By Jin Yan
In the third decade of the 21st century, the global political order is undergoing deep turbulence. Concepts once thought to have been buried with the collapse of the Soviet Union—Leninism and the Great Purge—appear to be resurfacing in China, not as historical replicas, but in a modernized, more concealed, yet equally ruthless form.
Historian Stephen Kotkin’s dissection of Stalin’s rule offers a revealing lens. Observations by contemporary political commentators provide the present-day texture that sharpens this comparison.
Stalin as the ‘gold standard’ of totalitarian rule
Kotkin is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and professor emeritus of history and international affairs at Princeton University, where he taught for decades and previously directed the Center for International Studies. He is widely regarded as one of the most authoritative scholars on Stalin, Soviet history, and authoritarian governance.
In his biography of Stalin, Kotkin advances a central argument: Stalin represents the “gold standard” of dictatorship. This is not an endorsement, but a measure of how thoroughly he mastered power, institutional design, and ideological control.
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Kotkin argues that while the death toll under Mao Zedong far exceeded that under Stalin, Mao’s regime was, at its core, a derivative of the Stalinist model. Without the organizational blueprint, military backing, and industrial templates provided by Stalin, the Chinese Communist Party would have struggled to prevail in the civil war or consolidate power afterward.
To understand Stalin, Kotkin maintains, is to understand the operating logic shared by all communist regimes.
Stalin was not merely a supreme commander. He was an obsessive micro-manager. He personally edited the autobiographies of Soviet heroes, reviewed film scripts, and even annotated industrial blueprints.
According to Kotkin, this extreme fixation on detail—combined with fear and personality cults—turned society into a precise but emotionally frozen machine.
‘Power alone does not explain dictatorship’
Kotkin stresses that raw ambition is insufficient to sustain Stalin-style rule. Dictators often operate within rigid, even distorted belief systems. Stalin genuinely believed he was defending the revolution. That moral self-justification enabled him to execute comrades without hesitation.
Commentators argue that a similar logic is visible in Xi Jinping. Xi appears convinced that only absolute Party supremacy can prevent China from suffering the fate of the Soviet Union.
Kotkin famously proposed the “half-pregnant” theory: just as a woman cannot be half pregnant, a Leninist regime cannot be half liberalized.
At the core of Leninism lies monopolized power. Commentator Wen Zhao has repeatedly described this monopoly as structurally brittle. Once even a small margin of political freedom is permitted, it rapidly becomes a focal point for organized resistance.
From Hungary in 1956 to the Prague Spring and ultimately Gorbachev’s reforms, history suggests that political liberalization does not initiate gradual improvement. It triggers systemic collapse.
Political analyst Shi Shan argues that when Xi assumed power in 2012, he inherited a Party whose authority had been diluted by decades of economic opening. Under Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin, and Hu Jintao, the expansion of private enterprise effectively tore fissures into the Party’s monopoly.
Xi’s mission, in Shi’s words, was to “patch the sky.” Through anti-corruption campaigns and administrative intervention, he forcibly embedded Party organizations into private firms. This marked a shift away from capitalists joining the Party, toward the Party colonizing capital.
The recent disappearances of senior figures from the Rocket Force, the Strategic Support Force, and even the defense and foreign ministers have revived comparisons to the Red Army purges of 1937.
1937 and 2023 as mirror images
Commentator Jiang Feng notes that Stalin purged the Red Army not because its generals were disloyal, but because they were insufficiently afraid. Dictators require absolute, non-rational submission.
Once military leaders develop independent prestige, professional authority, and complex internal networks, they become threats in the ruler’s eyes.
Kotkin observes that while a leader may cultivate dozens of loyalists at the local level, ruling a state with millions of officials leaves him fundamentally alone.
Those he promotes quickly develop their own interest networks. Such factionalism remains the dictator’s permanent nightmare.
Wen Zhao argues that purges function as loyalty tests. By destroying yesterday’s comrades, the ruler forces those who remain to choose between conscience and survival.
Shi Shan adds that these purges are inherently random. They do not pursue justice. They pursue uncertainty. Their purpose is to make clear that personal safety depends entirely on the leader’s mood at any given moment.
The spiral of paranoia: security obsession and physical vulnerability
Kotkin also highlights dictators’ fixation on personal physical safety.
Even at the height of power, basic physical threats remain unavoidable. Who can guarantee that food is not poisoned, or that ventilation systems are uncompromised?
Kotkin notes that extreme anxiety over personal safety often translates into extreme political control. Stalin’s refusal to allow doctors near him late in life, and Xi Jinping’s reported practice of using self-supplied furniture and extraordinary security measures during foreign trips, reflect the same psychology.
Jiang Feng argues that Xi’s sweeping securitization of the state represents the policy-level manifestation of personal paranoia. When the leader feels unsafe, the entire country is placed on wartime footing. When the leader suspects hidden assassins, the entire bureaucracy is subjected to repeated scrutiny by security organs.
The most lethal flaw of dictatorship lies in succession.
Kotkin explains that in Leninist systems, once a successor is designated, the center of power immediately begins to shift. Officials start hedging between the incumbent and the future leader, or aligning early. For a ruler at the peak of authority, this amounts to political suicide.
Xi Jinping’s gamble with lifelong rule
Shi Shan and Wen Zhao argue that Xi’s abolition of term limits was not designed to ensure long-term stability, but to relieve his immediate anxiety over power loss.
The absence of a successor, however, produces institutional rigidity. Should the leader’s health falter or a sudden political crisis emerge, the system lacks buffers and legitimate transfer mechanisms, making violent internal conflict or collapse far more likely.
Kotkin’s critique of Western China policy closely aligns with the views of Jiang Feng and Wen Zhao.
Kotkin stresses that the West’s greatest error has been conflating Chinese civilization, the Chinese people, and the Leninist regime. Jiang Feng notes that the CCP exploits nationalism to portray itself as the guardian of Chinese culture, even as its ideological core remains imported Marxist-Leninist doctrine.
Wen Zhao argues that confronting a “Stalinized China” requires firm military deterrence and technological separation. Such regimes respect only strength. Moderate persuasion is interpreted as weakness.
Kotkin maintains that only by convincing the CCP that initiating conflict would result in regime annihilation can fragile peace be preserved.
From Stalin’s Gulag to Xi Jinping’s digital totalitarianism, history follows a strikingly consistent logic. Dictators manufacture fear to sustain rule, only to be consumed by it in the end.
As Kotkin observes, understanding Stalin is to understand the irreconcilable nature of this system. The observations of contemporary commentators serve as a reminder: when a vast regime turns to large-scale purges in search of security, it has entered the final—and most dangerous—phase of its life cycle.