31:44that China's
31:45zero-COVID
31:46approach
31:47to the pandemic
31:48was superior
31:49to that of the
31:50rest of the world.
31:51But then,
31:52facing public outcry,
31:53the approach
31:54was dropped.
31:54These policy
31:56swerves
31:57produced a joke
31:58involving three men
32:00sitting in a
32:01Chinese jail.
32:02One supported
32:03the COVID policy,
32:04another opposed it,
32:06and the third
32:06administered it.
32:08During and after
32:09the pandemic,
32:11economic challenges
32:12reasserted themselves,
32:14even though in 2020,
32:15Xi had set the goal
32:16of doubling
32:17the economy's size
32:18by 2035.
32:20By 2023,
32:22many economists
32:22saw China
32:23entering a period
32:25of much slower
32:26growth rates
32:27and demographic
32:28strains,
32:29a declining labor
32:30force.
32:31The indebtedness
32:32of provincial
32:32governments
32:33intensified
32:34in cycles
32:35of infrastructure
32:36building and
32:38borrowing,
32:38so that by 2022,
32:41the total debt
32:41of government
32:42at all levels
32:44and state
32:45enterprises
32:46was triple
32:47the entire GDP.
32:49In 2023,
32:50Xi moved
32:51to reimpose
32:52control
32:52on private
32:53business,
32:54introducing
32:54ideological
32:55directives
32:56to an extent
32:56not witnessed
32:58since the launch
32:59of Deng's
32:59reforms in 1978.
33:02In proclaiming
33:03a program
33:04for the
33:04rejuvenation
33:05of the
33:05Chinese nation,
33:07Xi emphasized
33:08nationalism
33:09and Chinese
33:10greatness.
33:11Hong Kong
33:11protests,
33:12like those
33:13in 2014,
33:14were denounced
33:15as foreign,
33:16alien.
33:17Repression
33:18in Xinjiang
33:19intensified.
33:19In foreign
33:21policy,
33:22Xi aimed
33:22for recognition
33:23of China's
33:24global power.
33:26In Paris
33:26in 2014,
33:28Xi suggested
33:29that China
33:29is a lion
33:31that has
33:31awakened,
33:32but he added
33:33it was a
33:34peaceful,
33:34pleasant,
33:35and civilized
33:35lion.
33:36The Belt
33:37and Road
33:38Initiative,
33:39announced in
33:392013,
33:41envisioned a
33:41leading role
33:42for China
33:42in global
33:43infrastructure
33:44development,
33:45focused on
33:46a Silk Road
33:47economic belt
33:48to trade routes
33:49overland
33:50and a
33:51modern-day
33:51maritime Silk
33:52Road network.
33:54It is planned
33:54for completion
33:55in 2049.
33:57In 2019,
33:59China successfully
34:00sent an unmanned
34:01spacecraft to the
34:02moon and promised
34:03that astronaut
34:04missions were to
34:05follow.
34:07Even as Xi
34:07presided over
34:09the 100-year
34:09anniversary of
34:10the CCP
34:11in 2021,
34:13the party
34:14was laying
34:14claim to
34:15the future.
34:18of the
34:20sapphire
34:21and...
34:21the
34:26and...
34:26...
34:27...
34:27использ
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